The army waited in front of the city, in formation. A few minutes after Adam had arrived to the front of the army, he along with the other players received a notification from the system.
[The event 'Siege of Neve Dorei' has started! Reanimation within Neve Dorei have been disabled, teleportation array has been disabled. You will receive rewards depending on how many undead you kill, and their strength.]
After the unusually long message, Adam felt the ground tremble a little. It was very minute, and he almost missed it. Then, it shook again, with a little more intensity.
The intensity of the tremor quickly began to build up as more and more people felt it. From the top of the ramparts, Liara said with a magically amplified voice "The undead is upon us! Activate the cannons and the magic towers!"
As she said that, Adam saw rows of cannons appear on the ramparts, and the two towers near the ramparts lit up. He had wondered why no mage stayed on the ramparts, he knew now.
Adam turned back toward the battlefield, and saw something in the distance. An army, running toward them. The Undead Army.
It didn't take long for the others to see them too, although they were a few kilometers away, everyone here was above Level 50, and so they had an incredible vision.
Adam could already feel some of his soldiers getting nervous, by now they knew the tremor came from this undead army. For them to feel it from kilometers away, only showed how strong and numerous the undead were.
So Adam knew it was time for him to use his precious skill, [Barbarous Roar]. When it was only level 1, the only thing he could do was a wordless roar, but as it leveled up he became able to form words, and sentences.
By the time it reached level 10, he became able to say full sentences, but it would be enough. Fortunately, he had managed to perfectly master the skill, and now he could speak as long as he wanted using it. Of course, it would cost him Aura to do so, but the expense of Aura was very little.
Adam still had a higher comprehension than the average people after all. Since he had discovered he needed to understand his skills to make them level up faster, all his skills had received a boost. A huge boost.
And this was thanks to his strengthened soul, which he already knew gave him a better comprehension. This stronger comprehension helped him with leveling up his skills, but also in his creation of his cultivation technique, in which he was making absurdly fast progress.
Thanks to the last two days of hard work, Adam had managed to bring several of his skills to level 10, after hours of grind, using his skills during fights and doing his best to understand them.
-Mighty Strike (E, Perfectly Mastered)
-Charge (E, Level 10/10)
-Wind Blade (D, Level 10/10)
-Parry (D, Level 10/10)
-Lunar Smite (C, Level 10/10)
-Crushing Blow (C, Level 10/10)
-Icy Stomp (C, Level 10/10)
-Whirlwind Slash (C, Level 4/10)
-Totemic Rage (B, Level 1/10)
-Barbarous Roar (B, Perfectly Mastered)
-Misty Escape (B, Level 2/10)
Now that all those skills were Level 10, all he had to do was to bring them to the next level, perfect mastery, and he would receive yet another boost in strength.
Back to his army, Adam used his [Barbarous Roar] to talk to his soldiers.
"I am Valiant Heart, Aqua Sovereign from the Coldlands Empire, and I am here today to fight alongside you, my friends, against the Undead!"
Following his words, the whole army became silent, as they looked at him curiously.
Having gained their attention, Adam continued with "I know I'm not one of you, and never will, but I can promise you that I will fight until my very death for this city! If I, an outsider, am ready to go so far for this city, will you people be cowards in front of the undead?!"
"WE WON'T!!"
Adam was surprised by how many of them answered, he thought he would have to do more build up to rile them up. Well, maybe it was just his charisma acting…
"I'm not asking you to fight for me, after all, who am I for you? Just some stranger. Today, I may be one of your leaders, but I don't want you to fight for me."
Adam took a deep breath and said "FIGHT FOR YOURSELF!"
"FIGHT FOR YOUR FAMILIES!"
"FIGHT FOR YOUR CITY!"
His voice echoed in the ears of every member of the army, and they felt their heart pump blood at a never before seen speed. The close ranged began hitting them weapons against their shields or their armor, while the magical classes tapped the ground with their staves.
Adam said "The undead may have more soldiers, but we shall still win! And that is because…"
Adam made a short pause as the ground below him shifted, and Neith appeared. She appeared from under Adam and quickly stood tall, and Adam was now towering over the whole army as he finished "FOR WE ARE ONE!"
"WE ARE ONE! WE ARE ONE! WE ARE ONE!" The army repeated after him, and chanted the three words as the undead army approached.
Unfortunately, the undead were immune to fear effects. Had it been a living army in front of them, the effect of a whole army shooting at them 'We are one' would have applied a fear effect.
Adam unsheathed his sword on top of Neith and roared "ATTACK!!!!"
ROAR!!!!!!
The army didn't repeat this time, but shouted as loud as they could as the close range classes began rushing forward. Moreover, not just the army behind Adam, but even the army of players and the NPCs above Level 70 all attacked at the same time.
This made them look like a unified wall, about to crash into the undead army. Adam jumped down from Neith and began running alongside her as the impact with the undead army came closer and closer.
However, when the living army were 20 meters away from the undead army, they all heard loud booms behind them, and the first rows of the undead army exploded, getting annihilated by the power behind the explosions.
Those were the cannons which had been fired. They were defending their city after all, their soldiers weren't the only weapon they had.
The living army ran through the smoke caused by the explosions and clashed with the second row of undeads. As they clashed, the whole undead army seemed to move back at the same time, they had been pushed back because of the living.
As he crashed into the first undeads, Adam also looked at their status.
[Skeleton] (Elite, Level 50)
HP: 25000/25000
[Skeleton] (Elite, Level 70)
HP: 50000/50000
[Zombie] (Chieftain, Level 50)
HP: 125000/125000
[Zombie] (Chieftain, Level 70)
HP: 250000/250000
[Ghoul] (Lord, Level 50)
HP: 500000/500000
[Ghoul] (Lord, Level 70)
HP: 1,000,000/1,000,000
The lowest rank monsters were Elites, and they were all Skeletons. Of course, there were different types of skeletons, some were swordsmen, other archers, mages… but they were simply a stack of bones.
Next were the Chieftains, the Zombies. They were essentially the same as the skeletons, but they had flesh on top of their bones. They looked like every NPC present, except that their flesh and their equipment looked rotten.
However, the Ghouls were different.
Ghouls are masses of flesh that are several meters tall, and wide. Some of the Level 70 ones were even as big as Neith.
Something else to note was that the HP of the Level 70 was exactly twice as much as the HP from the Level 50, but Adam wondered if it was the same for their attributes.
The undead's tactic was also the same as them, they had split their armies in three sub armies, and each one had a leader. However, it looked like the leader of the army Adam was facing wasn't a tall or big monster, because he couldn't see it behind the big army.
Now that he knew what he was facing, Adam activated his armor's berserk skill, red fumes surrounded his body as he jumped above the first undeads.
The skeletons looked at him with the blue fire within their eye sockets, wondering why a human being broke the rank and jumped in the midst of their army.
However, Adam used the different undeads' heads to jump deeper and deeper in their ranks. There were two reason he did this. First, this was training him to open the Second Gate. Secondly, he had an AOE attack to use, and he didn't want to hit his allies.
When Adam was fifty meters deep into the undead army, he finally faced the first Ghoul, having bypassed all the Zombies and Skeletons easily.
He landed in front of it and used [Mighty Strike] and [Icy Stomp].
-120 000 HP!