The wall around the fortress was terrifying. Hirrus had never seen so much steel in one place all at once. Even the arms and armor for all the guards in Inoha wouldn’t make up a fraction of the thick metal barrier around the large property. It represented an expense that he found impossible to fathom. Even the king’s walls were made of stone. No one would spend so much money on an impenetrable bulwark unless they were the most paranoid man alive.

Especially since Hirrus could get over it easily with High Jump.

It seemed like such a gross oversight that so much had been invested in keeping him out, and there was such a simple solution. Hirrus almost wanted to find another way, since it felt disrespectful to the wall itself. But he didn’t have the time. Especially since the only other option would have been wasting a number of buffs to test Civilization Buster against it. He had a feeling he was going to need all his powers at hand when the fight began. If he couldn’t afford to take the time to find a fifteen-foot ladder, he wasn’t going to blast his way in and then wait out all of his cooldowns for the fight proper.

Landing on the inside of the wall was like landing in a different world. Hirrus went from the outskirts of Denstad - a quaint district full of fruit trees and vegetable gardens - into a desolate wasteland. The ground here was bare dirt, blasted with scorch marks. With the wall enclosing it, there were no signs of life and nothing to use for cover. Forty feet away was the stone bunker Ten had described. A smooth box of stone. Not even arrow slits; just a pair of steel doors on the front.

The lack of windows was, perhaps, the most galling oversight. As Hirrus started to walk across the dirt ground, he wondered how the adventurers hoped to use these defenses. They couldn’t see him coming. He was freely crossing the distance unhindered.

Hirrus found himself glad he hadn’t tested Civilization Buster against their wall.

They expected him to knock and he didn’t want to disappoint.

Usually, Hirrus would begin with X’ruhn’s Balance, but he started with Going Ape first. Using it before X’ruhn’s Balance would let the extra BUR become ATT, and using it now meant that he could dismiss the Going Ape buff once the fight began. He feared that the GLE penalty the Arcana applied would be a huge detriment to him if his foes were able to organize themselves and coordinate their attacks. To that end, he took an extra second and used Penitent Shell as well. He wasn’t going to have another chance to use it once the battle was joined.

With his base set, Hirrus topped off his buffs with Eyes On Me, Shining Sprocket, and Logarius Shroud. His other buffs would have to wait, as they required a target to strike to empower him further.

He reached out and planted his hands on the metal doors to the bunker, activating Civilization Buster.

There was a tingling sensation as he touched the door. As the spell powered up, he sensed a presence nearby.

In the second before the Arcana activated, he heard a voice.

“It’s gotta be a fuckin’ glitch,” that someone said. “There’s no fuckin’ way anyone is at the door. But if it’ll make your paranoid ass feel better, I’ll check-”

A beam of blue energy erupted from Hirrus. The roar of impact came first and then the heat of the steel doors melting before Hirrus’s power. Stone of the structure beyond was disintegrated. The beam of energy reached the back wall of the estate, warping the steel and punching a hole through even that defensive measure.

Hirrus only got one damage readout - he only struck one adventurer - but it was a tremendous nineteen thousand damage.

As the dust cleared, Hirrus saw the adventurer was still standing. He was covered in burns, and when he opened his mouth no sound came, only a mouthful of blood.

But he was still standing.

To Hirrus’s shock, once his airway was clear of blood, he didn’t scream.

He didn’t even snarl.

Instead, the adventurer smiled.

The man himself was wearing black leather pants and painted black and silver greaves with gauntlets to match. He wore no shirt or cuirass, but instead a strange palm-sized medallion hung on a simple leather thong over his chest. Despite having just taken enough damage to vaporize any other adventurer Hirrus had ever met, his smile wasn’t a furious rictus or even a pained grimace.

It seemed he was genuinely pleased to have endured a blast that melted steel.

“Yo!” the man called over his shoulder. “Who ordered the pizza with hot wings? I think you might find them a bit spicier than you expected.”

The uproar that followed was slightly more in line with Hirrus’s expectations. A dozen voices were screaming in panic and outrage. He supposed the shirtless one was just that much more filled with bravado than the average adventurer.

A taller woman in full plate appeared, her armor glittering black and red steel, her features creased with concentration. An Arcana suffused her with power, and her form began to flicker and shift, her speed redoubling. Her sword was a scimitar that appeared to be made from glowing red stone, rather than metal, and her shield was made of the same material, but reinforced with black metal, the glowing red showing through in a pattern that looked a bit like a demonic face.

The woman’s movements were rendered unpredictable by the erratic flickering of her Arcana, and Hirrus barely had time to duck aside from the first sweep of that scimitar.

He didn’t even see her other hand come up and strike him in the chest.

The palm strike did no damage on its own, but instead unleashed an Arcana on him. Six hundred damage was nothing, but the accompanying effect was a 50% movement speed debuff.

“Got him,” the woman snapped.

“Are you Cerberus?”

“Sorry,” the woman said, her voice low and calm, even as the shimmering form of her body took a defensive stance. “Cerberus will be your end boss this evening. You gotta clear the trash before you see her.”

The bunker was now a cracked-open shell, and the swarm of adventurers that emerged now did not look at all cocky or confident. With the exception of the shirtless man, they all had expressions of either boredom or concentration.

One of them - a man in roughspun burlap who looked more like a vegetable merchant than a fighter - stopped to fling a glowing orange orb at the shirtless man. The obvious Arcana split open against his back, suffusing him with healing energies. Another - a man in purple and green robes, waved his arms, causing both the shirtless man and the woman in red-and-black armor to glow with green energies. A woman dressed in a skimpy red outfit started to concentrate, holding out her hands to cast out another Arcana.

And then the attackers came.

There were nearly a dozen of them. Dressed in outlandish outfits, wielding weapons that crackled with power or held a threatening glow, they poured out of the rubble of the bunker. Five of them rushed straight for Hirrus, looking to join the melee, while the others immediately moved to spread out across the battlefield. One of them - a man in purple armor with a spear - began to use an Arcana that filled the air with a pulsing hum that spread out around him, putting a purple glow at the feet of all of the adventurers assembled.

Weapons were crashing against him.

A red-stone scimitar sliced across his arm.

A greataxe crashed against his back.

A petite woman in yellow darted in and out of his reach, hammering him with brass knuckles.

A man in armor made from the same ice as Hirrus’s greataxe roared and brought down a giant glowing blue claymore.

A man in heavy blue armor standing about twenty feet away started to yell and laugh as he raised his hands, sending a hail of red pellets at Hirrus in an unbroken stream.

Other adventurers were powering up.

A woman in snow-white robes with a curved sword was kneeling down, a rainbow of glowing energies building around her.

A woman in black leather was circling around to get behind Hirrus, conjuring a stream of red and green gemstones that floated around her head.

A man in green-and-purple robes was waving his staff, suffusing other adventurers with that same green energy.

Half a dozen others were moving into position, spreading out in a practiced formation, either to wait their turn to move in, or to optimally spread to avoid whatever Hirrus could throw at them.

A man in rough hide armor with two hand axes was doing some elaborate dance as part of an Arcana, redoubling and redoubling the glowing red cloud of energy around himself.

A woman in a blue robe with a long slit up the side - revealing her entire leg all the way up to her hip - was at a dead sprint to get as far from the ruined bunker as possible as fast as she could.

A man in green silks had a swirling green wind around him, and was using blasts of leaves to leap across the battlefield.

An elderly-looking man in purple robes with a pointed hat - all covered with golden stars - scuttled to stand well behind the woman in red-and-black, using her as physical cover as he rolled up his voluminous sleeves.

They were approaching the situation from a familiar way. The few who didn’t look bored appeared happily comfortable with this fight.

And Hirrus knew why.

This was what they had trained for. As raiders, they were supposed to be the bulwark of the world against threats. If these were the best of the best, they were prepared to fight as a team against titanic opponents. They knew this dance, and they were so practiced in its steps that they had no fear of facing him.

Hirrus just needed to change the beat.