“What on Mortis are those things?!” Sister Mirabel exclaimed. She had never seen undead like the ones in front of her before. They looked like incredibly ugly green children whose eyes held a visible malice.

“I believe Lady Alice called those ‘Goblins’. And she seemed to be afraid they will put children in her… The undead cannot multiply in such a way, can they?”

“Doesn’t matter!” Kevin interjected. “They are good target practice! [Fireball]!”

Without stopping to assess the situation, Kevin summoned a fireball and launched it at the goblins. The comet-like orb of flaming death landed in the center of the group and exploded, sending heat and pressure out like a mortar shell.

“What are you doing?!” screamed Sister Mirabel. “You can’t just throw those around so carelessly! What if you catch the convent on fire?!”

Kevin didn’t even bother to acknowledge the woman berating him. In his eyes, women only had one place, and that place was as housewives. He was a product of his time and family, after all, and the rigid family structure and strict gender roles that he was born into and its views on the feminine gender stuck to him like a potent adhesive. He was born between 1930 and 1940 in the Deep South of the USA and in a town that had seen nary a feminine soul enter the workforce. To his junior Klansman eyes, women needed to know their place and deal with it.

“[Fireball]! [Fireball]! [Fireball]!”

Launching three more fireball spells through the gate, Kevin hoped to hit something or at least give the undead pause. It seemed to have worked, but he also did exactly what the Warrior Nun had feared. Soon enough the convent section of the monastery was ablaze and there was no one available to put it out.

“Heh, heheh!” Kevin chuckled as he watched the convent turn into an inferno.

“YOU DAMN MONSTER!”

Sister Mirabel’s outburst caught everyone off guard. A member of the clergy calling a church-sanctioned Hero a ‘Damned Monster’ was enough to get her not only expelled from the clergy, but also excommunicated.

“Problem, *****?” Kevin smirked. He was at times far more cunning than he generally appeared. Although sometimes he was an utter idiot, other times he was far more… calculating. He had played her like a fiddle. He made sure that the woman had seen him abusing his privileged status more than enough times to push her to the edge, and now not only was the convent that she had not only spent her life building up ablaze, but the orphans she cared for were likely dying within.

Just that one final push was all it took to push her over the edge and lose everything. Soon, Kevin thought, she would belong to him. She would soon be a slave, his slave, just like all people with dark skin were supposed to be.

“You crossed the line. Take her away and prepare her for excommunication.”

The Abbott made his declaration and the Abbess nodded sagely. Mirabel tried to speak, but was silenced by a club to the head. Kevin watched all of this with glee. This would make the seventh ****** he had baited into becoming his slave. All he had to do was throw his weight and position around and BAM, he could have all he needed and wanted.

Turning back to face the gate, everyone watched as more goblins came towards them, this time accompanied by several different colors of gelatinous blobs. Several of the goblins were riding wolves, and this time the monsters did not wait for the Heroes to attack. They charged forth and met the defenders head on.

Or, at least they tried to.

Kevin let fly another few fireball spells in rapid succession before using Earth Magic to make a packed dirt wall where the dividing gate was with only a single one-person-wide gap for anything to move through. Kevin was thinking tactically for the first time since he got here. His ‘immeasurable talent with magic’ as his teachers put it, was showing and he made sure that everyone knew who exactly the top dog was.

“Hey, Jap, go deal with the pests. Shouldn’t be too hard for the ‘Honoraburu Samurai Warrior’.

“The name is Nagato Yamagishi, gaijin. I expect you to remember it, barbarian. Now, watch a true Yuusha at work.”

Nagato summoned his ‘Gift’ onto himself. A set of crimson Samurai armor manifested itself on his body and the two swords of a Samurai appeared on his side.

“Watch what the greatest disciple of my family’s technique is capable of!”

Nagato charged the gap and cut his way through the creatures trying to squeeze through the bottleneck. As he reached the other side, however, Kevin used his Earth Magic to seal the hole. Cackling like a supervillain, he then began to launch balls of superheated water over the wall like mortar shells.

Having seen what happened to those that lashed out at Kevin, everyone stayed silent even as the screams of the monsters overlapped with those of Kevin’s fellow hero. After a ten or so boiling [Waterball] spells had been fired, the packed dirty barricade exploded as Nagato powered through it and body slammed Kevin to the ground.

“Damn American! I’ll kill you, you damned dirty traitor!”

Before Nagato could plunge his katana into Kevin’s chest, he noticed that Kevin had already pressed his ‘Fuck Everything Gun’ against Nagato’s side.

“Want to dance, Jap? Which is faster; my finger or your arms? This baby has a hair trigger; I so much as flinch and you are gone forever!”

“Grrrr….” Nagato got off of Kevin and begrudgingly walked away.

“That’s right you Jap bastard! Know your place, you fucking squinty-eyed freak!”

The clergy assembled watched the monster of a Hero they had summoned continue his trend of destroying all connections that the Heroes were supposed to have with silent and disguised disgust. They were already regretting ever having summoned these people. In their eyes, they couldn’t tell which was worse; not having Heroes to fight off the Darksol Empire or having these terrible and twisted brats who refused to cooperate and actively tried to sabotage each other.

…

“Wave 1 and Wave 2 down. Sending in Wave 3. Taking previous displays of power into account; estimated strength of other individuals based on reports being factored in as well… Gathering Wave 4 for eventual deployment.”

Zero Noir watched the events that transpired just moments ago through the eyes of dozens of birds and other small animals. He was getting into the swing of things and was slowly ramping up the difficulty of the waves of mobs he sent through the Dungeon Entrance and into the monastery. By his estimates as a seasoned player of TTRPGs, MMORPGs and RPGs in general, he figured that he needed between 4 and 7 more waves before he started to push the Heroes to their limits. In his current frame of mind, he was not the paranoid mess he usually was. Now he was analytical, calculating and completely focused on his task.

“Estimated time until current wave is eliminated under current threat; 1.56 minutes. Estimated time for Wave 4 to survive; 2.68 minutes. Will correct for deviations as situations arise.”

Zero, like the golem he had become, was now acting more like a machine than a man. So completely engrossed in his work was he that he did not notice the arrival of a certain figure. It was High Tide out near Darksol, and the ‘daughter’ of Zalga had come to play around a bit with the so-called Heroes. Soon, a battle between a pseudo-Hero and the ‘true’ Heroes would begin and sculpt the land for ages to come.