Their momentum carried them over to the other side of the street as George glided to the ground, digging his claws in. He left scrapes on the ground and tossed up debris as they turned back to the street.
Rugrat unslung his rifle as he yelled out commands.
“Patrik, Sabina, hold your position on your end. The rest of you, move across as fast as possible. Strosic! Once you’re across with me, we’ll cover Patrik and Sabina.”
Rugrat got to the corner of the street and started firing his rifle at the moving skeletons covered in flames.
George blasted out fireballs, their momentum causing even the large undead to be thrown backwards.
“Covering!” Patrik and Sabina yelled as they had taken positions in a broken building, shooting at the undead down the road.
The rest of the group raced across the street, not taking the time to shoot.
“Dong Ju, keep going!” Rugrat shouted.
Sergeant Dong Ju kept them moving down the street as Strosic wheeled out, his panther finding grip on the road as he moved up to beside Rugrat.
“Move it!” Rugrat yelled at Patrik and Sabina.
Patrik and Sabina’s panthers moved as fast as they could, rushing across the street. A sword came flying down the street passed them and an undead mage shot out a string of curses that hit the ground or other buildings around the two, cutting holes wherever they landed.
George turned, leading Strosic’s mount as Patrik and Sabina passed.They all raced after Dong Ju.
“Cleared, regrouping with you,” Rugrat said as he reloaded his rifle.
“We’ve got incoming from the sides and ahead!” Dong Ju yelled.
Rugrat looked at the road with his mana sight, looking through the buildings.
“Shit, okay, what if we go up? Broken building to the left!”
Dong Ju’s panther led the way up the building, the others following.
They climbed and clambered up the debris pile that was left of the house, parts of it collapsing as the riders relied on their panther’s reactions as they jumped and clawed their way onto the buildings next to it.
George opened his wings, flapping them and using a few touches on the old destroyed building to reach the roof. The other three scouts with Rugrat charged ahead, looking to catch up with the rest of the section. Rugrat looked over the capital from his new high vantage point.
The streets are turning into a mess. We need to go across the rooftops but they stop before the interior walls. I could make the leap to the walls with George but the others couldn’t.
Rugrat’s eyes fell on the top section of the spire that had dropped onto the city.
Sections of one of the roofs collapsed under one panther. The panther reacted, jumping up and clearing the hole as the others moved around the new hole or jumped over it.
“Spread out, twenty meter spacing!” Rugrat yelled.
The scouts rushed across the roofs, getting closer to the inner wall. Running from roof to roof across the city, the panthers pushed their limits for their riders.
“Contact left!” someone called out, firing their repeater on a skeleton that had climbed up to a roof.
The new threat was hit with three rounds. They’d changed their formation sockets and their rounds, penetrating the skeleton and exploding. The poison laced on the round was acid based, melting the skeleton. The skeleton dropped back to the ground with its skull smashed.
There was sounds of fighting in the city from every direction.
“The undead are fighting one another in droves over there,” Tullia said as they pointed off into the distance.
“Better them than us!” Rugrat announced.
They continued on as Rugrat pulled out a speed scroll and cast it.
==========
Speed increased by 23% for 10 minutes
==========
Their speed increased dramatically, as they bounced ahead of the fighting and the high concentrations of undead, now lumbering behind them.
They must have been fighting with one another for centuries. With all of that killing, their Strength must be enormous.
The group of panthers and riders passed areas where undead were fighting one another, as they had for lifetimes. With this cycle of constant war, the strongest beings had continued to rise while the weak were left as bones, leading to these powerful monsters.
Dong Ju led them to a breach in the wall, where the broken sections of wall had created a lower bridge from the outer to the inner city.
They rode their panthers down the rubble of the wall.,Once on the ground again they bounded into the inner area of the city.
They passed through the into the area where the more affluent members must have lived. It had larger buildings, that were better built and had wide streets with higher quality crafting workshops arranged in a wagon wheel shape. The roads led to the broken main spire that reached into the heavens and the circular castle that lay underneath it.
“Move towards the broken spire. Those walls look sturdy and the spire is lying right on top of it,” Rugrat said.
The lead panther changed their direction as Dong Ju checked their groups limited map, trying to plot a route.
“Contact!” Sabina yelled out as her rifle cracked.
“Shit,” Rugrat moaned. He looked at the undead that were fighting one another ahead of them. Just being hit with the shockwaves of their fight would kill them.
“Roofs!” Rugrat shouted.
The scout squad ducked down a side street as the lead scout led them towards a broken series of buildings that led up to rooftops.
Undead appeared from within the rubble around them.
“Shoot em and keep going!” Rugrat ordered He could see that there were undead closing in from all around them. His mana sight was limited by the buildings; these inner city buildings had much thicker construction and thus were harder to see through.
The squad fired on the undead as their panthers used all of their speed to sprint ahead. They felt like the devil himself was chasing them as they bunched together.
Rugrat fired on the skeletons, not looking to kill, just to push them back.
They finally got onto the roofs, cutting a straight line towards the spire.Strosic, who was the last man in the section, threw a grenade down to welcome the skeletons in the rubble pile.
A small dust cloud exploded behind as they continued to move over the roofs, trying to avoid the roiling mass of death that roamed the streets below them. There were a few times when tiles slipped or people lost their balance but with the taller homes, few undead made it up to reach them in time.
Rugrat saw the horde of undead that now lay below them, blocking the streets leading to the dungeon core.
“I’m getting a look from above!” Rugrat shouted as he patted George. They jumped into the sky. They were getting close to the spire. There was undead all over the streets around them, patrolling, running to battles or just standing there.
Thankfully none of them had climbed on top of the broken spire that was Fifty meters wide and taller than most of the buildings in the inner city.
He looked back at the scout section.
They had barely slept for three days and rode nearly the entire time but there were no complaints, no words that needed to be said as they followed him.
Death was all around them but there was little that they could do. Throwing grenades here would be a waste, hurting a few of the skeletons at best.
The squad continued to cut through what looked to be higher class areas. The panthers jumped from the buildings to the large spire, scrambling up it and then rushing for the central castle.
Rugrat nudged George and they drifted down, rejoining the scout section on the ground once again.
“It’s pretty much a straight shot from here to the castle, where the dungeon core should be!” Rugrat explained before he got close to Dong Ju.“How they doing?”
“Minor scrapes and bruises, all loaded up and ready to go First Sergeant,” Don
g Ju said.
“Good shit,” Rugrat nodded and then raised his voice.“The rest of the company is relying on us! Keep your heads on a swivel and call out anything that looks like a threat!”
From the inner wall to the castle district it must have been close to two kilometers, a distance that they were crossing quickly.
They passed over the barracks and training grounds for the capital’s military. Now, there was no more life, and bodies were everywhere—both the non-human people with tails and humans. There were mounts and beast skeletons across the whole area. The large-scale destruction here all looked to be done with people’s own physical abilities and magic instead of with siege weapons and war machines.
This must have been a battleground of their Elites.
A part of his mind couldn’t help but wonder just what kind of war machines and loot that they might be able to find here.
Rugrat looked at the damage as they kept on going. The castle was broken in areas, with openings here and there but Rugrat could see into the castle. Only the main entrances were made of a size for beasts.
There was a cry in the sky. Several flying beasts that had been resting at the top of the jagged spire that jutted out of the castle jumped off, diving as they gathered speed directly towards the scout squad.
“Check your spacing and zig-zag! Change to repeaters, explosive distance shots!” Rugrat ordered.
The squad continued moving forwards but moving randomly side to side, making it harder to aim on them. hey put their rifles away and grabbed their repeaters, changing their bolt magazines and their formation sockets.
“Just three hundred meters more!” Rugrat exclaimed.
The flying undead came out of their dive, snapping up and shooting down by the base of the spire.
The undead flying beasts opened their bony faces and let out cries. The skeletons on their backs with black swirling eyes let out their own yells, eager to spill blood from those who had dared to enter their city.
Rugrat had changed one repeater around and had put it back in his storage ring. He was working on the second as George raised his head and started pumping out fire balls that exploded in the sky, making it hard for the skeleton fliers to pass through.
The undead flying beasts altered their paths to avoid the fireballs with angry noises as their riders were jostled around.
The squad started firing on the airborne threat. Their repeater bolts reached up into the sky, most of them missing but still exploding in the air, filling it with acidic gas that the airborne undead had to fly through or dodge.
Rugrat finished with his second repeater and pulled out the first as he laid back on George, shooting them up into the sky.
Shooting with two different hands was highly inaccurate—if you were just a human, without marksman skills and an innate knowledge of the movement of the world of Mana around you.
Bolt after bolt flew from Rugrat’s crossbows. The undead creatures dove and rolled as the squad were lying on their backs, their expressions stony as they filled the sky with explosive bolts.
Rugrat could feel the Mana gathering as the riders of the winged creatures readied themselves to create a spell.
Rugrat felt the Mana within him moving to his will and the Mana around him was clamped down. A suppressive atmosphere followed him as the bolts in his repeaters started to glow red. Rugrat’s body started to light up with the glow of contained Mana. The Mana around him was turned to chaos. A grin appeared on his face as the hairs on the back of his head raised up at the power under his command. The others in the group felt a deep-seated, almost evolutionary fear and excitement from Rugrat as he fired his bolts.
If Rugrat’s bolts from before were like rounds, they were now like artillery shells.
The undead birds might not be afraid of death but they couldn’t disobey the laws of physics and air resistance. The explosions knocked them to the sides, causing them to try to fight to stay on their trajectories.
“Disrupt their flight path! We just need to get past them!” Rugrat yelled. Even with his custom rounds, he couldn’t defeat them in a few shots. He was only try to gain space and create openings.
The others in the group obeyed, trying to disrupt the casters and their mounts as much as possible.The undead mages riding on the creatures seemed to realize that they wouldn’t be given the time to call down large spells.
Mana bolts shot out from a mage’s hands instead, peppering the broken spire and sending out shards of stone, making the scouts flinch at the near misses.
Lightning attacks played across the spire from the undead mages. Water turned into arrows and shot down at the scouts below.
“Fuck!” Someone yelled out as they were hit with water arrows.
Rugrat glanced over, seeing them holding their chest but still firing.
The first scouts had reached the base of the spire and were climbing down the broken wall, rushing towards the castle.
A mana bolt hit the spire above, right in front of Sabina.
Her panther was killed as they were tossed off of the spire into a free fall.
She slammed into the ground and rolled, no longer moving. .
“Sabina!” Patrik yelled out. He was the closest to her and moved to her as the aerial undead were starting to circle around to follow up with a second attack.
“Keep moving!” Rugrat yelled as he saw the squad start slowing down as Patrik stopped next to Sabina. He jumped off of his mount and put his hand to her neck and started to resuscitate her.
“Patrik?” asked Dong Ju.
“I-I can’t get a reading on her pulse, nothing,” Patrik said, his voice turning professional and analytical.
“Get her into your storage ring, move it!” Rugrat yelled.“Get your fucking heads in the game and keep going!” Rugrat yelled to them all as George kicked up the ground. Patrik stored Sabina in his storage ring as they rushed for the castle.
Rugrat checked his map.
We just need to get through the castle!
Strosic let out a scream-grunt as he was hit with a lighting blast. e entered the castle last, smoke coming off of his armor.
He and his panther slumped as they flopped forwards. Their momentum still carried them as if they were puppets with their strings cut. hey slowly smoked on the ground.
“Move! Get to the dungeon core, I’ve got him!” Rugrat turned back, knowing George was the strongest and the fastest.
Rugrat jumped off of George as they got close to Strosic. Rugrat grunted has he dove on the ground, using his legs to get over to Strosic.
He used simple organic scan on him and his panther.
Gritting his teeth, Rugrat put them in his storage ring and then jumped back onto George.
They’re just so strong here that even a slight graze could kill us. Mother fuckers.
He pushed the rest of his emotions down as he raced to catch up with the rest of the squad.
What he had thought was the actual castle was merely the outer wall protecting the compound inside. There were training grounds, open gardens, crafting buildings and housing. It wasn’t a castle but rather a castle district.
They had passed the barracks and now ran across a large open area with broken fountains and a massive garden, whose glory had been lost long ago.
Rugrat heard the aerial beasts with their mages that were now behind them.
“Move it!” Rugrat yelled as they sped across the inner area. The actual castle and cover from the aerial mages, lay ahead of them.
“Nothing is more important than getting that dungeon core!” Rugrat yelled. He hoped that they would all make it out of the blast zone of the spell but hedged his bets.
“Yes, First Sergeant!” they yelled back.
Rugrat nodded as they rushed on. Seeing their friends hurt and possibly killed, they had already changed.
Clouds converged above them as lightning rained down.
“Spread out! Move through cover!” Rugrat yelled. The lightning struck the ground, creat
ing new craters in the dirt and destroying the bones and debris that lay there.
A fountain was struck, turning it into flying rubble that struck one scout. They were able to remain on their mount but their left arm dangled uselessly by their side.
The rain transformed and turned white, its speed increasing as ice arrows shot down from the sky.
Mana lances also shot towards the soldiers. Spells were cast on the ground and plants were revived and slithered through the skeletons, weaving through their bones and turning them into humanoid plant creatures.
Rugrat and the others fired at them blindly as they focused on moving erratically because their lives did depend on it.
Using fire superiority to force the enemy back failed as, unlike live opponents, the undead continued to charge into their attacks with no regards for their well being.
Quagmires appeared, one panther was unable to dodge the newly created obstacle. Its paws entered and its rider was tossed, landing on the ground a meter away as multiple fireballs rained down from above.
The ground was torn up by the spell rain as the scouts all shifted around, making it harder to hit them.
Rugrat was hit in the shoulder and then the back with rocks from a near miss spell hitting the ground.
The first scout made it through a broken castle wall, their panther’s legs turning quickly as they tried to find purchase on the floors that were covered with bodies and rubble.
The rest of the squad pushed forwards into the corridors, clearing space for those following behind.
They all piled in through the breaches in the true castle.
The mages stopped firing on Rugrat’s group as they banked away with angry cries and yells.
“Store your mounts!” Rugrat ordered. Inside they would be more of a hindrance than an aid.
George shrunk in size, now about the size of a dog as the others were returned to their creature storage rings.
“Reloading!” one called out.
“West, this is Rugrat. We have entered the castle. We have a location on the dungeon core. Two KIA at this time. There are multiple undead in the streets, as well as aerial undead,” Rugrat reported into his communication device as they moved.
The Fourth Realm (The Ten Realms Book 4) Page 16