Two days before the height of the monster surge, Hugo finished crafting. It had been slightly stressful, hiding the fact that he was fabricating and inscribing from the maids. The real difficulty was acquiring a mana stone for the optimize ritual. He had asked for one from his mother and she flatly refused. Apparently Florin had a real problem with spending all of his money on booze and women, and she didn’t want to risk her son not being ready for the planting.

He got the necessary stone by stealing it from the azad table. He was the only one that played it so no one would notice that it was gone until he had the chance to replace it.

That is what he was planning on doing right now. Volunteering on the wall should give him plenty of mana stones. He had his sleek, optimized armor, and his geared crossbow. The total weight for all of it was less than twenty pounds. He also carried an additional twenty pounds in ammunition. This time he brought enough to do a full shift up on the walls. He flipped down the visor on his helmet and walked into the tower on the northern wall.

“Is that some kind of costume?” the receptionist behind the desk said.

Hugo was offended that she couldn’t see how awesome he looked. He knocked on his cuirass to show that it was metal and said, “It’s armor. I am here to volunteer for a shift up on the wall.”

Knowing what her next question would be, he solidified a buckler shield on his arm.

“Yeah, alright. We got plenty of people wanting easy money right now. But monsters keep coming so we can use you anyway. Talk to the sentinel captain on section N-2. He will record your contribution. If you kill less than five monsters an hour, you don’t get paid anything,” she said with a bored expression. She handed him a number and said, “This is your number, give it to the captain and make sure he knows it’s yours. That’s how you get paid out. Next shift starts in a half hour, and we don’t pay out the same day.”

Hugo nodded along, he knew most of that already. He stood around with everyone else that was volunteering on the next shift. Twenty minutes later he followed the new shift up to the walls. He got several strange looks at his sleek armor and strange weapon. He ignored them. They would see, soon enough.

The top of the wall was hectic with people running around. Tallinn was a larger city than the other ones he had seen before, and they had a slightly different strategy than the normal sized cities. Their wall was only three stories tall and it was slightly thinner than the ones he was used to. To make up for it, their ballista were much larger and fired exploding rounds. One shot would often take out several monsters and the countryside surrounding the wall was pitted with craters from the constant explosions.

Hugo checked in with the sentinel captain and made sure he was watching before Hugo started loosing bolts down range.

A combination of the unique crossbow design and optimize ritual meant that his bolts went farther than the volunteers nearby. A lot farther. Magic and arrows were flying about three hundred yards out, creating a kill zone in front of the wall. Hugo’s first shot went six hundred yards.

It missed.

This time he used the scope on top of the crossbow. He missed again. The mithril explosion still staggered the troll he was aiming at, so the next shot was easier. As it exploded into blue dust, Hugo heard two dings sound in his ears. He smiled. Rank four after two shots. Now that he was dialed in, this was going to be a fun night.

A few people took notice after he killed the first five monsters. But once he killed twenty monsters before they could get within 300 yards of the wall, more people took notice. It wasn’t the height of the monster surge yet, so Hugo’s swift work was limiting the amount of monsters they had access to.

For the first few hours, they just grumbled a bit. Perhaps they assumed he would run out of bolts soon. When he didn’t run out, they grumbled a little louder. He was exploding monsters with every other shot. Dire wolves, Iridescent Beetles, Treeants, slimes, hobgoblins, and manticores all fell to his bomb bolts.

A huge man walked up to Hugo and said, “You are doing good today, little man. Congratulations.” He slapped Hugo on the back affably.

Hugo could tell that the slap was supposed to stagger him. He didn’t even budge. The impetus runes he had inscribed on his armor worked perfectly to steal the momentum from his slap.

The giant frowned and said, “Well my little knight, we seem to have a bit of a problem. You are doing a bit too good. You are stealing our kills. I don’t know if you know that yet, but that is very rude. We all take turns here so everyone gets some mana stones.”

Hugo looked up at the man. He was human but almost as tall as a riese. Normally, he would be intimidated by the harvester looming over him. With this armor on, he felt a lot braver. “Oh really? They didn’t tell me about that when I volunteered for a shift,” Hugo said and glanced around. There weren’t any sentinels on this section of the wall, just a bunch of crabby harvesters. He knew the sentinel captain could see them though, it’s how he recorded their participation.

“It’s one of those unspoken rules,” the man said, “A way to be fair to everyone. You don’t want to make all of us mad, do you?”

Hugo wasn’t frightened by the implied threat. He stared the man in the eyes and said, “I’m just here to protect the walls. Do you really want to stop me from doing that?”

“Come on, silver knight. This is our livelihoods here. We are only asking for a fair share,” a different harvester said.

This got through to him. Hugo didn’t need the money, they did. He sighed, “Alright, good point. I can slow down a bit.”

He flipped up the trigger guard on his crossbow. For the next few hours, he only killed twelve monsters. Just enough that he would get credit for manning the walls. The harvesters around him nodded in thanks.

An hour before his shift ended, he saw something in the distance. Something big. It was headed straight for their section of the wall. Hugo yelled, “Anyone mind if I take out the queen antlion?”

A few chuckles sounded from the harvesters around him. The giant of a man said, “Knock yourself out, silver knight.”

Hugo grinned. They had seen him blow up monsters, but they still didn’t think he could take out this one. To be fair, it was a pretty big monster, normally handled by the ballista mounted on the wall. The queen antlion was four stories tall, taller than the wall they were standing on. It was covered in its babies. Regular antlions were still big, as tall as a human. When it died, it would explode, and its babies would fly though the air as a final attack. Hugo had seen it happen a few lifetimes ago. Antlions had survived the journey through the air and killed a few people.

Not this time. Hugo had the range to make sure the queen’s explosion wouldn’t happen close to the walls.

He laid out a series of bolts on top of the crenulations so he would have quick access to them. Just as the monster got in range, Hugo started firing. Six bolts were in the air in four seconds, and the next six were loaded in seven more seconds after that. Hugo fired the next six as fast as he could. His accuracy suffered, but the target was huge. Even though the monster was eight hundred yards away by now, all of his shots still hit.

The explosions all hit the monster’s exoskeleton head, but didn’t pierce through. Not yet anyway. Hugo didn’t bother with his piercing bolts though. He knew they could get through the exoskeleton, but their relatively small size wouldn’t hurt the monster much. It would be like attacking a human with needles.

Hugo kept up the barrage. The queen antlion didn’t like that one bit. She roared in anger, but that just opened her mouth up so exploding bolts could get in. Two bolts were enough to take its left mandible right off.

As much as he would like to take credit for that, it was pure luck. At the distance of six hundred yards, the bolt flight time was too long for him to take advantage of openings like that. It was almost four seconds from loosing the bolt to when it hit.

After a total of thirty exploding arrows, the queen antlion was four hundred yards away. Hugo was a bit disappointed. He had overestimated the explosive power of his ammunition. They were pure mithril with an ignition rune. It wasn’t as effective as his mithril/titanium mix. There were a few holes in the monster’s head, but it was still stomping closer. He switched to plain mithril bolts. If any of them made it inside the monster’s head, it would explode inside.

At this point, he was expecting to only get partial credit. The monster had just walked within ballista range and they were lining up their shots. Hugo assumed they had specialized ammunition loaded now and were just waiting for the perfect shot. Hugo shot another round of standard bolts and then gave up.

His weapons were great, but not perfect. He couldn’t wait until he got titanium back and could create more powerful ammunition. He suspected that if he hadn’t used the optimize ritual on these pure mithril exploding bolts that he wouldn’t have nearly as many kills.

Hugo could tell when the mithril bolts overloaded and exploded inside the queen antlion. She jerked in pain, each explosion rocking its head back and forth. It still wasn’t enough to kill it.

The two ballista bolts were. They shot the monster on either side of its thorax and detonated with a strange thwump sound. The queen died moments later, and exploded. Hugo could tell the explosion was smaller than normal. The ballista bolts must have interfered with its death magic. Hugo heard several dings in his ear. His contribution had netted him several levels.

A barrier sentinel had been standing on the air near the wall, ready to throw up a shield to stop flying antlions from landing on the wall. He wasn’t needed. The monster had been stopped far enough away that none of them came close enough.

The sentinel strolled through the air, and stepped down near their group of harvesters. He said, “Who was sending out the explosive arrows?”

When Hugo didn’t respond fast enough, the large man slapped him on the shoulder and said, “It was the silver knight.”

Hugo nodded. He hoped he hadn’t gotten in trouble, breaking some unknown rule about attacking large monsters.

“You did a good job, softening up the queen for us. Probably saved us a few ballista bolts and saved me some mana. Thanks. What is your name?” the sentinel said and shook Hugo’s hand.

Hugo didn’t see any advantage to telling him his real name and just said, “The silver knight is good enough for me.”

“Well, silver knight, I will make sure my captain knows about your contribution. Are you going to be around tomorrow for the height of the monster surge?”

Hugo shook his head, “No, I only worked this shift to get some easy ranks. I have other plans tomorrow.” He knew his mother would flip if he didn’t spend the night at home. She wanted to make sure he came with to plant rice.

As he walked home, he took his mithril armor off. He was glad everyone assumed it was silver, even though silver was two shades lighter and much shinier. Hugo didn’t want to run afoul of the metal guild during this life. He wouldn’t be selling any mithril at all. Well, unless he had their permission. He could just join the guild. He honestly didn’t know why he hadn’t done that the previous few times. He was fairly sure that all he would need to do is agree to their price fixing and pay his dues. He shook his head. One more thing for his to-do list.

At home, Hugo tossed his armor into the corner. He wouldn’t be needing it anytime soon. It wasn’t part of the plan. His sister Milana and him were going to spend the next few weeks working on his mother. They needed to convince her to let Milana take over the company before their father got back. Only with the three of them working together would they be able to convince the misogynistic man.