Chương 91: Chapter 92: Attrition

The next two days are just repeats of the same. They try to charge at the wall. We try to defend the wall. We shoot at them. A few of them climb the wall. We cut them down. Slowly but surely, we rack up a body count. But we take a few casualties, too. Not that many. Ash, El, and I are quick to jump in the way of any attack we see coming at our soldiers. We can reincarnate, they can't. So even though they have a lot of hit points, we want to avoid any of them getting wounded, let alone dying.

Our soldiers seem to heal at the same rate that I do, which makes me assume that the orcs do the same. One hit point per minute is really fast. Even if we manage to get them down by ten thousand points of damage, all that does is take them out of the battle for a week. And that's assuming no one casts healing magic. One of the three of us always takes on the orcs who manage to get over the wall. Usually El, because she rushes for the opportunity.

Ash is more intent on making sure that our soldiers keep fighting as a coordinated group, rallying them every few hours with a new speech. Today, our numbers are being lessened. Where before we had the thirty three of us plus another fifty in reserve, now we're down to just the thirty three of us. The other fifty have gone back to their posts on the wall, back to where the mountain army has arrived.

Word is the battle is more intense over there, because the elves from the mountain army are firing their own volleys of arrows, with pretty impressive precision. The orcs occasionally shoot a volley of arrows at us. But most of the time, if you just press against the palisade spikes, the arrows soar harmlessly overhead. Without the reserves, we have to actually worry about getting overrun.

The first two days of the assault were like practice; we knew that if there was any real danger we had fifty backup soldiers to swoop in and pick up the slack. But now they're gone, and we're on our own.

"Should we hold some of our soldiers back in reserve?" I ask as I see the phalanx being put together on the other side of the field. I shoot a Fire Bolt at the group, trying to make them scatter. It doesn't really do much to slow them down, but the 714 damage probably makes them think twice, at least.

"No point," Ash says.

"We need everyone at the wall to hold it. The more people we have holding it, the longer it'll stand. If we pull back half our forces for just in case we get breached, we are almost guaranteeing the breach by having fewer defenders to stop it."

"Oh, that makes sense," I say. I look up the tree next to us. The archers up there are relentless, taking pot shots at the orc army even as they hide in the tree cover on the other end of the field. The archers in the trees must have some kind of range bonus.

"So do we just keep doing what we've been doing?"

"I think so," Ash says.

"Sorry it's not more interesting." I shrug.

"I don't mind it," I say.

"It's not exactly boring. We keep having these skirmishes. Sooner or later one of them is going to break through. What do we do if that happens in one of the other walled sections?"

"We hold our ground," Ash says.

"We don't want to go reinforce somewhere else and allow a breach here when we do it." I shake my head.

"You have so much more discipline than I do," I say. A runner arrives from the city. I recognize her. Maize. Forest elf scout, level 43. HP: 3, 784/3, 784.

"Hey Maize," I say.

"Hey Caleb," she says, reaching into her spatial bag and starting to pull out bundles of arrows. The fletchers are working overtime to make sure that we have and endless supply of arrows. We've got plenty of wood to work with, but I fear that we will eventually run out. We can use the arrows that the enemy shoots over the wall at us, but even those are going to run out sooner or later. They're getting a lot more of our arrows than we are of theirs.

"Any news from the front?" I ask her. Which is kind of stupid question, since technically I'm on the front. Though she seems to know what I mean. And there are other fronts.

"The dwarves are building war machines," she says.

"Siege towers and stuff like that. I don't think the wall is going to hold long on that side."

"Does that mean we'll be fighting the invading force?" She shrugs.

"The mages are over there, and seem focused on destroying whatever the dwarves build as they build it. But the dwarves have time on their side."

"We need to do something to break the siege," I say.

"Before it stops being a siege."

"Yeah," Maize agrees.

"Word is that the higher ups are making plans for that sort of thing. But I don't know what those plans are."

"The higher ups aren't talking." She shakes her head.

"Not that I've heard." She lays out one last bundle of arrows, then hooks several bundles to a pulley system that sends them up into the tree towers, leaving just two bundles for us to use. We're not out yet, but those bundles are definitely going to become necessary by the end of today.

"See you later, Caleb," Maize says, giving me a wave before trotting off to the next tower to deliver bundles of arrows to them. I wave back to her as she leaves, then turn to look at Ash.

"What do you think?" I ask her.

"I think we may need to do something to break the siege," she says.

"And by we, I mean the three of us."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Mab's Rage," she says.

"You cast that, and we hold off the orcs for as long as we can, then fight our way back to this side of the wall."

"So you want the three of us to take on the entire orcish army?" I ask.

"Sort of," she says.

"There's a lot of army that can fit in that space. And you've got two minutes to kill them all, right? So then we just head back and get back on this side of the wall. As quick as we can."

"It's a bad idea," I say.

"Worse than you sneaking into their camp and doing it?" she asks me. I have no response to that. She's right; with the three of us, we might be able to actually do it. We might be able to hold off the army long enough for the spell to do its thing, and long enough for us to get back inside the safety of the wall. If we do it, it'll be like punching a huge hole in the enemy army. A radius of one hundred and nineteen feet can definitely include a lot of enemies. Like, potentially as many as a thousand of them.

It's forty four thousand square feet. I don't know if that'll get the whole army, but it'll get a lot of them. Like, a lot. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"Okay," I say.

"Let's do it." I don't even have to ask if El will be down. Even if it wasn't her idea, I know she'll jump on it. She'll want the chance to fight an entire army with just the three of us. And if we die, then so what? We set our respawn spot back to Elmspire, so we'll be able to rejoin the battle in a matter of hours, maybe a day tops. I don't know exactly how long it takes to respawn. I think it has something to do with how many people have set the spot as a spawn point.

When we were in Wrax's cave, it seemed like we respawned in a manner of hours; usually before Wrax got back from killing us. The only downside to dying is that we'll be stuck with regular equipment. I still have the extra set of armor from the scout of the mountain kingdom, and I still have my old sword in my spatial bag, so I hopefully won't lose all that much. But it'll suck to lose some of the bonus equipment we have, like the bracers of might or the horn necklace of might.

At the same time, I don't want to go into the fight without them. This is going to be a serious fight, and we need every advantage to help us stay alive. If we still end up dying, then so be it. But we don't need to make it more likely by hamstringing ourselves and not using our best equipment. That would just be stupid. I turn back to the orcs. They're trying the phalanx again. It usually only gets them about halfway across the field before we shatter it.

They lose a few soldiers getting to the wall, but then they have the chance to wipe out the wall if they're careful and quick. It's not a bad strategy, per se. But they've been trying to do it for three days now, and it hasn't worked yet. You'd think they'd try something else.

"When do you want to do it?" I ask Ash.

"Do what?" El asks, walking over with a big smile on her face. She's having a blast with this war. She looks at Ash.

"Did you tell him the idea?" She claps her hands rapidly together in giddy joy.

"Does that mean he's down?" She looks at me.

"The plan only works if you're a part of it," she says.

"I'm down," I say.

"It's a crazy plan, but if anyone can pull it off, it's the three of us."

"Let's do it now," Ash says.

"Maybe we can wipe out the phalanx completely and they'll stop trying to use it." We climb carefully over the palisades, and are soon standing on the outside of the wall. We start walking across the field. Ash is in front, using her shield to block any arrows that come at us. El and I draw our weapons, and we put distance between us and the wall pretty rapidly. We end up dodging and weaving around to avoid big volleys of arrows from the orcs. They aren't charging us yet, which is good.

Currently the radius of the spell will still catch the wall. I need to get almost to the other side of the clearing before I can activate it. We break into a jog, zig zagging back and forth across the field. I call up the spell, ready to cast it as soon as we get close enough. The phalanx still forms, but we're getting attention from the orc army. I shoot a Fire Bolt into one of the other groups planning to attack another section of the wall, just to get their attention. We want them to see us.

We want them to surround us. We want them to pack in close. We stop just outside the tree cover and make our stand. I'm glad we still have the hit point buff from Ash's latest speech, but this still feels like an incredibly stupid idea.

"You here to surrender?" a voice calls out from the trees.

"No," I say.

"We're here to slaughter." There's laughter from the trees.

"Three of you?"

"It'll be enough," I say. We start marching forward, Ash in front with me and El to either side of her. As we reach the trees, we see a swarm of orcs just waiting for us.

"Let them attack first," Ash whispers.

"Don't activate the spell until they're engaged." We keep moving forward, waiting for them to surround us. They seem to part ways for us, like a monster opening its jaws for us to climb into. Twenty feet past, they close the circle, then start to move closer and closer. We're surrounded, by ranks upon ranks of orcs. I can't even do a quick count. There have to be hundreds of them, grinning at us like we're stupid, but also waiting for the trick.

El screams and holds her axes up in the air, then charges forward two steps and slams an axe into an orc's chest, following up with a flurry of blows that make his health plunge rapidly towards zero. Ash's mace starts to glow. I cast Mab's Rage, and the cold wind picks up immediately. The orcs in front of me don't seem to understand what that means, even as the chunks of ice start to tear away at them.

I move as close to El as I can get without getting in her way, and Ash and I fight nearly back to back as we engage with the orcs. We're proper surrounded. There isn't enough space to really dodge around much, so I'm quickly taking damage from the orcs who are attacking me. I can attack back, but instead I focus on defense, trying to minimize the amount of damage that I take from the five attackers coming at me. Even with the focus on defense, I'm still getting hit for 58 damage over and over again.

I grit my teeth as I watch my Shell get thinner and thinner. I wait, getting hit maybe four times every five seconds. By the end of the first minute, I've taken 2784 damage. My Shell is doing just fine. I can keep this pace up almost forever. Then the arrows start to fly in, specifically at me. They know I'm the source of the spell, and they're trying to take me out. Most of the arrows bounce off my Shell and do 22 points of damage, but occasionally there is one that hits for 77 or even 99.

A minute and a half into the spell, and I've lost another 4, 692 points from Shell between the attacks, the arrows, and even the spells that come at me. My Shell still has just under four thousand hit points, but I don't think that will survive the spell. A strange thing starts to happen as we fight, though. We're a minute and a half into the spell, and orcs are starting to die. El is surrounded by a pile of dead orcs, and Ash is building up her own barrier of corpses behind me.

None of the ones I'm fighting have died because I'm not attacking them yet, but it won't be long now. They have 12, 500 points of health to begin with. After ninety seconds, Mab's Rage has done 11, 250. That just leaves 1250 left, and another 125 gone every second. In ten more seconds, anyone who has been in the path of the spell the whole time is going to be dead. And those that are trying to crowd in to get at us are still going to take another 2500 in the time remaining in the spell.

They pick up the pace in shooting me, casting spells with abandon and shooting me with such wild desperation that some of their shots miss and hit their companions. More orcs die as the seconds tick by. It seems like I'm taking almost 300 damage per second. After the initial ten seconds go by, my Shell is down to triple digits. Three seconds later, I recast it and send it back to its full strength. Seventeen seconds left before the spell expires.

"Start moving back towards the wall!" I shout. The cold air doesn't really effect us, and we're not taking any of the damage from Mab's Fury, but it's still very loud. So are the sounds of battle. I don't know how many we've killed, but I know it's a lot. We start fighting our way in the direction of the wall. My new Shell plummets down by almost half by the time the spell finally ends. After that happens, the attacks get less desperate, and the orcs start to get more organized.

I wonder how many of them are dead already. It looks like there are at least a hundred between us and the wall. We just have to get out of the forest and into the open plain. I wish I had a spell that let me move a short distance really fast. Some kind of dash ability would be great right now. I use Chop, I use Bleeding Strike, and I use Killing Blow when it is off cooldown. My stamina starts to sink, as Killing Blow is a very stamina intensive ability, but I'm not worried.

We'll get back to the wall before my stamina pool completely empties. I'm still regenerating two stamina per second, so all I really have to do is stop using Chop for a while, and it will refill. Chop deals 646 damage, and my sword strikes without Chop deal about 450. All of the orcs we're fighting are already wounded, so we start to make real progress out of the forest. They don't seem to want to let us go, but they also don't have the strength to keep us surrounded.

El starts to carve a path through the enemy, leading us out of the forest and into the clearing that the defense forces made. An orc spear nearly slices open my face, and I knock the spear aside, lunging forward with my sword to skewer the orc who attacked me. I slash again and again, pushing him back and making him fumble to draw his own sword once I get him to drop the spear. A spear is a good weapon, but when someone is madly slashing at you with a sword, you might want something a bit more quick and mobile.

I look at my Shell. It's down to about 4, 000 again. I look at the cooldown. Three more minutes before I can cast it again. This is not good. It's not terrible, it's not life threatening, but it's not good. I have to keep in mind that Ash and I, at least, have healing spells available. Once we start losing actual health, we can mend that and restore some health while we wait for the cooldown on Shell to end. I glance over at El.

She's covered in blood, so much so that I can't be sure how much of it is hers and how much of it is the orcs. Orcs have black blood, but the black and red is mixed all over her body, so I can't be sure how much of it is her and how much is them.

"El! Recast Shell!" She always forgets that she can cast Shell during combat. It's impressive that they've managed to do enough damage to her to get her to her regular hit points, but I don't want to give them the chance to get those hit points down to a dangerous level. El looks at me briefly, then casts the spell. Soon, the blood splattering her is all black.