Once the message had appeared stating that their tower had been destroyed, the Montem team members knew they were in trouble. It was incredibly fast and something like this had never happened in their practice games before.
"Change destination to the first tower now!" Alex shouted to his teammates.
The others followed Alex commands and straight away changed their destination. The team knew they needed to do everything they could to protect the first tower from being taken down. There was currently only one tower down the middle lane that was stopping Hershal from reaching their teams flag.
Scarlett who stayed at the bottom lane was doing her best to take down the enemy team's tower but she was all on her own. Range warriors also dealt less damage than melee warriors making it take a lot longer for her to defeat the enemy knights as well as take down the tower.
As Novis and Dan were running through the forest as quick as they could, Dan suddenly started to slow down. Novis noticed that Dan was no longer running by his side. When he turned around, he could see Dan kneeling on the ground.
"What's wrong Dan?"
"It's my head, it's ringing, just go on without me for now, I'll catch up in a bit,"
The students who were watching from the outside had also seen Dan stop all of a sudden.
"Hey, do you know what's wrong with Dan?"
"My guess is it would be his injuries he got before entering the game, you saw how bust up he was. Although the game gives you a new body, that doesn't mean your body in real life is magically healed, he can still feel everything."
What Dan didn't know was he was currently suffering from a form of mild concussion. Ashley was right when she stated that Dan should have gone to the hospital but of course, Dan wasn't going to let this stop him.
Dan had been getting frequent pains on the way over to school but didn't want to worry anyone and decided to power through. The problem was the VR headset required your mind to be in top condition to use it properly and now Dan was starting to feel his body pains and head injuries on his warrior in the game.
Alex had finally backed up to the first tower which was just in front of their team's castle and flag. He turned to look at the Hershal team coming towards him. The second wave of NPC knights spawned and went directly towards them but again Hershal arrow-like formation made quick work of the knights.
They would hold their shields directly in front of them leaving no gap between them. When the knights attacked, they would block with the shield and then all attack at the same time dealing with NPC in a couple of strikes.
Now Alex was alone once again by the tower. The enemy knights moved forward first. The tower shot out a cannon taking out three of them. Alex went to deal with the rest making sure to be careful and not overextend. He knew if he took one step out of his towers range Hershal would pounce on him.
"Dammit, will we have to give up this tower too, was my strategy wrong?" Alex asked himself as he fought one of the knights closest.
Once Alex had defeated the last knight on the enemy team. Ten more would spawn and using them as cover, that was when Hershal would attack. Alex knights had already been defeated and there were 30 seconds between the spawning of each teams NPC knights.
Alex waited by his tower and so did Hershal standing just outside the towers range. There was also another tactic that Hershal could have done. One of them could choose to take the damage from the tower while the others went in to attack Alex but Hershal didn't play this way and didn't take any risks.
They waited for their ten NPC knights to come forward and when the tower took its first shot. They moved in.
Alex knew he needed to delay them as long as he could so that's what he would do. He went to attack the remaining knights who had surrounded the tower knowing that Hershel was coming to attack him but as they charged forward a young girl came storming out of the forest.
It was Ashley. Ashley was the fastest out of the other three. Novis had been slightly delayed by Dan while Ashley ran at full force. A lot of Ashley's training with George was focused on speed. More specifically about training the power in your toes to push off as fast as you could.
Ashley hadn't realised it but the training with George had increased her speed greatly. Although she didn't have the monstrous stamina or strength that Novis had, this was her unique trait.
Frank the leader of team Hershal, as soon as he saw Ashley shouted out a command.
"Defensive formation now."
The team quickly changed from an arrow formation to an oval shape with their shields. It almost imitated that of a turtle. Ashley saw nowhere to strike but tried her best to anyway. Attacking one of the shields in front of her.
Her strike was powerful but when making contact with the shields it was useless. As soon as Ashley made contact with one of the shields Frank gave another command.
"Push!"
At the same time, all five players pushed their shield forward and stepped forward causing their shield to bash into Ashley and her weapon. This caused her to slightly lose balance and as she was caught off balance Hershal moved their shields away and went for the attack.
Frank was the closest to her and his blade was a few inches away from her.
"This is what our coach was afraid of?"
The Montem students watching from outside where silent. They didn't know how to react, not only where Montem going to lose but they were going to lose in a humiliating way not taking out a single member of the Hershal team.
Just before Franks sword could cut Ashley though, a chain came shooting out of the forest and wrapped around Frank's sword.
"Ashley's not the only monster of Montem," Novis said.