Mountain of a Mole Hill

Wave 7 complete. Wave 8 (30 enemies) will begin in 2 minutes!

John slumped down against one of the ruined walls, his breathing labored. Around him, the girls did pretty much the same, even Kiera and Anita, who had been quickly eliminated by the swarm of thirty gremlins that had attacked them last round. He was just glad that anyone tagged out got to come back once the round was done.

And it had been a close one. Only Aeolia had more than one ‘life’ left, thanks to her ability to take to the skies; the rest of them had clung to their last life with all their will. Vivian had refracted her image several times to distract the gremlins while she remained invisible, tucked in a corner and sniping them with reflected light rays. Beth, much like Aeolia, took the highest ground she could, taking opportune strikes and dancing around counter attacks as best she could.

Lynn had adopted a defensive posture, using a vicious and caustic compound as a shield, and the only reason she had lost lives had been from her efforts trying to protect Kiera and Anita from their final ‘deaths’. Too many gremlins around all of them made her valiant attempt sadly fail and she retreated back to turtling with well timed acid whips thinning the tide.

Senka burned most of her mana maintaining Shadow Veil to defend against the rapid attacks of the gremlins, staying as close to John as possible as he fought them off using a combo of wind spirit boosted Agility, dark mana Hex stealing more speed, and Verdant Surge to further boost his stats. With his mana being the wind element, he unlocked the Evocation’s effect mod, which was more than useful for this battle.

Wind: Increase Strength and Agility by (Evocation Lv x 5)% each.

Splitting the effect between both stats was a bit of let down, but the flexibility was nice, and in this barrier, the boost to speed was far more useful than more raw power. Even with all those stacked buffs, he still had to be careful. The swarming tactics of the gremlins meant one misstep could be his undoing. There was no cooldown regarding life loss. Those three hits could all happen in one second. Between that and the numbers, it made things a slog.

Wordlessly, he accepted the mana potion from Lynn, the bottle carried over on a thin tendril of water, and he downed it, the cool sensation of wintermint running down his chest as he felt his mana recharge.

“Don’t expect a lot more of these,” the blonde said after distributing the potions. “I didn’t expect this to be so taxing.”

“You’re out of the juice?” Beth asked in the teasing way John had come to associate with the sisters.

“Less out and more if we take more we start running the risks of negative backlashes happening if we keep chugging them in such a short time,” Lynn answered. “Won’t be too bad of side effects, but not really anything I’d like to experience during a fight. Not one that’s not life or **** anyway.”

“Well, the good news is I think we can get this done this round,” John said, willing the empty bottle into his inventory. “I only need another five kills with Evocation to complete the quest, and after eight rounds, I don’t think any of us will complain about taking a break.”

There was a small smattering of agreement with that plan, and Vivian cleared her throat after drinking her own potion.

“So, how are we going to play this?” she asked. “The main goal is for you to score those last kills.”

“I think we should funnel them to me in the opening moments,” John said after a moment of thought, the seconds drifting away, closing in on the start of the round. “If I can get off those five hits, it won’t matter if I go down in exchange. Then everyone else can go for the kill strikes.”

“Not a fan of the sacrificial play,” Aeolia remarked sourly. “Especally since you going out takes Senka out as well.”

“I’m not trying to get knocked out,” John protested. “But the whole goal of the quest is to hit my sixty kills and Gaia is being nice enough to count me hitting them once as enough. Getting them in as early as possible is just the best way to go about this.”

“I’ll make sure we aren’t taken out,” Senka said, placing her hand on John’s shoulder. “Victory tastes sweeter if we’re standing in the aftermath. That goes for everyone. Let’s see if we can win this without losing anyone.”

John knew that was going to be a hard task. All of them had lost at least once in the six rounds between the first and this hopefully last one. The gremlins were just too fast. While Anita could throw out her magic negating spores and Beth could lock them in place, their speed and numbers made trying to do so a losing proposition. The spores and adhesive ground would need to be of such a large area that they were likely to be caught up in them too, making them a double edged sword too dangerous to risk.

“We don’t have time to come up with a good plan, so we need to focus on what we can,” John said with a sigh. “Let me get the hits in, then we weather the storm.”

“Great plan,” Lynn sarcastically muttered.

“You got anything better?” Beth hotly asked.

“Unfortunally, no,” the blonde replied through clenched teeth, shaking her head. “Even if we didn’t need to meet the requirements for this quest, I don’t have enough potions to completely cover us, and that’s the best idea I’ve had.”

“Defense isn’t a bad idea,” Kiera spoke up.

“It is when your shield is half broken,” Lynn countered. “If I knew this was the sort of thing we’d be up against, I would have grabbed more potions.”

“You did kind of barge into this,” Aeolia pointed out.

“I didn’t know we’d be fighting one hundred plus enemies,” Lynn protested. “I assumed you’d need just a bit more mana.”

“Those have been very helpful,” Anita chimed in.

“Guys, we really don’t have the time for this,” John interjected. “We’ve got like ten seconds.”

“We don’t have time for anything besides your half plan,” Lynn remarked, acid flying around her.

The clock hit zero.

Wave 8 (30 enemies) begins!

The baying howls of the gremlins sounded all around them and John tensed. Even with Lynn's potion, his mana bar still was a bit shy of being full, which was a blessing as Senka’s mana flowed into him, setting him up for the Hex play. If nothing else came from today, he was sure to get a good number of skill increases from the amount of spells he cast. Hell, he might even hit a level up. He expected any experience from the gremlins to be low due to their ‘three hit out’ rule, but quantity over quality might still put him over the top.

The first gremlin he saw cresting the ruined wall John hit with Hex. He immediately felt his balance shift as his Agility soared higher and he activated Verdant Surge a moment later, pushing it even more. Speed boosted and an enemy left flatfooted, John had his target. With a rushing charge, he crossed the space in a few quick strides, wooden greatsword cutting through the air as if it weighed half of what it did.

‘One,’ he thought as he scored a hit across the gremlin’s chest, taking note of the frayed red headband it wore around its head. Over the course of the battles, they all noticed that each gremlin had some sort of identifying mark on them. A tattoo, piece of clothing or jewelry, which made keeping track of the ones he had already hit easier.

With red headband sent flying back, John pivoted to the nearest gremlin before it could get the drop on him. This one had a number of earrings in one ear, enough that John briefly wondered if it had to put in effort to keep its head level. Pushing that random thought aside, John thrust the greatsword at it.

With its speed giving magic in full effect, the gremlin was more than able to react to John’s attack, but the difference in their speed wasn’t enough for it to fully evade the sword. The glancing blow was enough to make the gremlin skip away from him. But the frenzied look in its eye made it clear to John that it wanted to get ****.

The gremlin dipped low, arms touching the ground in a frog-like pose, tensed to spring at him. John had a moment to brace before it did, shifting his sword so he could use the flat as a makeshift shield. The gremlin’s head squarely hit the improvised defence and **** John back a step. That was enough for another gremlin that had slipped past John’s notice to jump him from behind, its thick head smashing into his lower back.

In his mind, he felt his life counter drop by one. It was an odd sensation, an opinion everyone agreed with. It was like knowing you had a certain number of limbs and then had one less. But John didn’t have the time to ponder on it as he regained his footing and dashed back away from both gremlins, the pair smelling the proverbial blood in the air.

Thankfully, he had a dark guardian angel looking out for him. A Black Thorn struck the earring wearing gremlin, followed by a second one, felling it before it had time to wind up for a follow up attack.

John let his gratitude flow through to Senka before spinning to target his newest enemy. The gremlin that hit him on the back was by far the oddest he’d seen; its ears were practically non-existent, as if they had been ripped off by years of combat. It did make it easy to keep an eye on it.

John reupped Verdant Surge, and charged at the mangled gremlin. It met John with a charge of its own, a mad glint in its eyes. When they were only around two meters apart, John threw a Hex at it. The sudden drop in speed and dexterity, and increase to its enemy, threw the gremlin’s balance off and John struck its head with a heavy blow of his sword.

The gremlin crashed to the ground and John wasn’t feeling gracious and pounced down upon it, stabbing it twice to eliminate it.

‘That’s three,’ John thought as his eyes raked across the battlefield. From what he could see, along with Senka’s impression from her higher vantage point, they seemed to be doing well. As much as he would like to watch Beth parkour her way around the battlefield or see Aeolia dart between gremlins like a cutting wind, he had work to do. He may need only two more hits to lock in the quest’s victory, but he really didn’t want to ‘die’ afterwards.

A gremlin with a hat of all things caught his attention, mainly because its movements were sluggish, the swirling magic around it having turned from wispy green to a viscous blue. A glance at where it was coming from gave him an idea of what happened to it.

Anita was practically skipping around, clouds of deep blue spores flying from her hands. When these spores hit the gremlins, or more appropriately, mixed with the magic around them, it changed the elemental nature of the spell. Wind was overstatured by water, and the speed it gave was replaced with the weight, and the resistance, of the sea.

Moving as if neck deep in the ocean, the gremlin was far from able to fight back as John leapt upon it. Three quick strikes later, and it was gone, right in time for Verdant Surge to end. The repeated uses of the Evocation and Hex had left him drained but he only needed one more hit to reach the goal. Then he could fight more conservatively. And he had just the target for his final needed Evocation.

One of the now water mana logged gremlins was far from the small group Anita’s last attack had affected, and perfect for John to snipe with Fiery Pursuit. The quick, wind boosted fireball struck the slowed gremlin with a bang and threw it back.

‘And that’s five,’ he cheered, a grin forming on his face. The game was still on, but the quest was done. Now they just needed to clear the round and end the barrier to reap the reward and get a break.

John focused his efforts on the cadre of gremlins still under the effects of Anita’s spores. Slowed as they were, even with his speed only being boosted by the Overlayed wind spirit, John was more than able to quickly tap them with his sword, dropping another three gremlins.

“You holding up okay?” he asked Anita once the area immediately around them was clear.

“Doing great!” she answered in a chipper tone. “I’m soo happy I decided to try using the local mana for my spores! Slowing them down is soo useful! Don’t know why Beth seemed so down about sticking them down though.”

“She has to keep it up or they get unstuck,” John remarked. “And that means she doesn’t get to fight them.”

“She does look so happy running around,” Anita said with clear affection in her voice as she turned to watch Beth run up a wall before throwing an orb at the gremlin chasing her.

“Yeah, she does,” John responded with equal fondness. The battle cry of approaching gremlins broke through their little respite and Anita bounced up to kiss John’s cheek before she ran off to find more gremlins to fight.

John watched her run off for a second too long and a gremlin pounced on him from above. The weight of the leaping creature drove John to the ground, his knees taking the brunt of the impact before his face met the damp ground. Before the gremlin pinning him could deal the third and final blow and knock him out of the round, a wet whipping sound accompanied its weight being **** off him.

John scrambled to his feet in time to see a tendril of acid strike the prone gremlin twice, making it vanish. He turned to see Lynn looking at him with a disappointed look in her eyes, one John felt he'd seen her shoot Beth once or twice in the time he knew her. Clearly it was a skill she’d trained to mastery, as he felt a spike of shame of being caught so easily.

“Don’t get distracted,” she simply said tersely. Before John could give any reply, he spotted a gremlin emerge from a shadowy rooftop, its body bereft of the wind enchantment. Whether it had run its course or this gremlin had opted for a slow and stealthy approach, John would think about later. Right now, he had a second before it dropped down on Lynn, whose attention, ironically enough, was on him and not the battle around them.

There were many actions John could have taken to aid Beth’s sister. He could have shouted a warning, trusting Lynn to be able to protect herself from the attack. He could have used his remaining mana to fire one of his ranged attacks. He could have even just let the attack happen. There was no real risk of injury, just Lynn’s elimination from the round. A large drop in their ability to crowd control, for sure, but nothing they couldn’t bounce back from.

But John didn’t do any of those. Instead, his feet moved the moment he saw the gremlin slink out of the shadows, tensed to pounce. Lynn’s eyes widened at his charge, before she traced back where his eyes were focused, twisting her head to see her attacker lunge at her. John was right next to her before the acid she still had suspended around her began to surge up to intercept the strike.

John’s blade thrust up at it, catching it by surprise. The tip of his sword impacted its chin with a meaty thwack and **** it back. Two tendrils of acid struck it in quick succession right after, eliminating the gremlin.

John let his sword drop then he turned his head towards Lynn, finding her looking at him with a blank expression.

“I had that,” the alchemist said, her eyes scanning his face.

“Yeah, I know,” John said, gesturing to the still extended tendrils of deadly acid. “But I saw that guy coming and just, you know, moved. Think all this fighting has really improved my ‘don’t overthink things and just act’ part of my brain.”

“Didn’t know that was something you could level,” Lynn remarked, a hint of a smile cracking her professional expression.

“I mean, if I up my Wisdom enough… John began but trailed off. He shook his head. “That’s something to think about later. Still got a few more gremlins to deal with. Can’t let ourselves get distracted, right?”

Lynn opened her mouth, likely to comment on John throwing her words back at her, but shut it before saying anything. Then she shook her head after a moment.

“You’re right. Let’s get back to it.”