Chapter 40: The First Wave
The sun rose blood-red over the eastern horizon.
Leon stood on the wall, watching. The trenches below were empty, their stone spikes gleaming in the early light. The fortifications stood silent, waiting. Beyond the tree line, the forest writhed with movement—shadows shifting, branches swaying where there was no wind.
Then the horn sounded.
Long. Urgent. Terrible.
From the watchtower, a guard's voice rang out.
Guard: They're coming!
The tree line exploded.
Monsters poured from the forest like a living tide. Thousands of them. Runners in front—sleek, quick creatures with sharp teeth and glowing eyes. Clawed feet tearing up the ground. Behind them came the heavies—bears twice the size of men, trolls with stone clubs, things with too many legs that moved in horrible unison. Above, flyers circled, darkening the sky with their wings.
The ground shook.
Lyra gripped her axes, standing at Leon's side.
Lyra: Here we go.
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The first wave hit the trenches.
The runners tumbled into the deep channels, unable to stop their momentum. Stone spikes punched through them—screams and roars filled the air, cut short as bodies dissolved into light. One moment they were there, the next they were gone, leaving only small, glowing cores behind.
The trenches did their work.
But more kept coming.
They climbed over the spaces where bodies had been, filling the channels with their numbers. They scrambled up the far sides, only to find more trenches, more spikes, more death. The kill zones funneled them, broke their charge, turned their numbers against them.
Archers loosed from the walls. Fire mages rained destruction down. The air filled with smoke and the constant flash of dissolving monsters.
Hundreds died in the first minutes.
Leon watched the trench floors below. Small cores glittered among the spikes—hundreds of them, maybe thousands, lying unclaimed in the dirt. The trenches had killed them. His magic, his construction. But the system didn't recognize him as a player. No one would absorb these. They would sit there until the battle ended, glittering reminders of power wasted.
Thousands more monsters kept coming.
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The survivors of the trenches reached the wall.
They crashed against it like an ocean against cliffs—clawing, climbing, dying. Their claws scrabbled at stone. Defenders stabbed down with spears, poured boiling oil, unleashed spells into the mass below. Each kill flashed briefly as the monster dissolved, leaving its core to bounce down the wall and join the growing carpet of light below.
The wall held. For now.
Leon fought beside his party. His katana was a blur of heated steel, cutting through claws and limbs and reaching jaws. A runner lunged—he sidestepped, drove his blade through its throat. The creature dissolved instantly, its core dropping to the stone beside his foot. He ignored it. No time.
Dorn stood at his side, shield turning back a charging troll. The impact shuddered through him, but he didn't move. When the troll fell, it dissolved, its core flickering once before lifting and dissolving into Dorn's chest—absorbed, claimed.
Lyra roared, axes spinning. Three runners fell in seconds. Their cores dissolved into her mid-air, never touching the ground. She was feeding on the battle, growing stronger.
Lyra: Keep them off the wall!
Vex moved like smoke, appearing from shadow to shadow, cutting down anything that got too close to the archers. Each kill fed her, made her faster. Cores vanished into her before they could fall.
Sylas stood at the rear, wand steady. Frost traps slowed the climbers. Water binds pulled them from the wall. Ice lances punched through armored hides. Each kill pulsed energy into her core.
Leon kept fighting. Every monster he killed left a small core behind, bouncing across stone, rolling into corners, accumulating around his feet like unwanted change. He had no time to collect them. They piled up—a small fortune in power that wasn't his.
The wave didn't stop.
For every monster that fell, two more took its place. The trenches were filling with cores now, layers of glittering light where bodies had dissolved. The heavies reached the wall—trolls slamming against stone, bears clawing at the base.
An hour passed. Then another.
The sun climbed higher, but the battle didn't pause. Defenders fell—some pulled over the edge, some collapsing from exhaustion, some simply overwhelmed. When they died, their bodies remained. Only monsters dissolved.
The Outliers held their section. Barely.
Lyra's arms shook with fatigue. Dorn's shield was dented in a dozen places. Vex moved slower, her shadows flickering. Sylas's wand hand trembled with every spell.
Leon fought on. His katana was still hot, still sharp. But his core was draining. He had no absorbed energy to replenish him—only the cores at his feet, the ones he couldn't stop to consume. He kicked them aside and kept swinging.
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Then the battering came.
A massive creature—a living ram made of bone and muscle—slammed into the eastern gate. Its head was a solid mass of fused bone, its shoulders wider than a cart. It hit the wood with a sound like thunder.
The gate groaned. Cracks spidered across its surface.
Again. Again.
Defenders poured spells and arrows into it, but the creature barely noticed. Its hide was too thick. It lowered its head and charged again.
The gate splintered.
Dorn looked at Leon, face grim.
Dorn: If that gate breaks—
Leon didn't let him finish.
He jumped from the wall.
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He landed on the creature's back.
The impact jarred through his legs, but he held. The beast thrashed, trying to throw him off. Leon grabbed a ridge of bone and drew his katana.
He drove the blade down.
The creature screamed. He pulled free and stabbed again. And again. Magma-heated steel punched through bone and flesh. With each wound, the beast weakened, its charges growing weaker.
Around him, the horde pressed forward, but they couldn't reach him without climbing over their own battering ram. Archers on the wall took advantage, cutting down anything that got close.
The creature bucked one last time, then dissolved.
Leon dropped to the ground as its body vanished, leaving behind a core the size of his fist. It sat there in the dirt, pulsing with dense energy.
Then the horde turned toward him.
Dozens of monsters. Eyes glowing. Hunger driving them.
Above, Lyra screamed his name.
Leon didn't have time to reach for the core. He raised his katana.
They came at him.
He cut them down. One by one. Two by two. They kept coming, and he kept moving. Each kill left a core behind—smaller ones now, littering the ground around him like scattered coins. He stepped on them, kicked them aside, kept fighting.
But there were too many.
A massive claw swept toward him from the side. He didn't see it coming.
Then Dorn was there.
The shieldbearer had jumped from the wall too, his massive form crashing down between Leon and the attack. The claw slammed into his shield—the metal screamed, dented deeper, but held.
Dorn: You're not dying alone.
Lyra landed beside them, axes already spinning. Her kills left cores scattering across the blood-soaked earth. She ignored them, focused on the next target.
Vex appeared from nowhere, blade finding throats. Each enemy she dropped added another core to the growing carpet at their feet.
Sylas stood on the wall above, her magic raining down. Her kills dropped cores on the battlements, on the ground below, everywhere.
The Outliers fought back to back, surrounded by the horde, cut off from the gate—and standing on a field littered with unclaimed power.
Leon's foot touched something. The battering creature's core. Still there. Still pulsing.
He snatched it up, shoved it in his pocket. Later. Survive first.
They held.
The battering creature was dead. The gate was damaged but still stood. The horde's momentum faltered, just for a moment.
On the wall above, horns sounded—not warning, but rally. Reinforcements were coming. Archers redoubled their fire. Mages found new reserves.
The first wave was breaking.
Monsters still pressed forward, but the tide was slowing. Those that could retreated back toward the tree line. Those that couldn't died where they stood, dissolving into light and leaving their cores behind.
Leon stood among the glittering field, chest heaving, katana dripping. Around him, cores sparkled in the blood-soaked earth like scattered stars. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.
Lyra leaned on her axes, breathing hard.
Lyra: We're alive.
Dorn: Barely.
Vex: Look.
She pointed at the horizon.
Beyond the tree line, more shapes were gathering. The horde was regrouping. The first wave had tested them. The next would be worse.
Leon looked down at the field of cores. Power everywhere, waiting to be claimed. For anyone else, it would mean instant recovery. For him, it meant hours of consumption, of pain, of integration.
But it was there.
And they would need every scrap of it.
The siege had only begun.
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End of Chapter 40