Chapter: Welcoming the horde
Blaze had trained in the royal army for decades, while it looked like it was a system meant to work together, it was more the guards than the actual soldiers that had the best cooperation.
Everyone joined the army to gain skills and levels, there wasn’t a lack of people wanting to join. It might be bloody and people died, but it was one of the fastest ways to increase one’s power and reach higher, even touching the boundary of the higher realms.
When he had trained the heavy infantry, he thought that as soon as the battle started that they would break apart, simply wanting to get as many merits as possible and increase their own power. Everyone was looking to make their own legends and the military was filled with wild and ambitious people.
Well most militaries, the Alva Village people had been turned into soldiers, with their grim faces they were ready to go into battle, waiting for their orders. Now that they were sent to clean up the battlefield, they didn’t complain and understood that their actions which seemed simple helped the whole.
Blaze felt great pride looking on them and the people of Alva Village, they were closer than ever before, putting the group ahead of the individual.
I wonder how much stronger we will be once everyone is working together?
Once all of their forces were deployed to the walls he was interested to see how things would go.
As the heavy infantry left the southern gate, they looked to the archers, they had been simple farmers and village folk, now they were steely eyed watchers, looking out for the heavy infantry and ready to fight again.
The heavy infantry dispersed into pairs, using their storage rings they were able to clear up the tens of wolves and boars, returning the defenses how they were.
Blaze could feel that something was happening in the forest but he didn’t know what.
He worked with his people to speed up how fast they cleared the area and then pulled back to the village.
The heavy infantry passed off the full storage rings to the quartermaster division being run by Jasper.
Rugrat had renamed it a few days ago, finding that the name suited the group better.
They took all of the storage rings, most of the meat was ruined but they could still use the tendons and other parts though it would be much harder to seperate them.
Roska came over to them a strange look on her face.
She walked up to Blaze. Roska had been badly wounded at an early age, abandoned by her family as they moved to another village, he felt sorry for the girl and wanted to help her but she was determined to do things on her own.
Now she was no longer wounded and while she wasn’t immensely powerful, her reserved air and the way she analyzed things it made Blaze feel that he would be quickly surpassed in ability by her.
“May I have one of the corpses?” Roska asked.
Blaze opened his mouth to reply and then closed it, he waved his hand, a boar appearing on the ground.
Roska didn’t care about the blood or the dead beast’s wounds as she put her hands on it.
A magical circle appeared around her hands, the spell formation flashed with bright light.
The boar split apart, creating a row of pieces, one was bones, another tendons, another the meat, the skin was pulled from the boar and the organs neatly arranged.
The blood splashed on the ground, the rest of the meat had little blood on them.
“What is that?” Jasper who was nearby asked, with a husky voice, cleaning and storing the meats and materials took a lot of time, but Roska had separated it all in just a single spell.
Roska didn’t answer right away as a screen appeared in front of her, a hint of a smile showed on her face as she dismissed it.
She looked around noticing everyone staring at her, her expression turned cold once again.
“It’s a spell called Seperation, it breaks down the target into its components. It can only be used on dead bodies and inanimate objects. More mana is required to break apart stronger weapons, and if they’re in use then the mana requirement increases quickly,” Roska said.
Blaze let out a short laugh.
Roska looked at him in question.
“Looks like Jasper is going to want to steal you, also it’s funny, no one would share the effects of their spell with everyone,” Blaze said.
“Did I do something wrong?” Roska asked.
“Nothing at all, just showed me something I haven’t seen before,” Blaze said with approval, looking to his people. “Alright let’s get a move on back to the village square!”
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“Before you go, take these,” Jasper said, holding out a sack to Blaze.
Blaze frowned but looked inside the bag.
“What am I supposed to do with these monster cores?”
“Use them,” Jasper said a grin slowly spreading across his face.
“What?”
“Erik and Rugrat kept back a bunch of the monster cores, there are mainly common Mortal grade monster cores but there are a few Greater Mortal grade monster cores. The commons will give you five thousand experience when using them and refill your stamina, mana and increase the speed that you heal. The Common will give you ten thousand experience with greater effects. One should use the lesser cores and then the common cores. Once I have some more I’ll send out more of the common monster cores. Erik and Rugrat wanted to wait in giving these to everyone so that they push hard to increase their levels as much as possible on their own, with these it will allow people to break through their bottlenecks right before they fight. It would be best to hold back on using them right away, that way people can use them to get back into the fight. The more cores of the same grade you use the less effective they will be. After the first use they’ll go from giving you five thousand experience to giving you two thousand and by the fourth use they’ll practically give you nothing,” Jasper said.
“Been reading up on them?” Blaze asked.
“Something like that,” Jasper pulled out another sack.
“These are healing supplies to be given out to your people.”
Blaze accepted the items.
“Anything else?”
“Nope!” Jasper turned and look to Roska.
“Would you be able to help us out miss Roska?”
Blaze smiled and signalled to his sergeants.
The troops moved out, leaving their items with Jasper.
Roska had more than enough corpses to test out her new spell on.
***
Rugrat was sitting up in the watchtower, his rifle rested in his arms as he looked over the village.
He was eating his ration as he scanned for threats.
Work crews were coming back from the west side, the entire village had nearly poured out to finish the defenses.
“Feel a lot safer with everything patched up now,” Rugrat said through his sound transmission device.
“You’re bored again,” Erik said.
“Well, sitting in a watchtower like saving private Ryan ain’t exactly the most entertaining thing to do,” Rugrat complained, he could hear people filing through the village square, getting their breakfast as they came off of the wall, working in shifts to relieve those that had been on the wall since the first wave.
Seeing everything move efficiently Rugrat couldn’t help but feel satisfied.
“I think I have movement in the Northwest,” Glosil said.
Rugrat put his food away, he scanned the area quickly before using the scope on his rifle to look over the forest.
The trees in the distance were moving and the movements were getting closer.
“Yeah, looks like we have incoming,” Rugrat said.
“I’ve got movements over here,” Erik said.
Other reports of the trees moving came in as archers were moved up to the walls and the gates were checked.
In a rush beasts appeared around the village, the leading beasts let out their howls and roars, the bushes and trees were shaken as their numbers swelled.
Erik used a whistle, bringing Alva Village on alert.
“Archers fire on the sergeant's orders!” Erik yelled.
The pits were used once again as the beasts dropped into the spikes, this wave was much larger than the previous, even if they wanted to try and dodge, they couldn’t as the pits started to fill up and they were impaled on defenses, the obstacles broke the horde up and packed them in tighter.
The archers couldn’t miss as their arrows cut the beasts down like wheat before a scythe.
Rugrat looked out for strong beasts like the wolf king, those were his targets.
There were hundreds of beasts and they had been starved to the point of insanity.
“We’ve got some Panthers!” Rugrat called out as he saw fights break out at the rear of the horde as beasts, smelling nothing but blood and driven wild by the charge attacked one another.
The panthers might not have numbers on their side but they had the strength.
Rugrat silently willed them on, seeing them killing one another, it meant less pressure for the people on the wall to face.
Rugrat checked the magazines on his chest rig, he didn’t have that many rounds left, Erik had given him his rifle magazines as well, leaving him only with his shotgun and pistol ammunition.
Even with the panthers in play, Rugrat didn’t fire, instead he continued to scan, looking for the areas that seemed to be more controlled.
“Time to earn that pay,” Rugrat said, he sighted a large wolf that was coming out of the forest.
The magazine in his gun glowed as he used the spell explosive shot, it gave the projectile an explosive attribute where it would explode when hitting its target.
Rugrat was a little nervous, scared that it would cause the round to explode within his rifle.
He pulled the trigger, the round cut across the open area, hitting the wolf it went off with a muffled explosion, the wolf was killed instantly, it was still intact, telling of how tough it’s body was.
The lower leveled wolves around it were even slightly wounded.
Rugrat let out a shaky breath. If he had used normal rounds it would have wounded the wolves, but killing them with one hit wasn’t a sure thing.
Well, looks like I haven’t blown up yet.
He cast the spell again, buffing the next round as he found another wolf, he fired again, the crack of his rifle meant the death of another elite as arrows continued to cut down the charging wolves.
While they were killing tens of beasts, there were hundreds in the wave.
It wasn’t a glorious fight but one where they needed to wear down the other side to win.
New roars could be heard in the distance as the waves of wolves started to slow and more panthers entered the battlefield, Alva village was now surrounded by a sea of beasts.
Rugrat saw the flash of power as Erik used mana bolt, it arched over the defenses and landed among the beasts.
The mana bolt went off as other ranged spells were used. There weren’t many people that had gone the path of mage, Erik and Rugrat had basically picked out those with the most open mana gates as they had a greater natural advantage.
Now they started to show off their power, thinning down the incoming numbers as they launched spells into the beast horde, the dazzling display of magical fire power was similar to machine guns and artillery.
Rugrat needed to take a minute to gather himself and ignore the sights and sounds.
Alva was starting to use their trump cards.