Of course I trust you.
Sarah Valentine
“I am going to kill that crazy bitch,” said Sarah, holding pressure on what remained of her right arm while she laid on the ground in front of me.
“I told you this would happen,” I said calmly.
“One of you give me a fucking sword,” said Sarah practically frothing at the mouth. “I will kill this asshole first then put down that lunatic.” Neither Julie or Amanda moved. “And put my arm down you sadistic bastard.”
I also ignored her as I inspected the section of her arm that Susan had cut off. They made it a whole three minutes fighting the boars before Susan had accidently cut off Sarah’s arm. Luckily I was relatively close and was able to extract Sarah. All of the other women followed me as I jumped over the trench into the village but I asked Susan to return to fighting alone. Not only was that my original plan, but it removed her from Sarah’s sight.
“We should give her a potion,” said Amanda, holding out a bottle toward Sarah.
I quickly grabbed the bottle and poured a small amount on the severed arm. I pried Sarah’s hand off her stump and put the arm in place before I tipped the remaining contents of the bottle into her mouth. She drank the potion while staring at me with hate in her eyes. Ignoring her stare, I watched as skin reknit reattaching her arm. After a couple of seconds I couldn’t even tell where the original injury was.
“Holy shit,” said Julie, watching everything. She was very pale. Best I could tell she did not have any injuries and was more than likely suffering from her adrenaline crashing.
“I am going back out,” I said. “In half an hour I will have Susan return and one of you will take her place.”
“Fuck you,” said Sarah. “I won’t do what you tell me.”
“And how has that worked out for you so far?” I asked. “Do you really think I wanted this? I don’t know what I did to personally piss you off but it doesn’t matter now. We tried the plan you all wanted and it failed. Now listen to me and after this is done we can talk about what we will do going forward.”
I stood up and took a couple quick steps before jumping over the trench and barricade. While I was in the air I could see Susan fighting the boars. She didn’t appear to be in any distress. As soon as I landed, I turned and rushed around the parameter. Luckily the boars had not overcome the barrier in any place. As I moved amongst the boars I would randomly grab and throw them away from the defense.
Fully using my stats I was able to move around the village in less than a minute before returning to where Susan was fighting. As I approached her location, I pushed back several boars to give her more space to fight. I also tossed all of the dead boars over the barrier and trench into the village. There would not be enough space to keep doing this until all of the herd were killed but I did not want to risk the boars leveling by eating their fallen brethren. Once the village was full I would start storing them in my storage ring but that had far less capacity to hold the boars than the village.
“Help me my love,” said Susan.
It hadn’t even been 15 minutes and she was already needing assistance. I launched myself through the crowd and used all my speed and strength to get to her location within a couple of seconds. When I arrived I found that she had a gash in one of her legs and was still managing to fight off the boars trying to surround her.
Scooping the crazy woman in my arms, I jumped back into the village. Julie and Sarah rushed towards me as I set down Susan and looked over her injury.
“Rest and let your natural healing take care of the wound,” I said. I had enough similar wounds in the past to know that it wasn’t lethal. “Do not use a healing potion, you will naturally heal in about a dozen minutes. Who’s next?”
Amanda stepped forward. I scooped her up in a similar manner that I had used on Susan and jumped backed into the battle. I cleared an area for her by pushing back the boars and watched her fight for half a minute before I turned to check the parameter.
“Miki, this is Julie,” I heard from the communication crystal. “We are going to watch the parameter so please just focus on watching over Amanda. When it is time to switch, I will take Amanda’s place. Is this acceptable?”
I thought it over and couldn’t agree with this plan.
“I’m sorry but I am not going to follow your plan,” I said into the crystal. “If there is any break in the defenses I might be too slow to get to the break before the boars get into the village. If I am constantly moving around the village I can keep the boars from bunching up and putting a strain on the barricade.”
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There was silence from the communicator as I started another lap around the village.
“New plan,” I heard Julie say from the communication crystal a few minutes later. “We are having villagers serve as lookouts while one of us watches the one fighting the boars so we can notify you if there is a problem. Additionally we will let you know if the villagers see anything.”
This was a good compromise. It let me continue to do what I thought was best as well as set up a backup method of monitoring the person fighting along with the barrier.
“That sounds good to me.”
Amanda did surprisingly well and just before I was planning to get her she messaged that she reached her bottleneck. Dropping her off I left a dozen low quality mana gems for them to use. Hopefully the mana gems would help them get through both the major and minor breakthroughs faster than I could.
A few hours later all of the others had also returned to the village to cultivate while I continued my laps around the village. In total they had killed over 200 boars with more than half of the kills being from Susan. While there were less boars the village was still surrounded and it looked like they had barely put a dent in the number of monsters.
A day later Susan completed her minor breakthrough to level 25 and returned to kill more of the boars. It seemed like having another boost to her stats also helped her confidence as she started to fight more aggressively than previously. In less than two hours she had reached another bottleneck and had to return to town to cultivate.
The next day Julie, Sarah, and Amanda all had their breakthroughs to level 20. I anticipated the time it would take for them to finish cultivation and had the villagers prepare an area for them to get cleaned up that included a bath with my bath crystals. In reality the bath was just a small pit that the villagers dug in the ground, but it was better than nothing.
While none of them were as aggressive as Susan they were confident enough to return to killing monsters with their increased stats. By the time each of them had returned to cultivate again the horde of boars was starting to noticeably thin. By rough estimation I would guess that they had eliminated about half of the boars.
Since I didn’t want any one of them to get too far ahead in cultivation I had Susan stop hunting boars when she completed her cultivation. While she wanted to help me patrol the parameter she was not strong enough to completely disregard the attacks of the boars like I could. Instead I had her work with the villagers to start butchering the boars and storing the meat in our storage bags.
By the sixth day all of the boars were eradicated and all four of them were level 30 and had managed to complete their cultivation to high earth grade. All of them collapsed to the ground after receiving the floor compilation notice. I checked the floor information and it looked like my overtime necklace had activated as well. I had Amanda check her notification but she only had the normal amount of time remaining.
It wasn’t like I wanted to wait on this floor longer than necessary but I would rather know now than later when it might be important. If Susan was to be believed than very little time had passed outside the Tower. I wanted to believe that to be true but there was not way to really know until I finished the climb.
Despite the portal appearing, it did not look like anyone was eager to move on just yet. The cultivation gains seemed to help calm down some of the tension we had been experiencing as a group. Even Sarah had mellowed and was no longer looking to fight me or Susan.
While the boars were defeated, the hidden treasure did not appear. Checking my map I found the treasure icon was slowly moving away from the village. I quickly came to a decision.
“I need to go and get the hidden treasure. It is moving away from the village.”
“Why are you telling us?” asked Amanda.
“Since the boars are now defeated all that remains are the lower level monsters in the area. This is a great opportunity to learn how to move as a team. I would like you all to join me and we will track down the hidden treasure. I also have a feeling that all of us will get a reward if we find the hidden treasure together. If we wait too long it will be out of reach.”
Looking around I could see none of them were eager to go out of the village. Despite all of them having now killed hundreds of monsters, they seemed to lack the drive that I had to constantly seek out battle and challenges.
“Can’t we just relax and celebrate our level gains?” asked Julie. “After days of cultivating and fighting our minds need a break.”
“This is just the beginning of cultivation,” I said. “You may doubt me and my methods since I fought my way through the first ten floors, but all of you are painfully weak. As we climb the Tower the monsters are only going to be more challenging. We need to use every opportunity to get stronger. This means not only levels but also fighting skills and team coordination. There is also a good chance the hidden treasure will help in future floors.”
“Very well,” said Amanda standing up. “I will go even if the others won’t.”
Of course Susan hopped up quickly to join us and to my surprise so did Julie and Sarah only a moment later. I could not be certain but I think those two only joined since Amanda so readily trusted me. In the end it didn’t matter why they chose to join me. I would take any sort of cooperation at this point.
I talked to them about group movement tactics as we moved away from the village. I set us up in a simple formation and explained how every person had a role. Luckily they were attentive to my instruction and I could see that as I pointed out the various issues with our formation they quickly adjusted to ensure we were able to be aware of our surroundings while keeping an eye on each other. As they settled into their roles in the formation I had them switch positions.
Before we knew it a few hours had passed and we were finally able to make out the form of a monster moving in the distance where my map indicated the hidden treasure resided. I held us back and talked about moving stealthily and some basic gestures we could use to communicate silently. As we crept closer I was finally able to examine the monster.
Congratulations you have found the hidden boss: Blaze Boar
Level 130 Blaze Boar
As soon as my scan ability activated, music began to play in my head. My divine battle chant had activated. As if it could hear the music, the monster turned towards me and charged.