[CYA] Chapter 110: Wave 1, Endure

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K63GNUHuZHH_H2nTf7l_fBGXQi13Q1g37zSdr89fjhk/edit?usp=drivesdk

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<Alex, Real - Endure (Wave 1), High School Gymnasium Roof>

On the positive side, Alex watched as what looked like a city’s worth of undead pigeons streamed away, clearly magically drawn toward the base’s vermin bait towers.

On the negative side, each of the vicious little beasts seemed to have some bit of flesh or viscera in their greedy little beaks, leaving an absolutely eviscerated mess of disconnected bones behind.

Worse yet—Yeah… it got worse—three of the undead bat-gorilla things were fighting over the still wet bones… wet from more than the rain, which was actually seeming to grow in intensity.

The door hadn’t even fully swung open as Alex immediately sprinted forward despite the seeming futility of the action. He began to spin up Shaped Force Burst, altering the symbol into one of the variations he’d worked out the day before, then duplicating it and spinning the duplications so they all oriented on a single point of effect.

It wasn’t ‘fast’ as it took him nearly a second to put together the four symbols, but it was something that he was able to prep beforehand.

The rain and sound of departing air-piranhas covered his arrival and charge, as such, the first the three noticed him was as he arrived among them.

HIs dadao struck out with a Multi-Strike to behead two, and he shifted his force symbols to the correct orientation and triggered them, causing a four-fold ‘punch’ of force starting in a palm-sized spread, all oriented toward and striking to a single point some four inches further in.

His hit was a bit off center, striking the lower jaw rather than the forehead, but it worked all the same.

The result was the thing’s lower face crushing up, back, and in at the heavy strike. Each hit had only been about as strong as a mundane punch, but the four hitting at the same time, easily combined to crack the surrounding bone and crumble the whole back and inward.

All three beasts fell to the ground, unmoving.

He did not ash them, both because he feared he’d need the Life and mana elsewhere, and because he didn’t see a need. They were dealt with.

That sorted, he fell to his knees beside the mess of bones and harder to grasp internals. A fourth of the undead bat-gorilla things lay crumpled on the edge of the roof nearby, but otherwise, the roof was suddenly rather barren.

The drumbeat of the rain was the only thing he could hear… Oh, the school alarm stopped?

He wasn’t foolish enough to think that meant things were over.

He could feel magic flaring from various spots around the high school as Initiates clearly fought for their lives.

He needed to get up and get to them. He could help them.

Remains lay before him, and even though he wasn’t sure, he feared that it was James. In that, all Alex could see was the young man’s laughing face.

He’d tried to kill Alex the first time they met because of a misunderstanding, but since then, James had been nothing but a friend.

Now he’s dead.

Jacob thundered onto the roof, skidding to a stop. A moment later, the AED was thrown down beside Alex. “Broth-fork. This is useless.”

Alex reached out mentally and drew the tool into his Inventory before it could hit the ground. Thankfully, it hadn’t been moving too fast for him to grab it in that manner.

Still, Jacob’s arrival and actions had shaken Alex loose of his momentary despondency. “We can’t help him.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

Alex gave the man a flat look. “Now is not the time for sarcasm. Come on. There are others I’m sure we can save.”

Jacob nodded, pulling out his phone. “Kaylee is requesting us on the north-eastern exterior wall.”

Alex snapped his head to look in that direction, seeing flickers of magic. His greatcoat was keeping the rain from his head, which was actually an incredible boon in the current situation.

Jacob already looked a bit like a drowned rat, his curly hair practically pasted to his head.

Alex nodded, coming to his feet and running toward the northern side of the gym, angling for the street-side corner.

Jacob shouted after him, starting to follow. “There’s no stairs over there!”

Alex called back. “I don’t need stairs!”

He barely heard Jacob growl before the man skidded to a stop and sprinted the other way, a gust of wind carrying his words to Alex. “Well, I freaking do.”

Alex almost laughed at that, but then his Danger Sense triggered, and he lashed out, bisecting another flying monstrosity and allowing him to continue unobstructed.

He finally checked his notifications, finding that the things were called Undead Vespe-Muta, and they were only uncommon. The ones he’d killed were all level 12.

UVMs it is. He had no idea where the things had come from in order to be infected with undeath, and he really didn’t care. He just prayed that there weren’t too many, or many of his companions were not going to have a good time given the dark and the rain.

At the far end of the gym, he passed the vermin tower, now decorated with still-twitching undead birds, but they were trying to drive themselves further on the myriad long, thin spikes to get at the central spire rather than trying to escape it.

They wouldn’t be going anywhere. Moreover, other critters were occasionally slamming into the spikes behind them, everything from large cockroach-looking things, to small birds, and even bats.

Yup… those towers saved us today. He would need to specifically thank Kaylee for thinking of and implementing that base defense.

He reached the corner of the gym roof and leapt out and forward, aiming to get greater distance rather than added height.

Now, Alex had never before dropped forty feet to the ground, let alone in the dark and rain.

He’d dropped off the walls that sealed off the streets around their base, but those were only about ten feet or so.

His body was definitely more durable than it had been before—before, this would have meant broken legs at the very least, with death being a real possibility—but he was also heavier, meaning he’d hit the ground harder than before too.

Even so, he was at least mostly sure he’d be okay.

Why?

Well, as he’d been running, he’d spun up Shaped Force Burst once more, manipulating the symbol to another variation that he’d worked out.

As he fell, he triggered the spell and then immediately began pulling it up again.

It fired off, two symbols below the bottom of each foot, oriented upward, triggered in unison.

The feeling was… well, it was awful. It felt like someone punched the bottom of each foot at the same time… hard.

It wasn’t hard enough to break even those small bones through his fortitude and sturdy shoes, but it would likely have caused bruising if not for his ridiculous healing.

Now, why did he effectively punch himself in the feet, and why was he doing his best to do it again as soon as possible?

Well, that force transferred through, and even though he’d already fallen nearly ten feet before the spell activated, his downward momentum came to a near dead stop, Alex continuing forward even so.

The hit radiated up through his whole body, but he’d been expecting it, and he took advantage of the slow-down.

Even so, he’d dropped another twenty feet before he was able to get the spell reworked yet again.

This time the hit hurt worse. After all, his healing was fast, but not that fast.

He also didn’t come to a complete stop from a vertical perspective.

As a result, he fell the last ten feet, hitting with about as much force as if he’d only fallen fifteen feet or so, with aching feet added in for good measure.

He was able to drop into a roll to help disperse some of the impact, but that mainly just meant that more of him was now sore.

Still, his feet and legs were intact and actively healing, and he had saved at least two minutes by this more direct path.

Ahead, just down the street, was the place that Kaylee had requested that he go to.

Let’s see just how bad things are on the ground.

Answer?

Not great.

Kaylee had been having rotations of Initiates on each of the eight street-blocking walls, two at a time. She also counted any Initiate fighting beyond the wall as ‘on duty’ for that wall, and in that way, they’d kept a good eye on all of the fortifications.

That was also likely the only reason undead hadn’t just swarmed over the barriers and rushed the school.

Ahead, Alex could see the top of the wall he’d been sent to, a man and woman running back and forth—him with an axe, her with staff—hacking and poking at hands that were trying to grab onto the rampart, only the rare spell triggering when they couldn’t quite get to their target in time.

The fact that they were husbanding their mana didn’t bode well for what they could see beyond the wall.

More than that, the man was staggering a bit, and even at this distance—about a quarter block—Alex could see that something wasn’t right.

He put on a burst of speed, leaning forward and giving it everything he had, jumping at the last minute to land halfway up the ladder used to get to the top of the wall.

The aluminum thing bent under his landing, but it still mostly held, allowing him to scramble up. He arrived just in time to slap a hand on the man’s arm and dump HP into him, wiping out a plague of undeath on the very edge of taking over.

The man gasped, almost falling to a knee before turning and striking out to keep more undead from gaining the top of the wall. “Thank you, thank you!”

The man was basically weeping, though that might have been the rain.

He was wielding a wood-cutter’s axe with obvious skill, and as soon as he came back to his feet, he towered over Alex, showing that he was a beast of a man. Without delay, he turned back to his duty, helping keep the undead from gaining the walltop.

Alex was at the north-eastern corner road, the wall was just over seventy feet long. The fact that these two had kept the defense intact showed just how few undead had been able to try to climb over so far.

That wouldn’t last.

On the western side of the high school, Alex suddenly saw, then heard, a whoomp of flame, followed by a more constant sweep. Pilar had gotten in position, and she would likely be able to hold that corner road on her own. She’d keep the north-west wall clear, and John would be an excellent back-up for his wife.

They can likely hold for two hours.

Alex looked out over the wall, at the sea of bodies pressing toward the defense and felt grateful that most of those that he could see were common and uncommon variants. Flickers of lighting revealed further down the two streets. There were a few flesh golems sprinkled through further back, but they didn’t look like Plague Guard, and his Analyze confirmed that they were standard.

This wouldn’t be easy, but if this was all that came their way? They should be just fine.

Alex joined the frantic scramble back and forth, hacking at and blasting the increasing number of undead who were able to clamber over their fellows to grab at the top of the ten foot wall and attempt to clamber up.

Even so, the length of fortification was too much for the three of them to cover for long, and they began having to fight off the occasional undead on the way back and forth, each covering just more than twenty feet.

As he fought, he realized that they were, indeed, only fighting commons. In the increasingly frequent lightning flash, he could now more easily see uncommon variants sprinkled in further back, a few blocks down each of the streets, coming together at this corner… and further still, other flashes seemed to show some rares that he recognized among the absolutely packed bodies with even more uncommons around them as well. Oh, by Gandalf’s beard… It's a difficulty gradient.

He called out a warning to those fighting near him, and they settled in for the progressively harder fight ahead, magic becoming even less frequent, held in reserve for true need, and in preparation for what was to come.

Jacob arrived less than two minutes later, three Initiates with him.

A moment later, Alex felt death mana surging and roiling to the south, marking Stephen’s arrival at a defensive position. Other powers came to prominence as well, the Initiates clearly having been fully roused and mobilized by this point.

 Wave Time
1hr 46min 03sec

“Alex, sour-cream man! Check your phone!” Jacob yelled up at Alex as those with the spear wielder climbed up the wall to take their positions, lifting the defense to five, and making it far easier a task.

Alex pulled out his phone and found messages from Kaylee. He was needed in the High School?

Several of the UVMs had gotten in among the non-initiates before being killed. That hadn’t ended well, and several initiates were infected. While there was apparently an Initiate with skills and spells that slowed and even temporarily halted the plague of undeath, she couldn’t purge it outright. They’d use the curing potions if they had to, but it would be best to hold those in reserve if at all possible.

Alex’s eyes widened, tucking away the phone, jumping from the wall, and sprinting back the way he’d come, Jacob at his side this time.

He blessed his massive physical fortitude, because unless he missed his guess, he was going to be doing a lot of running until this wave was finished.

No time for self-pity Alex, people need you. Get to it.

And so he tucked his head down and ran.

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