Chapter 96: Chapter Ninety Six

Benny had to head back down to check on the prisoners, so Callie  finished up the last few wishes. Same as Benny she contractually  obligated herself to the role she'd been planning to take anyway, but  she took it one step further, and also paid for a wish with the promise  of her best possible skills being used in the battle. I wasn't sure it  would work, but it did, and not she had a geas keeping her at peak  efficiency for the duration of the fight. I could tell my genuine fear  of losing had a lot to do with increasing the value of that offer, and I  wasn't expecting that little trick to work most of the time, but it was  nice to have it in our corner during this battle.

Two of  the last three wishes were battlefield control. A wish that the trees  would actively attempt to attack them once they entered the clearing,  and a wish for a fog that only we could see through (it would save me  charges of enchanting and let the others use my tricks) . The last wish  was something a bit more esoteric, but just as important, and had been  Callie's idea. She'd wished the puppet master couldn't trigger the kill  switch on any of the sleepers at any point during the day of the attack.

The  wishes had been expensive. I was pretty positive without Impact to  offset the missing points I wouldn't have been able to grant any of  them. The Vitality needed for that stupid tree wish was my max, and the  Fantasy requirements for the fog were at the edge of my abilities too. I  got the feeling it would have been a massive markup over even that if  Impact wasn't worth so much more than the other stats.

Still,  we got it all done, and I was extremely pleased with how things had  turned out. It was a first run on what we could do other than strengthen  ourselves with my powers, and I was happy with how it turned out. I was  surprised some of them had even worked. I suspected the last wish only  went through because it was a very small part of the overall ability it  had to block. I wouldn't have been able to wholesale shut down his  power, and didn't think I'd get to that point anytime soon, but it was  still nice to know I might have the option down the line.

I  turned to Callie. "So, you think we're ready? I mean I know we still  have traps to put down. Benny was heading to tell Celine and Jessie  about the funnel wish, so they should be able to maximize our defenses,  but even with all this, theres no telling how many they're going to  bring. If they show up with another dozen G rankers this will be a tough  fight, even with all our advantages. So how are you feeling about all  this?" I was pretty sure she was as nervous as I was, but I wanted to  give her the chance to vent. As leader she couldn't in front of the  others, but I was pretty sure she trusted me en0ugh to be honest.

She  looked around, making sure the others were all really gone, before  sighing. " I don't know. I hope so. But theres so much we don't know.  We're basing a lot of this on guesswork. Decent guesswork backed by  logic, but that doesn't mean none of it is wrong. Granted we stacked the  deck in our favor pretty thoroughly, so that's bound to help, but I  wish this particular secret society was a bit less secret. The  effectiveness of their information security is almost absurd. We're  going to have to tear every trace out from the roots if we ever want to  be safe on this planet again." She paused. "Well if we want to be safe  before F rank. Still I think this is the best plan we could have come up  with, and I'm pretty confident in our skills."

In the end  that was all we could do, really. Have faith in our own abilities. Wed  prepared for this as best we could without waiting too long and leaving  those kids to be brainwashed. Hopefully we saved them before this whole  thing screwed them up any more than it already had. Before I could  continue though we heard sounds coming up the stairs, and turned to find  Jessie bursting into the room, a frantic look on her face and Celine  right behind her. When she spotted us her shoulders seemed to relax.

"Oh  thank the revenant. The ravens just caught sight of a large group  converging from the north. They're still about an hour out on foot, I've  had them ranging out in different directions. I assume that's the way  we need to set up all the traps but I wanted to come let you know we  have incoming. What's the plan then boss?" I could tell she was mostly  keeping it together by relying on Callie to know what to do, and luckily  our most senior team member was up to the challenge, or at least could  remain cool under pressure.

A  single deep breath was the only sign of any uncertainty before she  pinned Jessie with her bright blue eyes. "Head back out and finish the  traps, then get back here. You'll be manning the base and sending out  ravens for birds eye views of the battlefield, as well as keeping an eye  on Grimmengap. We can't really bring H rankers into battle when we  aren't sure how many of the enemy are G ranked. Otherwise any sort of  crowd control you can manage from up here would be great, though I know  your power mostly works through touch."

Jessie  grinned and pulled out a handful of acorns. "With my Might stat belting  one of these a few hundred feet off the top of this building is doable.  I can help at least a bit from here.Though I'll have to overcharge the  hell out of them to get trees to grow fast enough so I won't exactly be  spamming the things." Despite the warning she seemed excited to be able  to affect the course of the battle at all. Then she and Callie bolted  off to work on the defenses, presumably using the info from Benny and  from the ravens to plat the placement.

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As  Callie and I hurried outside we noticed some of the wishes they'd made  starting to take effect. The fog was beginning to mount. Not too  noticeable yet, but swirling in around our feet. I was assuming it would  start to thicken once they got into the clearing. Between the lack of  visibility and the trees attacking, it should keep them from retreating  back the way they came. I turned to Callie. "Ok what about us? I assume  we need to go get Cark and Clockwork, but then what? Do we just wait?"

I  had no idea what else we could do really. I was used to being the  aggressive party, I had no fucking clue what you were supposed to do as  the defender in a siege. I wasn't sure Callie would either, but she'd  been doing this years longer so she probably had SOME idea of what to  do. Honestly I felt like I should know what was going on, but my brain  was kind of jammed up with nonsense. This wasn't like going out to  patrol where you just had to react or falling into an ambush. I could  see it coming now and it was messing with me.

Instead  of a direction and a purpose I had about a hundred possible things I  could do in the next hour, and I couldn't pick one of them because it  would mean not doing the others. I was also incredibly keyed up, but  with nowhere to go, so I felt like I was rushing every single step  despite not actually rushing to do anything. I'd never been in such a  hurry to stand around and do nothing. I felt like I finally understood  the phrase hurry up and wait and I hated it. I took deep breaths,  forcing my heart beat to slow forcing myself to calm down as I waited  for Callie to answer. I didn't want to waste my energy before I actually  had to fight.

Callie  noticed the deep breathing and seemed to sympathize. I assumed she  remembered her first time playing defense, even if it probably wasn't  quite the same. I was grateful she didn't bother to comment on it, just  focusing on the question I'd asked. "We're going to spread out and wait  behind the traps. Clockwork's wish will funnel them through there,  though I'm not sure if he has some innate sense of where they're coming  in or if it just steers them into the spots we picked, but regardless  coming through the traps will be when they're most vulnerable."

I  nodded at that. It made sense to wait where they were going to be  having trouble to pick them off. I was pretty limited at range sadly. I  could use my overlay to aim thrown weapons, and Touch of Tears worked  even when I wasn't touching something, But it just took up too many of  my charges using disposable weapons. When I got to Intermediate  Enchanting I could afford to be a bit more loose with my attempts, or  when I hit F rank, which honestly seemed likely to happen first.  Beginner had marked a big slowdown in my skill growth.

We  headed over to where Jessie was still setting up the traps, and found  Cark nearby running his patrols. We gathered everyone together and she  went over the plan. "Ok everyone. Here's how this goes. Agria and  Grimmengap are going to be in the hatchery. We'll be using the ravens as  a means of surveillance same as now, and you'll be up there waiting in  case anyone needs healing. The G rankers will be busy with us but there  will probably be enough H rankers to slip around and try to get to our  healer. Grimmengap you're playing defense of both Agria and the raven  eggs, they're a resource we need."

Celine  and the others looked less than enthused to be staying in the back, but  nodded their assent. Callie turned to our stronger teammates. "Cark and  Clockwork, you, me, and Solomon will be spread out over the traps.  We're waiting for them to fall in so we can hit them. Cark, we've taken  steps to prevent him from using that head exploding ability so your  sister is safe, but that also means we can go for knock downs without  knocking them unconscious. That will be the plan. Damage is fine we can  heal it, but don't kill them. Remember these are other people's siblings  too."

Cark  didn't look happy about it, but he accepted the conditions. The use of  the wishes had shown that we could do much more with them than expected,  and it meant we might have a way to undo the brainwashing. Cark didn't  know about that, but he also didn't know exactly how deep the  brainwashing went in fully turned subjects. We'd just told him we were  trying to get his sister out before it took, so he hadn't focused on the  fallout if we didn't. I think he was afraid to think about the  possibility, and I didn't blame him.

Once  we got the locations of the traps we all spread out. They'd defended  two spots but they were big enough that we could spread out and engage  with some room around us. By this time it had been a half hour, and we  had to get ready for them to show up. We hid out of sight so they didn't  see us since the fog wouldn't descend until we got them into the  clearing and then we laid in wait. While we did I stared around at the  lengths of plant that had been set up as the traps, all I needed to do  was wait for them to step in, and then this fight would start.

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