Chapter 135 Ambushed

We had kept up the fighting, even as more undead poured in, but as they did, our levels kept going up. I had gone from one all the way back up to thirty-five. That would have taken a year or so of farming to do, and I had accomplished it in a single day, and I was getting roughly half the experience my combat class wives were getting.

What was overwhelming before now seemed to be another day of heavy grinding as we fell into the familiar rhythm of wiping them out. All these dead corpses and undead energy were affecting the dungeons, and I had felt a few snap as we kept being pushed back, becoming berserk dungeons, which would only slow the advancing army down more as the dungeon would fight back much harder.

I cut through another undead as I asked. “What are you all thinking of for dinner?” Cherry smashed the head of an undead as she answered. “Really? You’re thinking of food right now with all these stinky corpses around?” Before I could answer, Tems and Silk both answered. “Something sweet!” “A bunch of meat!” Sarah was right behind them with her answer. “How about something exotic? Don’t we still have some of that seafood left? We could do a seafood gumbo with peanut sauce. Or a normal gumbo and a peanut butter cake for dessert.”

She was normally the best at finding the middle ground on what everyone ate, and Cherry was the one who cooked her concoctions. I could tell some other girls wanted to add their opinion, but Tems cut them off before they could. “Careful. I smell something funny.” There wasn’t a beat later before a man appeared right in front of her and swung his weapon.

Only the fact that he attacked Tems, one of the fastest of us, and she was alert, did she manage to deflect the sneak attack and land her own counterblow, cutting the shadow man in half as the two pieces flew backwards before reforming. As he did so, a large contingent of other troops appeared out of nowhere, the shadows covering them all coalescing into the man who made the attack.

All attacked as their cover dropped. I couldn’t even make out who was all here, but it was a similar number of generals as the previous group that attacked us. Just as we were about to fight, one of them screamed in our direction. It was so powerful that I had to put my hands over my ears as I almost fell down from the pain.

Only Tems, Silk, and Leaf managed to stay up, mostly because they were the ones fighting the other generals. Tems and Silk were the least affected, except they actually weren’t. They just ignored the pain. I could see blood dripping from everyone who didn’t manage to cover them. I got a good look at the generals as I stood back on my feet and prepared to help with the fighting.

There were only two… No three… Scratch that, four enemies that looked to be a cut above the rest. All fighting the combat classes of our group as they tried to kill the strongest members in their sneak attack, which failed. The screamer of the group looked to be a banshee. Her skin was a darker color, but at the same time lighter than it would be if blood still flowed through her body. Likely a Northerner, which was sad to see, because she was very attractive, so it was a shame she was dead.

A shorter vampire girl was attacking Leaf with blood arrows as she dodged and returned fire. The shadow man fought Tems, his body morphing as the shadows extended to attack, sort of making it appear as if tendrils shot from his body, but anywhere that wasn’t hardened could be easily cut through with Tems’ weapon. It wasn’t a fair fight, and the shadow man was being pushed back.

Silk fought against a mummified man, but also… Held a cat in his hand that was staring at Silk. Silk had done her best to ignore the cat, but once their eyes met, her movements began to slow down. Not completely stopped, but enough for the mummy, the cat controlled to go from the backfoot to the pursuer in the fight. The banshee looked to be in intense pain, which I didn’t even know undead could feel.

She met Sophie in battle, her dual weapons slashing off Sophie’s shield as she coughed out blood from the scream attack recoil. Cherry launched a fireball into the army that was pushing up, but also close enough to the shadow to tell if he was weak to fire, and he was. The flames made him flicker and contort in fear as they tried to move away, which made the collection of shadows break into three separate forms before combining again on the opposite side of Tems.

Silk held her head, fighting whatever the cat was doing as the mummy tried to close the distance between them. A terrible glow formed from the mummy's hand, as if his touch alone could do significant damage to her, but it was abruptly ended as a hatchet flew out of nowhere, thrown by Olivia, hitting the cat, breaking the mental connection it was trying to form with Silk, and killing it in the process.

As it died, the mummy it was commanding also fell down as if it were a puppet with its strings cut. With the fall of the first general, the fight shifted in our favor. The group also seemed to be controlling a more powerful version of the undead troops that had been swarming in, but besides being twice as strong/fast/hard to kill, they weren’t much different.

The vampire girl laughed as she dodged again, moving so fast that only she, Leaf, and Tems could keep up, but I didn’t need to keep up, just lay a trap for Leaf to take advantage of. As she was moving, I waited for her to start backpedalling before I raised the ground in a single area up just about a foot. Since Leaf was facing that direction, she couldn’t help but smirk as she realized what I was doing.

If she had kept jumping around as she did at the beginning of the fight, she wouldn’t have fallen for such a pitfall, but it appeared that she was trying to conserve her energy, which was a mistake, as she tripped on my wall. It was only for a fraction of a second that she was vulnerable, but Leaf had decades of battle experience on top of her high level, and it was all she needed as her empowered arrow drilled a hole through the vampire's chest.

The banshee was dead. As strong as she was, she was fighting most of the other women; they made quick work of her while I was distracted looking over the battlefield and laying my trap for the vampire. Which only left the shadow person. We already knew his weakness, but it wasn’t just fire. Enough metal in his body when he wasn’t defending was also enough to shred the shadow for that part.

Before he died, almost a hundred shadows all burst forth from the corpse, leaving behind a skeleton as they fled in all directions. Silk, Tems, and Leaf managed to kill the three biggest, while the rest of us got any that came in our direction. I could only sigh at the thought of fighting all these generals together instead of separately as we did. We got lucky, extremely lucky, even more than our normal amounts of luck with this.

If you look at how close this fight was, it might have only taken another general or two to completely turn the fight in the other direction, with us losing. If the undead troll were here… Or the dullahan who took two combatants to keep pinned down… I shuddered at the thought, and we still hadn’t seen the leader yet, which would have been a completely different outcome. We still had no idea who was sending this undead north, but we’d have to find out, most likely by heading to where he was and killing him.

“How about a honey ham for dinner? Meaty, sweet, fits both tastes.” Half of everyone asked at once, still recovering from the banshee scream. “What!?”