Time continued to run its course, even though I got the long-awaited level, I was in no hurry to leave the village. While there was an opportunity, I practiced everything that might be useful to me in the future. The body was getting stronger day by day. It is a pity that progress in gaining experience has practically stopped.

Once, during training, to which we began to devote even more time, we heard the bell of our small church. It was an alarm. According to plan, all fighters of the first and higher levels had to take weapons, especially the notorious short bow, and go to the gates of the village. I checked for my blades, grabbed my short bow and arrows, and ran towards the gate. Anna and the others also wanted to see what was happening and followed. I didn't give a damn about the others, but Anna had to be stopped.

- Anna, go home to your mother. - I said, she was not even eleven y.o. So i had to chase her away.

- But I also want to see, I can fight!

- If you go fight, then your mother will definitely kill me, do you really want me to die? Run to Mary as quickly as possible if my life is dear to you.

She stamped her foot, pouted, but ran home.

Having run to the gate, I heard the screams of the innkeeper.

- Everyone who is at level one or higher and is able to use bows climb the fence, the rest stay here! Don't panic or crowd. Attention! Keep the bows behind your back or in your hands at the level of your feet, do not pull them out for everyone to see.

Our village had already arranged such trainings, but usually they were planned and everyone knew about it. In any case, despite people was somewhat nervous, everything looked organized. Well, as much as it could possibly be organized here. The fence near the village was not small, probably four meters, from the inside there were ladders along which the soldiers climbed and stood on the fence. There was almost no place to unfold on it, but there was enough space in width and gradually people filled the free space.

I climbed the extreme staircase away from the gate and, already standing on the fence, began to examine what was the matter.

There were 50 or so people outside. Only five of them were on horseback and were already a hundred meters from the gate, standing still. The rest were still approaching the village. Only five people using horses looked quite presentable, while the rest rather resembled an unorganized motley crowd, and not too well equipped.

The old man Raf, the head of the village and the priest, slowly climbed the wall. Seeing them, One of the riders rode up closer and began to broadcast.

“My name is Richard and I work for the Adventurer's Guild. Here is my badge - he showed a silver badge, it was small and Richard calmly held it with his thumb and forefinger - We were given a task to clean up the wild wolves nearby, we were tired and wanted to rest with you a little. Certainly not for free.

Raf answered him.

- Of course! We are always happy to see adventurers. We have long hoped that someone will take up these wolves and are very glad to see you. - he made half a turn, as if turning behind his back - Wife! Prepare a feast for the guests and hurry up! - Turning back, he said - Come on in friends, we do not live richly, but there will be enough bread for everyone.

There was a brief silence, and soon Richard spoke again.

- Um, then open the gate, how do we get in.

- Oh, forgive the old man. Open the gate! Run! Can't you see people are tired of the road! That's it, the gates are already opening, come in, brothers, don't stand outside!

Indeed, the crowd that stood behind Richard showed a sea of ​​smiles and moved forward. Richard himself hung for a short time, but after ten seconds he shouted.

- Stand your ground! - his fighters stopped. - Senior, we are in no hurry, you first open the gate and we will go right in. Why should we crowd under the gates how much in vain?

- The gates are already opening, see for yourself, we are just peasants and not an army, forgive these idiots. - Turning again, he hurried the peasants, and indeed they began to pull on the ropes and the beam overlapping the gate gradually rose, even the gate began to open slowly with a creak, though very slowly. - You see, friends, they just did not eat porridge, and they are busy for a long time, come in dear guests.

The gates had already begun to open, all the villagers at the gates were relaxed and sparkled with disarming smiles. Some chatted with each other, some smiled sweetly. And of course, I never heard that the old man had some kind of wife, and to whom he spoke only he knew.

Seeing that the gates were beginning to open, the guests were inspired again, and some began to persuade the leader to finally let them inside. This time even the leader smiled slightly and gave the go-ahead, although he let the others go ahead and followed them. The gates continued to open and behind them one could see a number of beauties as if on selection, all young and curvy. The guests increased their pace.

Raf chatted about how glad he was to finally see real adventurers and all kinds of nonsense, and when they were about ten meters away from the gate, he casually said one sentence.

- Wife! Come out and meet the guests.

And then I saw a huge bear about four meters in length and about two in width, he rushed towards the ajar gates at a frightening speed and choked on his own saliva with anticipation on the way. Moreover, the appearance of the bear was strange, it seemed the skin was covered with some kind of layer of strange wood, magic sparks were dancing around it and god knows what else. Obviously, the bear was pre-casted with various buffs. He finally jumped out of the gate when the nearest guest was only a couple of meters away, after which the gate suddenly closed quickly. The speed at which the gate closed, compared to the speed at which it opened, looked so fast that it even made me laugh.

Naturally, as soon as Raf called "Wife" everyone intercepted their bows, loaded arrows and fired a volley into the crowd of guests, without waiting for any additional commands. Thus, a hail of arrows fell on them literally a second earlier than the bear came out to meet them. Unlike the main five, which were well equipped, not all of the remaining ones even had poor shields. Although many villagers, like me, had penalties for ranged weapons, and even if they were ordinary short bows with ordinary arrows, when more than a hundred arrows were fired in the direction of the crowd, the accuracy of the shooting did not play a decisive role. Screams of pain and curses began.

The bear jumped out immediately after the first volley and literally blew off a head with his paw to the first loser he came across, without stopping biting into the face of another one. He was like a fish in the water, as if he had been doing this all his life. At the same time, we continued to shoot in spite of the fact that a bear was raging among the crowd, that was the instruction. Again and again we loaded arrows and fired into the crowd, although the speed of the shots was different and it all looked chaotic, but still quite effective.

"You killed a bandit, gained 3 experience." Not bad. The village is leveling up. It is worth noting that the final blow did not give all the experience from the target, the experience was distributed depending on the damage dealt, so 3 experience is quite a lot for myself, given my penalty for using bows. Maybe I got lucky and made a critical hit? I was shooting somewhere in the direction of the bear, and I myself continued to enjoy the sight of this powerful creature tearing apart miserable people. I even regretted a little that I had not chosen a magician.

Of course the bandits resisted as best they could. At first, they chaotically tried to run out of the shelling zone, but while they ran out and were cut out by a bear, they probably lost about 30 people. One of the ringleaders summoned a two-meter-long wolf, which also looked quite intimidating and ran to the bear. The same summoner began to throw acid arrows at the bear, although he did not always hit, despite the size of the bear. Others also took out bows and crossbows, opening fire or thrown all sorts of frosty rays, rays of negative energy, ice fragments, and so on. The melee fighters, including the leader, simply defended the sorcerers and archers, watching the remnants of the retreating torn to pieces.

At first, the bear ignored the spells, but soon the glowing dots around it died out and the spells began to eat away at its skin and pierce its flesh. A wolf approached him and they entered the battle, but the bear was clearly stronger and even, oddly enough, faster. After a few seconds of exchange of blows, the body of the wolf turned into white stripes, just in a moment those stripes grew in nymber while wolf was fading and they flew up into the sky and completely evaporated. This is how the summoned beings die, just return to their plane or where they came from. Soon after the wolf, the same fate awaited the bear. Some of us continued to shoot, but the distance was already more than 100 meters to the nearest guest, so almost no one could actually hit anymore. And Raf continued to speak all this time, though without a smile and not at all what he had said before.

- Pieces of shit! What kind of people are you !? A bunch of filthy cowards. I hope you will get owned by herd of wolves you rootless creatures! Come here! Where are you puppies running?! Where is your spirit of adventurism? Come out and fight me one on one losers! - his eyes seemed to burn with demonic fire and his face was terribly twisted, now I recognize the old man Raf.

After killing the bear, the guests were not happy, it seemed Richard wanted to say something in revenge, but Raf was constantly shouting in such a piercing demonic voice that Richard couldn't even put in a word. Richard could only listen to Raf and look at the pile of corpses around, his face turned red then turned pale, there was even only two horses left, and then by some miracle. And one of the leaders barely took his legs after falling from his horse. Raf seemed to have infinite energy and continued to curse non stop, in the end, Richard did not say anything and hobbled with the rest of the adventurers on another mission. Only when they could not be seen anymore Raf finally calmed down, it seemed to me that a kind of longing and regret even flashed on his face.

Soon the gates opened and we began to collect all the useful things that we could find, swooped down like vultures. No one controlled or commanded us, our eyes burned with the excitement of profit. Of course I was one of those vulturs and one of the most excited once. Although it was clear that there was not much to get from these grief of adventurers, but such a holiday did not happen every day, it was fun. There could still be some good equipment on some of them. People joked and laughed as they examined the corpses and poked their fingers at the headless bodies mutilated by arrows. Of course, not everyone flocked to the corpses, not everyone liked this picture, but there were enough people who wanted to. When we finished, all the corpses were burned.

Returning home, I explained what had happened. It was a really interesting experience. In fact, the village never lets strangers in. If a person who is not known in the village wants to enter inside, then this person must come under the gate and demonstrate his status. At the same time, a hundred archers will be aimed at his face and if something goes wrong, he will instantly turn into a hedgehog. Launching such a crowd of strangers into the village is just not possible in any way, at least in our village. The tax collector was essentially the only one who visited this village, and everyone knew him very well, and if not him then many of the escorts.

It was not so in all villages, perhaps in other villages closer to Rent it was not so strict, but strangers are definitely welcomed in few places. Once in the past then this village was created, it was called Crap. Back at the time of its foundation it fully corresponded to this name. However, time passed and once, after a similar ambush, more than a hundred "guests" were killed, the hill of corpses was very decent, so the village was renamed to Hill.

---

Half a year later.

Not far from the village, on one of the hills, a man was standing. Although if someone saw him, he would have doubted that this is a man. The entire surface of his humanoid body was black and glossy due to the effect of the Shadow Shield spell. He was surrounded by several magical barriers, shimmering in different colors, and on the ground around him there was a white circle, so white that it blinded the eyes of observer and it seemed that this light was hardly staying inside the circle becouse of how it was shimmering. It was a spell - Spell Mantle. Multi-colored eyes formed and disappeared above his head every second, this is how the True Seeing spell looked like. It seemed almost on the head instead of a helmet hovered a colorless halo, constantly rotating clockwise, it was a spell of Clarity, which gave immunity to any mind affecting spells.

He raised his hands to the sky and began to cast a spell. Red threads gradually appeared around his body and became thicker and higher and went higher into the sky, after a dozen seconds the spell was completed, all the red energy instantly dissolved into nothingness and silence fell. After another couple of seconds, a small earthquake began, fire began to burst out of the ground nearby, gradually the fire filled a radius of ten meters and in the middle of this fire it was difficult but possible to notice the formation of a fire gate. First, a huge sword appeared from them, then a hand, and finally the whole body of the summoned creature. It was Balor, a creature summoned by the 9th circle spell Gate.

The magician initially looked at the creature, but soon turned around and looked towards the village, which could be seen even from here. He pointed at it and said.

- Go. Destroy this village.

Balor snorted, spraying fire around, but still said nothing and went towards the village.