“What? There are undead in the city? How? Which wall did they breach?”
Over at the northern wall, after Richard had personally gone to give William the report about the undead in the city, the commander was in disbelief because, to his knowledge, none of the walls’ defenses had fallen yet.
“How is this possible? Explain yourself, Captain Richard!” William frantically demanded.
The city lord was there with them wearing a full suit of armor. Even though he was a noble, he had a record of being a trained soldier in the king’s royal army. He had only retired as a soldier to inherit his father’s title as baron, so he didn’t evacuate with the citizens and chose to remain in the city to fight despite his advisors’ protests.
Before Richard could explain, William seemed to have come to a conclusion himself, so he started accusing the captain, “Are you just sugarcoating your words and telling me that your wall has fallen?!”
“What? Not at all, Commander! The undead came from inside the city while we were defending the walls. If it wasn’t for their small numbers, we would have been caught in a pincer attack! I came here personally to report it to you because of the urgency!”
“Then who’s defending the walls when you’re here? Did you abandon it after seeing the first sign of danger?!”
The man was trying to find fault with everything Richard was doing but, thankfully enough, someone from the west wall arrived and urgently made a report that there were undead sightings in the western area of the city.
“...I wanted to say that maybe a few undead snuck through the south wall but we’ve yet to receive any reports of that. When was the last time we received a report from the south wall?” Richard asked.
“An hour ago…” the city lord answered.
“The reports were supposed to be given every half hour…It would seem that the south wall had fallen and the enemy snuck into the city through there.”
William couldn’t believe this because none of his scouts saw any undead moving towards the south wall and even if they did, there were still soldiers there that were protecting the wall.
“This is impossible. Even if they snuck in through the south walls, how could we not notice it? We still have soldiers placed to defend the walls!”
The city lord spoke up and said to the two, “If the undead are in the city, then we’ll need to begin our retreat right away. I will not have my people throw away their lives here.”
“Yes sir…but before that, we should secure our retreat route.”
“You secure the route, William. I’ll remain on the walls and hold out for as long as I can while ordering the soldiers to slowly retreat according to our original plans. Relay this order to the West wall’s commander and you do the same, Richard.”
“Yes, Lord!”
“Yes, milord!”
Just before they left, William eyed Richard angrily from behind. For a second time today, he had managed to one-up him in front of the city lord. Earlier, his performance during the North Wall’s defense wasn’t too good. Seeing the dark army’s vast and unending forces, he was in total and utter despair. If it wasn’t for the city lord raising the soldiers’ morale and snapping him out of his delirium, the northern wall would’ve fallen very quickly.
Now that Richard brought important information about the presence of the undead in the city, William felt a little threatened and pathetic. If there was one major flaw about this ambitious commander was his somewhat cowardly mindset.
Maria had picked up on this earlier in the city lord’s castle hall and she was actually nearby to see the malicious look William gave Richard just before he left. She had a feeling that Richard and William would clash in some way, and she was right. Most of the clashing was all in William’s head and Richard hadn’t done anything wrong, but this was great–especially for her.
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“Hehehe. So feeble, but thank you for being here. You’ve certainly made my job a whole lot easier.”
Maria cast [Charm] on William and began implanting suggestive thoughts into his brain, which caused the poor guy to hallucinate. She wasn’t able to take complete control of his actions using her ability, but instilling thoughts into his head that would make him move according to her will even after the debuff faded was possible.
“Now, go do your thing and betray Richard later, alright? Hehehahaha–Oops! I actually sound like a villain right now~”
She giggled at the thought, but unfortunately, her words couldn’t be more true than they were right now. Even though she intended to be the ‘writer’ of this story, she was more of the villain that was pulling the strings in the dark.
She quickly returned to the east wall and, with her speed, it was like she hadn’t disappeared at all. The squadron that she was with, who was tasked by Vice-Captain Kurt to clear away the undead lurking around or who were already inside of the reserve camp, didn’t even notice her disappearance. They were all too busy dealing with the zombies, so when Maria came back and they saw her cutting down one of the undead, they didn’t suspect a thing.
Over on William’s side, after he was subjected to Maria’s [Charm] skill, the Commander was in a psychedelic state that filled his mind with paranoia as he and his team were moving towards the south wall. So many zombies had appeared in his and his team’s way, so they were constantly fighting after they had moved away from the North Wall’s camp.
‘Dammit, how could there be so many of these things?’
‘Am I going to die here?’
‘Where did they appear? How come Richard was the first to notice this?’
‘Did he let them in despite knowing something was going on at the south wall?’
‘He’s trying to paint me in a bad light, he’s trying to get me demoted. That f*cking bastard.’
‘These goddamn disgusting things!’
A lot of negative thoughts were passing through his head and it didn’t help that as he and his team moved closer and closer to the south wall, more of the zombies were appearing.
“Ah!”
William made a mistake and lost his footing, which allowed one of the zombies nearby to pounce on him. Seeing the monster’s gruesome mouth inching closer to his neck, William grew angry and terrified at the same time.
“Get off of me you bastard!”
He kicked away the zombie and slashed it apart. After that, William was more cautious as they moved and his team finally arrived at the city’s central square, but was appalled to see that it was full of zombies.
“C-Commander…what do we do? There’s so many of them!”
William clenched his teeth as he thought, ‘Dammit, how could this have happened? Should I have just distributed the same amount of forces on the south wall as Richard suggested?’
‘Damn that bastard, it’s like he knew this would happen–’
‘He did know…’
‘!’
Earlier during the war meeting, only Richard suggested distributing an equal number of forces to each wall, countering William’s plan to concentrate most of their forces on the north, west, and east walls instead.
William’s plan was simple, since the undead would be attacking them from the front, where the north wall was, they should naturally concentrate their forces instead, because if one side of the wall was attacked more so than the others, then the soldiers on the wall that weren’t experiencing too much pressure would essentially be doing nothing.
This plan was approved by the City Lord himself as well as the others who attended the meeting. Eventually, Richard agreed with William because it wasn’t like William was asking to have the south wall completely devoid of soldiers to defend, it’s just that more should be concentrated on defending the other walls that would definitely experience a lot of pressure from the siege.
There would still be a few soldiers to defend the wall and if anything went wrong, they could easily send a signal for reinforcements. The plan was great but now it had gone to sh*t because undead had appeared inside of the city and the only plausible entrance was through the south wall’s gates. The south gates were also meant to be their army’s escape route, but with it being compromised, they were boxed inside of the city.
‘Richard must have had a hand in this…look at the square. More of the zombies are concentrated on the eastern side–’
‘It’s like they came from there.’
“Mages, I want you all to blast the buildings on the eastern side. The zombies are concentrated there, so if we can collapse a few buildings on them and eliminate as many of them as possible, it’ll be easier for us to deal with the rest!”
“Yes sir, but what about the soldiers on the east wall? Their path of retreat would be blocked…”
“Don’t worry about them, they still have many other paths that they can take to reach the south wall! We need to clear the path here so that the city lord can retreat safely!” William said as he tried to justify this obviously wrong decision.
The mage captain of William’s unit was convinced, however, and he raised his staff to rally together the other mages before saying, “You heard the Commander! Let’s get this done!”
William’s observation was true, as there seemed to be more zombies in the eastern area of the square. They needed to bombard and collapse the area there to kill as many zombies as they could, since it really would make dealing with the rest of the zombies much easier.
It would block the east wall unit’s retreat route, but William couldn’t care less about what happened to Richard and his goons. Even though it was still possible to get to the south gate via a different route, a large majority of the city was now infested with zombies and it wasn’t just the human-turned-zombies but various kinds of animal-based zombies as well.
Due to this, the task of getting to the south wall without moving on the proper road was definitely going to be much more dangerous. William knew this as well, but thanks to his current state of mind, he was bewitched by Maria’s [Charm] skill, so he couldn’t think rationally and chose such an extreme solution which could result in many casualties in the east wall unit. If he was clear of mind, William wouldn’t have done such a diabolical act even though he hated Richard.
The mages cast their spells and blew apart the eastern section of the square, collapsing the ground and a few buildings around it. The zombies roaming around that area were buried under the debris and once it was done, William had the rest of his team begin clearing out the rest of the zombies in the square. When Maria heard the rumbling of the collapsed houses and saw the explosion from her location, she smiled after seeing that her mind manipulation worked.
“All that’s left is to fiddle with Richard’s head a little bit, then we can move on from this scenario~”