Chapter 18 In the first hour of the fight, I learned a lot of things. One, the rats are really stupid. They keep attacking in small groups and they are unable to get past the wall. we must have killed over a hundred of them so far. The BannerLizard had to stop helping with bashing and had to start using his pole to push dead bodies off the side of the bridge. Two, the longer the bone wall stands the thicker it grows, also it can be manipulated to form spikes as well, so by now, it looks like a hedgehog with bone spike and spears sticking out of it. Three, dead wererats smell awful. Alive they already smell really bad, but when they are dead, ugh. I feel sorry for Luna who has a much better nose than I do. Queenie and her sprites haven't had to do much healing so far. The few rats that make it over the wall are quickly cut down. After three hours of this Moira and I decided to operate in shifts, letting one of us rest a little ways back in turns. Queenie would sit with that person and wake them if a major push comes. The stream of rats was endless, and they have been sending in bigger and stronger bands. Some just bigger in number, some way better equipped. They still didn't have any ranged weapons, which I was thankful for. About an hour before sunset everything went eerily quiet, the rats stopped attacking, we could see a lot of commotion on the other side of the bridge but couldn't make out any details. The rats were planning something. As night fell nothing had happened yet. I took a nap at the bone wall, so I would be ready if anything showed up. I was again in the dreamscape. “What's up AI-Me why am I here.” “Well, you might want to check your messages because you levelled up again. Also, I need to give you a heads up, as you might have learned in school most ages end with the system bringing out what it calls a major patch.” “Didn't the age end 18 years ago? When the Shark emperor was defeated?” “Your right but it usually takes between a decade and sometimes a few centuries for the council and the system to do the patch. I will go into more detail about it when it actually happens. For now, you should focus on your level and on the battle.” I looked at my notifications. Level up: Level 4: 2 PP gained I quickly put both points into skeletons. Path of the skeleton (4/5) Summon skeleton spell learned Path of the skeleton (5/5) Skeletons troops now have their CP cost halved. So Skeletal wolf cavalry would be 2.5 CP and regular infantry 0.5 CP I took a look at the summon skeleton spell. Summon skeleton Rank 1 Two different usages. Boost a unit of skeleton troops by resurrecting 5 CP worth of troops. (cost 50 mana) Summon a temporary unit of either 5 skeleton swordsmen or 10 skeletal archers (25 mana) Troops last 10 minutes. Both usages will put the skill on an hour cooldown Hmm, both would be useful, the first to replenish troops in combat as in combat the normal CP replenishment is stopped the other to add some extra firepower if needed. My troop count now also doubled to 22 skeletons. I had to probably use the summon spell to actually get the extra troops unless the system counts the small reprieve we have right now as being out of combat. After doing my path points I decided to wake up instead of going to sleep and cast the summon spell to get 10 extra troops out. I had half the extras make bone shields and raise them above their heads with two hands. And the other half then stand on top of the shields and extend the bone wall upwards. It was now about 2.5 meters high. Throughout the night the rats tried to sneak up on us. It was pure comedy to watch them with darkvision, tiptoe-ing across the bridge. From the last couple of days of them trying the same thing, I had found out that wererats didn't have darkvision. So I did what anyone would do in that situation. I snuck past the bone wall myself and hid amongst the bodies. The first two wererats I let past to be dealt with by the wall, the third one I snuck behind myself and tapped it shoulder shouting “BOO” real hard. As it then wet itself I picked it up and threw it off the bridge. Its screams on the way down spooked the rest of the 'stealth' rats and they retreated. The rest of the night they left us alone. That morning we found out what they had been planning.