You are Summoned

Chapter 289. Home Invasion.

I jumped out of bed, pulling on my shoes as I peeked through the blinds. The angle was bad, and the dark helped to obscure whatever was going on. Grabbing my gun and stuffing figurines in my pockets, I headed outside. My apartment was on the second floor, and down below, in the parking lot, I could see a black SUV with the doors open. It was the vehicle that the agents on Fitzfazzle’s security detail used.

The body of an agent, a middle-aged woman in a suit, was on the ground next to the vehicle. Her pistol was lying next to her as blood slowly pooled around the body. Gunfire directly below my apartment told me other agents were still in the fight. Who they were fighting was a mystery, and I couldn’t see anyone or anything else.

It was obvious they were here for Fitzfazzle, and there was no way I was going to let them get to him. I summoned my armor, the process felt odd from when I had tried it out right after the arena challenge. Instead of snapping into place, the armor felt like it slowly appeared, as the mana-starved world we lived in tried to siphon off its energy.

“Fitzfazzle get up, we’re under attack,” I said as I pounded on his door. I heard Fitzfazzle say he was up and getting his gear ready. As I looked over the railing again to try and get a better idea about what was happening below, I heard Fitzfazzle cursing up a storm because most of his gear wasn’t working. All the mana infused into his devices and weapons had been drained since arriving on Earth.

Flashes and the sharp crack of gunfire sounded below me. I saw the final two agents of the team assigned to protect Fitzfazzle fighting off at least a dozen people. Their opponents didn’t seem to have firearms, but they all held bats, knives, and axes as they rushed blindly into the gunfire.

“Impressive weapons,” Fitzfazzle said as one of the agents began to fire bursts from his MP-5 submachinegun. The attackers were cut down in droves, but as we watched, two large passenger vans pulled into the parking lot and more attackers poured out.

The submachinegun went silent, and I could see the agent try to clear a jam. Armed with only a pistol, the other agent couldn’t keep the crazed attackers at bay on his own, so I aimed my .45 over the railing and lined up on my first target. I snapped off two shots, hitting my target before I felt the tingle of mana on my weapon as the trigger stopped working.

“They’ll be coming up the stairs to get at us,” I warned Fitzfazzle as I summoned the rest of my minions.

There were two sets of stairs that an attacker could use to reach the second floor. My apartment was in the middle, and the walkway was narrow enough to create a chokepoint. The drone and Khurr went to my left, while all the goblins went right. Elida, I kept behind to support us with her healing magic.

“I’ve got this side, you deal with that one,” Fitzfazzle said, turning to the right while I took the left.

“The sacrifice is here. Take him alive for the master!” the first attacker, a young woman in her twenties, dressed in dark sweats and a hoodie shouted as she reached the top of the stairs. Khurr silenced her with a bolt from his hand crossbow, and behind me, I heard the twang of Glurk’s longbow as the goblin got to work.

Our ranged fire stalled the attackers at the top of the stairs, but soon, they pushed forward as more and more attackers joined them. To my horror, a school bus pulled into the apartment parking lot, disgorging even more attackers to join the siege. As the attackers started to pour off the bus, a huge ball of flame shot from the corner of the apartment complex and slammed into the bus’s open door.

Bright light, heat, and flames enveloped half the bus and even the crazed attackers on the stairs stopped to look at the gruesome spectacle before resuming their attack. In the back of my mind, I remembered that the young man Elliot was an elemental mage with a fire specialization. That must have been his work, though, knowing Elliot from our dungeon delve, he probably blew all or most of his mana in that one attack.

“We need more numbers, I’m going to summon some extra help,” I said digging into my pockets for the figurines I’d stuffed inside on my way out the door. I grabbed one of the figurines with multiple figures on a single base, remembering it was a tier one, rank five Angry Mob figurine.

It did the trick as a dozen people dressed as villagers, complete with torches and pitchforks, appeared around us. They shouted curses at the attackers before charging to the right and flinging themselves at the people engaging my goblins. My side of the walkway only had the drone and Khurr, but those two seemed to be doing a fine job at holding back the tide.

The drone had created a spear and a mace to use in its two smaller hands, while the long, bladed arms made short work of anyone in front of it. Any attacker that tried to get close was cut down, and the whole time, Khurr was loading and firing his hand crossbow over the railing at the mass of attackers below. Sirens in the distance told me that help was on the way, we just had to hold out a bit longer.

Just when I thought we were going to make it, I heard Fitzfazzle curse behind me. Looking over to his side of the fight, I could see that half our angry mob were down, turning into mana vapor alongside Glem and Glamb. A large man pushed his way through the crowd, and I immediately realized this was another summoned being.

I couldn’t guess at what his class was actually called, but to me, the man looked like a human porcupine. Large quills grew along his arms and bare upper body. Every few seconds, some of them shot forth, impaling more of my minions. I needed something a bit more heavily armored to deal with him.

“Do not harm the sacrifice, we need him alive,” one of the wounded attackers lying on the walkway said. She was bleeding out from an arrow in her chest, but found the strength to grab onto porcupine man’s leg to get his attention. He returned her warning with a quill to her forehead, finishing her off before attacking the surviving minions on that side.

I found my tier one, rank five mana slayer drone figurines, and summoned it immediately. While my drone minion was upgraded heavily, this generic figurine one was no slouch as it was also tagged as a veteran figurine. The drone appeared and ran toward the porcupine man, who responded with a hail of quills.

Thankfully the drone blocked any of the projectiles from hitting me and Fitzfazzle, but a stray quill did hiss past me and bury itself the back of Khurr’s skull, turning him back to mana vapor. The quills seemed powerful enough to penetrate the armor of the drone, but it was too tough to be taken down by a few holes punched into its armored frame.

Wasting no time, the drone slammed both bladed arms into the enemy summoned being. The man screamed as the blades cut into him. Oddly enough, the blows weren’t fatal, and the blades didn’t penetrate very deeply. Whatever his quills were made of, they served well not only as weapons but also as armor.

Undeterred, the drone unleashed a flurry of blows on his opponent, who couldn’t effectively defend himself against the number of attacks. Gunfire below crackled as two police cars and a black SUV pulled into the parking lot and the agents and officers began to engage.

With a scream, the porcupine man was hurled off the balcony to thud onto the concrete below. My summoned drone began to tear into the other cultists crowding the stairs, who, despite being outnumbered and outgunned, weren’t giving up the fight. With a drone on either side of us, the attackers with their melee weapons didn’t stand a chance.

Some of the enemy turned to attack the police and agents, but with the porcupine guy taken out, I figured they had nobody to cast Fail Weapons spells any longer. It was down to just mopping up now, but the attackers fought to the death. I could see a few had been somehow disarmed and subdued by the agents, and I expected that Lopez would have some way to get information out of them.

With all the summoned beings he was in contact with, Agent Lopez had to know someone who had a power or spell to coerce information from a prisoner. As the last enemy fell, one of the officers headed up the stairs, looking warily at the piled bodies and blood covered drone guarding the path in front of him.

“Rico Kline? Are you and Fizzle okay?” the officer called out, not willing to risk trying to push his way past the heavily armed and armored drone.

“Yeah, we’re good, and its Fitzfazzle, not Fizzle. Thanks for showing up when you did, I’m not sure if we could have held out against this many on our own,” I replied.

“I’m glad you’re okay, Agent Lopez said he’s on the way and wants to see if you and the others are up for a quick debrief,” the officer said.

“Let me round everyone up and find a place to meet that’s not covered in gore,” I replied. It struck me at that moment, the officer looked like he was about to be sick, but the aftermath of the battle barely affected me.

I’d been in dozens, if not hundreds of fights that ended similarly. To top that off, I’d also been killed more times than I could remember. I didn’t know if my numbness to carnage was a good thing that would protect my mental wellbeing, or if it was a sign I was turning into something I didn’t want to be.

Most of my minions were down, I had only the drone and Elida left alive. The summoned drone wouldn’t be around for much longer. With my class skills it would last a decent amount of time, but Earth was constantly pulling at the mana that held it together.

Looking down, I could see that I hadn’t come through entirely unscathed. A long quill was stuck into the body armor covering my chest. While the armor’s magical properties were gone here on Earth, it also carried the ballistic protection that modern body armor provided. The quill was stuck into the armor but hadn’t penetrated through it. With some effort, I plucked the quill from my armor.

A sticky goo with a sap-like consistency covered the end of the quill, and I was careful not to get any on my skin. Who knew what kind of nasty toxins the summoner had unlocked for his bizarre class. I was surprised that the quill felt more metallic than I expected. It was a deadly ability, but not one that I’d ever want to trade in my class for.

With Fitzfazzle in tow, we picked our way carefully down the stairs and found Marie, Julio, Elliot, and Quinn waiting below. A pile of bodies was strewn around in front of them, and it looked like they had teamed up to keep any of the attackers from breaking through into the rest of the apartment complex. I’d been so caught up in my own battle, that I hadn’t realized there was a second one going on down here.

Quinn didn’t look so good, and as I greeted the others, he collapsed to the ground. The young man’s Quest Knight class grated him strong armor, but I could see several quills sticking out of the armor. The porcupine summoned being must have tangled with my friends before homing in on their actual target, Fitzfazzle.

“Hurry, get those quills out of him, they’re covered in toxin,” I ordered, casting Health Bloom over the area as I waved Elida forward to help. I didn’t know if magic healing could deal with poisons and toxins, but I wanted to do everything I could to save Quinn.