The following days passed in a fog, nothing seeming clear. I know I ate occasionally, I know I chatted a couple times with my group, but most of the time was spent in the room I was staying at, reflecting. I knew I could have done something, my group could’ve handled the borow on their own, I could’ve just been watching for any monsters just in case, or maybe if I’d handed out health potions out beforehand he could’ve drunk it before he died, at least keeping him alive long enough for rachel to get to him. I kept beating myself up over it, blaming myself for his death.

I knew logically that it wasn’t my fault, but there were still things I could have done, and it was hard to get that thought out of my head after the first time it creeped in. I spent far too much of the time just laying in my bed, replaying the scene of the reik simply slamming into him. I’d known it was likely that they hadn’t put any points in vitality, and without any melee fighting they wouldn’t have naturally gained any, but still, it just seemed so easy to die. One hit, and a life was snuffed out.

After what felt like a month, but couldn’t have been more than a week or two, it was time for the funeral. It was a silent procession as both of our groups walked together, not a word being spoken, each of us left to our own introspection. It was some time until we arrived at a massive field, and I sucked in a breath. Everywhere were makeshift tombstones, as far as the eye could see. I’d wondered what had happened to the bodies, and it seems I had my answer.

How much loss had come when the monster waves arrived was slowly starting to sink in. We soon arrived at an open grave, with the body lying in what seemed to be a makeshift casket. I was sure all of the proper caskets had been used up with all the death that had happened, and I was sure that many had been buried without that decency.

Looking around, i saw a man and a woman already there, the woman clearly inconsolable, the man attempting to comfort her anyway. I wince, judging by their age, they were likely to be his parents. The thought drove a fresh spike of guilt through my mind. My inattentiveness had killed off their child.

The rest of the funeral passed in a fog, I finally learned his name, Joseph, he was only nineteen Before the update, he had been planning on going to college for mechanical engineering, and he’d loved to paint. The more I learned, the worse my guilt got, and the more my mind seemed to go foggy.

The only thing I remembered after that point was when Lily had gone up to apologize and gotten practically screamed at, being told it was her fault he was out there in the first place. I could see her visibly wilt from Joseph’s mother blaming her, and she had likely been blaming herself as much as I had been blaming myself.

We got back, splitting up, and Liz not even bothering to tease me as I went back with Lily. The next few days passed, and slowly my depression was turning into rage. It was the monsters’ fault that this had happened. If they hadn’t invaded we wouldn’t have that massive field full of people’s children, parents, siblings, friends. I wasn’t sure exactly where my mind was going at first, but eventually I decided. I may not be able to now, but I was going to find some way to get rid of the invaders. I may not be strong enough yet, but at this moment, I can at least get some revenge for Joseph.

Grabbing my spear and gear, I start marching out of the room, spotting Lily as I’m leaving.

“Where are you going?”

“Hunting,” I reply.

“I’m coming with you.”

Her tone made it clear that she would ignore any argument to the contrary, and I wasn’t going to complain about having someone along to make the hunting easier. We waited in the elevator in silence, and were soon outside, heading for the four star monsters.

The first monster we spotter was a borow, and while Lily threw lightning at it as it turned to charge us, I charged right at it myself, imbuing my spear with toughness and sharpness, taking my spear in both hands and driving it as hard as I could at its chest.

My spear goes straight through, and I get backhanded by the borow, getting sent flying a good distance. I roll on the ground for a bit, getting scrapes along my arms and back. I’m up in a second though, growling in annoyance as I down a health potion, ignoring the sharp yet dull pain from what has to be cracked ribs. I may have a lot more vitality than Joseph, but I wasn’t nearly to the point of being invulnerable.

I slowly walk towards the monster that is unsuccessfully trying to pry my spear from within its chest, getting bombarded with lightning as it happens, tensing up every time it’s hit. I join Lily in bombarding it, and it soon collapses, though I’m not sure if it’s from my spear or the magic we’ve been throwing at it.

Lily and I both down a mana potion wordlessly, and we continue our hunt. The rest of the day could be measured by the potions that Lily and I go through. I get hit much more than usual, forgoing my usual caution, taking hits to get in stronger hits, letting my health potions do work. At a couple points, Lily and I have to handle a monster on our own, but we somehow manage, though the one time a third shows up we have to run away, using stamina potions to outlast the monsters chasing us.

Our hunt continues regardless of the close call, until we run out of potions. We unwillingly head back to the less dangerous part of the city. Once we get back, I take out my potion making kit from my oh so useful magical backpack along with the massive amount of herbs I’d stockpiled from not needing to use many potions in the other world. I’m soon lost in the potion making, but my anger doesn’t fade, and once I’ve replenished our potion stock, the only reason I don’t head out to hunt more is the sun slowly sinking over the horizon.

I go back to the building where both Lily and I are staying, and fade into a meditation until my anger is muted enough that I can go into my sleep like state. I wake in the morning to my anger slightly muted, but I have no intentions of stopping hunting. With the rage now simmering rather than exploding, I grab Lily and we head off to hunt again.

The next few weeks pass in this fashion, and Lily and I eventually go from barely able to handle two of them, to killing them without too much trouble. Along the way, we invite our groups to go hunting, but neither of them are willing to hunt four star mobs again at first. I don’t blame them, and simply focus on hunting with Lily.

Eventually, I run out of herbs, and I’m forced to go around finding plants to replace them. It’s during one of these trips that I decide on something.

“I need to go back to the other world.”

“What?” Lily says with a confused expression.

“I need to learn more about the monsters, and the only place I’m going to be able to do that is over there. I need to find out where they’re coming from, we need to stop them eventually. We may not be powerful enough yet, but I’m going to change that.”

“I’ll be coming with you.”

I simply nodded in agreement, and we agreed to go after the next monster wave. The rest of the time up to the next wave was spent grinding the four star mobs, and the nights in my meditative sleep, eventually getting me to the point where my ice spears would do more than just annoy the four star mobs.

Along the way, I mention my meditative sleep to Lily, who after a few days manages to pick it up. I also find out that she’s been doing the same thing I’ve been doing: saving her free points from leveling. It isn’t long after we’d decided to go to the other world when Liz and Rachel both decide to join us in our crusade against the four star mobs, me very pointedly handing out health potions, and practically forcing Rachel to start putting points into vitality. I didn’t want our healer dying the same way Joseph did, from one unlucky hit.

Eventually, we slow down on hunting as the monsters start being too close together to fight without attracting too much attention, and we all agree to training sessions, working on raising our stats. The rest of my group and LIly's group decide to join us for these, and while we don't raise our stats by quite as much as we were with our aggressive hunting, they still go up in a steady way.

The day of the wave is pretty obvious, the mobs being so thick on the ground they seem to form a veritable sea, with clouds of brags, and the occasional feth interspersed among the practical clouds. The army formed up against them is impressive as well though, with machine gun emplacements here and there, and even a few tanks. The militia is also there, in their ragtag outfits, none of them having proper armor, though some have pseudo protection made of molt shells, one guy even having makeshift plate armor made from what has to be a reik shell.

The monsters start to move, and the military opens fire. In seconds, the front wave of monsters collapses, but there's always more where they came from, and the militia joins in along with our group, anyone who has any kind of spell casting it. There’s a good deal of simple force bolts, but also a lot of walls of fire, chain lightning, and I even see someone using the same spell I am, flash freeze. The barrage of spells cuts a massive swathe of monsters down, but again, they keep coming, and soon they arrive at the militia, though the military is holding their portion of the line a good distance away with their massive number of guns.

I stay back in the militia at first, acting as a spellcaster, but when the first four star mob impacts the line, sending a few unsuspecting melee fighters flying, I run forwards, the familiar rage bubbling in my chest as I sharpen and toughen my spear, stabbing through the glaneous’ eye and into its brain. Liz is already beside me, having been fighting in the front lines from the beginning, and chops deeply into another glaneous with a feral grin. The next hour is spent slaughtering anything that got close to me, and casting flash freeze whenever I had the opening to. While the other front liners would trade off every so often, I stayed, simply downing stamina potions while others rested.

After a bit, Lily joins Liz and I fighting in the melee, though we split up to deal with four star mobs whenever they show up, as they would plow through most of the lower leveled militia members. Here and there I would hear screams of pain, and I can only hope that they aren’t a prelude to death. Rachel is running around in the back, healing up anyone who got hurt that people manage to drag back there.

It takes a couple hours, but eventually the monsters seem to thin out, and eventually fade away, leaving countless bodies on the ground, interspersed with the occasional human one. I feel the rage in my chest bubbling up again as I see them, and when I look to the area the military is defending, at least the portion I can see, I see a few bodies there as well, and many of the soldiers have blood splashed on them. I can only assume that they ran out of ammo or overheated their guns at some point. I wince, if they’re out of ammo, the next monster wave is going to be horrifying.

I shake my head, I just hope that they’ve been teaching them the spell patterns I gave them. I then get to work helping people carry the bodies, feeling a mix of somberness and rage. We slowly put them next to each other, and there are far more than I ever wanted to see.

The rage seems to get a bit hotter inside of me, but at the same time, tears start coming to my eyes, the grief drowning out the rage for now. All of the people there stand in vigil for a time, before the bodies begin to be driven off in trucks to be prepared for burial. With this much death it’s no wonder the people at the mortuary had seemed so worn.

We all slowly head back to our respective sleeping places, and I collapse on the bed, not even bothering to try for my meditative sleep. The next morning, I grab Lily, and decide to see if anyone else in either of our groups would be willing to come with us. As we go around, two of Lily’s group, one of the tankers and the remaining spellcaster agree to come with us, and Liz and Rachel both agree to come as well.

That's when we run into some trouble, we need to find out where to go to find another gate. Deciding that the best thing to do would be to ask around, we go first to the military area as they patrol around, and start asking.

It takes a while, but eventually we get some information from a soldier who’s seen one, and we head off. It takes a few hours to walk there, but we arrive to see the same type of tear in the air Lily and I went through previously. Our group looks at each other for a moment, then we step through.