With the ritual over and their payments accepted, the outlanders let out a somewhat relieved breath.

“Is everyone ready?” The wannabe paladin asked, earning a firm nod from the rest of the group before they headed out once again.

“There they are,” Amanda pointed out the presence of the undead soldiers not too far ahead of them. “It looks like they’re not smart enough to return to their hiding spots once the ambush gets triggered.”

“They don’t have to, “Cruz shrugged. “Even if they would, we would already know what to expect, so it would be pointless. This way, they make it obvious that we have to go through them if we want to reach the gates.”

“It’s not the trash mobs that I’m worried about,” Osmond let out a sigh. “It’s the one that’s smart enough to set up an ambush like this.”

“Oh,” Khan stopped for a moment. “We have ourselves a boss monster hiding somewhere around here.”

“That’s most likely. So, how are we going to kite them?” Amanda asked before Sophie nocked an arrow on her bow string

“Taking down one of them from afar should do the trick, right?”

“It’s worth a try.” The wannabe paladin agreed as he raised his shield in front of himself, whispering a chant that reinforced his armour with divine energy.

Everyone else took up their battle stances before the sun elf pointed her bow at the nearest fallen, hitting it square in the head with an empowered shot. The undead spearman collapsed on the ground with a loud thud, alerting its nearby comrades that easily noticed the group of outlanders. The fallen soldiers began to move towards them with a slow trot, several shield bearers taking up the front position.

“Are you sure they’re not smart?” Valerie asked with an annoyed tone. “Because those bastards just set up a bloody shield wall to protect the rest.”

“I guess it’s time to try out the big guns.” Regis said as he held his staff forward.

He channelled his arcana through the enchanted staff, thin blue threads seeping out from its tip, forming runic symbols one after the other.

“Regis?” Quentin called out to him with a worried expression written all over his face.

“Hold.” The dark elf answered curtly.

Sophie tried her best to snipe whichever undead became momentarily visible behind a shield wall, but each of the creatures wore helmets, so she could only take them out one at a time with precise eyehole shots.

“Hold.” The spell weaver repeated.

A couple of seconds later when the shield wall came close enough to be at spitting distance, the dark elf stepped forward as the runes in front of his staff fused into a single ball of light the size of a human’s head.

“Here comes the Dawn, bitches!” He said with a cheerful tone reminiscent to Khan’s as he released the built up power of the runic spell.

A beam of light with the diameter of at least half a metre burst through the sunstone of the magic staff, devouring the upper half of the heavily armoured shield bearer undead’s heads as he moved his weapon from the left to the right side of the street.

“Bloody fucking hell!” Amanda couldn’t stop herself from cursing as she stammered back, watching the frontline literally getting eviscerated by the powerful beam of light, their shields falling on the ground unharmed.

The empowered spell faded just a second later, causing the dark elf to fall onto a half kneeling position with ragged breaths.

“The rest is up to you lot.” He said, trying to stop the world from spinning all around him.

“Show off.” Cruz spat on the ground as she launched forward with Khan at her side, both of them wreaking havoc amongst the now the senseless fallen.

Valerie’s whip blazed through the air, a cracking sound following its movements as she shattered the head of an incoming spearman. Her brother launched forward with his lightning spark covered sword, cutting his way through any unfortunate undead that got in his way. Nearly two dozen enemies were slain in a matter of a minute or so before the outlanders found it best to retreat once again to regain their strength and arcana reserves when several heavy bronze bolts struck the ground a few metres ahead.

“Looks like we got too close to their shooting range. Retreat!” Quentin said as the warband moved back, a couple of undead shambling behind them.

“That building on the right seems well defendable.” Cruz pointed at a double story house that had its door wide open.

“There might be enemies inside.” Amanda reminded the tomboyish elf before Quentin moved towards the building with his shield up front.

“We can’t stay outside all the time, or we’ll be easy to find or get targeted by archers.”

“They’re still behind us,” Osmond panted as he glanced back. “Regis, can’t you do your laser beam thing to take them out?”

“That spell eats half of my reserves and I’m almost empty already.”

“Wuss.” Khan fake coughed before turning back around, using his class ultimate skill to rush forward with his blades cutting arcs through the air, mowing down the incoming undead.

A moment later they had no pursuers left as they entered the building. Inside, the sight of dark blood splattered wooden floors and a messy room waited them. No corpses could be seen, moving or otherwise, but that did little to lower their anxiousness. As soon as Khan joined them, the door got closed before Amanda hefted a wooden shelf in front of it to barricade it.

“See any more of them out there?” Regis asked from the blacksmith while she looked out through a small window at the street.

“None so far.” The curt answer arrived.

“Is everyone alright?” Sophie asked the important question as she looked at her weary companions.

“Still breathing, though barely.” Cruz answered with ragged breaths.

“Still alive.” The rest of the group answered as one.

“Damn, there was a lot of them,” Amanda grumbled while wiping off the black blood from her grime covered hammer. “It’s like they just keep spawning more as time goes on.”

“They’re not,” Fabien discarded the idea. “We took out most of the ambushers that came at us at the first time.”

“Now we just have to find out how many of them left.” Cruz sighed while sitting down.

“And take care of those archers,” Khan added while cleaning his twin blades. “By the way; what the hell was that giant laser beam thing you pulled off Regis?”

“Greater runic ray of light,” he answered, his breath even as he tried to meditate and regain his spent arcana. “It’s the empowered version of the runic ‘ray of light’ spell and it most likely ate a lot more arcana than its little brother would have. Although, I think the end result speaks for itself.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Valerie chuckled. “You pretty much cut through those shield bearers like they were nothing.”

“Only because there were undead creatures. Light element spells deal double damage to those. If it was any other ordinary soldier, they could have gotten away with just being temporary blinded and not harmed otherwise.”

“Still; since we are dealing with undead, it’s proving to be damn effective.” Osmond noted with a slight envy in his voice.

“So what’s the plan now? How are we supposed to take over that gate with a bunch of archers aiming at us all the time?” Cruz turned their attention towards the important question.

“We’ll stick to the cover of the buildings, getting closer one house at a time,” Quentin began to plan their next move. “They can’t have an infinite supply of those heavy bolts. If we could get into those guard towers, then we’d have the upper hand in closed space.”

“You just had to bloody jinx it, didn’t you?” Khan slapped his friend on the shoulder.

“I hate to be that person, but I counted at least five arrows being shot at us at the same time when we got too close and we only have one person amongst us that uses a shield. Those heavy bolts will rip through our arcana shields and armour if we can’t dodge them.” Valerie let out a heavy sigh while looking around the abandoned building.

“Val, what are you doing?” Her brother asked, watching her search through the cupboards of what they believed to be the kitchen.

“What does it look like? I’m searching for food. We promised Mr Derris that we’ll bring back supplies once we closed the gates and I wanted to see if this place had any dry food or non-perishables.”

“And?”

“I did find some vegetables that are still perfectly fine, along with a pair of sausages and some cheese. You really don’t want to know about the rest.” She said as she crunched her nose a bit in disgust.

“At least this proves that the locals had some supplies of non-perishables,” Quentin nodded. “We’ll sweep the area properly once we managed to close the gates.”

“I noticed a small cart not too far ahead,” Sophie mentioned the primitive vehicle. “We could use that to haul over whatever we find to the guild building.”

“Still have to figure out a way to get to the gates though.” Osmond reminded everyone.

“Those shield bearers had some good equipment,” Regis noted. “They were out of the archer’s range when I took them out and their shield was unharmed by the ‘runic ray of light’ spell. If we can bring them over here and mend them, I could put a protective warding on them to increase their armour values. We should be able to use those to get close to the gates.”

“See,” Valerie patted spell weaver’s back. “I knew we had some use for you other than being a pretty face.”

The infernal woman giggled as she dodged a half-hearted swing from the bladestaff that was meant to swat her aside, hiding behind the wannabe paladin while the others let out a muffled laughter.

“All jokes aside,” Quentin cleared his throat as Valerie hid behind him. “I agree with Regis’ idea about those tower shields. We don’t even need to enchant them. There were six shield bearers if I remember correctly, so we can tie layer shields on each other. Even those bolts shouldn’t be able to penetrate through two shields in one go.”

“I’ll get them.” Khan jumped up from the dusty stool he was sitting on, practically storming out as Amanda opened up the door.

“I’ll keep an eye on him.” The blacksmith said as she followed the young bladedancer.

A few minutes went by with quiet meditation before Amanda and Khan returned with a pile of somewhat worn shields. Regis picked one at random from the similar looking shields and he cast his trusty ‘charlatan’s wisdom’ spell on it.

{Reinforced siege tower shield(scratched) }

{Item rarity: common}

{Item quality: ordinary}

{Durability: 78/100}

{Armour type: heavy}

{Armour Value: 28/30}

“Damn,” he blurted out. “It already has an armour value of thirty without any enchantments.”

“Double that with two being tied together and you have a pretty solid wall to keep those heavy bolts away.” Osmond hummed as he began to repair one of the tower shields with the ‘lesser mending’ spell.

A bit later the group had three doubled shields at the ready, tied together by some ropes they scavenged from the house. Everyone checked their equipment before Amanda, Cruz and Quentin grabbed one of the three doubled tower shields and they headed out.

“This is it,” Valerie sighed. “Let’s see who’s the leader of the gate occupiers.”

“Do you think it’s a demon?” Sophie asked as she nocked an arrow on her bowstring.

“It could be possible, but it doesn’t really matter at this point. Whatever we find, we’re going to put it out of its misery.”

“Keep the shields steady and concentrate on getting us close,” the dark elf said to his shield bearing companions. “We’ll take care of any unwanted attention along the way.”

“Let’s just hope they don’t have a spellcaster that knows fireball, otherwise we’ll be in for a rude awakening.”

“Try not to jinx it if possible!” Khan grumbled as he readied his twin blades.

The outlander warband moved out with slow steps, leaving a very thin gap between the shields so they could see what’s ahead of them. Several undead soldiers shambled about in the distance without taking notice of them until they were once again about fifty metres away from the city gates. A low grumble could be heard has the first wondering fallen swordsman noticed the incoming group, immediately beginning to move towards them.

“Here they come.” Amanda claimed as she braced herself for the incoming attack.

A heavy bolt reached their shield wall before the undead could, getting stuck after it drilled through the first layer of the reinforced shield. Cruz stumbled back for a moment under the weight of the impact but she kept on forward after a grunt.

“Open up.” Regis called out to his friends whom made a gap between the shields that was just wide enough for him to step forward, his bladestaff piercing the head of the undead swordsman that decided to take a swing at Quentin.His piercing strike went through the left eye of the enemy that collapsed on the ground after the young spell weaver twisted the weapon and then yanked it back. A new volley of bolts struck the shields, this time, one of them being empowered by a skill to the point where the tip managed to get through an inch.

“Fuckers are getting serious!” Cruz cursed as several foot soldiers began to slowly trot in their way.

“I get the distinct feeling that this might have been hastily thought out plan.” Fabien said as he cast a lightning bolt at an incoming enemy to stun it long enough for his sister to swing at it with her longsword shaped whip.“Should we get into cover until we take out these bastards?” Amanda asked, earning a slight nod.

“Go to the left,” the wannabe paladin pointed with his free hand towards a gap between two buildings.

“Looks like the reinforcements are coming!” Sophie behind Amanda’s shield to evade a bolt after she peeked out to see a small group of fallen soldiers bursting out from one of the houses closest to the gates.

“Just how many of these fuckers are there?” Khan got into the cover of the two story building that might have been a small tavern if they were to believe the sign that hung above the door.

“I could really use a beer right now.” Fabien let out a sigh while they took up their battle formation, ready to greet the incoming opponents with blades and spells.