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Since they had nothing to do while the students rested or had fun before tomorrow comes around, the professors were going around either inspecting the base or helping out where they could.
Castacia and Remri helped make the food for the students. Since there's hundreds of them, this task was quite the handful. It was only two hours after they got to the camp that the two could finally have a breather after finding a bench for themselves.
Remri, now in a bikini top and casual pants, sighed while fanning herself.
"It's not even the summer season but I'm sweating like a blacksmith in this weather."
"It's uncouth for a professor to be dressed so casually, Remri."
"Oh, whatever! The vice principal isn't here to scold me so why are you still so uptight? Maybe you should release those oversized things of yours as well and live a little!" she shot back at her friend.
"They aren't oversized…"
"You're hiding them underneath all those layers of clothes. They're actually way bigger than what they seem. Come on, show the girls you still got it as an old woman and let's go take a dip in the pool with the kids."
"Don't call me old! I'm in my early thirties!" she shouted with a blush.
"Hahaha! I can already see the wrinkles." Remri teased again, "I'm kidding! Don't give me that scary look!"
"Anyway, shouldn't we stop Lauran? She's been going at it," a rumble shook the ground and fire burst into the air in the distance, "for a while…"
"No facility can handle Lauran's magic so it's better to have her train in forests where monsters are rampant. The deeper parts of the forest also have monster zones so it's perfect for her."
"It feels a bit disheartening knowing your student surpasses you in strength. She also absorbs knowledge like a sponge and can learn a spell that's taught to her, in a day or at most a week. I know she's passionate about learning all magic but we'll eventually run out of things to teach her."
Watching the student sparring nearby, she continued, "If she'd been there with us in the dungeon… we wouldn't have had to bury so many of our students and lost our friends…"
"…"
"No… if we had simply investigated the dungeon beforehand, none of that would've happened."
"We need to stop thinking of the past and live on with our lives. If not for ourselves then for the ones we lost. If I could control time, I would go back and warn our past selves."
"Heh, yeah, me too." The sadness seemed to wash away from her face. "…We'll live for them…"
"Sooo, I heard Gaermann asked you out on a date… and I've seen you leave the academy every day after classes ended for a few days now. Am I right to think you accepted the date?"
Face flushing red, Remri harrumphed, "I just took pity on the guy! But I won't give in so easily especially when that shameless idiot asked you out last time."
"Aww, here I thought I could give him a chance."
"Y-You! Stay away from him! You're old enough to be his mother!" she fired back.
"Stop making it sound like I'm in my 40s!"
Just as their teasing became a little too heated, Castacia noticed a strange dark energy in the corner of her eye.
"Huh?" she looked in that direction.
"What is it?"
"Don't you think things have gotten too quiet?"
The people around them, hearing that, also stared where she was looking.
"Yeah, there's lots of monsters in this forest so there's no way she'd be able to wipe them out with just a few spells this quickly." Said an employee of the camp with a frown.
"Maybe she gave up?"
"How many students left again? I hope they listened to our warnings to not go too deep. That Lauran girl is stronger than any of the mages here so I'm not concerned that much about her but the others…"
"Yes, we should probably go check."
Castacia looked at the knights, who also seemed clueless about the sudden halt of her powerful spells.
"Can any of you sense her signature? I know knights have something called Warrior Sense."
One of the knights nodded and began to walk in the direction of that smoke, probably to get a more accurate reading on the signatures of the students that were outside the camp.
The explosions from before had stopped so Castacia was worried something had happened to Lauran. But the next moment, a pillar of ice that was taller than any tree and could be seen even from the base appeared in the distance, in the direction of the lake.
Before the knight could speak, a chill crept up all their spines.
An avalanche of dread filled the camp and everyone could almost visualize it—black threads spreading from the forest into the camp.
The defensive barriers suddenly activated—which they only do when sensing monsters.
The blue formation spread throughout the entire camp, casting a blue hue over them.
Caught off guard by that, the workers stared blankly before snapping out of it and running to their stations.
"Professor Castacia, a monster is nearby! Get ready to fight!" Jerlin, one of her colleagues that was with them on the dungeon mission, suddenly flew off and began to chant.
"What? A monster got passed Lauran of all people?"
She's considered S-class in terms of strength so she should be able to handle most mosnters on her own. The thing holding her back is her lack of experience for her to take down actual SS-rank monsters despite having reached the seventh rank.
Panick spread among the students so Castacia quickly ordered, "Head towards your dorms! There are powerful barriers in the buildings that can protect you if anything comes inside!"
"I'll go with them in case anything pops up on the other side." Remri quickly summoned her staff and told the children to follow her.
Dark energy seeped from between the trees and a dark purple light shone from within the forest.
'Dark purple… Necromancy!?'
Her premonition was answered in the next moment.
"U-Undead!?" one of the soldiers shouted when a skeleton came up to the barrier and hit it with a sword.
The forest edge vanished, swallowed by a staggering tide of bone, rusted armor, and rotting flesh. Thousands of undead poured from the treeline, their hollow eye sockets glowing with an unnatural, sickly hue. The sheer density of the horde choked the air with the suffocating stench of decayed earth and stagnant mana, rushing the military camp like a nightmare brought to life.
Suddenly, a deafening hum vibrated through the ground as the camp's defensive barriers triggered. A massive, translucent dome of golden energy snapped into existence just as the front line of monsters crashed into the perimeter.
Hundreds of skeletons and ghouls slammed into the ward, their bodies instantly incinerating into plumes of gray dust upon contact with the holy magic. But the swarm didn't hesitate. They piled onto the barrier, a mindless tsunami of bodies pressing forward with crushing, suicidal momentum.
The magical shield flickered and groaned under the impossible weight. With the horrifying sound of shattering glass, micro-fissures formed in the energy grid. Though the barrier maintained its overarching structure, the immense physical pressure squeezed several undead through the fracturing seams.
The ones that breached the barrier landed heavily inside the camp, immediately unleashing chaos. Supply tents were ripped to shreds under flailing claws, watchtower supports were violently battered, and weapons racks were trampled to splinters as the camp guards frantically scrambled into formation.
Students were safely moved to the buildings which had their own barriers activated around them.
"Request help from the empire and any other military camps in the empire! That's not a force we can manage on our own!" Castacia shouted at a soldier nearby.
They may be simple skeletons, but if the necromancer can summon this many, that means they're capable of enhancing their troops. They can probably summon even more.
She's not going to be cocky again like in the dungeon—
"E-Even if we do send a transmission with our military-grade transmitter, with how dense the mana is in this forest, the furthest the signal would go is ten kilometers… We're hundreds of kilometers away from the empire and the closest base we have is…" the soldier she ordered said with uncertainty.
She walked up to him in a hurry and slapped something against his chest, "Take this! I'm not sure where it came from but through our connections with a company that creates transmitters, the academy was able to acquire a new transmitter that's said to be better than even military grade transmitters. Relay everything you're witnessing!"
"W-What? I thought radio signals are suppressed by mana so how is this little device even stronger than—"
"Stop chatting and do your job! I have to go help the students handle the ones that got through! Return the device afterwards as it's one of the few that were donated to our academy!"
Without saying anything else, Castacia cast a Flight spell and burst into the air, surveying the ground. Fortunately, not a lot of skeletons made it inside. The barrier had some divine properties so it could extinguish their lifeforce that was created with dark magic.
'One of our professors used to work at a temple so if she can just—' before she could finish that thought, she saw multiple rays of light strike the skeletons on the east side of the camp, turning them into dust. 'Good, I don't have to worry about that side. First, I need to plug those cracks before the larger variants force their way through!'
Was what she thought before a shout broke through the camp, the source of the voice being an archer.
"BREACH ON THE WESTERN FORMATION! Archers, load your magic arrows!" the voice flowed through her left ear.
She looked that way, noticing a few soldiers getting overwhelmed and one getting stabbed in the throat.
"Another breach! Southwest perimeter!" then another through her right.
"They're inside!" another came from her back.
'T-They're surrounding the entire camp! What's causing this and why are we being attacked now!?'
It seems the barrier wasn't able to handle that many of them and since it's not an actual divine barrier, there's only so much it can do.
A commanded then shouted, "The barrier can't keep up with their forceful entry! They have no regard for their own lives but since they carry weapons, they must have a degree of intelligence! However, that intelligence won't prepare them for this plan. I order you to open several double door sized spaces in the barrier so that we can attack those areas! Everyone get in position and attack the moment you see the holes opening in the barrier!"
"Roger, commander!"
Soldiers rushed from every direction, shields locking together as openings appeared in the barrier. As he had predicted, the skeletons flocked through those gaps instead of forcing their way through. Soon enough, the barrier stabilized.
"Divine archers and priests! Infuse all your attacks with divine power!"
Steel shields collided with rusted blades. Those without blunt weapons bashed the skeletons with their shields or kicked them while covering themselves in aura.
Holy magic illuminated the camp again in bursts of golden light as priests incinerated clusters of undead, each spell reducing dozens to ash. While not enough to dwindle down the numbers quickly, it was still an effective strategy as keeping them at bay until reinforcements can arrive.
Mages unleashed torrents of fire that rolled across the ground like exploding waves, engulfing entire formations of skeletons.
Archers filled the sky with glowing arrows.
Fortunately, not many skeletons had made it inside and only some unlucky people had died when they, with a few still outside the barrier before it was activated but couldn't make it inside in time.
Compared to the endless army outside, the few hundred that breached the barrier through the holes were manageable.
Castacia's eyes drifted beyond the barrier just as she assumed everything would be under control.
Far beyond the endless horde of skeletons.
Something enormous moved among the sea of white.
The undead around it instinctively parted, as though making way for it.
The trees shook.
Then a roar shook the entire forest, even making the barrier tremble from the force of its roar. What emerged was a decaying Frost Giant.
From what Castacia understands about the undead variants of creatures is that they're several times stronger than their living counterparts. Meaning an S-rank Frost Giant that requires an entire party of S-rankers to take down, would be as strong as an SS-rank monster or even stronger.
The giant, eye hanging from its socket, hit the barrier with so much force that the ground itself trembled. It then opened its mouth, making ice energy gather then fired it at the barrier, bathing the ground in an endless white mist as even the skeleton as its feet were swallowed by ice.
One of the other professors looked at the sight with a pale face.
"Dammit, we have to go save Lauran and the other children that left the base but how are we supposed to fight that thing—"
At that moment, the barrier cracked open, splitting like glass, allowing the giant to reach through the breach, its finger grabbing the edges of the hole as if climbing through a window.
With a sickening crunch, its massive, frostbitten hand shattered the nearest watchtower that it could reach through that gap, crushing two guard knights instantly into the icy debris. The barrier's defensive wards sparked violently, attempting to cauterize the giant's decaying flesh, but the cold radiating from its hide simply froze the magic in mid-air.
The frost giant leaned its massive weight against the tear, forcing the shimmering wall of light to fracture further. Rime crept across the magical barrier like spiderwebs, turning the once-impenetrable shield into brittle glass.
"Form the ranks!" the Captain of the Guard screamed, drawing a broadsword that gleamed with holy magic. "Hold the line at the breach! Do not let it enter the main encampment!"
A squad of high-tier knights, battle-hardened and clad in heavy plate, charged forward to meet the beast. They struck at its exposed ankles and calves, attempting to sever the thick, dead tendons.
In life, those strikes would have drawn blood and forced the giant to its knees.
In death, the Frost Giant barely noticed.
It swung its colossal arm in a low arc, sweeping the air with the momentum of a falling mountain. Three knights blocked with their heavy tower shields, relying on military-grade defensive buffs that can withstand wild dragon fire. It was useless. The sheer, terrifying physical output of an SS-rank undead shattered their shields like porcelain and sent the knights hurtling into the forest trees, their armor crushed like tin cans.
Castacia watched from the watchtower, her hands tightening around her staff until her knuckles turned white. The icy mist rolled into the camp, instantly dropping the temperature below freezing. Water in the wash basins froze solid; breath turned to crystalline clouds.
"Castacia!" the pale professor next to her shouted over the sound of dying screams and splintering wood. "The children! If that thing breaks in fully, we'll be overrun so we have to infuse our mana into the generators! We should let it come in so that it doesn't destroy the barrier again then use all our efforts to take it down!"
"Great idea, professor!" yelled one of the knights, "We must hurry! Mages! Head to a generator and begin infusing your mana! Make sure to open a big hole for the giant to get through!"
There was only one Giant but probably over ten thousand skeletons. Though there will be casualties, they have a better chance at fighting the giant.
The Frost Giant roared again, a sound that rattled the bones in Castacia's chest. It raised both fists, dark purple miasma wreathing its frost-covered knuckles, and brought them down directly onto the central barrier rune carved into the earth.
CRACK.
The barrier dissolved into a storm of sparkling dust. The pressure of the giant's aura crashed over the entire camp, forcing half the novice mages to their knees, gasping for air in the suffocating, freezing cold.
The undead swarm outside, previously held back by the barrier, surged through the opening behind their titan, a tide of rot and bone following in the wake of absolute ruin.
Before they could even put their plan in motion, the Giant and the skeletons came through.
The soldiers let go of their weapons, some even falling on their knees.
"Why… Just why did this have to happen now…?" one asked, a cracked smile on his face.
Meanwhile, the colossal monstrosity raised its frozen fist, ready to flatten the helpless defenders into the icy earth.
However, a pillar of light struck the ground, decimating a hundred skeletons and sending the decaying Frost Giant flying backward. The sheer force of the divine blast lifted the multi-ton behemoth off its feet, launching it over the treeline like a discarded toy and shattering its icy armor on impact.
As the blinding radiance settled into a warm, golden glow, a familiar teenager stepped out of the crater, completely unfazed.
"It's Hero Luke!"
"Luke! Where were you!?" his classmates asked in panic, "W-We almost died!"
"S-Sorry, everyone! I had to run back to my room to fetch my sword. But it's okay now!" he lifted the sword in his hands, "Everyone, retreat! I'll hold them off by myself!"
Hearing his words and seeing his overwhelming golden aura that seemed to make even the skeletons hesitate to move, the soldiers and mages didn't hesitate. Even the professors knew that Luke was capable enough for this battle.
The blade hummed to life, flaring with a scorching golden aura that instantly melted the frost in the air.
Sensing the disparity in level, the giant took a few steps back after standing up.
Still offering an easygoing smile, Luke took a single step forward and swung his weapon. A massive wave of concentrated holy magic erupted from the steel, washing over the camp and vaporizing the remaining hundreds of skeletal warriors into harmless, glittering ash before they could even raise their weapons.
Luke charged without hesitation, several similarly tall monsters as the giant approaching slowly behind the army of skeletons.