Reincarnated As The Heroes Guide

The bugs were deceptively fast, their long legs moving them toward the city at close to a hundred kilometres an hour over rough terrain.

They didn’t even slow for the river, and simply charged right through.

Then, they were in rifle range, and the Pulse Cannons lit up the night like tracer fire, sweeping across the enemy line and tearing apart the insects.

The creatures were incredibly durable, but against energy weapons and the magic of the higher rank mages, they were no match.

Lightning seemed especially capable against them, with [Chain Lightning] spells effectively stopping a half dozen of the warrior types in a single spell. It even slowed the leadership caste and left their armour scorching.

After the last round, when very few needed upgraded gear, or changes in their equipment, nearly all the mages and other spell casters had invested in new combat magic.

They knew what they were short on right now, and completing the missions had given them more than enough points for an upgrade.

The best of them were now over level fifteen, and headed for the top of their Classes’ skill trees.

Once they got those ultimate spells, they could diversify and pick up everything else. But the general consensus was that they wanted to get to the top of the tree as fast as possible so that they could get the most powerful options.

Every new spell, or upgrade to an existing spell, increased the damage they did for every mana spent. So, they could either save on every cast, hit a larger area, or simply use a new form of more effective damage.

That advantage became obvious when the enemy was finally within fifty metres of the wall.

Explosions, crushing vines, lightning bolts, shards of ice, stone and metal. Everything imaginable was thrown at the bugs, as the first wave got tangled in the electrified razor wire before they reached the wall.

Lightning spells added damage to the wire, and the assault faltered.

Then, the tiny bugs underneath began their work, piling on top of each other in an attempt to scale the walls.

Gouts of fire from the mages wiped out entire sections of them, and a hurried order was placed for more flamethrowers.

There were many things that the heroes of Marimgar did not agree on. However, ”Kill it with fire” was universally accepted as the solution for all things with more than four legs.

A speeder with a cargo bin rushed the flamethrowers to the front lines, and the city was quickly lit with deep orange flames. They were in such heavy use that Kalli immediately prepared and sent out a batch of replacement fuel tanks.

They were no more expensive than ammunition cases, and in today’s scenario, they would go through far more of them than rifle rounds.

As long as the flames kept licking at the sides of the walls, the wave of bugs climbing up each other to try to reach the top would fail, but even in the middle of the city, Kalli could hear the popping of roasted insects under the general roar of battle.

The new walls were doing a wonderful job at holding the tide back.

Without the ability to fly, they were stuck at the bottom, unable to leap high enough to get over, and cut down too fast to organize anything more than the smallest of them at the walls.

However, their constant attacks were not easy on shields, as the warriors were using them to defend the flamethrower troops as they fired down the wall. They had to lean way out to get a proper angle, and that meant that they were more exposed than anyone else who was defending the walls.

The sound of chitinous spikes hitting the alloy of the walls was clearly audible, along with the roars, the burning, and the scraping of chitin on metal as they bugs tried to climb.

The noise was nightmare fuel if you couldn’t see what was going on.

The sight was nightmare fuel if you could.

Energy rounds sprayed into an unending horde of monsters in overlapping arcs, flamers lip up the walls in brilliant plumes of fire, and heavy cannons blasted the countryside apart, wiping out entire swathes of insectoid monsters.

All under the surreal glow of air defence artillery, lighting up the sky with white bursts of light that scorched winged insects out of existence.

Kalli recorded everything from a hundred different angles, intending to have someone compile the footage later. The heroes were doing amazingly well, and they had learned to layer their defences so that the ones leaning over the walls with flamethrowers were defended by the shield bearers and mages who had defensive magic.

The Pulse Cannons, with a whole team of lower level heroes supporting a higher level gunner, were firing constantly enough that Kalli began to wonder if there was a maintenance schedule for them.

Regular machine guns needed to have barrels swapped every so often, right?

So they might actually manage to wear out a Pulse Cannon at some point. But that was a matter of logistics, and the runners would inform her when it happened, and she could start replacing them all.

”Coordinator, we have incoming!”

Kalli heard the shout, and donned her flight suit before running out the door.

What she found was a heavily injured flying insectoid creature, almost like a gigantic wasp, but with spear tipped legs, and mandibles that could tear apart power armour.

A single shot from her pulse cannon splattered the creature’s head against the grass, and Kalli kicked off the ground, igniting the thrusters to gain enough altitude to see what was going on.

[ Does the top of a bug like that even count as a head? They don’t have necks, so is it just the front like with a crab? ]

Kalli’s mind wandered as she saw the issue.

A group of insects had gotten down low enough to escape the air defences, and they were now over the city, being engaged by the rooftop defenders and the buildings themselves.

[ Rooftop lasers, not just useful in a riot. ] Kalli mused as she began to fire.

There were plenty of defenders, and the buildings themselves did quite a bit of damage to the attackers. But the fast-moving insects were quite adept at dodging target locks, it seemed.