They tore through the new enemies as they jumped down from the stands one after another. Starting at wave twenty-one, the monsters participating in the wave didn’t appear in one group; instead, they constantly approached the group, providing an extra challenge that way.
This time, all of them had to start acting; they couldn’t half-ass it.
Most groups did the first twenty waves easily – at least based on the videos on the net – and started to struggle after that when the composition of the opposition could become totally random. They might get a dozen muscly, greatsword-wielding undead coming for them, or have a team of shamans wielding the elemental power of ice, unleashing a storm upon them. Thus, every team had to be prepared for every eventuality.
Dan was bathing the entire area in fire hot enough to rival the sun, countering every shaman that popped up, while also weakening the golems and other constructs. He also occasionally let loose a shower of plasma spears, eradicating a group of enemy monsters with them.
Clarissa, befitting a healer, kept the party healthy and hale, while occasionally countering the shamans who, instead of casting ice storms or blizzards, cast curses at them.
Katie and Sam were running around, using their own weapons and magic to kill whatever decided to enter the arena.
They fought duels with wicked-looking weapon masters, resisted the charges of enraged berserkers, dodged assassins appearing out of fog, and general wrecked havoc while having a good time.
Isabella, meanwhile, was running around, giving them buffs and striking down especially sneaky or fortunate monsters.
Sam was having a lot of fun.
With all the real-world drama, his health scare, and everything else that was happening in the game, he hadn’t had the time to simply enjoy playing the game. So, faced with an almost endless amount of monsters, all of them different in some way, he was having a blast.
Sword dancing around, catching the enemies’ weapons and parrying before his other hand lashed out with a simple blast of void, destroying whatever part of the undead monster he hit, leaving behind bodies with large chunks missing.
The twenty-first wave ended, and soon began the twenty-second with several shamans jumping down from the stands, all of their red eyes glaring at the group. The one in the middle looked a bit different, wearing dozens of necklaces made out of animal fangs stained with frozen blood.
As soon as the unique shaman touched the slushy and black-blood-covered ground of the arena, the fangs began to glow with an unearthly black glow, and skeletons of animals began to break through the ground.
It continued until there were half a dozen different wolf, bear, and mountain goat skeletons standing before it.
“We got the necro!” Sam called out. The necromancer shaman was one of the possible mini-bosses that could appear. There were ones that used fogs to terrorize the players with illusions, others were much more powerful versions of the basic shamans, unleashing deadly waves of ice shards, and wielding massive ice spears to skewer the players. Another type was the support shaman that, instead of attacking, cast buffs on other monsters and ‘healed’ them. Well, as much as the undead could be healed.
Unfortunately, summoning even more mobs didn’t really help the enemy.
Sam raised his hand and, with a grin, unleashed a crescent of void, bisecting all the skeletons. Then Katie rushed toward the wall of the arena, jumped on it with her feet first, then used the momentum to launch herself high in the air, hanging there for a moment, greatsword raised over her head, and undulating black-yellow energy gathering around the edge of the weapon.
Then time sped up, and the crazy berserker girl impacted the necromancer shaman with the power of a small bomb.
“HAHAHAHAH! DIE!”
Everything and every monster froze as the icy and foggy cloud enveloped Katie and the necromancer. Even the royal undead stopped Puffball’s ministrations as she stared at them.
“Is it dead?” Isabella spoke up hesitantly.
[You defeated the Undead Necromancer Shaman…]
The screen popped up for everybody just as the fog dissolved, revealing Katie standing in a small crater with bits of undead monsters around her that already started to dissolve.
[Ice Rumble: Wave #23!]
Katie let out a cheer, and the fight was on once again.
Wave twenty-five came and went, with a fight against a three-headed ice golem in the shape of a wolf.
With Lucky’s gigantification, it was like watching a kaiju battle in a bottle. The two canines smashed together, sending tremors through the arena.
After the ice golem fell, the reward chest was upgraded into a silver chest, dotted with a lot of blue gemstones and decorated with a bit of gold filigree.
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“Do…you…wish…to…continue?” came the wispy voice of the undead woman, their gaze turning from totally disinterested into something a bit livelier.
Sam just nodded, and the woman returned with a measured one.
[Ice Rumble: Wave #26!]
The stands were starting to get emptier and emptier; the weaker monsters had been destroyed already. Now the monsters that jumped into the arena looked like they snacked on steroids between feeding on steroids that took steroids on their own. Weapons were made out of a dark blue ice instead of metal, glowing with arcane symbols. Even their armors were fitted with the same material and runes, granting them enhanced abilities.
Golems stepping down the stands didn’t even drop a little; they were big enough that their heads were almost touching the ceiling. Even the ice that made up the construct’s bodies was made out of the same dark blue ice, and deep inside the team could see flashes of arcane light forming glyphs and runes as the golems moved.
The space inside the arena started to get a little suffocating.
Sam knew that this dense crowd of monsters was the start of the end of many players attempting this challenge.
Then Dan spoke with a voice that demanded attention.
“Plasma…Eruption!”
He raised his magical club in the air, his muscles rippling with the effort it took to hold the tiny ball of magical fire at the tip of his club, then the words were spoken–
And a new sun was born.
Notifications rippled over their visions, and by the time Sam blinked the flashes away, the golems were nowhere to be seen.
They progressed forward, wave by wave, defeating more powerful foes one after another. Their teamwork was seamless, the two in the middle raining death and destruction on their enemies and the occasional heal and salvation on their teammates. Katie and Sam were having fun destroying everything, Katie with her eldritch power and Sam using his void power.
‘For once, I love the fact I’m not fighting super-strong enemies…’ he thought as he danced between three undead assassins, wicked daggers missing him just by a hair’s breadth before the monsters exploded as void energy latched onto their bodies.
The entire fracture has done wonders for his void manipulation abilities. With the tight space, he couldn’t stay at a distance. He had to get close and make sure he was precise enough not to harm his teammates.
‘I can’t wait until I see the gains…Numbers go brrrr…’ he thought with a chuckle.
“What’re you laughing at, boss?” Isabella called over just as she was making a pass near him, dancing like a whirligig, dicing monsters into icy chunks.
“Numbers go brrr!” he replied with a laugh in his voice.
The rest of the team didn’t disappoint him.
““““Numbers go brrr!””””
It was really impressive how all of them managed to yell that at the same time.
Twenty-six was followed by twenty-seven, then twenty-eight and twenty-nine. The monsters stayed the same, only their numbers and strategies shifted.
One wave sent them in a giant offensive, launching all of them at their defensive position as if trying to crack it with their spearhead. That was suffocated almost instantly under a sea of plasma with a rain of void to extinguish any that stayed alive.
One wave, they tried to get smart and drop on them from the ceiling.
Sam finally could practice his ranged attacks.
‘It is really unfair for us to fight in this fracture…’ was the only thought running through Sam’s head as the team bulldozed their way through the challenge.
Thirty ended with a lone shaman, skin almost black, covered from head to toe with runes and glyphs shining with white light, eyes red as blood, and surrounded by ghosts of the other monsters.
“Hey! Those are the ones we killed!” Katie called out before anybody else could mention it. And she was right.
Sam could see several ghostly bodies that were missing parts in shapes that suggested it was his void mana that took them out.
The undead shaman snarled, but no sound came out of its mouth – the tongue missing.
And then a brief lull as their team, still mostly whole and hearty, stared at the mini-boss.
The shaman raised their arm, holding an ancient staff, adorned with all sorts of things, mostly from animals and plants, but they could see a few broken weapons and other metal bits and bobs on them.
With a silent, but nonetheless angry snarl, it pointed it at them.
The ghosts rushed forward, all eager to get their revenge.
Sam knew that most groups perished at this point.
To get all the enemies that they had defeated so far thrown into their faces with the added caveat of ghostly properties stumped a lot of guilds.
Sadly, Sam was here.
With a quick movement, he threw the sword into his inventory and raised both of his hands in front of him.
Void energy gathered in front of them as he focused on the purification aspect of the magic. Ever since his ‘accident’, this had become much easier.
Within a second, the magic grew into a ball of pure darkness.
Just as the ghost army was right on them.
“Void Encampment!” he called out gently, not finding the need to yell.
The magic in front of his hands launched forward, instantly shifting and transforming like rubber being stretched, until it was as thin as the membrane of an actual soap bubble and big enough to cover his entire team and the familiars.
The ghosts didn’t care.
They rushed forward mindlessly.
The first one reached the bubble and simply ran through it.
But it never arrived; the membrane simply erased it while Sam could feel a small dip in his mana.
The reward box was now made out of blue crystal, probably sapphire, with silver and gold adornments. The royal undead was watching them with interest. Puffball was still in her lap, playing with the fabric of the dress, uncaring of what was happening around him.
Katie tried to order the cat from who knows where to join the battle, but predictably – and true to its feline nature – Puffball totally ignored her.
“Warriors…you…have…proven…yourself…Allow…Us…to…congratulate,” came the whispery voice of the undead, even though she didn’t open her mouth. “However…will…you…survive…what…comes…next?”
Sam just smiled.
The true challenge started now. Most groups lasted until wave thirty-five, the battle with the shaman exhausting them, with probably a few that went up to wave forty, but didn’t publicize it. If he remembered correctly, the first guild to break wave fifty was one from the north. Their success was such that even the NPC rulers rewarded them.
“Bring it on!” he exclaimed, raising his sword in a challenge.
“Hell yeah! We can take anything!” Katie added her own voice.
“I learned a lot about the interaction of plasma and sub-zero temperatures. I’m thinking about writing a paper about it.”
“Dear god, how is the muscle-bound guy with the actual six-pack the nerdiest geek?” Isabella fake-wailed.
Clarissa was calmly casting a few buffs that expired, but Sam could see that she rolled her eyes.
The undead queen of ice eyed them with an air of someone deciding whether to grant death or clemency before she slightly nodded.
“Very…well…Prepare…yourself!”
For the first time, a gong sounded as she finished her sentence, and the next screen appeared in front of them.
[Ice Rumble: Wave #31!]
A dozen incredibly armored undead, covered from head to toe, dropped down from the stands, sending whatever was on the ground into the air as they unsheathed their weapon and began walking toward the team with an unwavering gait.
Author Note #2: Started posting edited chapters. First two are live!
Owed bonus chapters: ---
Character Sheet
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