Frostbound [LitRPG Apocalypse]-Chapter 179 - Hope for Aid

The announcement went over about as well as predicted. Worry and panic bubbled up but nothing crazy happened, which was good. I wouldn't go far as to say people took it in stride, but it wasn't as big a blow as some might've thought. Jonathan was right in that regard.

It was sad to say that people were used to this, but most in our city spent nearly a year surviving on their own in the wilderness. They had a toughness to them that kept them alive, which meant they didn't immediately freak out when hearing of a threat. Add surviving the tutorial to that, and we were a resilient bunch.

One thing we didn't think of in our meeting, and we really should've, was one of the first questions raised. I tried to keep everyone's names straight, as that was good practice, but it was getting harder as more people showed up.

Knowing the names of the 200 who joined us while traveling was easier, as there were fewer people and they joined spaced out.

But now, with more than four times as many people, that practice was falling behind and I wasn't able to know the person who asked the question.

"Who will fight the waves if we all leave?"

It was a good question and needed an answer, one I wished we had discussed before but I improvised one as best I could.

It wasn't like I was uninformed about the power of the waves or the manpower it took to fight it, but a little more thought would have been nice to put behind something so important.

All told, I answered like I had it prepared, "Considering the strength of the waves and the castle being mostly built, not many will need to stay behind. We've already spoken about who that will be so you don't need to worry about leaving our home defenseless. We built them strong for this reason, now all we have to do is stand atop them."

Saying that we needed to face the bigger threat wasn't necessary, everyone knew which was more important.

It was nice to have this occur after the castle was mostly built, as we wouldn't have to leave as many people behind. The stone was tall and thick, even the nonfighters would be able to stand atop it and repel the waves easily enough.

Not that I would plan for that. Just like I wasn't going to force people to go fight Demons unwillingly, I wasn't going to force people to fight here unwillingly.

My initial thoughts were to have Abigail and Jonathan stay behind out of our group, leaving the rest of my family to come with me, if they chose to. The idea to call upon Austin was brought up but I shot it down.

He had just left and we weren't so helpless to call him back so soon. We did decide to inform him though, as he might come across Demons on his travels and it was better for him to be informed of the threat.

In the letter we drafted to send, I impressed upon him to not come back and that we had it in hand, but ultimately, it was his decision to do so or not.

I figured not many in the world chose to be Messengers, or similar enough to serve the same purpose, but we did have one in our city. And I didn't even have to... persuade him like the Miners.

He used to be a Mail-man before the world ended and he was fine picking it back up again as his Profession. The skills it gave weren't groundbreaking as he was still below E-rank, but he had enough levels to make him efficient.

Slightly faster travel when en route with a parcel, less stamina drain on the road, weather and environmental effects were diminished if they were harmful, things a Messenger would need to carry out their job.

Luckily, knowing where Austin was could be easily determined. Asking the last group to arrive where they last came from was a good enough head start the Messenger would be able to go from there.

One of his skills would guide him toward the intended recipient if he was close enough and had met them before.

But for who would stay, that wasn't hard to determine.

Abigail was essential to the budding city and I wasn't going to tear her away from that. Plus, she wasn't as helpless as initially believed. While she started out as a pure Healer, circumstance drove her into a more hybrid build.

It was hard not to with her experiences. The amount of combat she was in as she gained levels made almost every Class option during evolutions at least tangentially combat-related.

Being in E-rank gave her three separate chances to branch out from Healer and she had chosen to do so. Her current class was a Mage/Healer hybrid that had skills for both.

You could hybridize most Classes but it was best to stick with the same main stats. Combining Warrior and Mage would diversify your points too much leaving you average at both, unless you had a high rarity Class to make up for it.

Stolen novel; please report.

All of her Classes had focused on the mana stats which made the change over seamless compared to some of the other ones I knew of.

While I thought it was a stretch to say she was a powerhouse at the level of Rachel and her mana skills, she wasn't as far behind as first assumed. Somehow, by some miracle, she found time to train just the same, if not more than I did myself.

Not in the dungeons, but straight manipulation and other manual ability training. She had [Water Manipulation], but at Gabriel's insistence, she trained without the use of the skill.

Her bloodline could also be used to fight. The majority of the Water Affinities in my family chose the same bloodline, but Abigail went above that. Partially at my insistence in the tutorial.

I made sure she set aside some of the points I gave her to get a more powerful bloodline. It was one of my more selfish requests, but she was my only immediate family left at the time.

She didn't use it often, but it was a sight to see when she did.

Leaving Jonathan behind was obvious, as he was the best-suited defender. While having him with me would be a massive boon, leaving him here would put me at ease knowing everyone would be safe.

It wasn't necessary to defend my decision of who to leave behind and hold down the fort as none had the courage to ask after my announcement.

After the gathering was over and the shock wore off, people started volunteering in droves, which I was glad to see. It meant we had a city of people who had honor.

Or at the bare minimum, decency, which was as good as I could ask of them.

When the numbers were tallied and everything organized, 415 chose to go leaving 453 behind. Almost 50% were willing to face the threat arrayed against us.

Double the usual amount that stood against the waves.

It would take a few days to get everything prepared, but half our city was set to march to battle.

Informing the group that arrived was delegated to someone else as my presence was needed elsewhere. I would be in the forge making sure everyone was at least armed and armored to the best of my ability.

Ashton

It was somewhat melancholic to look out over everything they had built. They had survived the tutorial, came back to ruins, built back what they had lost, only to lose it now.

His heart panged with guilt over how many they would lose. As it stood, they were in for an uphill battle.

People were just getting back to what would be their new normal and it all came tumbling down. All because of some idiot who summoned a Demon. Ashton didn't believe for a second this wasn't a human's doing.

He had seen the Ritual Circle and knew the area it was in. A human had done this and it could possibly doom them all. All for power.

He hadn't anticipated someone would fall to the temptation so fast or become desperate enough to do such a thing and that lack of foresight was hurting them now. If they had built walls sooner or spent more time building up their defenses, they wouldn't be in such a sorry state now.

That missing thickness or the lacking height of their defenses could spell defeat or victory, and he wasn't ready to face that. At that point, it would be on him and his failure to imagine.

As it was, nearly four thousand people toiled building what they could. There used to be thousands who lived here, but only half that returned and fewer still remained a year later.

Beasts, animals, the environment. Everything was out to kill them now and they were newly stripped of all their protections. The winter, where it was once a few months of cold where the sniffles ran through town, became a four-month fight to live as temperatures plummeted.

Food was scarce and people weren't ready for the conditions they now faced. Ashton wondered how high the death toll was from the snows alone.

People ran this way and that around the Fort as preparations were being made as fast as they could. When they first returned, they had started construction on shelter and convenience first, but that now switched to fortifications.

Ever since the Demon Ritual was found, it had been all hands on deck to make sure they would survive.

It was almost instinctual by now for Ashton to look at the glowing stones arrayed prominently in front of him. The three stones had been a stroke of genius from one of the crafters but they were his biggest source of worry.

They signaled whether help was coming or not.

One already had a crack running through it, while the other two remained dormant. Dormant was fine, as they could still come alight at some point, but a crack was different. He knew which of the pylons refused them as the distance and response time made it obvious.

It wasn't until the group came back that he knew the reason, but he knew no help was coming from them nearly two weeks ago. The pylon to the South didn't believe them about the threat they faced and fervently denied sending any aid.

Claiming, 'You just want us to leave our walls defenseless.'

It saddened him to realize how far they had fallen as a society. Instead of heeding his words, they feared betrayal. It went to show the changes and mistrust people now harbored.

Not that there wasn't any distrust before, but it was heightened now, more prominent than ever before Ashton felt. While he knew some of the best in people was brought out during this trying time, so had the worst.

And the worst in people left an impression that lasted longer.

Mistrust was fine, he wouldn't begrudge them that, but now wasn't the time for it. The Capital still hadn't responded and Toronto was gone. Their seer only knew of 2 pylons in their vicinity and one already denied them.

For their sake, he hoped they were at least preparing defenses like his own city was doing. Fort Hope didn't have the strength to stand alone, that much was obvious, but they would at least take as many with them as they could.

This chapt𝓮r is updat𝒆d by ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom.

If they did enough, maybe the Demons would falter at the next town or if not then, the one after. One thing about Demons was their voracious need to consume. The more powerful of Demons could resist the urge and become great planners and schemers, but in their base form they couldn't.

If the second pylon refused them as well, all their hopes were riding on there not being an evolved Demon pulling the strings. If the horde was full of Demonlings, they had a chance to make it out of this.

They weren't smart enough to form ranks or any advanced tactics and he could rely on wit and tactics to maybe make it through this.

On the off chance an evolved Demon was in the mix, things would be infinitely harder.

As he sat there thinking that, the third stone lit up. Honestly, he hadn't expected it to happen as Carolyn said the pylon was quite the distance away, but here it was.

They weren't able to communicate any details, but at least some help would be coming. He just had to hope it would be enough.