They were late. Late to respond to the distress signal.
The source of the distress signal is currently 7 km away.
She read the message sent along with it, again, for the hundredth time.
“The 2nd node near the Dark Mansion of Horath has been compromised. We’re quickly running out of manpower, weapons, and crystals. Whoever has received this text, we’re hiding northwest…”
— Sam Wilson, 2 hours ago.
Bringing her arms to her chest, she muttered a quiet prayer to Mother Prosperity, asking for her blessings. Quietly hoping they were okay, that they had held on for the night. As long as they survived the night, everything would be okay.
“How…long…before we…reach the node,” Brad droned on the side, arms crossed around his chest. He rested his head on the side of the carriage. Attempting to take a nap.
But it was hard. Frequent bumps on the road rattled the carriage and kept him awake.
Last night had been the hardest. The Undead horde had grown in number, and it took all of their strength to clean them up. From her benefactor, she had gotten Saintess’ ash(Silver) as a gift, which put the night creatures into a lethargic and weakened state. Without it, none of them would still be here, sitting in the carriage.
Others weren’t so lucky as she and her group.
“How long…” Brad muttered.
He was the muscle of the group. More than that, he was an overenthusiastic nerd obsessed with magic and had an obsessive interest in comics. The only reason why he’d put on so much muscle was…because he wanted to be like his heroes. What did he say? Like Superman, yeah. He was even wearing red and blue, which was supposedly the colour of a "Hero."
But he was no hypocrite like most of them. His actions were undoubtedly heroic.
He was always putting himself in danger to save others.
But in this world, no good deeds were left unpunished. And so, he also suffered the most injuries. Rest, for him, was vital. Yet his attempts at power naps were failing hilariously, as every bump on the road would make his head hit the carriage, to his immense annoyance.
Thud
The next time he struck his head on the walls, he could no longer tolerate it. He snapped his eyes open, made a tsk noise, and looked at Abel, who was ‘steering’ the carriage.
He barked, “How far are we from the distress signal? This shouldn’t have taken this long, even if we went on foot!”
Abel flinched and snapped back at him.“Just go back to sleep instead of whining about it every two seconds, you muscleheaded bastard!”
Abel and Brad always bickered like they were a married couple. That’s how she had found them, and they remained the same throughout. How these two were best friends was still a question to her.
“Yeah? Yeah? Whose bright idea was it to ride a big fuckoff carriage and have a Blind Warthog pull it? You try and sleep inside this thing!”
"This is the fucking trend, you idiot! This is going to bring us more benefactors! They like medieval stuff!"
"What a load of crap!"
The beast pulling the carriage, she scanned it.
Blind Warthrog, Lv 21
It was larger than a rhino and more powerful than an elephant, with the temperament of a pitbull. It was, in no way, suitable for carrying people like some domesticated animal. On top of that, wasn't it quite literally...blind?
We are totally going to crash.
She was thankful for not bringing Kayla along in this, despite the girl repeatedly begging to come. It was going to get dangerous, and she didn’t want to put her life on the line, too.
The only person in this carriage who was still unperturbed by all of this was "Eye". Not his real name, that was what he chose as his AstralSpace nickname. Nobody among them knew his real name or his origins. His voice made him sound like a kid, but he was always composed and still as water.
Even in this state, he kept stitching the wool garments, his fingers steady as ever.
No matter where he was, he would either be hunting or advancing his crafting class, Strandweaver. More like a machine than a man. To be honest, she had never seen him take a break.
“SHIT!”
Leah felt her heart skip a beat. Quickly turning towards Brad, she found him rubbing his head in despair. She asked, "What happened?"
“I dropped a rank.”
She sighed in relief.
That’s all he cared about. The ranks. The climb. Treating the leaderboard like some sort of real-life game.
“Hahaha! Serves you right!” Abel used the opportunity to mock him. “What’s his name?”
“Stoneheaded.”
“Stone what?”
“Stoneheaded!”
There was a pause in the air after that.
“I stand corrected, there’s someone with a worse naming sense than you.”
She couldn’t help but check, and sure enough.
Monster Hunter leaderboard
66. Stoneheaded
67. Point Break
Indeed. Seemed like he had met his match.
“It should have been me.” Brad muttered, “I should have chosen…Stoneheaded as my nickname! It was so obvious. How did I miss that?!”
Like that, she ended up chuckling. Even in dire situations, she couldn’t stay depressed. Not with them around. Particularly Brad.
He certainly reminded her of someone she used to know.
***
“AND HE JUST BURST THROUGH THEM!” The voice of a host crackled out of the speaker on the screen. “He just burst through that Clytheron with a well-placed barrier around its neck! The Barrier mage!! In the neck of time! No pun intended. That’s the Barrier mage for you, ladies and gentlemen!”
Klaus ignored the fanfare and chewed on the tasteless meat with a frown on his face. “This is worse than pig piss,” he muttered, and still devoured with gusto. Every resource was scarce in this new, insane world of Eledra. He couldn't waste anything.
He should really stop trying to find good food for cheap, though. If he chose wrong and got a stomach ache in the middle of the fight…yeah, he didn’t want to think about it.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
In the middle of the Inn, a thin screen hung in the air, and no matter where he sat, it appeared to be a few feet in front of him. So he figured the technology was embedded in his brain rather than external. Connected to the system.
The guide had said this was adjusted according to the most popular type of visual medium on earth, which he took to be television. But customization was a thing. It was possible to even change it to POV mode, which was VR, basically, and cinematic mode, like watching a 3D movie.
He preferred the base mode.
A curious scene played in Channel 709, broadcasting the Extreme zone, the one close to Area 7, namely, The Endless Plains.
He pinpointed the exact place from the snow and mountains. It was around the Volcano of Etho. The monsters were of the area, too.
A man—dark-cloaked—coolly posed in front of three wolf-like creatures, each standing at least two meters tall, their crystalline canines the size of longswords.
They opened their jaws wide, revealing two pairs of razor-sharp, dangerous rows of teeth, and made threatening gestures as they encircled the man. Their curved claws sheared apart the snow and tore through the surrounding.
“Oh no! But he can only cast one barrier every thirty seconds! Is that enough to defeat 3 Clarythons at once?” The host spoke with a grim anticipation, the inflections of his voice minutely controlled, expertly calibrated to arouse fear.
The entire Inn turned silent under his fear-mongering tactics. They began whispering to themselves.
“Goddamn! These motherfucken’ cats look scary as fuck.”
Those were wolves!
“What is the reverse version of pspsps?”
Wolves!
“Yeah, I would never go to those wolves. Each one must be level twenty, at least.”
Thank you! But more like thirty! Klaus snorted. He knew these: Clarythons, one of the wolf-type monsters found on the outskirts of the extreme zone. They attacked in packs, rendering them excessively difficult to fight, and most often fatal if encountered alone.
And their only weak points were the eyes, which had to be stabbed with precision to rupture the brain in a single strike. Other parts, particularly the bones, were extremely hard to get through and proved to be a messy fight.
Klaus could do that, but not many others could.
The screen gave a cat's eye view of the scene.
Barrier mage was cautious; the only parts of his body that were exposed were his hand and deep eyes that exuded weariness.
But Klaus would reckon he was not cautious enough.
He parsed out information from the fingers. Thirties, at least. Could be well in his forties if he were someone who took decent skin care. Judging from the caution in his eyes, this was a man who had gone through a lot in life.
From those thin fingers, Klaus could still glean additional information. Pianist? Not that elegant. Office worker? He didn’t seem like either. His posture was abnormally good. Someone who did a lot of standing, maybe.
Food service? Too old for that.
He seemed smarter.
Teacher? His eyes gave that scholarly, profound vibe, sure.
As he made mental calculations, all three of Clarythons leapt forward at once, pouncing onto the dark-cloaked, thin-fingered man, who raised his hands and did some weird weaving motion with his fingers.
Hmm?
Klaus saw it again, a near–invisible shield rising around the beasts. Inside those barriers, mana became sharp as cleavers. The beasts fell apart, erratically cut into pieces like they had been put into a meat grinder.
“That’s the Barrier mage, fellas! Barrier mage! To anyone else, this class would have been useless. But our Barrier Mage is no simple guy. Back on earth, he was a physics professor, a scholar now turned fighter. These barriers may look easy to weave for your viewers, but I assure you, they are anything but easy. They are physics meet energy! A wonderful blend!”
Right. He was a Physics professor turned butcher.
“Oh…and no surprise, he is up the monster leaderboard once more!”
The entire tavern burst into cheers.
“Third Ranked!”
“Area 7's Third best.”
Yeah, yeah, third best. Whatever. Klaus was unimpressed. Why were they making such a fuss over nothing? Sure, he was third best among maybe nearly half a billion people, but that’s nothing.
He could kill those monsters faster with Blink.
“Subscribe to Channel 709 if you wish to see more of the Barrier Mage and his adventures. Watch this physics professor combine magic and maths and achieve wonders, only at channel 709!”
The Innkeeper lady, a rather grumpy old lady with horns, changed the channel in annoyance.
After the Apocalypse, Humanity had been broadly separated into a couple of dozen areas. This Inn was in Area 7, situated right between the extreme zone and hard zone.
Barrier Mage, from his assessment, had a mage-offshoot class. One of the more powerful variations of it. And the guy had a good head on his shoulders, using it effectively for both offense and defense.
Though, thus far, that was mere luck. Klaus didn’t acknowledge Barrier Mage as his equal. Sure, what he did was amazing, but that was nothing in one-on-one. His aspect,
In real-life battles. He could kill him in a blink. He’d not see what hit him until he saw his body separated from his head…
The inn was bustling, with people gossiping about the various rising stars.
“Can’t beat Auracrat, though.” Someone said, from the sides.
AuraCrat was entirely another beast. Ranked 1 of the Area. She was someone he held no confidence in defeating. She was simply faster, stronger, and unreasonably powerful.
It was tough to believe she was from Earth.
“Hmph. Auracrat might be amazing with her aura formations for a while, but eventually, Barrier Mage would become capable of putting barriers around cities. What good would formations be against that? He could clear out monsters and protect us, too! Formations just aren’t as good.”
It had begun. Humanity’s worst trait—right after running away from responsibility—was rooting for others to solve their problem. Even after the apocalypse, they hadn’t learned.
They’d never learn.
Klaus once again checked the numbers.
Human (Earth)
Area : 7
Status: 63%
Nodes lit: 11/23
Safe Zone Status: 44%.
The irony was that sixty-three percent didn’t mean humanity was at sixty-three percent power. Much lower, in fact. Within the last seven days, more than one-third of the people who began at Area 7 had been wiped out.
The brave ones—the ones that dared to take the challenge were the ones that lost their lives. Now what remained was a caricature, the rotten skeletons clinging onto hope to survive, hoping for a hero to come save them.
Klaus was prepared to solve his problems on his own.
Since the third day of the tutorial, he had planned to leave. Area 7 was doomed. If he went to the right, the next area, Area 9, belonged to the Baratha people—the cat-like race that was integrated alongside them, and he planned to shift there.
He heard they weren’t hostile to Humans.
Right now, he was just staying low, keeping his identity hidden. His class, [The Wanderer] —an adventurer archetype, supported that idea. As more time passed, his brilliance would speak for itself.
Auracrat? Barrier mage?
Just minor names in his path.
In the great paths, it was the low-key ones that came first! The virtuous ones are low-key! Greatness came only by biding for time!
Hahahaha!
An audible laughter resonated in the entire tavern. He frowned. Who was laughing so loudly? Who could be so audacious…
Everyone paused to give him a weird stare.
Wait…it was him?
How embarrassing!
Cloaking himself, he prepared to bolt off with Blink, but another small commotion erupted, stealing the people’s attention away from him.
“Hey! Stoneheaded is moving again!”
“Stoneheaded! That cheating bastard!”
Who is Stoneheaded? He immediately had quite a few questions. For one, what kind of name was that? And who the hell chose that as their nickname?
He perked his ear to listen.
“He’s moving up again?” A bald middle-aged man exclaimed, “He’s at rank 64 now!”
Klaus felt out of the loop. He’s been out farming for a few hours at most. What did he miss? How did an unknown ranker pop up and sit on rank 64?
That must be a joke.
“Just two ranks?” Someone said in disappointment.
Why did he sound so profoundly disappointed about a guy jumping two ranks at once? It was excessively difficult, even in the 60’s. He had to kill at least 4-5 of level 20 beasts to climb each rank in the sixties. That was a couple days ago.
Now it was much harder.
“Well, you can’t expect him to jump 434 ranks at once again, can you?” A one-eyed man chugged his bottles, chuckling.
434 ranks?
Someone else seemed just as confused as him. One of the lower rankers in the low sixties, named Jung. He had muscles that seemed to be forged metal wires. Military background, possibly Marine.
“Making stories, are we? You paid actor!”
The one-eyed man frowned before showing an understanding smile, and then leaned forward to whisper. “I guess you haven’t heard of him yet? None of us did until just a few hours ago. It's like he spawned out of nothing and blazed to rank sixty-six all within a few minutes. Nobody else had heard of him before that.”
Another one chimed in, exclaiming, “Some of us even went and sent complaints to the Area guide. How else could someone jump so many ranks in such a short time? Must be cheating, right?”
“Bullshit.” Carl was astounded. “They denied?”
Klaus, knowing how the leaderboard worked, also found himself having a hard time believing any of this.
“He’s up again! Three ranks this time!” Someone else shouted.
Klaus quickly fished out the leaderboard.
Monster Hunter leaderboard.
Rank 1. AuraCrat
Rank 2. Iceberg
Rank 3. Barrier mage.
Rank 4. Stormfire
Rank 5….
Rank 9. Rex_Hyperious(You)
Rank 10…
.
.
Rank 59. Stoneheaded.
There he was. Didn’t he say he was at 61? How did he—
Rank 57. Stoneheaded.
Wait—
Rank 52. Stoneheaded.
Wait, wait, wait. That’s simply not possible. Klaus felt his blood boil in anger and disbelief.
“He’s doing it again! How high will he go this time?!”
“Do it! Stoneheaded! Dethrone them all!”
Rank 49. Stoneheaded.
“Rise!”
No.
Rank 36. Stoneheaded.
How?!
His understanding of the leaderboard collapsed. A strange fear choked him. That he was going to be overtaken like this. Mere minutes to take over his days of painstaking effort!
Rank 29. Stoneheaded.
Unacceptable.