Over the course of the next day, the mood of the town plummeted to the dirt.

  Not only were people miserable about preparing to evacuate even temporarily, there had been several Grimm attacks that left the local Huntsmen constantly fighting throughout the day. Even if they rotated out on occasion to rest they had to resupply ammunition, bandage any wounds they took, and do quick and constant maintenance on their equipment.

  And since they needed to always be on alert, small issues that normally wouldn’t be a big deal were starting to build up into bigger ones. There was at least one Huntsman that was rushed to the medical group because his weapon broke down after being hastily reassembled at just the wrong moment.

  It was a downward spiral that was just attracting more Grimm feeding the cycle as each Huntsman had to spend more time fighting them off, leaving a shorter and shorter amount of time to properly rest and recover.

  And that was without the bandit group making any direct moves against the town.

  No, they seemed content to let the Grimm wear the defenses down until they could just walk in and take what they wanted. Which was a little concerning because from what I knew, they should be under just as much pressure from the Grimm, but no one had noticed signs of fighting anywhere close to where Cedric had spotted their camp. That meant they had either relocated or more worryingly, had a way to hide themselves from the shadow monsters.

  If nothing changed, it almost wouldn’t matter though. The Grimm swarms would spell the end of the town, bandits or no bandits. And I wasn’t the only one that noticed.

  “Another attack was destroyed on the other side of town.” Leona muttered under her breath in order to not panic the children around us. “That confirms the worst case scenario, the Grimm have the town completely surrounded.”

  I nodded. “I know. It’s messing up our plans too. At this rate it'd be better to evacuate the entire town with the Horizon and any vehicles we can scrape together even if that means the bandits get away.”

  I’d expected the bandits to lure a few handfuls of Grimm towards the town while making themselves a general nuisance that would slowly ramp up over a couple days. I don’t think anyone was expecting a constant almost unending siege the very next day.

  “Will the others agree to that? I saw people packing supplies but…” Leona trailed off, and I knew why.

  Yes, the town was packing up some supplies with the expectation that people would need to evacuate. But most of the townspeople themselves had picked up whatever weapon they could get their hands on and moved towards the walls.

  It helped…for now.

  A bullet was a bullet and could kill something like a beowulf whether it was shot by a huntsman or a farmer, but the problem was that a farmer was a hundred times more likely to miss and waste ammunition and had no chance in melee range if a Grimm got too close. And it wasn’t like the town had an inexhaustible source of bullets, so Thornbell’s residents picking up a gun and helping hold back the Grimm tide might buy the huntsmen a few hours to properly recover but their ability to help would run out pretty quickly and then the remaining huntsmen would be forced to cover for dozens of suddenly helpless civilians.

  At that point it would be game over.

  I had to give the bandit group credit where it was due, they had clearly planned this out for a while to have this many Grimm in the area and still be able to move around unseen.

  My scroll pinged and alert and I cursed after checking it. “Another flock of nevermore. I’ve got to go. Do me a favor, can you start asking some people to start packing the trucks with supplies? If we can convince enough people we need to abandon the town we can use them as a convoy. I think there’s enough that everyone can hitch a ride even if we need to move slowly because of the older ones.”

  Leona nodded. “I’ll do my best, mistress.”

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  I just hoped it was enough. As powerful as I was, I simply couldn’t be everywhere at once if things went bad suddenly. And it was looking like things could go bad in a heartbeat.

  -o-

  The group of townspeople erupted into ragged cheers as the final nevermore exploded into a cloud of black feathers.

  As the only person here with functionally infinite ammo, I was making it a personal priority to deal with any flying Grimm. Just to let the defenders stretch their own ammunition as far as they could. It also helped that I could actually cover most of the town from any flying incursions from just about any decently high spot instead of having to relocate constantly to hit the ground based attacks.

  These Grimm were even fragile enough that I didn’t even need to break out any special tricks.

  With just slightly enhanced arrows I was able to wipe out entire groups with a volley…and it was pissing me off because it didn’t matter to the Grimm.

  Wipe them out with a volley of arrows, explode them with enchanted swords, vaporise them with a Zanpakutou or Noble Phantasm, hell, nuke them with a Nova Blast, the Grimm wouldn’t care and they died the same to any of them. They would just keep swarming until one group got lucky and managed to get through the walls.

  And to make things worse the sun was starting to go down.

  I noticed some movement off to the side and turned my head slightly to see Dann making his way towards me. “That was some good shooting, Alex.” He greeted me with a raised hand.

  I nodded back at him. “Just doing my part. Something up?”

  The huntsman shrugged tiredly. “Just what you would expect from something like this. Weapon issues popping up, the townspeople are starting to panic and waste shots we can’t afford, and one of the boys ended up breaking a leg… things aren’t looking great for us. I think it’s time you grab whatever and whoever you can and make for Vale.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “And the rest of you?”

  “Oh, we can hold out for a few days if we pull back a bit.” He replied with a cocksure grin, one I was sure was fake. “Set up some chokepoints, cook off a few explosives, there’s all kinds of things we can do to slow down the Grimm if we aren’t worried about keeping the town intact.”

  “Uh huh, and what about the people staying behind?” I asked. “How are you all going to get out?”

  Dann’s smile shrank. “We’ll think of something.”

  I sighed. Stupid, self-sacrificial idiots.

  “Okay,” I said after taking a deep breath. “Instead of that, why don’t we go get everyone and leave together? Leona should be working on getting enough vehicles together so everyone can ride out of here and I haven’t gotten a call saying she ran into issues.”

  But Dann was shaking his head. “Nice thought, and it might have worked if it was just the Grimm, but that bandit group won’t just let us go. Especially if we pack everything they want nice and neatly and put it in one place. They won’t chase a small group escaping, but if too big a group goes, they’ll have to assume the stuff they want is going with them.”

  That…was a good point. And not one I had an immediate answer to beyond; ‘trust me’.

  Before I could think of anything to say to convince him otherwise, there was a commotion nearby. At first I thought it was just another group of Grimm spotted heading towards the town only to realise the shouts were coming from inside the walls.

  There was the sound of squealing tires and I turned to see a small flatbed truck peel out around a corner and start heading for the nearby gate. Reflexively, I raised my bow ready to fire a shot into the cab, only to curse as Dann had the same idea and managed to unintentionally tangle our weapons when his rifle caught between one of the arms and the string of my weapon.

  Credit to him, he was quick to recognise the mistake and actually let go of his rifle to give me a shot rather than trying to fight me for control or disentangle the two weapons, but it was too late. The driver dove out of the vehicle and he must have wedged the accelerator or something because it continued speeding up towards the gate.

  I managed to snap off a single, poorly-aimed shot that blew off a wheel, but that didn’t stop the truck’s inevitable crash into the gate.

  If it was only that, it might not have been a big deal. Those gates had been built to at least temporarily hold off any Grimm that got close, after all. But the thing that made everything worse was that apparently that truck had been loaded up with boxes of raw Dust, crystals of raw elemental power that when properly used, could imbue machines and Aura abilities with all kinds of interesting effects and more commonly powered most day-to-day items. But when slammed into a gate at over sixty miles an hour? It gave a pretty good impression of a bomb.

  The town gate now had a decently sized hole in it. And I didn’t even need to look at the others to know that time had officially started running out for Thornbell.

  Dann moved to retrieve his rifle, looked at the gate for a second and let out an impressive string of curses before looking back into town.

  “Where’s tha’ bastard that was driving that thing?!” he yelled. “I’m gonna skin him alive before leaving him out as Grimmbait.”

  “He got away!” one of the other men on the wall called back. “Jumped out and ran into some weird red portal thing that appeared out of nowhere! Must’ve been a Semblance!”

  “Same thing happened at the North gate!” Another person called, scroll still held up to his ear on the call he must have answered.

  “Bastards aren’t even letting us try to get the women and kids out of here.” Dann cursed the bandits again, but I was distracted by the description of that portal. There was one person I knew that had a Semblance like that, but as far as I knew, she should be on another continent entirely.

  “I’m heading to my ship.” I suddenly told Dann and got ready to move. “If the walls are breached we need to get out of here before the Grimm swarm over everything. I’ll get the vehicles moving, you better meet up with us.” I turned to glare at each of the men individually. “I mean it, don’t go dying out here just because you’re too stubborn to know when to quit.”

  Most of them looked like they wanted to argue, and part of me couldn't blame them wanting to fight for their home. But no one said anything when Dann put a hand on my shoulder and spoke up. “You’re right, Alexandria. And I doubt the bastards stopped at two gates.” He said which drained the remaining fight out of the others. “You go ahead and get everyone moving. I’ll start rounding up the rest of us ‘too stubborn to quit’ and meet you by the East gate.”

  “You better.” I replied before deciding to screw subtlety and stepped out mid-air onto a spell circle. I caught the start of some startled muttering before I vanished using Haste.

  Three casts later and I was back at the Azure Horizon looking at a scene that made my heart skip a beat.

  Leona kneeling on the ground in front of a group of townspeople, holding a bleeding arm and surrounded by five smirking bandits slowly moving closer.