The next day was a triumph for all mankind. After a costly few hours, the first of the three walls surrounding the evil city of Necrograd was taken by the Luminas Confederacy (or at least what was left of it). Plans were hastily made to push the advantage and cross the winding paths that led from the exterior wall to the middle one. The war camp was moved up to be closer to the outermost wall in order to make the journey from camp to combat that much shorter.

All in all, while the previous two days had been painful and cost many men their lives, a beachhead had been won and the next wall would fall just as easily. In fact, it was going to be even easier because the Heroes were to join them on their assault! Of course, the lead Hero was staying back at camp, only to be deployed if and when the situation was the direst.

The infantry gathered together on the ‘ring’ that they had occupied and prepared to face even more skeletons. A horn sounding off in the distance was echoed by others in the four cardinal directions. The order had been given; it was time to attack!

Careful to avoid being hit by the Skeleton Archers that were likely up on the middle wall, the infantry held their shields up and formed a serpentine column that snaked up the angular paths that connected the two fortifications. This stopped when they reached the halfway mark, as they encountered a horde of Zombies waiting for them upon each path. The hordes were slow, clumsy and overall would be nothing more than a nuisance if faced on an open field, but these were paths not even wide enough for ten men to stand shoulder to shoulder without pushing together, thus making the task of defeating the large amounts of risen cadavers quite a bit more difficult.

Thankfully, there were Heroes on the scene!

All save the one woman amongst them were at the very front of the action, with Lady Alice acting as a mobile morale improvement system. Her mere presence charmed men into fighting harder and ignoring stress, strain and fatigue while the other Heroes carved a bloody swathe through the foul undead.

*Ka-Krack!*

The sound of a peel of thunder rang out across the elevated battlefield, causing the Hero closest to the sound to look up in shock and horror. All along the middle wall were undead the likes of which had never been seen before. Their frames were like a mixture of a Zombie and Skeleton, their flesh shriveled up and clinging tightly to the bone as their empty and hollow sockets glowed with a sinister red light.

“They have firearms?!”

When Jesus Rojo Mendoza, the Hero with the passive ability to lower the ambient temperature around himself to the freezing point of water, saw the undead aiming at the infantry with what looked to be oddly shaped wooden staves, he quickly retreated into the mass of Swordsmen, Axemen, Macemen and Spearmen. The thunderous sound from the weapon seemed to have spooked him, and the other Heroes apparently were afraid of these foul tools of evil.

The infantry barely had a chance to ponder what the actions of the Heroes meant, as soon after the Heroes had melded into the mass of humanity the undead upon the second wall began to fire their thundersticks at will. Whatever power that they had was both great and terrible, as with every time a roaring noise erupted from their thundersticks a loyal servant of the Goddess was hit with some kind of invisible projectile and thick smoke billowed from the weapon responsible the death. As if that wasn’t enough, soon black crossbow bots flew out from over the heads of the thunderstick-wielding undead and further damaged the morale of the infantry.

The undead must have been having so much perverse fun with their evil deeds, but after a few minutes of taking potshots at the good men of the world, the ranged fire stopped and the shapes of the strange undead fell back from the side of the wall. The morale of the living was damaged, and if the bombardment had continued for much longer there would have been a serious chance that there would be a full rout. However, as if the Goddess herself had smiled upon them in their dark hour, the evil undead had apparently run out of ammunition and retreated.

There was no time to wait for the undead to potentially acquire more ammunition and begin their assault anew; The time to strike was now while there was still a chance to do so! Men and women loyal to the Goddess Lumina charged up the winding right-angled pathways and finally set foot upon the middle wall. And lo, they beheld the nightmare that they had joined the war to face.

The same undead with their flesh so tightly gripping their partially visible skeleton were there, not the skeletons that were anticipated. They were clad in armor befitting of a low-mid ranking knight and their metal kit was a red so dark that it looked almost black. This was not going to be easy, as these undead were taller, more heavily built and better equipped than any of the skeletons that had been faced thus far. Audible gulps cloud be heard over the rustling of metal, cloth and leather and even the Heroes seemed to take a moment to wonder if they were a match.

It was the oriental Hero, Nagato Yamagishi, who was the first to move. He charged forwards at incredible speed and attempted to behead a few undead with a single swing of his single-edged curved sword. As one, the undead raised their shields and thrusted their weapons forward, forcing Nagato to pull back at the last moments. As soon as he had moved back, the undead returned to their previous stance. They were waiting for the living to make a move, standing like trained soldiers and patiently staying still until a foe approached them. This would be a poor move on some parts of the battlefield, as the Heroes Kristof and Pierre used their powers to damage the armored undead from afar.

While those actions did cause damage, all it really seemed to do was make the rest of the undead at every other point on the wall move forward into a melee engagement with the living. These undead were… powerful. Their strikes were heavier and more accurate, their movements cleaner and less jerky and their cohesion in combat put even trained knights to shame. The salient that allowed the living up onto the second/ middle wall was like a deathtrap. It did not matter what you were doing, if you were in front of the undead you could be certain that you would take at least a blow or two.

The infantry lamented that they were fighting upon a wall and not upon an open field. If the latter was their venue, then the cavalry could have smashed these undead with cyclical rear charges in a true hammer-and-anvil maneuver. Instead, there was just this seemingly pointless and costly grind. Worse still, every undead that was brought low seemed to be replaced almost instantly. It was as if their numbers went on without end!

As if that wasn’t bad enough, sounds similar to but deeper than the roaring of the undead’s thundersticks erupted from behind them. The odd tubes on the outermost wall were now moving and launching magical projectiles of their own accord! The camp near the base of the first wall was being pelted with exploding balls of elemental death, tents were set aflame and stockpiles of rations, water and equipment were reduced to scattered debris. Even the tents where the injured lay were not spared as the tubes vomited their deadly projectiles at anything and everything, stopping only long enough for them to build up enough magic to fire again.

This, more than anything else, caused such a morale shock that even Lady Alice could not keep the infantry from routing. Men and women alike tried to push each other out of the way as they attempted to rush back to the first wall and down the ladders and towers. As if on cue, the undead with the thundersticks reemerged from wherever they were and began to pelt the fleeing men and women with their shot while the undead crossbowmen did the same.

At the end of the day, the losses were beyond staggering. Even the lead Hero, Kevin, realized that attempting to take the walls was beyond suicidal. Instead, they would have to starve out the people inside the city. A city as massive at Necrograd had to have a large number of mouths to feed. Surely it could not endure a few months of siege and their occupants would have to either surrender to death or try and face the superior forces of good on the open field.

The camp, or what was left of it, was pulled back and requests were sent for fresh men and materials. Though sieging out the city would mean it was an almost 100% certainty that the People’s Union of Rusk would fall, this was a sacrifice that everyone was willing to make. Besides, the victory of the Luminas Confederacy was inevitable. The city of Necrograd would fall again, just like it had fallen in ages past.

All they needed to do was wait.