There was about an hour before the monster horde event was going to start, everyone was in their positions and Eli was sitting on his roof. He was going to use the early waves of the monsters to practice with his magic sense, reaching out at a distance and trying to pinpoint with his senses alone, what each person was doing and what each monster was like as it approached. This was to allow him a better understanding of his surroundings, to include monsters and people attacking, but mainly he wanted to be able to sense the people in the conference.
He was sure that people were going to be causing trouble, some will have real reasons and others will just be looking for a chance to oppose him due to him seemingly having special treatment from the system. Hopefully, if he can get his senses finely tuned enough he will be able to spot the manipulators and schemers in time to cut them off before their ideas get out of hand and more drastic measures have to be taken. That is probably his biggest worry about the conference, there were just going to be too many people playing politics for him to manage them or even know what they are all up to.
His worst case scenario was that a large group banded together against him, the system may consider him the strongest but that doesn’t mean that number 2 and number 3 won’t be able to team up against him. He had some ideas on how to handle it but the politics of it all just seemed so tedious that he would get bored and make a mistake or offend someone. The largest challenge was going to be the other continents' people, they represented a large portion of the conference and were totally unknown. The only thing that might save him is if his mother is there and she still has some influence over her people.
The monster horde event started, however, unlike the slow trickle of monsters like last time, these were all coming at once in a wave. Eli stretched out his magic sense to check on his people, they were going to have to fight around 8 to 15 each for the first wave, depending on where they were. Luckily their levels were low, starting off in the level 40 range and everyone had an easy time of it. Lucy’s group of people could even handle most of the ones that came at them which led to some cheering that he could hear from all the up on top of the town in the sky.
It was only thirty minutes until the next wave came running in and this time Eli focused on the monsters with his senses. They were all the same, basically gorillas but with lizard skin with scales and something more like a short alligator mouth with more teeth and three eyes. Their back was similar to a pangolin, with large razor sharp scales that separated and could stick out making an attack from behind difficult for short weapons. He hadn’t noticed the previous wave but this wave was all stone based magic, not that they would use magic, but that they were almost immune to earth type magic.
The next wave confirmed his suspicions, every wave was highly resistant to one kind of magic. They came every thirty minutes and there was about the same amount of them each time, but their levels got higher. At the rate they were going, after just twelve hours, the monsters would all be over level 100, this coming after everyone had been fighting the whole time. This was either going to be a short event, or there was something else to it that he couldn’t figure out and with high level monsters running in packs it could get very dangerous. The system had to have another trick up its sleeve, cause going above level 100 would wipe out everything except his town.
After three hours had passed Lucy’s group of people were too exhausted to help anymore and the monsters were approaching level 60. Everyone was handling it ok so far but the pace was going to wear everyone out. Bethany and Alora were faring the best due to being over level 100 and their efforts were making Lucy, Beau, Arinya, and Stevens not have to use as much magic as they normally would have to. Beau and Arinya seemed to especially be doing well together, choosing to fight at the same time and not taking turns. Arinya's earth sensing and Beau's molten earth armor meant that she always knew where he was and how he was moving so she could fight using him as cover and he could fight without worrying about hitting her.
At the six hour mark, the monsters were now approaching level 80 and it was getting to the point where Stevens or Alora had to help Beau and Arinya after they cleared up their part. The two weaker fighters just didn’t have a lot of damage output so they took much longer to bring them down. Bethany and Umber had really worked themselves into a rhythm with their fighting and would now be a challenge for Eli due to their coordination. Lucy was covering her area almost alone now, with the exception of one or two helpers from the group of people she was training. They would switch out each wave to get rest and recover from injuries. Being new to fighting at this pace they were exhausted already, but they didn’t give up helping when and where they could.
Eli didn’t have to step in until around the ten hour mark, Umber had returned to him as his tattoo since the sun was out and Bethany was covering a large area by herself. However that is not where his help was needed, he had to blink to save Arinya. Beau, despite his increased size and weight while he has his molten armor on, got knocked back hard leaving her to face five of the monsters alone. He plinked in before they could reach her and crushed them all with one wide swing of his bone mace. Beau came running back, his armor spell faded and the two hugged, each more worried about the other's well-being than Eli's presence. He just smiled to himself, sent some instructions to Alora telepathically, then blinked back to his perch on the roof of his home.
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With Alora and Stevens getting more involved on the western side, with Beau and Arinya playing a more supportive role, the next 14 hours or so passed without incident or intervention required from Eli. There were 12 hours left in the event and Eli started getting involved giving everyone an hour break on the western side and helping in the center. Bethany refused help and actually yelled at Eli for even considering it, she was going to do this on her own with only Umbers help at night to give her a bit of rest. She was a woman possessed with determination unlike anything Eli had seen from her up to this point.
The monsters were coming in at level 100 and were now virtually immune to four or five kinds of magic each time. The types changed with each wave but it was now coming clear that the final waves would have to be handled with high level composite types of magic like lightning or with only physical attacks from weapons. The composite types of magic would work at full strength if even one of the three or four types did not have a resistance from the monsters. Alora's staff was turning out to be crucial since its two magics, ice and lighting, together used five different basic magic types. Water and order for ice, and air, fire, and chaos for lightning.
Others were struggling and just using abilities for distraction until someone could come and help clean them up before the next wave. With six hours left, there was no pause for a breather between waves of monsters and everyone was starting to slow down from lack of magic or just being too tired to keep pace. This is when Eli really picked up his pace and was showing those that hadn’t seen him fight recently just how powerful he had become while he was away. He was clearing six or more with wide swings of his extended mace and instead of slowing down, his pace quickened.
With three hours left the monsters were essentially immune to any magic and Eli used his pale rider transformation, but this time he was different. Goshen’s influence on the skill was clear, now he was even larger coming in at eight and a half feet tall and he had four arms instead of two. Both right arms had a bladed mace and he used them with grace and efficiency like he had been born with the extra limbs. The power, magic, and will coming off him distorted the air around him and he moved through the monster like his unique skill’s namesake bringing a swift death to each monster he happened to come across.
Tara and Lucy were in shock, they could feel his power like a pressure on their souls and when he would let out a roar, it shook their bones and caused so much fear their whole bodies were sweating. The depth and purity of the death and chaos magic he was using was hard to comprehend for them, it was the difference between using magic to make a fireball and writing the word fireball on a piece of paper and throwing it at someone. The full use of higher level nodes was just something that they had no experience with. Beau and Arinya were having the opposite effect; they were cheering him on, shouting praise at him as he slew monsters by the dozen then moved and did it again.
Alora and Bethany were not affected at all by his display except to push themselves harder to show that they were strong enough to help. Alora was using her staff and her abilities in odd ways to keep being useful to everyone else, she used her earth root-in-place spell to instead make the ground around her in a large area perfectly smooth. Then she used the ice end of her staff to cover it in a thin layer of ice, like a skating rink. The monsters couldn’t get a grip so they just slid all over the place allowing the others around her to take them on one by one. Bethany was a tireless woman possessed, cutting some of the monster clear in half with her spear. It bent, flexed, and twisted in unpredictable ways moving so fast that even with her own heightened perception she couldn’t see its blade.
It was all coming to a head at the 36 hour mark, the end of the event, the final wave of monsters. But this wasn’t a wave, it was one monster, a boss monster. It looked the same as the others but closer to Eli’s transformed size and it was immune to all ten types of magic with what felt like heightened physical resistance to his magic sense as well. Normally the system was pretty fair, if a monster hit hard or was fast then it lacked defense and when a monster had defense it would be lacking in offense in some way. But all bets were off when it came to boss monsters, they were inherently unbalanced since they were meant to be fought by a group, a group that could cover for each other's weaknesses.
Eli made one of his bladed bone maces bigger and dismissed the other so he could hold the one with both hands. The scaly gorilla walked out slowly huffing and pounding its four arms into the ground, it was clearly trying to intimidate and rile everyone. It was a good tactic, if it can scare at least one of its foes it can take that one out first. Everyone had collapsed to the center near the pond and everyone but Eli, Alora, and Bethany were showing signs of fear. The boss monster snorted in a way that resembled a laugh, thinking there were only three it had to fight, but then it paused, stopping mid step when it got a better look at Eli. It almost looked worried, but played it off and kept walking closer until Eli roared with his reality shaking power.
Bethany stood in front of Eli facing the boss monster, “Hey, what do I get if I kill it?”
Eli dropped his weapon and with all four arms managed a chin tap and an arms folded, “Well, you would be taking away from my fun, but it would prove you are on my level which does deserve a reward. Alright,” Eli said with a grin, “You can have anything you want for two hours.”
“Make it three and you have a deal.” Bethany said in the closest voice to a predator that Eli had ever heard anyone achieve.
“Agreed, but you only have five minutes before I kill it myself.” he explained.
“I’m only going to need three.” Bethany hissed through clenched teeth.
