Outbreak Defence Wave 3 Completed

Accumulated Experience: 2035420

Contribution: 1.92%

Awarded Experience: 39080

Enter Wave 4? [Y]/[N]

You have opted into Wave 4

You have gained a Level!

You have been awarded 250 Ability Points

You have been awarded 5 Development Points

You have been awarded 2 Skill Points.

So, good news and bad news. The next wave starting must mean either that the griffins had landed on the outer walls, or our airforce had engaged. The lack of screaming suggested the latter. I still had a bit of time.

The new level was good news, but I noted with some irritation that my contribution had dropped down to under two percent. I’d been busy with other things I suppose.

Getting back to Cutter, I saw that he’d picked the lock and the main door was open. It was time for Jürgen to make a reappearance.

I cast [Phantasmal Entity] and Cutter jumped in surprise. “That’s you, Miss, right?” he asked nervously.

“Of course. Good job here,” Jürgen said with a grin and went through the door. Beyond was a short corridor with six doors leading off it. Jürgen tried the first one. Somewhat surprisingly, it wasn’t locked - I guess these were the low-security cells. The room was actually quite nicely furnished, and decorated with personal items. Its occupant - one of the teenagers from the feast - wasn’t enjoying the luxury. Instead, he was pacing back and forth as Jürgen opened the door. He quickly whirled to face us.

“What is it? Are we-” he paused and looked at Jürgen’s tabard. “You’re-”

“I’m looking for Edele,” I interrupted. “Where is she?”

He looked like he was trying to say three things at once. He looked at Jürgen’s armour and sword (they were decorations really) and gulped. He’d clearly heard about someone who’d matched this description.

“Second door on the other side of the corridor.”

Jürgen nodded, gave a little salute, and shut the door on the way out. The reason I was using Jürgen was that the Baron was already mad at him, so no loss if he got madder. And from the conversation earlier, I’d managed to establish at least a little plausible deniability that he was me. If there had been an invisible person opening the door and taking a look inside, that would have pointed a big fat finger in my direction.

As it was the Baron was probably still going to blame me, but whatever. I opened the indicated door, and sure enough, Edele was there. She looked dressed and ready to go, which was lucky. The other guy had been the same. I guess being held in a cell while a town alarm was ringing had motivated them to be ready in case the tower was attacked.

“Edele?” Jürgen said. “I’ve come to take you to your father.”

She didn’t react immediately, staring at Jürgen with surprise until he gestured for her to come over. “Grab anything you want to keep, we won’t be coming back.”

She moved over to a desk and picked up a small bag. “Wait, the griffins are-”

“It will be dangerous, but you should be alright,” Jürgen reassured her. “You’ll see.”

With that, she came over to the door, and we led her out. I was leaving the door unlocked, which might have been an opportunity for the others… or not. It was pretty dangerous out there, I could imagine they wouldn’t want to take their chances.

Out here, the alarm was still blaring, but no one had come to see. I led my party to a room that would hopefully be out of anyone's way so that I could brief Edele and make her invisible.

“This is Cutter,” Jürgen said, moving her hand to clasp his. “He’s going to lead you to our safe house.”

I explained how to get there by herself, in case they got separated, while she got used to the idea of holding a hand she couldn’t see.

“But the griffins?” she asked.

“You’ll be invisible too, so as long as you’re careful, you should be alright. Neither of you will be able to see each other though, so keep hold. Now drink this, just in case.”

Jürgen handed her one of the antidotes that Felicia had given me. Cutter had already taken his on the way. She gave Jürgen a doubtful look but downed the small bottle.

I cast [Greater Invisibility] and she faded from everyone’s view by mine. “Wait here,” I had Jürgen say, and moved on ahead.

As I’d expected, they hadn’t left the exit unguarded. The door was still open, but it was blocked by three guards with spears, facing outwards. Jürgen stepped forward, carrying his payload.

I was surprised he made it up to them, but I shouldn’t have been. Screams were coming from the griffins outside now, and all three were pretty focussed on the outside. I imagine if they noticed him at all, they thought him to be reinforcements.

Jürgen reached out with the bag of hatiem powder and squeezed it right next to the first soldier’s head. The bag was designed to be thrown, which meant a lot of the payload was expected to be wasted. Delivered personally like that, I could make the bag last longer.

The soldier sneezed, attracting the other guard's attention, just as Jürgen moved forward and around to dust them as well. They shouted and tried to turn their spears towards him, but he was too close, and the spears weren’t great for suddenly turning around in a doorway. And the spores worked fast too. They only had time for a few confused shouts before falling to the ground, unconscious.

I took a look outside, leaving Jürgen out of sight for the moment. We had attracted some attention, but there wasn’t a huge crowd. The soldiers in the square had been clustered into three tight groups of 6. They didn’t seem to be trying to hold a line, spreading out instead in small monster-hunting squads.

That worked out well for me. The closest squad was heading over to see what was going on, but slowly, keeping their eyes on the sky. There would be plenty of time.

“Get out here,” Jürgen called back, stepping away from the doorway and resealing his bag of sleeping powder. The kids came forward and he waved them through. “Go! Get home, don’t stop for anyone.”

I collected my bag and cancelled [Phantasmal Entity]. Then I staggered as the world went dim for just a second. Even with the antidote, touching that stuff was a bad idea. I placed the little ball of doom carefully in my pocket, allowing it to become invisible again, and tried to brush the stuff off my hands. Then I remembered I had to get out before the guards arrived and blocked the doorway while gaping at unconscious bodies.

It only needed five steps before I could lean against the wall out of the way and let them rush by, but it was like I was drunk. I stayed there for a few moments, letting the shouts of the soldiers wash over me while the magical drug was flushed out of my system.

Alright, time for Phase II.

I had actually planned on using the puffball on this part of the operation. Aside from meaning I didn’t have to kill any innocent guards, it would link the two crimes, and I was pretty sure that they would blame the second crime on either Kaito’s crew or the Tribal Council in general. Which would link Jürgen to them, and hopefully away from me. But to do that, I had to get moving and actually commit my second crime.

I wanted to take a quick break to spend my points, but I really couldn’t spare the attention. Invisible or not, I still needed to keep an eye out for swooping griffins, just in case one tried to land where I was. They were descending on the city now, in small numbers. The majority of them were wheeling around above the city, presumably fighting the Riders. It was hard the sides apart from below, but I’d seen the relative numbers as they came in, so I wasn’t hopeful of the Riders winning that fight.

The ones that landed were more of a concern. To me, and to the troops on the ground. Some troops - and civilians, it looked like - were set up on the rooftops, trying to deny the monsters a perch. What I mainly had to avoid were the monster squads running through the streets to attack any griffins that decided to open a house for the snacks inside.

Though… food didn’t seem to be what the griffins were after. Like Kaito had suggested, they did seem to be looking for something. The ones that landed on the street would move purposefully along it, rather than smash in windows or doors.

It made it harder for me to avoid them. I had to divert a couple of times to avoid trouble, but I eventually made it to the Rider academy and got to see why the griffins hadn’t ended this already.

There were three squads guarding the compound, but none of them were at the gate. Wandering in, I saw a squad on the roofs of two different buildings, and one in the courtyard. My target, the stables, had its own kind of protection.

Bemused, I looked at the smoke drifting up in the air, from a dozen braziers arranged around the building.

What the hell?

I moved closer, wondering if the smoke was supposed to be poisonous, but none of the soldiers were wearing masks. Then the smell hit me. It wasn’t that unpleasant, but it was strong. I almost gagged, and I wasn’t actually in the smoke.

That was their plan then. Block the beast’s sense of smell and turn them away. Would it work?

Probably not. They could hope that they could keep the smoke going until the griffins gave up on using scent. But the griffins hadn’t followed a scent here. They’d known the baby griffin was here, and they weren’t going to leave just because they couldn’t smell him. If they couldn’t smell him, they’d start ripping apart buildings…

So the operation was still on. I just had to get inside without anyone seeing me - or anything that would be recognised as an illusion.

I held my nose and walked up to the big doors, where they moved the griffins in and out. They were boarded up quite securely. Moving over to the nearest brazier, I gave it a quick shove towards the building. It toppled, and the burning bucket part landed near the door.

That should be close enough, I thought and moved over to the people-door further along the side. The fire-bucket probably wasn’t close enough to set the building on fire, but the smoke was now close enough for some of it to rise up under the eaves and find its way into the building.

The noise of the brazier falling over attracted some attention, but none of the soldiers moved to do anything about it. That was lucky. It might have been different if the building was going to catch alight, but this wasn’t their problem.

It wasn’t long before I heard muffled curses from inside before someone opened the door. He was wearing the uniform of one of Isidre’s people and he had a scarf tied around his face. He looked up and around, but the smoke was doing a pretty good job of keeping the monsters away. He cursed again and headed over to fix the brazier.

Ah, my nemesis, an ordinary locked door. Once more I have defeated you. I thought to myself as I slipped inside. It really was crazy just how much harder things were with a door in the picture. If I got a ‘teleport one-meter' spell, I’d be unstoppable.

This part of the building was empty, but I could hear raised voices from the other half. Objecting to the smoke? I moved forward carefully to see who was there, mindful that the lottery loser behind me would be coming back shortly.

I hadn’t really appreciated how big this building was. Griffins needed a lot of room, I suppose. Four rows of pens extended for the full length of the room, which was lit with glowing crystals. Just as well, since all that straw would make it a fire trap. With almost all the griffins aloft, the place looked empty, but it was easy to see the remaining exceptions. For whatever reason, the pens didn’t have high walls, so I could easily see that there were two full-grown griffins and eight younger ones. Six, no seven, including the one behind me humans were here guarding them. All of them were in a tight group, probably feeling a little tense.

Shouldn’t there be more of them? I wondered. I knew that Isidre had more men to deploy. Maybe they were protecting the town? Certainly, if the plan worked, then anyone left here wasn’t going to contribute to the main fight. If that was true though, then Isidre had retired from that battle as she and her baby griffin were right here.

Number Seven came back and reported that he’d fixed the brazier. Complaints were made that they could still smell the smoke, but he ignored them. I carefully moved closer and got a closer look at Manchas.

I could see why everyone thought he was special. Pure white, and with an air of… alertness that the other griffins didn’t have. He was just a baby though, about as big as a Saint Bernard. Some of the other fledglings here were like ponies.

OK, I thought. I took in the room, the positions of the men and griffins. Let’s get this party started.