Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 103: The Second Horde

“Zac!” a few voices shouted after him. And he could only sigh and turn around.

Since he saw her last Emily had undergone a drastic transformation. She was properly cleaned and wore new clothes. Zac noted with some interest she had chosen the men’s style with the pants and leather armor rather than the dress-robes that the two demons by her side wore. Her messy hair also was turned into a pixie-cut instead of the uneven mess of a crazy person.

All three, especially the teenager, carried an angry energy as they approached him, and he could only helplessly shake his head.

“Hello, the three of you look lovely today,” he said, preemptively trying to avoid whatever trouble was coming his way. It was a trick that usually worked on Kenzie back in the day. Unfortunately, it seemed to have quite limited effect, as there was barely any change in expression on their faces.

“These two are crazy! I want to learn cultivation from you instead.” Emily angrily huffed.

“This child has a great talent for the elements, and would become a great mage, healer, or poison mistress,” Alyn interjected. “But she is very rambunctious and keeps demanding to learn how to use axes. It would be a waste of her talent.”

“And also very unladylike,” Alea added on.

“So we have been trying to correct her ways, but she is very stubborn,” Alyn said with a frown.

“So what do you want me to do?” Zac asked.

“Punish the child. Hanging naked on the town square for a few days should make her temper milder” Alea said.

“Don’t be absurd. She needs to get married in the future. Just a public whipping would do,” Alyn retorted with a slight frown.

“I told you, they are crazy! They have tortured me constantly since you left me with them. Let me train with you instead. You saw I learned quickly,” she said while glaring angrily at the two demons.

“How do you know what talent she has?” Zac curiously asked, ignoring the teenager for now.

“I had a few warriors contribute some of their Nexus Coins to buy a simple testing device from Calrin,” Alyn simply answered.

Zac was starting to understand why Ogras thought Alyn would make a good slave driver. He felt it wasn’t as easy as the warriors simply willingly gave away their money after risking their lives. He could only nod and focus on Emily.

“Why do you want to fight with axes? You should be happy that you have the option to become a mage. You can just blast the enemies from a distance,” Zac extorted the teenager. “Poison isn’t a bad idea either. Have you heard about our contribution quest? Alea is on the third spot there with her poison attacks.”

When Alea heard the comment she smiled proudly and looked down at the teenager with a triumphant face, but she only rolled her eyes.

“But you are number one right? Much better than that stupid old hag? And you can blast enemies from the distance as well,” Emily said grumpily, drawing an angry glare from Alea.

“I’ve bled over every inch of my body the past months. There’s almost not a single part of my body that hasn’t been wounded and scarred from my battles. Fighting in melee range is to constantly put yourself in harm’s way. A single mistake and you’re dead. You should think long and hard before you decide to follow in my footsteps. There are innumerable paths to power, and mine is just one. Try to focus on yourself, and think about what would suit you,” Zac said with a sigh.

“Why are you here anyway? I thought only Alyn was in charge of Emily’s education?” Zac asked of the poison mistress.

“When I heard about her talent I wanted to check her out. I noticed she’s also a bit ruthless and crazy, so I think she would make a good disciple of mine,” she said with a slight smile.

“Who’d be a disciple to you?” Emily shot back with a scathing glare.

“I can’t help you train at the moment. Listen To Alyn, she is far more knowledgeable about these things than I am. And think long and hard about your future path before deciding. The choices you make for your class and attributes in the future will impact your whole life,” Zac said as he started to walk away. He didn’t want to comment about the discipleship as that was something between the two of them and he didn’t want to butt in.

“Oh, and no hanging or whipping. She’s a student, not a slave,” he added as he moved away.

All three of them looked like they weren’t finished, but Zac used [Loamwalker] to move away. The rest of the day Zac simply relaxed and adjusted his state of mind. He watched a few movies and took a walk along the shore. Finally when the counter reached 1 hour left he walked over to the wall. Not long after Ogras and his four generals joined him.

As time passed more and more of the warriors arrived, and thirty minutes before the next horde arrived every combatant was at the ready. Adran was also there along with the humans, who nervously looked around. It was on Zac’s command they were brought here. They needed to see the reality of this new universe.

They thought they escaped calamity when they fled their island, and hoped to get back to normalcy now. But that was impossible, as their experience with the frenzied rats was only a small greeting gift from the System, and it would only get worse. Unless they started to take things seriously the world would move forward without them.

Alyn and Emily also joined them on the wall. Emily wanted to walk over to Zac, but Alyn kept her close to the stairs leading down, together with the other non-combatants. They didn’t know what would come from the next wave, and they needed to be able to quickly get down to safety if it was needed.

The time slowly crept forward, and everyone gazed upon the battlefield with a solemn expression. Some tried to spark a conversation to lighten the tension, but any talk quickly died out under the heavy atmosphere. The moment his counter went down to zero a huge blinding light appeared in the distance. The next second a large construct appeared, most closely resembling a hive or anthill.

It was looked to be almost a hundred meters tall and was somewhat shaped like a pyramid. The whole construct was a dark grey, almost turning black. There were also green lights covering the hive, almost making it seem like they were windows wrought out of emeralds. On the ground a few large entrances were visible.

The structure gave an oppressive feeling like the whole thing was a large lumbering beast.

“What do you think?” Zac asked Ogras who was standing next to him.

“Some sort of nest. It looks like this second horde is a bit different compared to the first. There are no pillars unless they are inside that thing. I’m not sure where we go from here. I get nothing when trying to use my identification skill on it,” Ogras answered with slightly furrowed brows before he increased his volume “Anyone recognizes it?”

Only frowns and shakes of heads and a few short answers followed. None of the demons knew what they were facing. The minutes passed and the unsettling feeling only grew larger as nothing happened.

“Should we go in? It doesn’t feel like a good idea to just leave that thing alone. Who knows what’s going on inside there,” Zac asked with a frown.

“I sense something!” a voice suddenly shouted. It was one of the earth mages among the demons. He jumped down from the wall and placed his hands on the ground. “There are subtle vibrations in the ground. I think the things inside the nest are digging downward,” he said with a serious expression.

A few more demons jumped down, and they confirmed the suspicion. Something was going on inside that hive, but it was happening beneath the ground.

“We can’t let this go on. We need to head in,” Zac said as he jumped down the wall as well. “First group follow me!”

Twenty-five demons quickly jumped down behind Zac. They were a mixed group of both ranged, support, and melee classes. They shared the same shift as Zac during the fights with the wolf horde and were the demons Zac was most acquainted with apart from Ogras and Alea. They also had two earth mages in the mix, who would be able to help with the scouting.

They carefully approached the huge hive. It was quite far from the wall, and Zac noticed with a frown that it was outside the range of all his offensive arrays or fortifications. If they wanted to destroy this thing they would have to do it by hand. Perhaps they could construct siege engines that were more designed for structures compared to hordes of enemies.

When they were a few hundred meters away from the black nest one of the earth mages started and went down on the ground. Zac immediately stopped and glanced around carefully.

“They’ve stopped whatever they were doing underground,” the mage said.

In response the group immediately took out their weapons, unsure what would happen. Zac’s eyebrows suddenly rose in alarm as he stared at the large holes on the ground floor of the nest.

“Get ready!” he shouted as he took out a large rock from his pouch.

A huge stream of insectoid monsters was pouring out of the nest, heedlessly charging toward the group. Their colors matched the hive, a mix of black and green. They had large chitinous shells that covered their bodies, both their appendages and mandibles looked like sinister weapons.

There seemed to be three types of insects in the army. The most populous looked like a mix between an ant and a mantis. They had thee pairs of legs with three joints much like normal ants, but they were as large as a pony. The front set of legs were sharp hooks, and it looked they were made for digging or fighting, rather than running. They could be regarded as the normal soldiers of the insect army.

If the first group could be considered eighty percent ant with some mantis peppered in, then the second group could be seen as mostly mantis. They were at least fifty percent larger compared to the normal insects, reaching over two meters height with their bodies, with their torso stretching upward. Their two front legs were huge sinister blades, looking extremely dangerous.

The last group of insects was very different compared to the rest. Their legs were shorter and their bodies were fat, almost bulbous. The other creepy crawlies were mostly black with some green details, but these ones were mostly green. They also had huge heads with oversized circular maws.

Zac immediately threw out three rocks, each targeting a different type of insect. He still preferred this type of test on new enemies.

The first rock slammed into the footsoldier, crushing its head and instantly killing it. The larger mantis-like being actually managed to react and tried cutting the incoming rock. However, the force in the throw was too strong, and the insect missed as the stone slammed into its chest. The shell of the insect actually didn’t break as the stone cracked from the impact. The insect was thrown away and fell down twitching on the ground. If it wasn’t dead it at least was dying from the impact.

The last insect exploded into a large pool of green goop that instantly started scorching the ground. Zac realized the last things actually were large walking vats of acid or poison with some shock. He didn’t even have time to digest the information before the green acid-monsters spit out large balls of the green liquid at the demons.

“ACID! Target the green ones!” Zac shouted and moved out of the way from the incoming projectiles. A few defensive spells were erected as well to protect the group.

Feeling he had a good enough grasp of the beasts Zac charged up his skill and set out to decapitate some enemies.