This was precisely the thing that I said was not going to happen.
A coordinated attack.
I don't know if that cow is the Alpha or not but after that mooo, everything went downhill. The beasts that were waiting for us a couple of blocks to the north began to move towards us. A group of sheep started to baa and used a sleep ability that I was already familiar with.
If I must guess probably, there is another group of beasts somewhere near us to close us the way too.
First, I have to look for a way to wake up everyone, and somehow take care of the sheep on the building.
I used the most effective and fast way I could think off.
I took out a couple of grenades and threw them towards two different buildings praying that none of them miss the target and fall back… luckily none of them did.
I don't think that it would be enough to kill all the sheep, but it will cause a commotion and scared them enough for them to stop. The sound from the explosion should also be loud enough to wake up the people for now.
"TAKE COVER!"
Some people noticed that I did something and covered themselves and the people near them.
BOOOM!!!BOOM!!
[Congratulations ….]
I killed about 10 sheep, 8 F-Ranked and two E-Ranked. There are probably a lot more than those in there, but I can't see through walls even with aura view.
The glass and rubble rained on us, I could only hope that no one is severely injured because of this. I was covering Cecily who was next to me, I could feel a little rock hit my back, and I was covered by dust. The baa~ baa~ sound stopped, and the explosion seemed to wake up almost everyone. There were people hurt, but as far as I could see, there wasn't' anyone dead or with a severe injury on them glass cuts and minor bruises was all I could notice on a first glance.
The rest of my team was surprised and confused.
"Ian keep moving forward and protect them, use Alfred and Watson as you see fit, G go to the front and tell Milo to take defensive positions I'm going to the rearguard and to talk with D'Aurora."
I started to move with the people gazing at me. This was soon going to become more and more chaotic.
"Move forward fast! Stick together and compact the formation! That building can collapse at any moment! Help carry the wounded! Don't stand there like an idiot help carry that boy!!"
I just started to yell instructions as I saw fit, some people obeyed me and started to help each other, some needed to be pointed with the finger for them to react. Mr. D'Aurora face appeared from between the crowd while I yelled and moved to the back of the formation.
"Spencer, what happened!"
He seemed confused.
"An ambush, there is a group of sheep with a sleep ability on those two buildings, we need to tear them down, so I'll look for Giorgio, I think that the cow that sounded before is some kind of signal because the group of beasts in the north is charging this way too."
I saw that he wanted to ask more about it, probably about the explosion, but we were against the time. The commotion on the sheep group was not going to stay like that forever. The fear from the collapse helped increase the movement speed of the caravan for a moment.
"I'll organize things here go and tell the rear to move faster and catch up with us."
As that was what I already had planned, I moved and separated myself from the main group and went to the rearguard that was already running in our direction.
"What was that explosion??"
"Come fast call all the teams, we have to pass that building over there and throw it on the street to block it."
I explained the situation briefly to them, it took us almost no time to get near the group, but we already could hear the sound of a stampede, I actually could see it coming at us.
Some of the people from the hunting groups helped move people forward and clear the area for Giorgio to make his magic.
Some sheep recovered and started to use the sleep ability again. It prompted another notification from the system, and some people got drowsy. Luckily, Giorgio wasn't affected by it the sound died down when the building collapsed, the rubble floated taken by invisible hands and was moved around the street creating a wall. The ranged attackers were already firing at the stampede that was getting near.
"When you finish make this wall as big as you can for now."
"Ok."
Most people tried to run away when they saw the building collapse and felt the tremble from the stampede, the chaos was started to destroy the formation.
I heard Rose voice on my head. She was above us overseeing the situation.
'Beasts are coming from the north and the west.'
It's like… they are trying to push us away from Green Shelter.
I moved forward surpassing the people to get where the rest of the group was. Mr. D'Aurora was giving orders and trying to keep the people calm. Not sure if it was good or bad, a real battle has started at the next intersection because of the beasts coming from the west, that stopped the people that were about to run there, so we could calm things down. From the rearguard, shootings could be heard when a beast tried to climb the wall that Giorgio was making.
I looked around and tried to think of a place to hide all of us, since the main group couldn't move in any direction, and under the direction of Mr. D'Aurora they started to deal with the injured.
I thought about moving in the other two directions, but the detour would just be more significant, and after what has happened until now I was sure that taking any of those two routes will make us fall on another trap.
The only option was for us to somehow pass through them. Since the north pass was blocked our only option was the west, if we kill enough beast and resist long enough the reinforcement from Green Shelter might arrive. Somehow it reminds me of one of those "survive some time until the help comes" type of missions now.
I moved ahead of the formation towards the battle. As the wall got bigger the situation on the rearguard was fine, so the problem right now was at the front.
At a distance, I could see G swinging his hammer around surrounded by a bright and slightly annoying aura. It seemed to annoy the beast even more than me because there were more and more beasts attacking him.
I could see Milo moving around with his assault rifle shooting from a safe distance repositioning himself constantly to cover the weakness of the front, he was taking care of most of the beasts that tried to avoid G who was like a mountain in the middle of the battle. I ran towards the fight, and some of the beasts seemed to focus on me, I kept evading using Accelerated Senses together with my Enhanced Reflexes.
My kukri was slightly ineffective when I tried to cut down the pig's skin, so for them, I had to use the tomahawk, but the goat and some sheep fell after one clean cut. I kept activating and deactivating Slow on some beasts that were especially annoying to support other members of the group.
I slowly moved to stay in a place a little farther from the rest to also use Time Bubble as much as I want. This also annoyed the beast because it changed the battle flow slowing down the pace on an entire area, causing them to jam and stop their advance and charges, this released a lot of pressure from the people on the front.
Even if my time distortion was a secret, this was not the time to hide stuff. Also, I didn't have any ability capable of turning the tides anyway so reveling it right now wasn't that huge of a thing. The only idea I had was to use the system shop, to get grenades and other types of tools that I could use to deal with the beast faster, but they had a limited stock, for example, I have only 6 grenades left and 9 incendiaries.
The problem was that around me the beasts were mostly normal animals or weak Ranked beasts, it's not worth wasting the grenades on this. I don't think that there is even an E-Rank between them, which makes me doubt even more about the situation, from what I see this was just cannon fodder, was this wave supposed to just tire us for when the real deal came?