You have been accepted into the formation of the Empire’s Bastion. While in formation, you are affected by ‘Shields Up’, ‘Don't Give an Inch’, and ‘Hold the Line’.
Shields Up: Any offensive attack against the shield wall is reduced by 25% in effectiveness while formation is held.
Don’t Give an Inch: All enemy knockback abilities are negated as long as the formation is held.
Hold the Line: All passive regeneration rates are doubled while in formation.
That last one was a game-changer! That would boost his Mana Regen up to almost 3% per minute. That was still pitifully low, but it felt huge. He set his mental floor at 40% Mana so that he would never be more than 3 min from activating Flame Expulsion. He flicked closed the log and checked his Mana and Health.
Mana: 55%
Health:100%
He inflamed his hatchets just in time for the front of the enemy's charge to hit the line. Gorock looked over and snorted at Tilly's forearm-sized weapons, while Tilly watched engrossed as the tide of Corrupted crashed against a golden wall projecting from the shields. As soon as they hit, they slowed significantly and hit the seemingly unmoveable secondary wall of shields, having lost almost all of their momentum.
Then, as if they were a single entity with many appendages the second rank of soldiers thrust their spears over the shoulders of the shield bearers, impalling the first and second ranks of enemy combatants. As the spears were withdrawn with whip-like quickness, the first rank followed up the thrusts with business-like sword strikes, mowing through any Corrupted that remained standing. The soldiers showed incredible discipline in their positioning through all of these maneuvers. The first rank never broke the wall and the second rank continued to pull back and strike with terrible thrusts over the shoulders of their brothers. Tilly even saw one second-ranker strike through the neck of a Corrupted minotaur mid-attack as it bent down to try and gore the satyr in front of him holding the shield wall.
Very quickly the initial wave of attackers that had stormed over to the opening in the gate had been churned into a gory paste by the economical yet brutal strikes of the shoulder-to-shoulder fighters of the Empire’s Bastions.
Tilly nervously rotated the hafts of his hatchets as he watched the rest of the horde of Corrupted shift from the battlefield, drawn towards the noise of the new conflict. Tens of thousands of black orbs had fixed on the gap in the gates. Eyeing a Corrupted, shifting into a shambling run about thirty feet in front of the formation, Tilly hefted one of his hatchets and threw it, feeling like a kid tossing rocks at the ocean. It hit, decimating the reanimated body as blue flames licked hungrily through the center mass of the target.
Then he threw another and another... Soon Tilly didn't even have to aim, he just kept throwing, enflaming every attack he could until his Mana dropped below 36%. He was rewarded with a Level Up notification a few seconds later, as the blue flame from his strikes finished eating through its latest target. He mentally dropped all the points into Endurance and realized, he must have been pretty close to leveling after his part in the fight with the guards.
By this time, the new massed charge was almost upon the formation and Tilly dropped his arms and breathed deeply trying to recover as much Mana as possible. The second, much larger wave thundered forward, and this time, as it crashed against the shield wall, the crushing weight of thousands of bodies caused the formation to flex. Commander Linus stepped forward, waiting until it seemed like the formation was flexed to its breaking point, the men shouting in rage, as they dug their hoofs in and pushed back against the weight of an army. Then his bellowing command broke through the tumult.
“BASTIONS, PUSH THEM BACK!” He shouted in that same multi-octave voice that seemed to be linked to the Unit's magic. The aura around the unit intensified, and the second and third rank ducked low and rammed their shoulders into the body of the satyr in front of them. It almost looked like a scrum from rugby, and the unit collectively yelled as it pushed forward.
At first, it was just one step, then it was two, the radiance building with each step until it flashed and an explosive WUMPH sounded from the front ranks as the collective force of both sides rebounded back towards the enemy, sending bodies flying twenty feet into the air. Tilly watched in awe as the unit took advantage of the breathing room to reset, with the first rank rotating back to the third, and the other two moving forward one position. All of the first rankers were injured in some way, but they took up their new positions stoically, trusting in the improved Regen to get them right before their next rotation up front. Gorock looked on like a boy on punishment, forced to watch as his siblings ate all the dessert at the table.
“It feels like you guys will be able to hold forever,” Tilly marveled, wondering if his plan was even necessary.
Gororck bared his square goat teeth in what could have been a grin, or a sneer but didn’t say anything. Surprisingly he heard Linus speak up from ten yards away. Supervising the carnage as if he were a butcher, trying to decide how he wanted to divide up a side of beef, “Yes, at our levels, in group warfare, we are unmatched. But this is not group warfare. This is slaughter. And while we can endure for longer than any traditional foot soldier, not even we can hold out for more than ten or fifteen minutes at this pace.”
As if responding to his words, the horde gathered itself back together and surged forward again. Tilly had only regained about 5% of his Mana, but he enflamed his axes and launched them at the biggest approaching targets anyway.
“How much longer?” Linus asked. His voice was flinty but calm. Tilly's throws hit and he recalled the hatchets eyeing his glacial Mana Regen.
“I don't know exactly, but I only have one Level left to achieve, and it looks like these guys range from five to ten levels above me. No matter what I will activate the Ability before you are overwhelmed.” Tilly affirmed forcefully, not willing to allow the possibility of the formation breaking just so that he could regain a Title, and improve his chances at survival. Linus nodded at that, then squinted up toward the top of the wall,
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“Threstus, what is the enemy's disposition? Any elites moving forward?” He called up. Tilly whipped his head up and saw that at some point the same Satyr who had broken the shell against the wall had scaled its face and was now positioned near the gatehouse looking out over the enemy.
“No Sir!”-He shouted down. -“But the creatures in the center of the press have begun to cannibalize each other. Some seem to be growing in size as they consume more of their peers.”
Linus nodded at the news as if the lookout had just informed him of the weather. Then he turned back to Tilly.
“Mr. Tillman, you and Gorock are going to join Threstus on the wall. Disrupt as many of these things from forming and reaching the line as possible. This will probably be better for your level gain and the elevation will be advantageous for your throwing plan as well.” He stated dryly obviously not putting too much stock in the plan succeeding.
“Yes Sir!” Gorock growled, apparently excited to get closer to the action any way he could. Before Tilly could respond, he felt the giant grab him by the back of his jacket and his waist band,
“Hey, Wha-AAAHH” Tilly screamed as he was launched thirty feet in the air, his arms pinwheeling as he thudded into the side of the crenellations and urgently clung to them as Threstus reached over and hauled him over the side.
“What the Fu-” Tilly started, but as he caught Threstus’s grin, he clamped his mouth shut. He was the one who had come up with the projectile plan and he realized Gorock had wanted to see how he handled a smaller throw.
Tilly cleared his throat and straightened his jacket, before moving to the opposite edge of the wall to get a better picture of what Threstus had seen. On his way over, he saw numerous piles of javelins and a large ballista set and loaded every ten feet along the wall. He was again struck by a pang of fury at the thought of the hundreds of soldiers up here that could have been manning the defenses if not for the selfishness of a few.
Threstus called down behind him, “He flies just fine Gorock. Get your big naked legs up here and give us a hand!”
Tilly crossed to the other side of the wall and got eyes on what was happening in the center of the horde. The Corrupted there were being pressed in from behind, but were unable to move forward and had begun to fight amongst themselves. This would have normally been awesome, but unfortunately, eldritch tentacles had started to reach between the raging creatures and draw them together, fusing them into amalgamations of black ooze and twisted flesh.
Level 32 Corrupted Amalgam
Tilly shivered and felt Threstus step up next to him, “Gods that’s disgusting… bet I kill more than you, Mr. Magic-Fire-Man.” He snarked before pulling one of the nearby bundles of javelins over to his hooves and picking one up.
Mana: 38%
Tilly shrugged and enflamed his hatchets. Threstus heaved a shockingly powerful throw and Tilly followed him, throwing his weapons one after another at the largest Amalgam he could see forming. It had begun to wade through its twisted brethren like an adult at the shallow end of the pool, but then Tilly’s axes thunked deep into its torso of melded bodies.
Something about the composition of the new creature caused his flame attacks to be super effective. The flames ate hungrily at the surrounding flesh, and the creature urgently tried to brush off the tiny-looking weapons but only managed to press them deeper and spread the flames to its arms, which threw it into a frenzy.
Threstus’ throw blew another’s head clean off, although it just kept walking like nothing had happened. Threstus clucked in annoyance as he saw Tilly’s target start to flail in pain, spreading the fire on its arms to the Corrupted it was wading through.
Threstus quickly kicked up two more javelins into his hands and launched them at his target, hitting the points where its legs connected to the rest of its body. Both strikes were extremely effective, erasing the joints as if they had never existed. The creature collapsed to the ground, crushing some other creatures.
Threstus looked over smiling, only to see Tilly recalling his hatchets from a charred circle of bodies, the blue flame having done its work. He frowned and muttered something about “cheating magic users” under his breath.
“That may have worked great against these things, but I can't do that again for another couple of minutes, and it looks like we won't have that kind of time,” Tilly said in a hollow voice, as the rush of his triumph bled away. The rest of the Amalgams had started to move forward, and with at least 15 targets still to go, Tilly started rethinking his 40% rule. The sound of shouting and occasional commands rang out from below and the men down there continued to grind against the endless numbers trying to press their way into the city.
“Don’t worry,” Threstus said, launching another couple of terrifyingly powerful throws. If this guy could do this with javelins, what could a high-level bow user do?
“Commander has one or two more tricks to play before we are done.” He continued, crippling another Amalgam, before hoisting another couple of Javelins to throw. Tilly just lamely watched his Mana tick back up, twisting in knots over how slowly he was progressing.
“What did I miss?!” Gorock huffed, pulling himself over the side of the wall.
“Not much, Naked Knees.” Threstus quipped as he launched the weapons in his hands.
“Aim for the big guys. Whoever has the most knockdowns wins!” He said cheerfully as he watched another Amalgam fall. The rest were halfway to the wall by now. Gorock just grunted in acknowledgment and moved over to the nearby ballista.
“I thought it was 'kills'. I don’t remember you saying anything about knockdowns.” Tilly called, as he saw his Mana finally tick up another five points. He was able to launch another pair of enflamed hatchets at the next closest Amalgam. The exact same scenario played out, netting Tilly 12-24 kills for the price of one.
“Humans…” Gorock said disapprovingly as he hefted one of the tree trunk ballista bolts above his shoulders.
“Always able to find something to complain about.” he finished with a grunt as he lobbed the bolt in a perfect spiral that arced through the air until piercing through an Amalgam and biting deep into the hard ground beyond. The creature tried to pull free but was stuck at a forty-five-degree angle with no leverage to move forward or back along the body of the bolt.
“Yes, Yes. You very strong. Congratulations.” Threstus muttered dryly, before throwing again, hitting his target perfectly.
'These guys are machines!' Tilly thought, but as Tilly looked over the seemingly endless enemies, fear churned in his gut at the hopelessness of their position. Less than a hundred against tens of thousands.
Tilly flicked up his Character Sheet, checking to see just how much Exp was left before he regained [Resolute]. Deadly or not, he would activate the Microcosm before he regained the Title if it came down to it. He couldn’t just watch them die.
Level: 13 (45,000 Exp to next level)
He quickly followed up that query by pulling up his battle log, filtering through the updates to find how much he was getting per Amalgam and Corrupted kill. It looked like 7,000 Exp for a big guy and 500 for the normal Corrupted on average.
Still, a ways to go and they were almost out of time. Both Gorock and Threstus took out another Amalgam, while Tilly tried to decide if he should just try and activate Flame Expulsion without waiting for the Mana or Title. He had done it before, and if he was probably going to die anyway, might as well risk Mana Exhaustion.
“Guys, I'm holding back, trying to conserve Mana for the big move… but things aren't looking good. Should I go for it?” Tilly called, reaching into his fantasy fanny pack for the magical orb. The Amalgams were almost at the gate now, and Tilly ground his teeth in indecision.