A level 252 paladin, a level 203 Mage, a level 201 rogue, a level 210 ranger, and a level 205 fighter all from the order of Sera stood at the southern gate. “Guys let's assume the normal twenty-skeleton routine, Sam and myself in the center, Regi and Astria on the wall and Tracker go invisible for scouting and bait the skeletons from the farm before joining us in the middle,” Glen instructed. The split was fast and the four stood on their positions. Three additional guards were also present at the wall.
Tracker made his way to the southern forest. Atop a high tree, he waited for the skeletons to show up. He stationed himself on the path that was generally used by the skeletons. With a present maximum capability to stay invisible for an hour, Tracker waited with his daggers out. A group of 20 skeletons required baiting to arrive at the village. To his absolute surprise, Tracker’s eyes were observing a group of over 100 skeletons. With increased speed due to congestion, it seemed to tracker that he wasn’t needed for baiting today. So he made quick time by jumping from branch to branch towards the village. After running through the tetra-farm, Tracker showed up at the southern wall of windrow.
“Increased numbers, more than a hundred skeletons, no controlling constructs, all average skeletons,” Tracker informed Glen.
Glen nodded, showed Astria five fingers, unsheathed his sword, and picked up a blue and silver shield. Sam followed by unsheathing his one-handed swords.
Astria in quick reaction to the five fingers moved down into the battlefield. She put her hands on the ground, “Autonomous elemental: Earth,” Astria said as she channeled her mana into the earth and two earth elementals arose from the ground. Five feet in height, with humanoid limbs, they waited for Astria’s orders. “Destroy the undead that arrive here,” Astria ordered with a stern tone as she returned to the village wall. “There goes a quarter of my mana,” Astria noted. Meanwhile, Regi was busy inspecting his newly created arrows.
When the skeletons arrived, the three men and the two elementals ran forward to create a buffer zone between the southern wall and the battlefield. The forward wave of skeletons collided with the ground fighters. The skeletons were rot-less, almost pristine, yellowish-white in color, and had a surprisingly smooth bone texture. Their primary weapons were their teeth and claws.
Glen started slashing into the first wave of skeletons like a hot knife into butter. He penetrated the rib cages of skeletons with his broadsword and with a quick jerk broke the skeleton spine into two. Structural damage at such a fundamental level rendered the skeleton top on the ground before their bottom collapsed as well. Sam had the plan of cutting weak portions of the foe. Tracker planted his twin daggers into the heads of the skeletons. This slowed them considerably for the remainder of the battle. The elementals got busy in a fast fistfight with an overwhelming number of skeletons. The ground fighters were very quickly surrounded by skeletons on all sides. Creating a circular pattern around them, the skeletons maximized the number of attacks per unit time on them. It was the sheer number of skeletons that was overwhelming the ground fighters.
“Arrow barrage: Poison”
“ice tornado”
Two crisp shouts from the village wall came. A barrage of arrows entered the periphery of the skeleton circle leaving a lot of them destroyed. A localized tornado entered the circle leaving the skeletons immobile for a minute, giving the ground fighters easy pickings.
The earth elementals were destroyed when a few skeletons jumped on their body and the sheer weight of the skeletons disintegrated them.
The number of skeletons was rapidly reducing. “Radiant Thunder Mark V,” Glen shouted as sparks of thunder from his broadsword set moving skeletons afire. The battlefield was filled with burning skeletons, melting into the ground. The cold autumn air filled with the heat of burnt calcium at high temperatures. More skeletons found their way into the radiant damage of the blinding light. The final skeletons were just pushed into the burning pyre created by the attack. And so the battle was won with a few scratches here and there. Windrow stood for two more days.
The guardsmen collected all the bone material and deposited it into the burning pyre. The smell of which indicated to the village or the people who had their nose out for this signal, that the battle was a success.
Madilyn saw the smoke in the moonlight and started making sandwiches. The heroes would be back at the station for her to feed. Glen had never asked for food after these battles, but Madilyn had planned to do it anyway. Her friends had grown up to be warriors and administrators for the village. She felt a responsibility towards the village for non-combat requirements.
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Steve had started to dig for the fourth house when the team reached the station. “Hey Steve, get into the hall, you have some healing to do,” Astria called out. Steve washed his hands expecting to apply some bandages.
Steve was happy to see only minor injuries on the team. “Now concentrate and turn on your aura skill, no bandages from today,” Astria said.
Steve started to concentrate, ‘Ok, everyone here is an ally, the 15-meter radius is good’. Steve felt the aura working on himself as his minor cuts during the day’s labor started healing. He felt as if mana was leaving his body in all directions. When after around twenty minutes, all injuries of the team, mainly tracker’s scratches on the shoulder were healed.
[Healer Class level 6]
Astria asked steve for a mana update.
“mana update, it's 5 out of 120,” Steve exclaimed. “Good, remember that aura skills are always less mana efficient than directed spatial healing spells,” Astria pointed out.
At the very same moment, Madilyn entered with her bag full of sandwiches. “Hey everyone, sandwich delivery here!” She said. Madilyn lifted the mood of the room, Steve noted. Madilyn and Steve left for food stop. Steve with his sandwich in hand asked, “Do you guys not have washrooms in the houses. Nobody asked me.”
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“In the city, a lot of complicated plumbing is done via magic. But in windrow, a lack of construct mages forces us to go to the river,” Madilyn replied. Steve nodded, ‘So, they have washrooms, but here it's a feasibility thing, will have to think on this.’
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“Joy and Rudy, get into the hall for a meeting,” Glen called out from the hall. Now that the civilians had left, it was natural to have a team meeting. All seven members of the station sat at a round table. Rudy took up the responsibility of taking the meeting minutes as he had to eventually communicate the demands and needs of the station with tantrax.
Glen started, “ STATUS: More than a hundred skeletons, nothing more powerful. The first wave we have seen this large. Any higher number of skeletons and the sole mage would be out of mana and the ranger out of arrows. Minor injuries to the paladin, fighter, and Rogue in ascending order of severity. Luckily mage and ranger stayed out of the battlefield. Battle success. RECOMMENDATIONS: faster travel facility for grade A teams. If this escalates 5x every two days, we will lose windrow in a week. Repeat that sentence for significance. Windrow is going to fall in a week if a grade A team does not show up.”
A moment of silence fell in the hall as the team realized Glen was done messaging tantrax. “So, about more arrows...,” Regi stopped his question halfway. “He is a level 6 healer, what is he going to heal when these late-night fights devolve into an all-out war?” Astria said while downing her last mana potion, “About potions too, we are out of these.”
Glen just waited for a second, and then replied, “You met Steve today, right Regi? He is your arrow supplier from tomorrow. Madilyn has an emergency stock of mana potions, also get stock for the station from the alchemist. About steve, train him tomorrow, will you? Just level that guy to oblivion, he’s got the two classes we direly need and he’s also the one ready to do work right now.” Glen’s volume was steadily increasing with each sentence, the magazine class monthly published in tantrax had made the top 10 worst classes to have ranking this year and the worst class in that list was the handyman class, due to its generality and mundane nature of the job, with low pay being a prominent point in the article. This had made the class almost rare in all of Dravos, as rare as the healer class in adventuring teams. A city or town had one or two healers at the most. Everyone who did not have fast recovery or other combat-related abilities was bound to go to the healer. The fact that the healer in a town like tantrax would level up faster by living a sedentary life in the city meant a low number of adventuring healers. Combat healers were just uneconomical in terms of mana if you asked a mage. If you had a sufficiently high mana pool, you would choose something like ranged magic and get your job done.
What worried Glen was that Steve would run back to tantrax if he was pressured into leveling at the rate they expected him to and the rate at which he was making these houses would be considered harsh even by tantrax standards. Glen was interrupted from his problems and their possible solution by a group of five swordsmen.
Five swordsmen, dressed in white clothing, smudged by green slime. All five of them carried red feathers of the Krock bird. One of them spoke up, “There is no adventurer’s guild here so we are just gonna submit you guys these feathers and get a wash first.” A questioning look from Glen and his team made the man introduce himself. “I am Peter Droug, the captain of the flamboyant cutters, we are a grade D team which should have been grade C by the end of this expedition but we got a message of national importance and hitched a supply wagon to this place.”
The words flamboyant cutters made a connection with Glen, “Hello, I am Glen, the administrator here. You can deposit your loot here at the station and you can contact joy for your lodging and food services.” Glen replied in a voice that gave away his excitement for the arrival of the first team and what did he say? near grade C? That was music to Glen’s ears. Joy appeared in front of the team and escorted them to the newly made, newly partially dried quarter with five rooms. The team did not make a fuss as they observed that construction had recently started at the site. “There is a river to the east, you can temporarily use, toilets will be made eventually.” Joy was lying again to new people she had just met. She had no idea of Steve’s level or capability with plumbing. “Along the road, to the south, there’s a restaurant called food stop, All your food needs are on the house there, the government has made provisions. This is your arrival fees,” Joy handed Peter a small pouch of gold coins, “I have taken the liberty to mix all your earnings into this pouch. Also remember, you get paid every time you fight at the southern wall, your absence there at the time of battle will make you wanted criminals in Dravos. Furniture will be moved here in the morning, you can go to food-stop for some food and rest.”
The flamboyant team just walked into the newly made house with no furniture, put down their luggage, and headed towards the river. The five men walked in silence towards the river, when one of them started, “That plume of smoke in the south got to do something with the battles?” another one jumped in, “You think we will be any good in front of skeletons?” Peter just shrugged at the questions of his teammates, “Tyler, Bart, please, let's have a bath in damn silence, we just got 20 gold coins for showing our faces for the first time in our lives. The fighters at the station here are surprisingly strong, seemed to be equivalent to a grade B team to me. Let’s eat the free food during this national emergency, and be of use in battle. The longer this war stretches, the better the chances that the king will end the war with our neighbor and send troops here. It was the same fifteen years ago. We just have to be a cog in the machine, a cog that gets paid very well for its efforts.”
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Steve woke up after just an hour of rest as he realized the pillow he used was cutting his sleep time. “mana update”
“120/120”
“One hour of sleep gets me to full mana, got it”
Steve planned to move out of his room and go back to his construction site when he saw five swordsmen munching down on dinner. A late dinner shift of sorts had begun at food-stop and Madilyn was busy again in the kitchen. Steve started by serving them some orders. The demand list was longer than general customers but nothing the chef could not handle. During this order service, Astria entered the dining room of the food stop and sat at a table. Steve promptly took her order, “Ten roasted track fish coming up,” said a confused Steve. He had noticed the humungous diets of people in this place, but ten of those... Steve diligently brought the order to Astria’s table. “Not here, we are going out,” Astria said pointing towards the door. Steve was now beyond confused. “We start your proper training from today, let me tell you what we expect from you as a representative from the paladin of the order of Sera,” Astria had a stern face Steve had never seen. “That’s just Glen isn't it Astria? You could have just said, Glen...” Steve asked casually while putting the last plate of roasted track fish on the grass just outside the food-stop.
“SHUT UP, Stand straight, this is formal education I am trying to give you in a short period, I am sleep deprived, had to gulp down a mana potion and I can cast fireball on you before you utter another word from your mouth,” Astria said as she pointed her wand towards Steve. The generally cheerful Astria had an agenda on her hands today. Steve got into a military-like attention position in a quick move.
“Sorry for shouting, now listen carefully to what we expect from you. Glen wants you to become a level 100 healer as soon as possible. To your path to level 100, you are expected to have the following milestones:
level – 20: mana manipulation and heal casting
level – 40: Flesh reconstruction
level – 60: Bone mending, setting, and control
level – 80: Area of effect with instant effect on allies
This is when even Glen will want you on the battlefield.
Level – 100: Priest of Sera
That is where Glen wants you to be, as the numbers in this battle go up on both sides, your healing must get better. Now that you know your path, close your mouth and heal these fish with your aura,” Astria ended the monologue while pointing at the dead fish.
Without a word, Steve started his aura to undo the roasting of fish.