Chris and Mia were waiting at the gathering spot for the last hunters to join.

It took roughly 90 minutes for 70 hunters and the 50 hastily recruited archers to gather. The other hunter teams were too far to make it back in time.

Cid was doing good and only needed half his soldiers to secure the cave, the other half was sent to help against the Iris Gnolls.

A messenger sent by Cat arrived. The Gnolls were less than half an hour away.

Chris was impressed, her harrassing tactics had gained them close to an hour.

Chris, Berg and the troops left to join up with Cat. Mia was anxious, but had to stay in the city.

Who knew if another disaster would strike. Someone had to guard home.

******************

Cid and his fifty soldiers were currently trying to push back the undeads at the cave. If Chris was here, he would be slightly disappointed as those were not zombies, but skeletons.

Luckily the skeletons were stupid and were just piling up at the entrance. Cid used the entrance as a funnel to restrict the number of skeletons.

[Those were sumoned] Thought Chris when he noticed that each of them had a small crystal somewhere on their bones. The crystals contained mana, as long as the crystal remained on the skeleton it would be able to move.

[Did we provoke a necromancer? Is this his territory? No... It seems the undeads are only reacting to our presence...] He suddenly turned and shouted at the miners "What are you doing? Hurry and collapse the entrance!"

[Let's first block the cave. We can't let them reach the city.]

If humans had the bodies of Kunalls, they could just ram the cave walls to bring down the ceiling. if they had better technology, they could use an explosive charge to do the same job. Unfortunately, they did not have either of those, so the soldiers had to protect miners while they were working on collapsing the ceiling with their pickaxes. It was much more time consuming and much more dangerous.

[I wonder how my lord is doing up north?]

******************

Cat and her troops were in a rough state. Luckily humans were much faster in the plains than Iris Gnolls, they were creatures that lived in the forest after all. They had a fast short lived charge but were low in stamina.

Cat used this to the best of her abilities and used many hits and run tactics to slow down the gnolls. When things got too dangerous, they would retreat and rest a little.

Finally, Cat heard a guard shout "Reinforcements!"

Cat had a strange smile when she noticed a man riding a donkey leading the hunters and soldiers.

"Everyone, reinforcements are here! Let's join them!"

Her troops merged with Chris' a few minutes away from the Gnolls. There was no time to make complicated plans, they were fifteen minutes away from Brine City. The gnolls had to be stoped here.

The plan was simple, Berg took charge of the hunters and the archers recruits, at his orders they would shower the gnolls with arrows, once the Gnolls got close enough, the 150 soldiers lead by Cat would rush in. The archers would stop firing at the melee, they are not trained and would likely do some friendly fire. Berg would instead lead them to eliminate any Gnolls fleeing from the melee.

The troops were in a rough formation, it was far from perfect and not very stable.

Chris noticed that many of the archers and hunters were shaking, some had trouble finding their spots. He was not surprised as he could not expect military discipline from hunters and hastily recruited archers but he still thought: [We need proper training... This might work on Gnolls or wolves, but this will never work against a Kunall army...]

The soldiers were better off and quickly got into formation.

"Everyone!" Shouted Chris. "This is the first test of our Brine City! Don't bring shame to our brothers! You are fighting Gnolls while they are fighting Kunalls and undeads east and south of here! This is the easy part, there is nothing to fear! You just have to kill them all!"

Sudenly a loud growl was heard, the Gnolls charged.

Berg turned to the archers and gave the order "Archers! SHOOT!"

One hundred and twenty arrows flew, unfortunately, many missed.

"Reload and prepare to shoot!" ordered Berg.

...

... ...

"SHOOT!"

This time the arrows were better aimed as the Gnolls were much closer.

Many Gnolls fell to the ground. Some were dead and some were wounded. Many of the wounded were crushed to death by the Gnolls marching behind them.

This time the arrows were not poisoned, the archer didn't have time to dip the arrows in poison, many just came from hunting, no hunter would poison his kill. The Gnolls also had much smaller bodies, perhaps half that of an average human, they were much easier to kill.

....

"SHOOT" Berg gave the same order again.

One last wave of arrows were released, the gnolls were now only a mere dozen meters away. Most of the arrows managed to hit a target, after all the archers now only had to aim straight at the charging Gnolls.

As the Gnolls were tripping on their dead brothers Cat gave the order to her soldiers: "CHARGE!"

The soldiers released a loud shout as they charged and scared many of the Gnolls.

Many shouts could be heard from the soldiers: "KILL THEM ALL!", "THEY ARE JUST GIANT RATS!"

Chris looked at his soldiers' fearless charge. [Incredible.]