The next day was definitely interesting. I went out to hunt, only to have nonstop battles. It seemed every time I would kill one molt or ent, another would already be on me, and many a time I was facing multiple of them at once. Eventually, after being forced to use up a couple of my potions, I gave up and fought as I retreated back to the walls, only to look around and be able to spot multiple molts and ents wandering around outside, and many parties fighting close in to the walls, when I had seen very few of them this close in before.

    Heading back into town, I found it filled with chatter of what turns out to be an incoming monster wave. I’d only recently learned of them, and it seems I’d be able to get some firsthand experience very soon. Deciding that it would be best for me to prep beforehand, I went over to the market district, I was going to pick up some more potion bottles to fill up in preparation for it.

    I was soon off to the side of the road in large farming area, protected by the small walls as I dried out my herbs. While waiting, I meditated, and soon realized I’d become used to it enough that I could continue to think on what I was going to do, rather than be completely lost within the flow of mana. Time still seemed to be flowing ridiculously fast, but I could at least plan for what was going to happen.

    Eventually, I decided to meet up with Loss and the others, so I stopped my meditation momentarily and shot them a message

    Hey Loss, you guys ready for the monster wave that’s coming? I was thinking we should meet up and take it as a party.

    Monster wave? Does it have something to do with how many mobs I’ve been seeing around?

    Yeah, there’s going to be a massive wave of mobs that are going to assault the town, you should probably head back in before you guys end up trying to face it all on your own.

    We’ll head back into town then, thanks for the heads up.

    I closed the messaging window, and grabbed my collection of dried out herbs, it was back to making potions for me. While grinding up the herbs, I decided to look up what I would need in order to make the next level of potions. I wasn’t going to need them anytime soon, except for the mana ones, as my mana potions were only restoring around half of my mana at this point, while my health and stamina pots would fill me up completely after waiting a little bit for them to take effect.

    As it turns out, the next level of potion still used the basic herb, it just needed an additional catalyst, in the mana potions case an herb called myrua, and the next level of potions were referred to as elixers rather than potions, being effective up to 50 of a stat. It also stated that you would need to be able to make a potion that filled up three fourths of a level twenty stat to have the required mana control to be able to make them.

    I sighed, I was still a good ways from being able to do that, so I’d likely have to grind a lot of potion making in order to be able to do so.

Each time I would add the ground up herbs, I would be as careful as I could in adding my mana, and by the end of it, I thought I’d noticed an ever so slight improvement, or at least I thought so, it seems my increase in skill seemed to be noticeable.

    Once I was done, having filled up forty potion bottles, and having made a couple of antidote potions from the brag poison and healing herbs along with some herb I kept forgetting the name of, I filled up my potion holding belt, and stuffed a few excess into my pockets. Hopefully I would have the time to refill my potion belt in the battle, but I was going to stuff as many in my pockets as possible just in case. After labeling each of the bottles which I’d sorted by type, I stood up, put out the fire I’d been drying my herbs by, and headed off to town, to find out some more information on what I was to do during the monster wave.

    After arriving at town, I went over to the training field. I figured that the best person to ask for information would be to ask one of the trainers., and I arrived to find them mostly surrounded by groups of players. I wandered up to one of the groups to catch him mid explanation.

    “Adventurers are going to mostly hold the East and North walls, and small groups will support each of the other walls to fill in for any areas that the soldiers cannot handle on their own. So when the alarm bell rings, head over to the east or north walls, and try to stay in your party groups. We’re not expecting you to fight in a well organized battalion like the soldiers, so make sure to have plenty of parties near the back to take out any monsters that make it through the parties in front. There will be enough monsters for everyone, so don’t worry about not getting enough experience and just stay in your groups. Trainers will be there to organize the fighters.”

    I got the information I came for, and started to head out when I got a message from Loss.

    We just got back to town, wondering where we should  meet up to talk about the monster wave?

    I’m at the warrior training grounds, mind meeting me here?

    Sounds like a plan, be there in a bit

    I waited around for a bit, when Loss arrived with the rest of the party in tow.

    “Hey Rayth, mind giving us some information on the monster wave, I get the gist of it from the name, but we could use a better run-down of what to expect.”

    “I’m not all to sure what to expect myself. I just know it’ll be massive amounts of monsters attacking the town. We’ll be defending the inner walls, so when the bells ring just group up and go to either the East or North walls.”

    “Sounds good. I’m pretty excited for this, it sounds like a big event.”

    “It’s sure to be, time to rack up lots of experience it seems. So how have all of you been doing.”

    We chatted for the next hour or two, going over our experiences we’d experienced. They’d hunted a few king class molts and ents, but hadn’t really dealt with brags or craw. All of them had upgraded to new gear, Mars sticking with her oversized weapon, Light and Aylea wearing fancy looking robes, and staves with actually visible runing on them, likely more effective than my pitiful fifty percent boost on my spear. Dark had a fancy looking sword and shield, and Loss had an axe which seemed to be made of the same material as my spear, possibly from the leftover blades Kor had kept.

    We discussed how imbuing had made it so melee warriors could easily cope with monsters with thicker shells, and speculated on mobs to come, and soon enough, we heard what had to be the alarm bells, a very deep sounding tolling that seemed to make your bones shiver.

    We all looked up, towards the bell towers, and grabbed our gear we had left beside us, heading over to the east wall as we’d decided. We soon arrived, and were ushered into position beside another group of six, fidgeting from excitement and nervous energy.

    For a while, all we did was wait. It was when we’d finally started to relax that we started to hear it. It was like a constant droning sound, and we started to see a cloud of dust off in the horizon, slightly obscuring what seemed to be a dark cloud.

    It wasn’t until the monsters got closer that we could make out what the cloud was, It was an uncountable number of brags. I instantly started prepping my new spell, with how dense that cloud of brags seemed to be, a wide area of effect spell seemed to be the right thing to choose.

    Remembering that I could have multiple spells prepared at once, I drew out a pair of ice spear patterns as well, aiming them to the sides so as not to hit any of the brags that my flash freeze spell was going to hit. I also applied a single sharpening sigil which I could keep up with my mana regeneration.

    I waited til they got closer, and watched as the cloud of brags flew overhead, outpacing what seemed to be a tidal wave of monsters underneath them. There were the mobs I had grown used to seeing, along with plenty of king class mobs, and some mobs that I was completely unfamiliar with, likely four star or higher mobs.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    Once they started to get closer, people started to spam what spells they had at the monsters. I saw everything from clouds of poison, to chain lightnings, to walls of fire impeding the monsters, which seemed to flow around the obstructions like water.

    I waited until they’d gotten a little closer, then released my spells. I noted as my flash freeze spell impacted, and brags caught within it seemed to fall like frozen bricks, dropping out the the skies while the snowflakes slowly drifted downwards. The two ice spears ripped through a few mobs as well, and I was honestly surprised that I hadn’t gotten a level up notification from just that, seeing as how many of them I had killed. I downed a mana potion I took from my backpack, and managed to release another freeze spell before they were upon us.

    The brags seemed to fill the air above us, and every stab it seemed would kill one, slowly filling up the ground around us. Loss lashed out with his axe, Dark danced around them with his sword and shield, and every swing of Mars’ oversized sword seemed to cleave two or more in twain.

    Aylea seemed to be the one having the most trouble, as she couldn’t take advantage of the wide aoe fire spells with them so close by, having to try and sneak her fireballs between the mobs so the explosion wouldn’t hit any of us. Light sat back, and was insanely useful, being able to cure the poison off of us whenever we were hit by the stingers.

    I kept stabbing and slashing out with my spear as the brags seemed to rain from the skies around us, slowly making our footing more and more unstable, having to slide my feet along so as not to step on the corpses and lose my balance. Maybe five minutes in I had gained a level, and took the time to put it into wisdom before going back to the slaughter.

    The mobs mostly ignored light, healing luckily didn’t seem to draw any aggro, or the mobs simply weren’t intelligent to know to go for her first. It wasn’t long until I felt rather than heard the mobs impact the wall.

    It made a constant thudding sound as they rammed up against it, and it quickly started to make a pileup, with the mobs climbing on top of each other, slowly starting to make a pile made of bodies up to the high height of the wall.

    While watching it, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye that set my rage to a simmer, it was Lily, with her large group of fans at the forefront of the wall, fighting off the innumerable brags.

    While I simmered in rage, taking it out on the brags, a plan started to form in my mind, and I got a vengeful smile on my face on something I was now planning to do. I kept fighting the mobs, and eventually the wave of mobs on the land reached the edge of the walls.

    I kept fighting as they reached us, focusing on the brags while our melee group took on the land mobs, trying to prevent the brags from getting behind them and poisoning them. I didn’t start to move away until I noticed Lily’s party engaged something that looked like an ent with a pulsing mass attached to its left half, being disproportionately large, and dragging its lesser half along with its much longer and thicker limbs.

    I slowly made my way over, feeling slightly guilty at having deserted my party, but it was soon overruled with my excitement, and I was soon mixed in with the group of Lily’s fanboys and fangirls. I slowly attracted the attention of a bunch of brags, downing an antidote in preparation for what I was going to do.

    I waited until the odd monster swung out with its massive arm, and Lily went back to dodge, and I “accidentally” stepped back at just that moment, arresting her momentum, and causing her to not only take the attack, but get knocked off of the wall entirely, falling into the innumerable amount of mobs below. I joined the group in staring down, but slowly fought my way away from the group immediately after, not wanting to be pointed out as the one who had led her to her doom. The group had been focused on the monster so I doubt anyone had noticed, but better not to risk it, or risk that any of them recognized me. I soon was joining with random parties to hide as Lily’s group tried and failed to fight their way to her.

    Hiding my grin as I made my way back to Loss’ party, I soon joined back up with them, not letting my grin escape until I was back with them. I got a quick “Where did you go” from them, but gave a reply that “there was something I had to deal with real quick”, before they shrugged it off and got back to fighting off the mobs.

    We were all constantly downing potions, keeping out stamina and mana high, and it took what had to be hours, my mind totally exhausted by the time the monster wave started to thin out. There was a ragged, exhausted sounding cheer as we finally started to see the last of them, and we fought with renewed vigour until the last mob had died. I’d leveled once more during the fight, putting me to an even twenty, and putting the point into wisdom again.

    Once the mob wave had finally died, everyone seemed to fall down, even ignoring the massive amount of mobs that needed to be looted. Everyone at this point was exhausted, physically, even with the stamina potions, and mentally from the constant fight that had happened.

Eventually, people started to move again, and all of us began to collect loot. I was surprised that there was no fighting over any of the loot, but there was a veritable mountain around us, so everyone was able to get plenty. I waded through the bodies as I put my hand on each one, throwing the items into my backpack as I went, and it didn’t take long until even my magical backpack was filled.

After turning in all of my loot at the adventurers guild, I headed back to the mountain of corpses and repeated it again. It wasn’t until the third time that I ran out of corpses to loot, and I’d gotten a massive windfall of money, over 160 gold. I wasn’t sure what to do with all of my money, there was no point getting a fourth circle spell when I probably couldn’t cast it with my current mana anyway, and my gear would suffice for the time being.

Deciding I’d figure it out later, I logged off and went to bed in the real world, my mind still exhausted even there. I woke up in the morning feeling very refreshed, and decided that it would be a good time to go for a jog.

As I slowly jogged along, heading off to some forested trails I knew of, I thought back to the fight. I’d burned through a massive amount of potions, and had leveled very quickly. If normal parties could take on large amounts of mobs like that, it’s no wonder some people were so far ahead of me on experience, though admittedly, if I started to burn through my potions like I had there, I could be leveling at a much faster pace.

Deciding to be more liberal in my potion usage rather than saving if for king class mobs

And such, I was well into my jog when I noticed something hopping along nearby. Figuring it was just a bunny, I ignored it and went by it, when it jumped at me extremely quickly.

    Dodging to the side, I got a look at it, and my mind went into turmoil. I’d been playing a lot of Sanity Online, but it wasn’t enough to make me start seeing orbs. My mind in chaos, I did the thing I’d gotten ever so used to and prepared a spell pattern unconsciously, only to have my mind sent more into confusion as it actually seemed to work.

    I was feeling like I was having a panic attack, I was going crazy, I was clearly hallucinating, were the thoughts running through my mind as I released it for it to impact the orb. It shrugged it off, and I started to prepare another one, only to have it fizzle midway.

    It lunged at me again, and I did the only thing I could think of, I kicked it as hard as I could. It bounced maybe a meter higher in the air from my kick, and bounced on the ground, where I went over and started to stomp, my mind still running in circles at my apparent lost sanity.

    It wasn’t long until it stopped moving, and I did the only reasonable thing, I sprinted home. The entire time, my thoughts were in chaos, whirling with possibilities. I was hoping I was only going crazy, I’d read books where these things had happened, but they were fictions, were fake, had no basis in reality.

    I got back, and slumped down. I was horrified, it had been terrifying to me, even if it hadn’t been real. While trembling, I went to my computer, I had to see if I wasn’t crazy. I logged on, and went on a content aggregation site, and soon found what I was looking for.

    It was titled “Monsters are real!” with a video of an orb. I shook my head, I still was seeing things, but I still clicked through to the comments, and found multiple people mentioning they’d seen them. There were even supposedly a video of someone having been killed and eaten, though I didn’t have the stomach to click that one, and people talking of how the military had been mobilized.

    I kept looking through it in disbelief, and soon found another post in similar style to the above titled “Magic is real too!” with a video of someone casting force bolt at a tree. All of the top posts on the front page were related to something about the monsters that had appeared, but after a refresh, the top post was different. “Game become reality?” was the title, someone finally mentioning the link between Sanity Online and the monsters that it seemed had appeared.

    They even mentioned that the stats page had become real, so with my voice cracking, I whispered that word.

    “Status”

    I instantly noted that the stats table had changed a good deal. For one, there were three new stats, so I tapped each of them to see what they did.

[table]

Name

Roland

Level

1

str 0.7324

Grimoire

agi 1.2647

Recipes

wis 0.2861 sns 1.2654 end 1.4736 res 0.1906 vit 1.1739 lsp 1.0000

    Lifespan: Increases lifespan.

    Resistance: Increases magic resistance.

    Senses: Improves your five senses.

    Noting that the stats seemed to have changed a bit, I decided to look at the other stats to see if they had changed in description.

    Wisdom: Increases mana you can hold and spell output

    The others had changed as well, only providing a “Increases strength” for strength, “Increases toughness of the body and regeneration” for vitality, “Increases speed” for agility, and “Increases stamina” for endurance.

    They were also all fractions rather than the clean numbers I had been used to. At this point, I was completely panicking. I mean, in game the monsters had been invaders from another dimension, but was it the game that had brought them here? Or had the game simply been a warning of sorts?

    I took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure what to do at this point. I wasn’t Rayth, I wasn’t afraid of death and pain, I was just me. Just Roland.