NOVEL NEXT 204 – Guarding the Gatehouse
“Good to see your party in one piece, Miss O’Connor,” greeted Sir Inolet when the party was ushered into the gatehouse through the personnel entrance. There were only three entrance points to the gatehouse structure as a whole other than the two layers of gates, namely the two personnel entrances and the single trapdoor on the rooftop of the structure that connected to the northern wall’s walkways. “Where do you want them, Leon? We got most of the teams already other than the rabble rousers, I think.”
The so-called “Rabble Rousers” that Sir Inolet hinted at was the nickname the operation gave to the small teams of third tiers who went to sabotage and otherwise cause chaos and havoc within the enemy base. It was a risky task, since they would have to operate without support – other than if some of the teams managed to meet up with each other – deep within the enemy base for the entire duration of the mission, though at the very least with the fourth tier enemies eliminated they should be capable of tackling most small patrols they ran into with their prowess.
Every single member of those teams had volunteered for the risky task. Some of them were old and looking for a final chance to either make a bid to reach the fourth tier, or die in the process. Others were ambitious and chose to undertake the risky task because with danger comes experience and feats as well. A few others were specialists at that sort of dirty work and wordlessly stepped forward when Sir DelVillar called for volunteers back then, grim folk who were used to dirtying their hands so that others would not need to do so.
While the teams that focused more on direct combat – including the assault team’s fourth tiers – gathered together to hold the gatehouse, the rabble rousers continued to set things on fire and otherwise wreak havoc within the base, activities that forced the demons to split their response in order to deal with them and not concentrate everything on the gatehouse.
Even with the ambushes and the advantage it conferred to the assault teams, not every ambush went as swimmingly as Alissa’s had. Out of the other teams that ambushed demon fourth tiers, two were wiped out and three more barely managed to hold their target at bay. Alissa’s team or some of the other teams had to deal with the targets of the teams that were wiped out, and overall the assault team lost three of their own fourth tiers, with another five injured quite badly.
Leda ran off to work on the injured once they entered the gatehouse, since she was the only healer with the assault team. Most of the time, healers were considered too precious to risk in such daring assaults, and Leda was present mostly because she was part of Alissa’s party. Under normal conditions she would be in the main army marching their way with the other healers.
“Have them help Murdock upstairs. We can hold the lower entrances better with formations since we have the room to set them up, but it’s pretty cramped up there. Having them help him would make things easier on the old fart,” said Sir DelVillar from the other side of the gatehouse. “We just need to hold this place for another hour and a half or so. The demons won’t dare to damage the place too much since then it’d beat the point of reclaiming it to begin with.”
“Understood, Sir!” yelled Alissa back as she led the rest of her party – Leda was still busy healing the injured so they left her to it – towards the staircase that led to the upper floors of the gatehouse structure. The second floor was empty, as it was the place that housed the barracks and other facilities like the mess hall, but they found Magus Drummond together with around fifteen third tiers holding a defensive formation at the bottom of the trapdoor that led to the rooftop.
“Ah, did Leon and Henri send you over? Good. Help us hold against the demons here,” said Magus Drummond even as he conjured a wall of wind that blocked a couple of arrows shot from the other side of the trap door. The trap door itself had been blown open wide, and the corpses of at least several dozen demons already littered the floor around the staircase.
“Yes, Magus,” replied Alissa as she surveyed the area with a quick glance. The staircase that led down from the trap door was set flush against one side of the walls of the third floor of the gatehouse building, across the room from where the staircase that led to the second floor was. The gatehouse mechanism itself was roughly between the two staircases, in the center of the floor.
The demons likely didn’t dare to directly blow a hole over the gatehouse mechanism and go in from there because they were afraid of damaging the mechanism, but if they were pushed to desperation, they might well do just that. It was the reason Magus Drummond was the one stationed at the third floor, as with his magic he could protect the mechanism best out of everyone present.
With Alissa’s party present, the third tiers that had been helping the magus retreated from the bottom of the staircase, while Ethan, Bronwen, and Glenn took their positions there. The three were the strongest defensively and thus well-suited to tank any attacks sent from the demons above while they held their ground.
Behind them, Joshua, Ormont, and Benedictus took position and returned fire through the wide open trapdoor to the demons who were attacking from the walkways. Before the demons could retaliate properly, the three hid behind the shield and sturdy bodies of their fellow party members, and repeated the process each time a chance presented itself to them.
Alissa, Nadine, Maribel, and Moira kept themselves positioned to the side, a bit further away. From time to time the demons would attempt to rush through the open trap door into the room below. Some of those would be caught by Ethan’s group at the foot of the staircase, but others would simply leap down from the open side of the staircase, and those would be for Alissa’s group to handle.
Since the demons were only third tiers – some of them only second tiers, even – it was not a difficult task for Alissa’s party, but it was still rather tiresome, because the demons simply kept coming without any hint of self-preservation, no matter how many of their brethren already died under the party’s blades. After half an hour, the situation got so bad that they had to start removing the corpses that piled up by the staircase in order to have enough room to fight properly.
Even so the flood of demons did not abate in the least. If anything, the demons seemed to be more and more desperate in their attempts. They likely already detected the main army’s approach, given the time that had elapsed, and were thus doing whatever they could to get the gatehouse back under their control. They were all too aware that they would be completely fucked over if the enemy could just open the gates and allow the marching army to enter the base.
It was around half an hour or so before the army would arrive that the demons got desperate enough to attempt the worst-case scenario Magus Drummond worried about. They used various skills to undermine the integrity of the gatehouse’s roof and directly blew a hole through it before the demons directly jumped down to the third floor of the gatehouse.
Since the demons no longer cared about keeping the gatehouse mechanism intact – the gates would remain closed if the mechanism was damaged, as the assault team couldn’t afford to open the gates wide until their army arrived – Magus Drummond was forced to the defense together with a few of the third tiers. They covered and protected the gatehouse mechanism with their skills, while the rest fought off the descending demons.
At that point Alissa’s party also withdrew from the staircase and formed a defensive circle around the gatehouse mechanism. The ten of them were far stronger than the third tiers who were helping Magus Drummond, and thus quickly turned the tables on the attacking demons. Normally, they would have driven away the demons after slaughtering some of them, but these demons were desperate, and just kept coming even while watching those who jumped down before them slain in front of their eyes.
If Alissa and the rest had not faced the grueling siege at Fort Silvia where they were constantly assaulted by demons that similarly had not even a shred of self-preservation in mind, they might have been taken aback, maybe even faltered and made mistakes. However, the ten of them had gone through the brutal siege, and knew how to handle such enemies accordingly.
Even when some of the veteran third tiers grew fatigued and made mistakes, at which point they took blows they shouldn’t have, Alissa’s party fought on without faltering even the slightest bit. A few of their third tier allies were injured, some even killed on the spot, but Alissa and her party found unperturbed. They had seen death before. They knew what they were capable of preventing and what they could not.
If they strived to save some of the others, it might provide a chance for the desperate demons to strike more directly at Magus Drummond’s barrier, which might in turn damage the mechanism they were protecting. At this moment, their lives hinged on that mechanism remaining functional, at least long enough until the army could reach Arh-Getlam and mount their assault.
The increased intensity of the fighting must have alarmed those below, because midway through the battle, Alissa noticed a fourth tier from their side arrive from the second floor, leading another dozen or so third tiers. Their presence didn’t help that much, as the flood of demons kept them confined to near the staircase, but it slightly alleviated the pressure faced by Alissa and the rest.
Alissa herself did not think all that much. By that point, the battle was something she moved mostly subconsciously on, trained reflexes and drilled reactions run by instinct instead of conscious thought. Most of the enemies she faced fell within a strike or two, but more kept coming, so her priority was not to kill as many enemies as she could, but to keep herself in fighting shape until the army could arrive.
Finally the signal they had been waiting for arrived, after some indeterminate amount of time that could have been forever yet could also just be a short while had passed. The army had arranged with them to fire some flares – ones that were visible from miles away – in a specific order to signal their arrival from afar, and when four flares in the agreed upon colors burst in the night sky in the sequence they expected, they knew that the main army was there.
Almost immediately, the third tiers that remained close to Magus Drummond went for the mechanism and operated it to open the gatehouses, while the Magus redoubled his efforts to keep the mechanism and the people operating it protected. Outside the barrier, Alissa pushed back against the demons together with her party and the surviving third tier warriors who were still with them.
Even from the third floor of the gatehouse, they could hear the massive gates of the base grinding as they opened wide. The shouts from the demons outside also intensified, soon accompanied and overwhelmed by more shouts from the approaching human army. The flood of demons that rushed into the gatehouse’s third floor decreased as the army got closer and closer to the base, until finally Alissa and the rest managed to clear the place up.
Shortly afterwards, soldiers from the army rushed up to relieve them of their duties, with many of them visibly taken aback by the literal piles of corpses that were all over the floor. There must be at least hundreds of the dead demons, piled so high that at some places one could directly climb the pile to reach the rooftop.
