Chapter 274 – Defending.

It started out slow, one or two skeletal fiends at a time. The turrets didn’t have a problem aiming at the undead creatures that just rushed without any fret for their own lives. They were like guiding missiles aiming for the closest living being or magical object in the vicinity. In this case, it was one of his turrets that didn’t even need to move to shoot at the charging blazing skeleton.

Each time one of them was dead he was given a very minimal amount of experience points. This was quite annoying as otherwise killing the vast quantity of these creatures would help him achieve tier 3 a lot faster. However, he would need to worry about that after he took care of the problem before him.

There was one main road leading from the dungeon to the city. Roland had already witnessed the monsters following even smaller paths like the one to his house. Probably the majority of these monsters would end up at the city gates while a smaller number was funneled towards his side instead.

“Hey, Boss.”

“What is it? Did they sneak around the back?”

“No, it’s a message from the missus.”

Roland turned towards Bernir who for the time being had gone down from the walls. Instead, he went to the workshop to look at the map there. While the minimap in his armor was similar it was a much smaller screen. It was a lot easier to look through the larger one that was down in the workshop.

Besides it, there were the usual communication crystal balls, one of them he had lent to Elodia a few weeks before. It came equipped with a few battery packs and had a speed dial connection to his workshop.

“Bring it over then, I can use it without the support items.”

Bernir was quick to move with the crystal ball over. Normally anyone that wanted to use these items and wasn’t a mage needed to use specialized runic devices. However, Roland was the one that made this one and had the required mana to run it. As soon as the blinking ball made it into his hand he injected some mana into it. The surface started shining brightly before calming down and showing a close-up of Elodia’s nose.

“You don’t need to lean so closely to it…”

“Ah…”

He smiled slightly under his helmet as he saw her jolt away to make her face fully visible. The crystal ball that was in the orphanage was hidden away in a sturdy cupboard. Thus after opening it Elodia usually just leaned down really closely without realizing that it would mess up the image.

There was a solution for this, if he implemented a golemic eye it could function as a webcam. Crystal balls came equipped with this feature as a default so no one really bothered to change the design. Perhaps it was a quality-of-life upgrade but it would still be hard to sell it to people that were used to the old technology.

“I see that you are safe, are you all at your house?”

“Yes, Lobelia is with us.”

For a moment he could hear some sounds coming from behind Elodia which made it hard to hear. Elodia wasn’t the only person in the room as the orphans were there. The young kids had never really had the chance to play with a magic device like this, thus they continued to ask questions with eyes wide open.

“Hey, is that Uncle Wayland?”

“Is it, why is he wearing that funny helmet?”

“That’s enough, everyone out of the room!”

“Booo!”

He could hear Lobelia’s voice squabbling with some of the orphans. Luckily within a few minutes, they were able to clear out the room and he could finally talk to her in private.

“How is it? Did they lock down the city?”

“Yes they did, they sounded the warning bell and aren’t letting people leave the city, Lobelia was outside, the soldiers are forcing people to go back to their homes and the rest are at the square.”

“What is the guild doing about it? Are they organizing something?”

“There was an announcement from the city lord, they are going to form a Militia, and Armand decided to join it.”

It seemed that Lobelia was the only combatant left in the orphanage. Armand as always probably saw it as a chance to show off however he wasn’t that stupid. He must have been convinced that Elodia and the kids would be safe in the orphanage otherwise, he would have stayed with them.

“He did? That’s like him, what of the outside did they spot any undead?”

“Yes but they had managed to dispatch them before they got to the gates, they are reassuring everyone that this won’t take long… but what about you? Are you safe?”

“I’m fine, though I didn’t expect Bernir to show up, Dyana must be livid…”

“She was… but she managed to calm down but she understands.”

Roland nodded as he knew that Bernir’s and Dyana’s success and livelihood were tied to his workshop. If it was overrun by undead creatures then it would take a while to recover.

“Don’t worry, the skeletons are relatively weak, there won’t be a problem the runic turrets will be enough.”

Elodia nodded but he wasn’t sure if she believed him. In reality, he wasn’t sure how this predicament would play itself out. The monsters weren’t that strong but there were a lot of them. Then there were the superior undead that were quite troublesome, if one of them showed up at his doorstep then it would get spicy.

“Are you sure? Wouldn’t it be better if you come back to the city, I’m sure yo.. we can rebuild everything later, there is no reason to put yourself in danger.”

“No reason huh?”

Roland knew that if he just went back to the city then everything would probably be fine. Everything would probably work out in one way or another, his home might not even be destroyed as what was important was the underground workshop and not what was above.

However, after living in this house for so long he was getting sentimental. He could not stomach just letting this place be destroyed. There was another reason as well, he was tired of constantly running away. This was a chance for him to finally fight back and not run away like the two last times. At the moment he had amassed enough knowledge and experience to stem the tide.

“I can’t do that and stop worrying, I’m not going to put my life in danger, me and Bernir are just going to stay here for a few days until the city lord calls for a platinum party to take care of the Lich, it won’t be a problem.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“But…”

“I’ll be fine, just trust me!”

Elodia gave out a sigh and nodded. The crystal ball started blinking a bit as the time for conversation was coming to an end. Just as any magical device there was a certain time limit. In this case, it was built in to limit the deterioration of the runes if the call took too long then the ball could even shatter.