One Step Forward (2)
"■■■■■■■■!!!"
"You filthy monster bastards!! Crawl back to your mothers in hell!!"
"Don't fall back!! Stand and fight!!"
"You giant fucking rat!! Bet your guts are huge too!! I'm gonna rip you open and kill you!!"
A fierce melee raged along the walls. The battlements stood like a breakwater against the tide of beasts surging up from below — and they held only because the Apostles were throwing everything they had into the fight, holding nothing back.
Lose one arm, and you gripped your weapon with the other. If that arm failed too, you clenched the blade between your teeth and stabbed with everything left.
They were warriors who knew no fear — a wall that would not yield.
"For the glory of battle!! Offer up your lives!!"
"The gods are watching us! We shall find our rest!!"
For glorious combat. For the glory of the gods.
They still remembered their days as adventurers — living like vermin. Day after day wasted on drink and gambling; the rare big score spent drowning in wine with women at the tavern. When the money ran dry, they crawled into dungeons chasing easy fortune… and vanished without a sound, reduced to corpses. Their weapons and clothes became a handful of coins for petty thieves; anything of value, even their teeth, was stripped clean.
Rohan might have died that way himself — drunk, obsessed with whores, rotting into nothing.
He knew better than anyone now how thoroughly bottom-of-the-barrel that life had been.
At the Pantheon he had learned to read and write, and for the first time in his life he put words on a page that were not his own name. Literacy led to books. Books changed his thinking. Changed thinking remade the man. And when the man changed, so did his life.
Now Rohan could say it without hesitation: his entire life had been for the glory of the gods. He had been shaped for this — to fight for them in glorious battle.
He swung his blade again and again, cutting down every beast that came into reach.
"■■■■■!!!"
"Hah!"
He drove his sword through a jaw, ducked the whip-like tail of a creature lunging from behind, spun at the waist to slash, kicked, and drove an elbow down. The beasts pouring in from every side became cold corpses on the ground in moments.
His whole body was caked in black blood. His longsword was so thickly coated in gore and entrails that the edge had vanished. Still the enemies came without end.
"Hah… huuuh—"
Rohan leaned on his longsword for a moment, catching his breath. He had swung and swung without rest, yet the beasts kept coming. Was this what it felt like to fight the sea itself?
He glanced around. Fatigue was written on every face nearby. No matter how brutal the training, there were limits to what a human body could endure.
"Everyone! You must not let go of hope!!"
Hero Kenis whirled her holy blade with ferocious grace, her courage blazing. She had thrown herself into the heart of the swarm and tore through them like a predator among sheep. A single stroke sent beasts toppling in heaps.
By the desperate efforts of the Hero and the Apostles, the line held — barely.
And then…
— Crack!
"Hm?"
Rohan snapped his head up toward a sound from the sky. Across the black night, blue-white lightning writhed and crackled.
Lightning signs in the dead of night? He thought of the divine punishment he had witnessed in the Holy City — the moment the gods had dropped a bolt from heaven to strike a sinner down.
— Crack, crackle!!
The lightning writhed across the heavens, swelling larger and larger —
KRA-KOOM, KRA-BOOM—!!
KA-BOOM, KRA-RUMBLE—!!
—and fell as colossal thunderbolts that shook heaven and earth. Bolts that split the night sky and looked ready to tear the ground apart.
Blinding lightning struck once, twice… and did not stop, raining down in succession and setting the plague-sea ablaze.
"Good gods."
"Ohh…"
Thunderbolts swept the field with force enough to burn everything clean. Their majesty was a storm of lightning that made the world itself tremble.
Rohan dropped to his knees without realizing it. Kneeling in the middle of a battlefield was something even a man with a death wish wouldn't do — but he couldn't help himself.
Look upon that majestic wrath!
Look upon the lightning that raged!
"The gods—!!"
Rohan roared it out, pouring every ounce of reverence in his chest into a voice loud enough to pierce the thunder.
"Are watching over us—!!"
This land was a field of glory under the gods' own gaze. There was nothing left for them to fear.
"Heaven-Earth Storm's effect is no joke."
The rats caught under the wide-area Heaven-Earth Storm had been wiped clean. Once the lightning storm finished scrubbing that section of the field, the defensive line finally had some breathing room.
— "Stab them!!"
— "Kill them!"
Cutting their numbers so sharply in one go took a massive load off the wall defenders. With a little free time on my hands, I quickly shifted the screen and started hunting for the boss.
I had to run defense and a boss hunt at the same time, so splitting my forces was unavoidable. I needed to divide them carefully enough that holding the wave wouldn't become a problem.
"Hm?"
Zooming the map out and scanning around, I spotted a skull icon planted right there — complete with horns growing from its head and a glaring red color. Anyone could tell it was a boss marker.
So the boss was over this way. The map put it somewhere near a mountain peak.
And right nearby, a question-mark icon.
"A special event? They have those too?"
I could never resist a random event. Curiosity alone demanded I step on it.
The problem was that things were only relatively freer than before — not actually comfortable. Pulling someone off the wall for a boss run was still a hard call.
On top of that, a Stage 4 boss would have solid stats and almost certainly some nasty gimmicks. Send one person alone and they'd end up like a fried chicken — bones and meat neatly separated.
"I'd at least like to know the gimmicks or the stats…"
In other games you might throw a disposable unit first. This one didn't have anything like that…
I frowned, turning it over in my mind.
Then a character climbing the mountain caught my eye. Everyone else was glued to the walls in a frenzy — and this one was freeloading alone, so of course he stood out.
"…What the?"
I zoomed in a little. The name floating above the character was Hans — the one I'd been feeding candy this whole time. Whether the candy had done something weird to him or not, he was charging up the mountain like a man possessed.
"Oh."
A good idea hit me. Hans was just a regular adventurer, and his only weapon was a worn longsword with a rune stuck in it. That meant… as a scout, Hans might not be half bad.
"Alright, Hans. You're the one."
I'd raised him on weird candy and love. Time for him to earn his keep. Go scout the boss and come back.
— "Hah… huuuh—"
Hans climbed with real effort. He dodged the monsters that popped up along the way and kept going without rest.
Then, midway up the mountain, he suddenly stopped dead. Watching him dither in place, it looked like the auto-path only went this far.
I used the exploration skill that had come with the bundle.
Sparkling Guide Bugs!
Touch a character and drag to set a path. The character moves along the route and automatically explores anything along the way.
Familiar pale-green bugs appeared on the screen. I connected a path all the way to the question-mark event icon, and Hans — who had been standing there blankly — started following the trail.
He reached the event marker.
— Ta-da!
Hans and Daisy!
Hans has built a deep bond with a girl he met in the countryside. His relationship with Daisy has grown strong, and he has resolved to fight for her sake. Hans will not easily retreat from the battlefield!
A special event had given Hans a buff. The wording was vague enough that I wasn't sure it counted, but "will not easily retreat from the battlefield" sounded like a buff to me.
"Who's Daisy?"
A little girl appeared on the screen and gave Hans a small wave. It was only SD modeling, but compared to adult Hans the size difference was pretty stark.
At most she looked middle-school age? I'd have to see other random events to be sure, but if it said Hans and Daisy had shared deep feelings…
"Huh?"
Hans. You little bastard. Don't tell me—
"Huuuh—"
Hans ran hard, following the bugs that guided him. He raced up the rough mountain, yet not a single drop of sweat fell.
Cutting through the dark forest, a great cave finally came into view.
The mouth of it, thick with black darkness, looked like the maw of a hungry beast waiting for prey to walk in. A chill wind seemed to breathe out from deep inside.
"Huuuh— Alright, Hans. You can do this."
He slapped his own cheeks. His hands trembled pitifully and his legs had locked up as if frozen, but he forced his body forward into the cave.
— Whoosh
The torch in his hand flared bright and drove back the dark. Hans walked carefully toward the depths.
Only the soft slap of his boots on damp stone echoed out. Bit by bit, his figure was swallowed by the darkness until it vanished.
From outside, it would have looked as if the cave itself had eaten him.
And so Hans walked into the dark — to keep his promise to Daisy.