Rowan was pretty glad that Marcus and Milena were now part of his party. Outside of the fact that Milena was a single-person scouting platform with her [Shaman] class and Marcus could block against pretty much any threat that came their way, the two were actually pleasant to be around once he was used to their shenanigans.

This was true, despite their almost opposite temperaments. Where Marcus was enthusiasm incarnate, Milena was quiet and lethal in conversation. She watched, she learned, she struck where it hurt. Her jokes quickly honed into Rowan’s non-existent romance with Olivia and all of them hit true.

Rowan might have been bothered by those jokes but he was too busy dealing with things to care.

“I don’t like this,” Olivia shared. She was huddled with Rowan and the rest of the party in front of the village. They were close enough to slip back in if there was real danger but far enough that they could see into the woods.

“It worked the last few times,” Rowan said. He stared at the two birds flirting around the edge of a thicket that definitely hid a miniature horde. “Any time now, the beasts are going to take the bait.”

“I don’t know, I’m not getting a good feeling from this,” Olivia said.

“It’s our best shot. We can’t risk going into the forest anymore, not with more monsters than ever,” Rowan replied. “Milena came up with this, she baits a small portion of beasts and they go into a rage.”

As much as Rowan and the others tried to cut the swarm around the village down to size, the monsters just kept coming. Marcus swore that they were facing at least a couple forest’s worth of corrupted beasts at this point.

And now, it was too dangerous for the party to venture into the forest by themselves. In fact, almost any activity outside the village ran the risk of getting swarmed by hundreds of different monsters.

“Olivia might be right,” Milena whispered after she directed the birds to take a couple of low dives. “They’re not biting anymore. It’s like they know we’re baiting them now.”

“Is that even possible? Did one of the beasts get smart enough to take charge?” Rowan asked. He glanced back toward the village. They could get back to safety in under sixty seconds. Less if they had to run with their lives on the line.

“With this many different types of monsters? Unlikely,” Milena said. “A corrupted beast needs to reach epic to have that level of control. And if there’s something that strong out there, it would have no reason to play games with us. We’d be dead already.”

Rowan shuddered in spite of the relatively muggy midday air.

“Let’s call it,” Olivia said. “Not much that we can do if they aren’t biting.”

“What about the mana we spent on this?” Rowan asked.

Once it had been too dangerous to go on scouting trips, Milena’s temporary familiars were absolutely invaluable. The corrupted beasts didn’t bother them, most of the time. The bait plan had been put in place when Milena realized that her scouts were becoming meals for the increasingly hungry corrupted beasts.

“It was just a single potion. I’ve got dozens of them,” Olivia said. She had been downright force-feeding mana potions to Milena, desperate to get any edge over their incoming foes.

“Look sharp, foes incoming!” Milena yelled.

The thicket belched out a mass of corrupted beasts. Milena directed the birds back towards them and Rowan prepared to fight. In the past few days, the average level of the corrupted beasts had risen from the low teens to upper teens, with a lot of the corrupted beasts at the max level twenty.

All it took was for one thing to go wrong and an army of uncommon monsters would start besieging the village.

The fight itself was rather simple. Rowan’s Empowered Thrust was stronger than ever. Although his combination of cards was less flashy than before, it was undoubtedly much more powerful.

And that came in handy today, especially when a couple uncommon monsters appeared. Marcus would block, Milena would stun, and Rowan would deliver the strike that finished the fight. And in the cases where that didn’t work, Olivia had a potion ready to seal the deal.

As soon as they took care of the small group of beasts, the party rushed back to the village. Luckily, no new hordes chased them back, which meant that the retreat turned into a leisurely walk. Rowan used that chance to fall in with Olivia.

“That was fun, right?” Rowan asked.

“It was manageable.” Olivia strained out a smile. “But it’s time to go back to the hell we call home.”

“At least the offending mercenaries were relatively quiet today so you could come with us,” Rowan offered. “Hopefully, that trend keeps up.”

“They know that what’s happening is trouble. They won’t put their own lives at risk at key moments,” Olivia said. “No, now it’s the villagers picking fights instead.”

Rowan glanced over at the baron’s daughter. She looked like she had aged since he first met her. She was no longer the carefree girl and instead a ragged battlefield commander.

“Seriously? We can’t catch a break for even five minutes?” Rowan asked.

“Look at it from their point of view. We’ve been stuck here for this long, with no new messengers coming around and no reinforcements. Now, they can’t even go out to work,” Olivia said with a sigh.

“So, they’re making it everyone else’s problem,” Rowan said with a bit of bitterness in his voice.

“No, Rowan. They’re scared, powerless, and have no clue what to do. Picking a fight with unpleasant mercenaries who have been bullying them probably seems like their best option,” Olivia said. “Maybe I should have done the thing before.”

The thing that Olivia was referring to was when she had been tempted to have some of the more troublesome mercenaries executed just to calm down the flaring tempers. She had run herself ragged trying to keep things civil between the mercenaries and the villagers, which was part of why Rowan had brought her along for the trip. There was nothing like hard fighting to get the blood going.

“No, I think you made the right choice,” Rowan said. He meant it. “We need every hand that we can get right now. And there would have been morale problems in the village if we had gone through with it.”

Part of the problem was also that the mercenaries and villagers outnumbered the soldiers so heavily. Out of the twenty soldiers that had set out from the baron’s home, only eight were combat ready. Their unified spears were enough to take care of emergency beast attacks when Olivia or the hero party wasn’t around. But they were entirely inadequate to deal with the rising issue of arguments around the village.

That was only exacerbated by the fact that there were uncommon tier classes among both the mercenaries and villagers who were stronger than the soldiers individually.

“Desimir’s not helping?” Rowan asked.

“Not really,” Olivia said. She sighed as she sped up and rejoined the twins. Her face turned hard as she crossed the gate.

Rowan sighed too. He wanted to help but had no idea how. The only thing he could do was to keep killing monsters. Each slain enemy was one they wouldn’t have to deal with in the future.

—

As soon as they stepped back in the village, people crowded around Olivia like a tidal wave. But before she could start helping them, one soldier muscled his way to the front.

“Officer Bron,” he sputtered. “Woke up. A few minutes. Awake.”

Rowan pieced the different sentences together and while he didn’t quite let himself believe that everything would finally be solved, his lips were already twitching up into a smile.

“We can’t miss this, Rowan, come on.” Olivia grabbed his hand and beamed up at him.

They made it into Bron’s room and watched as the officer twitched and groaned as the motions tugged on his healing skin. Rowan was pretty sure he had seen the officer close his eyes when he saw them enter.

“Maybe I can do something to help him wake up,” Olivia mused aloud, drawing as close to the bed as she could. “I have some oils and scents I can mix. I’ve never made anything like it, but I think it could work. Or maybe the potion’ll explode.”

“Or we could wait, and let Bron have his break for a little longer,” Rowan teased.

“Eh, I like my method better. Let me see here, I have some tickle root and…”

“Why,” Bron croaked. His voice broke, cracking and faltering for a second, but gathered strength quickly again. “What is it going to take to get you kids to stop bothering me? Fighting a demon? I already did that.” Bron’s eyes fluttered open.

They were red.

Not bloodshot red. Not the ‘reflecting the flame of a candle’ kind of poetic red. They were a solid, crimson red, no separation between the iris, sclera, and the pupil at all. According to everything Rowan knew about basic biology, that was impossible.

Yet Bron was looking at them like there was nothing wrong.

“You look like you just saw a ghost, so I take it I’m not looking good. How long was I out?” Bron’s voice was still scratchy and Olivia picked up a cup of water from the nightstand.

“Three years,” Rowan replied without missing a beat. “The kingdom has fallen, and we might be all that’s left. We have to rebuild from the village up. Every day is a struggle.”

Rowan managed to keep a straight face right up until the man started squinting at him, then lost it and collapsed next to the bed in giggles.

“Ignore Rowan. It’s just been a few days,” Olivia scoffed, bringing the glass up to Bron’s lips.

The officer went to grab it from her, but that only brought his bandaged hands into focus. He scowled like he could cow them into submission but when that failed, he accepted his fate and sipped at his water.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

A couple minutes of awkward maneuvering later, he was laying back again and breathing heavily.

“Well, never let it be said it’s easy to kill a demon,” Bron sighed as he closed his eyes.

When neither of the two responded, he opened his eyes, only to find Rowan looking solemn and Olivia on the verge of tears.

“I’m so sorry,” Olivia whispered, clutching her hands together for lack of something better to do with them. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t given you that potion, you wouldn’t be in this state right now.”

The old lieutenant took her in then. Really took her in. All the signs of exhaustion, the way her robes always seemed at least slightly stained, the bags under her eyes.

“I’m guessing you’re in charge, right now?” Bron asked.

Olivia paused, as if she was afraid that she had done something wrong. “I was the highest-ranking official left.”

“And the village hasn’t burned to the ground? Everyone else wasn’t eaten by monsters, either?” Bron waited for Olivia to shake her head in the negative. “Good, then you’ve been doing a good job while I took my sweet time recovering.”

“You wouldn’t need to be recovering if it wasn’t for me,” Olivia insisted, almost getting angry that he wasn’t responding the way she wanted him to. She probably expected curses and castigation.

“Olivia Sutton, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be alive right now,” Bron said her name slowly, and the way he did it left no room for doubt.

“But —”

“No buts, please. We won. I’ll live. Neither of those two things would be true without you. I knew the risks. Besides, you got to me in time to give me that purging potion, no? So, you definitely contributed to keeping me alive.” Bron smiled.

Olivia took that in for a few seconds. “But your eyes are all weird because of me.”

“Really, then? What’s wrong with them?”

“They’re a solid red. Crimson. Looks kind of intimidating, really, you’ll probably like it,” Rowan said, though he could legitimately imagine Bron taking full advantage of his new eyes for added troop discipline.

Not that Bron needed it.

“All’s well then,” Bron said. “Will I still be able to wield a sword, do you think?”

“I think so. Not today. Or tomorrow, or anywhere within the next two months,” Olivia said.

“Hmm, so I’ll be stuck with logistics duty for the foreseeable future. Not great, but I can work with that.” Bron seemed about ready to try getting out of bed too.

“I swear that if you try to get up I’ll glue you to that mattress,” Olivia hissed.

From how angry she looked, Rowan believed her. Evidently, Bron did too. He sank back into the bed.

“Really, your father is such a nice, calm man.” Bron looked at the ceiling. “Who did you inherit that temper from.”

“We both know that is a lie,” Olivia laughed.

“What about my regeneration card?” Rowan asked. "Could that help Bron?"

Olivia paused as she considered it. “I don't think so. I've only ever used one set of phoenix materials. If anything, a rare tier regeneration card won't be able to negate the potion's damage."

“That was made with the materials from a phoenix?” Bron whispered reverently, his eyes huge.

“A single feather, but yes. Stolen from the family vault. At least my father was happy enough with the result not to punish me for it.”

“And you gave the potion to me.”

“I did.”

The man stared at her for a few moments longer, then shook his head and gave up. “You are as impossible as your father was at your age. If you’re not going to let me work, then let me rest. We’ll talk more later.”

Rowan traded a glance with Olivia before the two of them retreated, closing the door behind them as softly. It was only once they were outside the house that Rowan spoke again.

“Bron, what kind of an officer is he? He can fight and lead, that doesn’t seem like something an ordinary officer can do,” Rowan said.

“He’s a lieutenant,” Olivia answered. She twisted her hair around her finger. “Usually, that’s a rank for uncommon classes but he’s a rare class.”

“Then why is he only a lieutenant?”

“Because he never wanted the promotion. And because back when we were a duchy, only an epic class could become general of the territory’s troops. He said he wasn’t interested in anything above a lieutenant unless he became a general.”

“And then your family got demoted?”

“And then my family got demoted. It turned out that his stubbornness was actually a good thing. If he was of higher military rank, there was a chance they wouldn’t have let him follow my father here. This way, he slipped through. No one thought a lieutenant would have a rare class.”

Rowan smiled. He really should have known that the baron would not just send some random lieutenant to accompany his daughter.

“At least things should get better soon. He’ll be able to help you out with all the logistics. I’m sorry I’m so useless at it,” Rowan said.

“Don’t worry. You just need to keep being the big bad hero.” Olivia giggled a little, poking him in the side. “I’ll take it slow with Bron, he does a good job of hiding it, but he’s a lot more hurt than it seems. I’m just happy he’s finally awake.”

Rowan sighed and looked into the sky. The monster baiting plan was mostly a no-go with how risky it now was. Maybe he could become a messenger to help take some of the load off Olivia.

Off in the distance, the sky was awfully cloudy, and he was willing to bet that before things were through, they’d be dealing with storms too.

Just one more piece of bad news.

—

The clouds moved a lot more slowly than Rowan expected. It took two whole days before the sky opened up and released a deluge upon the world.

Most of the village had taken shelter in their houses and guarding the walls was now a miserable job. One that Rowan was glad to do. The raindrops were like little swords that slashed against his skin, but he justified the suffering in that his patrols were like a beacon of light in the swamp of bad news.

Right when Rowan was feeling pretty good about himself, Milena rushed up to the wall to find him.

“We have a problem,” she gasped.

“We have nothing but problems.” The other reason why Rowan was on the walls was because he didn’t want to deal with the problems on both sides of the wall. Cooped up, the villagers had started complaining about only getting meat for meals recently. Rowan wondered if they truly believed that there was a nice little farmer’s market down the street to shop for more supplies, and the hero party was just being stingy. “What’s going on now?”

“Some kind of new monster,” Milena supplied, looking worried. “Huge, snake or worm-like, large eyes and teeth. They’re moving through the mud and shallow water a couple miles from here. I only spotted them because of the hawks under my control.”

Rowan didn’t groan or throw his head back dramatically. Spending more time with Bron had its benefits, including little things like how a leader acts in response to bad news. Subordinates were like a megaphone. They took cues from their leader on how they should act, and if Rowan was groaning, they’d only amplify that negative sentiment.

“I’m going to assume that since you’re worried, those monsters are coming straight at us,” Rowan said. “How long until they here?”

“They’re maybe an hour or two out. I really can’t make any accurate predictions, though. Those things move all weird, and they move quickly.”

“Then I guess we should try to match their speed.”

—

If there was one thing that near constant attacks were good for, it was building up habits. At the start, it would take a couple of panicked minutes for people to take their positions and get ready for defense.

Now?

They were a well-oiled machine. Everyone, even the mercenaries, did their part. But none of that seemed particularly important when they all spotted the incoming monsters.

It was everything that Milena had mentioned and more. Their creator, some god or otherwise, had leaned all the way into ‘prehistoric eel monster’ designs. The monsters had jagged teeth that were too large for their mouths, long and slimy bodies that were over three yards in length, and fish-like fins on the sides of their bodies. The fins weren’t quite wings, but they would occasionally throw themselves into the air to better gauge their destination, gliding for a few meters before submerging back down again.

In essence, their new enemies were a nightmare fusion of flying fish, eel, and prehistoric vibes.

Lovely.

At least Rowan didn’t have to rely solely on Olivia to gauge what the things were anymore. After some time experiments against weaker monsters, he had a consistent definition of what ‘entering combat’ actually counted as.

Up high on the wall, he had more than enough time to swap out one of his cards for Inspect and get a better idea of what he was up against.

He couldn’t say he much cared for the results.

[Mudclad Lure]

Level 32

STR: 22

VIT: 26

DEX: 38

PER: 14

INT: 5

WIS: 5

Deck (5/5):

* [Heart] Demonic Breeding (Rare)

* Flawless Mimicry (Uncommon, Passive)

* Vicious Lunge (Uncommon, Active)

* Watery Grave (Uncommon, Active)

* Hypnotizing Lure (Uncommon, Passive)

Rowan shared the status screen around, earning himself a grin from Olivia. He returned the smile, replacing the Inspect card with something a bit more relevant for combat.

Right as Rowan was feeling good about himself, the eel that he scanned began to twist. It redoubled its efforts, slithered through the next bit of muck, and launched itself into the air. Where its previous hops were tiny glides, this was a full-on burst of violence that turned the eel into a living arrow. It aimed straight at Rowan’s throat, and he tried to bring his spear forward to defend.

Thankfully, Milena was a bit more attentive than he was.

Miasma drowned the eel, stealing its momentum and slowing it down even though it was mid-lunge. From there, Rowan had it. His spear ignited crimson, and he’d thrust straight for the creature’s gaping maws.

His strike didn’t miss, spearing through the back of the eel’s throat and out of its head.

In a truly horrifying display, the eel wasn’t dead. Its body thrashed for a moment before suddenly coiling around his arms and squeezing.

Even with bolstered defenses in his blessing and stats, Rowan still heard something crack inside his arm. His grip on his spear immediately weakened, and he almost lost the buff from Keen Spear.

Milena applied a double layer of miasma and Marcus rushed forward to strip the eel away from Rowan. In Marcus’ hands, the eel finally died.

Before Olivia could take out a healing potion, Rowan activated Persistent Regeneration, and all pain fled from his arm while a small part of the energy storage from Lavish Feasting vanished.

“Dammit, that was close,” Rowan cursed. If he had his previous movement cards, there was a chance that he would have been able to dodge from the attack in time. But the silver lining in everything was how well the combination of his two cards was working out. As long as he had enough energy, he could focus on damage output and berserk his way to victory.

“Ranged, fire!” Olivia shouted.

A volley of arrows flew out from the wall, only to land harmlessly in the mud. The eels were both too quick and too well protected by the terrain. Any attempts at area spells like fireballs were also quickly drowned out by the pouring rain.

“Hold!” Olivia yelled when she saw the eels mostly unscathed. “Melee fighters forward. Ranged, keep your attacks ready. Use them if you see an opportunity but don’t waste them.”

Rowan scanned the wall. The good news was that the eels were only coming from a single direction. The bad news was that almost all of the defenders looked especially pale. He had to do something to turn the morale around.

Rowan thrust his now-healed arm in the air. “People of Felton’s Mill. We’ve fought off monsters and demons. We’ve faced worse enemies. We’ll overcome these eels. They’re an opportunity for us. If anything, they’ll be a stepping stone in our path to leave our names in the history books.”

The speech was a bit clunky but it worked. Some of the defenders, especially the mercenaries, began grinning as they readied their weapons. Rowan’s words were true. The past few sieges had thinned the village’s population but the ones who remained were mostly sporting levels in the high teens or even twenty. All that they needed was a kill of an uncommon tier enemy and they could become uncommon classes themselves.

Their enthusiasm also translated rather well into deadliness. The eels launched themselves into a blizzard of steel and mana, quickly falling without inflicting anything more than a few broken bones on the defenders.

Rowan himself did the very best he could to contribute. He went for smaller but quicker attacks without Empowered Thrust. Thanks to Blood Siphon, even these light attacks did appreciable damage.

But perhaps the most important factor was that the Mudclad Lures were not meant for siege attacks. They were individual fighters, focused on speed and stealth. Seeing them fly at the wall was scary but once the initial shock was over, most people realized that the monsters were relatively easy to defeat.

These eels are lurkers or assassins. A through-and-through ambush predator at home in swamps. Why are they here? Rowan thought. Even though things were going well, he was beginning to have a chill rise from the bottom of his heart.

It didn’t help that some of the mercenaries were living proof of the adage, the only thing to rival human ingenuity is human stupidity. One loud-mouthed mercenary somehow gave an eel the opportunity to wrap around his entire body. Marcus had to use his shield in a precise strike and Rowan poked the eel to death thanks to Blood Siphon.

Outside of episodes like that, the defense of the wall went fairly well. When the eels finally stopped coming, a cheer from the village, echoing again even the heavy rainfall. There was plenty to be happy about. They were still alive and most of the defenders were now proud owners of uncommon classes.

But the celebrations didn’t extend to Rowan and Olivia. The two of them had a grim look on their faces as they made their way to Bron’s room.

“Well, don’t the lot of you look cheerful?” Bron said, giving them a sardonic smile. “The defense went that badly?”

“The defense went great,” Olivia said with no real enthusiasm. “But… we’ve most probably got another demon inbound.”