The Black Plague (5)
The apostles' morale soared as if it would pierce the heavens. With their god watching over them, what was there to fear?
Courage overflowed from their eyes, and the weapons clenched in their fists looked ready to split mountains.
And as always, the Hero stood at their head.
Kenis, gripping her divine sword that shone with a lofty violet light, climbed atop the walls and glared into the darkness.
"■■■■■■■■!!!"
"■■■■■■■■!"
Beyond that darkness, countless monsters came charging, red demonic light spilling from their eyes.
They hungered blindly for the flesh of the living and thirsted for blood.
Their very existence was a blasphemy against the divine, a perversion of life itself.
Vermin that deserved to be wiped from this earth.
"The enemy is coming! Bows to the front!!"
Kenis's shout rang out, and Friga bellowed the order right back.
"Bows to the frooont!!"
Friga's cry rolled across the entire wall. The apostles moved as one, drawing their bows and taking aim.
Bowstrings pulled taut quivered in unison.
Just a little more.
"■■■■■■■■!!!"
With howling shrieks, the beasts came hurtling forward in a mad rush. The moment their shadows fell across the moat ringing the walls—
Kenis roared.
"Loose!!"
"Fire!!"
"Shoot till your hands blur!"
"This is the arrow that went into your mama!!"
The drawn bowstrings snapped free, flinging their arrows into the sky. The shafts tore through the air and punched cleanly through the flesh-and-blood bodies of the beasts.
"■■■■■■■■!"
A volley so thick it blotted out the moon. Beasts toppled in heaps.
A single volley dropped a fair number of them—but more poured in from behind, filling the gaps almost at once.
Like trying to cut a shadow with a sword: kill them, and still they kept coming without end.
"■■■■■!!!"
"Crazy..."
Even with the moat before them, the beasts charged blindly. Splashing water and the sounds of drowning monsters filled the air.
The ones in front drowned, and the ones behind drowned after them—and still they came on toward the walls, shrieking.
A mad, death-defying obsession that left the watchers speechless.
"Th-the moat's filling in—!"
Corpses piled upon corpses until the deep moat was choked solid. The beasts trampled and chewed their own dead as they surged toward the walls.
"Second squad, third squad!! Oil!!"
They loosed arrows until blood welled from their fingertips, but the swarm of beasts was as inexhaustible as the sea—no matter how much water you bailed, it never ran dry.
Before long the monsters were close enough that boiling oil was poured down on them, and the ones clawing their way up were smashed back down in a frenzy.
"They're on the wall!! Move, move!!"
Even so, some of the beasts managed to haul themselves over the battlements. Friga swung her axe in a flash and cleaved a giant rat clean in two.
More and more rats clawed their way onto the walls, and the battle shifted from a clean defense into a chaotic free-for-all.
"...Something's off."
"What is?"
"These rats! Hup! They're the same ones we saw in the Empire—but were they ever this bad?"
Kenis split a charging plague rat down the middle as she spoke. Friga heaved her axe in a great arc and grunted agreement.
"You're! Right! They weren't! Hah! This damn crazy back then!"
"■■■■■!!!"
"What, does this village owe your mama a blood debt or something!!"
Black blood sprayed along the path of the massive axe. Friga planted the haft into the ground with a heavy thud and caught her breath for a moment.
They had swarmed in packs back in the Empire too—but never with this kind of death-defying madness.
What the hell is there here worth dying for...
Grumbling to herself, Friga flicked a glance toward the inside of the walls.
"Kyaaaah!! Kyaaaaah!!"
"Monsters!! We're all going to die!!"
"The witch!! It's all the witch's fault!! Aaaagh!!!"
The villagers huddled in a corner, trembling. For people so terrified of dying, they sure wouldn't let go of the pouches clutched to their chests.
"Tch. Cowards."
In the North, even children fought by throwing stones, Friga thought, her face twisting in disgust.
In a fouler mood than before, she turned her gaze back beyond the walls.
A faint moon showed its face between the clouds, casting a thin light over the ground.
And in that moonlight, a surging tide of plague rats filled the horizon—like a colossal wave rolling toward a tiny wall.
"...Damn it. Night's dragging on."
Friga spat.
The night was still far too long.
"Ugh..."
I watched the screen, bouncing my leg in agitation. Legs jittering, I chewed my nails raw. I'd figured a defense mission would be a cakewalk—but of course it wasn't that easy.
Waves of enemies were slamming into the base like mad, and there was still way too much time left on the clock.
"Need support on the eastern wall!!"
"Pour the oil!!"
"■■■■■!!!"
The sound design and BGM were so vivid it felt like I was standing right there. On any other day I'd have been losing my mind over how god-tier the game was—but right now I had no room for that.
The moat I'd upgraded with Faith had been neutralized ages ago, and now they were barely holding the line centered on the walls themselves.
Arrow towers and every other defensive structure were working overtime to hold back the waves... but I could feel it in my gut.
"We're screwed, aren't we?"
In a defense game, barely scraping by is a terrible sign. The moment the enemy numbers tick up even a little—or get any stronger—the whole line collapses in an instant.
The front was stretched so thin that a boss raid was pure fantasy.
Pull even one person out, and that threadbare defensive line would snap. That much was obvious.
"...The shop. There's got to be something in the shop..."
With no usable skills of my own, my hand drifted to the shop on its own. There really wasn't any other option. No buildings left to upgrade with Faith, no skills either.
"I'll just buy five. Only five."
No overspending. Just the five skills I actually needed. Maximum efficiency, zero waste—only the essentials.
"Oh, these look good."
It had been a while since I'd opened the skill shop, and apparently there'd been an update—a solid crop of skills I didn't recognize. Everything from bizarre, inventive effects to ones that looked genuinely strong.
New Raid Launch Celebration!
Defense-battlefield specialty skills at bargain prices!
A message recommending skills tailored for the defense raid. Five skills in total. I read each one carefully, and yeah—there was a reason they were recommended.
Every single one was built for defense. One of them looked more like a scouting specialty, maybe.
And best of all, they were selling the whole set as a bundle—with a pretty solid discount.
"Thirty percent off? Yeah, no way I'm passing that up."
No joke—even the Buddha himself couldn't resist a thirty percent discount. Without a shred of hesitation, I headed to the checkout.
A ₩70,000 bundle for under ₩50,000—that's a steal, right? At this rate of freebies, I had no idea how the devs were supposed to make any money.
For all I knew, I was single-handedly yanking the pillars out from under the company.
"Or maybe I just bought them a new desk."
Muttering nonsense to myself, I unpaused the screen.
The front line was still hanging on by a thread. First things first—I fired off the skill with the shortest cooldown.
Raging Thunderstorm
Pours lightning across a designated area. Low chance to inflict Paralysis.
KRAKOOOOOM—!!!
KRA-KRAANG!!
A thunderstorm crashed down right into the heart of the black mass of rats.
Lightning slammed into that disgustingly dense black swarm, and they died in glorious, satisfying droves—wiped clean off the field.
There was even a weird catharsis to watching it.
"Hell yeah—that's what fifty thousand won buys you!"
They sold a value pack this good at thirty percent off?
Seriously, what were the devs planning to eat?
"Hah... hah—"
Hans wiped the beads of sweat streaming down his face and climbed the mountain in grim silence. It wasn't a matter of strength or stamina.
It was the tension eating at him.
Rustle!
"Hhk...!"
Creeping carefully forward, Hans nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of brush stirring. He dropped flat and held his breath.
"Kihiiiik!"
A giant rat shoved through the undergrowth. At the same time, the nauseating stench of corpses hit Hans's nose.
The reek of something rotting, decaying, dying.
Please just go... please!
Hans clamped a hand over his mouth and prayed desperately. The longsword in his grip trembled, and cold sweat soaked his back.
"Kihik, kik?"
Something seemed off to the rat. It snuffled and sniffed, searching the area.
Its massive nose, dangling with foul spores, came right up beside Hans.
Please, please...!
Hans's prayer grew more frantic. Then the plague rat's snout yawned wide—
"Kek!! Kehek!!"
"Kihiiiiik!!"
—and snagged some nameless wild animal in a lightning-fast lunge. The plague rat smacked its filth-caked jaws as it tore into the creature's flesh.
Apparently satisfied, it slowly turned and vanished back into the dark.
"...Is it gone?"
Only after a long stretch of silence did Hans carefully push himself up. As he brushed the dirt from his clothes, a sudden wave of self-loathing hit him.
He'd swaggered off declaring he'd bring Daisy back—and this was the state he was in?
"Hah."
He let out a sigh heavy with tangled feelings. Then he lifted his head and looked toward the mountain's peak.
I managed to follow Daisy's footprints this far, at least.
Hans had put the wild-animal tracking his father once taught him to good use.
Relying on the thin moonlight, he'd desperately traced Daisy's tracks left in the soft earth all the way to the mountain's mid-slope.
The trail...
Once he hit ground where the soil hardened, the footprints vanished. From here on, he'd have to comb the entire mountain.
"Hah— alright..."
Hans snapped a nearby branch to mark his path. Without something like that, he'd lose his way in no time.
All of it was everyday wisdom his father had taught him.
Hans drew a deep breath and looked up at the sky. From this point on, it came down to his luck and his speed.
May the god guide my path.
A short prayer offered to the heavens.
Just as he was about to move his feet, he noticed the pale-green insects circling around him.
Bugs drifting about him with a soft glow like fireflies. Rather than anything repulsive or creepy, the feeling that rose first was wonder.
Bzzzzz—
All at once they formed ranks and flew off somewhere—almost as if they were telling Hans to follow.
Hans stood there slightly dumbfounded.
Well, I did ask to be guided... but that was fast.
The prayer had worked a little too well.