I scurried in the direction I assumed the cry to have originated from. I couldn’t believe I had been so close to the pond all this while.

If that guy or girl found the underwater door then the second level too would be lost. My heart was hammering in my chest, driving a nail of anxiety into my soul.

I ordered a troop of my monsters to rush in my direction, even as I saw moonlight shimmering on a liquid surface about twenty meters away. I quickened my pace.

The pond.

Ripples. The water surface had been recently disturbed. Someone had definitely fallen into it. I peered into the darkness of the pond. The silhouette of a human was hovering directly over the center of the pond.

My flesh turned to stone and my frame enlarged as I transmogrified into a stone giant. I had to put some of my health at risk now, there was simply no other way. I was about to dive into the pond, when everything changed.

The night flipped to day. The trees shriveled up and the water of the pond evaporated. At the bottom of the dry pond was a player—no, an elf with long pointy ears— kneeling beside a small door, his mouth open wide in a drunk expression of victory.

But his joy dwindled as he realized just how hot it was. I decided to ‘save’ him from the heat. I leapt down and smashed his head with my granite fist.

Some of the other monsters reached the spot as I trudged out of the small pond, my fingers dripping blood. I reverted to my human form, feeling miserable.

Two levels gone, just like that!

The monsters looked at me with guilt, their shoulders drooped. Of course neither they, nor I myself was to be blamed for losing the level. Luck had been on the elf’s side. Of course, ‘luck’ had eventually cost him his life, but it was a different matter altogether.

“Go search for the well,” I said to the monsters, noting how grave I sounded. “Search, find and protect.”

Once alone again, I sat down at the base of a tree, trying to make myself as small as possible. All the trees in this level were bare, without any leaves, so it was tricky to hide. The sun was glaring and I was glad at least I didn’t have to suffer the steep temperature.

I asked the mantures to fly systematically all over the place. I just hoped that the female who had earlier won the first level would not find the well before them.

The minutes passed, stretching into a, thankfully, uneventful hour.

I felt happy, already this level had sucked so much time of the players. The heat was definitely playing to my advantage. The monsters informed that it had become easier to kill players. The heat was roasting and weakening them.

However the well remained unfound, neither by players nor by monsters. And then in the distance, I saw a rather satisfying sight. The female with the flying carpet. She was on her levitating platform, her face glistening with sweat. The heat cast a permanent frown on her face, even as she fought to stand straight.

She took out an object from her pocket that I realized was a health vial. She drank it and some of the color momentarily returned to her face, but within seconds I could see that she was back to slouching. And then, a mass rocketed upwards to the sky. Bono and Bui.

Bui extended her arm with Bono, and her husband bit into the carpet. The female tried to curse them, but missed.

Bui and Bono successfully downed the female. Screams and sounds of smashing and hitting ensued. When I messaged Bui she confirmed the female was dead. I grinned from ear to ear. It is true, revenge is sweet.

After some time a manture reported sighting the well. It was a good distance away from me. I informed half of my monsters to take positions near the well, while the other half I asked to distract the players.

Another hour elapsed. I waited quietly, not shifting much.

Whenever players were nearby, I changed to one of the small monsters. When they turned their backs on me I would sneak up to them from behind, become one of the larger monsters and kill with minimal risk.

The only drawback was that quite a few corpses piled up about me, eliciting the suspicion of other players who came later on. They would move as a unit so that one of them was facing in each of the directions. This made me quit my silent attacks. I did not want to put my life at risk.

Finally the dreadful message came. A player had seen the well. That the players could not communicate anymore through messages turned out to be a big advantage. The monsters did away with the player without attracting any attention.

More hours went by.

The players were dying out and their number reduced greatly.

Only their health vials kept them going. But it was inevitable that they would eventually run out of the life-savers.

Another hour down. I felt giddy, since things were going in my favor. But then, my euphoria was neutralized when I received new info. The players were concentrating near the location of the well.

I reckoned that some player had been able to see the well without being noticed by the monsters and that the news had spread through word of mouth.

The players were launching attack after attack on the eviluns defending the well. However, there were enough monsters present there to sustain even an organized beating from the weakened players.

Two more hours burnt.

A few monsters were killed, however many more players lost their lives. I decided that I could move over to the site of action and see with my own eyes what was going on. I wanted to witness the last of the players falling, and know firsthand that the tower had successfully withstood the assault, and that my legs were guaranteed.

I turned into a Skhite and sneaked to the place of the raging battle. I climbed up a tree as a Littlefut and watched. There really were few players left. Perhaps only a couple of hundred. Over a thousand had initially come to the tower.

I liked what was going on. For every one monster dying, at least three players were being slaughtered. It hurt to see monsters falling, but there was no way around that. Sacrifices had to be made.

We delayed the players by a couple more hours. We had already stopped them for quite a long time at this level. I was beginning to consider if I should go away to a more desolate area so that I could turn into a human again and save my mana.

And then a sight met my eyes which sent my mind spiraling in apprehension. A lone sulky wizard was not partaking in the fighting, keeping his distance from eviluns. He wasn’t even helping his friends when they called for him. He refrained from throwing spells that would highlight him to the monsters. He was oozing sweat like an ice cube in the sun. His clothes were torn and he had sustained numerous small injuries. But all that was secondary.

He closed his fist on a sacrifice stone.

I shuddered internally. What was he sacrificing? I tried to read his lips.

“… Take away all the spells that I have… but allow me to become small… very small. I want to get past them and see what they are guarding.”

And poof! The wizard disappeared, the stone dropping down without its handler. Upon further thorough inspection, I realized the wizard had only shrunk in size, to the point that he was smaller even than me.

The wizard dashed like a rat towards the well, the brief movement of the grass enabling me to guess his direction.

“There is a tiny player coming your way!” I messaged the monsters immediately. “Stop him!”