Keeping with her schedule, Kalli went to sleep early that night, but stayed in the Hall of Heroes, instead of going back to her own room.
Everyone came here looking for her anyhow.
Twenty minutes to midnight, she was showered, her armour checked, and a laser pistol holstered at her hip, just in case things got spicy in the compound.
She was not the first one to the main hall, the newly arrived heroes and two dozen of the runners were sitting at the tables, eating fried tubers while they waited for the clock to strike midnight.
"Good morning everyone. Are we taking wagers on what comes to us next?" Kalli greeted them.
"No, I tried, but nobody was morbid enough to join in." Sergeant Sanchez joked from the back room, where he had been lounging in the more comfortable chairs.
"What brings you back to the hall?" Kalli asked, as he was the only one with a team who was with them.
"We’re on main gates with Esmeralda and her team, but I was waiting for you to wake up and loan me an assault speeder. The others are all occupied by the last team to use them, and I want an elevated position for the start of the fight."
Kalli shrugged, and purchased one, which was left floating outside.
"Alright. Take your speeder, and find a good driver because I know that you’re the gunner of choice."
Sanchez laughed and ran out to hop on the speeder, which raced between buildings at a speed that could not possibly be workplace health and safety approved. But he would make it to the wall on time to find out what they were going to be facing first.
{Welcome back, Heroes!
Good work clearing the first six waves. You ranked second in the whole trial. 84 spots above the next human settlement.
-(๑☆‿ ☆#)ᕗ
The Seventh Wave of the Third Trial begins now.
Good Luck.}
Something slammed against the door of the Hall of Heroes, and Kalli burst into action, equipping her flight suit and striding toward the door to see what was going on outside.
The moment that the door opened, she was swarmed by dozens of violent insects the size of dogs, with long pointed teeth and crablike claws on the forelimbs.
A burst from the Pulse Cannon splattered a dozen of them and cleared the street in front of the Hall of Heroes.
"Heroes, on me! Noncombat staff, stay inside and keep the doors locked!"
The Pulse Cannon spit bursts of light into the insectoids, which simply exploded on contact. The sight horrified the heroes inside the Hall, but they had all been ready with weapons in hand, though Kalli had told them that they were off for the night.
Everyone knew that wouldn’t last.
In the distance, flames lit up a side street, as one of the flamethrowers was brought into action, and laser defence turrets from the buildings turned the whole city into a nightmare of strobe lights and screams.
No, not screams. The hissing of chitinous creatures hit with lasers and superheated. The steam escaped their shells with a shrill sound that sounded much like screaming.
Kalli smiled to herself as she unleashed a stream of Pulse Cannon fire down the main driveway of the Academy grounds. Putting lasers on every single building was an amazing call, and now they only had to defend against the monsters that had managed to get inside.
Surely, there would be more than a few of them that managed it, since the main doors of the buildings were not armoured.
But everyone should know the drill already, and the residents of Marimgar were warned of the attack, so there should have been guards stationed. If there weren’t she was going to have to make a proper checklist and duty roster for tomorrow’s attacks.
The radio crackled in Kalli’s ear as the heroes at the wall began to give their first reports.
"{ Giant bugs of all sorts. Looks like most are three to five metre tall warriors, then we’ve got thirty metre tall behemoths with them. I don’t know what they can do, but I don’t want those big things near the walls.
Where are the air defence turrets? }" Sanchez was shouting over the radio.
He had flown out over the horde once it appeared in the distance. Not nearly as far as they had been expecting, but nothing within a kilometre of the walls, except what was already inside.
"{We’ve got intruders charging away from the city toward the lines. They think it’s safer here.
Stop them at the tuber lines. The plants will slow them.}" Someone else announced.
"{ We’ve got the inner city under control, watch your solid projectile usage until we’ve got them cleared enough for runners. }" Kalli informed them.
"{ Got it boss lady. }"
Kalli scanned the area around her, and realized that the creatures hadn’t spawned inside the Academy at all. They had left the gates open, since it was so far inside the city perimeter, and the monsters she was killing had all charged her way the moment that they had spawned.
The Hall of Heroes was the closest building to the gates, other than the well.
With the new heroes behind her, Kalli lifted off the ground and glided toward the city, five metres off the ground, where she could check for more of those monsters in the Academy grounds.
They might not have all stayed near the road, and there might be more near the dorms and main building.
However, when she made a fast pass around the Academy, she didn’t see any signs of them, though the ones outside the walls showed on the thermal vision of the suit’s helmet. That was a handy function that she hadn’t noticed it had, as she had only been using it during the day.
The resolution was actually terrible, grainy and slow to update. But it was good enough that she could see the monsters in the low lighting of the city.
Then, she realized that it didn’t have to be dark.
A quick command to the computer set the exterior lights of all the buildings to maximum output, and the streets became brightly lit, with nowhere for the monsters to hide.
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