Some of the messages were monster density reports, and some were resupply requests. Either way, Hugo spent hours running on the wall.

Running.

Running.

A few of the messages were written down, detailed reports about the amount killed at the walls. Other messages were short enough that they were just verbally passed along. Those were more common and Hugo grew to hate them.

“E5 requests 50 more bolts. E5 50 bolts,” Hugo gasped out. It wasn’t that he was tired from the constant running. His strength and dexterity made the running bearable. It was his hangover that was making this whole day horrible. His head hurt so much.

It didn’t help that he was still terrified of heights. It was one thing to stay in one place on the wall, four stories up. It was quite another to run around people and ballista on a narrow pathway high in the sky. If he lost concentration for a moment and ran into anyone up here, he could fall all the way to the ground. His throbbing headache was making him panic and fear he would fall. The panic was giving him a headache. It was a vicious circle.

He had a full plan for every stat point he was granted on rank ups. But after today, he was seriously considering upping his resilience instead. It would make Dean Artjom mad and ruin Hugo’s chances for an evolution at rank thirty-two. But still. He was tempted.

If he had a higher resilience stat, he wouldn’t have this headache. He knew that he would be ranking up today, and the temptation to use that stat point to get rid of that headache was high.

Of course, with a high enough resilience stat, alcohol would stop working on him. Suddenly the temptation wasn’t as high anymore.

“E5 50 Bolts. E5 requests 50 more ballista bolts,” Elise said and dashed off.

That was another thing that was making this day worse. Hugo was working with Elise to relay these messages. He was pretty sure that she was enjoying how difficult this was for him. He thought he saw a small smile as she ran off that last time.

He didn’t have to spend his entire shift on the wall running. Often there were fifteen minutes of silence when no reports needed to be passed along, and resupplies had just hit. But Hugo couldn’t rest.

He needed to check on the wall runes.

The last time he had lived through this, the walls had fallen. The runes on the southwestern section of the wall had been sabotaged, and weakened the wall enough that monsters had broken through. He needed to check the runes now, and see if they had been broken yet.

His messenger vest practically made him invisible. Acting like he belonged, he ran past his assigned section and all the way to the southwestern part of the wall. As he ran, he thought about what he could do if he saw it was sabotaged. He could pretend he was a runic student and he noticed the problem.

That might not be a good idea. If he was right and it had been sabotaged, they would investigate him. Since he didn’t have the rune domain nor even a working knowledge of runes, he would look incredibly suspicious. He still didn’t have a better idea by the time he got to where the wall had fallen.

Activating his mana sight, Hugo checked out the main control rune on the wall. It was two stories high and rather complicated. He didn’t have to understand it though, he just had to check the flows of mana. As long as there were no breaks in the mana flow, all was good.

He was almost relieved when he saw that it was working perfectly. All of the mana was flowing well and there were no breaks in the design. That still left him with a niggling doubt that he just didn’t see the sabotage, but he was pretty sure it was fine.

Hugo sighed and started running back. All this running was so dumb. He knew that they had the technology to send messages instantly. Pulse notes were a thing after all. They probably didn’t install them because they were happy to use the free labor of academy students.

As he was passing the local sentinel in charge, he realized there was a way to take advantage of the low tech message system. He stopped and saluted the man. “Message from command. They want you to have a new runic inspector come in and inspect the control rune tomorrow,” Hugo said.

“You got the wrong guy, buddy. Rune maintenance and repair is scheduled out of central command. I don’t have anything to do with that. I think someone sent you on a mouse hunt in a cat’s barn.”

“Oh, sorry for bothering you then,” Hugo said and ran off.

Well then. That didn’t work.

He could hope that the weirdness of that interaction would prompt the sentinel to double check the rune, but it probably wouldn’t happen. He would need to try something else. It was becoming clear that he would need to do something drastic to save the wall. He would have to come up with a plan.

He put it to the back of his mind and got back to work, delivering messages. During a brief moment of quiet, Hugo glanced out across the field. The attacks weren’t too bad yet. The monster wave wouldn’t crest for another few days. A few dozen ankheg, a swarm of drakes, and a few dire wolves were all that were attacking at the moment. Out a little farther was something interesting though.

A large lumbering monster was in the distance. It was three stories high, and approaching deceptively quick. Hugo was supposed to walk back to the meet point for further instructions, but he stopped for a bit to see what was going on with this new monster.

It looked vaguely like an overlarge antlion, but it was strangely fuzzy. As it drew closer, he saw that it wasn’t fuzzy, it was occupied. The queen antlion had hundreds of regular sized antlions crawling all over itself. The regular size was still longer than a human was tall. The queen was a dusty red giant, each step of her six legs crossing dozens of feet. Her children were a maroon red, and the combination made it look like she was bleeding all over.

Hugo watched as the ballista team near him got out a different looking bolt. It was glowing, even in the daylight. It was obviously runed, and pumped full of mana. Shortly before they shot it, a barrier mage touched the tip of the ballista bolt and a blue tip appeared on the bolt.

Heart beating, Hugo walked closer to the edge of the wall. He needed a better view. It was obvious that this was the good stuff. He couldn’t wait to see what it would do when it hit.

A high ranking sentinel got there just as they were firing the ballista. He yelled, “No! Not that ammunition, you gotta use...” But it was too late. The shot was fired.

They must have activated extra magic on the ballista when they shot it this time. The special bolt shot directly at the queen antlion without arcing at all. A straight line shot out at the colossal monster, an afterimage of blue trailing behind it. It pierced the queen’s eye and disappeared deep into her body.

There was a moment of silence.

Then the monster exploded in a wave of fire and force. The monster guts flew hundreds of feet in the air, the pressure wave from the explosion pushing guts and debris everywhere. Hugo expected the guts to dissolve into mana, but that didn’t happen. This must be an older monster.

The hang time for the monster guts was surprisingly long. He tracked several large chunks in the sky, many of them heading his way. A few of the bigger ones got blasted out of the sky by sentinels. A blue barrier popped into existence a few hundred feet off to his left.

That action reminded him that he could do the same, and gave himself a shield/ blood umbrella. He was glad he did when a few droplets hit his shield and were deflected. He looked around to see how the other people on the wall were faring.

Some were huddled close to the wall crenulations, protecting themselves from the spray. A few sentinels actually jumped off the wall and into the city. That was a bit weird. He noticed that Elise hadn’t moved at all, too shocked to put up her own shield.

Just then an antlion landed on the wall next to him. The impact instantly killed it, and the monster was rendered into a puff of blue mana and a mana stone that plinked away.

More antlions landed on the wall and in the city, and many of them survived the trip. The explosion had pushed them through the air, all the way into the city. When they landed they attacked anything moving. That must have been why the sentinels had jumped into the city, they were going after the antlions that had gotten into the housing district below.

Although many monsters survived their explosion driven flight, very few landed alive on the wall. It was a relatively small target for monsters hundreds of feet away, and they couldn’t really steer their flight anyway.

One antlion managed it anyway. It landed in between Hugo and Elise, slid across the walkway, and almost off the wall again. At the last moment, it tipped back onto the wall. It was heavily injured and took several moments to right itself.

Hugo was preparing to run away, but two things stopped him. The monster was facing the other way, and wasn’t an immediate danger to him. But it was facing Elise, and she was just standing there in shock.

Elise was in danger. Hugo had to do something. He didn’t have any weapons on him, and he wasn’t sure he could kill it if he did. Antlions were big and their natural armor was tough enough to survive an explosion and fall from a great height.

His first instinct was to create a sword. But even if he had enough mana to make a mithril sword, it would take too long. The monster was almost upon her.

Moving even before he realized he was doing it, Hugo ran at the monster. It wasn’t hard to catch up to the antlion, two of its six legs were broken. The remaining four were enough to keep it mobile, but it had lost its speed.

Arriving just before the monster got to Elise, Hugo jumped. He landed on the monster with a flying kick. The kick didn’t do much to the monster, but it was enough to knock it off course and towards the edge of the wall.

Hugo didn’t land well though, and fell in a heap. The monster shifted its attention towards the newcomer and turned towards the prone human. Hugo saw the monster head coming right at him, intending to cut him in half with its sharp mandibles.

At the last moment, Hugo remembered he had the barrier domain now. He created a small buckler and reinforced it with every ounce of his willpower. The antlion clamped its mandibles around the shield instead of Hugo.

Within moments, the shield shattered.

Hugo had used the time to get himself situated. Instead of standing up, he turned his body and lined up his legs. As soon as the shield burst into shimmering blue, Hugo kicked up with both legs. The leverage of the prone kick was enough to push the antlion back.

The monster hit the edge of the city wall, and almost tipped off into the city. A few wiggles of its still working legs and it tipped back onto the wall walkway. Disappointed, Hugo prepared to create another buckler and try again.

In the meantime, Elise had shaken off her stupor and finally jumped into the fight. Instead of creating a stationary shield, she created a large club and swung it at the monster’s head. The hit connected and knocked the monster back.

The distraction gave Hugo a chance to recover. As he rolled to his feet, he spared a thought at how impressive that was. They had only been taught to create stationary shields in class, and she created a club that moved with her arm.

Elise swung again and knocked the monster back for a second time. The antlion recovered quicker this time, and oriented itself to jump at her. Just as it sprung into the air, Hugo hit the monster, knocking it completely off the wall.

The both of them watched the monster fall four stories to the ground, and poof into blue dust. The accumulated damage must have been just enough to kill the antlion.

Hugo’s heart was pounding. He couldn’t believe he had just done that. Risking his life for someone that hated him was a terrible idea. He looked around, checking to see if there were any other antlions about.

There actually was one more thirty feet away, but it was closer to a harvester than the two students. The antlion ran at the man, who turned and punched it into non-existence. His stats were much higher than theirs.

Hugo turned to Elise to check on her. He was also trying to find a way to compliment her on her technique. It was tough admitting that she was better at the barrier magic.

She just stared at him, working her mouth up and down. Hugo frowned. She hated him that much? She couldn’t even say thank you when he literally saved her life?

The both of them were called away at that point, sent opposite directions to go and pass on the message of what had happened and request reinforcements. Elise looked like she wanted to say something, but nothing came out.

Hugo huffed and ran off. He had just expected a little bit of thankfulness. Let someone else save her from the next monster that literally fell out of the sky.

The rest of the shift was much less eventful. In fact, towards the end of his shift, things had slowed way down. There was a lull there for a half hour where no messages were passed back and forth.

It was better that way. Hugo just wanted to go back to the dorms and sleep off this terrible day. Once he got back to the dorms though, he found sleep hard to come by. The adrenaline had drained from his body, and left him overtired, but his mind was still racing.

He lay in bed and thought about Cristian. The original owner of this body. It is something he had thought about from time to time over the last few weeks. He had taken over the body of someone else, and he couldn’t help but feel bad about that. He knew it wasn’t his fault that the real Cristian was dead. That was Florin’s fault. Hugo knew it wasn’t his fault that he had taken over this body, that was the ritualist Alexandru’s fault.

Still. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was responsible now that he was wearing this body. He wasn’t able to find out who Cristian’s family was, so he couldn’t give them closure over his death. They were just out there, wondering about their lost son. It made Hugo feel like he needed to make it up to him.

Another thing that messed with his mind was that he was more popular on campus this go around than he ever was before. He felt like it was unearned. His classmates were obviously just reacting to the more handsome face of Cristian. The same interactions with the same people would yield better results because he was more attractive now. Not that he saw it himself. When he looked in the mirror, he just saw this slightly taller and wiry guy. He honestly thought Hugo’s hair looked better than Cristian’s.

Either way, he felt like he should be doing something to atone. Maybe none of this was his fault, but he was certainly benefiting from the strange situation. He wished that he could send a letter to Cristian’s family, just like the one he sent to Marion’s family. But other than this body’s name, he knew almost nothing.

Fieraru was a common enough last name that there were several families in this city with that last name, and many more in the other cities. There weren’t any noble families with that last name, or at least none big enough to get their records in the books he had access to. He just didn’t have any clues, no path forward to make up for the gift of this body.

He got back up. He might not be able to help Cristain’s family, but he could help the whole city of Reval. It was three days until the monster surge crested, he needed to find and stop the sabotage before then. He was going to make sure the city walls didn’t fall.