When she saw everything that came out of the dungeon, Tarra regretted using eight of her twenty shafts so fast. She took a quick glance and figured there must have been already over six hundred different monstrosities coming down at them, with more still pouring out of the dungeon.

Most were goblins and she sure as hell was not going to use nothing but a cold steel against them. But the bigger monsters could be put down with an arrow through their heads before they came down among them and caused trouble.

"Do you supercharge your shafts with Mana?" El asked her as he saw how she put one of the shafts inside the eye of the three Cyclop's eye, not bringing him down but pissing the hell out of him.

"No," Tarra said with a trace of regret since she chose the path of a warrior and not a sorceress.

"Let me help," El said and touched the tips of her long arrows, spreading some of his precious Mana among them. "Try now!"

Tarra felt the weight of the arrow as she put it in the string, picked the Cyclop that was halfway down the hill and shot it at its open mouth, and saw how it got buried inside, piercing it all the way in.

"That's better. Just a wrong target!" Tarra said and then chose to go for one of the eyes again.

This time, the arrow went all the way inside the creature’s head, causing it to spin around before it fell over the goblins that stood by its feet.

She wanted to bring the other two Cyclops down as well, but suddenly, they raised their heads to cover their eyes, showing intelligence she did not expect, and making her wait for the opening.

But then, not ready to wait indefinitely, she did not even need to blink to see her next target.

The bold-headed monster that stood a head taller than all the goblins around carried a three-meter-long pole that seemed to weigh a ton.

“Come with me, you little pricks!” it screamed at goblins.

She shot a shaft at his heart, and it was so powerful that it went straight through him, and even took off the leg of the goblin that walked down the slope behind him.

Before the first goblins made it across the stones and to the snow line, all the other archers opened fire and dead bodies started to roll down.

Suddenly a loud howling sound filled the air. All the goblins stopped advancing but stood their ground.

“What the hell is happening?” Trim asked, unsure why there was so much howling, yet, there was no wind coming down.

Then they heard a loud cheering of the goblins and saw many goblins and monsters who they already killed with arrows suddenly get up from the ground, looking paler and even uglier than before.

“But… they were dead,” one of the soldiers said.

“He has risen them from the dead!” another one answered in panic.

“He made them into zombies??” Alice asked, not believing her eyes.

“We are doomed. Nobody can survive this. Nobody can fight the dead!” one soldier shrieked in panic.

“Nobody can survive this,” a fighter from the village repeated.

“Yet, we will fight them or we will die running away from them!” El yelled even harder. “So, stand with me!! And kill them all!!”

While El was giving a speech, Alice noticed something she kind of expected and called everyone's attention.

“Look, look!!!” she screamed. “Only those that have no head wounds had risen! You see, the ones that you put an arrow in their brains, they are still down. So, that’s how you kill them!! No worry. They will die. Just aim at their heads!!!”

Tarra nodded her head and just to make sure that was the case, she put an arrow in one of Praetorian’s large heads, sending him down. “True! Go for their heads!! And don’t you worry, people! It can only raise them when they are on the dungeon ground. Once they get into the snow here, they are all ours.”

“Retreat toward the tree lines!” the Prince issued an order. “Then, let them come to us!!”

El found it best to move in front of everyone and hold the first line. Scarface guarded his back and Trim and Sergeant were there to keep his flank. The rest of the soldiers and everyone else who could hold a shield had formed the wall and waited for the goblin’s onslaughter.

By the time Cyclops had got into the snow, the first line of goblins was right among them.

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Two Cyclops left were still covering their face with their hands, and Tarra could not get a good shot at them.

She put a shaft in one of their groins, and as he buckled down, she jumped on his back to drive her sword through the back of its neck, picking her arrow from the killed Cyclop to shoot at the third one right in its neck.

But she could not finish him off as the bold monster with a hole though his heart was now a zombie with a long pole still in his hands.

She did not let him move ten meters in the snow but put an arrow in his head, sending him down for good. Then she emptied her arrows at the few Praetorians that came down and then pulled out her sword.

Goblins came running at them through the snow, slowing them down at first, and El met them, swinging his sword and slicing at them.

In the corner of his eye, he saw Tarra launch herself into the pack of goblins that tried to flank them. She moved so fast he had to tilt his head and look at her just to make sure he saw it right. He never saw anyone fight like that. It was so fast and so fierce that it almost did not seem human.

Everyone stopped and turned their eyes toward her. Even goblins stopped advancing, suddenly incapable of knowing who was killing so many of their kind.

She did not need Mana in her sword. The blade came down so fast that the goblins died before the whooshing sound of the blade even made it through the air.

“I like her,” Scarface uttered words out through his dropped-down jaw.

Fast did the snow lose its soft whiteness, the blood of goblins soaking it all around her.

Seeing her work, people cheered.

“That’s why she did it,” Alice muttered out and wished not for the first or last time that she could be just like her.

Weighing her axe, she then shrieked a battle cry and jumped to the first line of goblins.

El saw it and, without hesitation, ran after her, lighting up his sword and raising it high in the air, just to make sure all the goblins could see it right.

“You wanted to see the Paladin. I’ll give you one then. Watch and tremble!” he yelled as he moved to face the fastest goblin, lowering his head to avoid a spear, then spinning around and slicing him in half as the sword went straight through its waist.

By that time, goblin’s archers shoot the first valley of shafts through the air, hundreds of them going high up, obscuring the sun.

El moved his staff up, used the Mana inside to connect with the air and arrows, and moved them to go astray. Then, he had a better idea and concentrated all his Mana inside to push the wind harder, making the arrows whirl around and drop toward the archers themselves.

The effort made him go blank. But there was no time to drop on his knee and act lethargic. The crude blade came to drop on top of his head, and if not for Alice’s axe that chopped goblin’s hand off, that might have been the end of the battle for El.

This time, the goblins were coming at them all at once, and with the dungeon right behind them, none of them had any drive but forward.

“Fall back!” Tarra yelled from twenty meters away at Alice and El. “Can’t hold them much longer!”

Even though she worked now at Goblins with twin swords, one thinner and shorter than the other, El could easily see that she slowed down considerably. A pile of goblins around her was turning into a heap, but she moved steadily around, and everywhere she went, goblins dropped dead.

“Fall back!!!” he yelled at people behind him while he stepped closer to Tarra to engage a few goblins who tried to attack her from his side.

As the fighting intensified, Alice could see the Prince was in trouble. He went to defend the line of the tall oaks where a bunch of archers were nesting. His crew and Trim ran to help, but, soon they were all encircled by goblins.

A goblin cut the Prince from behind, making him lurch forward. Luckily, he got hold of his movement at the last second, so he did not fall on the long spear that another goblin was trying to stick into his neck. He twisted his body out of harm's way and planted his blade into the spear-holding goblin’s face.

Then he saw Alice on her knee and jumped to check the long sword that was coming to slice her throat. A large Praetorian, enraged that he was denied the kill, turned then to the Prince and attacked him.

It was not any kind of a Pretorian. Its armored chest was red, painted with human blood, and its ferocious strikes made Prince lose ground and with a pain shooting from his back, he went down on his knee.

But before the beast could finish him off, El’s sword suddenly appeared in its neck, forcing it to drop down to its knees before burying its face in the blood-soaked snow.

Relieved, the Prince wanted to find the Wizard and thank him with a head nod, but the Wizard’s back was already turned to the Prince as he used his staff to reflect the blow of another Pretorian that attacked him.

The battle went on and the soldiers and villagers kept their shields wall up as the avalanche of monsters came down on them. Sergeant Rewin governed their defenses, screaming at men to hold their shields, kill the monsters, and close the gap when one would open up.

El recuperated his sword and shot all the Energy and Mana he had left into it, cutting goblins. Suddenly, he felt the blade cut him from behind. He spun around and beheaded the beast that cut him, but the cut was deep and it made his body tremble with pain.

Half a dozen goblins saw him wounded and attacked him with more enthusiasm, and it took Scarface, Trim, and the Prince to drive them into the ground.

Then the arrow came out of nowhere and pierced El right through his shoulder, making him slouch over. Then a crude axe came flying from the hand of a large goblin. He reflected it with his staff, but the motion left his left side exposed and a spear came to pierce him between his ribs.

Then he fell to the ground and gasped for air, not sure if he was finally done.

The Prince jumped to help but was pierced with two rough spears at the same time and he went flying to lay on the ground next to El.

Tarra came to help, killing the goblins around, dancing among them, and moving with the ferocity of a tornado.

That gave enough time for Alice, Trim, and others to pull the Prince and El behind their defensive lines.

“Can you heal them?” Alice said. “You have that power with your Level, don’t you?”

Tarra could not meet her eyes. She kept staring at two of them, bleeding out, dying. She could have explained to Alice that most of her Healing power she already used up on healing herself as she earned more than a few deadly cuts while she did the goblin’s butchering.

“I have some Healing power still left in me,” she finally said, ignoring a nasty wound in her left arm that she earned from a spear just a few moments ago. “But it’s only little. It’s not enough. And I’m not even sure, it would be good enough for even one of them. ”

Then she sighed deeply and looked up to the sky. “So, make up your mind fast, Alice. Who do you think I should try to save?”