Chapter 234: Unequal Trade

The Frost Giants turned as Kalli approached at maximum thrust, and she saw one with deep blue cloth around his waist begin to cast a spell.

The air around her detonated with explosions of frost, pelting Kalli with ice as she spun the suit, avoiding the worst of the attack, which continually tracked her motion.

"You think you’re tough? Parry this, you filthy casual!" She shouted at them, leaving the Frost Giants visibly confused until a gout of Ghostfire melted their ice barrier as if it hadn’t existed in the first place.

Then, the Pulse Cannon tore into the group, and Kalli braced for impact as she collided with the Frost Giant mage at three hundred kilometres an hour.

The massive creature was hurled from its feet with Kalli on its chest.

Then, she reversed thrust and unleashed the Pulse Cannon directly into its face.

"One mage down."

Her suit was screaming at her in what Kalli was certain was three different languages, with orange and red damage indicators, but she was still pretty sure that her tactic was an effective one.

Perhaps a little slower next time.

The runners who had taken over the heavy weapons on the walls stared at Kalli in shock.

The Coordinator was insane.

But the barriers were down, and their gunfire tore through the rest of the group, leaving the inside of the city momentarily silent, save for the constant thrumming of the {Air Defence Battery} emplacements targeting the Frost Giants outside the walls.

Every group that was eliminated by the artillery was one fewer for the heroes to face.

They were in fast-moving vehicles, but the personnel carriers were not faster than the Giants over rough and soft terrain. So, they were being forced to engage the enemy outside the vehicles, while the Assault Speeders burned through rockets to break Ice Barriers.

Kalli saw Assault Speeders rushing back to the Hall of Heroes, and turned her suit back, ignoring the noises that it was making, and the plume of smoke from the left thruster.

The tinkers were going to hate her.

"Coordinator, what did you do to your flight suit? Are you alright?"

"I’m good. Minor bruising. I smashed into a building and then shoulder checked a Frost Giant. Don’t worry about it. Do we have enough rockets left? How are the heroes doing?"

"They’re holding their own. The Pulse Cannons struggle to get through the Ice Barriers from the front, but the barriers are directional, they’re not as strong from the sides and back. So, we’ve been doing alright, just going through a lot of rockets."

Kalli laughed as she restocked the assault speeders and sent them back into battle.

It wasn’t the heroes here that she was worried about. It was the ones that were not here.

If they were outside the range of the resurrection pod, there wasn’t much that she could do for them, and according to her screens, the healing pods were currently fully occupied, so the Giants that had gotten into the city had done some real damage before she had found them.

From what she could tell, they had moved in a line through the city, smashing buildings, headed for the Academy before she intercepted them.

So, there were multiple injuries all over the centre of the city, and the wounded had spread out to avoid the attackers. The damage didn’t look too bad, mostly broken windows, some shattered walls, and a lot of interior damage from ice shards.

They were going to have to do a lot of repair work once the battle was over, that was for certain.

A steady stream of heroes staggered out of the dorm building toward the Hall of Heroes, looking like they had been run over by a truck, even after being resurrected.

"Here’s more gear. Hold off on heading out of the city for now. We will try to deal with them from a distance. What level are the ones out there if you can guess? Somewhere around our power level?"

Temple shook his head. "A bit more powerful than we are. I’d say twenty-five percent more magical power than our mages. As long as we double their numbers, or have heavy weapons, we can deal with them.

But we’re not as magically powerful as they are, and certainly not as physically powerful.

Do you know what happened to the others?"

Kalli shook her head. "The assumption I’m working with is that they are wherever the Frost Giants came from. An exchange of heroes from the top two groups of the Third Trial."

"Damn."

The other heroes nodded grimly. There was no telling where they would have ended up, but dropping a bunch of heroes into the middle of a Frost Giant city was a death sentence.

"How many groups from inside the city were transferred?" Bert asked.

"Two that I know of. I haven’t gotten any reports of a third group inside the walls. It looks like we’re mostly down veteran teams, and one of the two flight suit teams as well," Kalli informed them.

Bert cussed as he did the math.

"Shit.

Well, with the flight team, they might stand a fighting chance of retreating. It appears that it took speeders and all. No empty vehicles left behind. By my guess, it’s half the heroes who were in organized groups.

The ones who were just randomly along the wall or working as runners must not have been picked, if you only got two groups inside."

Hakim staggered in, wearing the resurrection pod sheet as a kilt.

"Does anyone know what the goal is here? Are we going for the eighty percent kill count? Or is it a survival until noon sort of trial? Do we even know?"

Kalli shook her head. "The System didn’t say either way. We can assume that it’s part of the Third Trial, so the rules are likely the same. But no guarantees."

"Alright, we will go back to the wall and man the Pulse Cannons. If the Giants come for the city, we’ve got it covered. Thanks for the hard work, Coordinator."

Kalli nodded, and Bert led his group out of the Hall with new armour and weapons handed to them by the robotic assistant.