Chapter 156: Bacon’s Back
Someone spun the air raid siren in the early dawn light, marking the moment that the Swineherd Demons made the ten kilometre mark from the city.
The Air Defence guns opened fire, and flashes of light illuminated the horizon, marking the front lines of the enemy advance.
For some reason, they were not coming through the forest. They had come along the shore, just like the army of Flatfoot warriors had.
It didn’t make sense to Kalli.
They had occupied the whole region on the other side of the trees, and they knew those forests. Logically, they shouldn’t have hesitated to attack through the tree line so that they could spread out and come at the city in a wider line.
And certainly, after the big guns had started firing at the attackers, they should have spread out.
But they were still avoiding the forest.
Though there were only two of them, that was still enough to turn the open tidal plains into a living hell for the Swineherd Tribe. They had no way to predict where the next explosion would be, as the shots travelled too fast for them to react to.
Every second, two shots exploded among their ranks, wiping out sections of their tribe a hundred metres across.
So, they spread out, limiting the casualties, even if it meant that they were taking longer to get through the choke point between the forest and the shore.
Kalli pulled up the satellite feed to see if there was actually some huge monster on the other side of the forest that they were avoiding. But what she found was nothing of the sort. It was just an open area of volcanic dunes around the river.
Perhaps it was the river that they didn’t want to cross?
The river ran near the edge of the forest, and they were on the same side of it as the city, so there was a chance that they weren’t confident that they could safely traverse the waters?
That would put heavy pressure on one side of the city when they made it to the wall.
Kalli returned to her office to watch the satellite feeds, and got there just in time to realize why the Swineherd Demons were only taking one side of the river.
There were more of them coming from the west. They would meet with the force from the south at Marimgar, with a force hitting them on either side of the city.
Kalli frowned as she realized that this round of the attack was not going to be any less dangerous than the first six hours had been, even though she had put out so many more turrets.
[ I wonder if razor wire or something would slow them down? The Swineherd Demons have swords, so they might just be able to cut through it. But it could tangle them up and slow them down if we had enough time to place it.
Or is there something else that I’m missing?
We’ve got what any military base in my old world would consider impressive defensive capabilities. But against a force this size, I’m still not sure that it’s going to be enough.
I get that the System called it an Epic Grade quest, but we’ve already killed nearly a million enemies with just a few hundred heroes.
And a volley from the Kalkan Arks, but still.
What would the boss do if he was here? Likely call for reinforcements from off planet. But before that? No, I’m already doing what he would do. Send out all the guns, all the drones, and prepare to defend the perimeter.
That’s all that we can really do for now. ]
The Arks still needed hours to be back online, but they should be able to defend themselves against attack from the Swineherd Demons without much trouble.
Whatever they were fighting in the ocean appeared to have been many orders of magnitude worse than what they were facing on land. The Armoured Boars might seem intimidating to a person, but against the basic debris barrier of an evacuation Ark, they were pebbles.
Less than pebbles, as they moved so much slower, in a relative sense.
They certainly weren’t smashing into the barrier at tens of thousands of kilometres an hour, anyhow. That had to count for something. No matter how hard their tusks were.
After seeing what was coming, Sanchez and the special forces team returned to the hall of heroes to make a purchase.
"Coordinator, we need another pulse rifle each.
They take ten seconds to reload, but they take at least that long to shoot. We can’t keep up with the mana cost of rapid firing with Lasrifles, but we can keep up with the pulse rifles, if we have enough of them," Sanchez explained.
Kalli laughed at his eager expression, "Well, that’s one way to do it. Alright, here you go. Ten more Rare Grade Pulse Rifles. I’ll put them on your tab to settle them up later."
She was mostly joking about that, as she knew that her points were intended to secure the city. But the System did keep track of all the debts that the heroes owed to the hall, and it wasn’t a data selection that she could change.
Even if she chose not to collect it, the System did not forget the debt.
The noise outside was getting louder as the special forces team left the hall of heroes, announcing that the Swineherd Demons were now within range of the riflemen and the sentry turrets.
But the explosions on the west side of town were still in the distance, so the second group was not arriving at the same time.
A small mercy, as it gave the teams time to adjust based on the fact that the Armoured Boars were not easily capable of crossing the river. That should slow the group from the west, and all the Arks were on the east side of the new path, along with Marimgar itself.
The real question was how they were planning to get across.
Kalli had zero experience with medieval siege warfare, but that looked like what they were about to have to defend against.