Chapter 102 – Day One Sub-Raid
Chapter 102 - Day One Sub-Raid
”It’s not as dangerous, but it’s definitely just as important.” ~Shallies Mythernal
Sub-raids were not exactly a common occurrence, in most raids. But while some random raids might turn out to have one, Thrush’ven Alir was a special case, one where it would always include such a troublesome event.
They were leaks of power and influence, as far as Damascus’ lessons were to be believed. And while they would involve tremendously powerful monsters, the frequency of their appearances were at select timings. Ones that the Gaiamaxims Guild had studied down to a science.
Grace lay in wait. The first wave of monsters had been already dealt with, and they were looking for a potential second wave. It was a fifty-fifty chance, according to Damascus. So naturally, everyone went to their positions to prepare for the chance of an encounter. Some hid for an ambush, while others remained in the middle of Cinterbrim Town’s northern road in order to lure the monsters in.
“Any minute now,” Damascus said. He was communicating with them via their System Consoles. The man was nearby, but he wouldn’t be participating in the fight, unless something went drastically wrong. “If it comes, this will be the last wave for the day. You can either go all out, or conserve your energies as you see fit. We’ll have recovery items ready for you when you’re all done.”
As soon as his communication was over, a spike of mana erupted from where Thrush’ven Alir was located. Everyone turned to see the wave of monsters appearing from the clouds. And just as quickly, those monsters noticed the adventurers serving as bait and advanced toward them without hesitation.
Grace tapped into her Focus to verify the monsters. The wave consisted of fire and lightning wyverns. Lesser draconic creatures with a pair of legs and wings. Their respective elements surrounded their bodies like an aura, with a large concentration of it gathering around their jaws.
One by one, these wyverns folded their wings, accelerating downward at a dangerous rate. The half-orc immediately understood that they had no intention of slowing down to land.
“Avoid their feet,” Ren commanded with obvious urgency. “Some of them might attack from range. We’ll need to meet these attacks with our own, or we’ll be overwhelmed.”
The group around him immediately moved in an organized fashion. Guided by Tayin, the long-ranged combatants, along with some of the mid-ranged attackers, prepared their spells and skills, while the melee combatants focused on the monsters committed to diving.
Grace stayed hidden and made sure all her Mana Weaver buffs were activated. She waited until the entire wave of monsters had finished descending from the Great Storm. Then, she used her Scan with an engaged Mana-Affinity.
[Monster: Wyverns (Evolved Tier - Level 10, Unranked: Type-B)]Grace blinked. While the information she’d gathered from her Scan would definitely prove useful, the most alarming detail she’d found was the amount of monsters coming their way. The sub-raid group only consisted of fifteen adventurers. And if they only counted those of the recommended class tier, they were completely outnumbered by the oncoming wave. And even some of those adventurers hadn’t fully recovered yet from the first wave they had fought today.[Weaknesses: the direct opposite of their respective element]
[Resistances: their direct element, and physical attacks]
[Recommended Class Tier: Advanced or higher, matching the count of the wave]
[Total scanned monsters: 36 wyverns]
[Traits: Tough scales around its body contain defensive prowess second only to an actual dragon’s. Its preferred methods of attack are either swooping down to grab grounded enemies and toss them in the air, or use breath attacks from a distance.]
[Strategy: It could deflect any nonmagical weapon, so be sure to use only magical weapons, or use a skill to coat them with your mana. Utilize their weakness when attacking with element-based skills or spells. Their eyes are also weak areas, if you can precisely aim for them.]
Hastily, she passed the information to Ren, Tayin, James, and Phyl’swen through her System Console. Outnumbered or not, they were prepared to fight. And it showed, as each leader simply nodded at their own screens and dismissed them without showing a hint of intimidation.
Orders quickly followed, guiding the group as their strategy was adjusted. The other hiding members were commanded to join the whole cluster to strengthen the main force. This left Grace alone in hiding.
She stayed put, as the first of the diving wyverns closed in. It merely briefly shifted its wings and tail to adjust its trajectory, bending the straight dive into a forward glide that became parallel to the ground. If it lost any speed in the process, the half-orc couldn’t see it.
Sharp claws glinted as it attempted to snatch one of the adventurers, but it was quickly repelled by a barrier skill. The barrage of spells that followed immediately ended its life.
Grace felt a surge of pride at how easily the sub-raid group had defeated the wyvern. But she quickly suppressed it as she looked back to the skies.
The rest of the monsters arrived en masse. More than a dozen swooped in with their sharp talons, while the rest barraged the group with their breath attacks.
Ren and the rest of the sub-raid defended with their best protective spells and skills. They managed to deflect all of the ranged attacks, using barriers and ranged attacks of their own. Unfortunately, they didn’t have enough manpower to do the same for the diving wyverns.
Grace grimaced as she saw four people getting dragged away from the group, snatched indiscriminately by the flying monsters. These wyverns were about five to six times the size of an average man, but even if they could theoretically wrap their claws around their victims, none of them were sophisticated enough to plan that.
No. If their claws snagged a limb or a torso, then so be it. Then they were flying high with their prey hooked into their talons regardless.
The half-orc focused on those wyverns first, the ones that carried four of her teammates. From the shadows, she activated Haste and engaged her Agility as she dashed out of hiding. At the same time, she ignited both of her mana-edges.
In a blink, she reached the closest monster. It barely had any time to react when Grace unleashed two Crescent Slashes using both weapons. She managed to slice off its wings. There was no time for her to check if the abducted teammate managed to land safely. Before the wyvern lost its height, she used it as a launching pad to chase the next one.
Grace leapt so absurdly high, one could make the mistake of thinking that she was flying. But despite this, she still couldn’t reach the actually flying monsters. Desperate, she quickly unleashed a Blaze Edge to chase after one, but the wyvern had resistance against fire. As she started gliding down using mana-control, with no way to chase after them, she could only hopelessly look at the struggling adventurers as they were carried away.
That was when three metal spears flew past her, each one striking a wyvern straight in its head.
The half-orc looked down, and saw Damascus Vensteel as he summoned back his spears. At the same time, he was using mana-control to help the falling adventurers glide down. Their ability to remain calm had been crushed the moment they were snatched away into the air.
Grace only had a few moments to observe what was happening, before something caught her awareness. As the only adventurer who had shot straight up to the air, she grabbed the most attention out of everyone. She saw as two wyverns, one fire and one lightning, unleashed their breath attacks against her.
Parry and engaged Focus and Agility allowed her to deflect those attacks, but the force still pushed her down faster than she had anticipated. She lost hold of her mana-control. Rather than try to regain her stability, the half-orc instead twisted in the air as she met a wyvern’s talon with her Grand Arc Mana-Edge +5. She realized that the monster’s claw was coated with mana, as her weapon clashed against it rather than slicing through. If it was physically stronger than her weapon, then her mana-edge would simply pass through without harming it.
Regardless, the clash essentially threw Grace straight down. She had no more time to slow her fall. Instead, she used all of her remaining seconds to engage her Constitution as strongly as possible.
She slammed into the ground, causing a small eruption of dust and rock, but she was essentially unharmed. As she walked out of the small crater that had formed, Phyl’swen met her. The half-elf was caught completely by surprise.
“How are you okay?” she asked, then quickly shook her head. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. The people who got dragged off, are they okay?” Grace asked in return. She hadn’t had the time to properly memorize everyone’s names.
“Injured, but Damascus sent people to bring them to the infirmary. They won’t be fighting anymore for today. Not sure if they can fight tomorrow, though.” With a nod, the half-elf smiled and turned. “Have to get back to the group!”
The fight was still happening, but with a max level Hero class holder in their midst, the tide was quickly turning to their favor. It looked like Damascus wasn’t going all out, however. He was giving the young ones all the chances to fight, while making sure none of them fell into too much harm.
“Didn’t mean to crash the party,” he stated as Grace approached from his side. “But this many wyverns for for a day one wave wasn’t part of our expectations.”
“How so?” she asked.
“Much like in a real raid, the first day sets the town for the rest of the sub-raid. At this rate, we won’t have enough manpower to deal with the increase of monsters. Not to mention the upcoming days will have stronger ones in the mix.”
“Can you manage, though?” Grace asked. “I asked Vice Guildmaster Coraline why you’re not joining the main raid. She said something went wrong with your ascension to a Favored class. She said it affected your mana-core the most.”
Damascus grunted and dismissed it with a wave. “Would you rather I let you kids die for biting off more than you can chew? I’m strict, not heartless. Besides, as long as I don’t push myself too hard, I should at least be able to fight a few wyverns.”
“Gotcha.”
“Now enough talk, they’re coming back.”
Their strategy was simple. Grace and Damascus would pick off stragglers while the main group defended against the majority of the diving monsters.
Since fewer wyverns were attacking them from range now, Tayin and her group of ranged attackers could finally concentrate their attacks on offense. One spell after another, they quickly mowed down the wave of monsters.
The wyverns’ numbers dwindled down, and it quickly became obvious that the sub-raid group had succeeded yet again. This time, however, everyone was exhausted. Everyone except for Ren, Tayin, and Grace.
“That’ll be it for today,” Damascus said while people went around gathering the Loot Sources. “Make sure you all get a good rest for tomorrow.”
“That was fun,” Tayin said in a rather monotone voice.
“We had a lot of close calls,” Ren commented.
“I crashed hard on the ground,” Grace said lastly.
“You okay?” the halfling asked. “No broken bones or anything?”
“I managed to engage my Constitution, so I’m good.”
The three talked about their experience as they finished gathering their Loot Sources. As it was for the entire sub-raid group, they submitted them to Damascus for temporary holding until the raid was over. Their supervisor accepted them, but quietly signaled for the three of them to remain until everyone had returned to camp.
“Are you guys able to keep watch?” he asked.
“I thought we’re done for the day?” Tayin asked.
Grace quickly caught on.
“The amount of monsters that appeared today was outside of expectations,” she started. “You think there might be another wave?”
“I hope not,” Damascus replied. “But since this is a first, we have no record of what might happen next. I’ll be sending a report to the Vice Guildmaster. If there are members that can’t fight in the main raid anymore, they might be able to back us up, as long as they’re not too injured.
“But our main concern for now will be the potential surprise attacks. I saw you three maintain your watch for hours, so I’ll be assigning you to that. Do it in shifts, though. The waves will be completely obvious, so all you have to do is watch the Great Storm. Make sure you still get enough sleep.”
Grace looked to her partymates, and it was easy enough to see that they both were already in agreement.
“We’ll do it,” they all said at the same time.
“Great,” Damascus said. “I’ll make sure the Shalliesters Party will have a special commendation. You three have really been exceeding expectations.”
As their supervisor made his way to the headquarters, the three were then left to decide for themselves who would stay for the first watch.
“I’ll do it,” Grace said right away.
And at this point, Ren and Tayin had known her enough to understand that they wouldn’t be able to convince her to do otherwise. So they simply resigned and went to bed.
Now alone, Grace looked at the Great Storm and wondered what Shallies was doing. That was when she realized something was off. She frowned and looked at her System Console.
“I didn’t level up?”
[Nope!] Stachie replied. [So close though!]
“Wow… I didn’t expect that.” The half-orc smiled at that. It was one of the big indicators that she had made a huge step in her class. “Anyway, Stachie. What’re Shallies and the others up to?”
[If you promise not to get fully distracted from your watch, I can probably give you a sneak peak… It’s just a recording though, since they’re also taking a break now.]
“Yes! I promise!”