He hadn't been expecting this. He watched, nearly stunned, as a nearly forty-foot-tall Abaddon fought a fifty-foot-tall blood bat. If he couldn't smell the coppery tang, he might have thought he was in a movie theatre.
Suddenly, music started to play, heavy rock music that got his heart pumping
DING!!!
The notification snapped back to attention.
"Why the hell did you people stop firing?! This is a battlefield. Don't get distracted!" Adams shouted in his best drill sergeant voice as his skill kicked in.
The few people who had been staring slack-jawed at the ongoing immediately shut their mouths and turned back to the battle against the goblins.
Chester was roaring out orders to the line of police officers and larpers holding riot shields and other shields as they held back the goblin horde.
The goblins themselves were in shambles. Before, the horde had moved with a level of coordination. Now, however, it felt like he was skirmishing with a dozen different armies and a rioting mob at the same time.
"Fireball!" Adams roared as he tossed down another fireball into a swarming group of goblins.
Dozens of spells and arrows flew at them in response. Adam felt an arrow hit his chest but failed to penetrate his Kevlar. The next attack he did see coming as the spell raced towards his head. But this time, Adams saw it coming and activated [Time Leap]. He had finally gotten good enough with the skill that he felt confident enough to use it to dodge … when he remembered he had it. The next instant, when he reappeared with the spell flying off behind him, he chucked another fireball at his would-be attacker.
He cursed as he spotted the groups with shamans. Each one was protected by either a water or earthen shield, and they seemed to be the only goblins that weren't in a full-on riot at this point.
According to Tom, the Goblins relied on their leaders [Skills] to maintain their armies' discipline. They didn't know how to work together without them. Skippy's attack had cut off the goblins from the [Sanguine Monarch]. At this point, only goblins with a [Party Leader] skill could maintain any order at all, and only those goblins were directly in their party. Hence, they were the only ones capable of launching an organized counterattack. Which meant they would be his first targets for stage 2.
"Duncan, bring up the ballistae!!" Adams ordered
"They're called Scorpions," Duncan corrected him despite pushing the scorpions closer.
Duncan, a very reluctant Isaac, and ten other artillerymen pulled up a dozen ballistas. Each bolt was equipped with some kind of magically explosive tip. Adam didn't understand it, and he didn't need to.
"Focus fire on the shielded groups," Adams ordered.
Duncan, Issac, and the other craftsmen opened fire with the scorpions. The massive bolts punched right through the trolls and shields with ease. Then, the bolt tips exploded with enough force to knock down a one-story building.
Trolls, shamans, and goblins were blown apart. The shamans who had been resisting their barrage were immediately overwhelmed. The massive explosions were too much for their shields to handle, and once the shields were gone, the riflemen picked off any of the survivors while the mages concentrated their attacks on the trolls.
The goblin army had utterly devolved. Now, the goblins were bunching together, screaming and yelling as they threw spears at them and trampled over each other. Major Adams realized that what he was facing now wasn't an army but a literal riot.
"Chester Tear Gas!!!" Adams called out, flinging the canister towards the goblins.
Other people who had tear gas canisters also tossed them deep into the goblin horde. Immediately, the goblins started rolling on the ground, screaming out in pain as their eyes watered. Magic bombs rained down on the goblins in droves as the riflemen and scorpion operators continued to focus on any enemy that looked important.
The battlefield below was utter chaos. The goblins attacked each other as much as they attacked his own forces. As even more goblins tried to force their way towards them. It was an endless mob of little green monsters screaming for human blood.
"Fuck, You know, with all these civilians around, I wasn't sure if we should make the fertilizer bombs. Now I wish we made more," Thorn called up to him.
"I'm hoping we won't need them, but if it gets any worse, we might have to," Adams admitted.
He had honestly considered it an unnecessary risk to have so many explosives with so many civilians around. He was immensely glad he had made them regardless. The goblin horde seemed endless. Even with the entire horde disoriented from tear gas and getting slaughtered by gunfire, they kept pouring out of the university like an endless tide.
Then, it got worse as the dead goblins began to rise.
Adams took a moment to look up at the blood bat. He could see Tom flying around the creature like some reenactment of King Kong. But he couldn't see anyone else. That couldn't be good. An army of zombie goblins began to rise up from the ground. Their dead eyes glowing red, then they launched themselves forwards at the people on the walls, at the other goblins. Everyone and everything that was alive and in reach lashed out with tooth and nail.
To Adams' horror, he realized that the zombies were unaffected by the tear gas, and they slammed into the defenders with no regard for their lives.
"Casey, Time for the bombs!" Adams ordered over the radio.
Casey and a few others tossed the bombs over the roofs and into the zombie hordes. Nails and other shrapnel were sent flying with each detonation as the ground quickly turned into a sea of black-red blood.
The living corpses were blown apart but any goblin that died rose up again as a zombie.
"God dammit, now I wish we had more explosives," Adams muttered to himself.
But before Adams could do anything else, a scream in the intersection where they had the shield wall grabbed his attention. Adams rushed to the edge of the wall and quickly looked over it. The tear gas had whipped the goblins into a frenzy, and they crashed against Chester's riot shields. The shield wall buckled, breaking open at points as the undead goblins pushed through it.
"They're breaking through!!!" Chester called out as he stabbed the goblins as they tried to escape.
Zombie goblins started forcing their way through the shield wall like rabid weasels. They did whatever they could to attack the people on the line, even if they injured themselves.
"Casey, fire the Water Cannon," Adams ordered over his radio.
"I need a minute." Casey's voice crackled over the radio.
"We don't have a minute!!" Adams called back as he raced to the side of the roof.
The undead goblins were already forcing their way through. In another minute, they would be overrun.
"Everyone out of the way!!!" Penny's voice echoed into their ears as a demon popped into existence.
The demon was massive, almost seven feet tall, with red skin and black spikes of bone sticking out of its skin. Grabbing two of the spikes, the demon ripped them out of its body, unsheathing two blades of black bone from its body, which immediately started to glow red hot.
The demon surged forward, crashing headlong into the undead horde. Its impact sent the shambling corpses scattering. With a feral roar, it tore into the enemy ranks, its bone blades slicing through flesh and bone in an excited frenzy.
"Get back, get back." Chester waved people back as the demon single-handedly fought back the horde of undead.
The demon twirled through the goblin horde like a whirlwind of death, a blazing tempest of destruction. Its twin bone blades sliced through the air with blistering speed, each arc leaving fiery cinders. Goblins, both living and reanimated, fell before its onslaught, their bodies cleaved apart in sprays of blood and ash. The demon’s movements were somehow both graceful and savage, a macabre dance that blurred the line between art and slaughter. Every step, every whirl, sent severed limbs and molten gore flying, the air thick with the scent of burning flesh and sulphur as the horde crumbled around the unrelenting fiend. The undead were quickly beaten back, and soon, only the living goblins were left.
But despite its power and grace, the demon was still losing. For every ten goblins it killed, it was stabbed, bitten, or slashed by a claw. It wasn't much, but it was adding up, and Adams could see that it was adding up quickly. The demon was already slowing down as its body became a bloody mess.
"Casey, how long until we get those hoses!!" Adams demanded as he tossed a fireball into the horde, hoping to slow it down.
"I got it!!!" Casey called out
The fire hoses burst to life, crashing directly into the goblins' ranks and pushing them back. The jets of water crashed against the goblins with a thunderous roar. The goblins scrambled like a pack of wet cats as the force of the water knocked them off balance, sending them sprawling to the ground.
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The demon leapt into the goblin horde, no longer attempting to hold the green buggers back; instead, the demon was just going on a killing spree as it sprinted through the horde. Disturbingly, the demon was actually doing better now that it wasn't holding the line.
"Keep the pressure up! We need to create a buffer zone so we can pick up any corpses and stash them in our inventory!!!" Adams ordered as the jets of water pushed back the horde.
The firefighters adjusted their aim, strategically directing the torrents of ice-cold water to push back the goblins. Now drenched, cold and disoriented, the goblins struggled to regroup as the relentless onslaught of water pushed them back towards the flaming remains of the university.
The goblins were already shivering from the combination of the frozen air and the water cannons, and the tear gas disoriented them even further.
Chester led people to collect the corpses into their [Storage] and retrieve the people who had been hurt. Chester's aura skills washed over the injured and started healing them.
Chester picked up one of the injured as he moved around, collecting the bodies into his inventory as they hid under the jets of water. In a few minutes, they had collected all of the dead they could find.
"Chester, Thorn, Duncan. We need to withdraw," Adams ordered. "Collect the dead and pack them up."
"What?" Duncan asked, confused as Adams pulled him from the Scorpion.
"But we're winning." Duncan protested.
"We've lost the shield wall. In four minutes, those trucks are going to run out of water, and then we'll be overrun. We need to collect our dead and retreat before that happens," Adams stated in a tone that brooked no argument.
Duncan nodded, and slowly, too slowly, they started to pull out. The riflemen, mages, and artillerymen moved off the wall.
The two mage corps went first, as they could continue to use plunging fire to launch magical explosives over the buildings and into the goblin-filled streets. The mages took the longest to pull back, as they were primarily high school and college kids, and most of them still thought of all of this as some great game instead of a life-or-death battle.
Not that he could blame them. Between the monsters, the system skills that blocked pain, the Ego stat that increased their general pain tolerance, the magic healing, and Tom bringing everyone back from the dead, this fight was closer to a video game than real life.
He shook his head. This was real life now. He needed to remember that.
As the artillerymen ran out of explosive tips, which didn't take long due to their limited supply of explosive bolts, Adams ordered them to leave the scorpions behind, prioritizing the safety of the operators over the nearly broken machines.
Finally, the riflemen pulled out. They took the least amount of time as most of them were ex-military, and the ones that weren't were all RCMP. The moment Adams told them it was time to move, they cocked their fire and pulled out.
"One minute of water left!!" Casey called out.
They moved their way back to the reserve unit. Eve, Chester, and the rest of the paramedics were already loading up the injured person into the ambulance, even as they tried to treat them. Between Chesters Aura's healing and Eve's more targeted healing, they only really need to worry about people with broken bones and the dead bodies they had to stash in their [Storage] spaces.
Adams and Chester ran back up to Firetruck #8, getting inside with Casey, Penny and Thorn. Some form of blood magic had struck the other two fire trucks, which were smouldering wrecks. The bodies inside had been stored away for Tom. Everyone else was already gone at this point.
"Alright, everyone in the vehicles is driving away. It's time to pull back," Adams ordered over the radio.
"Great, we're just about to run out of ---" Casey's was cut off at the same time the water was cut off.
"Water," Casey groaned.
The chaotic mass of goblins surged forward. Adam felt his heart drop into his stomach as his hand gripped his rifle with a death grip. Penny threw a blast of wind magic at the horde as Casey reacted.
"Shit," Casey said as she slammed her foot on the gas. The firetruck sped backwards, the wheels screeching as Casey floored it.
The firetruck roared to life, its sirens blaring as it flew backwards. Adams was jerked forward as Casey spun the firetruck around like a sports car. Its massive frame drifted a hundred and eighty degrees as it slid down the road until it faced the proper direction. At this point, the truck stopped spinning with a jerk and sped after the retreating vehicles.
"Holy shit!!" Penny swore. "I didn't know you could do that."
"I can't. I got the [Racer] skill. [Impossible Maneuvering] lets me cheat physics," Casey cheered as the firetruck sped off like a race car instead of an oversized tub.
"Des just died," Penny warned as she fired off another spell at the goblins.
The goblins struggled to keep up, taken aback by the sudden burst of speed. Only the orcs, mounted on giant wolves, managed to keep up. The riders were quickly getting closer, close enough for Adams to start taking potshots at them.
"Come on, slow pokes!" Casey shouted as he weaved into one of the orc riders. The firetruck knocked the rider off his mount before running him over.
Adams felt the bump as they ran the orc over.
"You're enjoying this too much." Adams pointed out.
"I'm not arguing; I'm having too much fun," Casey said as she applied the brakes, causing one of the orcs riding directly behind them to rear-end them hard enough that Adams swore he could hear bones breaking.
"Go left," Adams ordered.
"Sure," Casey said, spinning the wheel, even as he said it was drifting into the left lane.
"I still have no idea how you're doing that," Adams said, as he was pretty sure that maneuver would have resulted in the fire truck flipping over.
"Magic," Casey said cheekily. "Sir, Why am I going in the wrong direction?"
"There's too many of them following at the moment. We'll lose them first before we head to the fallback point," Major Adams said as he used [Stasis] against one of the wargs. The oversized wolf froze mid-stride, falling to the ground like a statue, completely unharmed, its rider not so much.
Penny seemed to strum an imaginary guitar, and one of the wargs leaped away from the firetruck, bleeding from its ears.
"What's everyone's skill effects?" Adam asked. "We need anything to help us lose these assholes."
"All I have is my level 20 [Arbiter of the Cycle]; it has one stamina booster, and everything else is a passive buff or debuff," Chester said.
"15 levels in [Sharpshooter] and 8 in [Detective]. I shoot people," Thorn stated as she blew the head off of an orc.
"[Bard], [Warlock], and … [Rogue]," Penny added as she blew out another wargs eardrums.
"Level 11 [Racer] and Level 9 [Mechanic], mine just do car stuff," Casey said happily as she knocked over some garbage cans.
It occurred to Adams that they might need to consider their builds more carefully, as he quickly realized that none of them had any offensive skills—except for Thorn, whose skills were based on her guns, and Penny, who wasn't actually a part of his team.
Casey was quickly forced to start weaving through abounded cars on the streets and, at times, driving on the sidewalk. Penny summoned her demon again. It was a lot weaker this time. But it served as a distraction as they put some distance between themselves and their pursuers.
Penny, Thorn and Adams kept picking off the orcs as they drove through Newton. Adams and Throne just picked off the orcs one at a time as they lured them away from the group. When they got down to just three orcs, they broke off, turning and racing through the backyards.
Casey stopped as they realized they had driven all the way up to the Fraser River.
Adams fell back into his chair, he felt exhausted.
"Holy shit, that was amazing," Penny muttered.
"Casey, head back to the fallback point," Adams said as he collapsed back into his seat just as the notifications started coming in.
<[Bound Weapon] has reached level 17>
<[Bound Weapon] has reached level 18>
<[Hazmat] has reached level 21>
<[Hazmat] has reached level 22>
<...>
<[Hazmat] has reached level 26>
<[Snake Eyes] has reached level 26>
<[Snake Eyes] has reached level 27>
<...>
<[Snake Eyes] has reached level 30>
<[All-Seeing Eye] has reached level 16>
<[All-Seeing Eye] has reached level 17>
<...>
<[All-Seeing Eye] has reached level 19>
<[Fancy Feet] has reached level 21>
<[Fancy Feet] has reached level 22>
<...>
<[Fancy Feet] has reached level 24>
<[Stasis] has reached level 9>
<[Stasis] has reached level 10>
<[Military Leader] has reached level 14>
<[Military Leader] has reached level 15>
<...>
<[Military Leader] has reached level 30>
"I hope Tom can manage without us," Adams muttered, adding two more levels to his [Rescue Ranger] Class.
You may skip to the next chapter.
Base
Personal: +4 AGIL, +3 DEX, +3 PER, +2 CON, +2 CHA
Racial: +3 CON, +2 END, +2 SPIRIT, +1 EGO
Skills: +2 STR
Mini-Character List
Major Adams: The Leader of the military action. Ex firefighter
Sgt Thorn: an ex-military sniper and right-hand women for Adams
Chester: Large native American man. He was in charge of the shield wall. he was originally a paramedic, though now his role is more magical in nature
Casey: Adams Military mechanic. She takes care of the vehicles and drives.
Penny: The [Bard] responsible for the music and the demon
AN:
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