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The moment Paul heard the news about a “Monster Wave”, he saw System Notification popping right after, showcasing something important to him.

[The Countdown has finally reached the estimated time!]

[All Players, beware! From now on, there will be several World-Wide Events happening in every Realm accessible to Players!]

[The Realm of Obscuritas shall undergo its first World-Wide Event: {The Awakening of the Ancient Fallen Rulers}!]

[Ancient, Fallen Rulers from old Eras within Obscuritas have begun to awaken from their old and abyssal tombs underground, bringing with themselves their powerful armies of monsters and soldiers to the Realm!]

[Survive against the Monster Waves that these World-Wide Event creates and earn Special Event Points which you can later exchange for special Event-Tied Merchants.]

[Loading Event…]

[The City of Elderbridge has successfully triggered the [World-Wide Event]: {Awakening of the Ancient King of Neburias}!]

“W-What…?!”

Paul gasped as he quickly showed this information to his mother and even the guard; the two were left shocked. Teressa seemed nervous, swallowing saliva.

“Vlad! Do you mean that what’s happening right now is some sort of wicked “Event” set by the System?!” Teressa screamed. “What sort of evil mind would ever plan to do such a terribly wicked event?! As if we weren’t struggling enough as we are! W-Why is this happening?!”

“It’s because of the Players ma’am!” said the soldier. Paul learned his name was Gralturn Olubagdurz, Gral for short. “Since the Players began to appear, the whole world started to change for the worst! It’s a new Era… Only the strong can adapt; the weak will all be swept away and paint the world red with their blood… Just as the prophecies of our tribes have foretold.”

“Agh, Gral! Stop saying such things; you’re only going to scare me more!” Teressa slapped the man’s head, barely managing to not kill him with that. “Now lead us to the battlefield, hurry!”

“A-Ah! Yes ma’am!” nodded Gral clumsily, quickly grabbing his black spear tightly.

“Wait mother! What about Camilla?! At least let me call Alitheus!” said Vlad. “You go ahead; I’ll catch up with you.”

“F-Fine, but don’t take too long!” Teressa quickly ran behind the orc as he led her to where the army was coming from, which, based on the in-game map, was to the northwest, near the farms he had prepared yesterday.

“Dammit, the farms are going to get all ruined,” Paul sighed. “Chris! Hey Chris!”

He flew inside the manor and moved upstairs, finding Chris playing dolls with Camilla; they were playing teahouse adorably enough.

“Here, this is a special tea grown in my garden; please enjoy it, princess Alitheus!”

“Thank you, princess Camilla!”

As Paul glanced at this happening, he felt completely taken away.

The moment Chris noticed, he dropped everything.

“Uwack! W-What?! Why didn’t you knock the door, jerk?!” Chris grabbed a pillow and threw it at Paul’s face.

“Ugh! Ah, we’ll talk about this later,” sighed Paul. “We gotta go, Chris; there’s a monster wave coming! Didn’t you see the event message pop up?”

“What message?!” Chris wondered, confused. “Oh wait, THAT message, huh?”

“You ignored it?!”

Paul facepalmed as Vlad’s sister glanced at her brother.

“Big bro, what’s wrong?”

“Camilla… You should probably remain here and… No.”

Paul quickly considered that this was an ideal event, although dangerous, for Camilla to gain power quickly. If she could defeat a bunch of foes and absorb their blood, then she could certainly grow stronger.

All of that depended if their foes had blood though, but he was hoping that was the case. Undead was his guess, but he was sure some other monsters would be mixed in between.

“Huh?”

“Camilla, do you want to grow stronger?”

“…Stronger?”

“Yeah, this opportunity—you might not get one in a while. If you join us in fighting these monsters and you kill some, you’ll be able to become much stronger.”

“Oh…”

“So how about it? Are you up for the task?”

“I-I…”

Camilla seemed slightly absentminded most of the time. The girl liked to be in her own world since she was born; this made it so she wasn’t very sociable and never really had friends in her childhood despite not being physically sick like her brother.

Most Vampires in her family said she was a weirdo born “with a small brain” that made her seem strange and incapable of being as charismatic or sociable as Vampires could be. She was also often distracted by anything and had a hard time focusing on things.

While some said Vlad’s body was cursed, most said that Camilla’s mind was the cursed one, some even going as far as calling her “mentally retarded," which is one of the things that Paul could recall from Vlad's memories.

It was in fact something that made Vlad very furious and one of the reasons why his character wanted to fight back against his own family and take over.

Paul knew this, and he attributed some of Camilla’s trait to a person with autism, or some sort of type of mental disorder of a similar category.

“I don’t know… what to do.”

Camilla seemed a bit strange today; she wanted to keep playing her dolls.

“I want to keep playing dolls.”

“I know you want.”

Vlad smiled, kneeling in front of his sister and patting her head.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Let’s play dolls together later, alright?”

“Really?”

“Yes, if you can help us out and you grow strong, you’ll have a lot more time to do whatever you want, and nobody is going to bother you about it either.”

“Um… Okay!”

She quickly nodded; it was a bit surprising how she changed her mood so swiftly.

“Alright, come with us! Remember to stay focused; try your best, okay?” Paul asked.

“Sure… I’ll use my powers and bang and boom everything…!” She smiled, gripping her fist.

Despite her special mind, Camilla was trying her best to at least be more sociable with her brother and her mother after suffering years of neglect and abuse from the butlers.

Now that things were finally looking nicely and she could finally feel more comfortable, she had to fight to protect her home.

“Then let’s go!” Vlad nodded. “Here, have these too.”

“Oh?” Camilla received two silver-colored bracelets with little jewels on them. “Arcana items?”

“Yes, you need a lot, so keep them equipped,” nodded Vlad. “Now let’s go!”

Without further ado, the trio quickly flew into the skies. Vlad carried his sister so she wouldn’t waste Arcana on using her telekinesis to fly.

As they reached the walls of Elderbridge, they were quickly greeted with the incoming Monster Wave, composed of three types of foes.

Humanoid soldiers covered in silver and black armor wielding black weapons, overflowing with dark auras. Their entire bodies were covered in armor, and their helmets had the shape of beasts like lions, tigers, bears, and wolves. They were incredibly tall as well, between three and four meters, practically giants.

The second type of foes were beasts covered in the same armor, often times resembling wolves, lions, tigers, and bears; they ranged from four to six meters of height, big enough to carry some of the giants.

And lastly, giant black golems, composed entirely out of black stone and black steel and imbued with red colored jewels that fueled them with large quantities of Arcana. These were as huge as five meters.

None of them seemed to be undead; they had their own lifeforce, albeit it seemed twisted and strange. The golems had no lifeforce though, yeah, but they weren’t undead either.

“It’s a lot more than I imagined!” Chris panicked. “Just how many are coming?!”

“Probably thousands,” said Vlad. “Camilla, can you find mom?”

“Yes, she’s over there!” Camilla pointed into the distance, and as her eyes seemed much sharper than Vlad, she easily noticed Teressa floating above the walls, an aura of frost surrounding her.

Around her were the soldiers of Elderbridge that had been recently recruited; some were old soldiers that weren’t paid enough and left but were now paid well and came back to their jobs.

Others were former mercenaries with no money; Vlad’s mother handpicked the most trustworthy mercenaries to become soldiers, offering them great benefits, including free housing and food, plus generous salaries.

Back then, in the first Dungeon Raid, Elderbridge had been left completely to fate; no adventurer, mercenary, or soldier tried to protect the city from the dangers, and there were quite a lot of casualties and a lot of destruction.

And right as they were trying to get back from all of that, they were attacked by bandits led by Vlad’s brother and his mother, who had come to kill them.

And just recently they went to eliminate the criminals living in Elderbridge, managing to find a large branch of the [Desecrated Shadow King’s Templars], who were swiftly taken care of, but that ended with summoning an incredibly powerful Assassin from Ennead.

If Vlad hadn’t been there to stop him and stall for time until his summoning time ended, Elderbridge would have definitely been destroyed again, for the third time.

Now that they were decided, there wasn’t going to be a fourth time!

“Mother really gathered a lot of soldiers!” Camilla gasped.

“How many are there?” Chris wondered. “Woah…”

“At least three hundred.” Vlad said. “Hmm, still not near enough compared to the foes we’ll be fighting, but that’ll have to do.”

“The event said something about surviving, right? So maybe the Monster Wave won’t be endless; it’s perhaps like a Raid!” said Chris.

“I hope so,” nodded Vlad. “Mother!”

The Vampire Prince, carrying his sister and with his incubus consort by his side, flew to the side of the Duchess of Elderbridge, who quickly glanced back at them.

“Vlad! You’re finally here… Huh? Why did you bring Camilla?!”

Teressa seemed rather upset; he brought his sister.

“She has to grow stronger, mother. She has been unable to properly defeat enemies; this is a golden opportunity. Don’t worry, she’ll remain in the walls, right, Camilla?”

“Yes! I’ll use my Telekinesis to attack from afar!”

“Well said,” nodded Vlad. “So?”

Teressa sighed.

“Fine, but you remain in here, alright?” sighed Teressa. “Now, my son, you’re perhaps the second strongest in this city after me. As you can see, they all seem to only be coming from that direction.”

Teressa quickly showed Vlad the area where they were coming, creating a mirror of ice reflecting what a familiar could see from the skies.

Paul noticed rather late that there was a small bird made of azure ice flying in the skies; it seemed his mother’s magic was much more complex than he had imagined.

“Woah, that’s a familiar?”

“Hm? Why yes, this spell is called Mind Frost Mirror,” said Teressa. “It allows me to project things inside of my mind into this mirror. Also, that’s a simple Elemental Familiar, most Vampires can summon them. You’ll probably learn to do so eventually, Vlad.”

“So that’s how it is…” nodded Vlad. “Anyways, so they’re coming from there?”

The “map” that was what Teressa could see through her familiar showed a large dark forest to the northwest, right below a snowy mountain.

The place led into an underground cave that then most likely led inside of that very mountain, and that’s where these monsters were coming from.

“So the mountain… What name does it have?”

“It’s called the Mourning Mountain, an old Mountain that once had mines, but once most ore deposits emptied, it was quickly abandoned.”

“What monsters live there? Has any of this been reported before?”

“Not at all; this must have been well hidden this entire time, and only with this “Event” was the dungeon in there triggered to be open…”

Teressa was extremely smart; she wasn’t even a Player, yet she could quickly connect the dots and make very accurate assumptions of what was happening.

“My familiar has already counted over one thousand and five hundred monsters. The number continues to rise by approximately… one new monster from that cave every ten seconds. Six per minute,” she said. “They had begun marching for apparently an hour and, due to the distance from there, they had taken some time, but their march is relentless and fast. They’ll get here in less than half an hour.”

“The Event Information said we needed to survive,” Vlad said. “Most likely, it means that there’s a fixed amount of monsters that’ll invade this area.”

“I see…” Teressa nodded. “So it’s a game of defense, and for how long can we hold back? With the new army, Argentia, and us, I think there’s a good chance we could handle things for the first few hours, but as everyone grows progressively exhausted, it might not be the case anymore.”

“Hmm…” Vlad touched his chin as he started thinking, glancing at the advancing monsters. “How strong are these monsters, mother?”

“Their Tiers are all over the place…” she said. “The humanoids are at least between Tier 3 or 4, the beasts and golems. Probably Tier 5, I fear the bigger and strongest of them all might even be Tier 6.”

“They’re very strong then, not at all like the Dungeon Raid from before,” said Vlad. “We’ll need to employ more forces than this if we want to survive… Even more, it could become worse if they begin going around the walls, which they’ll definitely do. Argentia is big and strong, but so are their beasts. He alone could handle a lot of the army, but once a dozen of those beasts and golems corner him, he’ll probably die.”

“I could assist him; if the two of us work together, we could probably clean at least a third of that monster army, but once that’s done, all our Arcana and Stamina will be emptied,” she said. “Vlad, I’ll be leaving the rest to you by then.”

“Mother…” Vlad felt nervous; this couldn’t just be everything they had.

And as he thought, suddenly…

“S-Something is coming! Lady Teressa! Prince Vlad!”

Gral called for them as he was looking in the watchtower; suddenly, they all noticed a group of a dozen armored monsters, five humanoids, and the rest were all lion- and wolf-like beasts.

“They’re rushing towards here; they’ll probably have to pass through that huge ravine over there!”

“Ravine?”

Vlad quickly looked from the walls down below, noticing the…

“Ravine”.

“W-What is that?!”

His eyes widened as he saw the monsters rushing towards the walls, trampling over the houses and the abandoned farms.

Until they reached said ravine.

And then…

RUMBLE!

The ground shook as the armored monsters were suddenly surprised by countless roots emerging from the ground.

“SHAAAAHH!”

And from this "Ravine,” the true beings living there revealed their appearances.

Vines, flowers, plants, fruits, and vegetables of all shapes and sizes and of enormous height and monstrous appearances.

They started fighting the invading monsters, a huge vine started shooting giant watermelon-sized nuts and blowing holes through the armored beasts.

CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!

Then, a massive mass of azure grass surged from the ground, charging electricity and firing small thunderbolts, electrocuting the humanoid monsters.

FLAAASH!

And lastly, huge crimson sunflowers surged, opening their petals to reveal huge crimson eyes, charging the energy of the moonlight and then firing beams against the creatures.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

“T-This is… Isn’t this the farm you made yesterday?!” Chris asked in disbelief.

“Yeah… I think so,” Vlad smiled in disbelief. “I think I got an idea, mother.”

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