Warbreaker's Rage: A LitRPG Apocalypse Adventure (The Connected System Book 3), page 44
Harper did not like the elf woman. Not that she really knew the elf. Harper just didn’t trust her.
They made their way through the woods on the south side of Route 4. She’d done some scouting on the north side but hadn’t found any more of the humanoid frog creatures. Which was good. The gaunts were enough of a problem. And there was the threat of the giants and elves.
Their new Clan didn’t need anything else to worry about.
Davis led them toward the scout camp, inside an empty house. The woods were thick, but both of them had spent enough time to know the way. Harper was enjoying the time with Davis. She was sure both her father and Davis’ hadn’t been thrilled with both of them going off alone together. There were practical reasons. Both had scouting and stealth Abilities they could work on and their Classes complemented each other. But them being fathers, hers especially, they were never happy with two teens hanging out in the woods with no supervision.
Not that they’d had the time to do anything except talk.
When they were at the house, there were others around. Out in the woods, they had to keep on constant alert. No time to really do the things parents worried teenagers were doing.
Things Harper wished Davis would do.
He’d been a perfect gentleman. It was obvious he liked her. She liked him and made sure he knew that. She was ready to take the relationship to the next step. Maybe tonight, back at the camp, they could manage some alone time.
A noise behind her caught her attention.
“Davis,” she whispered.
He immediately turned, dropping the bundle of swords. They landed hard, metal clanging against metal. He held his spear across his body, eyes searching the woods behind her. Harper turned, shifting her stance, one leg stretched out and the other bent, ready to push her into the air. She quickly scanned the trees, measuring the branches, looking for the ones that would hold her weight. Her first move would be to jump into the lower branches, using them to balance before launching herself at the first attacker.
She thought about Skipping into the Shadow Realm but held off. Harper knew she was relying on that Ability too much. She’d already gotten it to Rank Two, which had somewhat shortened the cooldown and increased the length of time she could spend in the Realm. Not by a large amount, but every bit helped. She had other Abilities she needed to work on and the gaunt patrols had helped with that. They were typically equal Level to Davis, so between the two of them, with her higher Level, the patrols were somewhat easy. She didn’t need to go all out. It was a good opportunity to work on other Abilities.
The noises grew louder. Something pushing through the woods, speed over stealth. It wouldn’t be a gaunt patrol. The Gray Gaunt Drones weren’t that smart, but they knew the value of being quiet.
She took a step back, getting more clear space between the trees. Grunting and curses could now be heard. She relaxed a little. It had to be one of their patrols. There had been another out in the woods along with her and Davis. After the raid and knowing the hornet’s nest of gaunts they had stirred up, she and Davis had been spending most of their time operating out of the camp.
Shapes appeared in the shadows of the trees. Humanoid, moving quickly. They came closer, revealing themselves as the other patrol. Three men and a woman spread out, glancing behind them. All were breathing heavily like they’d been running for a while. Even with the increased stamina that being Adapted gave, it was still possible to get winded. For these people, still Level Five or Six, it was much easier than for Harper or Davis. It still amazed Harper how much stronger and faster she was compared to people ten or so years older than she was.
The man in the lead pulled up short, eyes wide in shock, sword raising. He lowered it as soon as he recognized her. The other three stopped, eyes looking behind them.
“Lady Harper,” he said between breaths.
“What’s going on?” she asked, not remembering the man’s name.
Harper knew she had to get better at that. Her father never seemed to forget any faces or names. It was a skill and not one given by the Connection. Just something he’d always been good at. She was horrible at it. There were kids in her school that she didn’t know the names of, and it wasn’t that large a school.
But with her family now the rulers of a growing Clan, she was going to have to figure out how to make it happen. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about all that. There were some benefits, and getting almost instant respect from adults much older than her was a big one, but she imagined there would be negatives as well. As the oldest of the Clanchief’s children, did that mean someday the Clan would be hers?
Harper didn’t like that idea.
That was a lot of responsibility to throw at a teenager. Before the Connection, being a teen was tough enough. Now it was so much harder. Add in knowing that someday she’d be responsible for the lives of hundreds, maybe even thousands by that point, of people. It was a little overwhelming.
No wonder the kids of the world’s few nobles had typically been so arrogant and snotty. They had to be, knowing what was coming in the future. They had no chance at a normal childhood. Was that going to be her fate?
Something to ask Cerie when they got back to the school. For now, she had other things to worry about.
The man pointed behind him in the direction the other three hadn’t stopped looking.
“We were near the wall,” he got out, his breathing quickly coming under control. “We thought it was a normal patrol at first, but then more of the gaunts kept coming past the wall. There were twenty of them before we turned and ran.”
“They were organized too,” the one woman in the patrol said, turning to look at Harper.
“They stood in straight lines and started marching down the ruins of the road.”
“Just the twenty,” Harper asked, exchanging a worried glance with Davis.
“That we saw.”
Harper knew there were more than twenty gaunts in that field. It was closer to two hundred, maybe more. Twenty wasn’t anything for their people to worry about. Her father, Piper, Davis, Brian, Jenny, and herself could handle twenty. Maybe her father could handle all of them on his own.
“Not all are Drones,” the first man added. “There was at least one Warrior and a Houndsman along with two of their dogs.”
Not everyone in the scouting teams had fought gaunts, but all had seen enough to be able to tell one of the gaunt types from another. With the Warrior and Houndsman, that made the twenty more dangerous. Still nothing that Harper thought was a real threat.
But why twenty? That was a pretty large group for a patrol.
It was a good number for the first attacking group.
“Head back to the camp,” she told the others. “Once there, gather everyone and everything up and head back to the school. Let my father know what you saw.” The four people of the patrol all nodded, still glancing behind them. They started walking toward and around her.
She twisted to look back at Davis. “You too.”
“But…”
“No,” Harper said, shaking her head. “Don’t. We need to know if there’s more and I’m the only one that can do it. Hurry back to the school.”
Davis stared at her for a couple more seconds, locking eyes. She waited for him to argue, hoping he wouldn’t say how she needed him, even though they both knew she was the stronger. He sighed then nodded, reaching down to get his bundle of swords. Harper watched him pick up the pace to join the patrol that had already set off.
Hiding a smile, she took off running in the opposite direction, angling to the road, trying to estimate where the squad of gaunts would be now.
The group of gaunts was organized. She stayed well back from the road, climbing a tree to hopefully avoid the hound’s senses. Four rows of five with the Warrior in the back row on the south side, the Houndsman in the back row on the north side. They marched in a somewhat orderly cadence. The lines couldn’t be maintained fully because of how ruined the road was, but when they got past the obstacles, the lines reformed.
The Warrior didn’t say any commands.
Harper watched the group continue down the road. They moved with purpose. It wasn’t a patrol, they didn’t fan out into the woods, just walked down the road heading straight for the school. She shifted position, looking toward the west, hoping there wouldn’t be more but knowing there would.
Another group of gaunts appeared. Twenty, including a Warrior and Houndsman. Same formation as the first group. They even broke apart around the obstacles the same way. She couldn’t be completely sure, but it was very close. It was unnerving.
There was no stumbling, no cries of surprise from a slip because there was none. Like the first, this group moved in near silence.
She waited, counting out the time before a third group appeared. Almost the same time between second and third as between first and second. No sound, the same march and movements around the obstacles in the ruined road.
Harper wondered if she should wait around and get an accurate count of the number of gaunts the Clan would soon be facing. There was no doubt where the gaunts were going. The Clan had been waiting for this, knowing that at some point, the gaunts would attack. Raiding the store had probably pushed that attack date up.
She was okay with that, as she was sure her father was. Knowing that there was a portal or something that allowed more gaunts to come to earth, the longer the inevitable fight took, the more gaunts there would be.
But to wait and watch or head back? She was pretty sure that if she pushed Shadowskip again, she could beat the first group back to the school. Barely. If she waited any longer, she wouldn’t. Harper knew how long it would take her to get from Johnson’s fields to the school. Would the gaunts be stopping for the night?
She was close enough to the fields that, pushing Shadowskip, she could make it in a couple of hours. Harper looked west, seeing dark storm clouds gathering over Northwood Lake. The winds were blowing to the east, the storm coming with them. She looked east, watching the gaunts continue down the road.
Harper knew what her father would want her to do, but she also knew what her father would need her to do.
Activating Shadowskip, Harper ran west.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Loch walked the wall, if it could really be called that. It wasn’t impressive, but it was the best they could do. There were gaps, mostly planned, a couple of places for defenders to stand and look over the walls. They weren’t as long as Loch wanted or had hoped for. At least they were continuous across the road and the parking lot, forcing the attackers to go around and then start to come up the hill.
Darren had some people working on some surprises there.
From the school to the water, the wall ran most of the way. It got thinner and shorter the closer to the water. There wasn’t much they could do for that gap. There just wasn’t enough material. Garbage cans, lockers, barrels, and anything that could be used as an obstacle was haphazardly arranged to cover that gap. They were filled with rocks and anything heavy, Loch hoping that it would at least slow the gaunts down, disrupt their flow, giving the backup teams a chance to get down there.
It was the best they could do. Each day, they added to the defenses, a little bit at a time. Scrambling to chop down trees, gather rocks, get anything they could, and add it to the walls. Luckily, they only had to defend from one side.
Loch wished he felt good about their chances. He wouldn’t let it show, but he wasn’t confident. They just didn’t have enough trained fighters. Barely any defenses. He’d fought the gaunts, and overall, the creatures were around Level Five to Eight. Not that bad for him and a couple of others. But most of Clan Brady’s defenders were only Level Five or Six. The Connected System considered gaunts monsters; normally, the extra Levels wouldn’t be that big a difference, but the defenders were used to fighting true monsters: Mutated Ants, Coyotes, that kind of thing. Most of them had not fought humanoids. The gaunts might not be the smartest of things, but they did have some tactics and awareness. Those extra two or three Levels could end up being a lot to the inexperienced defenders.
And if the gaunts had a lot of numbers? He’d killed a lot of them during the raid, but had it been enough? Had he really killed as many as he thought? There had been some kill notifications, a lot of Spirit gained, but he’d never gone through his logs to count the kills. At least two dozen, maybe as many as thirty. More? Was that a big dent in the enemy forces?
He hoped it was.
Loch was surprised at the amount of experience he’d gotten from those kills. They were so much lower Leveled, so he should have only gotten a tiny amount. If that. But somehow, the Connection must have thought the kills, in the way he had gotten them, to be quality kills.
He really didn’t understand the Connected System’s method of determining experience. It was just too random, too many variables.
Shouting came from behind him.
Loch stopped and looked up at the roof of the school. The archers were shouting and pointing. He was down in the parking lot, near the top of the hill leading to the fields, too far for even his Adapted hearing to catch. They were pointing to the west but not drawing weapons. Not the gaunts approaching, most likely a patrol returning.
Loch ran to the wall, jumping up onto a desk, giving him just enough height to look over the roughly stacked logs. The bark still remained on most of them, rough knobs along the entire length where branches had been cut away. Loch didn’t lean against the wall, not wanting to put weight against the logs. The logs were still rounded; there was some movement to them. Supports had been placed on the school side to keep them from falling back.
A group of figures were running down the road, avoiding the cracks and pushed up pieces of asphalt. They passed into the cleared area, the killzone before the school. Loch recognized some of the scouts from the gaunt area. They kept looking behind them, and with the way they were running, Loch didn’t like what it implied.
He leaped over the wall, landing on the other side, hand against the ground. Standing up, Loch jogged over to meet the group, raising his hands to slow them down.
“Whoa, what’s happening?”
The group stopped, fear and worry in their tired expressions. Had they been running all night?
“Lord Lochlan,” one of the men said, relief showing. “The gaunts.” He pointed behind him.
“What about them?”
“They’re coming,” he said, explaining what they had seen. “We ran into the Lady Harper.”
“Harper? Where is she?”
Loch looked past the man, trying to find his daughter in the woods, straining to look down the road. He didn’t see her but did see Davis Millman jogging down the road, leaping over the cracks and obstacles, not walking around them like the others had. The teen was carrying a bundle of swords.
“Get to the school, give your report to Darren,” Loch ordered the scouts. “Then get some rest.”
I have a feeling we’re going to need you soon, he thought to himself.
Making sure the scouts walked through a gap in the wall, Loch jogged out to meet Davis. In the distance, over the trees, Loch saw dark gray sky. A storm was coming.
“Where’s Harper?”
Davis came to a stop, not wanting to meet Loch’s gaze. He tried to soften his glare, not wanting to scare Davis.
“She’s out scouting,” Davis finally said, still not looking at Loch. “I wanted to stay with her, but…”
“She’s the higher Level,” Loch said, not harshly. It was just a simple fact. “What is she thinking?”
“Did the scouts tell you?”
“Yeah.”
Davis nodded, shifting the bundle of swords. There were only four, but that was added to the dozen or so that Davis and Harper had already sent to the school. Four wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. The gaunt blades were decent quality. If they had a blacksmith, that Class could repair the swords and improve the quality.
If they had a blacksmith, they could make their own swords.
“She wanted to see if there were more gaunts besides that first group,” Davis said, quickly turning away at Loch’s glare.
Loch sighed, turning away from Davis. The young man hadn’t done anything. He wasn’t the target of Loch’s ire. He wanted to be mad at Harper for being reckless, but she really wasn’t. She was right. They had to get a better understanding of what was coming. Was it just the one group or more? The full gaunt army?
Out of everyone in the Clan and school, Harper was the best suited for that assignment.
But it was Harper.
Alone with a possible hostile army around her.
Sending her back to the school alone was different, that was getting her away from danger. Now she was in the middle of it and chances are they would be fighting by the time she got back.
Davis wouldn’t even know how far behind him she might be.
Loch fought the urge to go running after her. Or send Elora out to replace Harper.
He had to trust his daughter. She was skilled, the second strongest person in the Clan. With her Abilities, she could get away from any trouble. And she wasn’t foolhardy. Harper had always had a good head on her shoulders, even before the Connection. She’d be careful.
She’d come back to him.
She had to.
Loch took a deep breath.
He was needed here, not out there.
As much as he wanted to be out there.
“Twenty isn’t bad,” Darren said, hopeful.
“If that’s all we need to deal with,” Loch said, leaning against the brick parapet.
Elora stood a couple steps back and to the side, her sharp eyes scanning the woods. No one said anything about the elf being there, but they had eyed her nervously when she’d followed Loch onto the roof. Now that they’d all been up there for a while, they were no longer staring at her. Still stealing glances, but they were no longer as interested. Elora being unarmed helped. Loch wasn’t yet at the point where he trusted her enough to give her a weapon.
