Her heart dropped. She desperately covered the distance to him while the swordsman attempted to end Hideki's life. Eva arrived just in time to block the blow with her sword. The archer behind the swordsman took a shot at her that she managed to Dodge★. With the boost in stats, she Infused★ her shortsword with air and ripped into the swordsman. It took almost ten seconds to take care of him. Unfortunately, the archer got off a shot into Thomas' chest in that time. It was near the heart, and she was unsure if it was fatal or not. The archer didn’t live long enough to find out.

She eyed Thomas and Hideki on the ground before she turned around to check on the two spearmen. Both were on the floor, dying from arrow wounds to their chest. Hakeem had managed to gain enough distance to take care of both of them.

Eva returned to check on the two injured men. They weren’t in great shape—Thomas was especially injured—but they weren’t in danger of dying in the next few minutes. Hideki’s wound hadn’t been as deep as she had feared, so he would be fine in a few hours. However, Thomas was in no condition to travel on his own for the five miles back to the village. They would have to carry him.

She took the meat off of the two poles and lashed them together using the rope they’d brought. Hakeem and Hideki helped her load Thomas on top of the poles, and the gear looted from the dead humans was slung underneath. She carried the front while the two men carried the back.

The trek back to the village was slow going with how bad their injuries were. The forest didn't help much as it was just a long string of obstacles to impede their progress. While it had taken about an hour and a half to get to the hunting grounds the first time, it took double that on the way back. When they finally arrived at the clearing by the gate, they lowered Thomas to the ground and Hakeem went to report the circumstances of the hunt to the guards.

Eva looked at Thomas. He was still breathing, thankfully, but it was shallow. He did not look well, and medical care would be needed if he was going to survive. That was something she couldn't provide. She had no potions like she did in the training that she could give him. If he were conscious, she'd tell him to put his Stats into Vitality to raise his health and regeneration... but he was still completely out of it.

Hakeem returned with a couple of guards several minutes later. The guards directed Eva and the others to bring Thomas inside to where other injured people were treated. That there was such an area—given how much regeneration each person had—was indicative of just how dangerous the Tutorial was without any preparation or training.

The healing area had maybe twenty people on makeshift cots. None of them were sick, but all of them were severely injured. She recognized several of the men there as being guards she'd seen on night watch duty with her. Eva hoped they hadn't run into the same landwalker problems she had on her first watch. It was either them or monsters, and neither of those options were good for human survival.

IV

Hideki and Eva left Hakeem and Thomas to get lunch. She snagged a mostly undamaged shield from a looted equipment pile near the infirmary on the way out. Lunch was yet another meal of dried monster flesh and water. It tasted alright but was far from filling and it was starting to get repetitive.

“So,” Hideki said as he sat down, “what do you think of what happened today?”

“I'm not surprised there are some bad hombres out there that take advantage of the situation. I mean, just look at what happened when we first went out to scout around.”

“Hm.”

“I don't think this is the last time, either. Humans are monsters, too.”

“That's certainly true,” he agreed. “What do you think about what the guy said? About there being another town northeast of here about 10 miles?”

“Worth checking out, if only to see if it's still there.” Eva said, thinking about her next words carefully. “With the equipment they were wearing, they were either the leaders of that town or they've raided it. Landwalkers are more than enough of a headache for the average person. I don't want to be a hero, but I think it'd be safer to at least scout the other town, right?”

“Definitely. We could sneak over there after the daily grind.”

“Hm... Ok. Let's do that. Maybe if Thomas's feeling better, we could grab him as well. I suck at finding my way around, and he's got a bow in case the recon gets a little spicy.”

Hideki nodded in agreement before leaving the medical area. Eva checked the time on the Tutorial and noticed that there wasn't much time before the beasts would come knocking. She used the available time to enhance her newly acquired shield with one of the Basic Shards▲ she had left from the previous night's excursion into the dungeon. She was rewarded with a 5% of melee damage blocked being reflected to the attacker. It would help a bit; but without a way to fix the shield, it wasn't all that helpful. She shrugged. It was still better than nothing.

With her gear sorted, Eva made her way towards the gate. There were a few hundred people preparing for the day's assault, though most of that number were milling about and chatting. The defense of the town was definitely of the militia variety rather than of a more professional force. Nearly as soon as she'd arrived at the front lines, the System decided it was time to start.

There are 25 days remaining

7222/10000 are still alive

New Quest: Defeat a monster wave. 0/1631 killed

It looked like a large chunk of humanity died in the last day. That wasn't welcome news at all. Eva hoped it had nothing to do with either the other town or the landwalkers. Both were bad news, but figuring out a solution to those problems wasn't her responsibility. She might have to do some dirty work to solve them, but that was an issue for future Eva. Present Eva needed to deal with some decidedly large ratlike creatures.

These were even larger than the in retrospect poorly named giant rats. Observe✦ named them colossal rats. Their levels were higher than in the previous fights. Level 6-8 was certainly a step up from the 1-4 they'd been the last few days. The fact that many in the village had raised their levels might have had something to do with it. Or it could have been that the days were advancing. The cause didn't really matter as higher leveled opponents meant more experience, and that was absolutely fine with Eva.

V

The wave of colossal rats broke against the lines of defenders. The wooden stakes were somewhat effective in channeling the tide to where it was expected. The rats were certainly large enough to get impaled upon them rather than darting through as their smaller cousins would have.

Eva kept up an air Infused★ blade, which made slicing and dicing the rats a breeze. With them just being rodents of unusual size, there was no armor to Pierce✦ through; and since they came as a suicidal wave, there was no reason to Charge✦ either. Those Skills wouldn't be getting any experience, sadly. Especially with Charge✦ being as close as it was to upgrading again. At least she could Dodge★ every once in a while for the momentary Stat boost.

In keeping with the theme from earlier, the colossal rats had their own even larger minibosses to destroy along with the main horde. They were adult and elder colossal rats. Unlike with the goblins or the slimes, these extra large rats were just rats. There were no real Skills or dangerous aspects to them besides extra size. Sure, they could do some damage to the defenders, but they weren't as effective as the goblins with their weapons or the slimes with their potentially deadly flammable interiors.

Only four of the seventeen minibosses came over to where she was. She had little difficulty in dispatching them. With the defenders switching out as their Stamina dropped too low, there were few casualties among the humans. This was especially true since much of the goblin gear had been repurposed for human use.

A good example were the goblin swords. They were too short to be useful as a sword for most humans, but they made good spears when attached to the end of a stick. The armor situation was still pretty bad, but the defenders could dish out a fair amount of damage at spear's length. All it really meant, at the end of the day, was that the rats marched into a meat grinder and none came out.

Congratulations on completing the quest!

Top contributors:

Sumit Nandi

Eva Greene

Pradip D'Aramitz

Li Po

Zoran Losnedahl

Wu Guanyu

Crescens Kalniņš

Karolina Hummel

Nikita Crnčević

George Banks

Bryan Pierce

Cillín Tarpinian

Mo Fan

Fang Min

Swapnil Anker

Sabah Mac Duibhshíthe

Ellie Ross

Reward: Double experience to the top contributors, 164 experience to all others. First place receives Tome of Repair★. Second place receives a Spear★.

Eva cursed when she saw the results. Since she'd come in second instead of first, she missed out on the Tome of Repair★ reward. If it was what she suspected, it was a Skill that would allow her to repair her equipment using mana rather than hoping she could put self repair on it. To top it off, she got a spear instead—something she didn't plan on using as she was quite good with the sword.

She spent the next half hour trying to find Sumit in the crowd of people. By the time she did, he'd already used the book to learn the Skill. He did tell her what it did—it worked exactly as she'd suspected—but also said that he wouldn't have traded for the Spear★ even if he hadn't already used the book. She tried to get him to use it on her armor, but he refused, citing the high Mana cost. She thanked him and inwardly cursed again. For all her advantages, there were plenty of things beyond her control.

Eva decided to blow off some steam and see if she could sell the Spear★ for anything useful. Someone could use it, and it'd be a waste for her to have it considering how she preferred to fight.

The area where people were selling things near the entrance was swamped by the returning defenders. Most of them had nothing to trade, but were simply in the way as they moved back to their camps. Eva strolled through the stalls slowly. There weren't many new things for sale than when she'd looked the last time. In fact, there were fewer items for sale overall.

VI

There was one seller that was interested—the same person she'd bought the notebook from. He was now selling a couple of bottles of variously colored liquids in plastic bottles.

“What've you got here?” she asked him.

“Oh, it's good to see you again! These are potions I made,” came the reply.

“Potions you say. Let me have a look.”

Eva picked up one of the red ones and Observed✦ it.

Health Potion✦

Heals 150 Health over 10 seconds

“Not bad. How'd you manage that?”

“Trade secret, my dear!” he smiled. “I'd be willing to trade you some, of course.”

“How much for the health and stamina ones?”

“Two for a Basic Shard▲. We can figure out something else if you've got other items for trade, but that's the base price.”

“So you’ve decided to use them as currency?”

“Mhm.”

“What about this Spear★ ? It's System-generated at Journeyman★ from the fight just now.”

The salesman thought for a moment before he answered.

“How about five Health✦ and five Stamina Potions✦?”

Eva had no idea whether that was good or bad. It implied that the spear was worth five basic shards at the very least. The man would probably make a ton off of it when the defenders and guards came back from training in the dungeon, but she would rather be rid of the Spear★ and have the potions.

“Ok,” she decided.

With the transaction complete, she wandered around looking for Hideki. They'd neglected to set a meeting point to scout the other town. It was something she deeply regretted and something she promised herself she wouldn't do again. Probably. Well, if she were being honest, she'd do it again many times, but she clung to the hope that maybe just this once a change she wanted to make would stick around longer than ice cream on a hot day.