Chapter 159: Not Without Cost
As it happened, Reggie was not the last of the veteran heroes to fall, but the last of a trend.
The others had simply thrown on their spare gear and rushed back to the battlefield, where they found that their teammates had rescued their badly damaged equipment for them, and they either switched back, or collected it and put it in storage to be repaired later.
And that gave everyone an answer that nobody had wanted to ask for.
"What happens when you die and get resurrected?"
As it turns out, the body vanishes, but everything that you had on you survives. So, as long as the whole group wasn’t wiped out, an ambush won’t cost them everything, and they’re not burning through a massive amount of points to keep their gear at a high enough level to fight.
The only issue was the new heroes who had died, and were now struggling to keep up with the battle.
If they hit level one, which most did, they had been instructed by Yara to stay near the dorm building, or to take a turn on the guns and get some rewards.
But that had cut the number of heroes still at the wall, and left a few gaps that needed to be plugged.
The resurrection pod had turned a disaster into a minor disaster, but they were still going to need time to recover, and the battle at the wall still wasn’t quite over. There were groups of Swineherd Demons still holding out, and the people of Marimgar would have to do a massive amount of cleanup afterwards.
However, Kalli’s concerns were more about the ships.
The one that had stopped the attack had gone dark again, and she could see that it had overloaded its engines again.
Even at minimal output, that weapon was more than the reactor could take.
It did clear both sides of the battle, though.
There would be nothing left to fight, and only a handful of wooden bridges across the river to remove to keep the enemy from charging at them again if they returned.
With a few minutes of downtime, Kalli ran a diagnostic on the ships, and found that there were a lot of blown relays, fried fuses and other issues that needed repair, but no spare parts. The ships hadn’t come with any, and Kalli’s store didn’t extend to space ship grade electronics.
However, not all was lost.
Most of the circuits would come back online with just a little work. The true issue only became apparent when she went looking for parts.
While the ships were online, there were two reactors inside. An antimatter power plant for basic needs, and the main drive for space flight. That one used a consumable fuel of some sort, and there was not much of it.
They could use the thrusters and the antigravity plating to move about on the surface, but if they went to space, it was a one time option.
They would get there, she was sure. But forget exploring the solar system, they would barely have enough fuel to stabilize themselves in orbit. The ships weren’t an almighty rescue net for them, they were a one way trip off planet with no destination.
But worse, the residents of the Arks hadn’t realized that the high powered shields that they had been using in the ocean used the main thruster drives to keep active, as the antimatter power plants didn’t have the capability.
So, they had burned fuel fighting sea monsters, and now had even less than they had started with.
In their defence, they didn’t know. But Kalli couldn’t in good conscience let them keep doing it. So, if they were attacked again, she would warn them to avoid using their full shields, and to restrict the usage to the deflector shields that were listed as being powered by the antimatter power plant on board.
Now that she thought about it, getting them to move after the battle, so they were in an extended portion of the city that they could wall off would be a wonderful addition.
It would give them far too much city to defend properly, but it would put the ships somewhere safe, and encourage everyone to work together.
At least, if that was the plan by the Kalkan Fleet, and not just an emergency measure because their ships were having issues. Both were legitimate options, and she wouldn’t be surprised if the fleet picked either of them.
Now that they knew that space was an option, they might actually choose to try to go, and turn the Ark into a generational colony ship.
That was what some of the locals had done, with much lower technology levels.
Annoyed with not knowing what was going on, Kalli poured herself a bubble tea and waited for news to come to her. It wouldn’t be long, as either a round of runners looking for supplies, or a round of exhausted heroes looking for quest completions would be on their way soon.
Those were really the only options.
Other than having everyone simply lay down for a nap right out on the grass behind the wall, that was.
Surely, some would be tempted to, but with all the blood and bodies, with the temperature climbing as they approached noon under the twin suns, it would not be a pleasant place for anyone to remain.
No matter how tired they were.
The first to return were actually the lower level heroes who had been withdrawn from the lines. They had been called to go collect armoured boars, so that they could be butchered and brought to either the large warehouse, which now had a cold storage option after its upgrade, or to Kalli, who had her Storage Realm.
Having the old warehouse be an option was a great relief to Kalli. Not because her storage was limited, it still had plenty of space, but because the heroes were finally beginning to have a stable city to work in.
The closer they were to being a functional society, the happier Kalli was.
With some luck, they might even do well enough on the third Trial to become a Level 2 Society, whatever that looked like.