After the meeting, Al was allowed to climb to the top of the walls in order to have a better angle to shoot down birds, and Yuly was sent to the hastily erected medical tents to treat soldiers who end up wounded in the battle. She did this of her own volition, insisting several times despite the lord’s reluctance. Al helped a bit by vouching for her skills though, so the man ended up giving in.
Then Koro, as if taking advantage of the lord’s acceptance, demanded to be sent to the wall to help with hauling the heavy boulders that had been prepared to crush Spinegolins and Tusk Tanks. He had to lift the man’s desk with a single arm to show his prowess, and when the lord snapped out of his dazed state after seeing the feat, he had no option but to accept.
Well, maybe lifting the desk had been a bit overkill, but it was to be expected from Koro.
Al remembered those events as he looked at Koro who was right next to him, on top of the wall, looking at the incoming black mass of beasts. Al put his hand on his newly acquired bandoleer filled to the brim with over a hundred small, sharpened stone spikes with a simple inscription to allow them pierce objects more effectively, and sighed lightly as he said
“Get ready, we’re going to crush those bastards.”
“You bet”
It was only two words, but Al could feel in them the anger and resentment Koro had built up over the past few months, after going through so much pain, so many times.
Once again, Al could not help but feel awe at the sheer emotional strength of the child.
His body was extremely tough, but his heart was even harder to break.
Then, stopping Al’s thoughts, a shout echoed through the walls “Archers!!! Prepare the first volley!”
Al cluched a stone spike tightly, the first of many,
“Fire!!!”
For a second that felt like hours, the sky was almost obscured by the barrage of arrows. They flew into the distance thanks to the power of the inscribed bows, reaching the approaching monster army.
Al didn’t dwell on it though, as he started spotting black shadows rapidly flying towards the city. The first spike flew out of his hand, a seemingly simple movement, but at the same time a refined sequence of precise movements and skills using [Physical Augmentation], [Sense Enrichment], [Piercing Throw], and even [Flash] to achieve the highest possible speed and accuracy.
It reached the shadow, boring a hole bigger than the spike’s diameter right through the middle of it and coming out, barely having lost any speed.
‘The spikes don’t need to go that fast. I could cut down on some of the skills to save mana... Fuck it. I’m done holding back.’
With a dangerous glint in his eyes, he took another spike and shot it as if it were a bullet.
Direct hit.
Then another one
Direct hit.
A third
Clipped the wing. ‘I won’t let you die from the fall.’
Fourth spike
Direct hit. ‘You’ll all die by my hand, you fuckers.’
He got a level-up message saying he reached level 20, along with the notification of some new skill, but he just put the new skill point into Dexterity without a second thought and kept going.
With that increase, missing shots was now a thing of the past. He started mowing the birds down faster than they could come forth, his spikes outranging even the arrows that came in barrages every 30 seconds or so. Eventually he ran out of flying targets, but that wasn’t enough to quench his bloodthirst. Oh, it was nowhere near enough.
Most of the ‘soft’ land targets had already been disposed of by the arrows, but there were a few left. He could discern them due to the horde closing the distance and the enormous amount of mana he was putting into [Sense Enrichment]. He shouted “Stop the arrows!!! Prepare the measures against armored beasts!” Hoping that the lord hadn’t forgotten to inform the generals that Al was the one who knew best in this situation. Well, he didn’t say it for the greater good or anything.
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‘I just wanna pick off the ones that are left’
He threw a spike at a black snake.
Its head exploded like a watermelon
‘They’re squishier than they look. Are those scales just for show?’
He shook his head and took the other three that he could see out. He moved on to the rabbits then, with similar results. As he was dealing with the last ones, he felt his body grow weak and a headache start to settle in. He realised, without much surprise, that his mana was pretty much all gone, so he slumped onto the ground, content to simply watch the battle unfold from then on. At that point, only the hogs and spinies were left. The former were being pelted with powerful, handheld ballistas tipped with poison to weaken their fearsome charges, and it worked wonders. They reached the wall and rammed it, but by then they had already lost half their strength. The part of the wall hit by them shook a bit, and a few were thrown down onto the city, but the ones Al saw fall could be counted in two hands, and there were more than two hundred hogs.
The situation with the heavily armored Spinegolins was a bit harder, and they even managed to hit a few soldiers with their single-use attack, but once they reached the wall they were crushed with boulders that squished them completely, rendering their defense useless.
Koro helped a great deal with this, and Al could see a fire burning in his eyes as he did. They were very numerous though, most likely almost a thousand, so there simply weren’t enough boulders. At that point, Koro did something crazy and jumped onto the outside of the wall.
Al didn’t even think of stopping his though, and decided to let him rampage all he wanted. He was too tired to say anything, anyway.
The hulk of a child ran along the wall, jumping from one corpse to another and using his two greatswords to slash any Spinegolin in his way. It was as if their armors weren’t even there, as he ran along and finished each beast with a single deep slash, sometimes even bisecting their bodies entirely. He had no fear, only deep, ingrained hatred for the foul bastards.
Al couldn’t help but be a little concerned.
His thoughts quickly turned foggy though, as everything around him slowly dimmed and disappeared.
He’d passed out.
----------------------------------------
Al woke up to the Lord’s face, but his body reacted before his mind and he tried to sit up, only to bonk his forehead against his.
Flustered, Al fumbled out an apology “I-I’m really sorry, City Lord”
“Haha, it’s my fault, don’t worry. And please, drop the formalities, you’re basically our saviour. Call me Caoman.”
‘That...kinda sounds like alligator in Spanish... oh well.’
“Of course, sir- I mean Caoman.” Al said as he became more aware of their surroundings and thought ‘We’re in one of the medical tents...’
“Haha! Well, I was told of your friend’s and your performance on the battlefield. I must say, I could barely believe my eyes when I saw your friend lift my desk before, but when my general told me about how you shot down those birds with pinpoint accuracy over distances not even enchanted bows could reach, I was certain he was spouting nonsense. You could probably fight fairly against the best cultivators of the city!”
Al felt a little flustered, but he managed to squeeze out a half-truth.“I just happened to learn good martial techniques for throwing sharp objects, it’s not that...”
Al felt himself trailing off, so he decided to change the subject “In any case, this must have done wonders for,your popularity amongst the people, right?”
The old man chuckled and said “Well, I was never disliked, per-se, but as you say, the soldiers have already started singing praises about ‘the miraculous kids that the lord managed to bring’ and ‘the lord’s great foresight in preparing the prefect countermeasures’, so it seems the common people will become even more satisfied with their leader.”
Al couldn’t help but laugh a bit, but he eventually addressed the elephant in the room. “So, why did you come here?”
Caeman smiled wryly and said “You’re really smart, Al, so much it's almost uncanny, so I’ll just tell you upfrontly. I know you three want to go to the west to become stronger, but if you stayed in this city-“
Al put his hand up as a sign for Caeman to stop and said “Sorry but-” but then he mulled it over a bit and said “Let me discuss it with the others.”
Seemingly satisfied with Al’s answer, Caeman nodded and smiled at Al before leaving the tent they were in.
Al slumped back down onto the bed and started falling asleep again, when he heard someone coming in. Opening his eyes he found Koro, Yuly and even Misty. Koro said “You called?”
Al nodded and explained the situation to them. At the beginning Koro was absolutely against the idea, but with Yuly trying to convince him to stay in the city at least for some time he became reluctant.
Eventually Al chimed in after having mulled the issue over, nd proposed an idea. “Let’s stay for a while, maybe find some ski- martial techniques to train, and leave when we feel like it. I think Yuly would really benefit from learning proper healing techniques, and there must be someone knowledgeable on that subject in this city.”
Yuly immediately nodded, and Koro rubbed the back of his head and conceded “All right, I guess learning some proper techniques wouldn’t be too bad. Still, don’t expect me to want to stay more than a few months.”
“Yeah, don’t worry. Anyways, I would really like to get some rest now, so please tell our decision to the city lord.”
Yuly nodded and wrote -Please leave it to me- in her board, then left along with Koro and Misty. She gave Al a meaningful look before leaving, but didn’t say anything with telepathy.
‘Haaaahh...guess we’ll finally be allowed to rest for once. Oh, yeah, I got a new skill right?’