Chapter Thirty-Four. The wave.

Chapter Thirty-Four. The wave.

Lesli was in her element, her feathers moving in a perfect symphony, riding the air currents as she circled back around to the northeast, looking for any large or unusual monsters in the wave.

Her incredible vision spotted something on the ground, just ahead of the oncoming waves.

Despite being almost a thousand feet up, she could see it was a man and a woman, the man carrying a small child while the mother helped to drag a slightly larger one along.

She shrieked her frustration into the sky.

They wouldn't make the wall, the wave was moving faster than they were.

There was nothing she could do. If she tried to help, she'd just be swept in the wave with them.Updated from novelbIn.(c)om

She swooped down, trying to see if she could at least identify the family before they were overrun.

The monsters were so close, only a hundred feet behind them and gaining fast.

She could make out the expressions on their faces, the confusion on the small child, the terror on the little boys, and the fear and resignation on the mother and father.

Then, twenty feet ahead of them, a blue-black portal appeared in midair, parallel to the ground, and a man fell out of it.

Lesli let out a very un-hawklike gasp of surprise.

She was a hundred feet above the wave now, and she could see that the man was the one who had been left in the plaza with her.

This close she could hear him yell at the family "Go! Go!" as another portal rippled into being in behind him.

The family raced into the portal, and the man lept through as well.

Lesli pivoted with a beat of her strong wings and looked for them.

There! She saw the portal wink out of existence less than a hundred feet away, close to the Watchtower.

The man wasted no time in creating another portal, this one leading to the top of the Watchtower before he began to shove the family through it.

She let out a shrill scream of triumph, and then cut it off abruptly as the man went to enter the portal, the wave a mere twenty feet behind him.

The portal vanished as he was about to enter it, and he fell to the ground screaming, one hand clenching his chest while the other clung to his staff.

Lesli banked again and dove for the top of the tower, shifting just as she touched down.

The woman who was cradling the young boy gasped as a hawk shifted to a woman and landed in front of them.

The little boy gasped in amazement.

Lesli let herself smile for a second. She never got tired of doing that, especially with kids. Her younger sister loved it.

She then hurried over to where the man was looking over the crenelation.

She arrived just in time to see the wave wash over the Adventurer that had saved the family around her.

Leading the wave were two-foot-tall, three-foot-long insects, with sharp scythes on their thin forelimbs and strong, powerful legs that allowed them to rush just that much faster than the other monsters. They swarmed over the man, their vicious scythes stabbing downward rapidly as the mindless monsters sought to end the strong mana signature all people possessed.

"He," the man grumbled in the way of men who trying not to cry, "he saved us..."

Lesli laid a hand on the man's shoulder.

"He was an Adventurer," she said quietly, "that's what we do. We stand tall, and let the waves break upon us."

"But sometimes," she continued as she felt the family's gaze focus on her, "we have to pay the ultimate price to keep others safe."

"Don't forget his sacrifice," she said sadly. Despite not knowing the man, he'd stood tall as an Adventurer.

"Remember him as a hero."

Then she heard a scream of rage from below them.

"MONROE!"

Lesli turned just in time to catch sight of the Adventurer below her stand up, covered in insects, having apparently recovered from the mana burn he'd suffered from his portal.

She was surprised that he had the strength to do so, as he was obviously a spell caster.

She watched as he shook off the mantises and started swinging his staff in an arc, knocking the oncoming mantises away, at least for a few seconds.

Lesli was surprised to see that he had what looked like a large house cat fighting alongside him.

But she was an Adventurer, and she knew that even though those monsters were weak, they were too many of them. There was no way he could fight them off for long.

Even as she watched he dodged one of them, only to step into the path of another, which started to drive its scythes into him.

She swallowed hard, her throat tightening. She hadn't ever met him, but it was tragic to have to witness this. He was brave, to have done what he did.

More of the insects latched onto him and then his cat was impaled, and let out a heart-rending yowl of pain.

As he tried to lunge through the portal himself, it winked out of existence, and his body exploded in pain.

As his body seized up and his mana bar reached zero, Bob had a moment to contemplate the nature of his new reality.

His increased intelligence had given him incredible recall. He didn't have an eidetic memory yet, let alone a photographic one, but he could see it was possible.

His increased wisdom had given him the ability to perceive events more quickly, allowing him that extra split second to react.

It had also given him a little more time, as he'd seen the family fleeing, to calculate that casting four portals back to back was going to put him perilously close to draining his mana.

And now it gave him a little more time to appreciate just how much that hurt as blood choked off his scream of pain.

Bob coughed out blood as he recognized that his health had dropped a bit when he'd tried to overextend his mana. He tried to unclench his muscles and stand up to run towards the tower, where he could make a stand, maybe hold out until he had enough mana to portal up.

And then he was in a sea of chitin.

He caught flashes of them as they piled onto him, just enough to sort of piece together a picture. They looked like praying mantises. If praying mantises were three-feet-long, two-feet-tall and hunted in swarms.

He coughed out more blood as they landed on him, and he felt the sharp scythe-bladed limbs puncturing into him, between the plates of his armor.

He struggled to rise, but even though they weren't heavy, there were just too many of them.

A scythe pierced through his right hand and he managed to let out a scream.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Monroe hated the loud ringing noise that hurt his sensitive ears and had escaped into the special place his human-servant carried with him.

It was quiet and big enough to move around, but small enough to be cozy.

And it was part of his servant, so that was good.

Ever since he'd been reunited with his servant, he'd been able to detect his emotions and push his own towards him.

Which was quite useful when it came to ensuring his human-servant knew when he needed to bathe or use a sandbox, or when he was hungry.

As Monroe tried to snuggle back down to sleep, he could feel his human's irritation and an undertone of discomfort.

Soon, that discomfort led to actual muted fear, and even sooner after that, outright terror, and then pain!

Monroe stood up, his ears laid back, and his tail low, then lept out to defend his servant.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bob gasped as another scythe pierced him underneath his arm where the sleeves met the vest.

'Fuck!' he raged as he was driven further to the ground. 'I'm going to die under a giant pile of bugs,' he thought to himself as he saw his health meter drop below half and begin flashing.

Then he heard a hiss and a familiar growl. And the familiar sensation of Monroe using him as a springboard to leap.

Terror gripped Bob's heart and he contemplated just what was about to happen to his buddy.

With a sudden surge of strength, Bob shoved himself up as he bellowed out "MONROE!" and started swinging his staff with both hands, not trying to do damage so much as to clear a circle around him.

He saw Monroe to his left with a mantis pinned beneath him. One savage jerk and Monroe had torn its head off, then the big cat lept past his swing his staff and landed in a crouch between his feet, facing behind him as he swung his staff.

A mantis flew at his head, and he managed to dodge to the side, but another clipped him as he moved into its path and it latched onto his shoulder and started stabbing into his chest with its scythes.

He was swinging his staff wildly but there were hundreds of them, and they were all trying to pile onto him. Every mantis that he batted away only flew a few feet before it landed in the sea of chitin.

Monroe was spitting and snarling while demonstrating just exactly why cats were the apex predator in every ecological niche they'd ever occupied. The Maine-coon moved like liquid batting at the insects with his claws, tearing off their limbs while avoiding every strike made against him.

Bob watched his mana bar inch up as a second passed, and then two. He now had four mantises latched onto him, trying to stab him through his armor. And having a degree of success. Bob roared in agony, as the one on his left leg managed to get a scythe into his thigh.

Then Monroe let out a howl of pain, and Bob looked down to see that his buddy had finally succumbed to numbers, and mantis had landed on his back, and driven a scythe into Monroe's side.

Bob tightened his jaw and dropped a portal at his feet, willing himself to go through it, and latching onto Monroe as he fell, noting that familiar burning sensation as his mana bottomed out, and his health bar, which was already at under a quarter, dropped as well.

Bob fought through the pain as he landed on the top of the tower. He dropped his staff and wrenched a mantis off his shoulder throwing it over the edge.

Monroe growled in savage satisfaction and pain as he turned the tables on his own attacker and tore off its head, at the expense of turning his puncture wound into a nasty gash.

The little boy grabbed the one on his leg and ripped it off before jumping up and down it.

The man and the two women... two women? His brain recognized that there hadn't been two women, but he was too occupied ripping another mantis off his chest, and then uncorking a healing potion that he'd pulled from his inventory and gulping it down, all while another mantis on his back did its level best to punch a hole through his back.

Bob threw himself back against the wall of the tower, hard.

He felt a scythe drive into his back, through his armor and he gasped in pain, spraying blood. But he also felt the chitin give way and shatter, as the unorthodox attack killed the monster.

He slid to the ground, cough out blood as the potion started to mend his flesh, and his health bar began to inch its way up from the bare sliver of color it had contained.

"That," he coughed out, "was way too fucking close."