John didn’t know exactly what his friends were imagining or thinking of, but he was certain none of them grasped the true magnitude of the machine threat. The silent weight of the unknown hung over them, dampening the fire of their recent victories.
Just as the silence was becoming unbearable, the ground began to tremble.
*Rumble!*
Just before he could press them further on their sudden silence, the loud alarm of the fierce earth shaking signalled the arrival of the final Wrathers wave. The air itself seed to curdle with malice and yet hope. John adjusted his grip on his sword, his expression returning to its usual mask of calm and determination.
"Let’s talk about it in great detail after we handle the Hiveminds," he said, his voice steady despite the thrumming of the ground. "I need to know everything, all about the threats you all know and I don’t. We can’t afford to keep secrets if we want to make it back to the academy and survive."
He didn’t wait for a confirmation. He began to move with fast steps toward the central den location. "Let’s go!"
His friends exchanged silent, heavy gazes, a conversation passing between them in a language of shared history and unspoken fears. Yet, true to their bond, they didn’t utter another word. Instead, they fell into formation, silently following John toward the last standing bastion of the red monster horde.
John had already briefed them on the anomalies surrounding this specific den. Its sudden relocation to the absolute geographical centre of the territory was a mystery that even the Bulltors couldn’t explain.
He reminded them of the suffocating purple fog that acted as a deadly shroud, eating away their health at a scary rate, the elite variant Wrathers that possessed so level of extra layer of defence thanks to their scales, and the terrifying Sorolith, the apex predator, the caller of the lightning, like how Elena called it.
As the den sat at the heart of the region, the wave it unleashed didn’t just march towards a certain direction; it exploded in all directions, saturating the land like a spreading ink stain. John opened up his map, and when he saw the sheer density of the crimson dots coming out from the centre, he couldn’t help but let out an inward, weary sigh.
"It seems this last wave is at least one hundred thousand strong," he said slowly, his eyes scanning the map in focus. "It’s double the size of our territory last Wrathers wave."
"That’s expected," Luke shrugged, though he tightened the grip over his club. "No matter what they send, we’ll kill them all. We’ve co too far to be tripped up by a numbers ga."
"That’s the spirit," Cissel and Elena shared a brief, glaring glance.
John knew the root of their sudden excitent, the sa reason behind their intense rivalry over the past few days. It wasn’t just about ego; it was an obsession with the grenades.
Both ladies were competing to see who could harvest more, a ’who has the most grenades’ type of ga, as Elena used to call. John didn’t mind the competition; he was actually encouraging it.
"We’ll walk directly through them; we’ll leave the task of killing those to the Bulltors behind," John commanded.
It took the team roughly two hours of non-stop, high-intensity combat just to breach the main bulk of the red tide. As they pushed through the sea of monsters gushing toward them, John started working around the central den. He laid down a series of big outposts, effectively creating a siege ring that surrounded the heart of the territory, creating a kill zone around the central den.
He hadn’t dared to set these structures earlier, fearing the previous waves would swarm and dismantle them before the right mont of using them would co.
He had waited until the main body of the wave had locked onto distant targets, and only then did he anchor the outposts. Once the ring was complete, he stood before his friends, his eyes fixated on the purple fog hundreds of tres away.
"Scatter around the periter," he ordered. "Kill every monster attempting to break out of the fog until there are none left to defend Sorolith."
"Take care of yourself, John," Cissel said, finally turning her eyes away from Elena. Her voice was thick with genuine concern.
Since they had arrived in this pocket trial, John had been like a tireless, endless bee, a worker who never slept, never rested, never felt peace. He moved from task to task, fighting, building, and strategising without a mont’s respite.
Even if the advanced cannons, energy cells, and generators were doing the heavy lifting now, the ntal toll on him was visible in the way he stood. She felt an imnse, gnawing worry that he would break before the trial was over.
John didn’t answer with words; he simply gave a sharp nod and began to repeat the manoeuvre that had won them their ho territory. He sprinted around the massive periter of the den, throwing clusters of cores to act as lures and disruptors.
He expected monsters to lung forward, and monsters were what he got; in a different way!
This den was different. It was at least fifty tis the size of the one they had conquered before. Not to ntion the weird relocation that happened to this den. He had expected so changes, but he was unprepared for the reality that t him as the purple mist gushed out what was hiding inside.
Instead of the standard, normal Wrathers, the purple fog vomited out batches of Elite Wrathers. And that wasn’t the end of it! They didn’t co in small trickles; they erged in organised battalions of five hundred.
Even worse, each battalion was led by a Sorolith, a towering, multi-limbed horror that acted as a group boss, the caller of the lightning was here, and there wasn’t just one of them.
John’s heart hamred hard as he saw ten of these battalions erge simultaneously from different points in the fog.
"John, help!"
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