Zoe

  Zoe looked over in the direction that Firo called out, but couldn’t actually see anything yet. The mass of enemy mobs was simply too large. She thought she might be able to see some of the crowd parting for what she figured would be the ladder troop, but couldn’t be sure.

  “Uh, Bisky? Firo? We couldn’t see last time because we were up on the wall. Did the enemies carrying the ladders look distinct at all?” Caoimhe asked. That was a good question.

  “They had armor, but not as much as the shield wall that was with the ram.” Firo said.

  “Big ass helmets to stop headshot damage.” Bisky said, annoyed. “You should be able to see the first group now.”

  The mass of enemies parted to allow the ladders close to the wall so they could get set up. And sure enough, it was exactly like Firo had called; they were armored, but not as much as the heavy units from earlier. But even more notable than that was that they didn’t appear to carry weapons.

  “No weapons?” Caoimhe asked.

  “It doesn’t look like it.” Mellody answered. “That’s…hm.”

  “What are the chances they actually won’t fight back?” Zoe asked, considering trying to [Shadow Slip] her way over to the first group. They were just within range.

  “Surely they would, right?” Caoimhe said.

  “I’m sure something will happen if you attack them.” Aleister said. “Which, we should.”

  “Agreed. That’s what we came down here for.” Mellody chuckled. “Death ball or free for all?”

  Zoe had all of a few seconds to think about the question before they would have to make a decision. Sticking together would presumably keep their survivability chances higher, especially if Mellody was able to stay in the middle of their little group.

  But if they had any hope of actually getting in there and taking out ladder bearers to stop the ladders from breaching the wall, they needed to move fast.

  In the end, her mind just went back to what they had said going into this stupid plan.

  “Go out with a bang, right?” She asked, grinning wide.

  “Oh, hell yeah.” Caoimhe laughed in agreement, and they both immediately moved.

  Their formation completely collapsed. Caoimhe had hit [Sprint] and immediately [Driver]’d through a group of enemies to try to reach the second furthest group. She got close enough to reach with the following [Wild Swing], knocking them down.

  Nyx had used [Shadow Slip] before she even had confirmation that they were actually going for it. She had been just within range to target the nearest group of ladder bearers, appearing amongst the small enemy group setting up to deploy the ladder. She hit the one she imagined was the leader with [Ankle Pick], hoping that knocking him down would be enough to delay, or even stop the ladder’s deployment.

  It seemed like it was.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Fuck, you guys! You can’t just leave your healer like that!” Mellody cried. Zoe snapped her camera to face the way she had come from for just a second to see Mellody fighting for her life, completely surrounded.

  “Where did Aleister go?” Caoimhe asked, unable to see what was happening from the next ladder over.

  “She poofed on me.” Mellody hissed. Zoe knew that Mellody and Aleister played together in the same room, with their chairs back to back. She was willing to bet Mellody had looked back over his shoulder to angrily growl at his wife. “Where did you go?”

  “I thought we were getting the ladder crews?” Aleister said innocently. “I gap closed my way to the third group.”

  “....That’s it. I’m dead.” Mellody said, sounding utterly resigned. “Been left to die by my own wife.” He let out a hollow laugh, playing it for laughs from the group.

  “Bro, you’re playing Skald right now. Hit your damn charge button and get your ass over here.” Aleister said flatly.

  “Oh, right.” Mellody snorted. “I honestly forgot that was a thing.” Mellody let out a sharp yell in the game, followed by a blast of light, and then simply dashed through the enemies on the way toward the rest of their team. [Accelerando] was a [Skald] skill that buffed nearby party members, including the [Skald], making them immune to [Suppress] type effects, like [Rooted] or [Knockdown]. It also included a damage mitigation and added the [Sprinting] effect to everyone hit by the effect.

  Mellody zoomed over to stand nearest to Caoimhe, who was positioned at the second of four ladders, while Nyx was on the first, and Aleister at the third.

  Nyx shook her head to focus back on her targets. Once again, she was surprised how quickly and easily the enemies went down. Yes, there were a near endless number of mobs to replace the fallen, but it didn’t matter when it seemed like the normal mobs couldn’t put the ladders up.

  “All clear here.” Zoe said, fighting in the middle of a large group of enemies. Without their formation, she had gotten surrounded, but was able to avoid the worst of the damage when she saw AoE markers. Thankfully, she was just inside Mellody’s healing range to cover the attacks she couldn’t dodge.

  “Same here.” Caoimhe said. “Collapse on us so we can all get healed.”

  “What about ladder four?” Aleister asked, seemingly perfectly happy to facetank a huge group of enemies on her own.

  “I took care of them.” Evie laughed. “They were no match for my rain of fire!”

  “Nice!” Zoe said, moving toward Caoimhe and Mellody. Aleister was slowly moving toward them too, easily dealing with the huge number of enemies between them.

  Once they were back in place for their wedge formation, they fought to clean out their small area of safety.

  Once Nyx’s area was back under control and she was mindlessly hacking away at the enemies in her way, she mentally paused for a moment.

  “Now what?”

  There were several beats of silence over chat as it seemed like everyone considered the question.

  “Dunno.” Bisky said, eventually. “I won’t lie, I didn’t think we’d get this far.”

  “Guys, should I come join you out there or something?” Fiona asked, having been quiet for a while. “I’m still holding the gate, but there’s been like no attackers on it.”

  “I guess we did kill the battering ram team.” Caoimhe shrugged.

  “Stay there, just in case.” Mellody said. “We don’t really know what’s next.”

  “Oh. I just heard the first bit of the war chants from the Gorias forces.” Bisky said. “I guess that’s a good sign?”

  “Probably?” Fiona said. “Not that we have any idea how to recover our idiot strike team.”

  “I bet we could put up one of the ladders.” Zoe said.

  “Because that’s a good idea.” Firo said.

  “I mean, if someone has a better one, I’d love to hear it!”

  “Guys? Heads up, you have incoming.” Bisky said, sounding concerned.

  “Care to elaborate?” Caoimhe asked, as the group continued to hold their position.

  Marissa chuckled and called back to what she had quoted much earlier in the evening; “They have a cave troll.”

  “Which direction?” Aleister asked.

  “Your….left.” Firo said. “There’s more than one, just to be clear.”

  Zoe angled her camera in that direction. She had been handling the bottom right point of their little wedge, which put her furthest from the incoming enemies. The ones that had simply overrun them in their first attempt.

  “What’s the play?” Caoimhe asked.

  “Bisky, Firo, what’s the situation look like from up there? Are there still mages popping up?” Mellody asked.

  “Of course there are.” Bisky said. “I imagine you want some cover fire?”

  “Whatever you can spare.” Mellody said.

  “Try to pull them away from the gate? The last thing we need is for them to start bashing it down again.” Evie said. “If you can pull them closer to the wall, I can firebomb them?”

  “Good idea.” Zoe said. The troll things were big and armored, but they didn’t seem like they would simply break down the wall itself. If they could keep them away from the gate, hopefully that would be enough.

  “I see three,” Caoimhe said, “How many more are there?”

  “Five total. The other two broke off to head toward something in the crowd, not sure what.” Bisky said. “Think you can handle three?”

  “Dunno. We didn’t exactly get to fight them last time, did we?” Caoimhe laughed. “What do you think, gang? Should we just focus on the new guys?”

  “Firo, any chance you can blast your biggest AoE down here when they get close to try to give us some breathing room?” Mellody asked.

  “I mean, sure, but Caoimhe’s big attacks are probably better at that than I am right now. There’s so many mobs that I don’t think blowing up a bunch of them will really do anything.” Firo sounded like he shrugged. “I can do it anyway though, sure.”

  “Thanks. Here we go.” Mellody said, as the new hulking enemies arrived. Once they closed in on the wedge formation the team was holding, Firo let a big arcane blast go. He had been focusing fire on the mages that cropped up, and so had held back his biggest AoE spell, [Ancient Explosion].

  It was a high damage attack that targeted a huge area; the highest damage AoE attack in the game in fact, though not by too much. The AoE was significantly bigger than most, however. And it was ground targeted, rather than used by targeting an enemy, so Firo was able to place it wherever he liked.

  In this case, he had chosen to basically center it on the team. It did enough damage to wipe out basically any enemy in the vicinity that had been damaged, and leaving the rest heavily charred.

  “Good?”

  “Good.” Mellody responded, happy to see their battlefield had mostly been cleared for the moment.

  When the new enemies finally got within melee range, Zoe was able to actually identify what they actually were.

  “They’re mutated bears,” She said, “Gross.”

  It looked like all three were wearing pretty heavy plate armor, and were more than ready to trample the four of them. Two of the bears, who were leading their little group in a reversed wedge, were holding the wicked looking maces that they had seen in their first failed attempt.

  The third bear behind them was carrying a massive axe. With the size of the bears already being much larger than most players, the axe was monstrous in proportion.

  “That axe is like three of me!” Caoimhe laughed.

  “Are we ready?”

  “As we’ll ever be.” Zoe shrugged. “Nothing to it but to do it.”

  “Here we go then.” Aleister said, and launched at the bears with a wide swing of her own large axe. Her initial cleave caught the two in the lead and jumpstarted her [Threat].

  The damage she had dealt amounted to about 1% on each of them.

  “Okay, they're big boys.” Aleister said, as she established aggro on the two mace wielders, before launching a few ranged [Threat] generating skills at the axe wielder in the back.

  “Ready, Nyx?” Caoimhe asked, a smile audible in his voice.

  “Always.” Zoe said, chuckling.

  And then they leapt in. Caoimhe jumped the left one while Nyx took the right, and they both immediately launched into their burst phases.

  Nyx had held back for the vast majority of this fight so far because they simply didn’t need the damage. Now they did.

  She layered on all of her damage buffs and used two more [Poisons] just for good measure. Then she fired off her disconnected damage skills, hoping to get at least a basic read on these new bear enemies before launching into her longer, more dangerous combos.

  By the time she had used [Knife Work] and [Dagger Dance], her bear was winding up for a big attack. She slipped to the side and around the enemy’s back before hitting [Knife’s Edge].

  The bear’s attack swung in a huge cone in front of it, and even clipped a few of the regular mobs. It sent them flying with a huge knockback, and they almost all landed on the ground already dead.

  “That looks painful.” Zoe said.

  “Yeah, don’t get hit by that.” Aleister said. Unfortunately, with enemies this size, there wasn’t much that Aleister could realistically do with positioning them. They had been at least lined up and facing the same way, but they were too large to actually stack their attacks’ AoEs well for safety.

  The massive AoE attacks they had were absolutely going to be a problem for Nyx and her long periods of wanting to stand still.

  “We’ll just need to do what we can,” Caoimhe said, “no pressure.”

  Zoe considered that and shrugged to herself. What was the worst that could happen? They knew they were playing with fire with this strategy; all she could do was buckle down and do her best.