Chapter 25

That Dreaded Laugh

The first day was somewhat quiet. Though there are those experienced hunters on the road they chose to climb the peak, since they all looked young, their group had become a laughing stock.

Especially the guy with the cloak.

Since Siva doesn’t have a visible weapon in him, he immediately became the center of ridicule.

Somehow, it was surprising to learn that Hawkeye has a short temper with those kind of people. But before she could even sprout trouble for their group, Siva only had to look at those guys and smile. After that, they will be off to where they should be going in double pace, some even run scared not looking back.

This action made Volt and the rest wonder what his smile had and so for the rest of their journey until their second day, they were making Siva smile over and over again.

But alas, there was nothing abnormal with his smile and Siva could only whine at his noisy company.

Finally, monsters started to greet them. Siva knew instinctively that those monsters are not products of his ability and so he let them handle the monsters.

One shot on the vital parts, and the monsters who received Hawkeye’s arrows all lost their will to fight. A finishing blow came from the Sword Mage Volt who uses impact type magic, similar to Siva’s Air Shot.

Then there was the Witch Samara.

She only had two magical abilities in her arsenal, despite her Witch image. It’s because just like Volt who had the image of a swordsman, the two are Engineers who actually is similar to Siva. They use inventions to fight in the battlefield.

Volt’s magic was impact type, imbued on the sword and deals devastating damage. His armor was imbued by magic to increase movement speed and the defense was solely left to the material’s high grade.

Meanwhile, Samara’s magic are Float (from the rare magic list) and a talisman magic, Burn, a fire element damage type magic. But what she uses in fights are not magic since Float consumes 1 MNA per second, she had no room to use Burn to cause damage. After all, it was a weak tier 1 magic and she only uses it for when she was defending from attacks.

But what she uses in fights is a cannon.

Simply put, Volt specializes in melee weapons and armor engineering while Samara focused on ranged weapons engineering.

Siva was utterly surprised how she used the cannon to deal tremendous damage. Not only it was somewhere in the A-class weapon specs, but the damage output in itself was surprising. With only two shots, she can take care of a D-rank monster and turn it into ashes, literally.

I wonder how long I can defeat a D-rank now.

As Siva pondered in these thoughts, he only watched and observed. While Hawkeye was dealing irritatingly damaging vitally placed arrows, Samara was firing off white volleys of light that finished them off. And for those lucky enough to not get hit by Samara’s large two handed cannon, Volt was cutting those monsters with his surprisingly large sword a third his size.

His slices burned their skins like paper, leaving any monster who got in his way either dead or on their last breath to die.

Weakness? This group’s weakness is Agatha. She had Tier 3 healing magic and Tier 2 buff magic. And Siva knew instinctively that this group had first focused on improving Agatha’s Magic Abilities before starting the enhancements on their individual talents. Though in a side note, Samara’s five second delay and cartridge type weapon is a weakness itself while Volt’s enemy is fatigue and Hawkeye’s nemesis is distraction.

But upon seeing them fight, the fact that they have this unspoken team work formed a strong impression in Siva’s mind. Their coordination was superb, no, it was more than superb, it was splendid! Without so much as looking at each other or even uttering a word, the three of them can form a strong barrier that not only was very intimidating, it was also a solid wall that defends their queen, Agatha, very tightly.

Slowly, while fighting, they can expand that barrier and Siva was slowly feeling that he was getting a bit excited. He wanted to join the fight.

But then he realized, that’s the very thing he doesn’t want to know. The monsters that’s been appearing lately are just few low D and C-ranked monsters and he knew that even at his level, he can defeat them. But what if he gets out of control and summoned a horde of C-rank monsters? He knew, he saw, they get easily tired of fighting off six C-rank monsters. Yes they can defeat them after fifteen seconds but after that, they get tired.

Though they were far from being exhausted, but what if it’s a horde of them?

What he was afraid of most are seeing comrades dying in front of his eyes. So as much as he can help it, he was stopping himself from getting agitated and was doing his best to retrain the shaking of his muscles.

After all, even though he won’t say it, he was happy that he can share this adventure with them.

Even though it was against the rules.

Then on the third day, that’s where the monsters became more and more powerful. Though C-ranked monsters are known to only group a total of five, it still took them fifteen seconds to be taken out.

Just in case, Siva prepared the Ender on his back if any monster approached Agatha and his location. But thankfully, seventeen seconds are the furthest their team can handle the T-Rex Herons and the tri-horned Sigma.

“Are you guys tired?” Siva asked innocently.

“Well, we‘re just exercising.” Volt answered. “We haven‘t had an exercise for the past month and so it was also a good thing that we could exert our efforts here.”

“That‘s right.” Hawkeye stretched her fingers. “But what about you, Siva? You can‘t escape my eyes. I can clearly see that you are stopping yourself from joining the fray. Why aren‘t you, anyways?”

Siva paused before he gave an “Uhmm” sound that made it more obvious that she hit the nail in the head.

And so all he could do is scratch his cheek. “Well, I really am stopping myself. Because if I join in on your fun, it might ruin your formation and your coordination. And besides, you guys looked great seeing it from the sidelines.”

“I doubt it.” Samara replied with flat eyes.

“I‘ll be honest here,” Agatha interrupted raising her right hand. “I sometimes see Siva smiling and shaking while holding his sword’s handle.” Then she eyed him with an apologetic stare. “Sorry.”

SIGH. “Alright, I admit it. You see, what I‘m afraid of is pulling you guys down with my ability.”

“So what is that ability?” Volt asked.

“Yeah tell us so we can be prepared!” Agatha added.

“Well…”

Seeing his reluctance, Hawkeye moved up front and she put her hands behind as she prompted, “Well?”

And the final push came from Samara. “Come on.”

“Actually, my ability is made for soloists. I can call on hordes of monsters to fight with and they will not stop coming until I stop moving.”

There were silence after the speech.

Even the wind stopped blowing and joined in on the silence of their group.

The regular hunters they’ve been seeing since day 1 had all vanished. They were already alone in the area for the past hour and this silence made them realize that fact at the back of their minds. But then again, the large cause of their silence was actually Siva’s revelation of his secret ability.

“That‘s it?” Volt’s brows curled.

Siva was taken aback. “Yeah. That‘s it.”

Then Hawkeye started to walk and brushed off the words Siva just said. “I thought it was a Unique Skill that can call meteorites. But call monsters…”

Agatha and Samara followed Volt and Siva was left to ponder on their reactions.

“It can be dangerous you know.” He followed.

“Yeah, whatever, on the next fight, call the monsters so we can practice.”

Volt gave him a disappointed tone as he answered and Siva was tempted to sigh and smile as he replied to his challenge with a chuckling, “Heh. You asked for it.” while actually trying to hide the fact that he was pleased deep within his heart.

It was because he knew they were hiding the fact that they were shocked to hear of that ability. Of course they already realized, it was really a troublesome ability.

Especially if the user is able to call hordes of S-rank monsters or even worse, dragons.

And as if luck had faced their back against them, a group of five Herons were waiting for them up front while munching on the remains of unlucky hunters. A sight of blood and torn up limbs were on the bushes and roots of trees. So the reason why they never saw other hunters is because these guys had already ate them.

At the sight of them, Volt drew out his weapon.

“Say, is there some sort of restriction to that ability?”

“Yes there is.” Siva answered him firmly. “First, it only activates if I am agitated. Second, I can‘t control how many monsters I can call with this ability since it was an AOE type of ability.”

“How wide?” Samara asked and summoned two big cannons. “I mean, how wide is the AOE?”

“A hundred meter radius from me.”

Then Hawkeye pulled an arrow on her bow. “Is there anything else we need to know?”

“Well, the third restriction is that I can only call on monsters the same rank as me.”

Agatha pointed out. “Ah…so when you said your rank is low…”

“I deliberately set it that way. I am also aware of my limits so I am taking it all slow at the same time.”

“I see. So is there a fourth restriction?” Asked Volt.

“Yes, there is.” As Siva replied, he dematerialized the sword he’s been displaying and changed his gear to his first ever, the one he’s really used to using. He fixed the grip of his fingers and saw the bewildered look on the faces of his companions.

“That is…?”

Siva took a step forward and motioned to charge but leaned back first as he said, “The final restriction is that I am their only target once they are summoned. The good thing about this ability is that once I recognized something or someone as an enemy, his defenses will go down by 70%.”

Hearing those words, Volt and the others exchanged glances in puzzlement.

And so Agatha prompted, “Meaning?”

“It means that you guys can attack them while they are busy attacking me.”

And after he said that, he charged right into the pack of monsters with a smile. His muscles were shaking, his body was trembling in excitement, he was literally in a bliss and his mind was in ecstasy. His first victim died after three seconds. The second victim followed after a moment and in between them, there were two loud explosions followed by a wide spill of blood.

Their jaws all dropped seeing how Siva fought. He jumped abnormally high, clung on the eye of a monster and killed it before it could even scream in pain.

At that moment, another boom sound echoed and a T-Rex looking Heron fell down at which Siva followed with a killing blow in its eye.

Blood literally spilled over that human and within moments since he charged right in, all five monsters died and the lone standing victor was Siva, draped in bright crimson blood and was pulling out a sword from the monster’s eyes.

And then, Hawkeye spoke, “I know that stance…”

“Me too.”

“I‘ve seen it before too…”

“Yeah. That video in the internet, there was no doubt about it…the only thing missing is…”

Agatha shivered, Samara was dumbstruck and Volt looked at them wide eyed. And the moment he said his words, the sight up front resumed on the missing lyric that would complete the phrase they saw in the net. And as a comment, anyone who had seen that video could never forget what would happen next.

All of them said it.

““That dreaded laugh…””