“Versai, Miyuki- no need to keep letting them through. Resume Plan A!” I was getting better at yelling across the battlefield, though I think there was some kind of magic effect at work there. Maybe the Tower was helping me out or something. My summons always seemed to hear me, which was a mercy. Can’t imagine trying to order them around if they couldn’t.

“Yes, Tower Master.”

“Miyuki hears the whispers in the wind.”

The number of monsters making it to the Mikas rapidly slowed. Rakim was taking the occasional potshot, but for the moment, the Mikas were cleaning house. My eyes narrowed as a new clump burst out from the treeline. Armored monsters, and a dozen of them.

“Miyuki, prioritize the armored monsters!”

“Miyuki hears the whispers in the wind.”

I kept my eyes on Miyuki. One, because she was a balm for my battered Otaku heart, but more importantly, if a sniper was no use against armored targets… then they were no use at all.

I needn't have worried. Miyuki stood proud atop a Crows Nest, bent her bow back, and lined up her shot. “Miyuki never misses.” The yard-long light-arrow tore away from her bow, and a fraction of a second later, sprouted from an armored monster’s eye socket.

“Miyuki never misses” Another dead. Thirty five long seconds later- “Miyuki never misses.” This time, something a little interesting happened. One of the monsters looked a little more on the ball, and kept its head down. Was it deliberately trying to keep the bulk of its horns and armored skull between brain and arrow? If so, that was… alarming.

Didn’t matter in its specific case, though. Turns out Miyuki’s arrows can punch through bone armor just fine.

I exhaled the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. The arrow through the bony part of the skull was… very relieving. Closer to explaining why she was a Two Star, even if her rate of fire remained a bad joke.

Another twenty armored monsters came out of the woods, mixed in with the same number of the ordinary variety. Forty at once- what the hell was Radz playing at?!

“Pomoroi- hit that clump!”

“Pomoroi, By Imperial Decree!” Her shiny black boots flashed in the moonlight as she pedaled her iron cannon around to target the mob rushing our line. There was a furious BOOM! The cannon ball smashed into the monsters, leaving an explosive trail of gore. I didn’t see where it dropped, but I had to imagine it rolling deeper into the woods, taking out legs as it went.

God, it tore through those beasts. Only in a straight line, but that armor did nothing to slow it down. She must have bagged eight in one shot. The monsters didn’t slow for their wounded and killed comrades. They raced straight for the walls, and cover.

“Miyuki never misses.”

My head whipped around, trying to find my shinobi. She had somehow, without my noticing, managed to move from a fairly central Crows Nest to one at the furthest edge of the network. The one closest to the woods. I couldn’t figure out why at first.

Then she showed me why she rated the extra star. It wasn’t her speed, or balance, or armor piercing. Miyuki was a goddamn sadistic psychopath.

Miyuki would wait until two monsters were more or less on top of each other, then aimed for places with little or no armor, like wrists, or feet. She would aim at those spots, and nail two monsters together. Then wait for the next monster to run into the heap, and shot them in the paw, nailing their hand to some monster’s neck. And so on and so on.

Versai quickly jumped down onto the heap and started harvesting heads. It was the damnedest thing. Miyuki’s slow rate of fire meant a lot of monsters scrambled over the clump, but it was a hell of a road block while it lasted.

And, unfortunately, a complete turnoff. I’m not into yandere. That murderous-obsessive girlfriend thing is just too alarming. My heart is like my arches- in need of soft, enduring support. Once more, a beautiful dream is shattered by bad character design.

I sighed. She just looked so perfect, you know?

I heard the monster pile scream as they clawed and tore at each other, trying to get themselves unstuck. Someone might look perfect, but once you get to know them, the flaws appear. I think that’s a good life rule.

There was something tickling at my brain, but I couldn’t quite pin down what it was.

“Miyuki never misses.” Well, now that bark was just creepy. And not what my instincts were nudging me about. I kept looking at the screaming, writhing heap of monsters she was building. All nailed together into a suffering mass.

All nailed together. The arrows. The arrows weren’t vanishing. They were sticking around longer than Mikas’ bolts. What’s more, the monsters didn’t seem to be able to break them. Or… pull them out? They weren't coming out with all the thrashing they were doing at least.

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Oh, I am going to abuse the hell out of that.

“Miyuki! Nail them together when they get to the pits!”

“Miyuki hears the whisper in the wind.”

They were starting to pour through the woods in a steady stream now- the time of easy pickings was clearly over. Radz had too many targets to keep up.

“Pomoroi, Radz, hold your fire until you have a clump of them in a pit. Versai, kettle ‘em in Pit Number One!”

“Yes, Tower Master.”

“Orders received.”

“By your command.”

My shoulders got tighter and tighter, waiting to see how this played out. So far, Versai had been hitting the monsters from behind. The kettling plan had her hitting them from the front.

Versa dropped down from the rope bridges just in front of one of the pits. She slapped her shield twice with her sword, fixing the lead monster’s eyes on her. Didn’t matter a damn from her perspective. She stomped once, hard, and lunged. I only saw her recovery. The lunge itself was too fast for my eyes to follow. One dead monster.

Another monster leapt over the first a fraction of a second later, and a fraction of a second after that, was also dead. Then it was two more monsters, scrambling at odd angles, pressed up against each other, with a third coming practically on top of them, and five more just behind the third. This is how she died in the past. No matter how fast she was or hard she hit, they buried her in bodies, or just got around her and to the Tower Master.

Not this time.

She slashed the two leading monsters, smacked the third with her shield, then jumped backwards and to the side. There was a thin ledge that skirted the pit a quarter of the way around, with a rope ladder up to the Crows Nests. In the bare seconds the monsters needed to recover themselves and make their way into the pit, she had already broken contact.

Ever been stuck in traffic because people were rubbernecking at an accident? Unlike you, who responsibly kept your speed up while trying to film the accident on your suddenly slippery phone? It really doesn’t take much to slow down an entire rush hour. Even though the road is “clear,” the Bruckner Expressway might as well be called the Bruckner Parking Lot.

Always been a subway guy. Cars are kind of horrible to me. Never even got my license. Still, not like I’ve never taken an Uber or whatever. At long last, I got to fulfill the dream of everyone who has ever been stuck in traffic.

The jammed up monsters stacked into a clump and pushed themselves in a roaring mass down into the pit.

Time to blow up all the other cars. “Artillery, Fire on Pit Number One!”

“Pomoroi, by Imperial Decree!”

“Orders received. Radz Raining Death.”

I really wanted to understand how these projectiles worked. I watched Pomoroi’s cannonball skim over the walls and drop into the pit, smashing who knows how many monsters in the process. A bare second later, Radz’s mortar round burst.

My mind locked up, unwilling to process the gorey scene. “Like Satan’s private ballpit” came the intrusive whisper. “Boy, I would sure love to know how a projectile seemingly made of light has a flight time and an explosive radius,” said the thought trying to flood my mind with distraction.

The combination worked. The monsters got clumped up, concentrated in a small area, then smashed with the artillery. Whatever those projectiles were, they followed at least some of the usual laws of physics. Laws I can’t even pretend to know. What I do know? Explosions in a confined space are really, really bad for the meatsacks in there with them.

I watched the few survivors, badly damaged all of them, trying to get clear. You could see that it wasn’t just physical damage. Looked like their brains got shook as well. Stumbling. Disoriented. Leaking blood and unknowable other fluids. Soaking the wood chips.

Pomoroi had time to get another shot off before any escaped the pit. A couple made it out, sort of. Miyuki didn’t even have to shoot them. For the first time, I watched monsters bleed out.

Then the next big batch was coming in, and I didn’t have time to worry about anything else, except doing it all over again. It looked like the wave numbers had shot up again. We were killing them at a hell of a rate, but this still felt… tentative. Probing. Which wasn’t really in character for the monsters.

No. The devs were cooking up something nasty. I was sure of it. Last time it was that so-called “optional boss.” This was a wave divisible by five. I was still betting on a whole new enemy type over a genuine boss monster. A fast mob was my bet. It was a classic- a dog looking thing, or (please Goddess, no) a bird. Different enough to the regular monsters be immediately recognizable.

Fast moving, high damage, low health and armor. Either that or my real nightmare, ranged.

“Keep your eye out, everyone! Anyone sees a new type of monster, prioritize killing it!”

I got a chorus of barks in reply. I kept my eyes moving around the battlefield, trying to spot where the beating would come from. So far, our defenses were doing well. The woodchip idea was a loser, but other than that, the extra mobility provided by the Crows Nests and the Rope Bridges was a game changer. It let us make the walls very narrow, limiting the number of monsters my summons would have to face at any given time.

I didn’t allow myself to relax or feel undue hope. I remembered what happened the last time.

I saw Versai crossing a rope bridge, maneuvering on a big clump of armored monsters.

“Miyuki sees the serpent hidden in the grass!”

I whipped my head around trying to see what she was drawing a bead on. It looked like she was going to shoot Versai! I was about to yell something when the rope holding Versai…

Dropped.

Dropping her fifteen yards straight down, into a mob of armored monsters.

Miyuki’s arrow flew fast and struck hard. It nailed something the size of a baboon to the Crow’s Nest. Something that had been invisible. Something smart enough to cut a rope.

Not fast enemies, nor flying enemies, invisible enemies that could think tactically.

I saw a sudden burst of gore from where Versai had fallen, the monsters alternately screaming in pain and with joy that they finally had an enemy they could sink their claws into. Versai was cut off from the other summons. Alone, surrounded by monsters. While the invisible knife pressed at our throats.