[Wrath Heart has reached Level 40!]

  My eyes snapped open. I woke up to the softest bed I’d ever slept in. The notification I had been waiting for had finally arrived!

  I grinned. “Moonwash! Moonwash!” I shouted at the woman in my arms and her eyes slowly fluttered open as if completely unbothered. “I did it it! I reached level 40! Well, it’s just for one Mutation for now, but I’m getting close!”

  And it only took over a decade to reach it. That wasn’t sarcasm, but rather a genuine achievement, for most people would live a full miserable life without ever getting close.

  “Congratulations,” she gave me a kiss. “Do know what Materials you want yet?”

  “Ah, no. We should really get on that.”

  “Yes, we should.”

  ~~~

  The adventurer’s guild was a tavern. More ornate, sure, and with added sections for receptionists and quests, but it was still a tavern at heart and certainly not any kind of upscale bar. Adventurers of rugged and worn appearances gathered around tables, and they shared stories loudly and recruited each other into raids and parties. Solo adventurers and drifters who went from and party to another were far more common in this godless place than in the vassal kingdom of Edengar.

  There were guards by the door earlier, but none of them cared to even wave us through as they were more interested in making out. The place was kept surprisingly clean, but not from a lack of trying to dirty the place by its many guests. They just had very active cleaning staff.

  The volume of the place slowly lowered upon our entrance, but never truly died. The attention was very obviously on me, and it did not take long for their voices to rise once more, even higher than before, as they recognized exactly who I was.

  “It’s Haell!”

  “Haell Zharignan!”

  “You mean the traitor!?”

  “Fuck you! I was there when she fucking roasted all those imperials! Show some respect!”

  “I didn’t mean it in a bad way, dipshit! She betrayed Edengar did she not!? She’s our traitor!”

  “Guys, guys! Shut up! You there, Haell! Can I join your party!”

  “Hey! What the fuck! I got here first!”

  “Get in line bucko!”

  “I bet they’re actually weak.”

  “Yeah. They don’t look like much.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? She fucking terrifying!”

  “That’s just looks! You only make yourself look scary if you’re actually not.”

  “Shut up Bronzies.”

  “I’m not bronze!”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Duel me!”

  “What’s her party called again?”

  “The Harbingers?”

  “Gardeners!”

  “No, no. They obviously The Charlatans!”

  “Hey! Are you picking a fight!?”

  “You wanna go mate!?”

  “They are The Harvesters. Please simmer down. Now, I would like to formally invite you into a raid.”

  “Team up with us!”

  “No! You need me as your guide! You’re all clearly new here!”

  “I’m fine with joining your party… if you insist.”

  “DUEL ME!”

  I stood, defiant and unmoving against their onslaught of words. Those who tried to get physical quickly found out that my terrifying appearance was not just for show. I agreed that I looked fucking cool.

  The people haranguing us came from all the different species… except for the shepherds. But other than them, there were even harpies among the people who were clamoring for our undivided attention. I could see only one dwarf in the entire building, however, and he didn’t seem particularly interested in us. Good chap.

  “EVERYBODY SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

  All of that ruckus had managed to summon the guildmaster from above. He was a lithe belfegor man over the level of 40, and his skintone constantly shifted to try and blend into his surroundings. It made for a memorable entrance that I liked, and to think that Edengar did not make guild masters like this! They were at most beurocrats there to actually manage the guild and rarely ever showed their face to everyone else. But what was the point if they weren’t overpowered enough to bash in the skull of any misbehaving adventurer!? USELESS!

  “Sorry about that,” he walked over to us, speaking far more softly. The wall of adventurers parted for him like the sea for Moses. A fucking miracle. The adventurers were well cowed and flinching. “I’m Estarian, the Guild Master of the Revenge City branch.”

  Oh right. I didn’t actually know that he was the guild master earlier. But I had a feeling. And that feeling turned out to be right.

  “Hey.” I waved coolly. “I’m Haell. And this is my party.”

  “Excellent. I have heard of you. Might you tell me what business you and your… companions have here?”

  “Oh. Well, that’s easy. We’re new in town, new in the country actually, and we are here to register as adventurers.”

  “Very well. Follow me.” He led us to the nearest receptionist, a centaur woman who looked thoroughly overwhelmed by the situation but still able to do their job accordingly. The other people in line were disregarded out of the way, but few of them had the nerve to even look pissed. I would definitely be incensed if I were in their shoes. Sucks.

  The registration process did not take long, and they even asked to have a look at our old Edengar badges for reference on what our rank should be. It was apparently such a common occurrence for defectors to make their way to this place that they already had systems in place. Neat.

  “Should I put down your party name as The Harvesters?” The receptionist asked once we were done with all the paperwork.

  I glanced at my friends before I answered confidently, “No.”

  “...What party name would you like then?”

  “The Hellvesters,” I grinned, fully savoring the word. It was my idea, an evolution that reflected well what we had become, but still acknowledged our past.

  I thought it was very creative.

  “I see. Um, how do you spell that?”

  I worked out the further details with her.

  ~~~

  We found ourselves near the quest board. A bunch of adventurers had gathered around us, not even bothering to hide the fact that they were very interested in what quest we were going to pick. I hummed in thought and ignored them as I looked at what was on offer. There weren’t any weird ones that asked us to act like missionaries, or to preach in some noble’s event, which I considered to be a good thing. That wasn’t adventurous at all. What they had instead were exactly what I would expect from a proper adventurer’s guild. From monster subjugation, escort quests, and some offers to accompany the army into war. The goblins were a big problem, and we were asked to hunt down and slaughter the plague that had been released by the evil Kingdom of Edengar into the wild!

  …Whereas I knew that Edengar blamed New Grandera for the goblin problem. So who the fuck actually did it!?

  Stupid fucking nations. I’d had enough of the goblins for the time being anyway. I’d been killing and manipulating them the entire way here.

  “Oh, they have bandits here too,” Berry commented idly.

  “Of course there are,” I snorted. “Did you expect there not to be?”

  “Well, no. But they don’t just exile people for no reason here, do they?”

  “Less so than Edengar, at least,” I shrugged. “I would feel less bad about taking this sort of quest here than I did back at Edengar… but I’m still not enthusiastic.”

  “I don’t like the idea either,” she admitted.

  We considered the options presented a bit more, and I took special notice of the monster subjugation ones. It was time for me to evolve once again, and maybe there was something convenient nearby that I might be able to use. But I could not find anything, for there weren’t even any known level 40 monsters hanging around the area. At least, no quest had been issued for them.

  “Hey, what are those quests?” Granuel pointed towards several posters scattered throughout the board. “Isn’t that too cheap?”

  I looked at what he was referring to, and indeed found quests that paid in only a few silvers, if not outright coppers. Some asked for healing, others requested protection, and there were even quests that just asked adventurers to help repair homes or clear out sewage and the like. Upon paying more attention to the rewards, I also began to notice even more quests that were remarkably cheap for what was being asked of us. Like isolated villages asking adventurers to kill an unknown monster in the area for only a gold piece and some change.

  “Yeah. What’s up with that?” I wondered. “Don’t they have a healer’s guild or like companies for construction?”

  “Weird…”

  My friends had no answers for me either, and we continued to ponder about those quests and the many others we could take until I felt a familiar powerful presence that eventually made its way over to us.

  “Hey! Haell! We meet again! Haha!”

  I turned around and recognized the level 40 centaur adventurer I had met on the final march to this city. I returned her smile. “Oh! You…” I searched my memory core. “Benta, right? How’ve you been?”

  “Oh, you know, just the usual. Taking a well-deserved break after a job well done. But forget about me! What are you up to? You’re the one who’s new here. How have you found the city of revenge?”

  “It’s quite alright. I certainly like it more Edengar already!”

  “Ah, yes. Happy to be better than that shithole.”

  “The one true standard.” I returned my gaze to the quest board as the conversation continued.

  “So,” she started after a short pause. “Have you registered as an adventurer yet? For this country, I mean. Still down to take on a quest with us?”

  “Oh, yeah. We’re all registered.” I showed her my badge, then looked to my friends for confirmation. “And sure. We’re certainly down. What do you have in mind?”

  “Great!” Benta looked at the quests available herself. “Hmmmmm… well, we just helped the army, and that doesn’t really feel like an adventurer thing to do, you know?”

  “Oh yeah. I totally do.”

  “How about some bandits then? I’m surprised there’s even one that’s evaded capture so far. There are soldiers everywhere here.”

  “Eh. I don’t much fancy fighting other people. I’d prefer some mindless guiltless monsters.”

  “Really?” Benta tilted her head in confusion. “You looked perfectly fine with it last I saw.”

  “Well, okay,” I rolled my eyes. “I’m not gonna cry about it. But it can be too complicated, you know? Banditry is… difficult.”

  “Maybe in Edengar. But here, the bandits are like that because they choose to,” she spat on the tavern floor. “They’re not some weak innocents cast away from society and have no other option. They just want to pillage and rape and do nothing for anyone!”

  I stared at her for a long few moments. “I’m sure there are plenty of them who deserve death. More so than in the empire. And I have no problems killing them when the situation calls for it, as you have no doubt seen. But I do not want to seek it out. I aint joining you if that’s the quest you want.”

  “Whoa, hey. Relax. It’s just an option, okay?”

  I realized that I’d gotten more intense than intended.

  “Alright. Let’s pick something else then.” I pointed at the incredibly cheap quests along the board. “How about those? Why are they so cheap? I’ve been wondering about that.”

  “Ah… That one. Shit is vetted still, it’s not total chaos, but the guild here is more forgiving for what quests they allow on than in Edengar. In particular, they are not very strict with the payment offered from what I’ve seen, nor do they only allow a few people at the top to issue them. It’s our fault if we take something grossly underpriced and all that.”

  “...So is it just people who don’t want to pay here?”

  “No. Sometimes. But it’s mostly people who are just too poor to pay and have no one else to ask.”

  “Ah. How about we take some of those then? I’ve… never taken a quest like that before. Might be good to get the lay of the land, so to speak. Unless if it’s too cheap for you.”

  “No, it’s fine,” Benta shook her head and smiled. “In fact, I’m glad you asked! We take those quests sometimes just to help out, AND I WISH MORE ADVENTURERS WOULD DO THAT!”

  She shouted that last part into the guild at large, and the crowd around us noticeably lessened while even more turned their heads away and buried their faces in their drinks.

  “Good then, it’s decided.”

  We picked our quests, and had the receptionist process them for us.

  ~~~

  The twelve of us arrived at the slums, much to the consternation and fear of the people who lived there. We traveled through its many twists and turns with the help of our belfegor guide who Angerly had just hired on the spot somehow. The narrow streets and alleys became a very tight fit for us at some point, especially because the rest of Benta’s party members consisted of two heavily armored ogres, and two crustecars, all over the level of 20, if not 30. Angerly and Berry on our side experienced quite some trouble too. People of their species typically only lived in the outermost areas of the slums, because of the space required.

  I observed those very people and more as we continued to travel, just as they did the same to us. The people here were destitute, malnourished, some were sick, and a fair number had lost limbs or were disabled in some way. A bunch of footsteps crossed the roofs of the shanty buildings around us, and I saw children playing and laughing up above. There were a few who tried to rob us, but the heavily armed group that we were dissuaded most from even trying.

  Finally, after all that traveling, we reached our destination. I could immediately feel the despair emanating from the small open building as people laid in blankets or cots in pain. They were sweating, their coughs filled the air, they turned in their sheets, and it was not rare to see someone all bandaged up and missing a limb or two.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Who are you?” someone walked out of the building and asked in a sharp tone. He must’ve been one of the smallest ogres I’d seen, especially for his level of 20, for he was only slightly larger than me.

  “We’re adventurers. Took a quest to heal sick people and clear out some mice or bugs. We were told to seek someone named Kristam. Do you know him?”

  “Yes. That’s me.” His expression softened a little, but remained sharp and guarded. “But why are there so many of you? I don’t think you need this many people.”

  “Yeah… you’re not wrong.” I shrugged. “We just wanted to take a bunch of quests together. New friends, you know?”

  “Are you taking this seriously?” he narrowed his eyes. “People’s lives are at stake, you know?”

  “Of course I am,” I couldn’t help but speak with the same aggression. “We’ll get the job done. Unless if you want us to leave right now.”

  “That’s up to you,” he was not cowed. “But as long as you can actually get the job done then I would ask that you fulfill your quest.”

  “Of course we can,” I huffed, then followed him into the makeshift hospital. Once there, Kristam rummaged through a chest and brought out three low-quality nature magic wands, and one middling light magic wand.

  “The quest I gave asked for someone who could use these elements. Do you have anyone?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Plenty?”

  “Yes. Especially for nature magic.” I turned and then asked Benta, “How about you guys?”

  “Caleb can do nature and water, with the ability to heal with both,” she pointed to one of the crustecars with her.

  “...All right,” Kristam nodded. “Can I ask you to have your best healer for the nature magic one?”

  I opened my mouth to make a snarky retort, but decided against it.

  “It’s hard to even get this much mana here so we need to be efficient. Our best ‘mages’ have not even reached level 20, and are not very good at healing, if they even can to begin with. So I would ask you to please try and save as many of them as you can. I believe that diseases don’t cost too much mana to purge, so if that alone could be taken care of then I would be very grateful.”

  He bowed lightly, and I paused to rethink my opinion of the man. I had enough control over myself to not attack anyone that I didn’t want to, but I could still get easily irritated sometimes. These people were stressed and on-edge enough as it was. There was no need to openly get angry at them when they were just trying to live.

  “Of course,” I showed a smile that could clearly be seen. “In that case, I think Moonwash should do all the healing, but what do you guys think?”

  I looked towards Benta’s group, and they had no complaints.

  My girlfriend proved my judgment correct as she just used her own wand to heal everyone with light magic. The sick quickly regained luster, the yet open and bandaged wounds closed and settled, and some of those tossing and turning in their sleep settled down for they were no longer in pain. They woke up soon after anyway as a cheer rose from both the waking patients and their waiting loved ones.

  “Oh, Boss!”

  “Thank you!”

  “Thanks Kristam!”

  “I owe ya one!”

  “I thought I was going to die!”

  “Daddy! You’re alive!”

  “Mom!”

  “Oh how can we ever repay you…!?”

  “Call on us anytime!”

  “Hey, what about them?”

  “They’re the ones who healed us while, you were asleep, idiot!”

  “You’re the fucking idiot! Why the fuck are we praising that guy then!?”

  “‘Cause he’s the one who them here, you ungrateful shit!”

  “What was that!?”

  “Umm, sorry about them. But thank you, really. Here, please have this… button. It’s all I have.”

  We told her to keep the button, but she insisted, so I took it.

  “Thank you, Hero!”

  “Yeah! Thanks!”

  “And her girlfriend.”

  “Yeah! She’s the one who actually did the healing!”

  “Oh! Thank you adventurer!”

  “Her name’s Moonwash!”

  “Okay. Moonwash! Thank you!”

  “That’s a stupid name.”

  A crack like thunder resounded when my hoof crashed into the ground, and the ishkawtan woman immediately flinched away in fear.

  “U…Ummmm. Don’t insult her girlfriend then,” an elderly centaur chuckled very awkwardly, and the rest followed suit.

  “Demons are scary.”

  ~~~

  “You’ve healed everyone,” Kristam said as Moonwash pulled the mana out of the other wands as compensation. “But the amount of mana you must’ve used is far more valuable than I’ve managed to scrounge up…”

  “That’s probably true,” Moonwash confirmed simply. “But the job is done.”

  “...You’re correct. I cannot regret my people being healed. We don’t have much more money, but I’ll pay it back somehow…”

  “What do you want to do?” Moonwash asked not him, but me and everyone else.

  “Well, the point of the quest was that we’re already just helping out, right?” I shrugged. “It’s fine. I don’t really mind. We can easily restock on mana.”

  “Yeah,” Benta agreed for her party. “We’re helping people out. That’s the point of the quest anyway!”

  Kristam paused. “I can’t deny that we’re underpaying you for your work. It’s just all we can do Thank you.”

  He bowed, much deeper and longer this time.

  ~~~

  “Do you still want to hunt down the bugs and rats that did this?

  “Of course. That’s part of the quest, isn’t it?” I smiled and gestured for Kristam to lead the way.

  He did, and Granuel kept his senses sharp as we traveled in search of probable nests. I helped too, because I was quite good at sensing critters due to how I’d made the bug population of the rainforests my archnemesis. We found a few along the way before we even entered the area that’s suspected to be the biggest cause of the recent uptick in diseases, and I nearly burned a house down when I tried to extinguish the roaches with fire. We switched to a different strategy after that, using instead nature or earth magic for the task, but the small critters were weirdly adept at fleeing or even surviving it. Not that the vast majority of them didn’t die, but there were so many of them that some inevitably slipped through the cracks.

  “Oh well. It’s just a matter of effort.” We reached the area where people had been getting the most sick, and those of us who could use the two elements began the painstaking process of killing them all.

  It was really good practice for hitting small things underground.

  ~~~

  “Thank you!” Kristam thanked us again, even more profusely, after we had completed the quest. We could now take the reward from the guild, but we all knew that it was chump change compared to the actual work we did. He insisted on escorting us out of the slums, and I took a closer watch on our surroundings on our way out. I noticed, almost abruptly, when the houses suddenly became even worse, and the people more desperate and unhealthy. They also reacted to Kristam with far more hostility. He was no longer any sort of community leader here, and he might’ve actually been attacked without our militant presence.

  The invisible lines drawn against the squalor ground were indeed invisible to me.

  “Again, thank you!” Kristam bowed again once we exited back into the red-light district. “If there is anything that we can do for you to ever repay this favor, please let us know!”

  “Okay. Alright. I’ll let you know.”

  He paused, a small frown floating over to his face. “I know you’re not going to. And I won’t blame you for it. But I’m serious. We are poor, we are weak, but we have our own strength. We know things and we notice things. So please, if you ever find yourself in need of someone to guide you through the… underground of this city, then call upon me.”

  “You mean like the dwarves!! They live underground!”

  “Ah. Uh. Err… I don’t mean…”

  “I’m just messing with you!” I laughed and slapped his back. I met his gaze with a wide grin on my face.

  I did not answer. I did not admit to anything. But we all knew, that the offer might well be taken in the future.

  ~~~

  We arrived at the orphanage. A vaguely familiar crustecar girl ran up to Angerly and crashed against her leg in a big hug.

  “Big sister! You’re here!”

  Angerly laughed. “Yes, I am! Can you get the headmaster?”

  “Okay!”

  “Big sister, eh?” I smirked. “Someone you know?”

  “Uh, yes? She’s the one who tried to steal from you last time we were at the slums.”

  “Oh. OH! Okay. I see.” Should’ve consulted with my memory core first. Oops.

  The human headmaster came after a short minute longer, and he led us into the grounds.

  “Thank you for coming, adventurers. And good to see you again, Angerly. I was just about to take down the quest and hire a construction crew thanks to a certain windfall, but I would be happy if we can save what you gave us for the childrens’ food instead.”

  I observed our surroundings. There was a small courtyard tables and chairs, a swing and a slide, all of it well-worn and close to falling apart. The main building fared no better, and was in a state of disrepair. And in addition to all this was a great number of children that the place just did not have the space for. They were loud and they crowded around us, asking question and trying to get us to play.

  “Alright. I think we can do that,” Angerly stated confidently, and took out an earth staff from her large pack. The rest of us who could wield the element followed suit, and there were a few more from Benta’s party, but it soon became apparent that they weren’t very good at it. So most of the work fell onto Moonwash. She led the others in making the barebones structures, before then smoothing it all out herself. The rest of us who could not wield earth magic worked on the wooden parts instead and fixed some of the furniture, but Moonwash still had to get involved there and make adjustments because we all sucked at it.

  But of course we did! We were adventurers! Not construction workers! What made me think this was a good idea!

  We played and talked to the children on our way out. And while we worked.

  ~~~

  We left the City of Revenge.

  Two wagons had been rented for both our groups. They both rolled along the road, pulled by five centaurs in total, with Benta traveling beside them and only occasionally going inside to rest. I sometimes went out to get some fresh air and spread my wings myself, happy that I could now just do that whenever I wanted when I wanted. Some of the other caravans and travelers still freaked out at the sight of me for word had not yet traveled far, but only one of them had managed to attack before the situation could be explained. Not that everyone totally believed my story, but it was enough for them to not do anything foolish.

  Oh and those adventurers that attacked me were not killed. I’d been good. I deserved a reward for my restraint.

  For some stretches of travel, I tried to stay in the air or run alongside Benta as much as possible. The wagons were just poorly made compared to what we lost, and the roads could be… inconsistent. The main ones were fine enough, but we often had to travel through the more unused areas because we had taken quests to help two villages with their monster problems.

  ~~~

  “Hey! Watch out! There are traps on the ground!” Granuel warned as I hung upside down from a tree.

  “WOW! I never would have guessed!”

  I burned the rope off and dropped to ground. We had reached the Nesting Village, and I could already see how it differed from other villages. Most of the people here were belfegors who lived in treehouses, and now that I was looking for it, I could see that there were traps on the ground. It was likely covered in them if I could spot this much.

  “So sorry about that!” A belfegor woman swung down from the trees above to greet us.

  “What brings you to our village, travelers?”

  “Oh, nothing much. We just took a quest to help you with a monster problem.”

  “Oh! Why, thank you. A bungeepider had just gotten too evolved and different and we’ve really been struggling with trying to get rid of it.”

  “Lead the way then.”

  She did as I asked, and led us around the traps to the center of the village. There was no big wall here, and it was clear they relied on other means to survive. At the center of their village were just a half-dozen houses for the people who preferred to live on flat land instead of up in the trees. I could see that some humans and the like were fine enough braving it up there, but it was seldom a place for centaurs or crustecars and the like.

  Their belfegor chief soon came over to the nearly empty administrative building, and explained the situation to us. He told us all that they knew about this monster, how it had been picking off their hunters, and where it had last been sighted.

  We thanked him, and went off to finish what we came for.

  We finally found the creature after a few hours of searching, and instead of dropping down on us from above like any good bungeepider would, it instead unleashed a rope of web from its butt. We knew it was coming, so I held my ground and let it hit me. The monster strained and the string of web rapidly retracted back into its butt, but my friends grabbed and steadied me before I could be dragged away.

  Somehow, the web then began to lose its stickiness. The bungeepider slurped it all back into its butt, but it had already waited for too long. Benta had ran right over to where it was, and with a powerful throw, a lance pierced right through its upper torso, thereby annihlating the monster in a shower of gore.

  ~~~

  “This is amazing,” Moonwash said as our wagons traveled to our next destination. She was still rummaging around the corpse of our last enemy, much to the revulsion of our centaur drivers. “The web is very valuable because it’s so much tougher than normal, but at the cost of being very hard to produce. This is because the web can be used for a long time, over and over, as the monster had stronger muscles for retracting the web into its body.” This differed from the bungeepider’s usual tactic of using its web as a bungee rope and then dropping and abducting unsuspecting prey. “The enzymes are especially interesting as it can somehow turn the web from sticky to non-sticky, but it’s hard to access those because the bungeepider is dead.”

  “Wow. Who could’ve guessed that killing is wrong!” I laughed and stared out the window as we headed to our next destination.

  ~~~

  It took another week to reach Treeside Village. It was a very normal village, with walls circling its perimeter, and a diverse sort of architecture inside to accommodate the many different kinds of people that lived there. What wasn’t normal was how tense and scared the people seemed to be. I thought I figured out the reason why when a thud traveled through the wind almost imperceptibly, but I could tell that it had come from way too far away for the sound to travel all the way here.

  A stoned bystander explained that the sound was caused by a monster they did not know regularly toppling down trees. Drugs were mostly legal here because all the different species and cultures had different ideas, so they just allowed it. If anyone didn’t like it, then they didn’t have to take the drug. That was their stance on a lot of issues, leading to a place that was quite liberal and free, at least by the actual written laws.

  “Well, we can’t have that. Those trees did nothing wrong,” I claimed hypocritically.

  We went to the mayoral office to get more details. Klariz, a fountan woman, told us of what the surviving scouts they had sent had seen, and the general direction of where we might find this threat. Not that we needed it, because we heard where the beast was earlier. Somewhere east.

  “We’re worried that it might come here,” she shook her head. “It’s pathetic, but I don’t think our walls will hold even after the reinforcing we’ve done.”

  “I understand. But don’t worry. We’ve taken the quest and we intend to complete it.”

  ~~~

  We found ourselves in a massive but absurdly messy clearing that had clearly only recently been created. Mushrooms grew along the toppled trees lying over each other, and new shoots were beginning to pop up beneath and over their dead predecessors, for nature was already reacting to the recent devastation. And at the center of it all was a beast that must’ve been around as tall as a mammoth. With a bulky head that looked vaguely like a hammerhead shark’s but brown, and short but bulky legs that ended in even larger hooves, the monster turned towards us and roared like a horn being blown.

  “Humoora,” Moonwash said, able to identify what we faced from memory. “They’re rare. They do live around these parts, and they love to eat mushrooms, so they create that environment themselves.”

  That was all she managed to get out before the beast charged right for us. The fallen trunks were swept out of its way, and the fallen branches and small animals that tried to take advantage were trampled. The monster was not very fast for its level, but it was unstoppable as proved by how little it slowed down once it met the still-standing tree. Trunk splintered, flakes of wood exploded out, and in the cover of all that, we dispersed.

  The humoora paused, unsure who to go after first.

  We did not have the same problem for our enemy was only one, and we bombarded the large target with arrows and spells.

  It roared out in rage, particularly and unsurprisingly the most mad about the ball of hellfire I shot out.

  “Bring it on then,” I growled and raised my greatsword. But my glory was not yet to be, for Benta’s party converged together while she herself separated from them further. The ogres and crustecars charged the beast, and to my surprise, they actually managed to survive it. Sure, they were tossed around like toddlers, but they still managed to draw blood and irritate the creature, thereby earning their great leader the opening she needed.

  Benta streaked through the uneven ground like a comet. With her lance at the lead, she plunged right into the creature’s side. The weapon buried deeply, and with a heave, she twisted it free, causing a whole fountain of blood to gush out. The humoora roared and tried to kick and stomp her to death, but the rest of Benta’s team managed to push and shift the creature ever so slightly, earning her the opportunity to flee.

  The powerful centaur looked for another opportunity and another stretch of relatively uninterrupted terrain to charge from, before she reenacted the same strategy again.

  “Can’t let them have all the glory.” I activated my aura and evil eyes, giving the monster just enough pause for Benta’s next attack to find a better target and bury deep into a joint. I charged forward while the humoora tried to swat at her, and I swung my greatsword with a powerful heave. I felt the sharp blade part heavily through the flesh, only to ultimately be stopped by the bone.

  I had been repelled, but not forever.

  I reared back, fell back, but I came back stronger. The confluence of my wrath manifested, and as I slashed against my opponent’s shoulder, I felt the bone crack and break.

  But it did not fall apart.

  The monster reacted and tried to smash me with its hammer-like forehead, and when I tried to get a good hit at its head-plate, I found my sword entirely rebounded. I rolled as I was tossed away.

  “Fuck,” I groaned and immediately got up. My wrath had jumped to action to retaliate in my stead, but it had only caused superficial damage against something that tanky. In the short time that I’d been out of battle, I saw how my friends too had begun their own moves. Moonwash and Granuel unleashed their bombardment. Angerly and Berry joined Benta’s party in trying the monster’s mobility down. And Therick tried and failed to penetrate when he aimed for the most vulnerable parts, but he noticed that it still provided a clear distraction so he kept on doing it.

  I jumped back into the fray. Great rivers of blood flowed from many injuries, and our ranged party members were forced to focus on healing at some point as those of the Asanorious party got terribly hurt. Even Benta got injured because of her insistence to save her lance, and she was forced to abandon her best weapon to not suffer a worse fate. But the humoora fared even worse, as I focused on the sheer number of cuts I could deliver so that I may water the devastation it had caused with its own blood. My hellfire continued for a bit longer, but I had to worry about collateral since I had a team here that did not truly know me, so I decided to switch to wrath. The targeting of that element cared a little bit more about my intent, and did not wantonly spread.

  It did not take much longer for the humoora to fall. It limped on its last legs, and I met its eyes as I readied myself for one final clash. My blood boiled in my veins as my very being pulsed with the confluence of my wrath. For all the shit I had endured to get here, only for our ultimate goal to be found lacking.

  People will always disappoint me.

  The greatsword crashed through the air like judgment, inevitable and true. The face-plate of the humoora cracked like a fissure through the earth, and then it died with a heavy thud unto the ground.

  My cursed greatsword was dented, and I would need Moonwash to fix that.

  The chapter lengths keep getting away from me. I’m so sleepy. Thanks for reading. Hope you liked it.

  This author's note was written ages ago, and it's still accurate today. It is super late. I'm somehow not sleepy though...

  ANYWAY! ! Help me buy food and bills and other things! Also the $5 tier is just about to hit the climax of book 2! The start of it, anyway. It's like 5 or 6 long chapters long.