1.30 A Proportional Response

It was Rocky’s understanding that nothing in the Tutorial could truly pierce and break his Cold Iron Golems. As it turned out, he was only partially right.

Immediately after the System notified them about the impending monster wave, something Alina had called a ‘tribulation,’ whatever that meant, the relative silence of the clearing was pierced by the sound of several simultaneous war cries.

In one direction, the Kobolds beat their weapons against the ground. The sun glistened on their comparatively dull scales, which ranged in color all the way from green to orange. Amber had called them Lizardfolk, and Rocky could see why. The Kobolds had arrayed themselves loosely, though they managed to remain together visibly enough, to where individual lines of lizards could be seen.

They were several ranks deep with about a dozen marching abreast. Though, maybe marching was a loose term. Harold had described something supremely organized formation when he had described marching, and this was definitely not that. ‘He said something about… a goose stepping, right?’ For the life of him, Rocky couldn’t figure out what a bird he had never seen before had to do with moving in a group.

The Kobolds still pressed on, disorganized as they were. In their hands they held a variety of weapons, from makeshift spears, axes, and even a shiny sword or two. ‘Probably granted by the System?’ Rocky mused to himself. If they weren’t, well, he wanted to know where he could get a source of shiny metal rocks for himself.

On the other side of the camp were the wolves. Similar, in fact, to the red ones the green men- goblins had been riding when he had first encountered them. These were gray however, sporting dark coats and glistening teeth.

At first, they had simply stalked towards the edge of the clearing, seemingly scared to enter the brightly lit area. But once the timer had ticked to zero? They howled as one, giving Rocky another one of those bad emotions.

They had seemed relatively small at first, roughly the size of the goblin wolves. But as he watched, the larger variants had stepped out of the woods, fangs bared at Rocky’s wooden fortifications.

They were hulking, some of the largest taller than even Rocky himself. Though thankfully, they didn’t seem to be taller than Harold or his golems.

“That’s reaaaaally not good.” Alina muttered under her breath. “I was hoping the System glitching would have extended to its threat calculations too.”

She got weird looks from the two humans around. “What? This is town construction and defense, it makes sense that I would know this. The strength of the tribulation is proportional to the strength of the town’s residents.” The Sprite gestured towards the three hulking golems. “They’re the ones throwing this whole thing out of balance.”

Before she could launch into another explanation, however, the miscellaneous beasts that had originally been relegated to east and west began to make their presence known. The shrieks of an enormous Orangutan Screamer came through first.

He could see it from their walls, perched as it was on a tree at the edge of the clearing. Its orange fur brilliant in the midday sun. With it, were not other screamers, not like they had fought on their force night aboveground. No, swarming about the trees were a miscellaneous group of beasts. Among them, all manner of predators and prey.

The monsters knew it too, the sounds of their interspecies clashes carrying over the entire clearing, almost as loud as their war cries. Yet, some had fixated on their camp. Rocky didn’t know whether the System still hated him for being an error, or if they just really hated wood like he did. But they were coming in large numbers.

The wolves, meanwhile, were messy, even when compared to the Kobold’s’ uncoordinated battle lines. They could barely be considered as anything more than in the same general area, much less in a formation for battle. And from this distance, Rocky couldn’t tell if their random spotty formation was a purposeful grouping at all.

“I’m gonna hit the Kobolds first.” Their only ranged combatant already had wisps of flame accumulating before her staff. The smaller flames swirled around, around, and then into the rapidly growing orb of flame. The staff itself feeding a thin stretch of red hot energy into the soon-to-be blast.

‘I wonder why she’s hitting the Kobold’s first.’ Rocky had come to understand Amber as being the smart one, and so he tried to understand her reasoning. ‘The wolves will get here faster if they run, so why…”

With a shout, Amber released the [Fireball] from its tether, and the concentrated ball of death was sent spiralling towards the center of the Kobold line.

The lizardmen were still marching as it did, forced onwards by their larger brethren, who brought up the front and back of their force. They were bigger, meaner variants, redder than the rest, while the Kobolds towards the center were a dull green. ‘Maybe they get more evil as they grow? That’s why they stop being green?’

Rocky was brought out of his musings by the flash of a fireball as it finally impacted the ground. The smarter, or luckier lizards had jumped, rolled, or ducked out of the way by any means necessary. The little green ones though, stuck at the center of their line were incinerated before they could even utter a yelp of alarm.

“This’ll be easy!” Harold laughed out loud.

Both Amber and Alina slapped him, the former on the arm, the latter on the top of his head. Then simultaneously, “don’t tempt fate, idiot.” That last part had just been Alina though.

Rocky, for his part, couldn’t really see why or even if they thought Harold was wrong, or how he was tempting anyone named Fate. The Kobolds had tried reforming, true, but another white hot [Fireball] from Amber shattered their resolve, and most had begun routing towards the tree line.

‘The red ones ARE stupid, I was right!’ The precious few who hadn’t run, were now sprinting towards their wall, seemingly uncaring about the possible fireballs that could be flying their way.

And maybe they could’ve been wiped out before even reaching the palisades, but their hapless charge had coincided with the first wolves’ attempt to scale the wooden walls. ‘Wait, what?’ Rocky turned as fast as his relatively wide body would allow him to, just in time to see Harold crack the skull of a wolf who had gotten antsy.

As the man whirled to meet his next opponent, Rocky could only more or less just sit and watch as his companions did the fighting for him. He glanced down from the walls, at the three golems guarding three respective sides of the inside… ‘compound’, Amber had called it.

They were too large for the walls, though according to Harold ‘fat’ was the correct word to use to describe them. That meant, though, that Harold would have to hold the walls by himself, should any opponent scale it too quickly for Amber to get a shot off.

Speaking of Amber, she had been mechanically spearing any red Kobolds who had gotten close to the wall with her [Flame lance] spells. ‘Hah, serves them right! You dare flaunt your inferior colors at ME?’ Well, not really at Rocky specifically, but in his general direction. For him, that was enough.

“Yay! Go Amber! Kill them all! Oh and fire lance BOOM!” Rocky, without any real offensive spells save for his [Words of Power], was resorting to something Harold had mentioned in passing: Cheerleading.

“Am I doing this right? Swing that hammer! Yeah! Oh, almost forgot, two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? Harooooooold!”

The hammer wielder barked a laugh even as he fought for his life. “That last one was halfway passable!” His voice was confident, but his body showed fatigue. They were losing ground, and Rocky would have frowned if he could, ‘wasn’t cheerleading supposed to make people win?’

He would try again. “Give me a R! Give me an E! Give me a D! What does that spell? LOSEEEEER!” He dragged out the last syllable, just like Harold had taught him. The man himself looking worse for wear as the fight dragged on.

Harold swung wildly at two approaching wolves, both of which had jumped or otherwise scaled the wall, and were boxing him in towards the corner. The hammer didn’t connect, but it bought him valuable time to backpedal, jumping the corner of their wall and ending up next to Rocky. The fight dragged on, and numbers began to make a difference, exhibited by the fact that Harold didn't even try to quip at Rocky's latest cheer.

As it stood, two of the wall’s four sides had been overtaken by monsters, with more battering at the gate down below. The larger wolves were coming now, where before they had seemed happy enough to just let everyone else do their dirty work.

Rocky tried some more cheerleading, though it didn’t really seem to help either Amber or Harold, both of which seemed to be running out of stamina and mana quite quickly.

“The walls are a shit place to defend!” Amber yelled, doing a small jump to get over Rocky. “[Fire Lance], [Concurrent Minds]” Two spears of fire appeared simultaneously, firing themselves into the hearts of the two wolves that had tried to corner Harold.

“Let’s get behind the golems.” No other explanation given, she began making her way down to ground level. Harold shrugged and followed, leaving Rocky on the wall on his lonesome. Mirroring Harold’s shrug, he stepped off the side, and promptly face planted onto the ground.

“What was that?” Harold looked incredulously at the rock, who had apparently failed at walking down stairs. “Nevermind, get over here!” Grabbing Rocky, he pulled on the golem, sending the both of them sprawling into the space between Rocky’s three golems, now retreated to the center of their camp.

With a roar, the gate burst open, and the largest wolf Rocky had ever laid eyes on burst into their town, eyes blazing.