Once everyone was dressed and ready, we left the front door. Akurra was out front waiting on us I could tell from his lack of hungry face that he had already eaten. I could also tell by the footprints by the entrance to the area he had a busy night. Nothing had breached the perimeter so the alarm had not gone off.

Akurra looked at the ladies approvingly. He moved closer to them and even nuzzled a few causing some mini shrieks. I could tell he approved of the upgrades and was proud that the upgrades came from him.

I put the tower away while Akurra was giving his appraisal. As soon as we stepped out of cover we ran into a group of dire rats. This time there were only two of them and they were as surprised as we were. I started to move towards them when Sari stepped up.

“Lord Van allow us a chance to take these,” she said not taking her eyes off the rats.

I nodded to her I would be ready to intervene, if necessary, but I would allow them the opportunity to test themselves. I could feel some tension in the group as I did not believe they had talked this out. Though once they were in the fight all the tension between them went out the window. They had an interesting fighting style. The group spilt in two as the smaller faster cat girls Aoi and Fisri went to harry one of the rats. Sari, Mari, and Nari all went to take on the other. The plan was for the faster girls to harry and keep one of the rats busy while the other three killed the one they were fighting. This time the fight was different as the spears did not just bounce off the rats. The attacks were effective this time even if the fighter's form was sloppy. Both groups were able to injure the rats and put them down almost simultaneously.

Both groups came back with fierce smiles on their faces. Sari stood and gave me some kind of salute that was followed quickly by the others doing the same.

This time as we walked, we had far more encounters. It was not a surprise to me as escort missions were like that. They liked to ramp up the danger as you got closer to the objective. I was glad that we had not kept going last night I was also glad that I had taken the time to upgrade their gear. Due to the upgrades, they were now able to take part. Everyone except Rina had multiple kills under their belt. Even Rina had made one kill, after which she had freaked out some. After that, we left Rina out of the fighting.

It was weird though since I seemed to be getting the same amount of XP from the kills no matter who made the kill. I thought that was weird since we were not in a party. They had told me that while parties were a thing, they could not from them since they had no access to their statuses. When I looked it did not show me in a party, but it did see a weird indicator. When I tried to zoom in to get an explanation I was blocked.

We walked, fighting our way through mobs for a few hours. The largest mob ended up being twelve dire rats. This caused some panic until Akurra stepped in and stunned the whole group allowing us to kill them easily. After that Rina informed me, we were close to the village. I knew what that meant, in game terms, it meant either that the boss mob would show up. Or, that waves of mobs would start to come. Or, both I was going to plan for both to happen.

As we got closer to the village the women started to visibly relax. That caused me to become tenser. I knew it was in the case when safety was in sight shit hit the fan the worst. That’s when I heard it. I noticed that they started to hear something at the same time as I did. I had expected them to hear it long before I did, but with my INT and me being on guard I had gotten the information at the same time. While they weren’t sure of what they heard I was pretty sure of what was coming and I wasted no time.

“Run for the village now! Akurra go with them and watch for more dire rats! Do whatever you must to protect them and the village! Now GO!”

I don’t turn to make sure they heed my warning before I sprint off in the direction of the lumbering crashing. The direction the noise is coming from is not hard to determine. It is accompanied by swaying trees and the occasional booms. The beast while moving at a decent clip is not moving fast for this world. Or I should say it is not moving as fast as I can even at one-fourth speed. While I am heading towards the noise, I equip my armor.

As I am heading towards the noise, I see that whatever it is, I suspect that it’s the Urgix. The beast is driving a hoard of rats and other beasts ahead of it. This truly pisses me off as this means that this was one of those scenarios that had a hoard mode in front of a boss fight. Those were always the worst types of fights in escort protection quests. It meant that there was probably not only a requirement to save a certain number of lives. There was also a requirement to limit the amount of destruction. If I had waited for this in the town instead of coming out here to tackle the problem, I likely would have failed this quest.

I knew the village in question was not even close to being set up to repel this mass. And if I wanted it to survive this, I was going to have to go ham. I touched the tree I was on.

“Sorry, my friend I am going to have to damage your forest some. I will also have to wholesale slaughter most of these beasts. I will try to limit the damage as much as I can.”

The Golden Guardian recognizes your plea. “Do as you must my friend the forest will be fine!”

I was not expecting a response but it would make sense that he would recognize what was happening. I looked down at the approaching horde with a feral grin. They did not know it but their death warrants had been signed and the reaper had come to collect.

With that, I cast haste on myself for the first time, and almost fell out of the tree I was in. The spell hit like a fucking Mack truck. The spell felt like mainlining caffeine while smoking crack. Not that I had done either but if I had I imagined this is what that felt like.

The haste spell in my games allowed you to move faster, and attack more frequently. So, I was unprepared for the ancillary effects of the spell. I only needed to think about it for a few milliseconds to understand why the spell functioned the way it did. The spell was required to affect your INT as well as DEX. It was integral your mind made your body move, it would matter if your hand could move ten times faster if your mind could not operate fast enough to tell it to do so. I also understood a few universal truths, as time slowed down. I understood that this was probably my most powerful spell, and I had not used it yet. I also understood that if I was not human with my regeneration, that I would not be able to use this spell very often. Even with my regeneration, I might be limited in its usage I would have to determine the effects afterward. The use of this spell would cause micro tears throughout my body. If I was not human this could be crippling. I watched as my MP surged with the boost to my INT as an unintended result.

I looked at the coming horde with contempt as I processed and discarded ten plans in as many milliseconds. Each plan while effective would have turned this section of forest into a smoking crater. Effectivity would not matter if the plan would have destroyed what I was trying to protect. I calculated and settled on a plan before the horde had taken half a step. The plan I had decided on was not one hundred percent effective and would rely upon Akurra and the others to do some cleanup on their end. After our trek to the village, I was sure they could handle it though.

I left the tree in was in towards the horde of approaching beasts. If anyone had been watching it would have looked like I teleported to them and then they blew up. What had happened though was that I cast a few spells. That was another reason why I believed this spell to be my most powerful one to date. I could cast spells as fast as I could think of them. During this time of accelerated thinking, I had an epiphany of just how broken I might be. The magic system I was using was based on the rules of six-second rounds. I somehow doubted that the magic this world used was as such. To a caster from here, I might appear to be a god. I would have to meet some other magic users to find out but it was something to think about.

Now back to my rampage of destruction. In my move, I cast glitterdust, two fireball spells along with power glide. Glitterdust was also a spell I had never used before. I had not because I had never needed to, blind a massive area before. Using the spell would have been counterproductive to my previous attack strategy. Akurra and I had been using the stun and strike strategy before. Plus, so many of the creatures here had alternate senses that they could use. In this case, though I knew that these creatures had to be using their sight only. Using alternate senses in this horde would have been impossible. By blinding them I could sow chaos. The glitterdust spell covered a massive area I had not fully accounted for the increase in INT from haste. I was able to cover at least seventy to eighty percent of the horde with the spell. A number of the larger beast panicked at their loss of sight and proceeded to trample several smaller ones. Just after they were blinded the fireballs hit with a roar, followed by heat and death.

What had started as a cohesive horde became utter chaos. Some of the smaller more fragile beasts tried to escape while the larger more aggressive ones lashed out. I would have guessed that the beasts had taken out as many of each other as I did. In the opening of the fight.

Then I arrived as if teleporting into their midst Fury in hand. I had thought about using Reaper but insight kicked in and I did not believe that the bonus would stack. Even if it did it might not be good it might warrant experimentation in a less dangerous situation. The strength buff from Fury thought would be perfect in this case. I then activate bladed wings and half a dozen copies of Fury sprouted from my back on each side. I cast a storm of blades next and ten more copies of fury spring into existence. I feel it almost immediately as my strength increases more as the blades flash into existence. Next comes the lynchpin of my plan as I unleash both hungering void maw and impending death.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I was going to show whatever being had set this up that they had sorely underestimated me. Whomever they were had no idea, I woke up choosing violence every day. Once I had cast haste, I realized this setup for what it was as my brain had worked through trying to solve it. Considering the condition of the women I had encountered when I found them. This scenario had been set up in a way that only a few of them would survive it. Worse the way this was set up I would have had to watch them die in horrific ways. It also would have destroyed the entire village. This all would have happened within moments of my arriving. Of course, the survivors would have been grateful to be alive, but it would have been a horrendous loss of life. Whoever set this up had intended for this to be a meat grinder, and for us to be the meat. I was going to flip that on its head right now. I am the grinder and these beasts were going to become meat literally as I intended to eat some of them later.

I began to lay into the beasts after my spells were fully formed. My first attack taking my pent-up rage and frustration killed twenty beasts. A blazing blade flashed jumping off my sword to cut them down mid-step. Then I became a tempest as the twenty-plus blades around me started to attack as well. I started laughing as the beasts around me started dying feeding my auras power. I could see that this might become addictive as I watched as my MP and ST started to bottom out only to fill indicating that I must have leveled. This was better than any grinding session in any game from back home. As I felt the gains from leveling as they happen to me directly. It was a heady experience as I felt my spells and skills proc multiple times. All of the blades floating around me attacking and defending me were perfect copies of Fury. In all of the attacks, despairing howl must have procced dozens of times.

The situation was turning into a complete scrum. As the feared beasts started turning on anything around them. I could feel the horde trying desperately to turn away. Whatever entity had set this up wanted to nope the fuck out of this situation at this point. A sane man would have let it happen. But I was not sane at the moment I was fully in my feels. Something, someone, or some being had tried to put me in a meat grinder. I was going to teach whomever the fuck they were a lesson if it was capable of learning anyway.

Meat grinders back home came with a device called a tamper. It was a simple thing it was usually a simple piece of plastic that was used to push the meat into the grinder. I could not conjure a large floating piece of plastic in the case. But half a dozen flame pillars behind the horde would do the job just the same. As the fire sprung into existence the beasts were given a choice. Try to make it through the pillars of flame behind them or face the whirlwind of death in front of them. Some tried the pillars few survived and disappeared into the forest. Others tried the whirlwind of death and met death head-on. I did not come out of it fully unscathed as some of the desperate beast’s attacks made it through my defenses. Though I did not lose more than a fourth of my HP at any point.

I also learned another useful trick as I was fighting. Every time I leveled while I was fighting all my spell and skill effects refreshed. I did not know if this was a human thing or tied to my aura’s. Whatever it was is OP as fuck. It was a normal raid mechanic for a boss to heal if it downed a member of the raid. But those were raids there might be something like that in a dungeon as well but at a toned-down level. I felt something like a world boss taking on a raid. I mean I was here face-tanking a beast horde like it was another day in the office. Not only that, I was handing it its ass for fun.

I came to my senses as the horde had gone from a couple hundred beasts to a few dozen. While I wanted to wipe the horde out, I did not know what effect the loss of so many beasts would have on the forest. While I was sure that the losses would probably sort themselves out shortly, but I was not willing to chance it. I also took a look at the area I was in. While it had been on the edge of the forest the area had had a decent number of trees. I had basically turned an area the size of a football field into a killing field. The trees that had been the closest to me were now more like splinters or toothpicks. While they had not been as tall as the emergents in the heart of the forest they had still been sizable. Maybe in the hundred to two hundred feet tall. In a matter of seconds I had turned those into mulch it was like I was a human wood chipper. The forest on the edge of the field had not come out unscathed either. The trees on the edges had taken damage from the beast and me both. Most were missing branches. Some of them had been knocked over. While others had large chunks ripped out of the trunk.

I was about to stop and call it a day when a boulder rolled through the flame pillars. Or I should say ran through the flame pillars, as I realized it had legs. This was the first beast that I had checked what it identified as I had been running my skill the whole time hoping that it would level up.

Urgix (Horde Leader) lvl 22 7800hp/345mp/4678st Stone Skin.

I had gotten so caught up in the high of fighting and leveling that I had forgotten about the boss fight. Shit, I am glad because if I had left, I would have let this thing waltz right up to the village all my hard work would have been for nothing. My hope that my identity spell would become evolved paid off. I was now getting new information about my targets. It was now giving me the beast's level stats and if I was to guess the active skill or spell it was using. This would be helpful down the line.

I cracked my knuckles glad to not be finished just yet! I was still riding the high of leveling. Plus, while that previous fight had been exhilarating. But it had just been the warm-up. I stowed my sword not wanting to damage it trying to cut rock.

As I looked at the urgix with a feral grin. I was reminded of a scene from a DC animated movie. Supes was fighting a villain.

“You can take it, can’t you big boy? What we have here is a rare opportunity for me to cut loose and see just how powerful I really am” I say with a feral snarl.

I know the beast doesn’t understand me let alone anything about the reference. But it feels like the fight would be less epic if I didn’t say anything. The urgix being the dumb beast it was snorts and charges at me trying to build up a head of steam to run me over. I move to its side before it has gotten more than two steps. I had considered waiting and trying to stop it in some kind of cool superhero way. But physics is still a thing even if I was able to absorb the impact which I was pretty sure I could. There was still the momentum due to the weight difference I knew that would not work out for me.

I went with plan b. In my case plan b, is the same as plan a, attack violently. The only change was this time I was going to punch this fucker to death. At least I was going to start out that way. I had never been a real fighter, hell before I got here, I could not tell you when I had been in a fight last. The honest truth was back home you never really had to fight if you did not want to. If you were reasonable, you could avoid most conflict. Of course, there were those people who would go out looking for a fight. Those people were either dicks or sociopaths. I did have to say though being in this situation was freeing.

I was basically in a fistfight with the biggest bully I had ever met. This thing had bullied a whole village to the verge of desperation and starvation. Then it had gone into the forest and bullied a whole horde of smaller beasts into doing its bidding. On second thought the beast while stupid was far smarter than I had given it credit for. So back to where I started. While I had never been a brawler back home, I had taken a few of those introductory classes from two different karate schools. I had even taken one or two self-defense classes at the rec. They were nothing advanced. Just the basics this is how you punch so you don’t break your hand. This is how you kick without falling over classes. While it had been quite some time since I had taken them. With my boosted INT I realized I remembered everything. I actually started to mimic the way the instructor punched and kicked in real-time. My form cleaned up in real time as I adjusted my posture and strikes. The first few punches did little to no damage as my form was shit. As I tightened up my form and got better at punching, I could visibly see the damage increasing. It wasn’t anything like on tv or in the movies. This thing weighed a metric fuck ton, and it wasn’t standing still while I punched it either. It was actively trying to kill me. That meant I was constantly repositioning. It would move I would as well and punch it five to ten times. We did this four or five times and I started to feel it and added kicks into my rotation.

On the second rotation after I added the kicks its stone armor cracked. I must have hit the threshold of damage that it could take as the stone shattered and fell off the beast in chunks. The beast shook itself as the stone gave way. I got my first look at the beast and immediately wished for the stone back. The urgix was basically a land hippo with tusks.

There is a channel on Tik Toc that does nature videos. The guy who did the videos had called hippos murder horses. Once it was clear of the stone, I could see the bulbous body and huge jaw. Unlike hippos who could have some terrifying teeth. This monster had teeth and two sets of tusks. One set of tusks faced forward, the other set pointed upwards out of its jaw. The beast had backed now and was threat posturing thinking better of the whole attack plan at this point.

Before if I was gaming when I had been soft, I might have let the beast go. A decision likely to come back and bite me in the ass later. That would not be happening here. It had decided to attack others, and it had included me in that attack. I like every morning woke up choosing violence. This beast would not be getting away today.

I renewed my assault. Moving back to my rotation. Now that I was more comfortable, I was able to up the number of my punches. Now that it was not covered in stone the beast was able to move much faster. It did not matter to me since I was hasted and it could not catch me unless I allowed it. From the outside, the fight had to look like something out of an anime. I watched as my attacks and my aura started to eat away at its HP consistently draining it. Now that I could see it taking damage, I ramped up my attacks. I hit what some athletes called the zone. Now when I punched it flinched as my punches started to move it more and more. I felt my kicks breaking bones. I could feel it start to panic.

I decided it was time for it to die. As I summoned Sky Cutter to my hand. The beast was spinning around looking for the next attack. I had thought about trying to snap the fucker’s neck. I didn’t think I could get enough leverage to do so. So, ten inches of steel to the brain it would be! I jumped above the beast to gain a vantage point. I waited for the beast to stop spinning and as soon as it did, I plunged sky cutter into the top of its head. As soon as Sky Cutter touched the beast's head a hole appeared through its skull. The beast dropped as if its strings were cut, and I watch as its HP does a nose dive. The urgiz’s HP goes from half to zero to negative in a few seconds. Since I arrived here this is the first creature I have seen go into negative HP. Most beasts when they reach zero HP that’s it, it's game over for them. This one must have had a skill that let it continue to fight even after it died. That is about as broken as an ability gets your dead but you can still try to take your enemy with you. Well, not today you won’t since that huge hole in your brain keeps you from moving.

I go through the area and collect the most intact and valuable bodies. I will want the cores later lastly, I move over and grab the urgix. The body is heavy but I can lift it. Once I have a firm grasp, I cast reduce gravity, and jump as high as I can. From this vantage point, I can see the area the village is in, in time to make my triumphant entrance.