Chapter 27

Chapter 27

"Yes, please. I'm almost out of mana, and there's a shit-ton of these bastards." Drew replied.

"Cool, I sent Freya out with Mark and Beefcake, they're going to the closest gate before heading to help defend." Amber mentioned.

"Have Freya only attack the stragglers, these things have weapons, and they've managed to kill seven of my minions so far."

"Alright, I just sent her the command, Miranda is with your mom and is heading to wake up Robert and my sister's family."

"Hopefully this will be enough. I don't even know how many I've killed, but there's a ton still in the woods."

Amber began to pepper the enemy line with her glowing arrows as Drew finished reloading the gun. He pulled out hearing protection for both himself and his wife. Shots continued to ring out from his rifle as his wife focused on her archery. Occasionally, he'd land a shot just as one of her arrows struck the same target. They weren't used to working as a team in combat yet, so precious time was being wasted by both hitting the same targets.

"Concentrate your fire on the right side, I'll worry about the left!" Drew yelled, so she could hear him with the ear muffs on.

She nodded her head, and the cohesion of their combined firing picked up efficiency.

Your minion, [Skeletal Minion (Grade - F) - lvl 1] has been slain

Damnit, they had gotten another one of his hogs. He couldn't afford to waste mana right now, if he blew through too much, he'd end up collapsing and become 100% useless outside of his minions. Still, he was losing his critters too quickly. One death toll should be fine, especially now that his friends were almost to the enemy. He focused on the threads of his mental connection, and found the minion that had taken the most damage. He quickly conjured a screaming skull and shot it straight towards his pet to heal its wounds and hopefully buy more time. He checked his mana; it was down to twenty-three.

"ROOOOOAAAAARRRRRRR"

A savage voice screamed in fury that thundered across the battlefield. Drew quickly found the source of the sound, it was Beefcake! The cavalry had arrived. Beefcake hunched over, almost squatting, as if he needed to take a massive demon shit. His body shot forward, his massively thick legs spring boarding him towards the enemy line like a group of middle-aged white women with short hair attacking the queues on Black Friday. The ground protested from the sudden pressure of his strength, and several cracks in the ground appeared as he'd launched himself. With his ridiculously large sword in hand, he crashed into the enemy lines and started tearing the goblins apart en masse.

His sword swung horizontally, and dozens of goblins were bisected in a violent and gory manner. It'd happened with such force, that even though it was a clean cut, the pressure shot both pieces of their bodies' backwards into the waiting arms of their allies.

"AAAARRRROOOOOOOOO"

"Don't worry, that's Freya using her new ability." Amber yelled to Drew.

He felt a warm, tingling sensation rush through his body. It was invigorating, but also calming at the same time. It was like waking up from a full ten hours of sleep, and then having a warm cup of coffee. His body felt great! There was a new flashing icon in the top right of his vision, so he focused on it.

Howl of The Pack
Grants a slight boost to health, stamina, and mana point regeneration for 30 minutes to all nearby allies.

Sweet, a buff! That would definitely help. Freya leapt to join the fray, heading to pick off straggling enemies on the right flank. Mark suddenly appeared from nowhere and backstabbed a club wielding goblin with his two short swords, bringing them down together to strike at the base of the creature's neck. Its body crumpled as his cut had severed the spine. Just as quickly as he'd arrived, he was gone again. Drew couldn't see where he'd disappeared to, so he was either making use of a new skill, or his agility had surpassed Drew's perception by a large margin. Drew needed to be exceedingly careful with his shot placement now that so many of his allies were on the field.

Beefcake was steamrolling the goblins in the center, Mark was appearing from thin air to strike at the critters holding clubs, and Freya was picking off any greenskin who wandered too far from its allies. Meanwhile, Amber continued to lodge arrows in the chests of the creatures on the right side. Drew was glad he'd taken a moment to take a look at the battlefield before continuing with his firearm. He really didn't want to hit any of his allies. He picked up his lever gun and started to pick off more of the horde on the right side, while paying extra close attention to the locations of Beefcake and Freya.

Ten minutes flew by as they continued to fight, and eventually Miranda and his mom showed up, with both of them joining Drew and Amber on the watchtower. The horde had finally run out of steam, and with their numbers so thin, several of the greenskins broke off from the remaining attackers and fled into the forest. Drew sent Scolder and his pack to run them down and tear them apart. There would be no mercy for these monsters, they'd attacked his minions, and his property. Once the remaining members were killed off, their frontline allies walked back around the outer fencing to head inside the gate.

His family and friends regrouped at the base of the tower, where Miranda was now checking everyone for wounds. Mark had gotten scuffed up a little bit, but other than some nasty cuts, and a bruised rib he was mostly fine. Freya had managed to stay completely happy and healthy, although she was absolutely covered in blood and gore. She'd need to get a bath, but Drew wasn't going to ruin the moment by telling her that. Due to his armor, Beefcake had gotten away without even a scratch. His armor had some scuffs, and apparently, he'd stubbed his toe from punting a goblin into its compatriots, but he seemed relatively happy. The guy had a real talent for the wholesale slaughter of those creepy creatures.

Miranda and his mom had found Robert, and Lacy's family and brought them into the main house. They'd taken so long getting to the watchtower because the new members of their growing community hadn't seen the notifications until they were woken up, and thus, had many questions. Questions that both Drew and Amber were frankly tired of answering. Anyways! Miranda and his mom apparently pawned the newcomers off onto Spock, who had decided to stay at the house and protect them in case anything managed to break through the walls.

Drew had learned several very important lessons from that combat session. The most important one was to give his minions proper orders from now on. He'd lost so many of them before he'd had the chance to react to the assault. After Scolder's pack had run down the fleeing goblins, he pulled all his minions inside the gate so he could check them over for damage. Most of the hogs were pretty fucked up, and a couple of Scolder's pack had gotten a solid beating. Scolder himself looked like he was missing a couple ribs, and had a long crack running down the length of his skull. He was going to need a lot of mana to repair all the damage, and even more to raise new minions.

The other major lesson he'd learned the hard way, he really needed to focus on his mana capacity and regeneration. He'd been so focused on getting all his stats to twenty points, that now his main capabilities were actively handicapped. He didn't regret those points those, if he'd gotten stuck out there with those greenskins, those points he had put into his physical stats likely would have kept him alive. But still, he needed to be more proactive in pursuing the correct stats for his class, otherwise he'd be shooting himself in the foot, especially against a horde of enemies like they'd just fought. His spells did plenty of damage, but when there were so many enemies, each cast would eat up so much of his limited mana.

Drew left through the gate with Mark, once he was healed up, to collect several bodies of the goblins he'd killed. He was going to need more bodies after his previous minions were smashed to bits. He collected all the skeletons he could find that were leftovers from his casts of corruption, but he also grabbed several bodies that looked mostly intact as well. He had felt so proud of his little army, but they'd lost a over a third of their number within an hour of The Descent. He didn't know if the quality of minions would be better, but at this point, he was desperate for more troops.

The allies made it back to the house. The front liners were removing their gore-soaked armor on the porch, while Amber was out collecting several buckets of water from the manual pumps. Everyone was thirsty at this point. Additionally, there was no way in hell that Amber was going to let Freya back into the house with chunks of meat stuck to her coat. Drew went inside and found Spock sitting on the couch with Robert and Amber's sister's family on the furniture around them. His two nieces were in pjs, with their mother in an extra-long t-shirt. His brother-in-law, Cody was in boxers and a white wife beater. Robert, funnily enough, was also wearing a matching pj set. Drew slumped onto the couch next to Spock.

"Were the enemies repelled, Drew Wright?"

"Yeah, I lost a lot of my minions though. Mark got cut up pretty bad, but everyone else was fine. Miranda healed him up after we cleaned up the remaining monsters."

"Did you happen to inspect any of the monsters?"

"Shi...I mean crap. No, I honestly forgot to with all the chaos that was happening. They looked like goblins though. Short, green skinned, red glowing eyes, a mouthful of fangs, and they all had crude weapons." He tried not to curse around impressionable young ears.

"Did the monsters in question have large noses, and extremely pointed ears?"

"Yeah, that pretty much sums them up."

"Indeed. Those would be goblins. They are nasty monsters. Did you kill them all?"

"I'm pretty sure we killed all that attacked us, yeah. Several fled into the forest, but I sent my minions after them. They attacked in a massive horde, I couldn't even count all the bodies out there, it was like a never-ending swarm of them."

"I'd highly recommend performing a more thorough search at your earliest convenience. They breed extremely rapidly, and if any escaped, there could be several thousand by the end of next week."

"I'll ask some of the group to go check out the surrounding areas. My mana is practically drained, and I'm exhausted. I'm going to go lay down for a while after I talk to them. Can you handle talking with everyone here?"

"Indeed, please go rest. We may be under attack again soon." Spock said.

Drew went outside to talk with everyone, and let them know the dangers that the greenskins represented. He asked Mark, Amber, Freya, and Beefcake to go check things out. Mark's tracking skills should be extremely helpful in locating any monsters that managed to flee the fates of their allies. Plus, Drew sent the command to Scolder and two of it's pack to act as protection for the departing group. He cast two death tolls to heal up some of his hog minions, and sent them to patrol the outer fence. He added the command to stay alert, and not to engage in combat, but alert him, and flee in case they ran into anything unfriendly. With less than ten mana left, he went back inside the house, and straight to his bed. He managed to get some of his clothes off, before he gave up on the rest and crawled into his bed.