The elites of the camp gathered around Damien and his lieutenants the morning the operation was supposed to start. My eyes shifted between the three, and I could feel my heart pumping in my chest from anticipation. They’d just finished the brief and we were all waiting for our group assignments. It would be a three-pronged attack with eight people in each group. I was disappointed and nervous to find out that I wouldn’t be with my friends during the attack, but I wasn’t the only one who’d been training over the last few weeks. We’d managed to maintain our spots on the leaderboards even though none of us had leveled up again.
The rewards weren’t nearly as good this time, but they were still decent. I’d been rewarded with a ring that buffed my movement speed by 10% and I had started to believe that my speed might be the thing that would make me stand out in the future. Someone nudged me in the side and pulled me out of my thoughts.
“Did you hear me, Nathan?” Damien asked me with an annoyed look on his face. I shook my head, and he mumbled something under his breath that he knows I would have heard if I’d had my aura activated. I glared back at him underneath my mask, he didn’t see it, so he just continued. “You’ll be in Santi’s squad as the reserve healer, we only have two and they’ve already been assigned. Try not to let anyone die.” He was talking about my Song of Healing which I’d demonstrated for them a few times.
I’d gained a lot more skill in playing the song and now I could raise the tempo enough to finish it within three minutes instead of five. I thought that it would make the song sound rushed and terrible, but the music still sounded beautiful no matter what speed I played it at. Nodding my head, I went to go stand with the others that had been assigned to Santiago’s squad. The other bard leaned over to whisper something to me.
“Aren’t you lucky! We get to spend some time together.” I was confused about what he was talking about, but I tried to answer the best I could.
“Yeah, I guess that’s what happens when you’re on the same team?” I heard myself coming off as more sarcastic than I meant to be. Santiago just nodded his head and went back to standing straight backed beside me. We were supposed to attack The Hive while the other teams attacked the two other dungeons. When we finished our dungeon, we were immediately supposed to move to the next one to support the next squad. The strongest squad would attack The Aviary and the weakest team would attack The Venom Trap.
Each squad was supposed to be made up of two warriors, two fighters, one caster, two bards, and one healer. Since I was taking up the role of bard and healer, we got another caster in our squad, and because there was an odd amount of bards Damien’s squad would only have one and another fighter. “Wish healers weren’t so rare.” I thought feeling a nervous energy bubble up inside me. Not wanting it to affect me too much I stepped to the side and went through my exercises quickly following up with a fast meditation. When I opened my eyes, Santiago stood directly over me.
“You ready or should we continue to wait for you?” Santiago sounded odd, and I found myself wondering if I’d done something wrong. It didn’t matter too much though so I put it out of my mind. We were only about 10 miles from the city limits, but each of us had enough agility that it only took us about 30 minutes to get to the city limits and if they didn’t then the fighters would carry them. I said goodbye to my friends before each squad took off in the direction of their own dungeon.
“Awe can’t stand to be without yow fwends for a day?” A large red-headed warrior wielding a kanabo said as he passed by me brushing my shoulder slightly. I felt a sliver of anger pass through me, but I let it go in the next moment so that I could pay attention to Santiago’s instructions.
“Our goal is ‘T-Mobile Park’ We’re going to have a long fight on the way through the city, so make sure you’re getting rest where you can. Warriors you’ll be in the front of the formation do your best to drive through their lines and keep their attention. Fighters you’ll be in the back protecting me and our supplementary healer. Nate raise your hand.” I did as he asked. “This is our healer, make a note he is not a specialized healer, his only healing ability has a long cast time of approximately three minutes, so be aware of that while you’re fighting. I expect you to protect him the same way you would Autumn, or Michelle though is that understood?”
“Yes sir!” Came a round of loud voices. “I wonder how they turned into disciplined little soldiers?” I thought in passing.
“Casters you will be between the warriors and the bards, if you have any defensive spells only use them if our flanks are getting overwhelmed and we’ll use them to fall back. The goal is to make it into the dungeon, defeat the boss, and make it back in one piece.” He pulled his mask off so that the entire squad could see him. He nudged me in the side motioning for me to do the same. “If you die, we will both, be very disappointed.” It was like a light turned on behind each of their eyes and they cried out in agreement.
It was uncomfortable but our masks were charisma-dampening and that meant that our skills would be less effective if we wore them. We moved into the formation that Santiago had explained to us weapons out and ready then started walking briskly into the city toward our destination. I immediately turned on my aura covering a whole 15-meter circumference around me covering our entire squad without suppressing them. I could feel Santiago’s aura within mine though. It was only his base element, but I could feel the sharpness coming off of it. “Metal…” I thought to myself.
I focused myself again, I had to filter out all of the erroneous sounds within my aura. The brush of clothes against skin, the slap of our footfalls on the concrete, the nervous breathing. As I focused all of these sounds fell away leaving near silence. At that moment I felt like I was close to something, I could almost touch it, but I had no time to sit and meditate on it. Instead, I heard the fluttering of wings, and the scrape of shells scraping against concrete.
I brushed my aura against the warriors’ cores surprising them enough that they stopped. They looked back at me with none of the hostility that the red-headed warrior had expressed to me earlier. Lifting my hands, I pantomimed the message that there were monsters around the corner of each building we were about to pass. Santiago, being aware of the abilities my aura provided me asked me in a pitch only I could hear how many to expect. The best I could do was continue to mime my answers stretching both arms out to express that there were a lot of them. “We need better hand signals or sign language.”
Luckily Santiago had taught all of us some basic hand signals. He lifted his thumb and pinky and we moved into a different formation, the warriors maintained their position and so did me and Santiago. The casters moved out to the flanks and the fighters moved out slightly farther than them. He made another motion, and we started moving slowly toward the ambush. The monsters were in our way so we would need to take care of them.
With another hand signal the warriors suddenly sprinted forward, then the casters then us. The Warriors got to the ambush sight first, the kanabo-wielding warrior slammed the tip of his weapon into the ground letting out a shockwave, and the other warrior slammed two war hammers together making the hammers glow red. The horde of giant beetles scurried forward toward the warriors. There were at least 200 giant insects of different types heading toward the two men, but right before they reached them, I saw the caster to my left raise his hands and then slam the palms of his hands directly into the ground.
Spikes of concrete and earth burst through the ground skewering several of the bugs and creating a spiked barrier for the warriors to fight behind. The caster to my right pulled out a wand and fired a single sharp spike of ice, as he moved his wand it shot through several monsters at a time moving in tandem with the caster’s directions. The warriors crushed and smacked away any bugs that made their way over the barricade. I put the arrow up and started playing “Blitzkrieg Bop by The Ramones” activating amplify and, up the octave at the same time.
The warriors suddenly became beasts, blasting through their barricade and running directly into the horde, wherever their weapons landed another bug exploded. We all moved up to keep up with them. The casters killed anything else that slipped by their fury and within ten minutes we were sloshing through a street full of bug juices and carcasses. Santiago motioned for us to head inside a nearby building. He had me clear the ground level using my aura and we took our first break. It might take us longer to get to the dungeon if we kept taking breaks after every fight, but we wanted to be as fresh as we could for every fight. There were fewer humans every day, so Damien had made it 100 percent clear that he wanted us to do everything we could to maintain our lives. I thought back to his words at the brief.
“Kill everything, take a thousand breaks, ask for help, run away screaming, fail the mission I don’t care. The only thing you can’t do is lose your life. Protect yourselves, protect each other, 24 people are going out and 24 people are coming back clear?” A throat clearing shook me from my thoughts and I looked over to see Santiago with his mask back on. We’d decided to wear them during our breaks. The rest of the team might fight harder for us without them, but it was very uncomfortable for us. Charisma didn’t automatically make someone sexually attracted to us, but it would make people feel different things.
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Sometimes it would be a strong urge to protect like a sibling or parent, at other times it might make someone feel respect or admiration like someone might look at a teacher, or a celebrity. Then there was the romantic or sexual thing that we were all wary about. It didn’t matter how it made someone feel, the feelings weren’t really theirs, and that made me a little sick. Santiago was passing me a bottle of water and I took it nodding my thanks at him. I cracked the top off and took a sip.
“Feels like crap huh?” Santiago spoke quietly to me. He didn’t have to tell me what he meant.
“Yeah. I always wanted to be a famous musician you know. Feels a little ironic now.” I responded frowning under my mask.
“Yeah.” That’s all he said, and we sat silently for a while. The red-headed warrior from earlier walked up to me and put his hand out.
“Listen, man, I know I was kind of an asshole earlier, but having you on the team probably saved us at least some injury so… thanks. I’m Eric Timin.” I told him my name and shook his hand. One by one the others introduced themselves to me. I guessed I’d earned their respect a little in that last fight, even though I didn’t feel like I’d done much of anything. A few minutes later we were back on the road heading to our destination.
We had several run-ins after the first one and took several more breaks, but after several hours of fighting our way through the city, we finally arrived at the entrance of the dungeon. I shot another arrow piercing through three monsters killing them instantly. Using my aura, I would occasionally shout out one of my squad members’ names and directions. In this way, I helped direct the battle. Several thousand bug monsters were standing guard at the dungeon entrance, and we were in a circular formation attempting to wade through the army and kill as many as we could. I listened to Santiago narrating the battle and felt power flowing through me. My mana was out right now, and he’d taken over buffing the group while mine refilled. He used two silver crossbows that reloaded themselves using bolts summoned from his floating book.
I continued firing arrow after arrow and calling out possible threats. Most of the insects were low level but when there were this many in one place it was difficult to move. The casters were recovering their mana in the middle of the formation while we all did our best to hold the horde off. I felt another giant centipede-like monster crawling underneath its fellows toward the rapier-wielding fighter Tara. I called it out and she swiped her weapon down immediately, cutting off its head. She blocked an attack from a beetle’s pincers, then pulled her sword back her blade glowed, and she performed a riposte clearing a 20-yard line in front of her which was filled with more monsters swiftly.
Luckily, we didn’t get bogged down by corpses because the insects would cannibalize their own. My mana filled and I called it out immediately changing back to my instrument. I activated my buffs again playing “Crazy Train by Ozzy Osborne” I also activated Ritardando trying to give the fighters some breathing room. We fought for several hours, changing responsibilities, and supporting each other. Until finally we stumbled into the entrance to the stadium. We quickly slammed the gate together and the earth mage put up a thick wall. I started to falter, exhausted from the fight, I staggered and leaned against the wall. Eric walked up and gently patted me on the back.
“Hey, it’s going to be ok I got you.” He cooed.
I shot him an annoyed look under my brow and swiftly put my mask back on. The man realized what he’d been doing and coughed turning away from me clearly embarrassed. “Gotta get that thing back on faster when we get a small break.” I thought, looking down the hall.
“Alright let's get it in while we can,” Santiago ordered and we all sat down tearing into the provisions we’d brought.
“I guess there’s no turning back now huh?” Dakota the ice mage said wryly. I agreed with him there was still a large army of creatures outside I could hear them scurrying over the walls. After I finished eating, I asked the group if they minded if I meditated for a bit. They agreed, obviously still very tired from the long battle we just endured. Beginning my meditation, I focused on the essence once again. Earlier in the day I’d felt like I’d been close to something.
I dove into the memory of it and allowed my aura to extend to its maximum range. This time I shut out every sound I could. I fell deeper and deeper into the silence exploring it and probing it. There were different facets of it, and I realized that there were specks of another essence attempting to make their way into my aura. Rotating my core faster I filtered out the small lavender specks, I recognized it was a facet of sound, but I didn’t need to pull it in just yet. My foundation was still being built; I needed the insight but not necessarily the essence.
I couldn’t tell how long I’d been in my meditative state not hearing anything, but then I felt a small click deep inside my core and my eyes snapped open. Santiago squatted in front of me looking worried.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, but by the look on his face, he couldn’t hear me. I focused on allowing sound back into my aura and I asked him again.
“Dude we all went deaf! What the hell did you do?” I looked around and saw several upset faces. Realizing what I must have done I felt embarrassed, but also ecstatic. I pulled my aura back in just to cover myself and Santiago. I focused on what noises I wanted to make go away until it was just my voice, I wanted him to hear.
“What do you think of my new auric ability?” I asked, smiling while looking at the others’ faces, clearly unable to hear us. He must have noticed the squad members’ expressions because I heard a small chuckle escape his throat. We told the rest of the squad what had happened, and they had a lot of questions. They allowed me to experiment on them for a while until I figured out the ability a little more. I could explain what my new ability did but not the process that I used to gain it. The system restrictions were still too strong, and I silently cursed the Congress for making it so hard for us to get stronger.
My new ability allowed me to control the sound inside my aura and what sound could escape it. It felt like I’d stumbled into a powerful stealth ability, and I was excited to put it into practice. We took off down the hallway at a slow pace, I silenced all of the sound within my aura from escaping unfortunately it didn’t work against the insects as they had other strong senses to detect us. Still, within The Hive we didn’t come across many of the low leveled monsters that we would find outside.
Instead, the farther we traversed into the stadium the more difficult the fights became. I stood in front of a giant ant at this moment it kept making clicking sounds as it raised its pincers to us in a challenge. “Level 45 Formicidae Defender.” It had already picked up one of the warriors in its mandibles crushing him until he was close to death. As soon as the warrior had been picked up though I started playing the Song of Healing. It barely kept the warrior alive, but when the ant finally dropped him, the casters covered Eric as he dragged the unconscious warrior back farther.
Eric didn’t drag the other man too far back he needed to get back to the front to defend the casters. Instead, he raised the man’s unconscious body in one hand and threw him toward one of the fighters. I’d already begun playing the Song of Healing again, but this would be the last time I’d be able to do that without my mana bottoming out. My wisdom being at the level it was my mana would refill within two minutes, but two minutes was a long time during a fight. Santiago stepped back and reached deep within his book.
When he pulled his arm out it was followed by a ballista. A metal stand unfolded underneath the weapon, and Santiago took a couple of seconds to aim it properly at the monster. He looked over at me and gave me a wide smile before releasing the large bolt at the Formicidae. The bolt slammed into what I would call the chest of the ant and pushed all the way through the ass. The ant monster fell twitching to the ground another trait of the bugs I didn’t care for. I let out a small laugh before I turned to look at the other bard with a smile just as wide as his.
“Have I ever told you how jealous I am of your weapon?” I asked him and watched as the ballista turned into silver moats and get sucked back into the book.
“Are you kidding? Your little monocle thing makes yours just as cool. It’s got that steampunk badassery!” I rolled my eyes at him, but I appreciated the compliment. I finished healing the warrior, and we continued exploring The Hive. The monsters only got stronger as we traveled toward the field. We were in the stands now and could clearly see something large cocooned in the center of the baseball diamond. We would have just leaped into the field, but we decided it would be better to clear the rest of the dungeon first. It would be bad if we started the boss fight only to be swarmed by more high-leveled beasts during the battle.
I’d only leveled up twice more since we started the operation, and I couldn’t help but marvel at the fact that the other bard out-leveled me by 10 still. The other man hadn’t leveled up a single time in the past month, not even during this operation where he’d killed thousands of monsters himself and performed his oratory skills numerous times. I took the time to look at the amount of essence I would need to make it to the next level.
“Essence: 963,782/1,697,721,600.” I gaped at the exorbitant number. I was surprised that I’d been able to gain as much essence as I had, but the monsters kept getting stronger, and so did the people I worked with, so my essence gain continued to climb. If the essence requirements had continued to double after level 25 there was no way that I’d have been able to make it as far as I had. Instead, they just continued up by increments of 10 million, but I had a feeling that ended at level 50. Which begged the question. “What kind of high leveled monsters are out there in the multiverse?” I would get an answer to that shortly. We finished cleaning up the rest of the hive from what we could tell and were now walking onto the field.
“You know I was a baseball player before all of this happened. I had a chance to go pro, but then I met my wife. We had kids and it all just kind of escaped me. But I was happy.” Eric spoke and I could hear the pain in his voice. I could guess what had happened and I felt for him, we’d all lost someone. I hadn’t talked to my family in a long time, but when I couldn’t find their names on the leaderboard, I couldn’t help but feel the loss that I’d never talk to them again. I hardened myself again as we arrived right before the giant cocoon.
“Make them pay for it.” I heard Santiago say before he pulled his ballista again. I stayed farther back so that I could start healing if necessary, so I had a good view of each of my squad members. The earth mage stomped his foot into the ground and the sand from the baseball diamond flew up congealing into several hundred small pebbles. The ice mage lifted his wand swishing it in a circle, a thin disk of ice appeared and with another flick of his wand, the ice mage turned it into a whirring saw blade.
The rapier wielder prepared her stabbing skill, and the man wielding a katana sank deep into a stance preparing to draw his sword. The tanks raised their weapons preparing to smash down. I drew an arrow from my quiver and taking a deep breath I aimed at the side of the cocoon. We were going to kill this beast as it slept inside before it had a chance to evolve into whatever monstrosity it was working on.
A couple of heartbeats passed, then Santiago signaled the attack. All at once each of our attacks fell the mages earth bullets and ice saw blade shot down. The fighters’ skills flashed brightly as they slashed and stabbed. The warriors pounded on the cocoon shockwaves bursting out with every swing of their weapons, and Santiago and I fired bolts and arrows again and again. The dust stirred up, but we didn’t stop our attack for a full five minutes.
When Santiago called for us to hold the dust cloud was very large covering the entire cocoon. We waited with bated breath for the kill notification to show up. When thirty seconds had passed, and it still hadn’t popped up I got a sinking feeling in my gut. Before I was able to call out to the others, an enormous pair of green wings spread wide from the dust cloud. The wings pulsed once, and we were all blown back. I saw most of my squad hit the wall but the katana wielder and the ice mage were blown all the way into the stands.
I’d activated my aura so when it blew us back, I adjusted myself in the air and floated back towards the ground. The monster had blown the dust cloud away and I could finally see it. It looked like a giant lunar moth, but the underside of its body opened to reveal a giant maw of razor-sharp teeth. It roared in anger, and I finally saw the description of the beast. “Level 100 Queen Mother Dungeon Boss.” I felt my stomach fall out of my ass looking at the level and only looked away when I heard Santiago speak next to me.
“Holy Mothra Batman.”