“Are you okay, Hitomi?” A girl in mage clothing shakes her friend’s shoulder.

“Oh, sorry. My bad. I was just spacing out again.” Her friend whose thinking got interrupted replies with a low voice.

“Get a hold of it, Hitomi. It will be dangerous if you space out like that in the middle of a battle, you will be injured, you know.”

“Sorry for worrying you, Airi. It’s just that I feel very nervous, you know, with so many towns being under attack from the goblin army.”

“Yeah, I can understand that. I heard that things are quite bad in the places the other groups go. The place that Kaito’s group went to suffers the most. It’s said that there were already more than 40,000 people died when the reinforcement request arrived.”

“So, finally, we are going to step into the battlefield, right? Into a warzone, as a student.” A timid girl next to Hitomi says worriedly.

“I know that you hate fighting, Kazuko. But your healing is necessary. A lot of people are injured and they need your help. We will also have to rely on you when we get hurt too.” Grabbing the timid girl’s hand, Airi says with a begging voice.

“I know. That’s why I agree to go along with you to the battlefield. Not to fight, but to save the life of the people. But you can understand it too, right? Stepping into a real battle without anyone looking after you, having to adapt to the situation with the right judgment, making a correct decision what to do and what not to, giving instruction to people. All of these actions can determine the life and death of one person or many. Just thinking about the responsibility makes my shoulder feel heavy.” Kazuko whose job determined is a priest replies.

Hitomi and Airi become silent as they hear her friend’s words. They know that this is a trial they must face when accepting their identities as the summoned heroes.

The country Vahalla is facing a national crisis. Right in its territory, a goblin army suddenly appeared and attacked every town and villages it came across. It’s not a simple monster wave, but a calamity to those who heard of it.

Brendhill town is not the only place currently under attack. After the first wave destroying a lot of the villages, a second wave has come, targeting the surviving towns from the previous wave, with a completely different scale of power. Not only the level of the goblins is higher, they are also more organized, have more classes. Furthermore, there is a report that some of them have grown parts belonging to different monster species. To add to that, the goblins also tame high-level monsters as part of their elite forces and devise strange strategies that are giving the ones commanding headache.

The country has given orders for the cities and strongholds to send out reinforcement to the towns, but an unexpected development halts such order. A large army from the demon country is stationed at the border. As a result, a majority of the army and elite forces are forced to station at the border for the incoming battle with the demons instead of supporting the towns.

However, despite stationing there, the demon army does not move at all. They just silently stare at the human’s wall and army while organizing a battle formation. Meanwhile, aware of the crisis inside the country, the human army does not dare to make any initiative to attack at all and does the same thing as the demon army, organizing the troop without actually fighting. Thus, a strange battle of starring starts between two races.

Comparing to the threat caused by the goblin army, the demon army is much more of the concern. Therefore, the reinforcement sent to the towns is cut down and become not enough, that’s when the summoned heroes come to use.

Being only recently summoned, and just recently consenting to fight for the human side, the summoned heroes have been only trained with the human trainers so far, getting only the fundamentals of fighting in this world. Even so, the quality of the summoned heroes shines brightly in Vahallad royalty's eyes. After two weeks of instruction, from being non-combatant with zero experience, they can already fight as skilled as veteran soldiers, reaching the level of the commander or true mage in a short time. But that is still not enough for the battle with the demons.

With the appearance of the goblin army, the king uses this as a chance to sharpen the blades of these heroes, giving them a chance for real combat experience, a chance to level up and mature as real fighters for humanity. The heroes are divided into many groups, sending to different towns as reinforcement. The group that Hitomi is in will go to the Brendhill town. These three girls will lead a group of solders from the royal capital to help defend the town. The king heavily emphasized that the survival of the town depends on them.

In Tristina, there exists a device called teleporting gate, allowing nearly instant traveling between two connecting gates regardless of distance. This powerful magic device can only work by being powered a large of amount of mana, provided by a mana reactor. Both are very expensive and hard to produce, making them quite few in number. Even so, the country Vahalla is special, sparing no effort to possess a large amount of them, and install them in important places throughout the country, creating a network of teleportation portals. The group will use this network to travel to their appointed places.

After waiting for more than an hour, the teleporting gate finally finishes setting up and connecting to the other side. The hero group consisting of three girls: a martial artist Hitomi, a priest Kazuko, and a mage Airi check their equipment for the last time. Accompanying with them is a group of knights whose levels are between 30 and 50.

“May I have a word, Lady Tanaka Kazuko?” A person in plate armor approaches. His twin horn helmet and red cloak differ him from the rest of the knights, indicating him being an upper rank.

“You can drop the honorific, knight commander. Is there anything you would like to say?”

“Sorry for interrupting your conversation, but I think that you are thinking too much about it. We are fully aware that you are still inexperienced and need training. That’s why we are here to help and advise you when the need arises. Although this is not what I should say, you should not pressure yourself too much because of his majesty’s words.”

“He is right, Kazuko. What we should concentrate now is to do what we are good at. Things like giving out order or accessing the situation, we still have much to learn and require help from the commander and those at the scene. Stop thinking too much about those. Knight commander, I trust that you can give us the best instruction so that we can perform the best on the battlefield.” Hitomi says.

“Yes, thank you for giving such an honor.” The knight commander bows in respond.

“Yosh, the gate has finished setting up. Let us all depart.” Hitomi signals to everyone present.

“””“Yes!”””” All the personnel respond at the same time.

……………………….

Embracing the resolve to march through the battlefield, fighting a horde of monsters and overcoming danger and death, Hitomi and her friends brace themselves for a fight staking their life on. However, the situation at hand no longer requires them to do so. The fight is already over.

When they pass the teleportation gate and meet Brian Rondo, who is the town mayor and commander of the local army, an urgent messenger comes in and says “The Earth Snakes are defeated. We have won, Sir!”

Surprise appears on everyone’s face as they hear the news. From what they know, this town is nearly doomed. With more than 20 Earth Snakes above level 30 accompanying with hundreds of goblins with specialized classes, there is no way that this town could hold long, and now suddenly someone says that all the Earth Snakes are defeated. Such a contradiction can make everyone doubt what they are listening.

“Tell me the details. How can the snakes be defeated when I just felt the trembling they caused just a moment ago?” Brian grabs the messenger at the collar, shaking him violently.

“It is the truth, sir. The mysterious warrior girl that came yesterday slain those snakes with just a few slashes. And before we realized what was going on, all the snakes were in pieces, scattering around the ruins of the residential area.” The messenger hurriedly replied.

“That girl? I know that she is strong, but to think that she can kill all those snakes with ease. I really have underestimated her. I guess her background being the disciple of a solitary master is true. What about the other girl?”

“We have seen her in a different area. It seems like she fought an elite unit of goblins. It looks like a hard fight as the building they fought in is now in ruin. Traces of magic skill belonging to upper-rank true mage are present. I believe that the elite goblin unit was quite powerful but she managed to take them all down.”

“I see. So how about the rest of the goblin army?”

“Despite their specialized classes and surprise attack tactic, we managed to kill all of them with a moderate casualty. However, the overall damage is quite intense, with a lot of non-combatants and combatants dead by the rampaging of the snakes and the elite goblin unit. We have lost more than 1000 people tonight, with many injured heavily.” The messenger reports.

“Haiz. Such a heavy loss for the town. To think that we have lost so many people so fast in a single night.”

“Sir Brian, may you hear my request?” The knight commander approaches and speaks up.

“Yes. If there is anything I can offer, I will help. Sorry for making you come over here, taking away the opportunity from the other town to receive help when we can manage it by ourselves.” The town mayor apologizes.

“That is unnecessary. I doubt that you expected that you could fend off the sudden attack as well. May I have a meeting with the two people you mentioned just now? I think we will need their help to provide us the information on the enemies they fought. Unlike the low-level monsters, high-level monsters require a lot of information and planning in order to subjugate them. Asking for this information from them can benefit us greatly as we can quickly come back and send this knowledge to the other towns, helping them making a strategy. If possible, if we’d like to have their cooperation to come with us and help the other towns. With their powerful force, we can save more people in shorter time. Of course, we will reward them appropriately after everything is over.”

“This matter I cannot decide. As you have heard, they are disciples of a solitary master. Their perception can be very strange at time. Although they are quite open-minded and have a kind heart, they are also quite careful about everything at the same time. I can ask them to meet you but everything after that I cannot help.”

“No, what you have just said helped me a lot. I will try the best to negotiate with them.”

“Very well. You heard them. Send a message to those two immediately.”

“Yes, sir.” The messenger receives the order and gets ready to leave. However, a voice stops him from doing so.

“There is no need for that. I am already here.” A girl in black witch clothing appears behind the door, accompanied by a cat next to her feet. “Now I know why you are missing when the outside is a mess.”

“Good evening, Makoto Tachibana. Your words really shame me. This place is very important so I have to come here and defend it.” Despite being surprised by her sudden appearance, Brian quickly gains composure again and greets the girl.

“Don’t worry. I can understand it. Seeing so many strong people in this room, I believe that your priority is put on the right thing.” The girl strides into the room, assessing everyone in front of her.

“Makoto Tachibana? A Japanese name?” Hitomi lowly mutters.

At the same time, Makoto focuses on the three girls leading a group of knights. In her eyes, their stat table has a hidden property in the job tab, which is written as “Altered to be hero”. Then she speaks.

“Summoned heroes?”

“Heh, who?” Brian becomes confused at her words, but the face of the knight commander suddenly pales in response to her word, then quickly becomes tense as he stares at Makoto.