Chapter 178: Doubled Up
Shrieking from above announced the arrival of the flying monsters which had managed to avoid the bombardment and get close enough to dive bomb the lines. But the laser turrets immediately prioritized them, spinning upward and picking them off.
Some died instantly, others fell wounded into the lines to attack the heroes.
But the effect was enough to slow some of the fire at the ground forces, and that let them advance just a bit faster.
The flying enemies were coming in greater numbers than they had last time, and the guns simply couldn’t keep up, even though they were doing their best to keep the enemies from getting directly over the base.
There was a saying on her home world, back in her previous life. "A battlefield never forgets the scent of war." Kalli had always thought that was a euphemism, but now that she was standing within it, surrounded by the carnage of the battlefield, there was no doubt that whoever had coined the phrase did not mean it in the spiritual sense.
With the number of flying enemies increasing beyond what even a third {Air Defence Battery} could deal with, and the power grid already nearing the stage where all three guns were causing peaks near the maximum output of the power plant, Kalli knew that something had to be done.
More heavy weapons? It was a start.
But the most obvious answer was that when the flying monsters got close enough, the mages would start to attack them. That would cause issues on the front lines, but there was still the wall to slow their advance once the airborne threat was reduced.
Kalli switched to a Pulse Rifle, and began to fire bursts into the attackers.
They were agile, swooping around in evasive patterns designed to make them difficult to hit, but every few bursts, one of the pulses would hit its mark, or a nearby monster, and another would fall from the sky.
{ Coordinator Kalli added to Third and Fourth Wave Kill count. }
{Please leave some enemies for the heroes. ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ }
Kalli felt the first hints of hysteria creep into her mind as she continued to fire.
Leave some for the heroes?
SOME?
Oh, that was not the problem that they were having at all.
Did the system not get just how terrified she was? How she had to fight to keep the stench of death from overwhelming her? How every nerve felt like it was on fire as she searched the sky, looking for something trying to kill her?
One of the ammo runners paused as he saw the coordinator rapid firing a pulse rifle at the sky and laughing like a madwoman. They needed ammunition on the line, but perhaps he could wait a few seconds until she was a bit less scary?
When that didn’t seem likely to happen, he cleared his throat, and Kalli spared him a glance, while her rifle tracked the monsters.
"Ammo?" She asked, her voice eerily calm, as her thoughts were entirely dedicated to not dying from a surprise monster attack.
"Four cases, please."
She handed them over, and then added a case of bandages because she knew that they were going to be needed soon. The mental math said the first waves of monsters would be at the walls soon, and as they looked intelligent, they were definitely going to be able to deal some damage to the defenders.
As the runner left, Kalli calculated the likely monster populations.
If it was the same as the first two, there should be a weaker enemy, a stronger enemy, and a flying enemy, plus the chance of an invasion inside the walls.
Three of the four had already happened.
She didn’t know if it was going to pull the same stunt again, but Kalli knew that the invasion inside the walls was normally the most dangerous of them all. The heroes were focused on the perimeter, leaving the interior of the base mostly undefended.
They had given weapons to as many people as they could, the ones who could make good use of them, but that might not be enough if the next enemy was stronger than the Goblins.
Logically, it likely would be, the waves normally got worse every time.
Only this time, the attack from inside never came.
Instead, what came was so much worse.
Giants, ten metres tall and fully armoured, marched in the distance, headed for Marimgar with long loping strides. Metal armour protected their chests, while massive swords and clubs were slung over their shoulders, promising a level of destruction that Marimgar had never seen before the moment that they reached the walls.
On the front lines, Yara laughed as she saw the monsters in the early morning predawn light.
"Well, I’ll give the System this much, it doesn’t lack a sense of style. We built walls, and it sent monsters that could simply step over them."
Beside her, her team laughed as they fired into the enemies at the base of the wall. They had a lightning mage with them, and they were stationed along a section where the river ran next to the wall. So, they had been doing well enough, if you disregarded the fact that half their enemies could swim.
The Lightning cured them of that well enough, sending bodies down the river for the second time in three days.
"If those air defence cannons can’t take care of the flying beasts fast enough, we’re going to be hacking away at shin guards," a new healer from the underwater base joked. But his voice cracked a little with panic, and the joke fell flat.
"Trust in the Coordinator. She will find a way for us to prevail, even if it means using machine guns against armoured giants. But who knows, perhaps she’s got an anti tank rifle in that store of hers, and we really can take them out?"
That store was the key to their survival so far, with their advanced composite armour shrugging off the spears of the hyena men that the system called Gnolls. Only a few of the warriors had taken major injuries so far, but more than one had already switched to their backup armour, as their primary set hadn’t been repaired in time for the battle.
They would have to start begging for more from the store soon, before the warriors were too battered to keep fighting.