“Here they come,” Apostolos said, eyes peering far ahead. Now that he was tier six, Apostolos could see further in a straight line than even Rory could, given his use of the Hawk-Eye skill.

  “How’s it looking?” Rory squinted; even with the Eyes of the Architect, he could only barely make out movement from within the trees, Hawk Eye more suited for such purposes.

  “Well… there’s a lot,” Apostolos said. “Can’t get a good guess yet, but…. Initial estimates… I’m seeing about three hundred off the bat.”

  Rory whistled. They were fully expecting at least a thousand monsters, but for three hundred to be approaching straight off the bat was surprising.

  Tapping once on his interface, Rory sent a message to the third member of their team. As long as they were within the bounds of his territory, he could send messages with impunity. They’d just never bothered because their settlement had, for the longest time, been no larger than a large campsite.

  Time to eat.

  -Rory

  That was all the message said as Rory sent it. He doubted the snake could read, but he was confident that the message would still appear in a form the snake would understand.

  “Go time,” Rory said, his blood picking up speed as he pulled free a bow he’d fashioned. While bows weren’t his primary weapon of choice anymore, the advantage of range still couldn’t be denied, especially from a defensive position.

  Stellarite-Braced Bloodwood Bow

  Grade: Uncommon

  A composite bow fashioned of potent uncommon-grade bloodwood and uncommon-grade Stellarite. It has been inscribed with runes for repair, kinetic storage, and resistance amplification.

  Gem Sockets: Barrier (Uncommon, 765), Conversion (Common,468)

  Since he’d become capable of producing uncommon-grade gems with some consistency, Eon had added a new ‘Gem Sockets’ information tag on any items socketed with any. The barrier gem performed its usual function, allowing arrows to pierce defenses more easily. Meanwhile, the conversion gem facilitated the process by drawing in latent or active pneuma-based defenses and incorporating them into the arrow’s kinetic energy.

  Aside from being made of some of the best bloodwoods they had in storage and augmented with stellarite struts that wrapped the bow in supporting metal bands and threads, the bow wasn’t anything special; built with the exact blueprint like any other composite bow he crafted, a standard formula he’d now long established.

  Everything else on him remained unchanged, the same armor as when they’d first encountered the Khan of Blue Lightning -now with all the corrosive damage repaired.

  Waiting with an arrow drawn back—extra difficult because of the inscription that purposely made it more difficult in return for storing that tension every second it was drawn, allowing for extra powerful arrows—Rory felt his eye twitch until a moment later, the first monster charged out from the tree line that had been pushed back.

  It was instantly joined by dozens more water buffaloes, except they had centipede-like legs and mouths that opened up like a blooming flower bulb, revealing hundreds of needlelike teeth.

  “Skitter Bulls, god, I hate them,” Rory grunted as he released his first arrow, which snapped through the air with such speed it almost appeared to teleport. It struck the first of the monsters straight through its eye, a lucky opening shot. “Stupid sappy blood. Stains shit like spaghetti stains a container.”

  Apostolos had left him to defend his portion of the wall, starting with a bow that fired golden arrows; he’d only switch to his solar blades once they were within one or two dozen meters. By himself, he freely muttered to himself, knowing he wouldn’t distract Apostolos.

  Rory continued firing at the monsters, the gap between a tier-six armed with potent weaponry and a base tier-five monster an enormous gulf. Years ago, when he was still tier-five and had far less potent weaponry, they may have been a struggle to fell one or two, much less a swarm, but now it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

  Man, I love having overpowered weapons.

  Mentally patting himself on the back was perhaps premature, but he couldn’t deny the satisfaction that he’d felled one of the beasts, swiftly cutting through the horde with only one or two arrows.

  Of course, as fast as he slew the monsters, more charged out from the trees, not just from the patch of forest directly before him but also from the surrounding forest that encircled their entire settlement. He could hear the twang as the Imp constructs around the wall plinked away at the monsters, but it didn’t take a genius to realize they’d be forced to retreat to their secondary walls shortly.

  That’s fine.

  Their tertiary walls had never been meant as the final staging ground; they were simply the opening battlefield.

  Culling masses of the monsters, Rory occasionally noticed something within the trees striking out, coiling around a monster and dragging them beneath their undergrowth. Eia slipped through the forest amongst the shadows like an assassin in the night, the serpent a deadly force even as a tier-five monster herself.

  With each monster killed, Rory felt a tiny energy ping rushing into him. He was still in the first half of tier-six, maybe thirty-five percent, yet even a single tier beneath him felt as if they barely gave more than a handful worth of Ascension Energy compared to the swimming pool worth he needed for A7. It wasn’t a new revelation, but it still irked him that even culling hundreds of monsters during the wave would likely only amount to a one or two-percent jump in his progress.

  I could always directly use the energy awarded at the end, but that feels wasteful.

  Perhaps he was getting ahead of himself, but he wasn’t exactly facing a difficult task for the moment, hardly different than shooting fish in a barrel. He had time for his thoughts to wander, waiting until the next phase of the battle.

  Which came shortly after. Though he’d slain something like fifty or sixty monsters, he heard a sudden crack, the splintering of wood in the distance as the tertiary walls were breached. Rather than call a retreat instantly, Rory continued holding his ground for some time as some of the hordes began streaming in from the hole that had appeared in their wall. Flooding in, Rory finally started to pull back, preferring to enact a fighting retreat as he withdrew to their secondary walls. Already, the Solar Coils were charging up, and as Rory scrambled up the wall, he was just in time to see a massive lash of solar energy snap outward like a titan’s cracking whip and cleave through thirty of the monsters in a single strike.

  Better than expected.

  Still, the tide of monsters seemed unending. Their initial assumption of merely a thousand monsters was already beginning to look incorrect. Between himself, Apostolos, and their defenses, nearly two or three hundred had likely already been felled.

  Still flowing endlessly from the trees, a new monster began to appear intermixed within the masses, four-armed monkeys with the crest of a rooster and swishing alligator tails.

  Huh, that’s new.

  It was uncommon for Rory to find a monster he’d never seen before in their territory, but the monkeys were completely new. More alarming was as they drew near, small chakrams of chitinous material appeared within their hands before they flung them forward.

  What the hell are these things?

  Curious, Rory examined one, biting back a sudden inhale as he did.

  Bane-Warped Primate

  Level: 51

  Born from the designs of a powerful would-be Architect, they carry malice and dexterous destruction within their many hands.

  “Bane-warped,” Rory grunted as he released an arrow, striking one of the primates through their hand that had been about to whip another strange chakram toward their secondary wall. “What are the chances…”

  The chances were pretty damn good if Rory had to guess.

  Which he was, of course.

  As more primates began to appear, order seemed to take hold of the horde of monsters, as if the primates were somehow controlling and conducting the mass of monsters.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “Focus on the primates!” Rory shouted, confident that Apostolos would hear him from opposite the secondary walls. His voice carried his intent even through the battle din. With the primates somehow instilling a limited order in the horde, they shifted their focus, attempting to batter down the walls where the Solar Coils were located. It was lucky they had the protection of the Imp Constructs as the Bane-Warped Primates attempted to fling their strange chakram weapons at the Solar Coils, only to be foiled by the nearest constructs.

  At one point, Rory saw one of the primates jump forward, preparing to whip one of its chakrams, only to suddenly be yanked under the horde of monsters, a flash of electric-blue coloration, the only sigh of what had snatched the beast.

  Good job, Eia; take out their commanders.

  The flow of battle had seemingly turned back in their favor; with the added element of the Solar Coil and smaller field of battle, it was easier to cut through the monsters penned in by the outer walls that they now flowed in through the few breaches within. It was the real reason for the tertiary walls; Rory had figured once they were breached, the monsters would charge through the breaches rather than bring down the entire wall, an assumption that had proven correct and quite beneficial.

  Of course, another new monster suddenly appeared, swinging the battle back in the favor of the monsters. The ground seemed to shake as something began to push trees aside, and giant hulking monsters emerged. Thirty feet tall, they looked like orangutans covered in orange and black cysts.

  Bane-Warped Spoiled Flesh Primate

  Level: 51

  Failed experiments born from the designs of a powerful would-be Architect. With their flesh and bodies forcibly warped and spoiled, they have nearly no intelligence whatsoever but, in return, gain massively increased vitality.

  Each Spoiled Flesh Primate was led by a team of two or three Bane Warped Primates, leading the giant abominations with ugly-looking saddles and whips.

  Well, that’s not good.

  Large as they were, the primates crashing against their walls could create a ramp for the rest of the horde to cross, which he suspected was the plan. Switching focus, Rory reached behind his back to the quiver he’d strapped on, snatching a new arrow type.

  Or, depending on how you view it, it could also be seen as an old arrow type.

  Locking on, Rory released his first of the new arrows, which slammed into one of the hulking behemoths. A moment later, the exploding arrow blew off the entire left half of the abomination’s torso.

  Risking a glance across the battlefield, Rory saw Apostolos across from him, sweeping his scythe as solar blades slashed into his own behemoth.

  A third Flesh Spoiled Primate had fallen to its knees, a literal choker of electric blue scales wrapped around its thick neck and strangling the life out of it, sweeping blindly about as its eyes had been torn from its head by Eia.

  And yet another six were already lumbering out from the forest, not to mention that there was still a horde of the grunt monsters attacking their walls, kept back only by the power of the Solar Coils and the Imp Constructs protecting them.

  Grimacing, Rory fired several more explosive arrows. They were quickly blocked by some of the standard Bane-Warped Primates, either knocking them off course with their freakishly resilient chakrams or simply blocking the arrows with their bodies.

  I guess it’s the hard way.

  Clipping his bow to his back, Rory flicked his arms downward, the chains wrapped around them unraveling as he jumped down from the walls, sprinting, jumping, and vaulting through the horde as he neared one of the six abominations. The abomination attempted to swipe at him, prompted by its handler, but Rory dodged. While it was freakishly powerful for a nearly base-level tier-five monster, it was still a tier-five monster. Arms waving about, his chains became a whirling blender that opened a hole several meters in any direction; nearby monsters slashed into meaty ribbons when they drew too close.

  The abomination fared little better.

  Enhanced to have greater vitality, the monster could take far more damage, but all that meant in the grand scheme of things was that the hulking beast was little better than a living picket that kebab meat was prepared upon back on Earth, huge chunks of flesh carved free from its body with each sweep of his chains. Within seconds, he’d carved his way to its spine, yet still, the beast didn’t want to die.

  Ah, screw it.

  A green image appeared in his hand, a knife that quickly became real, which he flung forward the instant it had physically manifested. Colliding with the abomination’s spine, it exploded as his chains followed up a heartbeat later, the already weakened spine ripped in half.

  Rory had no way of knowing -within the thicket of battle as he was- but he suspected Apostolos had likely come to a similar conclusion, directly cutting a path through the horde to kill the oversized flesh-spoiled primates.

  All I can do is wish him the best of luck.

  Across the battlefield

  “Damn it all to Eon and back; I hate these things,” Apostolos muttered as he swung his scythe through the air, clearing a path forward as the halberd head cleaved through the endless sea of Skitter Bulls. The monsters, a base-tier-five, weren’t very dangerous to him as a tier-six with such a powerful weapon, but damn, did it suck to have their blood splatter on you, sticky like tree sap and staining anything like a magical dye that took days to scrub out.

  Where so many of them had come from was something Apostolos found himself pondering amid the massive siege. Was it that there was a herd that had lived somewhere in the forest drawn to their camp, individuals or small groups that had banded together, or had Eon itself manifested them out of the aether with its divine powers of creation?

  Apostolos had no idea; it was something he’d ask his Master later to see if he had any theories.

  Noticing movement from his right -something that wasn’t just another Skitter Bull- Apostolos ducked his head back just as a black chakram spun through the air and clanged off their secondary wall.

  And then there are these… things.

  Apostolos had never seen Bane-Warped Primates before; they were entirely new. Primate-type monsters weren’t exactly rare, but neither were they super common, yet the Bane-Warped Primates still stood out. The name alone suggested a connection to the Planetary Bane Event, but Apostolos hadn’t thought about it for some time. It had been several years since the Architect’s Bane had attacked them.

  I haven’t asked Master how far he’s progressed into tier-six, but considering how long it has been, maybe he’s passed a ‘threshold’ after which the Architect Bane could return.

  For a level fifty-one monster, with the occasional level fifty-two variant mixed in, they were unlike any monster he’d seen before. They didn’t have a greater raw number of attributes or intelligence like an alpha variant or territory alpha might. Still, there was something… broken about them, with the giant Flesh-Spoiled primates being the perfect example. They were nearly comatose in how they behaved, only capable of lumbering forward and making lazy swipes as their handlers prompted them. In return for being living meat bags, they were far more challenging to kill than a monster of their level should be; even the scythe-head of his Rare-grade weapon wasn’t capable of inflicting instant death on the monsters.

  Putting the thoughts aside, Apostolos swept his scythe out as a blade of sunlight arced through the air and separated the head from the Bane-Warped Primate that had attempted to strike him with their strange chakram weapons.

  Where do those come from anyway?

  At first, Apostolos assumed they were using Pneuma to create them from nothing, but amid the fray, he could distinguish the monsters’ lack of Pneuma; they were literally pulling them from empty space.

  How?

  Another question he’d run by his Master, assuming his Master even noticed. Apostolos was far more sensitive to magical happenings between them, so there was a chance he hadn’t even noticed the oddity. Sure, ever since his Master had created the skill of gem crafting, he could ‘see’ magic…. stuff -Apostolos wasn’t sure exactly how it appeared to his Master- but only when he was actively looking for oddities with a pertinent skill, such as his Eye skill.

  Another consideration for later. Whipping a hand forward, a whip of sunlight snapped across the face of a Skitter Bull, causing it to flinch back as Apostolos then proceeded to uppercut the monster with his fist, glowing with sunlight.

  Apostolos continued his acrobatic slaughter, and as seconds passed into minutes, he felt a noticeable shift in the tide of monsters for the first time. Their numbers finally felt as if they were depleting, and the endless horde was not nearly as limitless as the name implied.

  “Never even breached our second wall,” Apostolos said smugly as he eyed the mountain of corpses. There were easily over one or two thousand monsters slaughtered, with maybe one or two hundred left.

  Had Apostolos had Rory’s genre knowledge, he would have known better than to have so blatantly goaded the universe to respond with serious schadenfreude.

  For a moment, it felt as if the ground beneath his feet were shaking as a raucous explosion of noise erupted between where he and his Master fought on opposite ends of the battlefield. Eyes instantly locking on to the source of the noise, Apostolos was shocked to see their secondary wall breached; a Flesh-Spoiled Primate had magically popped into existence before exploding in a shower of gore that had ripped apart a segment of the wall. Given how much sturdier the secondary wall was than their tertiary wall, Apostolos was forced to do a quick mental calculation, shaking his head.

  Even if it somehow converted the full force of its life energy into that explosion, it shouldn’t have been able to destroy such a large segment of the wall so easily.

  It would have been one thing for the Flesh-Spoiled Primate to fall atop the wall and leave its body as a ramp for monsters to rush over, but to explode like that?

  How?

  Much as Apostolos wanted to get to the bottom of understanding, within a few seconds, Apostolos felt a strangely familiar sensation, like space was being warped and bent, something he’d felt during his few attempts at the Trial of Space. The warping came to fruition when, nearly ten seconds later, dozens of creatures began to step out from rents in space, as if the secondary walls needed to be breached before they could step through space.

  As for what they were, Apostolos winced as he examined them.

  Bane-Molded Void Walkers

  Level: 56

  The successful experiments born from the designs of a powerful would-be Architect. The creature they once were had long been lost, continuously reshaped, and molded into a powerful monster capable of stepping short distances across the fabric of space.

  They looked tangentially like the Bane-Warped Primates, with the same general body shape, but the comparison ended there. They were covered in chitin, the color of the darkness of space, with heads that looked like a monkey and a hawk had been smashed together before being tipped into inky black wax. Through their chitinous black bodies were coursing veins of neon orange fluid that Apostolos instantly guessed as the same acid that the Architect’s Bane had also utilized, and from their backs emerged another set of arms, bringing them up to a ground total of six arms, each ‘arm’ double-jointed and ending not in hands but scythe-like blades that appeared nearly identical to the scythe-head of his own weapon.

  Probably because their arms had been molded into the same shape as the Architect’s Banes’ scythe-arms.

  Time to retreat.

  Against ordinary monsters, level 56 was hardly the wall it had once been. Unarmed, a high-tier five monster could be a potential threat to even a tier-six person, but with the quality of their gear, Apostolos hadn’t felt genuine worry from a tier-five monster in a long time. Anything short of either a high-tier-five alpha variant or a mid-tier-five territory alpha lacked the overall intelligence and raw attributes needed to overwhelm them with their gear.

  These monsters were different, though. First, each one had a feeling distinctly similar to the sort of ‘vibe’ that alpha variant monsters carried. Second, there were a lot of them, at least four dozen on his side alone. Third, and most importantly, there was no pretending that the Architect Bane wasn’t involved, which meant there was always a chance the terrifying foe that had defeated them once already could make an appearance at any moment.

  It was better to get to the safety of their most powerful walls then.

  Retreating, Apostolos could only frown as his thoughts turned to his Master.

  I hope he gets the message, too.