CC 9: Tenacity ~ Seven

The Penguins didn't have much in the way of defensive options, nor offensive capabilities. Just as the system had informed them, these were essentially prey animals. They were the equivalent of rabbits or level one rats on another world. Even so, they had an extremely dense outer layer of blubber protecting them against the ravaging cold of Jotunheim which at least gave them excellent natural defenses against blunt attacks, while also slowing down any edged weapon that parted their flesh.

Truly, the only reason they hadn't been completely destroyed yet was their sheer size. Since they were so tall, the Dwarves needed to jump into the air, or be on a raised embankment, in order to target their heads directly. Since none of those were great options, they were forced to carve their way through the rotund bodies of the squawking Penguins swing by swing.

Contrary to Joe's expectations, the Dwarves were loving it.

“Annoying things… they just ignore the trenches! Good thing I had my spear ready to greet this one!”

“Look! I carved out a little house for myself… it's so warm!” The words of this particular Dwarf were slightly muffled, as they were emanating from a gaping wound in the side of a bird that was shrieking and flapping wildly.

Joe blinked several times and shook his head as he tried to wrap his head around what he was seeing. The Dwarves weren't taking this threat seriously, and it showed in the strange, over-the-top methods that they were using to kill off the creatures. Another Dwarf had a different mission in mind, but it wasn’t any better. “Get out of there! You’re going to make the meat all sweat-salty, bro!”

“What a surprise, you see monsters and your stomach starts rumbling, dudette.” That comment got a multitude of laughs and jeers at the expense of the Dwarf in full plate armor. Joe couldn't tell for certain, but there was likely some serious blushing going on under that helmet.

The Ritualist looked at the situation at hand with new eyes. Pieces started clicking into place in his mind, and he realized something extremely important. “Wait, I think these Beast waves actually are our food supply. The ground is completely flat, and until the Beast wave started, we had no idea where any monsters were. Hey! All of you, stop playing with your food! Jokes aside, I think these are the only meat we’re gonna be able to eat for a good long time!”

His words rippled out through the too-relaxed encirclement, and the truth started dawning on many faces, his words being repeated over and over. Then someone looked back at Joe and scoffed, “Yo, bald bro… why should we listen to you? I say, buzz off, rando.”

Joe felt that comment as a physical blow, as he instantly gained a notification from the system.

Title lost: Major-General Pyrrhic, Noble Candidate for Baron. The society that had granted you this title has been shattered. Remnants of the Dwarven race have shown their disapproval for your attempts to assert control, and the system has recognized that your continued usage of this title is erroneous.

“You…! You made me lose a title!” Joe sputtered as he tried to make sense of what was happening. He had no idea that his hard-earned rewards could be taken away so easily. “I was a Major General! I had a massive capability to help us succeed! Abyss, if I died you'd do fifty percent more damage until I respawned!”

The Dwarf he was bellowing at by the end of his rant had the good grace to look slightly shamefaced for a moment, though his eyes hardened a moment later. “Guess you should've thought about that before trying to tell us what to do, civilian bro.”

Joe lost sight of that particular Dwarf in the next few seconds, as the death of the Penguins had apparently reached a breaking point. With a terrified squawk, the line of birds scattered into the distance, some of them running away, some of them circling the troops and looking for a way through. With their enemies no longer coming along and and cheerfully throwing themselves on their weapons, the Dwarves suddenly had to struggle to chase them down and remove them from existence.

The Penguins were surprisingly fleet of foot, moving faster as more of their number was exterminated. Then, when there were only fifteen percent remaining, they dropped to their stomachs and slid across the frozen earth at twice the speed they'd been moving. The Dwarves started cursing as they switched to longer range weapons and began relying on their spellcasters to take down the sliding targets. “Abyss! Finish them off!”

It wasn't difficult to find them, as they stood fifteen feet tall and hopped like crazy. None of them should be able to do too much to cause issues for the Hamlet. At least, that was what Joe thought until the system informed him of the next piece of unfortunate news.

The guildhall has been destroyed! Town upgrade canceled. Caution! All remaining Beast waves will still be targeting this location! If you rebuild your guildhall or build a Town Hall, the Beast waves may overlap.

“What?” Joe bellowed as he turned and raced to the center of town. Sure enough, as he got closer he could see the remnants of the building starting to scatter across the ground as a half dozen of the Penguins slid, bounced into the air, and blasted through the walls. An instant later, a hair-thin tendril of mana shot out and sliced each of them perfectly in half.

A very displeased Grandmaster Snow stepped out of the rubble, shoving a falling wall in the other direction. “Somebody please tell me this is a joke. We lost our guildhall in the first wave? To Penguins?”

Her eyes darted over to Joe, and narrowed slightly. The human crossed his arms to showcase his own extremely disgruntled expression. “Don't look at me, I'm not in charge of anything. The Dwarves on the front line made sure to make that eminently clear to me. They refused a warning, and it made me lose my title with the Legion.”

Snow looked slightly above his head and squinted, which Joe knew would make his name and currently equipped title appear. As he'd always made sure to keep his title as a Major General visible so that the Dwarves would know where he stood, it being replaced with ‘Despised by Humanity’ was quite obvious. “Well, this is a right mess. No one’s going to believe it was lost that easily, so there goes your support in the council. Great. Just… hold off on rebuilding this, let's figure out what happened and make a plan to take care of it.”

“What! You can’t blame me, I didn't do anything to lose my title. The system-”

Snow held up a hand, not looking at him. “The fact that the system took your title away is going to be used by some as a word of caution against you. There’s already been a few… allegations. We can’t know the truth of the matter, so let's just deal with the issue at hand.”

He wasn't happy about it, but for the moment, Joe didn’t know what else to do.

Lapsing into silence, he waited until the rest of the wave had been cleared. As soon as someone shouted that there weren’t any more monsters, the system confirmed it with a notice that the wave was over. Joe noticed that it hadn’t sent a word until they'd confirmed it with their own eyes, making him wonder if that was going to come back to bite them at a later date. Several scouts went around, gathering information and asking eyewitnesses what they'd seen just before the guildhall was attacked. Soon enough, they had a preliminary report on how it had fallen.

“Reporting to the Grandmaster!” A Dwarf in light armor shouted as he sprinted over to the listless group of leadership. “The reason behind the failure to defeat the enemy in a timely manner, as well as the subsequent events, has been distilled into a report. May I offer that report publicly, or would you like to keep the information private?”

“Make sure everyone can hear it, Chief Scout.” Snow loudly stated, apparently not wanting anyone to think she was trying to be anything but transparent.

“Ma’am!” The Scout saluted and began recounting events in a loud voice. “Beginning with the enemy! Each of the Beasts followed the one in front of it, moving in a single line from a point in the distance where they'd staged themselves for the assault. Their linear path suggests that they were targeting the fifteen foot opening in the stone palisade that had been erected around the wall over the last half day, going by standard timekeeping.”

“Just tell us what's going on, you don't need to qualify every statement.” Snow informed him primly, her patience waning thin.

“Understood. It almost seems that the creatures were guided to this particular location, as they moved in a perfectly straight line without original line of sight.” Joe heard what the Scout was saying, and a sneaking suspicion began to form in his mind. Still, he waited until the remainder of the report had concluded before speaking. “Upon reaching approximately thirty percent losses, that straight line of enemies broke down and scattered across the area.”

The Scout coughed lightly, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Upon reaching eighty-five percent losses, they doubled their speed and were also able to jump higher than had previously been accounted for. This allowed several of them to directly go over the currently completed sections of wall with a single bounce. Once inside the fortifications, they directly targeted the guildhall with no deviations.”

“Why did no one inside of the walls defend the building? How were Penguins able to avoid eighty-five thousand battle-proven people? Surely someone stepped forward to block them?” Grandmaster McPoundy rumbled ungraciously as he glared around the area.

“That’s…” The Scout hesitated, clearly not wanting to speak up and make enemies for himself. Even so, he was the one in charge of giving this report, and managed to spit out the words. “No. By the time most of the people had realized that a threat had entered the area, it had already passed them. All eyewitnesses questioned on this gave approximately the same answer of ‘I thought someone else was going to deal with it’. I believe that there’s a heavy debuff affecting their initiative, as the cold sets in.”

“Objection, relevance.” Havoc called out softly. “Your next excuse is going to be that your dog stepped on a bee.”

Snow glared at Havoc, as absolutely done with his strange references to Earth culture as Joe was at this point. “Thank you for reporting the findings. If anything else comes to light please let us know.”

“Okay, here’s what we do.” A Dwarf in the crowd started calling out to the people around him, earning lots of attention as he started speaking out before anyone else had a chance. “We start with really big walls. Like, absolutely huge. The best walls ever. That way, no one can get through if we don't want them in.”

Havoc’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the crafter who was trying to grab fifteen minutes of fame by offering an inane solution instead of a proper plan. “You! What’s that on your shoulder?”

The Dwarf wilted slightly under the smoldering glare that he was receiving, looking on each of his shoulders frantically to figure out what Havoc was talking about.  Seeing that his shoulders were empty, he responded with evident confusion. “Um. Nothing?”

“Exactly. Now what do you see on mine?” The Major General stood proudly, crossing his arms.

“It’s… four stars?” The Dwarf seemed to know where this was going, and his reply came out flat.

“That's right! Four star-”  Havoc cut himself off, looking down at his shoulder. Glancing up at the people standing ankle-deep in rubble, he slowly lowered his face and licked a crumb of broken cracker off of his shoulder, slurping it into his mouth and chewing quickly. “Three stars! Question. Know what that means? Answer! Keep your blasted mouth shut when I’m talking!”

“So!” With the crowd thoroughly cowed, Havoc spun on his heel and lowered his tone to speak softly to the others. “Hate to say it, but that guy had a point. Really big walls might be the way to go.”

“No.” Snow cut him off with a swipe of her hand. “Not right away at least. We need more information.”

Joe stepped into the silence, releasing his realization into the wild. “I think I figured out the trick to this. I can't guarantee it’s correct, but it's pretty easy to test. First off, to make sure we aren't defeated by abyssal Penguins again, instead of a single wall, we should set up a double wall. That way, even if they hop over the first, they won't have enough room to build up speed to jump the second.”

“Eh. Fair point.” Havoc let the air fill with smoke as he hissed out the reluctant agreement. “What's this trick you're talking about?”

“I think this entire world is a specific scenario. Enormous flat landscape, building a large fortification, and at minimum a City is the end state goal. The big clue is that the monsters come in waves.” Joe took a deep breath and nodded as he became sure of his thoughts. “If I’m correct, back on Earth we called this kind of scenario a ‘tower defense’, and it plays by some very specific rules.”