"Okay, Lupie, kill it," Sam said, referring to the sole surviving raptor from the ninth wave. Following her statement, there was a muted crunching sound followed by an event notification.
‘Bing’ Wave 9 complete. Beginning wave 10. Good luck.
"I hope you know what you're doing," Chad said from where he crouched in the trench just outside the blocked cave entrance.
"Sir Little Boy Chadwick, I think we have established I never know what I'm doing until I'm doing it, and even then, I am usually just winging it," Sam responded happily from the top of the cliff. She felt good about their chances now that she had devised a solid plan.
Sam had tasked Marin to hollow out a two-meter deep, meter-wide, and ten-meter-long trench in front of the cave entrance before having him seal himself and anyone else who didn't want to or couldn’t fight in the final wave safely inside the cave. Not surprisingly, at least to Sam, both Chad and Parish decided to stay and fight. She had been a little surprised when Nina, the archer girl Naris had saved, had walked out of the cave to stand with the defenders. “The fact I have over fifty WMD’s in my spacial storage right now probably helped in their decision-making process,” Sam bemusedly thought while rolling one of the said weapons of mass destruction around in her fingers. Sam hadn't missed how Nina stared at Nara and stood slightly closer than necessary to the Moonblight while she had gone over the plan with them. Sam mentally noted, "Note to self: tease Naris and Nara about Nina later."
***
No monsters had broken through the far tree line since the wave started, so Sam decided to speed things up a little. Glancing over to Naris, she raised her eyebrows with an unspoken question. Naris gave her a nod, and Sam chucked the mana crystal as hard as possible. The tiny crystal flew across the river and bounced to a stop a few meters from the nearest tree on the far side of the battlefield. “Gotta love that strength stat!” Sam thought, admiring her throw.
Naris wasted no time in casting a void bolt at the small crystal. His spell struck the small construct a few seconds later, the impact tossing it the final few meters into the trees. The explosion shook the ground of the entire battlefield, and Sam was sure she could see the ground ripple from the blast. The shockwave uprooted several smaller trees close to the epicenter of the five-meter-wide violet fireball that erupted from the tiny crystal. The trees that didn't topple over erupted in flames from the extreme heat of the blast. Dust and debris filled the air, blocking Sam's vision temporarily. Once the dust settled, nothing could be seen exiting the trees.
Sam glanced back at Lupie questioningly. "I detect nothing to either side," Lupie said from behind Sam and Naris.
"Better safe than sorry," Sam said, throwing more crystals to the edge of the trees bordering the battlefield on both sides. She and Naris immediately hit the crystals with void bolts when the tiny targets stopped moving. Sam, Naris, and Lupie all dropped to their stomachs on the cliff, and Sam warned everyone in the trench below to brace themselves.
Six more explosions rocked the battlefield, sending violent shockwaves over the party's trench and threatening to bring the cliff itself down as huge chunks of dirt and stone fell from the cliff, narrowly missing the party below, where they were huddled in the trench. When the dust settled, several trees could be seen sinking into the river, and dozens more were scattered across the field. Small fires dotted the landscape with their smoke, threatening to obscure Sam's vision from her perch on the cliff.
Sam frowned; there wasn't a single kill notification from what would have essentially wiped out every wave up to this one. Standing up, she said, " Okay, everyone, it looks like we're going to have to do this the hard—”
Sam was cut off when Lupie sprinted past her and lunged off the cliff, yanking both her and Naris off with her, using her blood tendrils to snag them around their waists. Trusting Lupie to know what she was doing, Sam did her best to keep her focus forward, looking for threats. Hearing a whistling sound above her, Sam looked up just in time to see three black spikes about a meter in length fly past their heads to slam into the cliff face so hard they disappeared entirely, blasting chunks of stone out from the impacts.
Shouting through the event chat, Sam warned everyone in the trench, "Everyone, keep your heads down! We have a ranged attacker throwing what looks like spikes made from onyx!"
The three hit the ground an instant later and sprinted for the trench. Sam threw up a kinetic dampener spell in front of her as she ran. It was just in time because the instant her spell formed, it shattered under the force of a spike slamming into it. The pain from the spell backlash slamming into Sam's brain was overshadowed by the pain from the black spike tearing through the right side of her chest, taking out one of her lungs. Her spell had slowed the projectile enough that it didn't penetrate entirely through her body, but the impact still threw her backward to land on her butt a few meters from safety.
Lupie slid into the slightly larger area of the trench Marin had hollowed out specifically for her. At the same time, she wrapped a blood tentacle around Sam's ankle, snatching her toward the trench. Chad scrambled up the side of it and ran to Sam with his shield strapped to his back to block from attacks. It was good that he did, too, because he had just grabbed Sam's other ankle when a spike slammed into his shield with a deafening clang! Even with the impact from the black spike, Chad managed to keep his footing and, with Lupie's help, quickly dragged Sam into the relative safety of the trench.
“What creature does the church have that throws black spikes?” Sam gurgled through a mouthful of blood as she tried to yank the spike from her chest.
"I don't know of anything with that ability in the church's arsenal," Parish said, trying to pull Sam's hands from the spike. She snapped at Sam, "Stop struggling! I think the spike may have clipped your heart! If you yank it out now, you will bleed to death before my healing takes effect!"
"I'll be fine!" Sam snapped back at Parish, then turned to Brenda and Ella and said, "Help me get this out!" The spike was slick with blood, and Sam's hands kept slipping off of it.
Parish opened her mouth to argue, but one of Lupie's blood tentacles wrapped around the base of the spike in Sam's chest. When Brenda grabbed Sam's shoulders, Lupie quickly popped the spike out of her chest.
Parish held up her hands to cast a spell, but Sam, Naris, and Lupie simultaneously yelled, "No!" through the event chat, making the healer pause.
Sam pushed everything she could into mana repair, and within moments, her wound was nearly closed. Parish could only stare in amazement at Sam as she healed herself faster than most healers could.
"How?" Parish asked, staring at Sam's rapidly closing wound with a mixture of wonder and confusion.
"No time to explain," Sam said quickly. She looked at Chad, who was peeking over the edge of the trench, and asked, "Did the spike penetrate your shield, Chad?"
Chad had to duck down to avoid another of the black missiles as it smacked into the ground just in front of him. He looked at Sam and shook his head, "No, it didn't get through my shield, but I was bent down, so it was deflected by the angle. I'm not sure what a direct hit would do."
Sam thought for a moment while staring at the spike Lupie had pulled from her chest. Lupie had dropped it at her feet once she had removed it. On a whim, Sam identified the spike.
Simian Bone Spine
“Simian? As in monkey?” Sam thought before bringing herself back to the present. She looked back and forth between Brenda and Chad, saying, "Okay, Chad's shield can deflect the bone spines, and I managed to slow one down drastically with only a sixty by six by one hundred shield, so I think all of our—”
“I’m sorry, a what?” Brenda interrupted Sam.
“It’s how I determine the strength of my magic,” Sam explained quickly, slightly annoyed at the interruption but figuring she should explain a little so the others would understand her reasoning. “When I detected the spine approaching, I formed a magical kinetic dampening barrier in front of me. It was sixty centimeters in diameter and six centimeters thick, and I used one hundred mana units to form it. That is to say, it was weak as shit." She looked to Brenda, "So, I think that as long as anyone with shields can keep their distance, they should be safe from the bone spines." She held up the spine from where it lay at her feet with a mana thread. "Oh, and does anyone know what a Simian Bone Spine is?" When everyone answered in the negative, Sam sighed, "Okay, I guess we have to do this the hard way. Lupie, you and Nara, who had switched back from Naris, circle around the edge of the battlefield, and I'll run straight up the middle with a powerful barrier up to distract the beast."
“What should we do?” Ella asked from where she was crouched behind Brenda.
"Wait for my signal," Sam said, "I'll let everyone know what we are up against, and we can plan from there. I have a feeling there are only one or two monsters in this wave, which means we have completed the event requirements, so anyone who doesn't want to engage in the final fight shouldn't."
Parish spoke up, "Sam, I appreciate how you and Lupie have carried us so far in this event, but if there are only one or two high-level enemies, we can hold our own in the fight. Horde combat is drastically different than battling an individual monster." Everyone was nodding along with Parish, so she continued, "May I suggest we all attack as one but spread ourselves across the battlefield so the ranged attacker cannot focus all its attacks on one target?" Parish asked, explaining, "There are only two of us here without physical or magical shield abilities." She looked at Nina and Nara, crouched together next to Lupie. Both women only shrugged.
Lupie spoke up through the chat, "I will protect them both," she said as she spoke, two saddles made from hardened blood formed on her back. One faced forward and the other to the rear.
"Damn, now I wish I didn't have a shield," Brenda mumbled to Sam's left, causing her to snicker.
Checking the event timer, Sam said, "Okay, everyone, we have seventeen minutes to take out who knows what. Is everyone ready?"
Confirmations rang out from everyone, so Sam charged her body with mana. At the same time, Parish and Nara cast their regeneration spells on the berserkers. Chad cast a defensive boost on the party, and Sam felt a thin layer of magic coat her body.
Once everyone was prepared to exit the trench, Lupie gave them one final buff by letting out a long howl. The instant Sam heard the howl, she felt the magic take effect, and it seemed like the world slowed around her as the hastening spell took hold. Not wanting to waste the advantage Lupie had just given them, Sam braced her foot on the back side of the trench and kicked off, angling so she cleared the opposite edge.
Sam and Lupie exploded from the trench, leaving the others behind as they raced across the field of death. Nara's screams of excitement and Nina's shock at Lupie's speed brought a slight smile to Sam's lips as she sprinted toward the far trees. A black spike hurtled toward her, but in her hastened state, it almost seemed to be moving in slow motion. Sam easily batted it to the side with her arcane shield, not even bothering to erect a barrier. As she cleared the river without even having to jump, she thought, "Just how fast am I moving? I have to be pushing one hundred kilometers per hour right now!” There was no more time for thought when the spine-throwing monster finally revealed itself.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Sam's breath caught in her throat when the giant beast leaped from the trees and ran toward her. “Damn, that’s one ugly,” she couldn’t even think of a word to describe it, “I’ll call it a Porcupine Cat Monkey for now!” The beast was a giant forest green catlike creature at least nine meters long with six muscular legs, four of which resembled the arms of a monkey, complete with hands that had opposable thumbs that were set farther forward on its torso. The two remaining legs were set below its rear like the standard legs of a quadruped; the thick, long claws on its hind feet dug deep into the soil as it dashed toward her. From the looks of its body, it seemed like it could stand upright and use its front four legs as arms. Its head resembled a lion’s, complete with a large mane of course black hair. It didn't have fur; instead, it had a thick coat of densely packed spines reminiscent of a porcupine from Earth but sized appropriately to the creature they protected. It had a long black tail, and, looking at it, Sam immediately recognized where the spikes had come from. The tail was thick and leathery, the end of which was slightly bulbous with the tip of a black spike protruding from it.
Just as Sam focused on the bulbous tail, the monster glowed in her mana sight as it activated a skill. The bulb holding the spike swelled to double its size, and the bone spine poking out of the tip was blasted out at an incredible speed, followed by two more in quick succession. Sam didn't try to block these spines; she could see them glowing with magic and didn't want to risk it. Fortunately for her, she was hastened, so with deft movements, Sam avoided each of the spines, allowing them to hurtle past her, each missing by centimeters. The spines had even turned slightly toward her as she avoided them, but the speed they were approaching prevented them from having time to correct their course enough to hit their mark. The massive beast roared at Sam when its attack missed.
In just a few more steps, they were less than ten meters apart. Sam readied one of her javelins, intending to aim for the monster's face and hope for the best. Before she could throw her weapon, the creature surprised her by ducking its head and curling into a ball rolling toward her. Its body glowed with another skill activation, and all the spines on its back and sides stood straight out, glowing with energy.
"Shit!" Sam shouted when she realized her speed wouldn't let her dodge the two-ton rolling ball of spikes hurtling toward her. Without time to avoid or even think of anything else, Sam threw her weapon into the mass of spikes and planted her feet, raising her shield as she slid toward the monster. “I hope this works,” she thought, forming a thick mana construct in the shape of a ramp over her body. She didn't have time to build supports for the construct, so she used her body to brace it up, hoping to withstand the impact.
The ball of spines slammed into her makeshift ramp like a wrecking ball of death. Sam screamed as she felt the force and weight of the attack crack her shin bones, forcing her to her knees. She braced her shield with both her arms when the monster and she collided and felt her shoulders shatter from the impact even as her arcane shield cracked under the skill-infused attack.
Then, the weight was gone just as quickly as it was there. Sam turned to see the rolling spikes spinning past her through the air. Sam was glad her ramp had worked, but now the monster was barreling toward the rest of the party as they charged toward the fight. Sam's fear for her companions proved to be unfounded when seeing the attack coming, Chad slammed his enormous shield into the ground, shouting out as he activated a skill. Brenda and Ella quickly slid behind Chad, interlocking their smaller round shields behind his, bracing for the impact. When the massive beast hit Chad's improvised shield wall, it was stopped and pushed back when Chad activated another skill with a shout.
Seeing the other participants had the monster's attention, Sam took time to heal her shattered bones while identifying the creature.
Adult Simian Spinebeast [Level 56]; Hostile; Affinity: none; This species is not native to Hallista. Additional experience will be granted for assisting in eradicating this invasive species. As this is the final creature of its kind on this planet, additional rewards may be granted for slaying this beast.
“Additional rewards? Sign me up!” Sam said after reading the description.
“Be warned, there is another monster in the trees!” Lupie’s voice came through the event chat. This was the first time Sam could remember that the Bloodmorph sounded excited.
“Can you identify it and share it with us?” Sam asked. She received a notification in response.
Adult Gilabear [Level 52]; Hostile; Affinity: Strength, Endurance; This species is not native to Hallista. Additional experience will be granted for assisting in eradicating this invasive species. As this is the final creature of its kind on this planet, additional rewards may be granted for slaying this beast.
“I have never heard of either of these beasts,” Nara said to everyone.
Nina surprised everyone when she said, "An adult Gilabear can rip a rock golem apart with its claws and bite through virtually anything but the most powerful enchanted metals. The creatures have no magic, but their health and stamina are virtually limitless. It can heal from any wound almost instantly, the only exceptions being decapitation or the destruction of a tiny organ in its chest. Decapitation is the preferred method to slay the beasts as the organ is barely the size of my smallest finger and, according to my father, can be freely moved around in the creature's chest cavity if it feels an attack might strike it."
"I have an idea for the bear thingy, but it won't work on Spikey," Sam said, wincing as her shoulders finally snapped back into place and she could move her arms again. "I'm going to plant a mana crystal in its chest, then detonate it."
"Yes, please don't do that to the beast made of spears," Parish's voice came through the chat. She followed up with a concentrated beam of light from her staff that hit the Spinebeast in its eyes, causing it to miss hitting Hanna with one of its spines it had pulled from its back to throw at her as she closed on the beast with her shield up and her axe prepared to strike.
Lupie came sprinting from the trees a moment later with the most enormous creature Sam had yet seen on this planet snapping at her heels with Nina firing arcane arrows at it from her position facing backward on Lupie's back. Sam realized that decapitation was probably going to be impossible anyway for a creature whose neck was nearly two meters thick!
"Who the hell is that girl's dad, and how the fuck did he ever decapitate one of these things?" Sam thought incredulously as the twenty-meter-long, ten-meter-tall mass of green scales and claws toppled several trees in its single-minded pursuit of Lupie, who was also keeping the giant lizard bear hybrid's attention by peppering it with void spikes. Most of the arcane arrows were skidding off the Gilabear’s thick scales. Even the void spikes barely penetrated the beast, leaving only small holes that slightly bled before closing almost as soon as the wound appeared. “And that’s with void wounds being twice as hard to heal,” Sam thought while she was trying to figure out how she was going to get a mana crystal past the rows of teeth and down the giant monster's throat, then hit the crystal with a void bolt, while still being able to avoid any attacks from the enormous beast.
An idea struck her, and Sam turned, shouting, "Lupie, bring it to me!" as she ran toward the river. She could feel the ground shaking with each of the Gilabear's steps as she sprinted as fast as her magic-infused legs could carry her. Sam explained to the group what she was planning: "Everyone, I'm going to detonate a mana crystal under the Gilabear to hopefully knock it off balance, so Lupie, we need to get as far away from the others as possible. We'll use the river to escape the blast." Sam was thinking fast as she ran down the river's edge. No one objected to her plan, which she hoped meant they were in agreement, so pulling out two mana crystals with her mana threads, she slammed them into the soft soil near the river close to where it left the event zone. Keeping her threads attached to the small crystals, Sam dove into the river and headed for the bottom, asking Lupie when to infuse them through their party chat.
"Now," Lupie responded only a second later.
Sam, moving quickly, began pumping more than a normal amount of void energy into the small crystals. She felt Lupie enter the water just as the crystals exploded. Sam felt the concussive force through the water, followed by an insane increase in the water's temperature. The entire river lit up in violet hues even where she was nearly ten meters below the surface. “Maybe I put a little too much void in there,” Sam thought as she magically propelled herself from the near-boiling river water, trusting Lupie to care for herself and her two riders.
Bursting from the water, Sam was prepared for the worst, and instead of gaping lizard bear jaws lunging to snap her in two as she half expected to happen, she was greeted with a scene of pure carnage. The giant Gilabear was lying on its back in a pile of its own blood and viscera, with smoke rising from the stumps where its two hind legs had been blown off along with a substantial portion of its rear quarter. “Holy shit, I can't believe that worked!" Sam thought, running up to the monster's head. The beast seemed to be unconscious, its breathing coming labored and slow. Using her mana threads, Sam tried to get a crystal into the closed mouth of the monster, but its jaws were clamped too tightly shut.
"Oh, come on!" Sam shouted, trying to pry open the Gilabear's jaws with her remaining javelin without success. With a quick look, Sam saw the monster's hind quarter visibly growing back. Not knowing where Lupie was or if she could even pry the massive jaws open, Sam decided to switch tactics and go for the decapitation option. "So, how do I decapitate a tree trunk?" Sam knew she could cut a tree in half with her abilities, but trees in this world didn't have levels. “Are there sentient trees here in Hallista?”
Sam refocused on the task at hand, which was cutting the head off a level 52 lizard bear monster that was from a planet other than the one she was on…which was also not her home planet. Sam sighed and asked herself, "How in the fuck am I going to cut this thing's head off?"
Sam wracked her brain, “Come on, think! I’m an artist, sculptor, and recreational anime consumer! What can I make that could cut this thing’s head off?” She knew she could probably get through some of the monster’s thick neck with a void blade, but she wasn’t confident she had enough energy to cut its head off completely. She decided to create a massive, bladed construct.
“Man, I really have to stop experimenting with my powers when fighting! I really hope I don't blow myself up with this stunt!" Sam mumbled to herself as she formed a massive axe construct with her arcane mana and hefted it high over her head while at the same time trying her best to block out the screams and shouts of the other event members that were battling the spike monster.
Sam focused all her attention on channeling her mana into the creation. It was the largest weapon construct Sam had ever created. She modeled the axe from old pictures of Tabar axes with a single giant crescent blade three meters wide on one side and an even more giant hammerhead on the other. The axe blade extended two meters out from the shaft at the peak of its crescent shape. As Sam poured more and more mana into the construct to increase its density, the weight of the blade and hammer at the end of the nine-meter shaft threatened to make her lose her balance, forcing her to stabilize herself with her mana threads burning precious amounts of her rapidly dwindling mana pool. Fishing out the smallest mana crystal she had, Sam embedded it in the hammer portion of the axe with one of her free mana threads.
With her axe fully formed and as dense as she could make it without it being too heavy to hold up, Sam looked at the rapidly regenerating body of her target. She knew she was out of time. So, against her better judgment, she formed a void layer over the arcane edge of the crescent axe blade. She felt her arcane mana try to fight the negative energy of the void. Through sheer force of will, she managed to control the violent torrents of negative and positive energy fighting to destroy her construct. The axe's handle heated to the point her gloves started smoking from the friction of the energies fighting each other. Knowing she had only moments before the entire weapon exploded in her hands, Sam brought the massive construct down on the Gilabear's armored neck with all her strength, infusing void into the mana crystal embedded in the hammer side of the axe head as she did so. Just as the blade struck the monster's neck, the mana crystal exploded, blasting her axe into the thick scales and hide of the beast's neck. The explosion blasted Sam back, and she rolled into the river from the force of the blast, which was a good thing because her clothes and hair had burst into flames from the intense heat of the explosion.
***
Sam groaned to herself when she came to floating in the river, “How can I be hurting so bad with a pain tolerance as high as mine?” Suspended just under the water's surface by her own buoyancy, she took a moment to check her notifications to see if her stunt had worked.
You have defeated Adult Gilabear [Level 52]. Bonus experience earned for defeating an enemy at least 10 levels above your own. Note: experience gained will be calculated and awarded upon event completion.
Sam sighed at the notification, causing bubbles to rise to the water's surface from where she was floating. She didn't resist when two tentacles wrapped around her and started pulling her through the water. “Thank you, Lupie, I'm exhausted," Sam mentally sent to her friend as she dragged Sam's limp and broken body out of the river using her blood tentacles. The Bloodmorph wrapped Sam up in a warm cocoon of blood and seated her on her back, holding the Pathfinder in place with her blood tentacles.
Sam surveyed the battlefield, barely able to keep her eyes open as the warmth of Lupie's healing ability soothed and healed her broken and burned body. Sam was vaguely aware she was missing both her arms from the elbow down and one leg that had been blown off at the hip. She didn't care, though, because as Lupie sauntered to join the others, a welcome notification popped up in her vision.
'Bing' Congratulations! Your party has completed the System-curated event: Cull the Herd.
Actual Completion Percentage: 100% (Success requirement 85%)
Starting Participants: 25.
Ending Participants: 20.
Average Level of Participants: 42. (5 Levels below recommended event level.)
Time Taken for Mission Completion: 1:27:36. (Time allotted 1:30:00.)
Calculating Rewards based on individual performance…
Personal performance reward(s):
1.93 x Experience gained.
100% Completion group reward(s):
One-time access to the system shop network for two purchases. Note: Purchases must be made within 10 minutes of the user's full recovery.
Note: All Church of the Light followers involved in the release of the invasive species have received a 25% debuff to all stats for 1 cycle.
Sam closed her eyes and slumped into Lupie’s healing cocoon. They had done it.