"Fuck, where the hell are the reinforcements?!"
Carrot cursed harshly, raising his hand and firing a crossbow bolt straight into the face of an enemy charging at him with a rapier.
As the swordsman staggered back two steps, Carrot slipped into the cleared guardroom beside the gateway... he had spotted a red glow at the far end of the passage.
Cigarettes had yet to be invented in this era, so Carrot doubted the enemy opposite him was having a smoke.
If it wasn't a cigarette, it could only be a burning matchcord.
The moment Carrot took cover, a gunshot rang out. Of the three players still swinging their halberds inside the gateway, one screamed.
"Fuck, I've been shot!"
When Carrot darted back out, he saw one man lying on the ground, barely alive and unable to fight. The other two were still resisting the endless stream of enemies pouring out of the Outer Keep with their halberds.
But they couldn't hold them off for long. The narrow gateway limited how many enemies could join the fight, allowing only two to charge through at a time, but given enough time, they would bring up their matchlocks.
Just as they were doing now.
Carrot fired his last bolt, dropped his hand crossbow, and rushed forward to pick up the halberd the unlucky man who had been shot had dropped.
His bolt struck the musketeer in the neck, sending him stumbling backward with a hand clamped over his throat.
At the same time, however, an enemy sword-and-shield fighter stepped in to replace him. He lunged forward, raised the knight's shield in his left hand to block a player's halberd, and thrust the arming sword in his right hand into the player's chest.
The player wore a plate breastplate, but he had forgotten that