I

It was two hours before the first elements of the landwalker and traitor force appeared at the edge of the wood. The sun was getting low on the horizon as they formed up before waiting. Eva felt the tension of the impending fight grip her gut. The sun marched every lower and still they waited. Even as it slipped below the horizon, still, the aliens waited.

She stood up and Snuck▲ closer to their lines. It was doing the villagers no good to be standing there waiting for a blow that might not fall for hours. It was much better to have the initiative. The human traitors were untested in battle against fellow humans, for the most part. She reasoned that if she could ruin their nerve, they might scatter and make the ensuing fight just a bit easier.

As soon as she was within range, Eva threw one of the two Firebombs★ as hard as she could towards the group of humans. She watched as it sailed through the air. In the gloom of the night, she could hardly make out the shape of the bottle even though she knew where it was going. Before the first landed, she reared back and threw the second into the heart of the landwalker formation.

The first potion hit the ground and split apart. The liquid spilled out and burst into flames so bright that Eva had to shade her eyes. Before she could get a good estimation of the damage inflicted, the second of the potions ignited amongst the landwalkers. Screams of agony reached her ears, which put a smile on her face. After all, they’d killed Hideki without a care in the world, why should she care for them?

Vengeance felt even sweeter as the experience notifications rolled in. Soon enough, Eva took a peek through her fingers at the rapidly diminishing flames. There were some motions amongst the landwalkers as it looked like they were preparing to charge the village. The traitors were in complete disarray from her attack. Though she hadn’t killed as many as she would have liked, the effect was enough for some of the humans on the periphery to melt into the trees. Eva felt a surge of energy partly from the thrill of the fight and partly from being a part of a group in battle.

A battlecry rang out from the landwalkers as they began to march towards the village gate. She retreated and began to throw Fireballs✦ as they advanced. Most of her throws hit, and all of those that were direct hits ended with a dead alien. Even with the handful of Mana Potions, she wasn’t able to throw that many Fireballs✦ before she ran dry. Still, 30 corpses was nothing to sniff at!

Eva quickly allocated her experience and braced for the charge. The landwalkers’ walk became a jog and then a run as they crossed the open ground. Several tripped over stumps or fell into burial pits, but most of them avoided the obstacles to meet the villagers head on. The landwalkers still outnumbered the villagers around two-to-one, but the villagers had the advantage of walls and ranged support.

Arrows clattered off of armor or the ground, but every so often one would find its mark and elicit a pained yelp from the invader that was struck. Eva used her shield as a hammer to beat the landwalkers in front of her back into their brethren. Her fire Infused★ shortsword poked in and out as quickly as she could manage. Landwalkers screamed and fell with each thrust.

Next to Eva, one of the villagers took a cleave through their head and crumpled to the ground. Another villager took their place and stabbed the landwalker to death. The grind continued. An arrow whizzed over her head and she heard a body thump to the ground behind her. Another arrow came over her head from one of the towers, sticking into the eye of a landwalker. The grind continued. She tossed a Fireball✦ into the crowd. The explosion killed two injured landwalkers. A Waterball sailed over her head. The grind continued.

Each minute that passed felt like an hour. The smells of shit and iron mixed in a most unpleasant manner, making Eva want to throw up the now-unmagical potion-juice that filled her stomach. A casual glance over her shield showed that about a quarter of the landwalker forces were dead for around a fifth of the villager force. There was a defender's advantage, but not enough to decisively determine the outcome before it began.

Suddenly, there was a crash and screaming from behind! She looked back as soon as she had an opportunity and saw that several of the towers were gone, replaced by flames. There were craftsmen and other non-combatants being forced into the back of the villager lines by a small group of humans and landwalkers working together. Eva immediately recognized one of them and her anger exploded. Rob.

“That shit went his own way after seeing how many Chinese people there were going to the village” she said to herself, “and instead of being a stand up human, he sided with the aliens rather than drop his bigotry! Fucking traitor!”

Eva turned in his direction, disengaging with the frontline of the landwalkers. As soon as she pushed her way through the lines, she Charged★ towards him. She had to avoid the fleeing humans, but they were more spread out and she found it easy to slip between them. Two more Charges★ brought her to within striking distance of him.

Surrounding Rob were a group of four traitors as bodyguards. The bodyguard detail consisted of two men and two women, each with a spear in one hand and a shield in the other. Their armor was not too different from the rest of the humans from the fort that she’d fought before, but it did look like it was of a higher quality, no doubt influenced by the landwalkers. Unlike the landwalkers, however, the group was not well trained, and their levels, according to Observe★, were only 10 or 11.

Eva stared at the man with hate-filled eyes. She lit a Fireball✦ in front of her shield and Charged★. The bodyguards tried to intersperse themselves between her and her target, but a well-placed air Infused slash from her shortsword left one of them dead and another killed from the Fireball✦. The remaining two attempted to stab her with their spears, but she was able to deftly Dodge★ them. Two more quick slashes of her sword sent the rest of the bodyguards to whatever afterlife existed.

Rob looked at her with fear. Eva grinned as she prepared to go in for the kill. He turned and began to run away. Her stats were high enough that a light jog was all it took to bring her behind him. A Charge★ with her shield knocked him to the ground and two stomps to the face produced an experience notification.

She assessed her surroundings. The towers had fallen and most of the archers were dead, but there was a contingent of them still fighting off a band of traitors and landwalkers working together. Around a quarter mile along the wall was a small breach where they’d entered. It was still smoldering from whatever explosive method they’d used to gain access to the village. Eva decided to help the archers. The survivors would be useful in helping her plug that gap.

She ran towards the group of enemies and lobbed a Fireball✦ into their midst. She got three kills from it. By the time any of them turned to face her, another two were dead to her blade. The defending villagers took the opportunity she gained them to finish off the remaining enemies. There were eight survivors.

“We need to stop more of them from coming in!” she called to them. “Follow me to the hole!”

Eva jogged towards the gap in the wall with the archers in tow. As she got closer, she could see that the aliens and traitors had used some kind of fire to burn their way through the still-green trees used to make the palisade. There were no more of them trying to come through the hole, but she made sure to leave a couple of spearmen behind while the rest of the group followed her through to the other side.

From outside the wall, she got a good view of the battle still raging. The forces on both sides were nearing half strength. The villagers were starting to falter, but the landwalkers weren’t doing much better. In the back of the landwalkers were three that wore much fancier-looking equipment, much like the group she’d faced in the dungeon. Eva guessed that these were their leaders. A plan immediately formed in her mind.

“See those fancy ones at the back?” she said to the archers behind her. “I’m going to kill them. Try to keep their guards off of me if you can. Escape if you can’t.”

Eva Snuck▲ toward the treeline with the archers in tow. She entered the dark woods and crept closer to the landwalker leaders. From behind, their armor was less strong, and she knew she would be able to kill one straight away. The problem was that she had to get close enough first. There were several guards around them that she would have to either assassinate or sneak past, else face half an army on her own, which she would undoubtedly not survive.

She waited for the closest guard to look the other way before she slit its throat and lowered the body to the ground gently. This opened up enough of a gap that Eva figured she’d be able to reach the leaders unmolested. She Snuck▲ as close as she dared before picking the one on the right as her initial target.

Eva Charged★ the landwalker while igniting a Fireball✦ in front of her shield. She Infused★ her blade with fire and smashed into the confused alien. It fell to the ground from getting hit with her shield, and its clothing burned from the Fireball✦. It screamed for a moment before she silenced it with a Pierce✦ to the head.

The two other leaders and their guards turned to face her. Several arrows whizzed by, striking some of the guards in vulnerable places and bouncing off of the armor of others. That served as enough of a distraction for Eva to Charge★ the middle landwalker. It did not take this lying down, however. It used its saber to force her to Dodge★ rather than let her use her shield as a weapon.

From the other side of the landwalker, she Pierced✦ it in the back with her sword. The wound did not bleed much, having been sealed by the fire in the attack. Immediately, she had to Dodge★ two stabs from the spears of two landwalker guards. Eva lit a Fireball✦ and launched it at the one she’d stabbed as it turned to face her again. The landwalker staggered and screamed as its body caught fire and burned. The final leader slashed at her with its saber. She took the strike on her shield and countered with a slash of her own and clanged off of its shield.

Eva jumped back. She only had enough mana for two more Fireballs✦, which would leave enough to still Infuse★ her sword. She lit one Fireball✦ in front of her shield and Charged★ the final landwalker. It did its best to Dodge, but she shot the Fireball✦ out, catching its saber arm. Its arm ignited, burning even the metal of its armor. Another Fireball✦ a second later rewarded her with some experience.

Several attacks came all at once. She Dodged★ most of them, but took damage from two of the spears. Eva winced and grabbed the last health potion she had easily accessible. Her body stitched itself back together. She threw the bottle at the closest guard and slashed another. Though they had been trained well enough, they were not a high enough level to be much of a threat in anything but numbers. Between her sword and the occasional lucky arrow, the guards were dispatched in under a minute.

The battle was continuing to be a slog between the two sides. Eva could see the humans starting to get pressed back towards the inside of the village. It was time to mess up the aliens from the rear now that their leaders were gone. She ran towards the back of the landwalker lines and Charged★ into them as soon as she was within range. Instead of using her sword to cut down one or two of them, her aim was to disrupt their formation to give the villagers a chance to inflict more damage. Her shield slamming into the backs of the landwalkers sent ripples through their lines, knocking several of them to the ground.

Her fire Infused sword fell again and again. Each time it fell, it left a smoldering landwalker corpse on the ground. Eva Charged★ again into the lines, using the extra stats to push as hard as she could into the aliens. The ones who stumbled but did not fall looked around and saw her killing their comrades. Panic began to spread from where she was, but not quickly enough. Soon, she had enough mana for another Fireball✦. She tossed it towards the edge of the panicking landwalkers. The explosion killed a couple of them and spread the panic farther until the invaders finally broke and ran. The villagers pursued to the treeline before returning to the gate and celebrating their survival.

Eva sighed. It was their victory, but it had definitely come at a cost. The landwalkers were all but destroyed as a fighting force, but so were the humans. Where there had been around 1200 villagers at the beginning of the day, there were only around 500 remaining. They would need to lick their wounds and do their best to survive. Though she felt bad for them, she still had work of her own to do. There were landwalkers still living, and the fort needed to be liberated from the traitors to free whatever prisoners were alive.

II

She raced through the woods towards the fort. It was the closer of the two objectives. Most of the traitors had been killed in the fighting with a smaller number driven off early on that were likely to have returned to the fort.

When Eva arrived at the clearing around the fort, she was almost full on mana again. There were fewer guards on the walls of the fort than there had been the last time she’d been in the area. Their torches bobbing up and down as they walked was the only indication she had of where the guards were. The moon was only half full, so she could barely make out the occasional escaping landwalker running through the clearing towards their town. It was time to plan the assault before they were ready to defend themselves.

Her first thought was to burn the place to the ground, but with the prisoners that might be inside, that was a nonstarter. Her next idea was a little better—climb the wall and take out the guards—but she didn’t have the gear to climb a wooden wall that tall. Finally, she decided to go with something in between those two ideas. She’d burn the gate down and storm the fort, with a Fireball✦ for anyone who thought she’d be an easy target.

Eva Snuck▲ towards the gate. There were no guards on the outside and the gate itself was barred inside. As soon as she was next to it, she Infused★ her sword with fire and Pierced✦ the wooden gate. The fire took half a minute to catch; and in that time, she had made a mess of the gate. A Charge★ into the weakened area was enough to break into the fort.

The inside of the fort was a mess from what she could see—the lack of light made getting a full picture difficult. There were some large communal buildings for sleeping and cooking and the like, as well as a smaller building that Eva guessed was for the leader. The biggest thing that she noticed inside the fort was the smell. Without sewers, it was even worse than the village. There were several pits full of shit. The areas between the buildings were mostly clear of people. Only a few guards roamed about with torches, the rest of the traitors were likely already sleeping.

The closest guards to her were alarmed by her less than quiet entrance. They jogged over towards her and the crackling fire behind her. She created a Fireball✦ and tossed it their way. The explosion—accompanied by an experience notification—was enough to alert the rest of the guards to the situation. Eva sliced the injured guard in front of her and Charged★ towards the next group. She liberally used her Fireballs✦ to weaken and kill from a distance. The aim wasn’t to burn down everything inside, but more surgically kill all the traitors.

When she had killed a majority of the guards on duty—the rest had fled—she made her way towards the bigger buildings. If they had prisoners inside, she would free them. If not, she’d burn the buildings. The first one she came to was filled with sleeping sacks for the traitors. A quick and quiet look inside revealed no prisoners. A handful of curious traitors tried to see what was going on with the noise outside the building. They died quickly. Eva used her fire Infused shortsword to light several fires on the building before she found a couple of heavy containers to block the entrances with.

With the first group taken care of, she made her way to the second building. Looking inside that one showed her the prisoners she had been hoping to find along with more sleeping sacks. There were not many prisoners left—and most of them were women. Eva Snuck▲ inside and began Piercing✦ the head of any traitor she passed while trying not to wake them all up.

Her plans for a clandestine operation were ruined by the prisoners’ screams of fear as her methods for taking out the trash. The surviving traitors woke in varying states of readiness. Some bolted awake and were ready to fight at a moment's notice. Others were groggy and died soon after if she was close to them.

Soon there was a group of twenty or so ready to take her on. Eva chucked Fireball✦ after Fireball✦ into their midst. After the fifth Fireball✦, the surviving traitors decided that discretion was the better part of valor and fled. Eva let the thrill of victory wash over her before centering herself with a deep breath. It was time to free the still screaming prisoners and get them back to the relative safety of the village.

The prisoners were bound by rope to the poles that supported the structure. Several minutes of fiddling with the knots later and they were freed.

“Hi,” she said to the group. “I’m Eva. Follow me if you want out of here.”

A few of them tried to ask questions but she ignored them. She’d much rather pass that job off to someone who enjoyed talking to people. She wasn’t there to make friends. Rather she was there to destroy the traitors. That they had been rescued was just a bonus. She led them out of the building and into the grounds of the fort. There were some burning traitors attempting to escape the building she’d set on fire. Most of them, thankfully, did not survive. The gate had mostly burned down by the time Eva led the former prisoners through the wreckage.

III

The walk back to the village took almost two hours in the dark despite having a light Infused★ sword. The freed prisoners were not in great shape and moved slowly. When they finally did get to the village, the mess from the earlier fight had not been cleaned up. There were bonfires burning the dead villagers and groups of people mourning lost friends and comrades.

“What happened?” one of the prisoners asked her.

Explaining the situation was enough to dampen the mood even more than it had been.

Eva found one of the surviving councilors and passed off the former prisoners to him. She knew that she was definitely not the right person to handle their needs and mental issues from being kept prisoner by the traitors. She had her own problems to deal with, but she decided not to deal with them until after her revenge was complete. The traitors had been scattered, yes, but the landwalker town still stood; and she would not stand for that.