* * *

Telnia fretted, nervous, uncertain, worried, and angry. It was a combination of emotions she’d never really experienced before. Her uncertainty was the biggest thing that left her disconcerted. She’d had a plan yesterday. She knew exactly what to do; exactly how to bend him to her will. However, the knowledge of his skill, his seemingly utter invulnerability to her beauty, and the existence of his queen left her frozen in indecision and lost to any options. She paced more. She missed breakfast, and she lost much of the day, coming out only well after lunch. I must try… one more time. Telnia headed to the wall.

* * *

Joe frowned as he ate his lunch. Shifting his jobs over to his newest two jobs proved quite easy, taking almost no time whatsoever. Private had opened up specialist, and hired man had opened up sell sword, which actually made sense, for a mercenary line of jobs. Still, he wasn’t really excited at all to see or use them, to be honest, finding the mindless litany of new job after new job starting to become quite overwhelming, even annoying. Despite that, it was a path to strength, and seemed to be not an inefficient use of his time. Once he’d gotten his parity with his old stats in everything, he’d already had plans to shift his focus to developing his place in this world rather than simply powering through multiple jobs. His learning stat gave him quite a boost, allowing him to spend even just half a day, even less, and then the rest of the day on other goals or pursuits.

In any case, Joe enjoyed his meal after that, no longer needing much time, but put a ‘check his base stats’ plan on his list of things to do. It wasn’t very high, but it was on his list now. He found himself eating a bit quickly, and forced himself to slow down; he wanted to enjoy his entire break. He decided to head back to the stairs, settling in beside the others. The other four fell silent when Joe sat down beside them, but when he just waved at them and took another bite of food, they returned to their conversation. Joe added in some comments, joining in a bit but he spent most of the time just trying to rest.

While he was enjoying his meal, Kilniara did bump Gwenvair on the shoulder to which Gwenvair nodded and then looked up at Joe, catching his eye before glancing to the side and nodding off to the side. Joe was a bit confused, but when Gwenvair nodded again, a bit more deliberately, Joe glanced to the side and then grimaced, shaking his head. Telnia was on the wall again, but quite far down the way, her mass of staff surrounding her while they both sat on the lower wall. Joe turned back and looked at Gwenvair and Kilniara, rolling his eyes.

“Why did you tell me? I don’t care about her.”

Gwenvair shrugged, “Yes, but she still cares about you.”

Joe shrugged himself in reply, “So? I don’t care.”

Kilniara giggled at that, “That will only make her more intrigued.”

Joe sighed, “As long as she stays away from us. She will leave us alone soon enough.”

Gwenvair stared at Joe, her smile slowly growing until she chuckled and nodded. Kilniara only laughed some more before the two returned to their conversation, letting it go. Joe didn’t join the conversation, but listened in for a bit until his meal was done. He rested another few moments after, but then no longer felt comfortable delaying returning to fight. So he stood with a grunt and headed back, offering his thanks to the woman who defended his section of the wall for him.

“Thank you very much, miss.”

She immediately stopped, stepping back and bowing deeply, “My pleasure, eccentric.”

Joe bowed back as well, “Have a good day.”

“You as well, eccentric.”

Joe nodded and then turned back to the fight, no longer able to delay as the monsters were pushing too close to the guard line. He worked hard to clear the monsters back to where he was comfortable, then relaxed, keep the monsters at bay while letting in the ones he was told to where he killed them just short of the soldiers’ line. He soon fell into a rhythm, similar to yesterday, alternating between using his mana points and his personal mana to empower the arrow heads with mana twisters. He’d started off the day with the mana twisters then swapped to using his mana points just a few hours before lunch. The break for lunch allowed his mana points to recuperate almost to full so he continued using the mana points.

Around midafternoon, his mana points had dropped to around ten percent or so. Not wanting to completely empty them, he swapped to the mana hurricanes instead of points. He sent the arrows out, each one still rapidly killing each beast, if a bit slower than what his mana points were capable of. He still didn’t understand why his mana points killed the monsters so much faster, but Joe didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. He could take advantage of it when harder monsters came along. The only frustrating thing was how they were able to dodge the attacks. They almost seemed precognitive. His thoughts faded as a surge of monsters pushed him and he turned to fighting the beasts.

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The fight’s intensity left him unable to really daydream anymore, his thoughts now entirely on keeping the beasts at bay. He soon found himself losing himself to the repetitive work, firing arrow after arrow, imbuing each one with mana twisters as rapidly as he could. Afternoon faded and the sun dropped low in the sky. The monsters began to come more and more rapidly and Joe soon began to struggle to keep the monsters at bay. The pressure grew, and his careful line began to be pushed back further and further. He soon was unable to let the best monsters through, despite the increasing frustration of his monster guide. He had to let through whatever monster he was able to maintain control with, mostly randomly choosing those that were a bit slower and would be within his sweep of attacks, or at least not interrupt his next target of opportunity too badly. OK… this is weird… why the push? Gotta be… something… something’s happening.

Joe continued to fight, but his concern rapidly climbed. Something’s definitely not right. Joe didn’t have a lot of free time, but he did glance to his left and right, finding the monsters a bit less than what was on him but still quite a bit more than earlier in the day. When he looked to the matriarch on his left and the man on his right, both appeared very much overwhelmed but Joe had no time to think anymore and had to return to keeping his line. Pressure continued to build, the beasts continually increasing in numbers.

Soon, they were crawling over one another to get past the front line, the bodies of the beasts he’d killed piling up too fast. Previously, the bodies were destroyed by the beasts behind, torn apart or crushed into the now muddy land turned swamp by the incredible amounts of blood. But now, the beasts didn’t halt to clear the bodies away, choosing to leave them behind by crawling over them. This made it difficult for Joe to keep up as the beasts didn’t pause. This pause, before, gave him time to kill them; to keep the line. Now, he was struggling to simply kill the animals closest to the guards. He was still doing pretty well keeping the ferocious beasts away from the guards, even letting a few beasts through to kill closer to the line to allow the crafters their corpses to harvest.

Despite this, he could tell, rather distantly, that the guards were growing restless and the crafters and slaves were much more recalcitrant to pull corpses back behind the guards. In fact, many of the butchers and crafters had taken to butchering the beasts where they fell when they noticed that Joe was so good at keeping the line of beasts at bay. Thankfully, it appeared they recognized the delicate balance of the current battle and had returned to dragging bodies back when the number of beasts began to grow extreme. Maybe… someone warned… focus!

Joe cut the distractions from his mind and turned back to his fight, his arrows flying into the animals, but even as he tried, their push was overwhelming him. Joe felt his frustration rise, his struggle to keep the beasts at bay difficult. Suddenly, another person came to his side and began firing off attacks, only every once in a while. Joe looked to his side and saw the guy who’d first fought beside him on the first day. Tou… Tra something. Toulend… Tralar. Joe dismissed the errant thought, firing arrow after arrow, but finding the pressure easing a bit as those he missed, he was able to catch easily enough. With that pressure relieved, Joe looked up and down the wall and saw that there were several new defenders on the wall. Some of the original defenders had three, others four. He turned back to look at the fight and noticed that much of the line was noticeably closer up and down the wall. He saw the man beside him seemingly frustrated, and decided to talk. With the pressure off, it was easier.

“Tralar, right?”

“Hu… what?”

“Your name. It’s Tralar, right?”

“Ah… no, sorry eccentric. It is Toular.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry. The names of this plane are a bit unusual to my ear. I apologize that I did not learn yours well.”

Toular seemed a bit nonplused, quickly dismissing his apology, “I am grateful that you remembered me at all, eccentric.”

Joe laughed, “How could I forget. You helped me, explaining a lot on that first day.”

Toular seemed uncertain how to reply, and settled for gratefulness, “I am glad I was of help, eccentric.”

“Joe.”

The man seemed confused, so Joe quickly continued, “My name is Joe. Please just call me Joe.”

Toular nodded, bobbing his head a couple of times, “My thanks for giving me your name.”

Joe laughed a bit, “It seems only fair. We are bothers in arms. It would be wise to know each other’s names.”

“I will remember it, eccentric.”

Joe felt a flash of frustration and snorted, “Well, if you have my name, and remember, please use it. There is no need to call me eccentric.”

The man grew more nervous, bowing his head a bit, “As you say, ecc… Joe.”

Joe nodded and glanced towards him, smiling brightly to reinforce his use of his name, “Thank you. It’s nice to hear my name spoken.”

“I… uh… you're welcome.”

Joe fell silent at that, the other fidgeting until he was able to fire off a shot at an incoming beast that got close enough. Joe soon realized that Toular had a shorter range than him, and looked down to see that the guards still had a good distance from the wall. Huh… might as well give him some experience… and make him feel useful!

“Toular. Do you mind if you inform the guards below us to retreat back to the wall by about half way? I will reduce the line of the beasts a bit. Then you can help shoot some, too.”

Toular looked at him, then seemed to grin a bit, appearing a bit happier. Joe laughed and added.

“Figured you would want to fight, too, right? Or am I wrong,” Joe added with a grinning laugh, glancing at Toular.

The man seemed to greatly relax at that before nodding his head, “I would be grateful. I fear I do not have your great range.”

Joe laughed at that and shook his head, “It shouldn’t be too difficult.”