Before anyone could loot the corpse of the gnoll elite, a boulder three-feet wide came smashing down like a bomb. Dirt flew through the air twenty feet high. The scattering of debris could be heard shaking tree leaves around us. Eventually, the boulder rolled into a tree trunk and made it crack like thunder. Another twenty gnolls came running at us.

“Hold them back, for just a minute!” Alan yelled at Richard. Both Lucas and himself needed to retrieve their weapons still.

“Got it.” Richard spoke confidently. His sword began smacking into his shield, which started to grow hot like molten iron. Thomas threw a heal-over-time on Richard who started running forward to meet the incoming enemies.

My undead soldiers joined in just behind Richard, with instructions to intercept any stragglers who tried to run past our tank. I pulled two MP potions from my inventory and tossed one each to Jessica and Anna. Decay wasn’t nearly as useful in these large-scale fights as the area-of-effect dot that Anna could cast.

The power of a mage class was marvelous, not only did Anna drastically slow the incoming enemies, powerful and sharp shards of ice punctured every portion of their body. It was if their hide was nothing in front of the power of mother nature. I suspected even bone armor would be torn like paper under her spells.

Lucas managed regain his weapon out first, just in time to bisect a gnoll that was barely five feet from Thomas. Another gnoll had gotten past Richard and my undead soldiers. I cast a full body Bone Armor and had no choice but to tackle it to the ground so as to save Maria from being battered into meat paste. The side of my arm acted as a hammer as I pounded it into the gnoll’s head, only stopping when it ceased biting at me.

It was havoc all around, and I could only shift my attention away from our group for just a moment, long enough to see one gnoll elite swinging a rock trapped inside a net of rope. Every time it hit Richard’s shield, our tank buckled another inch, and even though his blocking was successful his HP was dropping steadily.

“Hurry up Alan!” Richard yelled between blows, and then swiftly retreated back towards us. More than half the gnolls had been dispatched, although my undead squad had started to dwindle. I constantly picked out corpses from which to spawn new skeletons and keep fighting.

Between Lucas, Richard, and my undead soldiers, we kept Anna, Thomas, Jessica and Maria well protected. The melee skeletons I summoned fell quickly, but all my MP went into resummoning. Further off, two gnoll shamans and three archers were dispatched with well-placed releases of Explosive Arrow by Maria. Two of them lucky or unlucky enough to survive the blast were struck through the neck by Jessica.

Only after the regular gnolls died could we focus our attention on the elite. As I did so, I realised we weren’t facing just one, but two elites. It seemed like the battle had been ongoing for a long time, but since the gnolls had arrived and the twenty common types were dispatched, a mere fifteen or twenty seconds had passed. We had become that efficient at killing the fodder.

The first gnoll elite was several heads taller than the second. There was a striking red mohawk coming from the top of his head, and this wasn’t because it had red fur. I assumed it was blood, but it could have been from berries or some other coloring dye. The tall elite wielded a rock as its weapon, strapped by thick ropes that let it swing it around with incredible deadly force.

The second gnoll was smaller, and didn’t look much like an elite at all. It wasn’t easy to tell at a glance, but on closer examination it was clearly different from the yard trash we had fought. There weren’t any weapons in its hands, instead there were metal claws attached to its arms, almost like Wolverine.

“That one might be fast,” I called out. Its body was too sleek, too compact.

We had finally regrouped; Alan had barely managed to retrieve his blade from the first gnoll elite’s back, the corpse of which was a dozen feet to my right.

“Human, you did?” The smaller gnoll elite looked at the corpse and back at us while asking in broken English, almost in disbelief, whether we had killed one of their generals.

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“You’re next.” Alan said with a bloodthirsty smile. Jessica and Maria both nocked an arrow at the same time, promptly taking aim. As soon as they let loose, Alan rushed forward with Richard behind him. I moved half of my undead soldiers to assist and kept the other half back as a reserve against any unexpected development. Lucas shadowed both of the elites while priming a Wind Slash.

The smaller gnoll gave me a bad feeling from the get go. It moved at the same time as Alan, and it was clearly twice as fast, or faster. It avoided Alan, who faced off against the tall, mohawk elite. Fortunately, I had half my squad in hand and I sent my skeleton general rushing to block the fast elite, only for it to be sidestepped. I was next and I put myself in the path of the swift elite: it was after our ranged, and was smart enough not to have calculated this was how to defeat us.

“RICHARD COME BACK!” I yelled. A moment later, a claw came grazing past my shoulder. Bone armor caused the metal to spark and my Sixth Sense was screaming bad news. I could see the second attack coming for my gut, and was certain it would tear right through bone armor and all the way out my backside.

Just before that happened, a bolt of ice came flying at incredible speed and smashed into the gnoll elite’s side, sending him off balance. Richard arrived a moment later and cast his instant heal on me, topping me off before blocking its path. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

Having failed to cut down our ranged members, the fast elite backed off with Richard taking serval steps after it.

“Nice save,” Jessica yelled. She hadn’t expected the speed of the elite either. She had focused her attention and her archery on the bulkier enemy. But the sooner we could isolate the fast one, the easier it would be on us. I recalled all my undead troops and I surrounded us in a wall where each skeleton stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the next. Unable to close on the fast elite, Richard also came back, waiting to intercept any further attempts.

And there were. The fast elite tried several times to break through to our less well protected members, and even though it could slice my skeletons into pieces in half a second, that brief pause allowed Richard to fill the gap and keep us safe, and for me to resummon my undead soldier. After about ten attempts, the gnoll elite grew frustrated and listless.

When I was able to check on the battle with the large elite, I could see it was missing an eye and one arm. The weapon it once had no longer worked, as Lucas had Wind Slashed through the thick rope and sent the boulder hurdling away. There were more rocks in the caravan, but it couldn’t move to grab them. Blood dripped down from a dozen slashes and several parts of its body were frozen solid in ice. The confusion in its eyes grew each passing second, all it could do was flail its arms and legs in a desperate struggle.

Victory looked to be in sight, but then the gnoll that seemed to want to assassinate our squishiest members did something unexpected. It faked a frenzy of attacks, killing several of my undead soldiers, before shifting direction and sprinting towards Alan from behind.

“ALAN CAREFUL,” Maria yelled, but it was too late.

The blades on the arms of the elite went straight through his Alan’s back and then tore out in one swift motion sending blood squirting through the air. Richard could only see red and rushed out with reckless abandon, Lucas did as well. Lucas didn’t even use Wind Slash and instead decapitated the bulky elite with a jumping swing before landing to try to guard Alan’s fallen body.

We all went forward to Alan in response. Thomas sent three heals in quick succession, but our tank’s health was rapidly plummeting still. My undead quickly surrounded him to keep any further attacks from happening, but the Wolverine gnoll elite kept his distance, without making a second attempt on Alan. He was smart enough to realize that we were powerful enough to hold him off. Suddenly, it raced into the distance, likely for reinforcements.

Maria supported Alan from underneath, while I removed his shirt in haste. The wound was terrible, and I couldn’t be sure if it was poisoned. I pulled out several bandages from my bag and an HP potion.

I uncapped the potion and poured it into the wound—I wasn’t sure if it would have any affect as for now his HP total was back in the safe zone, I just hoped it would have some form of healing effect to slow the rate at which Alan’s HP kept dropping. Jessica helped me wrap bandages around Alan tight five or six times, sparing no expense on supplies.

I could hear Glenn mumbling under his breath, “Please let it have missed.” Adrenaline was high and I could only assume he meant important organs. As soon as we bandaged him up, the rapid falling health slowed, but it was still going down.

“He has internal bleeding.” Thomas said. I was certain that was true, but didn’t know how bad this was and if it would stop on its own.

“We have to go,” Lucas said. “More gnolls are surely coming.”

I nodded, “Destroy the carts.” I looked at Maria. “Use Explosive Arrow.” No response. It was as if she couldn’t hear me, she was in complete shock.

Jessica reached down and patted Maria’s shoulder, “We did all we could, we have to finish what we started.” She helped Maria let go of Alan and then started off towards the far cart. There were two explosions within fifteen seconds and the two raced back. “It’s time to go,” Jessica said.