Night had already almost fallen when it happened. The entire day had passed by with only a single fight, which he had managed to stay away from. But now, one of the guards was assigning Ferdinand to go to the other side of the fort as reinforcement.

It was simply bad luck or more like a missed opportunity. If the guard had been a normal human being, they wouldn't have noticed him, but instead picked someone further away, but in front of them. Not Freddy who stood behind the guard.

But, alas, every person of importance seemed to be superhuman and determined to deny him all opportunities.

So, together with nineteen other fighters, he was running around the fort to get to the other side.

Before he even reached halfway there, he could already make out the thundering noise of what was no doubt a horde of monsters, and when he finally stood atop the wall at the side of the other defenders, he saw what they were dealing with.

The monsters that were charging at them in tight formation, were at the very least twenty bulls, every single one not smaller than twice the size of the animal they resembled.

They had come just in time, as the monsters were already only two hundred meters away. A distance that meant almost nothing at the speed they were going.

At that moment, he saw movement in front of the wall. Someone was still out there!

Then, he recognized who it was, but it was already too late to save her. He could only silently watch as Lucy stood right in the monster's path. He watched as she stood there frozen, pointing at the monsters in fear...

No, she was pointing at them, but the gesture was wrong. It looked more like she was trying to shoot some kind of energy beam or magical attack at the monsters. But of course, nothing like that happened.

His eyes went back to the monsters. It may sound heartless, but he couldn't get distracted from the important things.

Then, suddenly, three of the monsters in the first row fell, stumbling out of nowhere. Violently ragdolling over the ground, they came to a stop after almost twenty meters, only for the monsters following them to run right into them.

Like a Rube-Goldberg-machine of death, they ran into each other, piercing each other with their horns and getting flung through the air with broken limbs.

No fifty meters away from the moat, the monsters Freddy had thought might just raze the entire fort, came to a very abrupt halt. The thundering noise of their hooves exchanged for their cries of pain.

In the corner of his eye, he could see Lucy falling to the ground. Suddenly, the entire scenario made a lot more sense.

Then came the cry of the Commander, and like a band of bandits, the fighters streamed down the wall in an uncoordinated mob.

The first to reach them quickly began stabbing at the monsters lying around on the ground, while small groups of four to six people surrounded the few monsters that had come out of it unharmed. Now that they weren't moving at over fifty km/h anymore, they were significantly less of a threat.

Freddy, however, was doing something different. He had seen an opportunity. He had waited for a few moments until most people were gone and then ran along the wall until he reached around the middle before making his way down.

As soon as he reached his goal, he asked: "Lucy, are you ok?"

The only answer he got was a low grunt.

"Is she okay?", he heard a voice behind him asking. Looking over his shoulder, he could see the commander coming towards him.

"I don't know, but I think she... Commander! Behind you!", before he could finish his warning, the small bulge in the ground he had noticed exploded, and out of it came a monstrosity.

The Commander had spun around just in time to block the meter-long claws that were swiping at her back with her shield. She quickly swung her sword at the enemy, only to get blocked by another clawed hand. With both her hands otherwise occupied, she decided to stomp on the monster's head, but before her foot connected, it got suddenly caught by several pink tentacles.

"Tsk!", she clicked her tongue.

Then, her sword lets out a soft green glow, and the next time she brings it down on her enemy's head, it cuts cleanly through the monster's claws.

"EVERYONE! KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE GROUND, WE HAVE MOLES INCOMING!", the Commander's voice echoes over the battlefield.

Now that it was dead, Freddy had a chance to take a closer look at it, and indeed, it was a mole, although a gigantic one. But it wasn't one of the cute variety. What he had previously thought to be tentacles were actually attached to its nose. Star-nosed-moles, he thought they were called.

"You, take the girl and bring her inside the fort. But stay with her in case one of these bastards appears again. If one appears, try to stab it in its nose and then get away."

Commander Klein quickly helped him to get Lucy on his back, but before he could even take his first step towards the fort, he suddenly heard a high-pitched sound.

Then another.

And another.

And within seconds, the entire battlefield was covered by the headache-inducing sounds.

Freddy looked around in confusion, unable to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. Despite the bonfires, it was already too dark to see anything properly.

At that moment he realized. Night and sound, there was only one animal he could think of. Freddy looked up, only to be greeted by the large shadow of a gigantic bat, one even larger than that of the other bats around it.

"Get to the fort! Now!", Freddy could barely make out the Commander's voice through the constant noise. Actually, he wasn't even sure if he really heard her, and he wasn't just instinctively reading her lips, his mind creating the illusion of her voice in his head.

With a mighty flap of its wings, the gigantic bat came to a sudden stop. The wind it produced was almost enough to make Freddy stumble. He quickly caught himself and ran.

The last thing he saw, was the Commander jumping towards the enemy.

For the first time, Daniel felt that it would be better if he wasn't a Hero. Not being able, and not even allowed to do anything until the boss appeared, he had been anxious the entire day. Sure, there had only been one fight so far and he even sneaked out at some point to talk with Victoria, but they hadn't been able to talk much at all since he shot himself in the foot with his own excuse.

Then again, if he wasn't a Hero, he would probably feel even more helpless right now.

Looking out of the window, he saw that it was already getting late. It was at that moment, that he sensed vibrations in the ground. Monsters were coming from the plains, they were fast and quite a few as well. But as soon as he wanted to go, he could feel Mother Earth's disapproval. That meant the Boss wasn't amongst them.

With an anxious heart, Daniel sat back down. At least they weren't coming from the forest, where Victoria was. Not much later, the vibrations changed, the charging monsters must have been stopped somehow.

From that moment, things started to develop rapidly. First, he felt tremors in the ground. Not from creatures running on top of it, but from underneath and rapidly going upwards.

Again, he wanted to go, and again, his goddess stopped him.

And then, only moments after he felt them break through the ground, the shrieking started. And Daniel hadn't felt them coming. That meant that they were either exceptionally stealthy creatures, which he doubted for monsters at their low level, or they could fly.

That was a problem. It wasn't like he couldn't fight them flying enemies, but with his patron goddess being an earth goddess, most of his abilities were related to the element. That made his attacks slow, but heavy and in turn weak against light but fast enemies. Which was pretty much the minimum requirement for everything flying.

Even worse, by not being in contact with the ground, he couldn't even use that to restrain them.

And of course, just as he thought about that, he could feel Mother Earth urging him on. The Boss had appeared.

Before he could even stand up, he heard a shrieking louder than anything he ever heard before. Even from such a distance and through a, admittedly rather flimsy, housewall it almost hurt physically as the soundwaves traveled through his body.

Daniel now knew where he had to go. He quickly went into a crouch and pushed off from the ground, simply ignoring the wooden roof he shot through.

Two seconds later, he was twenty meters high in the air and getting a good overview of the battlefield. It was pandemonium.

These people might be able to fight gigantic wolves or similar animals, but he could see several scenes of people looking up in the sky or down on the ground, only to get ambushed from the other direction and get cut apart by claws.

Then, he saw the Boss. It was a gigantic bat, just its body was at least twice as big as Daniel's. Its wingspan on the other hand must have been over ten meters to be able to carry it, and only because its body was enhanced by Aura could its muscles even move the wings.

He also noticed something different. One person was running away from the Boss, but unlike others, he was carrying someone on his back. Also, another person was charging at the boss seemingly covering the pair's retreat.

At twenty meters, Daniel had already the highest point of his flight, and falling another twenty would take only about two seconds. But, in a fight, two seconds were almost an eternity, especially in fights between high-level fighters.

As such, Daniel was helpless and could only watch as the person ran at the boss, only to get pierced by its claws almost as if in an afterthought, their shield barely better than a sheet of paper.

Daniel had already long since created himself a weapon and then swung it down at the monster. At least, the Commander's sacrifice hadn't been in vain. She had distracted it long enough that he could get a clean hit on its wings. If he did, the monster would become grounded and be easy pickings for him.

Half a second later, his sword connected.