—3rd Person POV—
Arriving in a small village far from Castle Town, the sky above the settlement had a sinister aura to it. High above the village dark, gloomy clouds slowly encompassed the surrounding area making it feel like it was almost night. Seeing dust clouds rising up from the east, it wasn’t hard to miss the horde of monsters approaching them.
“That’s a lot of monsters…”, Raphtalia murmured.
“Haha, you mean a buffet of experience points!”, Motoyasu said with excitement, “This is just like a raid battle, this is awesome!”
Turning around to see the other Heroes and their parties nearby, Naofumi quickly noticed they weren’t alone. In addition to their parties, the King and several dozen knights were here to back them up. Watching a mysterious woman in all black step out from behind the King, he was curious who she was as he’d never seen her before. Seeing her whisper something in his ear, the King turned to look at Motoyasu’s party.
“Sir Motoyasu, I thought we agreed you’d remove my daughter from your party. She is currently under house arrest for murder and treason.”, the King stated in a frustrated tone.
“Haha…well there isn’t much we can do about it now.”, Motoyasu replied skirting an actual response, “Anyways, what do we have to do again to stop a Wave? I know you told us before, but I don’t remember off the top of my head.”
Noticing an angry expression growing on the King’s face, he quickly redirected the question to everyone else. Looking at everyone present for an answer, Senko stepped up to tell him.
“In order to end a Wave, you must kill the Boss Monster. It is far stronger than the normal monsters, and it is highly intelligent when compared to normal monsters.”, Senko informed them.
“Simple enough.”, Ren stated watching the horde draw closer, “Just like in the games, endless waves of enemies till you kill the boss.”
“We should begin evacuating the civilians before the horde arrives.”, Raphtalia spoke up, “None of them will be any help in this fight, and they will die if we don’t help them.”
“Our duty is to stop the Wave, not evacuate the civilians.”, Ren said with an uncaring tone, “If the Boss is our primary objective, we should get going now.”
Running ahead without making a plan, Ren sprinted away as his party hurried after him. Unwilling to be outdone, Itsuki and Motoyasu gave chase with their parties to get a cut of the glory. Shouting at the Heroes to wait a moment and make a plan of attack, none of them gave the King a response as they were too impatient to wait.
“Those idiots, they are going to get themselves killed!”, the King spat in anger before calming himself down, “When this is over, they are going to receive a lesson in strategizing and planning!”
Knowing that the three parties were only going to delay the horde for so long, Naofumi sprung into action. Looking around the area for a safe place to evacuate the civilians, there wasn’t any real shelter nearby where they could take refuge in.
“Raphtalia and Senko, I want you both to start evacuating the villagers behind our defensive line. Unfortunately, there is nowhere to take them so it will have to do for now.”, Naofumi told them.
“Of course!”, they replied as they began running through the village.
Doing a visual sweep of the area to confirm that no monsters were spawning nearby, Naofumi made his presence known to the Demihuman villagers. Raising barricades made of stone from the earth, Naofumi started blocking off areas trying to hopefully slow down the enemy. Noticing what he was doing, the King came up with a plan on the fly. Going to ask Naofumi for his help, the King remembered that Naofumi may not be receptive to his request. Deciding to give it a try, he called out to Naofumi as he helped a Demihuman family to the Safe Zone he was trying to set up.
“Sir Naofumi, if I may make a suggestion…”, the King called out to him.
Turning to look at the King, Naofumi reluctantly asked what he needed.
“Blocking off the village won’t do us any good, they will simply go around the village. I would like to create a channel down the middle of the village to funnel the enemies through. Can you use your barricades to do that?”, the King requested.
Asking the King to show him what he had in mind, the King quickly pointed to the areas he’d like blocked off. Agreeing to help him, as the King was trying to be reasonable for once, Naofumi started erecting barriers in key points around the village to funnel enemies to a single point.
“You sure this will work, won’t they crash through the buildings?”, Naofumi remarked as he worked.
“Not based on prior reports, they only destroy structures where people are in. If there is no one inside, they will go around it as they would with boulders and trees.”, the woman in black stated, “Where is the Adventurer Kessler right now, we could use his strength in this fight.”
“He is currently attending to family matters right now.”, Naofumi told her as he drew closer to the edge of the village, “I am hoping he has a sixth sense and will come here if we need help.”
As he erected barricades closer to the horde, Naofumi could see that the Hero Parties were in a bad way. With no plan or coordination, they were being overrun and the Heroes themselves were being cut off from their allies. Seeing Ren and Motoyasu trying to forge their own path through the enemies, it looked like they were exhausting themselves quickly. Not seeing anything that looked like a Boss Monster, Naofumi was going to call out to them when he saw movement behind them.
The movement was only for a split second, but he swore it looked like the earth rose up ever so slightly and then settled again. Seeing a few of their party members using Earth Magic, Naofumi thought it might have been a spell that caused it. Pushing the sight to the side, for now, Naofumi shouted out to the others as loudly as he could.
“They are starting to get behind you! Fall back and regroup, we can’t provide you with aid out there!!”, Naofumi proclaimed, “You are going to waste all your energy before the Boss Monster shows up!”
“We don’t need your advice!”, Motoyasu remarked, “Our parties are doing just…”
Turning his head back for the first time since they started fighting, Motoyasu realized that Ren and himself were far ahead of the others. Seeing their parties struggling to gain ground against the horde, he understood that falling back was the only option.
“Ren, our parties are going to be overrun if we don’t fall back!”, Motoyasu told him.
Glancing back to confirm for himself, Ren agreed to regroup with them. Falling back to their group, the horde of monsters suddenly began to increase at an alarming rate as the main host arrived. Seeing monsters as far as the eye could see, the three parties understood that things were out of hand now.
“Air Shield!”, Naofumi said creating several barriers to block the enemy, “Fall back, go through the center of the village and rejoin the King!”
Ordering their parties to throw a few bombs to help cover their retreat, they chucked them over the Air Shields and blew the enemy crashing against the shields to heck. Running the few thousand feet back to the village as fast as they could, the Air Shields finally gave out allowing the host to charge forward unimpeded. Show them the way back to the main group, Raphtalia and Senko rejoined Naofumi now that the evacuation was completed.
“*panting*...anyone see a Boss Monster in the host?”, Itsuki asked before drinking a potion, “I didn’t see anything but a wall of monsters.”
“I didn’t.”, Ren answered wiping monster blood from his face.
“Neither did I, but…I wasn’t really looking for one.”, Motoyasu admitted.
Feeling the earth beneath their feet tremble as the host reached the edge of the village, the King saw for himself how massive the horde was. Seeing no end to them in sight, he knew that something was wrong here. Every documented Wave before had always started out as a trickle with the occasional horde of local monsters being thrown into the mix. The host in front of them easily exceeded several hundred thousand, maybe even half a million or more which was unheard of.
“This isn’t good…”, the King murmured, “I didn’t think something of this magnitude would happen.”
“Whatever spell you guys used out there to make the ground raise up, can you use it here to make a tidal wave of earth?”, Naofumi asked the other Hero Parties.
Looking at one another with confusion, they replied that none of them had cast a spell like that. Going to argue that with them, as he knew what he saw, Senko and Raphtalia grabbed his cloak tightly. Looking back at them, both women had their ears flat against their heads and their tails between their legs. Glancing over at the Demihuman villagers, all of them looked equally mortified for some reason.
“Something is coming!”, Raphtalia screamed before the ground shook violently.
Bursting out of the ground, in the center of the village, a giant snake-like creature rose up and looked at them.
“What is that!?”, the King shouted.
“IT’S A WRYM!!”, Motoyasu replied, “Everyone scatter, it breathes fire!!”
Seeing the fire start to form in its mouth, Naofumi created dozens of Air Shields to try and protect everyone. Blasting through his shields almost instantly, he jumped in front of it and used his Dragon Shield to block the stream of fire. Safely resisting the hot flames that it was spewing, Naofumi shouted at Itsuki to shoot it.
“I can’t hold it forever!”, Naofumi barked as Raphtalia and Senko helped him keep the shield up.
“Help the Shield Hero, take that thing down!!”, the King ordered.
“Sir the horde is going around the village!”, one of the Knights told him as they formed a defensive half-circle around everyone.
Turning his head to confirm, he was shocked that they had chosen to go around instead of through the village. It was like they understood that they would have been forced into a choke point and decided to go around.
“This isn’t right, something has changed!”, the King stated, “They are far more intelligent than they should be!”
“They aren’t intelligent you idiot, what’s different is that they have my brains helping them”, a voice said from atop the Wyrm’s head.
Seeing a man dressed in scarlet robes before them, he wore a sadistic smile on his face as he started looking over them. Scanning the group of people for someone specifically, his expression soured when he couldn’t locate the person he was hoping to see. Knowing that it wouldn’t have been this easy if he were here, the man demanded to know where his target was.
“Where is Cole!? I don’t give a rat's ass about the rest of you people, I want the God Killer himself!!”, the man shouted in anger.
“He’s not here!”, Naofumi said as the stream of fire weakened.
“Is that so…well I am sure if I start killing a few of you he will show up. How about you have some fun with my pet?”, he stated as he snapped his fingers.
Watching a pitch-black portal open in front of the Wyrm, a massive Troll lumbered out of the darkness. Carrying a massive ornate, stone pillar with it, everyone present could feel the overwhelming magical power the pillar radiated. Letting out an ear-piercing roar, the Troll slowly started to charge forward at Naofumi and company.
Ordering the mages to fire on the Troll and Wyrm, all of their attacks served to just annoy them. Swinging its massive pillar forward like a battering ram as it drew near, Naofumi pushed his party away and attempted to stop the blow by anchoring his shield into the soil. Underestimating just how strong the Troll was, Naofumi was sent flying into the hillside a few yards behind him. Coughing up a mouthful of blood as he crashed into it, he heard several of his bones crack from the impact.
“Naofumi-sama!”, Raphtalia cried as she ran over with a potion.
“How dare you harm My Lord!”, Senko hissed trying to distract it.
Completely ignoring the Kitsune, the Troll approached the injured Naofumi while the Wyrm began to charge up another fire breath attack. Seeing the horde crashing against the shields of the knights, Naofumi knew they weren’t going to survive this and resigned himself to death.
“Please Naofumi-sama, we can’t give up!”, Raphtalia pleaded as she made him drink the potion, “The villagers need us to end the Wave, if we don’t, all of them are going to die!”
“Raphtalia, we aren’t strong enough to take on the Troll or Wyrm.”, he replied as the Troll drew closer, “Take the villagers and run as fast as you can…maybe you can escape.”
“No, I…I won’t lose someone else!!”, she cried as the Troll raised up its weapon, “I won’t leave you alone!”
Swinging it down on them, both of them braced for death to take them…but it never came. Instead of that, a giant bolt of lightning came crashing down out of the sky behind them sending the Troll flying back into the village and blew the horde of monsters several hundred feet away. Sitting up to see what happened as the dust settled, Naofumi saw Kessler standing in the center of the crater with an angry expression on his face.
“Alright… who is the idiot that is interrupting my family time.”, Kessler growled as he surveyed the area.
“You did show up!”, the man in scarlet robes cackled, “I knew you’d show up if I tried to kill-”
Vanishing from view, Kessler reappeared in front of the man instantly. Sucker punching him in the face, Kessler slammed his head into the ground causing the entire village to drop almost ten feet into the ground.
“You are with those fucking Gods, I can sense their presence about you…”, Kessler stated staring down at him with a cold expression, “I hope you had your fun because now this game is over brat!”
—3rd Person POV—
Arriving in a small village far from Castle Town, the sky above the settlement had a sinister aura to it. High above the village dark, gloomy clouds slowly encompassed the surrounding area making it feel like it was almost night. Seeing dust clouds rising up from the east, it wasn’t hard to miss the horde of monsters approaching them.
“That’s a lot of monsters…”, Raphtalia murmured.
“Haha, you mean a buffet of experience points!”, Motoyasu said with excitement, “This is just like a raid battle, this is awesome!”
Turning around to see the other Heroes and their parties nearby, Naofumi quickly noticed they weren’t alone. In addition to their parties, the King and several dozen knights were here to back them up. Watching a mysterious woman in all black step out from behind the King, he was curious who she was as he’d never seen her before. Seeing her whisper something in his ear, the King turned to look at Motoyasu’s party.
“Sir Motoyasu, I thought we agreed you’d remove my daughter from your party. She is currently under house arrest for murder and treason.”, the King stated in a frustrated tone.
“Haha…well there isn’t much we can do about it now.”, Motoyasu replied skirting an actual response, “Anyways, what do we have to do again to stop a Wave? I know you told us before, but I don’t remember off the top of my head.”
Noticing an angry expression growing on the King’s face, he quickly redirected the question to everyone else. Looking at everyone present for an answer, Senko stepped up to tell him.
“In order to end a Wave, you must kill the Boss Monster. It is far stronger than the normal monsters, and it is highly intelligent when compared to normal monsters.”, Senko informed them.
“Simple enough.”, Ren stated watching the horde draw closer, “Just like in the games, endless waves of enemies till you kill the boss.”
“We should begin evacuating the civilians before the horde arrives.”, Raphtalia spoke up, “None of them will be any help in this fight, and they will die if we don’t help them.”
“Our duty is to stop the Wave, not evacuate the civilians.”, Ren said with an uncaring tone, “If the Boss is our primary objective, we should get going now.”
Running ahead without making a plan, Ren sprinted away as his party hurried after him. Unwilling to be outdone, Itsuki and Motoyasu gave chase with their parties to get a cut of the glory. Shouting at the Heroes to wait a moment and make a plan of attack, none of them gave the King a response as they were too impatient to wait.
“Those idiots, they are going to get themselves killed!”, the King spat in anger before calming himself down, “When this is over, they are going to receive a lesson in strategizing and planning!”
Knowing that the three parties were only going to delay the horde for so long, Naofumi sprung into action. Looking around the area for a safe place to evacuate the civilians, there wasn’t any real shelter nearby where they could take refuge in.
“Raphtalia and Senko, I want you both to start evacuating the villagers behind our defensive line. Unfortunately, there is nowhere to take them so it will have to do for now.”, Naofumi told them.
“Of course!”, they replied as they began running through the village.
Doing a visual sweep of the area to confirm that no monsters were spawning nearby, Naofumi made his presence known to the Demihuman villagers. Raising barricades made of stone from the earth, Naofumi started blocking off areas trying to hopefully slow down the enemy. Noticing what he was doing, the King came up with a plan on the fly. Going to ask Naofumi for his help, the King remembered that Naofumi may not be receptive to his request. Deciding to give it a try, he called out to Naofumi as he helped a Demihuman family to the Safe Zone he was trying to set up.
“Sir Naofumi, if I may make a suggestion…”, the King called out to him.
Turning to look at the King, Naofumi reluctantly asked what he needed.
“Blocking off the village won’t do us any good, they will simply go around the village. I would like to create a channel down the middle of the village to funnel the enemies through. Can you use your barricades to do that?”, the King requested.
Asking the King to show him what he had in mind, the King quickly pointed to the areas he’d like blocked off. Agreeing to help him, as the King was trying to be reasonable for once, Naofumi started erecting barriers in key points around the village to funnel enemies to a single point.
“You sure this will work, won’t they crash through the buildings?”, Naofumi remarked as he worked.
“Not based on prior reports, they only destroy structures where people are in. If there is no one inside, they will go around it as they would with boulders and trees.”, the woman in black stated, “Where is the Adventurer Kessler right now, we could use his strength in this fight.”
“He is currently attending to family matters right now.”, Naofumi told her as he drew closer to the edge of the village, “I am hoping he has a sixth sense and will come here if we need help.”
As he erected barricades closer to the horde, Naofumi could see that the Hero Parties were in a bad way. With no plan or coordination, they were being overrun and the Heroes themselves were being cut off from their allies. Seeing Ren and Motoyasu trying to forge their own path through the enemies, it looked like they were exhausting themselves quickly. Not seeing anything that looked like a Boss Monster, Naofumi was going to call out to them when he saw movement behind them.
The movement was only for a split second, but he swore it looked like the earth rose up ever so slightly and then settled again. Seeing a few of their party members using Earth Magic, Naofumi thought it might have been a spell that caused it. Pushing the sight to the side, for now, Naofumi shouted out to the others as loudly as he could.
“They are starting to get behind you! Fall back and regroup, we can’t provide you with aid out there!!”, Naofumi proclaimed, “You are going to waste all your energy before the Boss Monster shows up!”
“We don’t need your advice!”, Motoyasu remarked, “Our parties are doing just…”
Turning his head back for the first time since they started fighting, Motoyasu realized that Ren and himself were far ahead of the others. Seeing their parties struggling to gain ground against the horde, he understood that falling back was the only option.
“Ren, our parties are going to be overrun if we don’t fall back!”, Motoyasu told him.
Glancing back to confirm for himself, Ren agreed to regroup with them. Falling back to their group, the horde of monsters suddenly began to increase at an alarming rate as the main host arrived. Seeing monsters as far as the eye could see, the three parties understood that things were out of hand now.
“Air Shield!”, Naofumi said creating several barriers to block the enemy, “Fall back, go through the center of the village and rejoin the King!”
Ordering their parties to throw a few bombs to help cover their retreat, they chucked them over the Air Shields and blew the enemy crashing against the shields to heck. Running the few thousand feet back to the village as fast as they could, the Air Shields finally gave out allowing the host to charge forward unimpeded. Show them the way back to the main group, Raphtalia and Senko rejoined Naofumi now that the evacuation was completed.
“*panting*...anyone see a Boss Monster in the host?”, Itsuki asked before drinking a potion, “I didn’t see anything but a wall of monsters.”
“I didn’t.”, Ren answered wiping monster blood from his face.
“Neither did I, but…I wasn’t really looking for one.”, Motoyasu admitted.
Feeling the earth beneath their feet tremble as the host reached the edge of the village, the King saw for himself how massive the horde was. Seeing no end to them in sight, he knew that something was wrong here. Every documented Wave before had always started out as a trickle with the occasional horde of local monsters being thrown into the mix. The host in front of them easily exceeded several hundred thousand, maybe even half a million or more which was unheard of.
“This isn’t good…”, the King murmured, “I didn’t think something of this magnitude would happen.”
“Whatever spell you guys used out there to make the ground raise up, can you use it here to make a tidal wave of earth?”, Naofumi asked the other Hero Parties.
Looking at one another with confusion, they replied that none of them had cast a spell like that. Going to argue that with them, as he knew what he saw, Senko and Raphtalia grabbed his cloak tightly. Looking back at them, both women had their ears flat against their heads and their tails between their legs. Glancing over at the Demihuman villagers, all of them looked equally mortified for some reason.
“Something is coming!”, Raphtalia screamed before the ground shook violently.
Bursting out of the ground, in the center of the village, a giant snake-like creature rose up and looked at them.
“What is that!?”, the King shouted.
“IT’S A WRYM!!”, Motoyasu replied, “Everyone scatter, it breathes fire!!”
Seeing the fire start to form in its mouth, Naofumi created dozens of Air Shields to try and protect everyone. Blasting through his shields almost instantly, he jumped in front of it and used his Dragon Shield to block the stream of fire. Safely resisting the hot flames that it was spewing, Naofumi shouted at Itsuki to shoot it.
“I can’t hold it forever!”, Naofumi barked as Raphtalia and Senko helped him keep the shield up.
“Help the Shield Hero, take that thing down!!”, the King ordered.
“Sir the horde is going around the village!”, one of the Knights told him as they formed a defensive half-circle around everyone.
Turning his head to confirm, he was shocked that they had chosen to go around instead of through the village. It was like they understood that they would have been forced into a choke point and decided to go around.
“This isn’t right, something has changed!”, the King stated, “They are far more intelligent than they should be!”
“They aren’t intelligent you idiot, what’s different is that they have my brains helping them”, a voice said from atop the Wyrm’s head.
Seeing a man dressed in scarlet robes before them, he wore a sadistic smile on his face as he started looking over them. Scanning the group of people for someone specifically, his expression soured when he couldn’t locate the person he was hoping to see. Knowing that it wouldn’t have been this easy if he were here, the man demanded to know where his target was.
“Where is Cole!? I don’t give a rat's ass about the rest of you people, I want the God Killer himself!!”, the man shouted in anger.
“He’s not here!”, Naofumi said as the stream of fire weakened.
“Is that so…well I am sure if I start killing a few of you he will show up. How about you have some fun with my pet?”, he stated as he snapped his fingers.
Watching a pitch-black portal open in front of the Wyrm, a massive Troll lumbered out of the darkness. Carrying a massive ornate, stone pillar with it, everyone present could feel the overwhelming magical power the pillar radiated. Letting out an ear-piercing roar, the Troll slowly started to charge forward at Naofumi and company.
Ordering the mages to fire on the Troll and Wyrm, all of their attacks served to just annoy them. Swinging its massive pillar forward like a battering ram as it drew near, Naofumi pushed his party away and attempted to stop the blow by anchoring his shield into the soil. Underestimating just how strong the Troll was, Naofumi was sent flying into the hillside a few yards behind him. Coughing up a mouthful of blood as he crashed into it, he heard several of his bones crack from the impact.
“Naofumi-sama!”, Raphtalia cried as she ran over with a potion.
“How dare you harm My Lord!”, Senko hissed trying to distract it.
Completely ignoring the Kitsune, the Troll approached the injured Naofumi while the Wyrm began to charge up another fire breath attack. Seeing the horde crashing against the shields of the knights, Naofumi knew they weren’t going to survive this and resigned himself to death.
“Please Naofumi-sama, we can’t give up!”, Raphtalia pleaded as she made him drink the potion, “The villagers need us to end the Wave, if we don’t, all of them are going to die!”
“Raphtalia, we aren’t strong enough to take on the Troll or Wyrm.”, he replied as the Troll drew closer, “Take the villagers and run as fast as you can…maybe you can escape.”
“No, I…I won’t lose someone else!!”, she cried as the Troll raised up its weapon, “I won’t leave you alone!”
Swinging it down on them, both of them braced for death to take them…but it never came. Instead of that, a giant bolt of lightning came crashing down out of the sky behind them sending the Troll flying back into the village and blew the horde of monsters several hundred feet away. Sitting up to see what happened as the dust settled, Naofumi saw Kessler standing in the center of the crater with an angry expression on his face.
“Alright… who is the idiot that is interrupting my family time.”, Kessler growled as he surveyed the area.
“You did show up!”, the man in scarlet robes cackled, “I knew you’d show up if I tried to kill-”
Vanishing from view, Kessler reappeared in front of the man instantly. Sucker punching him in the face, Kessler slammed his head into the ground causing the entire village to drop almost ten feet into the ground.
“You are with those fucking Gods, I can sense their presence about you…”, Kessler stated staring down at him with a cold expression, “I hope you had your fun because now this game is over brat!”
