Monsters were alarmingly evenly distributed through my switchback path for them. Alarming, because this combined the worst of both worlds- able to overwhelm my defenses with numbers, but too spread out to be easily blown up with artillery. Fortunately, I had planned for such an occurrence. Unfortunately, I had invisible murder-baboons to deal with.

So. Mixed bag.

Miyuki seemed to be dropping the new monsters from all over the clearing, whenever the vile things broke cover. Rakim could spot them too, but they had to be within ten yards or so. Practically knife range. Scared the Hell out of me, because it meant that she had to keep moving along the wall to make sure none were getting around her and infiltrating through a blindspot.

Versai was taking five. Or ten. She could take however long she wanted. I don’t care. I do not care. She can, and should, sit right there on the battlement and get healed up and just work on her tan or whatever, I do not care, I just don’t want her out there again this wave!

Every few seconds, the Mutilator 3K would fire its buzzsaw blades down the path, and monsters would leave chunks behind. My favorite was when those infiltrator monsters got nailed in the process. I could see their logic. Miyuki was killing any of them that tried to go over the top of the walls, so sticking tight to another monster, particularly an armored monster, made it much harder to spot and kill.

Not for the Mutilator 3K. State of the art Gnomish engineering was not at all deterred by minor inconveniences like camouflage, or ethics. Or basic concepts of morality. I seem to remember something, some Youtubers warning of Gnome perfidy.

Well, right now I’d tolerate them. Because anything that killed stealth-monsters was good. Flat out, no qualifiers, good.

I could see one of the horrors on the ground of the killing field in front of the Tower. It wasn’t invisible, exactly, it just tricked your mind into not seeing it. The patterns on its fur and hide broke up the outline of its body almost perfectly. Even lying on the ground, I was fairly sure I wasn’t seeing it correctly.

It was clearly related to the larger monsters. That… awful face. The combination of goat, wolf and bat. The long, clawed hands and feet that were no different than the hands.

The eyes though, the eyes! They had the horizontal slit pupil of a goat, but even in death there was a cruel cunning to them. Smart enough to understand the rope bridges. Smart enough to cut the rope with its claws, or even undo the knots, when someone was on it. That meant at least monkey or baboon level intelligence.

It might even mean full sapience. In which case, we were one-hundred-percent dead. The only way we had been surviving this game was that the monsters were stupid. So completely kill-obsessed, they ignored the obvious and followed the path of least resistance.

It didn’t look like they were quite that advanced. At least, they couldn’t seem to stop themselves from constantly charging forward. They might do it slowly, or in unexpected directions, but they kept pushing forward. Kept pressing the attack.

When they stopped attacking… well I’m already scared. The day they stop attacking and just wait, I’m going to be utterly terrified. Because if they are smart enough to realize they are being slaughtered thanks to the fortifications, then it means they are smart enough to strategize around them.

The Mikas were doing an incredible job. The monsters were getting through the switchbacks in, frankly, much larger numbers than I had expected, and it really didn’t matter. The Mika’s upgraded range and rate of fire meant that even without Rakim, none of the ordinary, or even armored, monsters got too close. The armored monsters were more of a challenge to be sure, but when six bolts headshotted simultaneously… it wasn’t anything too bad.

Ever since they got the squad upgrade, there was an extra something to the Mikas. They had a glint in their eye, like they were ready and willing to be the solution to the monster problem. Even their idle animations changed. No more being clumsy, or looking awkward. They looked like they were professionals, having a little rest before they got back to work.

“Tower Master- It worked!”

I heard Versai calling me. It sounded like a taunt. My plan had very spectacularly not worked. I was about to yell down something unkind, but she interrupted me.

“The blade play- it worked!”

It took me a couple of seconds, then my lips pulled back. I don’t know if I was smiling or snarling. I felt like I should have a mouth full of bloody fangs. We had spent a very, very long time practicing before the fifth wave. We didn’t have many examples to work from, and I was practically screaming with frustration at the blatant blocks the system was throwing at us. But we found an edge, and pushed.

In Versai’s case, the edge was on her sword.

“They couldn’t stand against me. They couldn’t keep up at all! Once I cleared enough space to stand in, I tore through ‘em. It was only right as I fell when they got me!”

“Like Hell!” I yelled back. “You were shredded. You damn near came back in chunks!”

“It WORKED!”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Great, I’m happy! I am genuinely very happy! NOW STAY ON THAT BATTLEMENT AND DON’T TAKE A SINGLE DAMN FOOT OFF IT UNTIL I SAY SO!”

I was gasping at the end. Shaking. The whipsaw of emotions was too much. I forced my attention back on the monsters, trying to see where adjustments were needed.

I could just slap the teeth clean out of her head! How dare she look so damn proud! She almost died!

The monsters were neither clumping or dying nearly as well as they had been before. Rache was still marking them out in the woods, but the smoke was rising closer and closer to the Tower. Looked like this was the majority of them, then.

Could… Rache spot hidden units? It would be a very “scout” thing. I should ask Versai if she had spotted those infiltrator units. I didn’t.

My summons had this. Unless there was another curveball coming, which I wouldn’t rule out. The basic geography of the terrain, all those walls and pits, were working. I hadn’t even had to activate the pit traps I got from Crusher Jim’s place. That was a savings right there.

The monsters would come pouring through, Miyuki would staple a few of them together, they would clump up, then fall over into a pit. At which point, they were given a free lesson in the development of artillery.

Miyuki wasn’t clumping them as much as I would like- she was still primarily anti-stealth. Which meant that artillery wasn't killing as many as they would in my ideal world. More were reaching the Mikas. But like I said- the Mikas were doing incredible. I wasn’t too worried.

All that was left was waiting for Rache to bring the good word.

A few minutes passed. I was noticing fewer and fewer monsters filtering in through the woodline. Then none. Well. None that I could see. The wave wasn’t over until the system made the announcement.

“Miyuki, start shooting to wound. Pin them to the ground with as little damage as you can manage.”

It was almost time for phase two of tonight’s events.

“Range free and clear of Banditos, Boss. Boss, sneaky varmints are around.”

“Clean up the sneaky varmints! Leave the normal monsters alone if you can.” I yelled down.

“Chromed lightning!”

I smiled up at the moon. This time I knew damn well my expression was nasty.

“Alright, here’s how it’s going to go. Maria, you stand over here. If the monster looks like it’s about to die, heal it. Not all the way, just enough so that it doesn’t die.” I pointed to the ground near the monster. Miyuki had managed to pin it to the ground through both legs and both hands. She really took the time to get it just right.

Yandere confirmed. And my heart breaks.

“Miyuki, you are up in the crows nest. You keep an eye out for any infiltrators that we might have missed,” despite searching quite carefully for what felt like forty minutes, “and if your arrows vanish for any reason, pin the monster to the ground again.”

So far, Miyuki’s arrows hadn’t vanished on their own except when the monster she was aiming at died. I couldn’t order her to deliberately miss either- I tried. Nor would she shoot anything that wasn’t deemed a valid target. So far, the only valid targets were monsters.

Ah well. Lots of time to experiment. Lots and lots and lots of time.

I looked over at the Mikas. “Your job is to stand around Maria and keep her alive. Keep yourselves alive too.”

Corporal Mika sketched a salute. “Yes, Tower Master. You have nothing to fear. Mika is here.”

I rubbed my hands together.

“Judiths, Marci, come on out!”

I huddled with them and Rakim. “Can I order you to build things during a wave?”

They looked at each other. Then at me. Then at each other. Then the workers looked at Rakim, apparently shoving the responsibility off on the highest Star present.

“I can make repairs and field fortifications during a wave. They probably can too.”

“It would be a sort of attack, right?”

“Err… Yes Sir. Probably, Sir.”

“Would it subtract from tomorrow’s orders?”

“Sir? How could that be possible? Every day has exactly five orders.”

I started chuckling. Then guffawing. Then laughing. I fell on the ground. My body convulsed. I hammered on the ground, laughing and cheering. My summons just looked at me strangely. I couldn’t possibly care less.

When I was done tearing up half the dirt around me, I smiled as Rakim. Who, displaying the experience provided by her long career in whatever army she came from, looked like she wished she was hard at work somewhere far, far away from officer supervision.

“Remember when you said that you had ideas for fortifications built out of rammed earth walls, but it would take ten or fifteen orders to build?”

“Roughly, sir.”

“How long would it take if you added in anti-stealth detectors, siege engines and an entire forbidden pyramid’s worth of traps? Plus extending and refining the single forced path monster killing field?”

“I have no idea sir. Sounds like a job with no upper limit. At least twenty five? And I should tell you, I don’t know how to build siege engines, whatever they are.”

“Not a problem. I don’t know any of the math behind trebuchets but guess what? We can all learn together.”

We couldn’t extend the night indefinitely. We had seen the world react when the NPC’s got too out of line- first with Sebastian, then with Crusher Jim. Sooner or later, the system would move to end the wave, or force us to.

But until then, I had unlimited orders to play with. And after the wave ended, I would have whatever unlocked next. Then I would take all the time I liked training, training, and training some more. Seeing if I couldn’t push the lower stars past their boundaries. And then I would be finishing my business in the Floating Quarter of Gradden March.

The camouflage monsters- they would need careful study. Dissection, even. Rakim could build countermeasures, but could summons be trained to spot them even if they couldn’t before? Oh, there were endless things to build. Endless things to test. Endless things to experiment with, in this endless moment the devs had locked us into.

Endless time to grow, and become mighty.

“Can I come down from the wall now?”

“I said park it, lady!”