Hou Zheng sighed dramatically. “I am here to kill you, destroy the town, kidnap Ruth Moore—” Jael glared at him. Hou Zheng rolled his eyes. “I'm sorry, rescue her against her will. Once the town is burned and the people slain, my mission will be complete.”

  Silence. The defenders weren't laughing any more.

  “That's a lot of trouble for a small problem.” Josh remembered what the orc had said about him. About how the dragon considered him little more than an annoyance to be scratched out. Josh believed him. So why all the trouble?

  Hou Zheng shrugged. “Trouble for me, yes, not trouble for my master. This could have all been avoided, you know. I did offer to pay you.”

  Josh noticed some guards giving him side-eye. He really wished he'd had a chance to give a big speech about honor and dignity and not trusting genocidal dragons. Didn't exactly have time, now. He could ask for a minute, but he didn't think even Hou Zheng was polite enough to just give him time to make a speech. It would be a great way to get him to attack immediately, before Ruth and Darius had a chance to do anything. Instead, he went on the offensive.

  “Notice you're not talking too loud about your boss,” he said, in a voice he knew would carry. “Don't want your mercs to know they're fighting for someone who wants to destroy the City and kill everyone there?”

  Most of the mercenaries looked confused. Many looked angry or frightened, and glanced over at the orc as if in confirmation. Hou Zheng barely even twitched.

  “Your habit of exaggerating the problem will not avail you,” he said. “You know very well that the City is not in danger. I think—”

  “Hold on,” Josh said, holding up a hand. “Did you seriously just say avail?”

  The orc gave him a flat look. “You, of all people, do not have any ground to critique my language.”

  Josh snorted. “Bollocks. I don't care what country you're from, you clearly understand enough English to know better than to use avail.”

  Hou Zheng took a deep breath. Josh thought he saw an eyebrow twitching. It was hard to tell, because all his hair was burned off. “I did not come here to debate linguistic trivialities.”

  A slow grin stretched over Josh's face. He found it hilarious that, of all the insults and taunts he'd thrown around, this was the one that managed to get under his skin. “You sure? Because I've got some opinions on what's coming out of your gob.”

  The orc raised his voice. “I require this man's head. He has rejected all overtures of peace and nonviolent solutions. Deliver him to me, dead or alive, and your people will not be harmed. You will be allowed to flee south, to other villages.”

  A very heavy silence fell. Josh forced himself to remain utterly expressionless. His heart was hammering in his chest. He might be the highest level person here, not counting his friends, but that didn't mean all that much. Any two random people on the wall could pitch him over the side without trouble. Hou Zheng was an honorable sort, he'd accept that and keep to the deal he had just offered.

  He had made a few mistakes, however.

  “Wait,” someone called. Josh vaguely recognized her as one of the delvers. “What's this about leaving the village?”

  He had forgotten how attached people were to this village. This was a place that they had built, carved out of the heart of the Jungle itself. They weren't going to abandon it without a good reason.

  “I have my orders,” Hou Zheng said, stony-faced. He did not seem to realize what a terrible reason that was. “It is too late now. This town, its citystone, all must fall. They are too dangerous to allow to continue. However, the people do not have to fall. There are still villages where you can—”

  “You're telling us to just run through the Jungle and hope we find somewhere safe?” someone else demanded. Josh squinted at the man. He had seen him in Abraham's shop. One of the merchants? “You might be some level 80 freak, but the rest of us aren't! Most of us haven't gone out there in years!”

  “I can guarantee safety—”

  “What was that about the City being destroyed?” Anna interrupted loudly, which Josh appreciated. If Hou Zheng actually guaranteed safety, he might manage to flip a few people to his side. “My parents are back in the City, I'm not letting you kill them!”

  Others on the wall cheered Anna, or jeered Hou Zheng. A few even started throwing trash and food, making the mercenaries flinch back. The mercenaries who, Josh noted, looked a lot less sure of themselves than they had at the start of this thing.

  The orc looked up at Josh. He didn't try to shout down the people heckling him, or defend himself point by point. He seemed to have accepted that he had lost the ideological battle. He gave Josh a simple, small nod. Even under all the burns, Josh could see the genuine respect the man had. This hadn't been a difficult fight for Josh. It would always be difficult to convince people to leave their homes in any circumstances, and an invading army had even more trouble. Defeating his arguments had not been difficult.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Still, Josh saw genuine respect in his eyes, more than expected. It was overwhelmed, however, by the burning ember of pure rage.

  Josh understood, then. He had been confused as to why Hou Zheng seemed so calm. After all, Josh had set him on fire. Still, he hadn't thought too much on it. People who regularly ran [Healers] could be a bit weird about physical injury. Since they could fix it without too much trouble, sometimes they didn't care. They just dismissed it as nothing more important than the cost of the spell to heal it.

  Hou Zheng had not dismissed his burns. He had not forgiven or forgotten the one who had attacked him. He had just buried that ember of anger down deep, too deep for anyone to notice.

  But when push came to shove, he had come here with an army. He had come here with tanks. And he was not accepting any outcome today but Josh's death. He could give Josh some respect, first. But he was going to kill him. One way or another.

  Hou Zheng opened his mouth, and Josh knew he was about to give the order to attack. Josh acted first.

  “Darius, NOW!” he called.

  He didn't even know what he was ordering. He had no idea what Ruth and Darius were trying to prepare. He just knew that they had run out of time.

  Thankfully, it seemed that he had managed to stall for long enough for them to get something set up. There was a curious whirling sound, and then a ceramic jug went sailing over his head, over the walls, and towards the enemy army.

  He felt like he had ages to watch it fall. Josh wasn't a tactical genius of any sort, but even he could see that there were three immediate problems in front of them: The tanks, the mercenaries, and Hou Zheng himself. Josh had no idea which one that Darius would consider most important to hit first.

  The answer, it turned out, was the tanks.

  Josh had hoped that the tanks were some sort of trick or illusion. That had always been unlikely, as Hou Zheng didn't strike him as the type to pull bluffs like that. Of course, tanks showing up were plenty unlikely all on their own, so Josh had been holding out hope. Maybe the tanks were too old and ill-maintained to move on their own. Maybe they didn't have any ammo. Maybe they were just elaborate paper copies magicked up by an illusionist to look real.

  Nope.

  The first firebomb impacted the side of the tank, the ceramic shattering, and burning liquid flowed across cold metal. It did not burn away any hidden paper wards, it did not break through an illusion of light and dreams. It did what fire usually did to hardened tank armor, which was to say basically nothing.

  Then the massive main gun turned, paused briefly, and fired.

  The entire world shattered. That's what it felt like, at least. A wave of sound so loud that Josh could feel it impacted him at the same moment that the wooden wall exploded into splinters and shrapnel. He was thrown away like he had been slapped by a giant, and he felt his shroud break from that one hit. It did its job, though, and he recovered after just a moment. He struggled to his feet, and looked up.

  There was a huge hole in the first wall, and the mercenaries were pouring through it. Thankfully, they still had the second wall, which hadn't been breached. The mercenaries found themselves stymied by Mages and Gunners on the wall firing down into the horde.

  Almost all of the mercenaries had defensive shrouds, which was an annoyance. He was more worried by the flickers of light he could see around them. Glowing veins and eyes, flares of light when they punched, that sort of thing. Even through Josh's muddled mind, he recognized what that meant: They had been given support buffs to increase their strength, damage, and defense. It seemed that Hou Zheng had decided to stay in the back and support his army, rather than wading into the thick of it. That would make it harder to eliminate him.

  With a start, Josh realized he had lost track of Jael.

  “Bollocks,” he muttered, as another firebomb sailed overhead. It landed in the middle of the mercenaries this time, and several of them died before the rest of them could put the fire out with magic.

  He finally decided where he needed to go. He shouldn't be outside the walls, facing the full army, the tanks, and the orc. As much as he would like to solve any of those problems personally, he wasn't in a [Combat] class. Gone were the days where he could dance through a hundred enemies untouched.

  Still, that didn't mean he was helpless. He pulled one of Ruth's new metal grenades off his belt. Well, they were at least as much his own creation as they were hers. She didn't have the necessary [Crafting] skills to work with any material beyond wood, and now that she was a [Combat] class, she'd never get one. So he had made the grenade's casing, basically nothing more than a metal can containing liquid mixed with nails. Ruth provided the rune that could be used to heat the can, and the liquid inside, to explosive temperatures.

  They had tested a few different types. Sturdy cans with nothing but water inside had proven less effective than they'd like. The cans mostly just broke open, without much shrapnel. Stronger cans broke more violently, but less predictably. Weaker metal, filled with a small mix of nails and other pieces of shrapnel, had proven much more effective.

  Josh pushed mana into the rune, waited a breath, and then threw it over the wall and into the mess of mercenaries below. Before they had a chance to realize what was happening, it exploded in a mess of fire and shrapnel.

  They had also started filling the cans with biodiesel instead of water. Instead of steam explosions, now they had good old-fashioned fire explosions.

  The air was filled with shouts, cries, and gunshots. Josh's explosion was barely more than a pop over all that. It did make him wonder, however, why the tanks hadn't fired again. Even if the mercenaries were so disorganized that they were getting in the way of another shot, surely the tanks could just make a new hole farther down the wall. Somewhere that none of their allies would get in the way.

  Josh pulled out another grenade, and readied his new ax in his other hand. Hou Zheng was his ultimate goal. He could already see the big orc running away, and he had to chase him. There were a lot of people to cut through in the way, though.

  It was time to get to work.