The Convergent Path (Reincarnation/LitRPG)

The Walled City of Crie had transformed into a hive of desperate, barely controlled chaos. Along the weathered stone battlements, archers nocked arrows with hands that trembled from exhaustion rather than fear, they'd done this too many times for simple terror. Their quivers rattled against the ancient parapets with a sound like bones in a dice cup. Militiamen in patchwork armor barked orders in voices that cracked and frayed at the edges, authority eroding under the weight of too many losses.

The air itself seemed thick with tension, carrying the sharp mechanical scent of freshly oiled bowstrings, and the acrid bite of human sweat mixed with animal fear. It was the smell of a city that had been dying by inches for far too long.

Below the walls, in the cramped streets of the city proper, civilians moved with the jerky efficiency of people who had rehearsed their own potential deaths too many times. Windows were being barricaded with whatever furniture could be spared, faces set in expressions of grim resolve that had long since burned away any hope of rescue. Children were herded into root cellars and basement spaces, their usual bright laughter conspicuously absent, replaced by a kind of unnatural silence.

Fin stood with the rest of his team in Mayor Elmur's command hall, a squat, utilitarian stone building pressed against the base of the wall like a barnacle clinging to a ship's hull. The interior walls were covered with frantically scrawled maps that had been updated and re-updated until the parchment was more ink than paper, their surfaces bearing brown stains that Fin hoped were old wine but suspected were something far more visceral. The whole place reeked of desperation.

Elmur himself paced the small space like a caged animal, wringing his hands until the knuckles cracked audibly. His threadbare cloak hung from his portly frame like a burial shroud, every thread telling a story of gradual decline. Triana prowled the opposite side of the room.

Daryl had claimed a support pillar as his personal territory, leaning against it with studied casualness while he sharpened his knife with idle, almost meditative flicks of the whetstone. The repetitive sound was oddly soothing in the tense atmosphere, a reminder that some things remained constant even when the world was ending. Onrio inspected a rack of municipal spears, his rail-thin frame practically vibrating as his fingers twitched through unconscious casting gestures.

Harbour stood apart from everyone else, as still as a statue carved from obsidian, her long black dreads framing a face that revealed absolutely nothing. Her eyes moved constantly.

"Which direction do the beasts typically attack from?" Triana asked, her voice cutting through the ambient tension like a blade through silk. "Do they vary their approach, or is there a pattern we can exploit?"

Elmur's gaze flickered toward the window where the main gate loomed like a mouth waiting to swallow the city whole. "Always that gate," he said, his voice cracking slightly under the weight of too many memories. "Every single time, like they know it's our weakest point. Like they're intelligent enough to recognize a vulnerability."

Triana nodded. "What about cultivators among the defenders? How many do you have on the walls?"

Elmur blinked, confusion momentarily overriding the worry lines that had carved permanent channels into his weathered face. "Cultivators? You mean like farmers? We've got plenty of good folk who work the fields, strong backs and willing hands, but I don't see why agricultural expertise would help against…"

"No," Fin interjected gently, trying to spare the man further embarrassment. "She means people who can use magic, throwing fireballs, casting defensive barriers, that sort of thing."

"Oh, those kinds of people." Elmur's sigh seemed to deflate his entire body, making him look smaller and older. "We don't have any. They're exceedingly rare in these parts, maybe a handful in the entire country, and every last one of them is kept on a short leash by Lord Cavann in the capital. Treats them like prized hunting hounds, he does. Collars and kennels and all."

Daryl snapped his knife closed with a decisive click, pushing off from his pillar with fluid grace. "We're wasting valuable time asking questions we already know the answers to. They're just regular people with pointy sticks. They'll be absolutely no help in actual combat beyond providing convenient distractions." His tone was matter-of-fact rather than cruel, but the words still landed like physical blows. "Let's focus on actual strategy instead of false hope."

Triana's glare could have scorched stone to slag, but she gave a reluctant nod that acknowledged the brutal truth in his assessment. "Fine. Show us the optimal wall positions for our defensive setup."

Daryl strode toward the door. The sound of his boots echoed off stone walls. Triana followed, muttering something under her breath that was probably unflattering and definitely unprintable.

Fin lingered in the doorway, something in him unwilling to leave the mayor to his despair without at least attempting comfort. He turned back to face Elmur, whose shoulders had slumped under the weight of hopelessness. "I apologize for Daryl," Fin said quietly. "He's... extremely blunt. Tactless, even. But he's not wrong about the situation, and sometimes brutal honesty is kinder than false comfort."

Elmur's tired smile held a flicker of genuine warmth that transformed his face from merely exhausted to something approaching human. "It's quite alright, lad. Your group is shouldering a burden that should never have fallen on strangers' shoulders. It's a tremendous lot to ask of anyone, let alone people who have no stake in our survival."

Fin met the mayor's eyes and found himself making a promise he wasn't entirely certain he could keep. "I swear to you, we'll do everything in our power to keep everyone safe. Your people deserve better."

Elmur's expression softened with something that might have been gratitude or might have been the beginning of tears. "Thank you, boy. May whatever gods watch over this place extend their protection to you as well."

Fin nodded and turned to leave, only to find himself pinned by Harbour's void-like stare. She stood in the doorway, her dark eyes holding his. The moment stretched uncomfortably before she finally spoke.

"The group's assembled on the wall," she said, her voice carrying no inflection whatsoever. Then she turned away, her dreads swaying with the movement, and disappeared into the afternoon light.

Fin followed, climbing the worn stone steps to the battlements two at a time. The parapets swarmed with frantic activity, archers making last-minute adjustments to bowstrings, militiamen hauling wooden crates of arrows that rattled with every step, officers shouting contradictory orders that only added to the chaos.

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Triana stood at the center of the controlled madness, mid-sentence when Fin arrived. "...approximately five minutes until the horde arrives. Everyone check your equipment one final time and prepare for sustained combat."

Fin scanned the assembled team with growing concern. Onrio was making minute adjustments to the positioning of his light orbs, Harbour had already nocked an arrow and was sighting down the length of the wall, Daryl leaned against a merlon. But someone was conspicuously absent.

"Where's Vance?" Fin asked, frowning at the incomplete formation.

Daryl jerked a thumb casually over the wall toward the fields beyond. "Already outside where I'll be soon. I'm waiting for our fearless leader's brilliant tactical strategy." His smirk carried just enough mockery to earn him an eye-roll from Triana.

"The beasts always focus their assault on that gate," Triana explained, pointing down at the main entrance they'd used to enter the city. "So we're going to turn their predictability into our advantage. I'll create three parallel wind walls, each twenty feet apart, extending from the gate all the way to the tree line. That gives us two narrow corridors, kill zones, essentially. Vance holds one chokepoint, Daryl takes the other."

She gestured to Onrio. "Onrio positions his orbs along the interior surfaces of the wind walls. Anything that tries to push through gets seared to the bone. Harbour stays up here on the wall, picking off stragglers and anything that looks like it might be coordinating the assault."

Fin nodded. "What if I can pick off monsters from their rear? Thin their numbers before they reach the kill zone?"

"Absolutely not," Triana said. "Attacking from behind scatters them away from the funnel. We need them channeled, concentrated, predictable. A dispersed horde is exponentially more dangerous than a funneled one, even if there are more of them."

The logic was sound enough that Fin couldn't argue. He gave a reluctant nod of agreement.

A howl split the afternoon air, a sound that started low and primal before climbing into registers that made human spines lock with instinctive terror. Along the wall, militiamen visibly flinched, their knuckles going white on weapon hilts. Several began muttering prayers to gods who had stopped listening weeks ago.

Daryl's smirk widened with genuine anticipation, his eyes lighting up with the kind of enthusiasm that suggested he might be slightly unhinged. "Well then, that's our cue." Without further preamble, he vaulted over the wall with acrobatic grace, disappearing into the fields below with a warrior's whoop that sounded far too cheerful for someone about to face a monster horde.

Vance's heavy footsteps echoed from ground level, his massive frame already moving into position with the inexorable certainty of an avalanche finding its path downhill.

Fin's Electromagnetic Synchronization suddenly blazed to life, painting his awareness with a detailed map of approaching signatures. Three hundred distinct sources, all registering as low to mid Tier Three. The direwolves and direbears radiated a kind of feral hunger.

"Three hundred hostiles incoming!" Fin called out, his voice carrying clearly across the wall. "Low to mid Tier Three signatures, moving fast!"

Triana's head snapped toward him with startling speed, her eyes sharp with the kind of focus that suggested she was re-evaluating his worth. "How confident are you in that assessment?"

"Dead accurate," Fin said, meeting her gaze steadily. Then, to prove his point, he added quietly, "I know about your core. The instability."

Her eyes narrowed dangerously, her entire body going rigid with the kind of tension that preceded either violence or flight. For a moment, Fin thought she might actually strike him. Then she hissed through clenched teeth, "We are not discussing that now." She raised her voice to a commanding shout that cut across the wall. "Three hundred hostiles confirmed! Low to mid Tier Three! Prepare for sustained engagement!"

Vance's response was a grunt that somehow managed to convey both acknowledgment and complete confidence. His massive greatsword materialized in his hands.

Then the horde crested the distant tree line and Fin's breath caught despite having known they were coming. It was like watching a living tsunami of fur and fangs and murderous intent, direwolves loping in coordinated packs that moved with disturbing intelligence, direbears lumbering forward like battering rams. Their combined howls shook the very foundations of the wall, a deafening chorus that seemed designed to break human courage before the first claw landed.

Triana's mana suddenly blazed like a bonfire, drawing heavily on her reserves as she channeled approximately a third of her total power into a single sustained working. "Watch for anything that tries to escape the funnel!" she commanded. Three translucent walls of compressed wind erupted from the ground, each precisely twenty feet apart, extending from the main gate all the way to the distant forest like ghostly barriers made solid.

The effect was immediate and devastating. The horde's frontal charge hit the invisible barriers and compressed like water hitting a funnel, three hundred individual predators suddenly forced into two narrow corridors where their numbers became a disadvantage rather than an asset. Onrio's light orbs took position along the interior surfaces of the wind walls, their radiance intensifying until they glowed with the heat of miniature suns. Any beast that tried to push through the barriers was instantly seared, the air filling with the nauseating stench of burned fur and cooked flesh.

Vance and Daryl stood at their respective chokepoints like reapers at harvest time. Vance's greatsword rose and fell with mechanical precision, each swing cleaving through direbears like they were made of paper rather than muscle and bone. Blood arced through the air in ruby sprays that painted the grass. Daryl moved like violence made graceful, his knife finding throats and major arteries with surgical precision, never wasting a single motion or expending unnecessary energy.

Harbour's arrows sang from the wall, each shaft finding eyes or joints or other vulnerable points with the accuracy of an olympian. Stragglers that managed to avoid the main kill zone dropped with arrows through their skulls, their bodies crumpling mid-charge.

The killing zone was a massacre, bodies piling so high they began to form impromptu barricades. The beasts' cries of rage and pain were drowned out by the ring of steel and the crack of breaking bones and the constant sizzle of Onrio's burning light.

Fin watched from the wall. Around him, the militiamen had stopped even pretending to help, their arrows forgotten as they stared in slack-jawed awe at the absolute efficiency of professional cultivators working in perfect coordination.

Then his Electromagnetic Synchronization pinged an urgent warning, two new signatures, much stronger than the rest, moving with deliberate purpose toward the eastern wall. They were bypassing the funnel entirely, circling around the engagement zone.

"Two hostiles approaching east wall!" Fin shouted, his voice cutting through the sounds of battle. "High Tier Three signatures! They're flanking!"

Triana spun toward him, her concentration on maintaining the wind walls making her response sluggish. "High Tier Three? Are you certain?"

Harbour was already gone, her bow abandoned on the battlement as she sprinted toward the eastern section with inhuman speed. Onrio hesitated, his thin face twisted with uncertainty as he looked between Triana and the direction Harbour had vanished.

"Can you maintain the zone without me?" he asked, his voice unexpectedly light.

"Yes," Triana growled through gritted teeth, sweat beading on her forehead from the sustained mana expenditure. "Go. I can hold this."

Onrio didn't wait for further permission, sprinting after Harbour with his light orbs trailing behind him like a comet's tail.

Fin turned to Triana, already knowing he wasn't going to like the answer. "Is Onrio primarily a fighter or support?"

She cringed, her focus wavering dangerously as the wind walls flickered. "He can handle himself in most situations, but High Tier Three? One on One?" Her expression said everything her words didn't.

Fin didn't waste time arguing or asking permission. He bolted toward the eastern wall, ignoring Triana's furious shout, "Get your ass back here right now!" as he vaulted over the battlements and dropped into the fields beyond.