18: Evacuation of Runehold

[Year 18 Month 4: Continued]

It was only a few more minutes before the swarm arrived. Although the runed alpha hound had moved to the back of the pack, letting the little ones go out first.

It is either incredibly intelligence to hold back and wait to see our strength or doesn’t want to deal with the walls.

Knowing my luck, it was probably the former.

The first wave of beasts hit like a net, testing the defenses and probing the automatons.

Within moments, the first of over a hundred stalkerhounds reached my golems.

One of the Juggernaughts that had been stationed in that particular point intercepted the first to approach, and without hesitation, immediately slammed its sledgehammer with enough power to create a crater, and left a hole in the stalkerhound’s body.

Another Vexus had tried to take advantage of the Juggernaut’s open flank, but one of the alloy soldiers speared it in its side, causing a viscous fluid to spill out onto the grass. The liquid sizzled as it touched the earth, leaving patches of dirt from where it hit the grass.

Other similar situations had been occurring all across the plains, but with the golems clearing large swaths of hounds while the archers provided the occasional cover fire and kept the golems from being completely engulfed in the stalkerhounds.

The monsters were shrieking all the while, the high pitch yelps causing the human defenders to wince in pain.

Although their agony was apparent, they did not run; the number only swelled. More continued to pour out of the forest.

By now, the bodies had begun to pile up, making it harder for the golems to move forward, as they required sturdy ground to support their tremendous weight.

The runic assistants and I began to pull back the golems, closer to the walls where the bodies had yet to truly build.

It was then that I felt a buildup of corruption, and the Alpha wolf took its first steps from where it had been standing.

I watched as its cold and pale eyes turned away from Runehold. It faced the direction of Gorn, and I felt the weight of its gaze on me. Somehow, it made direct eye contact with my sight. Reacting quickly, several of my golems stopped working for a moment while I supercharged the anti-detection obelisks around the village.

Snarling as it lost focus on my main body, the wolf turned back to the walls in anger. Raising its head, it howled, and I could see the human defenders struggle to maintain their composure. It must have been a debuff skill.

Since my golems couldn’t truly hear, they were unaffected by the debuff, but the ones that I had temporarily turned off were struggling to regain the original flow of the battle.

Seeing that its skill was mostly ineffective against the constructs, the Alpha wolf howled once more. The defenders of the wall braced for the incoming debuff, but none came. No, this was not an attack, but a call to arms.

Emerging from the forest, shapes formed. Instead of the smaller variants of stalkerhounds, these were different, more powerful. Their bodies were bulkier and stronger than those of their weaker brethren.

A new variant?

I called upon my runic assistants, “Metis. Begin the evacuation into the facility. Codex, take control of the golems in Metis’ stead.”

Her voice chimed in my head, “Acknowledged. Should I seal the tunnels behind the citizens?”

“Wait until the Vexus are breaching the walls. I want as many people out of here as possible. Golems are replaceable, but not the living.”

I felt her consciousness turn away, and Codex quickly took control of the unmanned golems.

At the same time, I decided to withdraw all of my totems, pillars, and unnecessary Obelisks and held onto them. If I were to activate every single one of them, I should be able to generate a tremendously powerful warding field. Earlier, I had Codex run the calculations, and while the multiplicative effect was a decaying one, with each added ward decreasing the overall efficiency by a certain percentage. Although with the number of obelisks available, I should be able to hide a large region from obscenely high-level people, or in this case, monsters.

The unfortunate side effect of retrieving them all was that my influence grew much, much smaller, reducing to Gorn village and the chain of pillars that led to Runehold.

As mentioned by many of my trusted, Vexus were attracted to large populations. After careful observation, I believe it’s because of how they convert normal mana into their own version. Curiously, every sapient being is like its own mana generator, while those at higher levels only generate even more.

With how my anti-detection wards worked on the Spyider variants of the Vexus, I already knew that these wards could disguise mana. Honestly, I think we would have been attacked way sooner if Runehold didn’t at least have a few; the population should be large enough to attract powerful enemies sooner than today.

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If need be, I could use my backup slots to hide all of the population underground; it could possibly work to mask the mana signatures.

For the moment, however, I wanted to see how the battle developed before taking any actions that would consume most of my mana regeneration.

Salfi had stayed in Gorn as one of its strongest guardians, but Osbert refused to leave his soldiers and twiddle his thumbs.

Astrid had already been evacuated into the tunnels, and she was currently displaying much surprise at their presence. Unfortunately, I couldn’t talk to her about it right now, as things were picking up, especially when the alpha decided to join in with its stronger minions.

A pair of Juggernaughts and Soldiers were able to take on one of the more powerful Vexus, but the alpha was different.

There was no warning; unlike the leader’s slow, methodical approach through the woods, it no longer cared for its brethren and instantly arrived next to one of the juggernauts, bringing a heavy paw down onto the leg of the Juggernaut, causing the steel joint to buckle under the pressure.