Change: New World

Against the Tide

A flushed face and panic stricken eyes. The girl’s chest heaved up and down as she frantically wiped the sweat from her perspiring cheeks.

“How close are they?” I asked concisely.

“They…they…” She spoke with broken sentences in between heavy panting, only managing to form a coherent sentence after repeated effort. “They’re… only a couple of blocks away… I-it was Hina who spotted them when they were making their way over here.”

I inwardly frowned. Although I expected my estimations to be off, the horde was closing in a bit too fast. I thought we at least had an hour or two left before they could make it this far into the district. Did something happen? What had changed?

As my mind struggled to find an answer, the others came closer. Cielle, Cher, and the President all stared at me with worried expressions.

“How many are there?” Cher asked, already fastening her makeshift sword prosthetic onto her arm.

The girl hesitated for a second before simply replying, “A lot.”

“A lot?”

“Um…y-yeah, that’s what Hina told me when I asked…” She hastily continued, waving her arms fruitlessly in panic.

For a fraction of a second, a grimace contorted my face before I forcefully suppressed it and nodded. The grip onto my sword tightened as I turned towards the others. I looked at Cher and the President.

“How much have you two harvested?” So far, they’ve spent close to an hour and a half stripping down the corpse and collecting the hide, fur, scales, etc. Unfortunately, because of the body’s durability, the progress was slow and arduous.

“We barely finished separating the hide, fur, and scales from one of its lower legs.” The President replied. “We started working on the muscle and meat, but it’s a lot tougher than we originally expected.” He pointed to a spot near the manticore, where they gathered the resources they managed to harvest.

Compared to the rest of the body, the pile wasn’t a lot, but it was still a considerable amount. It would probably fill-up about half of the Humvee’s cargo space.

I thought for a moment, before I nodded my head. “Alright, you,” I pointed to the nervous girl in front of me. “Start loading the stuff onto the car. I’ll call Narise back and get her to help you out later. The rest of us, Cielle, Cher, Prez, let’s go.

We’ll be a bit busy for a while.”

****

I walked onto the open street beyond the school. Aside from the narrow alley ways that weaved in between the houses, this street was one of the only paths that lead towards the east. I approached Hina, who stood next to Kido’s childhood friend and ardently stared out into the distance. In her hands was a pair of high powered binoculars.

I followed her eyes, and looked beyond the horizon. It was hard to make out, but the horde was close. Each passing second turned the distant silhouettes slightly larger. It won’t take long for the horde to arrive.

From what I could make out, the incoming horde was a coalition of hobgoblins and cliff ogres. A mix of walking giants surrounded by tiny brown clusters. They looked like a poorly constructed pack of trail mix. Seeing this scene, the frown on my face deepened. I finally figured out the reason why the horde was so fast.

Two of the opposing monster groups formed an alliance. The infighting that I hoped would delay them did not come to fruition.

I briefly glanced down at the sword in my hand and felt the familiar ridges on [Fynch]’s hilt. Fiddling around in my pocket with the other, I grasped onto the paper clip sized axe and gripped its tiny handle with the end of my fingers. Because of [Extreme Burnout], my active skills were essentially locked out while my stats were greatly limited due to the effects of the various other demerits my body suffered under.

If I were to make a rough estimation based on what I experienced these past few days, then my current strength was probably below half of Cher and the Prez’s. Numerically, that would put me somewhere around level fifteen, not including weapon bonuses.

Fortunately, things weren’t all that bad. I tested it previously, but the weapon skills and weapon bonuses work just fine, although the changes given by [Equip] were not added.

As all the combatants of the group gathered, I took command and implemented one of the key aspects of the [World System] that we couldn’t do previously inside the dungeon.

[Party Formation].

The rest of the group experimented with this feature previously while I was away, and they explained a bit of what they discovered to me yesterday. Parties weren’t really anything special. Creating a [Party] just basically meant forming a group and sharing the experience among the members. This was probably in order to compensate for people with more support type roles. In addition, another feature that parties had was the ability to display the other member’s HP to each other.

When I tested the system yesterday, I confirmed all of this. When I assigned myself as [Party Leader], I discovered an additional feature that the others previously did not know about. I found out I could send brief and short messages to the other members in my party. This message was limited to three to four words, and could only be done every fifteen minutes. I figured this feature was due to the leadership stat I possessed. Since I was the only one with the leadership stat, then it wasn’t surprising that the others did not know about this feature. I also concluded that the limitations to the system were because of my leadership stat. If I increased it, then it was probably possible to send longer messages in much shorter intervals. Heck, maybe I can even unlock other features if I continue to increase my leadership stat.

There were plenty of things I still did not know about this new system. The most worrying question I currently had on my mind was whether there was a limit to the distance between members for the [Party System] to stay in effect. If we separate far enough, will the party automatically disband?

For now, I pushed my worries to the back of my mind and set myself as [Party Leader]. I looked back at the approaching horde. Hina’s previous statement was spot on. There was a hell of a lot of them advancing.

More than thirty Hobgoblins and seven Cliff Ogres. The hobgoblins were similar to the goblins I fought before. They were just a bit larger and had dirty brown skin as opposed to the green I was familiar with. As for the Cliff Ogres, they resembled golems rather than actual ogres.

When I questioned Hina about the Ogres, she briefly stated that the ones today were larger than the few the group fought before.

They were close to ten meters tall and towered over the surrounding houses. The rock like skin covering their bodies was literally rock. The Cliff Ogres looked like giants molded from stone and mountain. Near the front of the horde was a Cliff Ogre that was almost twice as large as the others. Its arms dropped all the way to the ground, and each step it took shattered the underlying pavement beneath. It was clearly an Elite, if not a Named monster.

After thinking for a bit, I asked Hina a question. “How much mana will it consume for you to create a wall of earth?”

She paused for a second before replying with a dread filled expression, “… If it’s a wall that will block the whole street, then… at least seventy percent, probably more.”

Hearing this, a sigh unconsciously leaked out form my slightly parted lips. After a moment of hesitation, I asked another question. “How about fire? How much for a wall of fire?”

Not even a second later, Hina instantly responded. “I have better control over fire, so only twenty percent… but it will immediately collapse if I don’t continually supply it with mana. The wind outside is too strong and the conditions aren’t right for me to perpetually maintain it.”

“…Alright.” I nodded. “Cielle will aim for the Elite Cliff Ogre. Shut down one of its legs. Hina create a wall of fire for… at least sixty seconds. The main purpose of this is to separate the horde. The Cliff Ogres will be able to cross the fire but that’s alright. As long as you can keep the hobgoblins at bay for sixty seconds, then that’s enough.

Meanwhile, Cher and the others will go around through the houses and use the sixty seconds to attack the hobgoblins. There are too many for just three of you to kill, but if you don’t aim to kill and prioritize survival, then it should be manageable. During the sixty seconds, Cielle and I will cut down the number of Cliff Ogres. They are the biggest threat.”

The Cliff Ogres possessed a durable exterior, and in the past, with the exception of Hina, nobody here was capable of doing significant damage to them. Rather than pair Cher and the others against something they were bad against, it was better to make use of everyone’s strength and have them target the weaker, but numerically advantageous group.

“Wait, wait,” Cher interrupted. She looked at me with creased eyebrows. A worried expression masked her face. “Are you sure about this? Aren’t you still…”

I lightly smiled and interrupted her before she finished, “Don’t worry, I’m more than capable enough. I might be like this now, but I’m still stronger than you.” I lied before turning to Hina, “Hina, buff me up with your spells.”

“Alright.” She nodded slightly, before a surge of warmth entered my chest and spread throughout my body. Similar sensations overwhelmed me for the next few minutes.

While Hina hurriedly casted spell after spell on to me, the “Hobgoblin distraction team” set out and hopped from one house to another and quickly got into position. Once the horde approached one hundred meters and once Hina finished casting her buffs, I slightly nodded my head.

Cielle, who received the go ahead, immediately brought forth a bubble of [Black Gemini] that she kept within a canteen strapped to her waist. The dark bubble slowly collapsed into itself before converging into a thin ice-like spear of solid black. After a few seconds, the originally opaque darkness took on a slight shade of green. Cielle used [Acid clad] and imbued her magic with acid.

Cielle’s face was a shade paler than before, and her chest heaved heavily as sweat continually poured down her cheeks. According to Cielle, this one shot alone costs about forty percent of her total mana. Luckily, it was all worth it.

Taking a deep breath, Cielle raised her left hand up, mimicking the stance of a javelin thrower. The spear of dark green matched her posture and floated a few centimeters above her open palm. With one giant step forward, she flung the spear straight towards the incoming giant.

The chunk of [Dark Gemini] flew like a streak of black lightning, piercing through the humid air before stabbing into the Elite Cliff Ogre’s left knee cap.

The corrosion immediately took effect. Because of the Cliff Ogre’s durability, the acid had a lower effect, but it was enough to make a difference. The Ogre marched forward without feeling the impact. It took several steps forward before the acid began to kick in, and its footsteps wobbled. After one more step, its kneecap shattered. The weight of the creature pushed down onto its broken knee and made the situation even worse. It toppled to the floor with an earth-shaking crash, crushing two hobgoblins beneath it.

Despite the success of the first attack, the Ogre did not stop. Its remaining leg wasn’t strong enough to support the monster’s full weight, but it crawled forward using the power of its oversized upper arms. Seeing this scene, I could not help but frown. I assumed Cielle’s earlier attack was enough to incapacitate it, but I was dead wrong. At the very least though, it was moving at a much slower speed than before, buying us precious time.

I turned towards Hina, who was ardently waiting for my signal. “Now.” With one word from me, Hina immediately casted her spell.

A wall of blistering flames erupted forth from the ground about thirty meters away from us. The column of fire was enough to completely cover the street from one end to another.

The wall of fire was easily passed by the Cliff Ogres, but the hobgoblins could not easily proceed forward.

After a few seconds, I heard the sound of battle coming from beyond the wall of flame.

I inwardly smiled and stared straight ahead. Not counting the Elite Cliff Ogre who was still crawling from behind the fire wall, there were six Ogres in front of me. Statistically speaking, that would mean two per person, but that won’t quite work in this situation.

For sixty seconds, Hina needed to maintain the fire wall. Meanwhile, Cielle was limited with what she could do. Based on the exchange from earlier, a cliff ogre was eerily similar to a golem. They could not feel pain and this attribute alone greatly limited Cielle’s potential during this upcoming battle. Spamming [Acid Clad] was her only method of attack, but this consumed too much mana. In this regard, it might have been better to send Cielle off with the others to fight the hobgoblins. Unfortunately, I deemed shutting down the Elite Ogre more important to the overall battle.

Well, that was alright. This situation was what I expected. It just meant I had to take on more than two golems.

I walked forward with calm and leisure steps. The approaching Ogres saw me. The closest one immediately barreled towards me, its arm already swinging downward. Considering how tough its skin was, I returned [Fynch] back into the make shift scabbard I hurriedly crafted yesterday. Instead, I felt for the familiar weapon in my pocket as I narrowed my eyes and stared at the incoming giant.

Stolen from NovelFire, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

A sigh leaked out from my thinly parted lips.

Right now, I only had two weapon skills available to me, [Devour] and [Shift]. [Devour] wasn’t a combat skill in the first place, and [Shift] had a massive setback. It was a good skill, but the kickback was a major problem.

While suffering massive kickbacks wasn’t exactly ideal, given the situation, I wasn’t left with much of a choice. The Ogre rapidly closed the distance between us.