It was that feeling. The feeling when you are crossing the road, and Truck-Kun is coming straight at you, but it’s not your time yet. You think. You aren’t sure if Truck-Kun knows that. Will he stop? Or are you getting Isekai’ed the hard way? Do you have enough time to jump forward? Backwards? Can you even move? Because right now, it feels like your feet are nailed to the pavement.

That feeling.

The monsters were through the first barrier. They had hit the stake field between the first barrier and the second, but they were coming in a huge wave. I had never seen so many come at once. At least a hundred. At least!

“Radz, hold your fire until I give the order!”

I couldn’t miss the shot. They would hit that second barrier like a wrecking ball, but they had so many bodies, they could climb over each other and cross it without hardly slowing down. I had to time it just right.

They were filtering through the stakes. Picking up scratches and gouges. Slowing down, so the ones behind shoved them hard, forcing them forward. Into yet more stakes. They wanted to spread out horizontally to get around the stakes. Fine. Do that. Take your time. As they moved in closer, the funnel of hedgehogs would force them into a clump.

I had to wait until just before maximum density. Everything was chaos below me. How should I know when to give the order? I hung on as long as I could stand.

“Radz, aim for the front of the mob and fire!”

“Targets marked. Radz raining death.”

I don’t know if it was the perfect moment, but Radz caught them just before the firetrap.

The shell exploded at roughly the monster’s head height. It looked like some of the blast radius just missed the monsters, but that was fine- it caught the leading edge of them. It broke their momentum. Just for a moment. Just the ones in the very front. But it slowed the line just barely enough that they almost came to a standstill without pouring over the barricades.

I smashed the activation button for Fire Trap #2. The monsters screamed, and I screamed with them- in joy. I must have caught at least forty in the trap. At least forty! Maybe even fifty. The sheet of fire blazed and the monsters blazed with it. I roared, pounding on the palisade.

It was working! The plan was working! There would be a bare few of them that managed to reach the palisade and the ones that did would be maimed and slow. Easy meat for the Mikas.

“Radz, hold your fire! Wait for-”

I squinted. There were still more monsters coming in from the woods, but not a whole lot of them. This was probably the bulk of the wave. That wasn’t the problem, though.

The problem was, they were starting to climb over the hedgehogs. They weren’t waiting for the fire to die down- the uninjured ones were just avoiding both the first fire trap and the still blazing second firetrap entirely. It seems that the raid had decided not to stand in the fire.

I could see them in the light of their burning comrades. Long, human-like fingers wrapping around the stakes, pulling themselves over the stacked hedgehogs. It took them a few minutes, but so what? I don’t know if they had thought it through or not, but there was no way I could blast them without destroying my own barricades… all to catch two or three of them. They had spread out, and were pushing the whole line.

Well. This is the exact, specific thing I didn’t want. I turned spacy for a moment. I watched them slowly work through the barricades, spreading their line, helpless. I needed them to bunch up. I needed that. I was getting that, and now they were spread out. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair! Nothing about this was fair. The first wave had, what? Forty monsters? The third has more than two hundred?! No wonder almost no one passed it!

I gave my cheeks two sharp slaps. No time for moping. Moping equals death. And I couldn’t allow myself to die before Black Robe and his cousin. Rosalia? Yeah. Rosalia. Black Robe and Rosalia. Murder them, then see about next steps.

The monsters seeped through and were starting to filter though the stakes between the second and third wall of hedgehogs. I got a little lucky- they were still more spread out that I would prefer, but they seemed unable to resist the gap in the wall.

A straight line is not, in fact, necessarily the shortest distance between two points. As these monsters were about to learn. “Radz, lead elements. NOW!”

“Targets marked. Radz raining death.” The cool competence of her bark was almost soothing now. The round sailed out, and smashed eight flat, backing up twenty or so. The others were still spread out. This last firetrap would be the least effective. I would have to make it count.

I hesitated. They used the opportunity to get up and organize themselves again.

“Mikas, the second, and I do mean the SECOND they are in range, start shooting. Radz, hold your fire. Kim, Buff the Mikas and Versai. Versai, same as yesterday. Vermin Control.”

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“Yes, Tower Master!”

I deliberately let a few get through. Just a few, forcing the gap. The Mikas tore them apart, even at extreme range. The buff from Kim was doing a lot, I could tell.

I never took my eye off the gap. Monsters were giving up on trying to climb over the final wall, opting for the “safe” gap that already existed. More of them. More of them! They were still trickling over the barriers all the way back to the tree line.

I kept my eyes on the funnel and waited. Two got through. Four. Ten. Now the monsters were really crowding in. Thirty of them in there? Something like that. The stragglers were still a few seconds back. This was as packed as it would get.

“Radz, hit ‘em!”

The mortar was firing almost straight up now, at the very closest range it could manage. It blew them back, knocking out a dozen. Then when they gathered themselves, I activated the final trap!

“Radz, target the furthest marked targets. Prioritize groups of three or more.”

“Orders Received.”

The Mikas were already firing at speed. I could see Kim’s buff at work. They weren’t massively faster, but they were faster. The monsters were dropping. Mika Alpha, with her improved weapon, was especially deadly. Other Mikas might take three hits to drop a monster at extreme range. Mika Alpha was doing it in two, and even at this range, she was one-shotting some of them.

All the accumulated damage was adding up. The monsters were lit by all the fires in the clearing now. Three burning traps, the burning stakes, their burning comrades. I could smell the burnt monster flesh and it made me sick. I was glad I couldn’t throw up. I was glad I didn’t have to eat. It didn’t smell like pork. I don’t know what it did smell like, but… not pork.

Maybe it smelled like war. I could feel reality slipping again. The Hell do I know about war? I was a terminal-phase otaku slipping into terminal-phase morbid obesity, funded by swindling swindlers, using technology that was going to shatter humanity. I didn’t know a damn thing about war.

The Mikas knew all about it though. I could see it in their eyes. They always looked a little lost in the Tower, like they didn’t know what they were supposed to do. Not now. Shields planted, crossbows up, sighting down at the enemy. They were right at home.

The third barricade, with the final fire trap, was exactly forty yards from the palisade at its closest point. Forty yards being exactly Mika’s range. It was those forty yards that were going to determine life and death.

This was it- the final moat before the wall. Filled with spikes and whatever little hedgehogs the Judiths could make with the remaining timber. We used everything. Every scrap and splinter. Pushed to the very limits of the available time.

Scatter them. Hurt them. Slow them. Make them easy meat for for the hardest hitting waifus that ever got tagged as One Stars.

The crossbows snapped out, their bolts of white light flecked with fiery red. They hit the monsters with meaty “Chunk” noises, and stayed in the wounds. Like they were real, physical bolts. I couldn’t explain it. The Mikas couldn’t either. They just lined up their shots, pulled their triggers, and were on to the next unspeakable horror.

I kept a tight eye on those seemingly solid bolts. Would they overshoot? I couldn’t tell for absolutely certain but it didn’t look like it. Whatever magic caused them to exist in the first place seemed to rip them out of existence too.

So much for exploiting the physics model. Damn! The screaming monsters were still coming- picking their way over the barriers rather than force themselves through the fire.

Radz was picking off groups of stragglers, but we were in the thick of it now. Tens of them were now too close to be targeted by the mortar. Mika couldn’t keep up. I tried to count flattened, bat-like noses, and didn’t like how high the numbers were getting.

“Versai- go slow them down! Aim for their legs and don’t let them bog you down. Stick and move. Kill if you can, but cripple them! Retreat if you start getting surrounded.”

”Yes, Tower Master.” She jumped over the palisade, sword and shield in hand.

“Mika Alpha! Your job is to prioritize any monsters that get behind Versai. She is the vanguard, you are covering her.”

”Yes Tower Master! Mika is here. You have nothing to fear.”

Versai landed, long blond hair fluttering like a battle standard. She slapped her shield twice with the flat of her blade, and lunged in. Her shining blade struck- and the monsters fell apart.

Up and down. Step, cut, step, lunge, step, chop. Versai made her way through the field and where her blade went, limbs fell. She did as she was told, moving constantly, not trying to stop the rush. She just hacked open the backs of thighs, removed legs at the knee, chopped spines at the base.

No blood stained that fluttering blond hair. Her face and armor blocked it all. Not even blinking at the foul spray. More ordinary for her than eating or drinking. The monsters screamed and collapsed, and she was past.

Mika Alpha worked behind her, punching down gleefully on the crippled monsters outside our walls. Some were getting close but the Mika’s were keeping up. I tried to keep my eyes sweeping around. There were still monsters filtering through the fortifications, but it looked like we had broken the back of the wave.

I sighed slightly. Too soon to relax, but it sure looked like the careful planning had paid off. I nodded slightly to myself. That’s how it should be, of course. Proper preparation, careful use of all my summons, aggressively exploring-

A little golden light popped up in front of me. Frowning, I tapped it.

Hidden Objective Unlocked- Defeat Monster Alpha 0/1. HINT: It’s very proud.

A boss. There was a hidden boss. Did we do too well? Was this a punishment for success? What fresh Hell had the devs cooked up? What kind of damned gacha was this?

”I’ll remember this, Pachinko!” A stream of smoke rose up from the woods. Then another. Then another, all in close proximity but moving for us fast.

”RADZ! Target the incoming in the woods! GIVE ‘EM HELL! TONIGHT, THIS TOWER DOES NOT FALL!”