106 106 Zombies Burn
The flames had done their job, they had spread a raging fire through the undead ranks, and even if they didn’t manage to alter the course of the group, they did a fine job of removing zombies, thanks to the tightly packed crowd.
The zombies were mostly shoulder to shoulder, so once they were on fire, they spread it to every zombie near them, engulfing even the ones which had been nowhere near the actual [Flame Wall].
“Lower the temperature of your outer cloak to match the air. I don’t know if they can sense heat, but they might since a lot of those things don’t have eyes.” Mary whispered to the group once Cassie and Reiko had returned.
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It took Beth longer than the others to manage the task since she wasn’t a Witch, only using an amulet, but they did all get their disguise finished, which left them with nothing to do but lay in the snow and wait for the undead to reach their defences.
When the Ghouls reached the outer trench, they began to howl and snarl, but still, the group waited to see what they would do. A few tried to jump the pit full of bones, only to end up impaled.
The water had frozen the base of the trench into a sheet of ice instead of turning it to mud as they had hoped, and being stuck in the ice made the jumble of bones into a deadly defence of their own.
Some tentatively began to crush the bones in front of them to make a path, but the consensus was that going around was easier.
More and more, the undead horde was moving around the camp, avoiding the outer trench line and proceeding on their way.
Then one of the Ghouls stopped and sniffed the air. It turned to look in the general direction of where the group was hiding with an intensity that made everyone certain that they had been found.
It wasn’t deterred by the spikes anymore and pushed its way through them until Cassie discretely punched a hole through its heart with an [Earth Spike] that came up from the ground.
That first Ghoul wasn’t the only one with a sensitive nose, and once it was dead, more of them began to notice that something was alive in the camp.
For the moment, it was few enough that they could kill them without attracting too much attention, but their deaths and shrieks were attracting more attention as time went on.
Wolfe’s hope was that the main force would move around the camp, and the outer trench was doing an excellent job of that, but behind the Ghouls were a group of undead animals with bloated, rotting skin and a short wall or a few bones would not deter something that large.
“Prepare to attack those big things with everything you’ve got. If they make it past the trenches, we are in real trouble.” Wolfe whispered.
The Ghouls were giving up on getting past the trenches by the time that the large creatures were close to the camp, and the undead force had turned west, following some unseen signal toward the main lines.
This was the purpose of the camps on the flanks, to eliminate as many enemies as possible and funnel the rest toward the majority of the defenders. They might have to rebuild some portions of the outer trenches, but so far, the plan was working flawlessly.
The undead knight that appeared to be leading the Ghouls suddenly turned and joined the exodus west, giving Wolfe and the others hope for a reprieve, but the largest beasts had other ideas.
They continued to shamble toward the camp at the same rate, stomping toward the position where the group had hidden among the rubble with a determined gait.
It seemed clear that the undead beasts knew where they were, but for the moment, everyone held their breath and waited, not wanting the rest of the group to come back.
“When they reach the inner wall, hit them as hard as you can and then begin to retreat. Something is bound to work on them. Beth, scout out a safe path through the rubble. We do not need any twisted ankles.”
Reiko quickly moved Flame into her hood so she could lay on her front while Mary shifted to lie on top of Pup, whose white fur Blended perfectly with the snow.
“Now!”
A barrage of Flames, Wind Blades and Wolfe’s Unholy Smite crashed into the lead few undead, cutting deep furrows in their rancid flesh the moment that he gave the order.
Normal Magical Fire didn’t do much except make the smell worse, but the flames of Unholy Smite were burning the undead to ashes, and the sharp [Wind Blades] managed to sever limbs and decapitate one, causing its body to crumble to the ground.
“More [Wind Blades]. Chop them apart.” Mary cheered as her Blades struck another in the neck for the kill, and everyone got to their feet. They retreated a few dozen meters down the path that Beth had marked to keep their distance while they continued to cast on the monsters.
With four casters sending out Blades and Stephanie focused on channelling mana to Wolfe so he could use [Unholy Smite], the last few undead were dropping every second.
“This way, it used to be tents, and we’ve already cleared everything of value out of the area,” Beth instructed, leading them through less vital areas of the camp so the remains of the horde didn’t destroy the hidden supplies.
“How is your mana?” Cassie called as her spell chopped the legs off of a beast that Ella had used Witch Magic to bind with thick roots.
“Holding for now. I’m switching to just burning the disabled beasts for now, so keep up your attack speed, everyone.” He replied.
With one less caster, he wasn’t losing mana as fast, but they couldn’t stop moving since the shambling undead were still chasing them at a pace that the humans needed to almost jog to stay in front of.
It was clear that base defence was a poor strategy against the undead. Attack and move made the slow-moving creatures little more than target dummies and made their immense strength mostly irrelevant.
By the time they had passed over most of the camp, only a lone, wounded undead remained, burning with the lingering unholy Fire from repeated uses of Smite and cut all over from Wind Blades.
“Just keep it tied down. Even the undead can’t survive our attacks forever.” Wolfe panted, struggling to keep up with the mana draw while also keeping up the fires on all the crippled undead so they wouldn’t regenerate.
The beast finally fell when Wolfe’s Unholy Smite burned most of its face away, ending its resistance and letting the fire burn it to ashes.
As soon as it died, the other bodies went up like dry kindling, lighting the area with a deep purple glow for most of an hour while Wolfe and the Witches sat in the snow and just watched them burn, too mentally drained to do anything else, even with the refreshing amulets active.