The rain never stopped.
And there was only so much water that the ground could take. At some point, it was like a switch had been flipped and the village became a swamp.
Water seeped into everything. Homes, food, and even the mood.
“I wish they’d cooperate at least a little.” Rowan gritted his teeth, eyes scanning over the shuttered homes of the villagers. “Don’t they realize we’re the only thing between them and a pack of hungry monsters?”
“I would like to say that I don’t blame them, but…” Olivia trailed off with a sigh.
“But this is getting ridiculous. I can understand feeling scared. What I can’t understand is why they think hiding in their homes is going to solve anything. Even I can see that the mercenaries are on edge. They’re going to do something drastic if this keeps up.” Rowan disliked being pushy but at this point, something had to give. Otherwise, the next wave of monsters would meet a village that was tearing itself apart.
“I know, I know,” Olivia growled as she ran a hand over her face in frustration. “It’s just that if I do something and things go wrong, it’s going to be on me. Tell me some good news.”
“The beasts, they seem distressed,” Milena said. The beast folk was currently sitting cross-legged on the wooden wall in spite of the rain, eyes closed. Her face was scrunched up in concentration. “I can’t get a good read. The best familiar I have left is a fox after that last attack. I’m trying to get closer but I don’t want to lose it. Give me a second.”
“What are you seeing?” Olivia asked.
“I think… take this with a grain of salt. I’m really not sure if I’m seeing this right.”
“Milena, please, you know I won’t blame you for whatever you say. What’s going on.”
“I think the horde will rush us soon. I don’t know why they haven’t already. Some of the weaker ones have drowned. I think there’s some kind of commander among them. Probably a wraith like the one we fought a couple of days ago,” Milena replied in an unsure voice.
“You think that the corrupted beasts were holding back and massing in number?” Rowan furrowed his brows. That was tactics, something only the demon had employed.
“It makes sense,” Olivia sighed, closing her eyes briefly. “They’re too well organized. The skyfins for scouting, the wraith assassin, the troop of urchins, the harassing lures. They are organized.”
“So what’s next is going to be a corrupted beast wave. If they want to weaken us, now is the best time to just unleash all of them,” Rowan concluded.
“Exactly. We need to organize our defenses before that happens. Spell casters for now. We’ll need to save the archers for pinpoint attacks when the demons come.” Surprisingly, it was Milena who said those words. Not Olivia. She looked down a moment later. “I’m not sure. Just a thought.”
“A good thought.” Olivia offered her a smile and bumped her shoulder. “We’ll do just that. I’ll go send the order.”
It wasn’t an easy thing to drag the right defenders up to the wall and force them to take station. Rowan couldn’t help but show a bit of worry on his face as he watched the men and women slump against the palisades, miserable in the rain.
—
Five hours after they’d bolstered their defenses, Milena’s fears proved true. A tide of beasts gushed out of the trees, literally and metaphorically.
Funnily enough, the rain actually worked in the village’s favor for once. They had the nice, tall wall they could attack and defend from. The forest critters, meanwhile, had to waddle and even swim to get at them.
Some of the small beasts were entirely submerged, and the smarter of the monsters clung to their larger comrade in arms. Interestingly, this didn’t provoke a battle. Under normal circumstances, they would have started infighting over that kind of breach of personal space. But under demonic control, Rowan could see it all make sense.
“Should we go down there?” Marcus quipped.
“What? No. Why would you suggest that?” Rowan asked.
“Because most of those can’t really hurt us.” Marcus motioned vaguely at the slowly approaching horde. “And we could break them up into more manageable chunks for the troops by hunting down the stronger beasts.”
Rowan blinked, then looked at the beasts again. The shield bearer was right. Despite their numbers, most of the attackers were at the common rank. They might have all been at the max level twenty, but they were still a walk in the park compared to the demonic creatures they had been fighting.
“Rowan Clairfont, if you so much as think about jumping into thigh-high water to fight a beast horde when we have a perfectly fine wall, I am going to strangle you myself,” Olivia hissed.
Rowan hesitated. For all of about fifteen seconds.
“Catch you there.” Rowan grinned at Marcus, and leapt down the wall.
It was horribly annoying that he couldn’t use any of his more interesting cards in his build, since his two ‘free’ slots were taken up by Lavish Feasting and Persistent Regeneration.
He couldn’t remove the former without eliminating all the energy stores he’d accrued and they didn’t magically return when he reequipped the card. Meanwhile, the latter was just a no-brainer to keep when heading into combat.
“Keep them off my back, okay?” Rowan shouted at Marcus over the rain, and didn’t even wait for the nod to start wading into the slaughter.
It was oddly calming. Therapeutic even. Rowan used his spear for what it was intended for. Combat and death.
Rowan buried the spear into the eye of a boar, then gracefully sidestepped the remaining momentum of the same beast while aiming at the throat of a wolf. The spear tip became dyed in red from the blood that gushed out. The beauty of Blood Siphon was that it was entirely passive. He didn’t need to use a single drop of mana on the card for it to do its work.
About twenty or thirty beasts in, Rowan began to relax. He was absolutely bullying monsters that would have turned him into mince meat just a few weeks ago. It was exhilarating. And it was good to feel Keen Spear go to work after being without the card for the past few days.
A deer with glowing horns jumped in his path. Rowan’s eyes briefly widened. That was Relentless Advance if he’d ever seen it. The creature must have killed a boar and then added its card to its own deck. As it barreled toward him, Rowan carefully took a few steps back.
They were fighting in a flooded swamp. The mud sucked down on every step, which meant that although the deer was faster than Rowan, it wasn’t a big advantage. And it wasn’t quick enough to get to Rowan before Marcus did.
The deer collided straight on with the wolf kin’s shield and came up short. It didn’t even rock the defender back, and by the easy smirk on Marcus’ face, he wasn’t daunted either.
Rowan took down two wolves and a fox trying to attack them from the flanks. Then, using the opening, he stabbed at the deer’s neck.
It did the job. The spear bit deep into flesh, and when Rowan drew it back, deer blood swirled around their feet.
The animal released a cry of pain and somehow stumbled through the wound. Rowan advanced again, raising his spear for a final attack on the monster’s head.
Rowan locked eyes with the deer. And everything felt wrong. The eyes he met belonged to a creature of perfect purity and innocence. Its tearful gaze struck straight through Rowan’s heart, and he couldn’t believe what he and Marcus had done. To raise his weapon against something like that was practically sacrilege.
When Rowan was ready to confess his sins, the deer reared up and stomped its front hooves on his chest. The air flew out of his lungs. He gasped, only to get a lungful of murky, disgusting water.
The only reason Rowan didn’t panic and manage to drown in mere feet of water was Keen Spear.
He did a slow roll to the side and fought down his panic.
When Rowan came up, spitting water and gasping for air, Marcus was locked shield-to-horns with the deer and a wolf was preparing to pounce on his unprotected back. Rowan snarled in rage, his spear snaking out and catching the beast in the throat. He wrenched his weapon clear and rounded on the deer. He made sure to use Empowered Thrust, coating the spear in a red haze.
This time, there was no coming back for the deer. Not unless it could function without a head.
“You okay?” Marcus shouted.
“Fine,” Rowan coughed. He leaned over and hacked up blood. Normally, that might have given him pause but he could feel his regeneration kicking in and fixing him up. His chest was tight for a bit before he could breathe normally again. “The damn thing got me.”
“That’s for sure,” Marcus laughed. He swung his shield in a giant arc, creating some space for the two of them. “I got scared there for a second.”
“You and me both,” Rowan grunted as he took a couple of deep breaths to make sure everything was functioning fine. The blow had been surprisingly devastating, perhaps the hardest he had been hit since rising to the uncommon tier. “It’s my class. Sacrifices defense in favor of attacks.”
Rowan speared a couple of the beasts that crept closer. He used Empowered Thrust in its lowest form, just a single mana per attack. That was enough to end pretty much anything in his way with a single shot each time.
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“I’ll say. If I could attack like you, I’d give up a couple points in defense as well,” Marcus said as he came closer to Rowan.
“Yeah,” Rowan grunted. He was beginning to learn a bit more about his class and the implications behind it. It was true that his blows were far more ferocious than before, but he couldn’t underestimate any of his opponents.
The ‘reckless’ in the name means that I go all out, no matter what I’m fighting.
Soon, the majority of the horde finally reached them. Even though the beasts were likely under the control of a demon, they seemed to have a bit of wiggle room in their orders. Instead of rushing toward the high wall, most of the monsters chose to wade their way toward the two stupid humans who were sitting out in the open.
Rowan gradually lost himself in the fighting. The bodies of the slain beasts piled around his feet, gradually accumulating enough that he found himself fighting on dry ground, or at least something that was different from mud. And thanks to the baron’s training, he could keep his footing even when the dead monsters rolled and shuffled under him.
Marcus was not quite so lucky.
The shield bearer, predictably, worked best on solid ground. His stat investments clearly favored vitality and strength instead of the dexterity that Rowan prized. As the bodies piled up, he began having more and more trouble moving around.
“I’ll cover you,” Rowan called out after dispatching another squirrel that flew off another beast to scratch at him. “Just make sure you don’t let them get through to me.”
Rowan danced around Marcus, protecting his flanks and back while using him as a semi-mobile wall. That, in turn, freed him up from having to worry about his own back and allowed him to unleash his full destructive might against the beast horde.
“Heavy hitter coming!” Marcus yelled.
Rowan spared a glance back and saw a bear, ten feet tall and built like a tank, rumbling towards them. It wasn’t overly fast but its slow momentum plowed through the other beasts like they didn’t exist.
“Is that thing still uncommon?” Rowan asked. He swung his spear out like a staff and poked at a few antsy beasts that tried to rush in.
“Is that really what’s on your mind right now?” Marcus grunted as he braced himself. The bear’s front paws started glowing well before it reached them and it began to charge. Every time its claws came down, water shot up in the air and any beast unfortunate enough to be in its way was trampled into the mud. “Brace.”
The beast practically launched itself over the last few yards of distance.
Its front paw landed heavily on Marcus’ shield, creating a miniature light show as his cards struggled to absorb the blow. Somehow, the beast folk never backed up even a single inch.
Then the second blow landed and Marcus’ defenses folded. The glow protecting him shattered, and he was suddenly thrown back with startling force.
The only thing that saved Rowan were his enhanced reflexes. He dropped down on the pile of bodies, letting the beast folk sail over his head and impact some of the common beasts behind.
Almost by instinct, Rowan committed the strongest offense he could possibly bring to the bear.
Twisting his body in a way that made him sorely miss the Feline Physique card, Rowan channeled as much force and mana into his strike as he could. He pulled his shoulder back as the glowing mist surrounding his spear tip turned viscous and incandescent, and then shoved forward.
The bear never knew what hit it. The spear flashed through the air and found its way into the bear’s chest. There was so much momentum that nearly half the length of the spear staff went into the bear and the tip even poked out of its titanic back.
Rowan stared at his attack, almost unsure that he was the one who did it. There was now a hole the size of his head running through the bear’s body and through it, he could see the dark cloud rumbling behind the monster.
That’s what… twenty points of mana does. Rowan thought in mute shock as he quickly checked his status screen.
A gusher of blood exploded out of the bear’s back. The beast paused, swayed, and collapsed forward. Rowan actually had to let go of his weapon to avoid getting crushed. Thankfully, even when temporarily separated from his Keen Spear effect, Rowan had more than enough speed and presence of mind to scramble on top of the bear’s back and pull out his spear from the other end.
As soon as Keen Spear’s cool relief flooded through him, Rowan turned around to help Marcus.
The shield bearer was nowhere to be seen. And then Rowan found him. Or rather, he found a lump of common beasts that made a tiny hill and assumed that Marcus was underneath. Wading his way forward, Rowan speared away the critters and unearthed an unharmed shield bearer. Even though his main defenses were down, the claws and fangs of the common beasts weren’t enough to even draw blood from the man.
How much vitality does he even have? Rowan was jealous of Marcus’ defenses for a few second before realizing how much it would have sucked to been under a mass of wet, snarling beasts. I’ll take my current build, actually.
“Thanks,” Marcus said as he got back to his feet, almost entirely fine despite the scare earlier. “Same tactic?”
“Same tactic,” Rowan replied as he left his back to the shield bearer.
Luckily, the strong uncommon beasts seemed to be a bit of a rarity and the two of them got a chance to catch their breath against weaker swarming common beasts.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this disgusted while fighting for my life,” Marcus quipped after dispatching a pair of boars.
“Or this wet,” Rowan said. He was soaked with a combination of blood, water, and murky fluid that he didn’t even want to find the provenance of.
“At least we’re doing something.” Marcus moved closer to the wall.
Hygiene related trauma aside, things were actually going well. Their presence on the field made them a very obvious, very attractive target, which relieved much of the pressure on the defenders. Besides the numbers, the beast horde was surprisingly manageable.
As the wave eventually began to thin out, the beasts began to throw some curveballs at the two of them.
A flaming boar ran forward, somehow lighting itself on fire and probably hoping to score a lucky hit with its charge card. Marcus effortlessly stopped its charge and Rowan quickly skewered it while using the bare minimum in mana.
Later, an owl divebombed down and attempted to sink its claws into them. That one was a bit harder to deal with due to a corona of wind surrounding it but once Rowan figured out the trick, it was just a matter of stabbing upwards at the right time.
And right when Rowan thought things were done, a massive trio of wolves came into the picture. The beasts were tricky in that they all conjured clone illusions, quickly surrounding the two humans with real and fake wolves. It would have been tricky to deal with them if it weren’t for the fact that it was still raining. The water splashed on the real bodies while passing through the illusion ones like nothing was there. Rowan made short work of them.
A small flash of movement danced at the edge of Rowan’s vision as he finished putting down the last of the wolves. For the moment, he didn’t think much of it. He had been dealing with squirrels for much of the day and even when there were a dozen hanging off of him, they hadn’t been able to be more than just a nuisance.
So when lines of agony suddenly ripped their way up his legs, Rowan was a bit too shocked to scream.
Instinctively, he punched down to stop whatever was hurting him. The pain stopped for a second, only to begin again on his arm. When Rowan finally heard an angry screech and looked down, he realized that his worst enemy of the fight, funnily enough, was a weasel. And unlike nearly every other corrupted beast, it was utterly adorable.
The weasel had wine red fur, with a perfect, snowy patch stretching on the underside of its belly. Its eyes were large and glassy and its whiskers twitched left and right in a way that would have had Rowan squealing in delight under any other circumstances.
As the pain caught up with him, Rowan was definitely squealing. Part of the weasel’s wine-red fur was thanks to Rowan’s blood and each time it scratched down with its claws, three new wounds appeared on Rowan.
And it was using the arm as a death-delivery system to scramble toward Rowan’s face.
“Shit,” Rowan cursed. That was the only words he got out before the weasel hit his face and the world went dark on him.
Things seemed to suddenly slow down for Rowan and he got confirmation of several of his suspicions and theories.
First, the reach of the spear was a double-edged sword. Its length was great when the opponent was something big and heavy, but in the case of a small and nimble enemy that could get past his guard? He was pretty much at its mercy.
Second, the weasel was definitely an uncommon. The raw instinct it had to hide and then go straight for Rowan’s face was something that hadn’t been true of most other demonic beasts.
Third, Persistent Regeneration regrew organs like a person’s eyes. Or at least it felt that way. Rowan lost his sight when the weasel got to his face and a sharp pain blossomed from his eyes. But the healing process was surprisingly painless. Or at least it should have been.
Somewhere next to him, Marcus was screaming some gibberish. The next thing that Rowan knew, he was getting bashed in the head. And the blows didn’t stop when he fell to the ground. Finally, he heard a soft whimper by his ears and the attacks finally paused.
“Rowan? Are you okay? Rowan?” Marcus’ yell was so loud that Rowan thought his head was going to split in two. Or maybe it had already been sawed in half with how bad everything hurt.
“I hope so,” Rowan said, surprising himself at how calm he was. He could feel his eyes reforming, followed by flashes of colors and shapes that he didn’t even have names for. “I really hope so.”
“Holy shit. Thank Sarina,” Marcus whispered. “I thought… I’m sorry.”
Rowan blinked blearily into rain as he got his bearing. Marcus was fighting desperately right above him to keep the common beasts away.
For better or for worse, Keen Spear helped Rowan push through the horror of what had happened to him, and he was able to shakily rejoin the fight.
For the first few beasts, Rowan made sure to double check that there were no critters hopping a ride and about to wreak havoc. He relied on Marcus to keep the monsters at an appropriate range and backed into the safety of his beast party member after each strike.
No small critter was ignored in favor of their bigger counterparts. If anything, the two of them focused them down first.
That may have actually saved them a repeat of the incident because one of the smaller foxes that Rowan skewered actually managed to survive for long enough to extend a paw far further than physics should have allowed and almost scratch Rowan.
Another uncommon, by Rowan’s reckoning, and another one that could have attempted to climb him like a cat determined to knock the tree topper ornament from the top of a Christmas tree.
Thankfully, the horde quickly dwindled and soon, the two of them were facing only a handful of beasts. Rowan dispatched them with ease, now completely healed thanks to Persistent Regeneration. And whether it was his imagination or post-healing hunger pangs, all of the beasts looked delicious to him.
Every wolf, fox, boar and whatever else the forest had disgorged onto the field were lying dead on the field next to them. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The muddy swamp had turned into a bloody cesspool of fur, muscle, and beast parts.
“We’re done?” Marcus asked when no new animals came to challenge them.
“I think so,” Rowan sighed.
The wolf kin nearly collapsed on the spot. “I’m never going to suggest something dumb like that again. I thought you were…”
“Dead,” Rowan finished Marcus’ sentence for him.
“Yeah. I’m sorry, I didn’t see the damn thing,” Marcus said.
“No, not on you.” Rowan looked at his companion. Despite a ridiculously high vitality score that left Marcus without so much a single bleeding wound, the beast folk was exhausted. He had swung an incredibly heavy shield for, by Rowan’s hazy estimate, the past three or four hours. “I think we both deserve a chewing out.”
Rowan was feeling the effects of the fight too, but mostly on a mental front. For one, he was pretty sure he would never look at a cute, fuzzy animal the same way again.
Quite literally too, because he was in possession of a brand-new pair of eyes.
As Rowan surveyed around himself once more, he realized how low Lavish Feasting’s energy stores must have been. He wasn’t just hungry. He was starving. He felt like his body was devouring itself. The beasts never looked better.
Rowan shook the sensation off, but then blinked when he realized it wasn’t entirely his own. Whether it was because of the card’s original owner or because of its inherent quirk, there was a tug in his chest that seemed to be urging him to feast right then and there.
And Rowan wasn’t sure if he would have been spared from trying to gorge on the beasts if it weren’t for Keen Spear backing him up. For the first time, he realized that literally shoving magical cards into the core of his being had some effects he couldn’t entirely predict.
Now that he had a moment to reflect, even his use of Relentless Regeneration was not something done consciously. The card seemed to activate entirely on its own the second he was hurt in some way.
That wasn’t troubling, but that did lead down a disturbing train of thought.
We bend the cards to our will. But the cards also shape us. The cards I decide to equip right now will influence me in ways I have no clue about.
It was a sobering thought, one that Rowan didn’t dwell on as he waded across the battlefield with Marcus and back to the gates.
Now, it was time for the real battle. Enduring Olivia’s scolding.