The anticipation in the air was like a physical force as all over the city, people were watching the countdown before the tier 2 gate breaks. The first had decimated large sections of the city and everyone was expecting the second to be much worse as bosses and hidden bosses were being added into the mix. Owen was standing on a fire escape across the street of a tier 2 gate as he watched the time countdown. When there were five seconds left, it looked like the gate had begun vibrating, as the time hit zero, the gate shattered due to the energy fluctuation in the vibrations as monsters began pouring out of the gate.
Owen patiently spent his time counting the monsters as they poured out of the gate and began spreading. More than 200 hundred before the boss appeared. He texted the results to Myra, before preparing his spear. The monster didn't look all that special. They looked like some variation of beastmen, with the beast being unrecognizable. It looked like it was a furry axolotl with a human face.
*Terrabeast Queen - Level 25*
Owen was satisfied to see that is wasn't too high leveled and charged as much energy into his spear as it would allow. He waited to make sure there wasn't a hidden boss after several seconds without one appearing, he launched himself from the fire escape towards the boss. It noticed him too late as his spear tore through it's shoulder and down through it's hip. Quickly taking his short sword out, he sliced the throat of the boss, tearing head from torso, before immediately rushing towards the next gate. He was in an already decently well abandoned area of the city, so he let Briar distract the horde as he made it closer to the next gate.
The monsters at the next gate were surprisingly familiar and he felt like it was his chance to vent some rage as he saw the boss monster.
*Golden Roseborn Mother - Level 20*
It died just as easily as the first, though it put up a slightly better fight as one of it's attacks used up more than 70 points of his vitality. He danced through the monsters trying to see if there was another hidden boss, but after not seeing one, he shrugged and continued to the next gate. More and more monsters had began to chase him and after only another minute or so Briar appeared as a bracelet on his wrist once more. "Briar how much time before you can use another one of those explosion attacks?" He asked as he darted through street after street towards the net gate quickly dispatching a rat monster, before continuing. "I will take another day before my body can sustain another one of those attacks."
With the power used by that attack Owen wasn't surprised, but he was disappointed as he had hoped it could be used as an easy way to take down the groups of enemies. He now had almost 600 monster chasing him, though he was happy to see that the made dash created to follow him had caused some of the monsters to begin fighting. He managed to kill several more bosses before the horde got to be too much to let them continue to follow him. Switching his spear out for his bastard sword, he channeled his mana through it and began making large sweeping attacks, sending out sparks of electricity through the crowd of monsters. His mana was beginning to run low, but he still had more than nine bosses and possible hidden bosses to kill, before he could take a real break.
After having killed several dozen of the monsters, he dashed away again and realized it was going to be more of a problem than he thought. How the hell was Peggy and Lucas's group supposed to clear out this wave, especially if Myra was creating a similar sized group. He knew it was less likely for Myra since her abilities were better against groups, but he was focused much more on singular enemies. Since he was going to be fighting the groups, for now he needed to have better control so he put all his free stats into dexterity. Feeling the rush of power, he smiled before rushing to the next gate, he would think of some way to clear out the monster before guiding them to the smaller groups.
Several more bosses had been killed, with only a couple of hidden bosses having shown up in that time. It was frustrating that he didn't receive any rewards for clearing out these enemies other than experience, but he had already seen that he had most likely leveled up. There were thankfully only four gates left on his side of the city, but the crowd of monsters was destroying almost everything in it's path as they stormed after the one nearby human they could see. Several groups had had their numbers cut down heavily as the stampede had killed all of the weakest monsters that couldn't keep up. Some of the stronger ones had also began to fight, but the group had grown regardless.
Owen had almost completely run out of mana and wasn't looking forward to trying to kill bosses without using his buffs. At the fourth to last gate he was surprised to see it had already been destroyed with the last of the monster he could see having been slain. The group looked surprised, but began to run the same direction as he was. Timing their run slowly, one of them moved close to Owen and shouted over the roaring monsters. "ARE YOU TRYING TO DESTROY THE ENTIRE FUCKING CITY?" Owen shook his head and pointed to the map, passing it over as he had memorized it already. "THESE ARE THE LAST TIER 2 GATE'S THE POLICE KNOW ABOUT. I WAS CLEARING OUT ALL THE BOSSES AND GOING TO FIGURE OUT THE HORDE LATER."
He heard a voice in his head at a much more reasonable volume after he finished speaking. "We have cleared these other four gates you have circled, we also have another group moving north clearing gates as they go." Owen was surprised and tried speaking back to the voice in his head. "My friend Myra is also up there clearing gates, she will probably need less help than I will finishing up the horde of monsters. I hadn't expected this quantity and have a trump card that I didn't realize would only work once a day."
The person running next to him looked around and nodded and suddenly a loud boom sent a shockwave, sending several of the severely damaged buildings to the ground. Owen started to shout at the guy in shock, but when he turned, he saw that the entire horde of monsters was trapped inside of a slightly see through dome of golden energy. The four companions of the person that had talked with Owen were each holding out there hands, clearly channeling energy into the skill and the person turned to Owen. "We've got some good methods at trapping groups." They pulled their hood and mask down and Owen was shocked as the man was clearly in his late sixties.
"Want to help take them out?" The older man asked cheekily and Owen only nodded. The next hour was spent with the older man and Owen taking turns tearing apart the monster trapped inside of the barrier. After the hour passed, the horde had been culled by about 40% leaving a little more than a thousand monster still inside, but as the hour passed the barrier got weaker and weaker as the four continued to run out of mana. Owen got ready to run again and as soon as the barrier fell, the older man shouted louder than even the sound boom from earlier. He didn't say anything, but the shout got all of the monster's attention and they began chasing Owen and the man again.
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As they raced throughout the city, taking breaks from running to trap the monsters and rain attacks down on them, Owen realized that bracelet Briar had turned into was intermittently warming up, before quickly cooling. Looking at it's status during one of the breaks, he felt like the system was glitching as Briar had gained levels for almost every boss he had killed, without even needing to directly consume them anymore. On top of that Briar had began to learn skills from some of the bosses.
He could barely hold in his anticipation for how Briar was going to change next, as if he kept killing at the pace he was tearing through enemies, Briar would become the strongest creature on earth, without much contest.
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Myra was having the time of her life as she tore through her tenth boss monster. The horde of monster quickly surrounding her, but into the gauntlet and empowered body had her ripping through each monster with relative ease. Each kill regenerating a small percentage of her resources allowing her to keep the ability going for longer. She had a group of people meet up with her, only for her to send them down towards Owen.
She had this, but she was worried Owen didn't have a good way to deal with horde's of enemies like she did. She had also gained almost five full levels since she began, but something felt off about the amount of experience she was gaining. Even though she was still a lower level than a couple of the bosses, they had only ended up giving her a hundred experience per kill and as she continued it had slowly sunk down to single digits for the normal monsters.
Her best guess was it had something to do exactly with preventing people with her build to be able to power level 20 level in a single extended fight with enough enemies. She even got several system messages saying that she could no longer gain experience from certain enemies. By the time she had cleared all of her gates, only around 3 hours had passed, which made her feel really proud, but one look at the city surrounding her, she felt her heart sink. It was ruined. Despite her doing her best to keep from building up a horde that would be to big, several buildings had still been destroyed.
She shook the thought from her mind and raced towards Peggy's group hoping Owen had beaten her there. He was better at bursting bosses down anyways. As she raced through the city she heard loud booming sounds coming from nearby where Peggy and Lucas where. She pushed herself even harder, quickly seeing what was making the sound. An unbelievable huge swarm of monster were fighting their way towards Peggy's group but they were somehow locked behind a weird golden barrier. She saw Owen and a group of ten people standing nearby all placing their hands against the barrier. Owen was repeatedly jumping inside of the dome of monster killing several, before jumping out and another figure diving in to fight against the swarm.
Several of the weaker people that had joined to help Peggy earlier were standing at the tops of buildings now launching skills down into the horde. Not wanting to be left out, she ran over to the fire escape Owen was standing on. He looked over at her with that stupid smile, but she could see he didn't mean it, she was used to the look as she often did much the opposite of it. She chose to ignore it for now and decided to ask what was going on. "That's a lot of monsters, don't tell me you just rushed from boss to boss nonstop all day." She said frowning.
He smiled at her, looking much more genuine as he looked embarrassed. "I may have underestimate the amount of monsters that would have ended up chasing me, but thankfully Thomas as his guys came and helped me out." The old man Myra had seen jumped out of the barrier landing next to them on the fire escape. "You must be Myra, I'm Thomas Hudson. Hopefully you don't have a similar horde to this chasing after you as well." He looked worried but she shook her head. "No, my skills are much better at clearing large groups of monsters than most." He smiled at her looking relieved.
"Well, we managed to protect a lot of the city doing it this way, though they are several areas that look like a hurricane came in a blew everything over." She said and Owen winced. "I should've probably tried to grab some people who had some wave clear, I think I might've done more damage having them chase me than they might've done on their own if the boss was gone." An awkward silence followed, but Owen was saved by the system as a chiming sound echoed through his head and a system screen appeared unprompted.
*Congratulations, Humans of Earth, due to your achievements of having more than 60% of the population still remaining after the tier 2 gate breaks, you have unlocked Tier 4 and Tier 5 gates. Minimum level requirement removed for entry.
Welcome to the multiverse!*
Owen at first felt his heart sink as they would have no way of closing tier 4 and 5 gates, but realized there wasn't anything said about them breaking. He turned to Myra who seemed to be thinking the same thing. Leaving the monster inside of the dome, he apologized to Thomas as he and Myra excused themselves to go check in with Lucas and Peggy. It only took a couple minutes before they found them, Lucas was resting on a bench and Peggy was directing several different people who looked like they were getting ready to go searching for people.
"Hey, do you guys have a second?" Owen asked as he drew close and Peggy made a scowl, but nodded and Lucas agreed. "I'm still helping organize groups to go searching for anyone and everyone that's injured." Peggy said flatly. Lucas went to speak up, but Peggy interrupted him. "Lucas should be fine to join though." She then turned and moved back to help direct some of the more excited volunteers. Both Myra and Owen turned to Lucas looking unimpressed. "Hey, it isn't like there is anything I could do to help, I don't have any healing skills."
Myra now looked annoyed, "I didn't know that Peggy was using a healing skill right now, in fact she is moving around as if she hasn't had to use much mana for a while at this point." Owen just shook his head, but called Peggy close again. "Lucas go help organize the rescue effort for now, we both need to talk to Peggy right now." Lucas just shook his head, but agreed and move to help give directions. Peggy still fuming sat down on the bench that Lucas had been sitting on. "You know he was sitting there for almost the entire time you guys were gone, saying that there was no way he could help out, since he didn't have a healing skill? Unbelievable!"
"Did you see the system message?" Owen asked seriously. Peggy nodded a waited for him to continue. "I think we should help out for a couple days, getting things situated, especially since this would be the greatest opportunity to start a guild. But once we are starting to get things situated, I think we should take on a tier 3 gate." Myra gave Peggy a wide grin, but Peggy shook her head. "I love the system and everything, but I'm not sure if I want to make the grind anymore. Too many people got hurt today and if I had been out helping to kill monsters right now, many of those people would have died." Peggy looked just as disappointed as Myra did, but she still put on a slight smile. "Plus I'm okay if you guys are the hero's. You guys have pulled to far ahead of me anyways and at least for now, I don't want to be paired with that slack off."
"Think about it for a few days?" Myra asked hopefully and Peggy hesitantly nodded. Myra then turned to Owen, "You ready to go bash some heads down at the police department?" Owen grinned, "Hell yeah I do."