355 Brace For Impact
“Pikes up. Brace for impact.” The section Commander ordered.
The warriors brought up their pikes, and Thor brought up his barrier over his team, including Morgana and the group under Colonel Wilkes, who were his team by default, as they were right next to him, and attached to the same unit.
The larger beasts were closer, as the smaller carnivores had chosen to stay behind the hyper-aggressive giant lizards and beasts, who naturally treated them as food.
Tessa activated the Holy Blessing on the pikes, in time with the other battle Clerics along the line. The metal heads glowed with golden light, prepared to cut through the thick hides of the attackers, but the monsters didn’t care.
“Ranged attackers, begin.” Karl raised his bow and fired [Chain Lightning] into the front ranks. The lightning arced between the attackers, and dozens of the smaller beasts went up in flames as the Commander Rank ability hit their Awakened Rank bodies.
The Hill Giants didn’t care what they sent this way, they just herded everything, so there were many strong beasts, but also a horde of weaker ones that would slowly wear down the more powerful defenders once they reached the human lines.
The first wave of attackers fell easily to the combined attacks of the defenders, and most of the weaker beasts were already severely injured from Remi’s Thunderstorm.
The damage from the rain wasn’t extreme, but it was a Commander Rank skill, and against Awakened Rank monsters, even half a minute of exposure was enough to nearly cripple them.
Then, they had to pass through the area attacks of the other mages, many of whom had the same idea that Remi did, and spread their attacks over the largest possible area so that they injured everything before it made it to the line.
The air in the distance crackled with lightning, fire swirled along the ground, and razor sharp gusts of compressed winds tore through fur and scales.
Thor bugled his challenge to the closest of the giant lizards, who raised his head to chomp down on the Cerro’s back. But that was where Tessa was sitting, and as Thor charged forward, she brought up her spear and stabbed upward through the roof of the beast’s mouth to impale its brain and send holy light bursting out of its skull.
The enormous predator fell, and Thor crushed the ribs of another with his armoured tail while Tessa lashed out with her spear, and the pike line pushed the other attackers away from them.
Karl continued to fire, switching to [Flaming Body] for more effect on the Commander Rank beasts, who were starting to pile up against the spears, running over the bodies of the fallen first ranks.
The mages put up solid barriers, halting the advance of the monsters for a split second before the warriors charged through again.
The goal was to keep moving forward so that the bodies didn’t stack up and give the monsters the chance to jump the defenders. Retreating would do the same thing, but that would eventually lead them back to camp, so it wasn’t really an option in a battle this large.
Karl remained a few steps behind the pike wall as they moved forward, pushing the beasts back so that he could continue to fire arrows toward the thicker clusters of strong beasts.
Unlike the Hill Giants, most of these beasts didn’t have any defensive magic, so the ongoing attack spells were devastating to them, especially in their enraged and starved state, where they were stopping inside the attack zone to feast on the bodies of the fallen.
But Karl knew this fortunate state wouldn’t last forever. The mages were burning a lot of mana to keep the area spells up, and once they started to get tired, things would become much more difficult.
Remi left her place with Morgana when the Witch Doctor didn’t understand that the refreshing spells were moving forward with the offence team. It didn’t take the mages long to understand that the warriors had gotten priority for the stamina spells from the clerics, as they were the ones in immediate danger if someone faltered due to exhaustion.
That led to the whole line pushing forward, holding their positions, while Remi slithered along at Karl’s side, doing nothing but keeping her [Thunderstorm] active.
Only when the monster density began to increase again did she start creating her totems on top of Morgana’s staff. They were now designed to look like two Lamia back to back, instead of just one, and the firing rate had doubled, while the totems themselves were lasting closer to two minutes than their original ninety seconds.
The poison was slower acting, but the fireballs had an immediate effect on everything that they hit, and their flank of the line was holding strong, even as the others were calling up reinforcements from the army.
They weren’t Elites, but there were more than enough Clerics here to give them blessings and send them into combat to reinforce the students, the same as they would do on any other battlefield.
The Academy had been trying to avoid it, but the pure weight of numbers was dragging down some sections of the line that didn’t have as much area attack ability.
“The strongest monsters are falling. Front line, hold position and let them come to us.” The Section Commander ordered, giving the students a bit of a chance to catch their breath between fights.
Not that they were going to get completely out of combat, as the mages’ reduction in mana meant that they had to cut the power of their spells back to the mana level that they could sustain in a longer time period, and that was bringing monsters to the front with less damage than at the start of the battle.
The pikes were beginning to falter, and the warriors in the front were being forced to change to shorter ranged weapons, while the second rank used their pikes to keep the largest of the monsters from crushing them as they fought.
That was Rae’s cue to switch tactics. Now, instead of sending the Spider Golems after the most dangerous targets while she spat silk to trap ones that looked like they would make good snacks, she had the Spider Golems switch to the mass clearance tactics that they had used in the last battle with the Hill Giants, just murdering as many small monsters as possible.