Chapter 90: The Primal Constructs
The tenth wave deviated from the pattern.
Coop and the Eater of Worlds remained at the forefront of the battlefield for the duration of the ninth wave, each defeating tens of thousands of the Brutal Piercers before they reached the fort. They fought day and night. Coop allowed his Fog of War domain to shrink slightly after the Carriers stopped spawning, reducing the pressure on his mana and letting him keep the smaller domain active indefinitely after running out of mana potions. Not even a single invader made it through his side.
Coop was wholly impressed with the wild pig’s stamina. He had believed that the Revenant class was uniquely situated for extended fights, especially when combined with his Reaper ‘on kill’ regeneration making his sustain unmatched. The pig’s class represented a counterpart to Coop’s. The Eater of Worlds was unstoppable as long as he kept eating, and in a battle with effectively unlimited enemies, the pig could consume on demand. Coop could have set a watch to the Brutal Piercers being levitated into the air and getting crunched down.
When the tenth wave timer came and went, everyone waited for the next monsters to attack. As the minutes went by, the expectation from the defenders grew until it was palpable, but no new monsters made themselves known. Like the previous 25 hours, they continued to deal with the Brutal Piercers by themselves. Scouts frantically searched the perimeter of the fort for stealth monsters, combed the underground, and kept a close eye on the skies above, just in case, but nothing was found. It took one of the pirate ships braving the current wave and checking the same vector as the Piercers to discover the next monster.
They had appeared from the same direction as the ninth wave, on the second island of the chain, but instead of directly attacking as a stream of enemies while the wave spawned them in, like all the others, they appeared to have arrived as one large platoon. It wasn’t a flood of monsters, the tenth wave was a singular force.
The pirates hadn’t been able to identify them, but from the descriptions that spread among the defenders, they sounded coordinated and organized as if they would be facing a real army instead of an unruly horde driven by simple aggression. They were sure it would be a completely different type of enemy compared to the previous waves. Coop was anxiously waiting for them to join the Piercers.
They didn’t come. The Brutal Piercers fought alone for two full days after the Rabid Carriers ceased spawning. They still managed to decimate the western half of the southern fort wall, using their crowns like battering rams in suicidal leaping attacks across the moat that collapsed large sections of the stone walls. The fort had already been weakened by so many previous waves, it couldn’t withstand the heightened assault from the stronger monsters, even after emergency repairs had been hastily applied. The Piercers even forced their way partway into the courtyard. Three new breaches appeared in the wall, adding to the one on the eastern half, but the monsters had been held off through the coordination of phantoms and melee fighters securing the weak points and using the new breaches as chokes.
After the last Brutal Piercer was defeated Coop inspected the pig, interested in his progress.
[Gluttonous Wild Pig (Level 73)]
[Eater of Worlds (Body)]
[Chosen of the Shepherds of the Lost]
The pig had gained an incredible 13 levels in one wave. Coop was left in awe as the beast moseyed across the battlefield until he waded into the ocean. The pig shrank back to his normal, small building size, as he went. He swam through the moat, back toward his wallow on the west side of the fort’s channel without much more than a glance at the other defenders.