Chapter 64 – A Gathering Storm

“Following us again?” Petra asked the large man. “And you think this is a good way to get us to trust you?”

“I could have simply turned and headed to the North Gate as I was about to and not revealed myself to any of you, but I thought that this way might be of more help.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Petra continued. “It still doesn’t explain why you’re following us in the first place.” Then she turned to Titus and said: “Don’t you think you should take that ring off so this one can't keep following us around?”

“Do you really think that I needed the ring to follow you here from the Arena?” Darius asked, clearly annoyed. “But it doesn’t matter what you think, either you want to come to the North Gate to help the entire City or you want to stay here and moan at me for wanting to make sure you remain out of harm.”

“I think we should go with him,” Titus said. “We’re going to go anyway, and he could’ve just remained hidden from us like he said…”

“You really need to stop giving people credit for admitting when they’re doing something they shouldn’t,” Petra said. “They’re still in the wrong whether they own it or not.”

“But he isn’t wrong,” Jordan said. “Whatever the reason he’s following us around – be it good or bad – we were going to follow the Guardsmen anyway, so what does it matter if he comes along or not.”

“Alright, that’s enough,” Darius said with a tone of finality. “We have to go right now or we might not make it in time to help. You can take up my position with the Grandmaster later, but now, we’re going to have to run.”

“Alright, you heard the man,” Titus said. “Time to go,” and then he tapped Jordan and Petra on the shoulders and broke into a jog back the way the group had come.

Nobody spoke as the group of four stamped through the City once again, hearing the sounds of alarm and cries of Citizens tending to damage and fires.

The only thing running through Titus’ mind as he ran was not what he might find on the other end of their run north, and not even of the people whose lives were no doubt going to be ruined by whatever it was that was happening. No, the thought he had was that he was thankful for the circuit that he’d been forced to run over and over back in the Arena. He knew that without the practice, he wouldn’t have been able to keep up with Jordan, even with the large Defender wearing his heavy plate armour.

Eventually, the group passed the Arena again, and then entered into the area that had been subject to the damage that’d been caused. It seemed like there had only been one large strike – like a meteor or something had hit the City because there was just one large crater that up close looked like it had been the size of four regular buildings or so.

Most of the fires had been tended to, though some smaller patches around the perimeter of the crater were still flickering as they reignited themselves.

But they weren’t there to help. As much as Titus thought it would’ve been the right thing to do, he knew that their skills – as relatively new as they were – would be best suited to combat and not firefighting.

As they moved through the northern quarter of the City, it was devastatingly clear that something big was happening. The Citizens that remained were still darting around trying to deal with the destruction, but more than that, City Guardsmen from all over the City were streaming north, towards the North Gate and wall.

Titus had never actually been very close to any of the City walls before. The last buildings before the outer walls were a good hundred metres from the tall stone structure and the dry ground between the buildings and the walls were controlled by the City Guard, who would run drills, train and patrol the area in case anything made it past the numerous Guardsmen who walked the top. The walls themselves looked out to the wilderness that was outside the City, and something that Titus had never had any interest in seeing.

But all of that was about to change. Because where the City Guardsmen and anyone else who wasn’t a Contestant were heading up to the top of the walls, seemingly to see what was happening beyond, the Awakened were heading out of the open North Gate to join the rest of the Contestants and Instructors who were already there.

Titus and his friends were amongst a few stragglers to head out through the North Gate and he couldn’t help but marvel at the grandeur of both the wall and the gate. A solid construction of at least five metres thick, the wall stood on either side of the North Gate as far as the eye could see. The gate itself was actually two gates, both constructed of iron bars as thick as Jordan’s legs, though both had been opened to allow the City’s protectors their exit.

And then for the first time in his entire life, Titus saw what was beyond the walls and outside the City.

An open grassland of at least a hundred metres led away from the North Gate, and carved into it were a few tracks where carts had obviously travelled regularly, but past that was a dense treeline – it was like the City had been placed square in the middle of a centuries-old forest that was so thick nothing could be seen within.

But the most striking thing that Titus saw was the fact that just outside the City walls and facing the forest, were hundreds upon hundreds of Arena Contestants and Instructors. The only notable face that was missing as far as Titus could see, was Grandmaster Kane herself.

It clearly wasn’t all of the Contestants though. Many were presumably still following their orders to head to different parts of the City in case any monsters had made their way inside. But this was surely where they were supposed to be.

Thankfully as per the previous orders, all of the Black-Ranked Contestants were already at the north, though the Browns had been sent east, the Purples west, and the weakest of the Contestants – the Blues – had been sent south. The City wasn’t so large that they wouldn’t be able to make it North in time for a fight, but that was only if they actually decided to head to the North Gate and offer their help – given that nobody other than the people stood right here had any idea of what was happening.

“I bet Theodore’s regretting splitting everyone up now,” Petra said. “If we’d have waited he could’ve sent everyone up here to deal with whatever this is, but now we’re scattered, and that means we’re weak.”

Jordan looked around at the sheer volume of Contestants who were being filtered out into groups of their respective ranks, and then their parties therein.

“I don’t think this can be called anything close to weak,” The Defender said. “This has got to be the strongest fighting force the City’s ever amassed in one place at one time. Whatever’s happening here, it’s got to be huge.

Titus looked around to get Darius’ opinion but when he turned, the man was gone, presumably to join the rest of his rank.

“I’ve never seen the outside of the walls before,” Titus admitted to his friends. “Have either of you?”

Both Jordan and Petra shook their heads, though the loud and somehow magically amplified voice of Theodore prevented them from answering.

“Contestants!” Theodore shouted. There was certainly something magical about his voice because Titus couldn’t even see where the combat Instructor was. “Today we face the biggest threat that our City, and anyone living today has ever faced. I know that we all wish our Grandmaster was here to lead us all to victory in battle, but that is simply not the way things have happened. In her stead, it has been deemed that as the Combat Instructor, I have the honour of leading you today.”

His voice sounded a little strained and very unsure, no matter how much he was trying to hide it.

“But nevertheless, we have our duty. We must protect the City and her Citizens with our lives as we all proclaim, and as we all do every single day. But now, today, our information suggests that the creatures of Chaos have come together in one large force and are heading this way right now. This will be a fight like no other. Some of you will die, but together we shall prevail. Together we shall be the wall that this City needs beyond its wall. We shall fight together, and we shall die together!”

There was a murmured response from the gathered Contestants who clearly weren’t won over by Theodore’s proclamation. Or perhaps they simply didn’t believe the scale of what he was announcing.

“It’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it?” Jordan said. “I mean, it’s one thing bringing us all up here as a drill, but that speech… it’s all a bit much, isn’t it?”

“Bringing us up here for nothing?” Titus asked as his mouth fell slightly open. “Did you not see the fire in the City? The destruction?”

“Well yeah,” Jordan said with a shrug. “But that doesn’t mean the two things have to be related, does it? I mean, let’s say there’s an explosion in the City, fire, chaos, and whatnot. Wouldn’t that be the perfect time to run a practice drill? One where the Combat Instructor is in charge but there are no monsters to be seen anywhere?”

“You know,” Petra said. “Sometimes it’s good to agree with the great lummox. If he’s right about this then we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Petra smiled but Titus could see the tiny flicker of doubt cross her face. And it was something he felt too.

“Contestants!” Theodore shouted again. “Join together with your parties and form into groups. When the time comes we shall advance with the highest colours moving at the tip of our spear. Give space to your comrades and fight in your parties. We do not want any friendly fire today.”

“Or any day, really,” Petra added quietly.

There was a slight shuffling of Contestants as people moved to where they should be, though they were already well separated as things went.

And then there were a few gasps from the crowds. Pointed fingers and whispers and when Titus followed them, he saw something that made his stomach drop.

The treeline across the open grassland was moving, and it took a second for him to realise that it wasn’t the vegetation that he could see slowly swaying back and forth; it was the thousands of monsters who had emerged and come to a halt just in view.

If it had been nighttime or raining, then perhaps the monsters would’ve been impossible to see, but Titus could tell that this was the effect they were aiming for: fear.

Even analysing the monsters from where he stood, Titus could see that they were all below level ten. But then he looked across at the swathes of Contestants and noticed that they almost all hid any and all information about themselves from analysis, something that he too followed suit with. Perhaps it would be a good thing if the monsters could indeed analyse them, so they wouldn't know who they were fighting.

And then a notification pinged into Titus’ vision, and by the gasps around him, it was one they all shared, and one that was important enough that the God of Balance had forced them all to see.

New Quest:

Defeat fifty monsters of Chaos in battle

Reward: Experience, Gold

The notification of a quest was something that Titus had never seen before nor expected, and by the sounds of the murmuring from the other Contestants, nobody else had experienced it before either. But it was clear that the God of Balance was encouraging them to fight, to go to war, and to kill many more monsters of chaos than Contestants were killed.

Titus turned his attention back to the forces of Chaos who had all stopped and were standing across from the Contestants and Instructors, ready and waiting for their fight to begin. It wasn’t clear what exactly they were waiting for, but Titus took the opportunity to analyse exactly what it was he was looking at.

Of the forces he could see, or at least the ones who’d revealed themselves from the dense forest, he could see Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins, Ogres, and Imps – pretty much everything he’d seen as low-level monsters in the Arena. But behind them, raging upwards from the forest, he could see a bright white smoke rising into the air. He knew, though, that he was likely the only person that could see this phenomenon. Because it wasn’t a physical smoke that was rising; it was an unholy amount of Mana.

“There’s more hiding in the forest, and they’re stronger than these,” Titus breathed to his friends. His palms were wet, and he could feel his heart beating faster and faster with the anticipation of what was to happen next. It made his breaths come in short gasps, and he shared an anxious glance with his two friends.

And then, like it had appeared from nowhere, a dense white fog began to spread across the open field between the two opposing armies. But it was seeping out from the forest and around the creatures of Chaos like it was one of them, sentient and aware of what it was supposed to do.

The fog crept across the battlefield until it eventually reached the Contestants and the City walls, stopping there like it had encountered some invisible forcefield.

The fog was all around Titus and extended along the open field for as far as the eye could see. It was lapping thickly at chest height before fading to an eerie thin fog above all of their heads.

Titus’ visibility, and that of the rest of the forces of Balance, was reduced to nothing more than a few metres in a perimeter around each of them.

It was hard to name what the actual stuff was as it had no smell or texture, but no matter how often it wafted or moved about Titus and his friends, it seemed never-ending.

“Forward!” Theodore’s voice rang out through the thick fog, and Titus looked at his friends.

Jordan shrugged. “I guess that’s the order to move then?”

“Stay in your groups! Show no mercy!” Theodore instructed loudly, and Titus and his friends began to move slowly forward.

They had barely taken ten paces when Titus felt something moving around his ankles. It was hard, he guessed around a foot tall, and as soon as he felt it brush against him, he had the distinct feeling that it had stopped as it too was not expecting the contact. He froze, and after a couple of paces, Jordan and Petra noticed that he was no longer next to them as they walked and turned to look at him.

“What’s up?” Petra asked almost in a whisper.

Titus could barely whisper in response as he pointed to the ground beneath him. “Something’s in there,” he mouthed.

“Wha…?” Petra started to speak but promptly shut her mouth as Titus recognised the face of someone who had also just felt something brush up against her leg that shouldn’t have been there.

The order to ‘God damn run’ was barely forming on Titus’ lips when everything changed. Feeling a sharp pain and a clamping force around his calf and shin bone, Titus tried to pull his trapped leg away from the source of the pain but it simply got worse and worse. He could feel the clamp deepening as whatever it was was trying to sever his leg entirely.

Then Petra screamed, and Titus knew that something had grabbed hold of her too. But there was nothing he could do about it before he tried to free himself from his own unseen enemy.

So grabbing hold of his borrowed silver sword in two hands and aiming it straight down at the ground through the still thickening fog, Titus thrust down as hard and as best he could.

And he felt the tip of his sword crunch through the tough carapace of the creature that had bitten him, and then the sweet release as it let go of his leg.

The fog around Titus began to clear, and he looked down at the thing that had attacked him. Analysing the skewered and clearly dead oversized insect, he saw that it was called a ‘War Beetle’ and was only level one. No wonder it had been so easy to kill.

But the thing that was interesting was the fact that once the War Beetle had been killed the fog around it began to abate, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the large insects were the cause of the fog somehow. It was obvious that the beetles – however many of them there were – had been sent out into the battlefield to obscure the rest of whatever was happening.

It didn’t take long for others to figure out what was happening and that the beetles were seriously weaker than any of the Contestants, and patches of the fog began to fade away as the beetles were easily cut down in vast swathes.

But seeing that the process was taking longer than it should, a handful of the higher-ranked Contestants, along with Ferran Torres, stepped forwards, stretching out their palms towards the battlefield where no allies stood.

A second later, a carpet of flames erupted from the ground as they all cast their fire-based spells to obliterate the helpless beetles. Screeches filled the air as the beetles perished before the stench of burning insects overtook the screams, and the fog disappeared from everywhere the flames had touched.

It was something Titus had thought about doing, but decided that for his level and Mana pool, the result just wouldn’t have been worth it; it would’ve left him with just a handful of Mana to use when the real enemy joined in the fight.

“That should give us a bit of space,” Jordan said as he looked at the ground around himself at the bodies of the beetles that’d been destroyed. “And did you see they count towards the quest? Easy money, right? We’ve got this in the bag!”

Petra slapped a hand to her forehead. “Why, why couldn’t you just keep your big mouth shut?”

And as she spoke, the ground began to shudder, and an eerie silence fell across the battlefield.

Titus and his friends turned their attention back to the treeline, where the enemy front line from the far side of the falling fog began to shift. And then they parted, and the trees behind them exploded into showers of splinters that reached even Titus and his friends where they stood seemingly so far away.

From the broken trees and behind the lower-levelled enemies rampaged three monsters the likes of which Titus had never even thought could’ve existed. If nothing else, to maintain the size of the things they must’ve had to have eaten so much food that just their upkeep boggled the mind.

Two clawed feet attached to massive muscular shoulders, a head not dissimilar to a crocodile crossed with a snake – judging by its long pointed fangs – and hides that were scaled and looked even at this distance to be made of something that even the sharpest blade couldn’t penetrate.

The three monsters were easily four or five meters tall and twice that in length, and Titus could only stare at them with his mouth agape.

Ironjaw Behemoth

Level: 120

HP: 250,000/250,000

Each of the three monsters was identical, and each had more health points than Titus had ever seen in his entire life if he added up every single time he’d even seen a health bar. The sheer size, strength, and level of the creatures was enough to make him want to turn and run from the battlefield. But he stood firm. He stood firm with the rest of his friends and the Blue-Ranked Contestants because as they stood and watched, Theodore and a handful of the Instructors from the Arena stepped forward, ready to test their might against these three nightmares.