Radz fired for effect. Kim kept her buff refreshed, but with the speed that this was closing, I wasn’t optimistic that she was scoring hits.

”Kim, I’m expecting a big one to close in pretty soon. Debuff as soon as they are in range. Keep the Mikas buffed, keep Radz buffed, above all keep Versai buffed but be sure you get the big guy.”

”You got it boss. A tough critic?” The vet grinned, spinning her wand across her fingers.

”Toughest we have faced yet. But so what? We are the best! What do we have to fear from a critic?”

Kim was a Three Star. She just about got it. “Right, boss. It’s showtime!”

The plumes of smoke were coming close, fast. It would be through the woods shortly. Moving in a hell of a hurry. “Versai, clean up anything inside the last barricade. We have a big one incoming. I want you off to the right. Be ready to flank and shank!”

”Yes Tower Master!” She barked reflexively. Then “A big one?” Her blade started hacking off heads. The monsters clawed for her, but their talons just scraped along the shield. Harmless.

And shortly thereafter, armless. Versai was quite willing to hack away anything that came in reach.

“Alpha Monster. Wave Boss.”

”What’s that?” A head pinwheeled away from her in a spray of blood.

”Big nasty. Clear out everything you can before it gets here, then back off. I need it to not think- wait one.”

I frowned in thought. There were still low burning fires where the traps had gone off.

”Kim, can you buff with fire resistance?”

”Not really my field, boss.”

Damn. Damn! Alright, alright, hard way it is. Harder way.

”Clean ‘em up quick. It’s coming!”

From out of the tree line, the alpha charged. It was everything the ordinary monsters were, but bigger. More brutal. More cruel. It’s long horns were ridged with little spikes. Most assuredly not for my pleasure.

The alpha surveyed the field and roared with outrage. It stood on its hind legs and slapped its chest with both hands. The heavy CRACKs sounded like a legion of legs breaking. Like an earthquake in a brittle bone ward.

“Radz, shoot that guy right there.”

”Orders received.’

”And just to keep him focused,” I muttered.

“Your Mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!” I yelled across the field. It tilted it’s head, looking at me. Clearly not a monster of culture. I suck my thumb on my nose and wiggled my fingers. “PLIBTHTHHH!”

Oddly, that got its attention. It roared and sapped its chest again. I turned around and wagged my derriere. Packing a lot less junk in the trunk these days, but when I slapped it, the hand feel was a pure upgrade.

”Compensating for something, Tiny?” I yelled.

It took that personally. With a scream, it rushed forward. I smiled happily. The beast rushed straight at me… into a special delivery from Radz. Never thought I would see a monster headbutt a mortar round.

The blast knocked the monster down for a second, but only a second. The smile drained from my face. It shook its head violently and staggered to its feet. Were their tiny flickers of flame on it?

Kim’s debuff made rage more likely to trigger, right? And it was a very proud monster. I made a particularly sinister, particularly dirty, move.

I want to be very clear here- what I did was not a Hakka. The Hakka is a traditional dance of the Māori, one with much meaning and significance. As someone who was not remotely Māori and who had never seen it properly performed, what I committed on that palisade could only be described as a very tasteless parody.

The repeated gestures, anatomical, scatalogical, and reproductive, really obliterated any faint gestures towards authenticity. Though I like to think my passion matched the real thing.

Especially when I started adding some tongue to it. Really swinging my hips in there. Waving what the devs gave me, as it were. Waved it a lot. Much slapping. Much chopping.

The monster took that personally too. Extremely personally.

In a fit of coughing bellows, the alpha charged towards me. Anything unfortunate enough to get in its way was smacked aside, The stakes- smacked. Other monsters? Smacked. The fire trap? Well, that wasn’t exactly in the way, was it? The alpha ran straight through.

I smiled viciously. “You just SUCK! You just SUCK! Whosa Loosa? Yousa Loosa! I’ve had bowel movements scarier than you!” My voice thundered across the battlefield.

I paused. Some imp of honesty compelled me to add- “Really. Don’t get discount supermarket sushi. There is a reason they are cheap, and it ain’t every day low prices.”

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

I might as well have saved my breath. It was still coming right for me. I saw Rache move in from the forest. Guess the Alpha was the last of them. I cupped my hands and yelled- “RACHE! CLEAN UP THE WOUNDED. DON’T ENGAGE THE BIG GUY UNLESS ORDERED!”

She waved her saber in acknowledgement. The monster roared again. Must have thought I taunted it a second time. It was really moving.

Radz fired again, the mortar delivering its payload right on target. The monster was a little slower to get up this time. A little shakier. I shook my head. There wouldn’t be any time for a third shot- it was already at the second barrier.

”AWW DOES BABY NEED A NAP TIME? AWW! WAH, WAH, WAH!”

Oops! He was back in it now! He charged right through that second fire trap. I could see those hand-like paws were scorched almost black. It was moving pretty roughly too. One more fire pit to go.

The alpha was doing a great job of clearing out the slower monsters too- all those injured horrors limping towards us were simply crushed or smashed away.

Was it starting to slow as it got close to the final fire trap?

”HEY! I GOT TO KNOW YOUR MOM REALLY WELL! SHE IS A CLASSY LADY WITH VALUABLE OPINIONS ON SUBJECTS LIKE MONEY, GENDER, AND THE LAZINESS OF THE YOUTH! HER OPINIONS ON RACE AND RELIGION WERE PARTICULARLY INSIGHTFUL! YOU SHOULD CALL HER MORE OFTEN!”

It glared at me just long enough to scream with outrage. A sound somewhere between a bleat and a howl. Its mangled, deformed face promised hideous death.

“Kim, ready on the debuff. VERSAI! WAIT UNTIL THE MIKAS GO FULL SPEED! HEY MONSTER! YOUR DAD IS A GENEROUS LOVER AND I AM GRATEFUL FOR HIS FINANCIAL SUPPORT THROUGH COLLEGE!”

It charged, furiously fast, ripping up its already shredded feet. Ignoring the way the fire was starting to burn up its arms and sear its underbelly.

It crossed the fire trap. Forty yards on the dot. The only target left in the inner line of defenses.

”MIKAS! DEFENSE! NOTHING GETS PAST YOU!”

Their shields glowed white, and a second wall rose above the palisades. “MIKA HOLDS THE LINE! MIKA HOLDS THE LINE! SAVE OUR FAMILIES AND RUN! NOT AGAIN! YOU WON'T TAKE THEM AGAIN!”

Wait- that was different. What-

The Mikas unleashed Hell. There was nothing else to call it. A blizzard, a winter hurricane of flame touched bolts smashed into the alpha. Their screams harmonized into a sound of pure, horrified rage.

The Mika’s hated this thing. Hated it with every scrap of their being. They were the final line of defense. Shields planted. Retreat was impossible, surrender more so. All that was left was the killing.

Us or them? The Mikas spat on such empty optimism. “Us AND them. Mika holds the line.” Every bolt carried their desperate resolve- that this time, their sacrifice would matter.

The Mikas fired until they collapsed. They gave it their everything. It wasn’t quite enough.

The Alpha groaned. It was pierced with so many bolts and covered with so much blood, you couldn’t even guess what it originally looked like. But it wasn’t dead yet.

With a terrible resolve of its own, it dragged its body closer to the barricade. One bloody step at a time. I couldn’t bring myself to smile.

”Versai. Finish it quickly.”

”Gladly. Tower Master.” Was there something in her voice now? I thought there was, but Versai was faster than my thoughts. She swept in from the right flank. She hacked off one hind leg, then the other. Then chopped its spine. Then higher up the spine. Shifted her grip and stabbed into its guts from the back. Over and over and over, hunting for the heart.

She stepped back a moment, took a closer look, then stabbed a half dozen more times. She touched it- “Dead, Tower Master.”

I nodded. “Join Rache and clean up the remainder. Well done everyone. Damn well done.”

WAVE 3 COMPLETE.

I don’t know how long I sat on the firing step. “Time” was a meaningless concept here. Must have been “a few minutes,” because Versai made her way back to me.

”Congratulations. You are only the second Tower Master I know to survive the third wave, and you kept all of us alive. All of us. Three waves, and you haven’t lost a single Awakened Soul. So far as I know, that makes you unique.”

I laughed quietly. “No offense, but I have to seriously wonder about the competence of your prior… ugh. I don’t want to call them masters.”

”Why? That’s what they were. The Tower Masters I served.”

“Cultural reason.”

”Ah. Don’t want to call someone master unless their guild recognizes them as such?” She nodded. Her eyes were very understanding.

“Yeah. Let’s go with that.” Never a John Brown when you need one.

I slowly shook my head. No. That was weak thinking. I beat the Alpha tonight. That meant it was time to become the true, final form of modern masculinity- the SIGMA male.

No waiting for John Brown. No hunting for John Brown. I would become him, and exceed him. His soul would march on in another world. This world.

”I’m breaking this world. I am. I’m beating this game, figuring out how it all works and shattering it. I’m getting you all out of here. Not just the six stars. All of you. And killing the evil necromancers that made this place. Freedom first, murder a very, VERY close second.”

She smiled. It was a sad little thing. “Others have said that.”

”Yeah?”

”I think they meant it too.”

”Hope so.” I really did.

“Also, calling you Tower Master is one of the rules of this world. Some summons can call you Boss, or Commander or something, but it all amounts to the same thing. Sorry, they tried that too.”

I bowed my head. It really was the next thing I was thinking of.

“Alright. Alright. I have this… absurd title. I have a tower. I have involuntarily loyal subordinates. JUDITHS! Out you come! Time to clean up the battlefield and collect the loot.”

It was a hell of a haul. The hundreds of monsters yielded four hundred Runed Bones and a small mountain of crafting materials. There weren’t any real surprises until the Apha was harvested. Common tier crafting mats, an extra five hundred Runed Bones… and a directed summoning crystal.

I squeezed the stone tight in my fist. I was out of traps. Who knows when I would find more. The extra help was more than appreciated. We wouldn’t have survived the monsters alone, without the traps killing so many of them, and wounding so many more. The alpha got hit by mortars twice, was raging, smashed into loads of spikes, walked through the remnant of all three traps, ate Mika’s Ult AND STILL absorbed a ton of damage from Versai before it was finally dead.

Balanced? You call this balanced? A skills based game? Was some depraved marketing lunatic giggling and fiddling in his pants pocket as he unveiled his “Dark Souls of Gacha” advertising campaign?

I took a deep breath, wondered at my ability to breathe even performatively, and stood. “Alright. To the Throne room. Let’s see what the Devs have in store for us now. And it damn well better be outstanding.