[1% LIFESTEAL] Chapter 194 - Breach

[AUTHOR'S NOTE]

Sorry for the late and somewhat short chapter. I had a week from hell which robbed me most of my work time. Sick family member, lots of hospital visits, and that's on top of loads of chores. Ugh. I wish I could finally breathe a little.
Anyway, hope you guys enjoy!
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Despite the fact that he was rushing back to the wall as quickly as humanly possible, Freddy wasn’t panicking. A breach in the wall was a crisis, yes, but not only had he been living through a crisis for a while already and was prepared for such emergencies, he also believed that a breach in the wall shouldn't have been that big of a deal. 

The wall was important, but its role was to allow the frontliners to pull back whenever necessary. As long as the defenders were still standing, it was unlikely that many monsters would make it into the city.

As he set off at a run, he suddenly employed Hydraulic Flex to push himself forward, faster and faster. Emily and Georgie both ran along with him, and at first, they could almost keep up with his speed. In fact, Emily was a bit faster than him. But as he got into a rhythm and reached his maximum speed, he quickly overtook her.

He didn’t wait for anyone to catch up. He trusted his companions and the mercenaries, knowing they would likely be all right as he rushed to make it back to the wall as quickly as humanly possible.

Once he arrived, however, his sense of calm instantly vanished.

The alarm denoted a breach in the wall—but it denoted any kind of breach. There was no specification for how big the breach actually was. And the situation was far worse than he expected.

A section of about 500 meters in length had collapsed into rubble. From within it, he could see numerous heavily wounded defenders pulling themselves out of the debris. Many of them had died.

Gasping in shock, his mind reeled.

What the hell could have caused all of this? he wondered.

Pushing those thoughts aside, he raised his Sanguine Avenger and rushed at the first monster he saw.

To their credit, the vanguard was holding up just fine. Several of the more powerful defenders had stepped forward, flaring their auras as they commanded the weaker fighters, directing them into formations to maximize defense. As for the monsters, there weren’t any more than usual. Not at first.

But with such a huge section of the wall collapsed, the number of ranged defenders had plummeted sharply at that particular spot, leaving a significant gap.

From what Freddy could see at a distance, many of the monsters were gradually shifting their direction—subtly yet noticeably—towards the collapsed section.

“Shit,” he cursed as he ran.

A few seconds later, he found himself diving into the mass of monsters, swinging his sword and cleaving through them like a farmer scything through wheat. When he held the grip near the pommel, he could drastically extend his range. The speed at which he was dispatching enemies left many of the defenders gaping in shock. He was like a natural disaster—parting the sea of monsters as he ran through them.

Every swing cleaved through about ten monsters, and he swung almost twice per second. It was the kind of display that people only ever really saw in movies, and not in real life.

A few moments later, Georgie arrived with a crack of lightning, having overtaken Emily at some point. With a swing of her hand, she conjured a massive surge of water that flooded through a particularly thick section of the monster horde. She waited until the tide receded to only about an inch off the ground, and then, a spark of lightning coursed through the water, paralyzing and even killing many of the monsters caught within.

Seconds later, Emily arrived, raising her hand. Despite only a single star lighting up in her chest, a massive, hundred-meter radius of land suddenly plunged into darkness, leaving the monsters inside dazed and scrambling to find their way. If that wasn’t enough, many of them actually started attacking each other, making Freddy wonder what kinds of concepts that ability was built upon.

Despite lagging a bit behind the rest, Peri arrived as well, together with her dragon of soulfire. It flew above the invading horde, breathing fire through it, scorching a vast section of land, killing nearly every monster weaker than an average two-star with a single breath.

“We have enough manpower to fight them off!” Freddy shouted to the line of defenders. “Half of you, go and help pull the victims out of the rubble!”

After only a moment of hesitation, a large portion of the defenders—more than half, in fact—turned and went to assist their comrades from the wreckage. Even then, with Freddy and the others there, the situation was mostly under control. 

The handlers of the young elites had been following them closely the whole time, and even in this kind of circumstance, they still only watched from a distance. 

Freddy was tempted to shout at them to get them to step in and help, but held his tongue. While they were acting as bodyguards, these weren’t average three-stars. Just by the way they stood, Freddy could tell they weren’t particularly intimidated or impressed by the danger at hand.

Gritting his teeth, he ignored them as he focused on killing more monsters. 

Soon enough, the others from his team and the handful of other mercenaries that followed the young elites around arrived as well. 

For about an hour, things went smoothly. They fought the monsters back while the victims of the fallen wall were being rescued and treated. 

During that time, Freddy got a much closer look at the young elites in action. 

Emily’s hair could extend to about 10 meters in length. Swinging it like a whip, she cleaved through the horde. Her attacks were precise and lethal; her bindings were so strong that even a single, hair-thin tread of darkness could keep a weaker monster tied up. Be it killing or restraining, she was fast and rarely took more than one move to handle a target.

Georgie was the slowest when it came to killing, mostly due to the essence-intensive abilities she used. That being said, her attacks against single targets were explosive and absolute. Her combination of lightning and metal abilities showed why she had such a large collection of disposable weapons—when she went all out, most of the weapons ended up twisted out of shape by the sheer power of her attacks. 

Peri’s Soulfire Dragon single-handedly culled about 80% of the approaching monsters, weeding out the chaff with its Soulfire Breath. Wherever a monster died to its attack, a rudimentary fire elemental was summoned. Usually, the dragon consumed these smaller elementals to replenish energy, but now Peri left about half of them alive, spreading them out to help stall the incoming monsters even further. 

They were really quite weak, but they acted as an excellent distraction. They also created a small explosion on death.

Past the one hour mark was when things finally started getting dire again.

The construction crew was just getting started with fixing the wall up. To their credit, they were damn fast. The rubble was still there, and earth abilities allowed them to piece the stone back together, so there was no need to bring more material. 

But the horde of monsters had continued growing thicker and thicker. And with nobody to scout ahead, the bigger threats were starting to close in—several at once, almost as if they’d been waiting for this to happen.

The first among them was a zombie bear. It was quite skinny and emaciated, making it look relatively unthreatening. But as soon as it arrived on the battlefield, the situation took a dire turn for the worse. The creature possessed a talent that made it automatically bring corpses back to life, even piecing scattered or charred gore into flesh golems that got up and started attacking.

The worst part was that because this was a talent and not an ability, there appeared to be no limit to how many corpses it could bring back from the dead. At first, Peri’s dragon of soulfire, kept the undead number to a minimum, mostly by charring the corpses of killed monsters to a crisp.

But then the second threat arrived. A pitch-black spider blitzed across the landscape, leaping into the air and tying Perry's dragon up into bindings of darkness, finally putting it out of the fight. 

Emily tried to restrain the spider, but with its natural affinity for the dark, her bindings were significantly less effective on it than on basically any other kind of opponent. Freddy tried lunging in to hunt it down, but it was ridiculously fast—faster even than him while he was sped up by Twisted Pendulum. 

He tried throwing javelins at it, but it had an uncanny ability to predict where his throws would go. It ran circles around them, picking away at the weaker defenders to further crumble their defense, all while running back to keep the lich bear safe from harm.

While these two monsters were already starting to turn the tides, things got even worse with the arrival of the third. A floating, white, three-eyed head appeared from seemingly nowhere, having likely been invisible just a moment prior. 

Were it just of the light affinity, there wouldn’t be half a problem. But it also possessed the holy affinity, which was incredibly rare among monsters. When it appeared, it made the situation even worse. It could heal monsters within its range of vision and even apply Blessings, making the already ridiculously dangerous spider even more of a threat.

As the situation rapidly deteriorated, Freddy felt like he was losing his mind. The elite handlers were still doing nothing but sitting around and waiting, even if some of them looked like they were preparing to step in. 

He was about to breathe a sigh of relief when he saw a golden-robed elderly man jump into the fight. But all he really did was pull Peri out of the way of the spider's attack, which would have likely severely injured her. And that was it. Once he picked her up, he simply left.

Mind reeling, Freddy barely held himself back from cursing the man out. It was becoming increasingly obvious that he would be forced to use blood sacrifice to keep things from completely spiraling out of control. 

Just as he was reaching his limit, and just as he was about to succumb to the temptation to summon Bloodshed, a spear of crystallized miasma shot out from atop the wall, hitting the spider right in its head, taking it out of the fight. 

With the spider dead, nothing was protecting the zombie bear. Unhesitantly, Freddy took out a spear, conjured his blood javelin, and threw it at the bear, hitting its head and finally removing it from combat.

In the next moment, the white floating head blinked out of existence as it activated its invisibility, but even that wasn’t enough, as another spear of crystallized miasma shot out, hitting it out of the air.

Freddy looked up at the wall, spotting the adjudicator holding his hand out, his eyes scouting the situation to see if there was anything else to take care of. There were few moments where he felt more grateful for someone’s help in his entire life.

With the three monsters out of the way, the situation finally stabilized, with Freddy, Georgie, and Emily finally being free to properly push the incoming tide of monsters back. 

With the looming threat diminished, the construction workers came out in full force, quickly erecting about 20% of the wall, which was already enough to prevent most of the minor threats from making their way in. 

It appeared that whatever force was controlling these monsters had them rush ahead as quickly as possible to capitalize on the sudden gap in the wall. Due to this, there was a big gap behind them, finally giving them a moment of respite and allowing them to reorganize.

The most important thing now was to discover what exactly had destroyed such a vast section of the wall.

Before Freddy could even begin his investigation, the adjudicator leaped down and waved the three elites over. Peri also returned to the fight, looking a little ashamed of herself as she walked over to their group to join the conversation.

"Apologies for being late," the adjudicator said as he looked Freddy right in the eye. "I would have come sooner were I not occupied by a separate issue."

"Did you find what destroyed the wall?" Freddy asked.

Sighing, the adjudicator said, "Yes. And the situation is worse than you think."

Freddy’s heart skipped a beat at those words. "What caused it?” he asked.

“Is it not what, but who did it that is the problem,” the adjudicator elaborated. "This was an inside job."

As soon as he mentioned those words, Freddy’s expression turned cold.

"And I wish I could tell you that this was some kind of terrorist conspiracy. That would make things simple.” Pinching his brow, the adjudicator released a heavy breath. “Unfortunately, it is much worse than that. We tracked down seven individuals who had planted explosive devices inside the maintenance tunnels that go through these walls. 

“All of them had square pupils."