“What the hell was that?” said Thesta, her fingers digging into Cole’s shoulder. Her eyes bored into this own, an intense blue that made him uncomfortable.
“What was what?” he said, grinning sheepishly. He knew exactly what she wanted to know, but he was still riding the high of power that he’d felt when unleashing the Hallowed Blast. Cole would let himself enjoy the feeling for a bit before he had to explain.
Thesta narrowed her eyes, “You know damn well what I’m talking about. Why were you holding out on me? Are you trying to hide something?”
‘Yikes. Not good.’ he thought. She almost seemed offended. Cole guessed it made sense from her perspective. If he had ‘lied’ about his abilities, what else could he have lied about? It looked like it was time to nip this in the bud. They were in an active emergency situation to be fair.
“I wasn’t holding out on you. I developed a new ability while meditating the other night. Didn’t get a chance to tell you.”
Thesta looked sceptical. “What’s it called?”
“Hallowed Blast.”
Gears turned in the woman’s head as she ran through a list of Runic spells in her head. She looked slightly confused.
“What did you say your class was again? Do not lie to me” she said, eyes glowing blue.
“[Runic Knight]” said Cole truthfully. For whatever reason, he had a gut feeling that he shouldn’t tell her what it actually was. Luckily she hadn’t asked what his class was, rather what he’d said it was.
Thesta narrowed her eyes once more.
“I’ll chalk it up to outworlder strangeness for now. But we are going to talk about this if-“ she shook her head, “-when the Surge is over.”
“Uh sure”, replied Cole, calm and collected, but internally stressing. He was almost certain there would be a way for her to tell if he was lying. Truthtelling spells had worked in the VR world of Vestria Online by reading the body’s involuntary signs of lying. Some people had claimed to be able to train their bodies, or use special methods to trick the equipment, making fortunes selling online courses. One person had suggested using an ice bath to throw the sensors off. Somehow Cole didn’t think that would work in this world.
Anyhow, there were bigger problems to focus on. While their momentary respite wasn’t ending anytime soon, it simply wouldn’t last forever. It was only a matter of time before monsters began pouring out of the forest once more, and Cole got the impression that they’d been lucky to only get Kobolds for the first waves. Well, mostly Kobolds. Speaking of…
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“What was that last thing anyway? It looked like a roided-up Kobold.”
She scrunched her face in confusion, which Cole quickly realised was due to the term ‘roided-up’. Obviously whatever weird system that made him hear the language of this world in English and vice versa didn’t work 100% of the time. Thesta answered the question regardless.
“That’s the unholy creature created when an Infernal Devil possesses a Kobold. Some call it a Koboldevil, but if I hear you use that made-up word around me you’re getting stung by my bolts again. Damned hard to kill, your ‘Hallowed Blast’ did most of the work, and a whole lot more powerful than their host body as you saw. It almost looked like a Dragonborn with horns.”
Cole wanted badly to say that all words were made up, but elected not to earn the woman’s ire this time around. He thought that the concept of a Devil that possessed monsters would almost be cool if it was a concept that wasn’t trying to kill everyone in the town.
“Devils possess lower ranked creatures so that they can have a chance to experience our world. If they ever got a chance to come through a Gate normally, we’d be saying goodbye to our village and the surrounding area. Normally we’d shut a Gate down before that could ever happen, but with this Surge…” she trailed off, the same anxious expression Cole had last seen on Argyle’s face now painted on to hers.
The village was still under a very real threat, and they had heard no news of a Surgebreaker unit being located, so for the time being they were on their own. Unless, of course, they asked the Empire for help. From up on the palisade, Cole could see into the streets below, and among the moving crowds of volunteers and adventurers swapping out their teams, were the golden robes of the Imperial Priests of Auremon.
‘They’re definitely making the most of the opportunity’ he thought, turning away from watching them help with defensive efforts. Times of high strung emotions were the perfect situation for people’s opinions to be swayed, and the voice of the public would hold great sway if Percival was put on the spot about protecting the village. While the Branch-master of the Venture Adventurer’s guild would do everything he could not to bend the knee to the Vestrian Empire, if push came to shove, he would listen to the people.
Cole wished he could do something, but as the priests likely well knew, there were bigger things to focus on. After a short while longer, a yell from one of the [Archers] snapped him out of his daydreaming stupor. The second wave had arrived.
Thesta’s eyes were shining brilliant blue once more as she surveyed the oncoming force. This time, she didn’t seem as dismissive. Part of it was because of the incident with the Koboldevil, but as the new wave of monsters came close enough for Cole to make out, he realised that there were also different types of creatures this time.
Once again, there were Kobolds loping along, and luckily all of them were normal heights for their species, no Koboldevils this time. A fan favourite had made a return with a few Infernal Boars were among the horde. Some new creatures were there also, hulking Infernal Gargoyles, whose bony wings were shot through with flames and charred black. The Gargoyles would be much harder to handle than the other two monsters, but still weren’t anything to be too concerned about. What had Thesta worried however, was the huge Infernal Drake that was bringing up the rear.
“Is that a Dragon?” asked one of the younger [Knights], who, alongside the rest of the adventurers left on this section, had joined Cole and Thesta up on the palisade. The remaining [Spearman] snorted dismissively.
“Does it look like it can fly?” he asked, pointing to the Drake’s tiny wings. Drakes could glide for short distances but didn’t have the right bone structure to actually take flight like their far more powerful cousins. “If that was a Dragon we’d be dead already. That son, is a Drake.”
Thesta nodded, “It’s a D2 rank Infernal Drake. We need that Surgebreaker unit soon.”
“Can we kill it?” asked Cole, in awe. The Drake’s head was about 5 metres up from the ground. He’d seen bigger monsters in the VR world, sure (The Storm King came to mind), but this was real.
Thesta pulled her tome out of her pocket dimension. She flared with a blue aura once more.
“I can.”
As if in response, the Drake roared in the air, an intense sound which vibrated air around them.
Cole leapt over the palisade, landing on the battlefield once more.
Time for round two.