From Ben's point of view, they were winning. Vivi had been fortified by the consumable mana stars Red was able to create from corpses, and he had in turn fortified their position even further. Ben had wanted taller walls, but Red had screamed at Vivi, actually screamed at him, to not make the walls taller but to tear up the terrain around them.

The ground around the increasingly worn Ring of Stone was now dipped and torn, uneven to the extreme. Gremlins could no longer charge their position at will, and instead needed to navigate carefully to approach. They tripped and stumbled all the way to their deaths. Vivi's main job was now to continually maul the ground around them and maintain their fortified position.

Ghost Ears was flying around inside the protective bubble of a fairy swarm, barking orders which were gleefully followed. His main task had been to keep the Gremlins from singing and to disable their leadership, and he was succeeding at both tasks. His abilities as a [Dreamer] were hard to define at times, but his ability to touch someone and put them to sleep or put them into a waking dream was proving itself to be remarkably effective. More than a few gremlins were running around their formation in a [Nightmare], attacking their allies and causing chaos.

Short Bus, who would never admit to being exhausted, was on guard duty. His simple task was to defend their fortified position and take out any gremlins that made it over the walls. He loved his job, which was mainly defending Vivi and Red as the two of them filled support roles.

Red's eyes were out and about and wreaking havoc. One eye loomed high over the battlefield simultaneously increasing the awareness of the party and decreasing the awareness of their enemies. The gremlins felt as if a fog had come over the area, felt disconnected from their group, felt as though they were going blind. Ben's party however, felt as though everything had gained a degree of transparency, like they could see through solid objects and view everything clearly. They knew where the rest of their party was with a degree of awareness that bordered on and actually was supernatural.

That was her first eye. Her second eye was flying around the battlefield like an orb of evil energy and brutalizing Gremlins. It would find one that was alone and isolated and get right in their faces, forcing eye contact. The eye would then start to afflict the gremlin's mind with as many mental afflictions as it could. Gremlins ran away afflicted by Terror; they ran screaming and attacked anyone in their way;

Afflicted by Berserk; they ran at anything that moved and brutally attacked.

Afflicted by Madness; the effects were varied, but not a single one of them was an effective combatant after that.

Afflicted by Nhil; those gremlins just fell to their knees and stopped fighting, because what was the point?

Afflicted by. . . anything and everything that could go wrong with a mind. Red's eye loomed enormous in front of a gremlin and exploited every weakness, attacked every doubt, and amplified every discord present in their mental structure, to devastating effect.

All the while, Red cleared their fortified position of corpses and transformed them into a stock of paper hearts, mana stars and green stamina orbs. The effects of the consumables weren't individually strong, but there were a lot of dead gremlins around, and Red's skill cost nothing to use, and had a five second cooldown.

Finally, there was Ben. He had no idea how a Leap-rechaun was supposed to fight, let alone how a Leap-rechaun with a utility pocket was supposed to fight. What he did know was that he had an inventory full of hastily sharpened sticks, and the ability to [Leap] from gremlin face to gremlin face superman style and punch them with his surprisingly durable fists.

Which is exactly what Ben was doing. To imagine this properly. . . just picture it. A sea of red bulging eyeballs and jutting lower jaw canines, hundreds of monsters twice his height, their bodies covered in stiff brown fur, their disposition towards him one of complete hatred.

Then, there was Ben, standing on top of the Ring of Stone, aiming for a gremlin who looked like he was daydreaming, and leaping at him. Ben's flight trajectory was a straight line, a real straight line unaffected by the pull of gravity. A gremlin face which had once been small became very large, very fast, and soon was yelling in pain as Ben's tiny fist impacted against it. The gremlin went to knock Ben off, but every time his hands swatted towards him, a utility pocket would open and a sharpened stick would stab at the hand.

Ben then repeated the process, targeting another distant gremlin and knocking it out cold. They fell to the ground and Ben jumped straight up into the canopy, then straight down and kicked a gremlin in the back of the head.

There was a disturbing snap, and Ben was pretty sure he'd killed him. There wasn't time to think about it, because a gremlin holding an ax swung it at him, and Ben had to think about his own life rather than the life he'd just taken.

Ben was familiar with the feeling that had overtaken him. It was as though his problem solving brain had gone into overdrive; the problems were simple, someone is swinging an ax at me, and the solutions were also simple, [Jump] to the side and then shove a stick under its ribs, pull the stick out, and flee.

Problem: Violence. Solution: Greater Violence.

It was as though the human brain had been designed to solve this single problem, and everything else humanity did with it was a hack, like emulating a smartphone on a PC.

That distant, detached part of Ben noted with dispassion that he wasn't even scared. He was actually excited and interested in what was going on around him, every little detail sparking off huge trains of analysis in his mind. Everything had a degree of novelty to it which was absent in regular life, or to put it another way, every shadow of boredom had been banished from his mind.

In Ben's mind, they were winning.

In Red's experienced, professional opinion, they were not winning. There were just too many monsters for them to deal with. They were on the losing end of a stalemate, and what was worse, the gremlins were adapting to their tactics. She would occasionally see a gremlin poke its head over the top of the wall, rather than blindly charge in, and then retreat; she prioritized killing those gremlins above all others. She was not always successful.

By now, the Elders knew how the party was sustaining itself, and had already dramatically lessened the number of gremlins charging over the walls in response. Instead, they were taking blind pot-shots with their bows, and hauling dirt to create a stable path to the walls.

Red could already see how their tactic was going to play out; they would wear out the defenders with arrows, keep them occupied while they finished their road, and then break a hole in their wall. After that, they would pour through like a flood and wash them away.

Red's nose scrunched and she bared her teeth at the thought. The Elders, the ones they needed to defeat, were crafty and wily. It quickly became obvious to Red that the Elders were hiding amongst their spawn and creating decoys to divert the party's attention.

She wondered if they had killed even a single one of their leaders. She had to believe that they had, but how could they know!

“Boy those gremlins sure are tricky,” Short Bus said casually, his already impressive endurance fortified by the green stamina orbs.

“Yes?” Red said, not sure if she was asking a question or just spouting a meaningless response.

“Yeah, super tricky. It's a shame I can see their brains and smell the difference between them all,” Short Bus said casually, then did something extremely violent to a gremlin and tossed the resulting two pieces over the wall.

“You can?”

“Oh yeah, I can see inside of brains you know. Your brain is a little funny,” Short Bus said, briefly allowing menace to enter his voice, “but I think you're all right. Hang on,” he said, then grabbed a fleeing gremlin by the foot and whipped him against something hard, then tossed that body over the wall as well, in the same direction he'd thrown the last one. No more gremlins were coming over the walls, but more arrows than ever were flying towards them. Vivi erected a simple force shield, then greedily topped his mana off with a purple star.

“As I was saying,” Short Bus continued, gathering up the remaining corpses and throwing them over the wall, “there are big differences between people. I can see the best people, like Ben; good people, like Vivi and Ghost Ears; difficult people, like you; and very, very bad people like those gremlins out there. Their leaders are the worst kind of people, and to me, they stand out like a sore thumb. Could you be a dear and defend that pile of bodies for me?”

Red was many things, but she wasn't ignorant of battle. There was only one reason to start throwing valuable corpses over the wall and tell her he was able to identify the Gremlin leadership.

“Vivi,” Red shouted, “On my mark, breach the wall right there,” she said, pointing a little bit to the right of where all the dead gremlins were now scattered. Vivi, who was more than happy that people were telling him what to do, nodded and prepared to follow orders. Red's eyes grew in intensity, her own internal reserve of power being fully committed to what she was about to do. They both flew towards the new path of attack, then merged into a single, very large eye.

“Ben,” Short Bus said, sending his words telepathically, “fall back. Ghost Ears as well, all of you, we're about to charge. Red's about to do something really nasty, I suggest you take cover in here.”

“Falling back,” Ghost Ears said, and he and the fairy swarm immediately flew high, then dove to safety.

“Charge, why? We're winning!” Ben said, still in his excited, predatory aggression mind-set. He still fell back though, leaping up to the trees, then down to the ground next to Short Bus.

“You're taller,” Short Bus said, then slapped Ben's back, his arm just barely long enough to reach that low. Ben hopped up and slapped Short Bus's back, the action looking like special effects from a bad martial arts movie, or a really awesome high school play.

Vivi eyed Ben's new form, then rolled his impressively large eyes.

“You just can't be out specialized, can you? What's next, you triple in size next week?”

“Fuck I hope so,” Ben said, and Vivi frowned, then decided it wasn't worth pursuing.

“There is no time for this,” Red said, and Ben and Vivi both immediately shared a look, the kind of look that requires no words or telepathic communication or anything fancy to transmit meaning.

“There's always time for this,” Ben said, and Vivi nodded with his eyes, “but also, yeah, no time.”

Red, who was still charging whatever attack she was about to inflict on the battlefield, felt her face scrunch in concentration, her knees going weak. She fell, but managed to maintain her focus.

“I'm ready,” she gasped, “Vivi, now! Everybody, shut your eyes!”

Say whatever you want about Ben's party, but they were fast learners, and when Red said 'Shut your eyes', they shut their eyes.

If they hadn't, this is what they would have seen.

The enormous eye, which was now a perfect sphere about six feet across in any direction, began to rapidly develop pupils. First doubling, then doubling again, then doubling again and again and again; the whole thing was teeming with eyes like an amphibians egg sac. There was a burst of light, and the eyes began to shift from color to color to color, and the very air of the battlefield started to warp and twist with toxic poisonous color.

For the gremlins not smart enough to shut their eyes, the consequence was that their brains shuddered for a moment before giving way to the mother of all migraines, and their entire nervous system feeling as though it needed to vomit. It was a bit like the eye-sphere was a large chunk of visually radioactive material, and anyone who looked at it had their brains irradiated.

The effect continued for three seconds, the eye-sphere rapidly contracting in size, shrinking until it expended its stored energy. Red fell over, her body's energy spent, and her two dim, dull, insubstantial eyes weakly flew over and nestled themselves in their protective cages of horn.

The battlefield had sound yet seemed silent. Gremlins screamed in pain, but their screams were weak, pathetic sounds. The silence then, didn't come from the gremlins, but from the forest around them. Whatever Red had done seemed to have caught the attention of every living thing in the area, including all the things summoned from The Beyond, as well as all the regular monsters of the Overcavern Forest.

Ben heard a howl, but not a wolf's howl; it was something the size of a wolf, but with the chittering, whistling scream of an insect. Then, he heard a different sound, a loud hissing click, clearly from a different kind of creature. After that, there was a sound like the fluttering of insect wings, the rapid buzz, the quickness of it distinctly insectile.

But all of that was dwarfed by something else. A presence had come over the battlefield, a looming gaze that had always been there, a presence which had been asleep, but slept no longer. Ben, Short Bus, Vivi, and Ghost Ears all looked up at the same time.

The bladed slayer's eyes were open, fixed on the spot where Red's attack had been. It was watching the world, taking in the sights. If Ben, or Red, or Ghost Ears, hadn't been so distracted, they would have noticed the cabal of Elder Gremlins behind the giant tree the Bladed Slayer's cyst was attached to.

They would have noticed the Eldest Gremlin utilizing another soul-stone, not as vaunted and powerful as a Quasar soul, no, but none the less powerful enough to give life to their monstrous creation. They would have then noticed the Eldest wearily running away with a small group of Lesser Gremlins, ordering them to carry him to safety and to die to protect his life.

But none of Ben's party saw that happen. They'd been too distracted by the battle, which was in and of itself just a gigantic diversion tactic.

The chorus of giant insects started up again, and the sight of what was coming towards all the death and carnage the fight had generated would give most modern humans a fright at a minimum, and a permanent psychological scar at a maximum; depending on how freaked out they were by organized packs of giant scorpions that acted like wolves, and a swarm of human sized mantis monsters that acted like a pack of lions. Or how terrifying they would find an enormous solitary fly with razor sharp whipping antenna, who's hairy legs were like sharp razor wire, and a mouth which could bite a regular sized human in half.

Oh, there were a lot of monsters in the Overcavern Forest, and almost all of them were giant bugs. That's what made it so famous, and so dreaded.

The spiders that were coming at them? Not even worth describing, they were terrifying though, I can assure you of that. The kind of thing that a single glance of would turn your skin to rigid goosebumps that won't go away for days kind of terrifying.

Ben's party was, in two words, completely fucked. Most of these monsters would not be hindered in any way by a wall or uneven terrain. Then, there was the fact that the army of night fiends had decided that enough was enough, and now was the time to burst forth to the surface world.

Their first ranks poked their heads out of the hole, saw the endless horrors of the surface and then retreated. Probably best to wait a few hours and fortify their position underground, in-case the surface decided to invade them.

Anna, the teenage sunlet, the female statue of beautiful orange crystal, realized she might be in way over her head, and rushed towards the fortified position of Ben's party, bringing her group with her.

“Don't attack,” she shouted, effortlessly clearing the wall with a jump, followed by the robot and the elemental, “we're here to help.”

The System custodian effortlessly floated over the obstacle, then quickly latched its attention onto Vivi.

“Greetings Vivi,” it said, its voice male and pleasant, “I am here on behalf of The System-”

A soft pop interrupted the System custodian. Frankie had finally finished modifying the Pocket of Sanctuary to his satisfaction and wasted no time transporting it to Ben's position. A black oval ringed by purple appeared and all hell broke loose as the monsters attacked.

The bladed slayer cut his embryonic wall easily, and glowing orange fluid spilled everywhere like a tide, soaking the battlefield with the stinking water of its birth. It stepped forward in shaking, unsteady legs, the ground trembling from its massive size, then righted itself.

The insects didn't care, at all, they were bugs and didn't have a survival instinct. They immediately attacked this new monster, and the Bladed Slayer attacked back, stomping and cutting, killing without hesitation.

Ben hopped up to get a look, barely avoided getting grabbed by the giant demonic fly, felt all the blood drain from his body in terror, and landed.

“Retreat!” he shouted, “retreat! Into the pocket, now!”

“No!” Red croaked out. Her dim eyes locked onto the retreating Eldest Gremlin. With the last of her strength, a light shot fast as a bullet from both of her eyes and impacted the Eldest Gremlin with no apparent effect. Red watched the attack hit the Gremlin, then collapsed.

Short Bus and Vivi grabbed the immobile Red and dragged her in. Ghost Ears along with the fairy swarm then rushed in. Ben looked at the newcomers.

Anna, the Sunlet.

BRX-031, the cyborg.

Dryst-la-la-la, the music elemental.

“Betray us, and we'll fucking kill you. Follow me, you'll be safe in here,” Ben growled, his crown instantly heating to near incandescence, like a light-bulb's filament when the switch was flipped, all the power of his Quasar Soul pouring through it for just a moment. The crown nearly cracked, and its durability plummeted, but it didn't break.

Then, Ben rushed into the Pocket of Sanctuary. The System Custodian followed after, calmly calling for Vivi.

Dryst coughed, an entirely unnecessary noise from a being of elemental energy, a learned noise that allowed him to communicate with regular creatures.

“I think we should put the mission on hold,” the music elemental said, then rushed to safety.

“Agreed,” Thirty-One said, then flew as fast as he could into the portal. Anna looked around, spat some burning spit, then walked forward towards the portal.

“This is some fucking bullshit is what this is. I'm going to kill Dryden that fucking asshole. Easy mission, what a fucking liar,” she said, then crossed the threshold.

A moment passed, and then unknown to everyone inside the Pocket of Sanctuary, the second most dangerous combatant entered the fight.

Frankie was obviously playing the playful, helpful host to Ben and his friends. He rolled around and played and delighted the visitors, while his minions piloted the deadly skill.

The portal's purple tentacles merged into six solid mechanical legs of purple light, spread equidistant from one another. The Pocket walked in a few directions a bit experimentally, then started to climb over the ring of stone.

The remaining purple tentacles merged into a few arms. The now large and long tentacles floated about aimlessly for a moment as the pocket made its slow way over the wall.

The Pocket of Sanctuary hopped and landed heavily. The legs buckled, then righted themselves. An insect charged blindly at it, and a tentacle shot out like the tongue of a frog, grabbed the bug, and then stuffed it through the entrance.

There was a short moment of pause, like two utility pocket elementals were adjusting a few things, and then all hell really broke loose, and the tentacles started to attack all at once, grabbing everything within reach.

The Bladed Slayer, all rage and hatred, shrieked at the Pocket of Sanctuary and charged at it. The Pocket hung from the side of its tree, its limbs and tentacles growing visibly brighter as it gathered the thick mana pouring from the Underground. The Slayer charged, and the Pocket jumped. Its entrance widened and widened as it fell.

The Slayer was half-swallowed in a single bite, and then the Utility Pocket seized up, frozen. All of it’s mana expended as it dealt with the extremely tough Bladed Slayer. It was vulnerable, though none of the gremlins knew that, nor any of the more intelligent insects. The Utility Pocket spat the Bladed Slayer out, and the Bladed Slayer fled, looking like something had been bashing it’s head against a wall at high speed.

The Pocket of Sanctuary sat fallen over on the ground, frozen in place, open to invasion for any brave enough to approach. None were.

The thick, powerful mana in the air was drawn in by the Pocket of Sanctuary’s [Greater Mana Siphon] and refined by its [Greater Mana Furnace], and slowly, its tentacles began to thrash again. It righted itself, and without ceremony continued its assault.