A/N: Like before, you can join the discord channel for questions and discussion with this invite code: X6WeHRn

Erin cursed when the white flare went up. She knew the approach to the city was too easy, clearly this place held some surprises. The location was... in grid D1, right where the worst of the fire damage was.

Distant cracks, barely audible. Gunfire. Then the distant roar washed over the encampment. The shriek was like nothing she had heard before, no animal or person could have made that sound, nor at that volume. The rekis in the camp were yelping in barely constrained panic, a similar ripple washed over the soldiers. Fear and doubt, with an undercurrent of tension.

Something terrible had awoken, was the feeling of everyone who heard it.

"Fast response one, go and kill it!" Erin snapped, not bothering to wait for the messenger doubtless on their way to her. Whatever it was, it needed to be crushed, immediately.

One of the messengers waiting near the command center immediately dashed off to his bicycle and pedaled away. The Minmay 2nd Guard she had reserved was divided into three groups of three hundred each, with twenty summoners plus five of the new spell cannons attached to each group. Like the Model 2, spell cannons had also received an improvement. Mounted on reki-drawn carriages with powerful suspensions, the new spell cannons were meant to support flying columns like this.

The base to elevate the barrels for high angle anti-air work was too heavy to transport quickly, so when moved like this with the response groups, they only had direct fire. They were no less deadly however, especially not with the special ammunition. No zombie nightcryers had been spotted however, so there was little risk of that.

The messenger from the exploration squads returned a few minutes after the first group departed.

"Commander!" the young man, practically still a boy, skidded to a halt in front of the command post and saluted her. "Scout squad in D1 reports they have encountered a new monster. It appears to be a bony worm roughly three meters high and ten meters long. Heavily armoured. It fires light beams from its mouth. Guns and fire ineffective!"

Guns and fire was ineffective? That was their main weapons negated! Erin thought furiously. The summoners and spell cannons were their only hope then?

"Send out the special summoner squad," Erin said.

She hoped she would not regret using all her backup plans immediately.

"Are the reinforcements not here yet?!" Kobel yelled as the bone worm lurched down the street in a horrible parody of life.

What was left of his squad, less than half, had retreated towards the open hole in the city walls. Along the way, they had been joined in the retreat by two other squads as the fighting drew them to support him.

"The messenger must have reached them minutes ago. The response squads can't get here that -!" the other squad's commander yelled back.

His words were drowned out by the discordant shriek of the worm as it barreled through the street, slamming into a stone and wood building as bullets peppered it from all sides. A shower of broken rubble swept over it but the worm crawled out, none the worse for the wear. None of the scouts were out in the open any more as the light beam vapourized anyone standing in the worm's way.

The only comfort was that the worm did not use it often and the beam was quite short ranged compared to the normal shooters. Its conical shape was only lethal out to about twenty meters. It would still easily blind anyone it hit who wasn't facing away, even if they were at larger distances.

Half their fighters were unable to fight or dead. All their efforts and fireshells had yielded only a series of pockmarks and half the worm's armour on one side sloughing off. As Kobel watched, a spell storm of forcebolts sailed in from behind the worm and splashed across the side. Chunks of bone and flesh ripped away, the top layer of the weakened armour simply blowing apart.

The worm turned around, blasting a wide light beam at the source of the forcebolts. The spell storm had already anticipated that however and she was already gone before the building flashed into a pyre.

What made the worm so much more deadly than normal zombies was its intelligence. Shooters barely attracted any attention from it, the worm would chase after and try to run them down with its bulk, but it saved its deadly beam for things that threatened it. The monster had a rudimentary instinct that made its advantages so much more terrible.

Ironically, the common forcebolt was the best answer they had. For whatever reason, the aura was very strong on the inside of the worm, but its armour was only poorly defended against direct magical attacks. Forcebolts were only half as effective, judging by the showers of stone and wood chips that flew everywhere whenever someone missed, but that was still better than a bullet that only broke a piece of armour.

The problem was that they were fast running low on magical power. A third of the guns had run dry and the rest were not far behind. If this simple trap didn't work...

Kobel leveled his gun at the worm as it turned back to the street. It crawled forwards with sudden speed, aiming for the building sheltering most of the three squads' casualties.

"Fire!" Kobel yelled.

Soldiers spread all over the buildings to either side of the street, Fukas perched on the roofs and every one of the injured who could still hold a gun opened fire at once. Forcebolts slammed in from three sides in a deadly crossfire that presented no relief to the worm. Its weak facing could not be protected and the hail of forcebolts tore chunks off it, slowly deepening the wounds.

It shrieked again, but the soldiers were getting used to the cry. The steady stream of attacks barely faltered, but when it sprayed the building to its left with the beam, a third of the soldiers were silenced as they evacuated the suddenly burning buildings. From the desperate screams of the dying, a few had been caught in the beam as well. There would be no saving them.

Kobel fired and fired until his gun refused to comply. The magic had run out.

All across the area, the only ones still firing were those who had escaped its breath and returned to fight. The worm was writhing, looking much smaller now. Deep gashes in the mixed bone and stone armour were everywhere, exposing the zombie crystals underneath. The zombie aura was spilling out in deadly wisps.

Had they almost killed it, only to be left inadequate at the last moment?

Then the worm rolled over the ground. The ground filled with rubble and torn bits of street and buildings and shattered zombie bone. In its wake was only the larger slabs of stone and bare soil.

Kobel cursed as the worm began to get fatter again. It regenerated its armour?!

Another white flare shot upwards, from somewhere in the middle of the city. A far off, and familiar, shriek echoed over the city.

This was just unfair.

The hasty retreat almost turned into a rout when the worm caught up to them, but Kobel managed to get everyone to stick together and haul the injured back towards the entrance. They were practically down to nothing but steel blades and muscle power. The worm was only one street behind and they were all getting tired.

So when the collapsed wall section came in sight and there was a group of bicycles being hauled over, the squads nearly collapsed in relief.

The wall itself was six meters high of rough stone, stacked and bound with cement. With the base of the wall still present almost a meter above ground, the broken section of wall doubled as a raised firing platform as the advance party of bicycle riders readied themselves to fight the horror.

The retreating squads reached the wall to find that half the special response squad were bicycle riding summoners, their escorts carrying fresh guns and spare ammunition. While the majority of the exhausted scouts began to evacuate their injured over the fallen wall, the rest hastily rearmed themselves and spread the word to use force bolts.

"Plain force. " Yan muttered as the scout squad leader finished explaining their findings. He nodded at the listening messenger and the girl dashed off on her bicycle to report to the army's command.

"Swordstones, shieldwall and bladewall only. Wisp holders assist me. " Yan commanded. If living fire was not good, then magical flame was probably worse. Too bad his Ritual class stone was Frostfire and probably also ineffective.

The summoners arranged their line. Planes of force, sharp and dull edges both, sprang into existence, covering the line with a cloudy wall of squares and rectangles. Yan climbed up to a higher point, but still within reach of the summoners who didn't have stones that used force.

The crunching of stone got closer. Then the worm rolled into view, barreling through a shattered building.

"Pin it down," Yan said. The assembled and charged phantoms all shot forwards, slamming into the worm from all sides. Blades cut deep, though their edges immediately began to dull as the zombie aura ate at them. Shieldwalls trapped the worm's sides and tail, pressing it into the ground.

The worm ground to a halt more than forty meters away. Immediately, the escorting soldiers began to open fire, bullets and forcebolts splashing all over it.

"The summons won't last," reported the summoner wielding Bladewall. He was a strong one, a cousin of one of the Third family if Yan recalled correctly. Already some of the summoners were reforming their phantoms and replacing them as the ones in the field continued to erode.

Yan began to charge his magic.

Power flooded the air and everyone's magic sense dimmed in response to the massive flare behind them. One summoner who could wield ritual class alone, fed power from three other summoners; the quantities of magic were greater than even a spell cannon charging a powerful shot.

The worm shrieked and thrashed at the bindings, but the summoners held their concentration. These were the best of the summoners and it would take far more than unnatural sounds to faze them.

Yan took his time forming a truly massive forcebolt. It was a non-standard one and was so powerful it was the size of a person's chest.

Perhaps sensing the danger, the zombie worm attempted to fire its beam from its mouth, but the summoners were ready for it. An overlapping layer of shieldwalls flew around to block the beam right in front of the worm's mouth. The flash of light was dazzling, but harmless. The shields, being non-material, needed virtually no power to deflect the deadly cone of light.

With a coordination almost like a dance, the curtain of magic parted once the beam died down. Right behind it was the ball.

The forcebolt sailed into the worm's mouth.

A heartbeat later, the entire worm blew apart. Bits of zombie flesh, bone and chunks of buildings flew outwards, bouncing off everything and sailing high into the air. The shock wave from the explosion even cracked the street below. Dust and zombie bits rained down from above.

"Spread out and find any magic. Disrupt it then burn it," Yan commanded.

The group rushed to finish off whatever pieces they could find.

Yan looked at the crater, idly brushing off a piece of zombie that landed in his hair. It ignited mid-air and never reached the ground.

"Even an old summoner can learn new spells. "

Erin watched the flares shoot upwards as the shrieks of the monsters echoed out over the army not busy with exploration. As she thought with the first worm monster, they were concentrated around the ruined section of the city. How or why she did not know but her role was to put them down.

"Orders," she said, watching the messengers around her perk up with attention, "all except you and you, go into the city and recall all scouts. Scouts to reform at entry points then move to the south gate to aid in the defence. Go, and stay safe. "

To their credit, the unarmed and mostly young boys and girls of the army messengers all went without complaint. Erin spotted traces of worry and fear but they were willing to obey instructions despite the higher risk than usual.

"One message to the special summoner squad, pull back and return to the south gate. " There was only one girl left.

Erin paused then nodded to herself. No point hesitating now. "Go into the city and proceed down the south big street, all squads you find are to perform a fighting retreat and draw as many of the monsters towards the gate as possible. "

As the less messenger sped off, Erin looked around at the remaining commanders of the forces that stayed in the back area. "Set up the spell cannons pointing towards the south gate. Keep in mind that there are our soldiers retreating through it. I do not want the spell cannons to kill anyone by mistake. All summoners to back up the spell cannons. The Minmay 2nd Guard are to aid in creating dugouts and defences for the spell cannons while time permits. "

If guns were poorly effective, perhaps spell cannons could work. They also had improved ammunition after all.

The report from the special summoner squad had not yet returned. Perhaps they had not yet even started fighting. Erin was going to have to bet on the spell cannons working.

"Divert all messages to the south gate defence. I have to be there. "

"Get the spell cannons in line! The monsters won't wait for you!"

Outside the city, past the ruins of the south gate, was an open field that might have once held farmland. It now bustled with activity of a very different sort. Soldiers dug at the ground, spellcannons were sighted and ammunition made ready. In the distance, the occasional roar of the oncoming bone worms served as ample encouragement.

Beside the spell cannons lay the ammunition. Piles of crystals, canisters of compressed magic and more importantly, a pile of large metal cylinders.

Each of the cylinders had a diameter of about half a fist and were a handspan wide. Each of them was also tipped with a metal cone.

Indeed, they looked a lot like Landar's rockets. These were made from failed rocket bodies, whose design had been chosen to fit in a spell cannon barrel. While not meeting the tolerances required to achieve the accuracy and stability for long range rocket use, these discards had been repurposed for making spelllcannon ammunition. Their high numbers compared to the rockets' spoke of how ridiculous the tolerances for rockets were, there were simply far more rejects turning into shells than successful rocket bodies.

The body and conical tip were enchanted with disruption alchemy. Based on the shield piercing experiments, it had been hoped that this ammunition would be able to deliver a living fire payload into the middle of a zombie aura. Without the need to carry rocket propellant, the entire projectile body had been filled with an oversized liquid fire canister, that itself had been enchanted to explode open on impact.

Cato called them 'shells' but of course no one had the required history to understand why he had chosen that name.

Bone worms didn't have an aura outside their armour but Erin hoped the shells would pierce them anyway. Cato had explained that physical projectiles were more efficient than force bolts at penetrating physical barriers and that the worms' armour would hopefully only be effective against small bullets.

Erin looked at the man standing to one side with the summoners, watching the preparations and the city. For all his reputation, Cato had not contributed to the military campaign in any way that Erin could see. Though he did stay out of her way.

The distant roars were getting closer, individual cracks of gunfire became clearer with shortening distance. From the sounds of the fighting, the worms were heading towards the south gate. The soldiers' enthusiasm for defensive barriers became visibly more pronounced.

Erin waited and watched as the first few ranging shots were fired into the city. Despite the risk of friendly fire on the retreating scouts, the ranging shots were necessary to be able to quickly attack the monsters. There would be no time to do so once the worms appeared.

The observation balloon floating above the city waved their flags. The worms were getting closer and there were twenty of them. Her aides marked the progress of the enemy against the grid of the city map. The monsters were heading straight to Erin's group, she couldn't have lead them better into the trap if she had given the monsters orders.

Far unlike the zombies in the open field, the bone worms' entrance was fast and explosive. One moment the straight cobbled road leading into the city was empty of any scouts or monsters, the next a bone worm smashed through a building to roll into the main street. It looked deceptively small in the distance but everyone could see that the worm was nearly as tall as the single floored building it had just leveled.

The blackened scars on its armour spoke of the scouts' brave action. Now that the fire from the harassing scouts had died down, the worm monster turned its full attention to the arrayed spell cannons with their massive magical stockpiles.

Before Erin could give the command, the various spell cannon squads had already begun to take action.

With a sound like the sky tearing apart, the first of the spell cannons flung their shells into the city. Quite different from their smaller gun counterparts, the earsplitting cracks of the special shells traveling faster than sound was deafening. The bone worm and the street around it exploded into fireballs.

"Fire by squad!" Erin commanded, reminding the spell cannons that they weren't all supposed to waste their shots on a single target.

The worm broke free of the flames, still smoking and bearing two large craters in its armour that dripped living fire. Erin cursed, the shells did damage but were not as effective as she hoped.

Another salvo of four spell cannons exploded onto the body of the worm, blowing huge chunks away. Only more worms had shown up, bulling through the buildings or crawling through side streets. The sergeants in charge of the spell cannon squads adjusted their fire, the battery of a full hundred was divided to fire at three zones of the enemy. The last minute range adjustments carried out, the full might of the spell cannon battery spoke at once.

The replaced crews had regained some of their experience since the disaster of the Firestorm gambit. These spell cannons were also larger and more powerful than the easily portable versions Erin had deployed then. And most importantly, there were five times the number.

At the range of more than half a kilometer, the shells' inaccuracy made it hard to hit individual targets. The worms writhed as the shells smashed into them. The dirt and cobbles of the street fountained into the sky. Buildings had their faces smashed inwards and flames gutting their insides. And the blossoms of fire continued to bloom like a beautiful but deadly flower.

And the worms refused to be destroyed. Too many shells were missing, those that hit were simply not enough. One or two burnt out husks was not going to stop the remaining as they charged through the onslaught.

"... detonator! It's not working!" someone shouted next to Erin. She looked right to find Cato trying to make himself heard over the din of constant shell fire.

"What?" Erin shouted back as Cato came to a halt next to her.

"Tell the crews to remove the impact detonator! The armour is resistant to fire and if the shells don't explode until they get inside, the impact will do more damage!" Cato yelled.

Erin considered the suggestion for a moment then nodded to the messenger, "give the order! Set the shells to not detonate on impact!"

It took two precious reload cycles and the monsters reaching nearly the five hundred meter mark before the switch occurred.

Immediately, the difference was obvious. Without the impact detonators in the nose cone, there were no more huge gouts of fire or thunderous reports of explosions... except when they hit a worm. The first shell impact blew straight through a weakened section of armour without exploding and a moment later, the inside of the worm exploded with fire. Later, it was determined that the shells that pierced the armour had exploded from the disruption aura triggering the living fire containers.

Pools of living fire spat smoke into the sky, leaking from broken shells as they smashed apart on the ground instead of exploding in the intimidating towers of fire. Intimidation didn't work on monsters anyway.

One by one, the worm monsters began to fall as the shells took their toll. The bone and stone armour was cracked apart, the fleshy insides set on fire and slowly but surely, the monsters were being ground down by superior firepower. A trail of broken and burning bodies scattered among the raw destruction was left in the wake of the monsters' advance.

And then the shells ran out. Five worms with an assortment of scars continued soldiering on towards the human lines. They were getting a little close for comfort.

As the soldiers began to fire their guns, in futile hope, and the spell cannons swapping over to force bolts, Erin felt the Iris camp blooming with sudden power.

The remaining worms' rush was halted by a massive lightning bolt that smashed into the leading worm . As Erin blinked away the dark spot in her eyes, the crater of red hot rubble held a pile of broken bones and stone, burning merrily. That was far more powerful than the usual minimum power.

The monsters continued their charge, even as the next was blown to pieces by concentrated force bolt fire from the spell cannons. Another was destroyed by another ritual summon. And on it went, until the last bone worm had charged right up to the human lines.

The thousands of guns surrounding it flayed its surface with a withering barrage of fire, the armour was visibly deteriorating and spalling debris flew everywhere. The worm got into range of the few remaining flamethrowers at the front and was buried under continuous streams of living fire.

The army adjusted their positions to surround the thing and fire at it from all sides. Sword summons flew in to pin it to the ground. Then the closest squad of spell cannons pushed their way through to get a clear firing line.

The worm was burned and pounded into a smear of ash in short order.

The cheers and celebrations was well deserved. The soldiers had come a long way, expending effort and material to step into the dangerous lands beyond the borders of civilization. They hadn't suffered too many losses either. In the process, they had become experienced, in their weapons and in the way war was now conducted.

The city had been cleared of zombies after going through the ruins once more with a careful eye and many a trigger happy finger. By the time the city was known to be safe, the groundwork for the future military base was being laid. The Minmay Ironworkers had chosen a building for the steel workshop and were repairing it. A mana well was being dug in the center of the city. Material to repair the city's walls was being sourced, along with surveying the land for defensive trenchworks. Meanwhile, the slope of the land gave some hope that an aqueduct from the River Yang could be built. Surveys and patrol schedules were being drawn up.

That humans could reclaim land lost to the monsters, no matter how small this one city was, was a great achievement. It would inspire the Federation and cement Ektal's place in history as the first to turn the tide.

The mood in the command tent was less jubilant.

"We simply do not have any more of the shells for spell cannons, with no way to produce them here. Minmay's last communication from a week ago indicates that supplies for more rockets and shells are being manufactured but we cannot expect resupply of these advanced weapons for at least three weeks. " Erin had her logistics officer briefed the military commanders of the divisions. "Though once the workshop is ready, we can replace our expended bullets and cut iron bars for spell cannon ammunition. "

She nodded at Cato and Landar, who were special invitees. "A large and heavy rod of iron rolled into a similar shape as the shells will have even greater penetration and damage than the fireshells on the worm's armour," Cato explained, "it won't burn the insides of the worm like shells do, but they can blow holes into the armour through which living fire can enter. "

"Our magical power stores are at less than a third of capacity," continued the man holding the current state of the northern expedition on his clipboard. "Fortunately, the mana well is expected to begin operation in a few days upon which we should be able to generate enough magic to cover our expenditure. Assuming the rate of attacks on us remains the same as on our journey here. Further mana wells could eventually allow us to build a stockpile as originally intended. "

"What about fire?" asked the leader of the Ektal 1st Militia. It was the main question and one that everyone knew did not have a comforting answer.

"The flamethrowers report that almost half of them are empty, the rest range from unused to almost empty. Fireshells are down to a quarter of what we started and of course, rockets and shells are completely depleted. At the rate of usage on our way here, we will run out of fireshells before the first supply shipment arrives. "

And of course, out in the middle of nowhere, there was no way to make fireshells at this place.

Erin thus gave her orders, "therefore, trenchworks and lower walls around the city are our top priority. To conserve our stock of fireshells and ammunition, we need to efficiently defeat the monsters. Luring groups into prepared defensive positions where spell cannons can destroy them will have to be our main strategy. "

But the question that everyone was thinking of was, were there more worms out there? The worms were practically impossible to defeat without the living fire.

If the worms came again, would the army run out before the first resupply could arrive?

A/N: I feel like another discussion on shell fuses (AP version!) is coming on, but this isn't something Cato would have prior knowledge about.