“Prince Karl, what a sight for sore eyes. Of all the things that we expected to be coming our way, Thor and Rae were not even on the list.” The Prince next to Karl informed him.
“I take it that we have met before. How is your team? Skilled fighters or recruits on a training mission?” Karl replied.
“All skilled combatants now. We were reassigned from the Mountain Giant front to try to reach an anomaly that opened west of here. There is a rumour that it is stabilizing, and it might be high-ranked.”
As the man spoke, Karl realized where he knew that voice from.
“Prince Corbin?” He asked.
“Right in one guess. Muffin is four or five spots down, and Tamarind is on the other side somewhere.”
Karl didn’t remember a Tamarind, but he was more focused on the battle right now than people’s names.
“And the others from the Yeti anomaly?” He asked instead.
“Larry and Darrel, the Commanders, are here. The other youngsters had duties at home.”
Karl continued to casually fire arrows into the crowd while Remi stood with her arms outstretched, guiding her main vortex with her hands while Karl let his roam freely.
Corbin sent arcs of energy that were rather similar to [Rend] into the zombie horde, keeping them back of the defenders on their side, but some of the others were beginning to have trouble on the far end, where there was no Royal and no Hellstorm to slow the attack.
“I will move to support the others. Once this initial wave slows, we can talk again.” Karl informed the Spellblade with a quick nod of his head.
“Greatly appreciated. We will see you soon. Let me know if your team needs to take down that regenerating barrier. The mana it grants is likely all that is keeping our Ascended Blades going at this point.”
The fight had only just started, they hadn’t been fighting for more than fifteen minutes. But if they had been surrounded when they woke up, they might be working on four hours of sleep, and they would have burnt a lot at the start of the fight.
They were doing their best, but most of the Spellblades weren’t specialized in multiple enemy fights, and these ones had most likely been fighting Giants before being sent on this mission, the same as Karl and the others had.
It limited the skills that they were familiar with, as large area attacks were less effective against widely spread, larger targets. But the zombies were shoulder to shoulder, and packed tight front to back, trying to claw their way to the living.
Karl used [Rend] at neck height and spread as wide as possible, decapitating dozens of weaker zombies in a single shot before returning to firing arrows along the new front.
It was becoming clear that they were still on the losing side of the battle, just not soon.
The group didn’t have enough area attacks to keep the horde back forever, and minute by minute, the lines were advancing.
Blizzard wouldn’t effectively get rid of them, it took too long to get through to the brain, and the zombies didn’t stop for mere flesh wounds. It might be worth a shot, though.
Hellstorm was killing at a steady pace, but didn’t move between targets fast enough when it would only arc to a dozen or so targets at once while pulling almost all the mana Karl was getting from Eternal Lightning and his own regeneration.
So, Karl switched the spells, with [Blizzard] spread as wide as he could make it.
Unlike the flaming vortex, the zombies didn’t see it as a threat, so they didn’t try to go around.
That caused a momentary increase in the number of them reaching the front of the lines, but with the help of the Bodyguards, the perimeter was holding.
Hawk’s bombardment was burning the piles of bodies, preventing them from creating piles that could be pushed down the hill onto the defenders, while Remi had a [Thunderstorm] on one side, and was following Karl’s lead in switching to [Blizzard] on the other.
The Spellblades were concerned, seeing more wounded zombies making it to the front. If the new arrivals couldn’t sustain enough output to eliminate the zombies, they would soon be in hand-to-hand combat again.
Prince Corbin understood the long game, though. Blizzard was low mana cost, so the casters could focus on other spells at the same time. Plus it was a huge area, with the two Blizzards and a Thunderstorm completely encircling their position, leaving no gaps.
All they had to do now was to hold the zombies in place long enough for the damage over time to tear those stuck in the middle of the pack apart, and the defenders would get a respite while another wave of attackers made its way through the spells.
“Just keep holding them back. Let the area spells do their work.” Corbin shouted to his weary Sect members.
That was all that they could do anyhow, but the prospect of getting a break when the area spells wiped out a whole region of the enemy was a welcome one.
Rae was firing stone bullets at the zombies from her position beside the wagon, while her golems hunted the stronger zombies in the area.
It was the closest that she could come to having fun in this fight when the zombies smelled so terrible.
Their blood was rancid and corrupt. Even with a barrier over her, Rae did not want any of that getting on her. Just the thought of smelling like that for the entire battle grossed her out.
It didn’t help that the Spellblades didn’t know about the spawns, so they had only put a minimal guard rotation on duty for the evening, thinking that if they did face anything it was likely to be bandits or local monsters.
So, when the spawn had happened, the undead were already on them by the time that they noticed.
That meant close combat, and zombie blood on the mages.
Zombie blood that smelled absolutely terrible and was all over the area around the camp.
