The Test of Merit does not end with a summative exam. Rather, it is a formative assessment with the System constantly examining our progress. As mentioned earlier, the hordes are its primary method in doing this. However, like any adept teacher, it understands students are fond of passing as easily as possible and will, therefore, abuse any tricks they find to work. For this reason, the System will often change the format of its hordes to force its students to adapt and grow or fail and die.

Giada Marino - Scholar - Intricacies of the System

____

Silas scanned the crowd and gulped: 17 fighters and 42 non-fighters, all still weary and bruised from yesterday. For a time, he had considered punishing those who ran from this battle, but now he realised how ill-thought of a notion that would be. Turning to Rolf, he nodded, and the second battle meeting of the week began.

“Right, we know the horde will attack in six hours. Last time, those mastiffs attacked in three waves, the second being larger than the first and the last being smaller than the two before,” the fat strategist said, eyes glued to the rudimentary map. His tactic of luring the ratkin to closely congested areas (to diminish their numbers advantage) and raining arrows on them had worked wonders for the last battle, his skill further highlighted by the fact he had pointed out the optimum ambush spots himself. As such, the others were far more confident in him this time around.

“However, we don’t know whether this horde attack will be the same. It may be mastiffs or it may be something far more dangerous or numerous - we simply don’t know,” he carried on. The gloom in the hall grew with his words. “But there is something we can be confident on: last time, they came from the west, beyond the corner shop, and circled around the village before attacking in coordination. Our scouts checked the western area again, and they say they have found a highly unusual structure that wasn’t there before. We think this is the portal the horde will come out of.”

Silence washed over the room as people thought through the significance of this find. “Are you sure? What if they come from the other side?” a woman with a limp asked.

“We were worried about that, so I sent a few people to check the other areas around the village as well,” Silas said, studying the woman. He had nothing but respect that she was fighting on despite her injury, in fact, nothing but respect for everyone who had stayed. “That one in the west is the only ‘portal’ we found. It also couldn’t have been there before as it has an aura that makes it very hard to ignore.”

There was a pregnant pause, and Silas wondered if he had said something wrong. Even though he was forcing himself to speak in public more often than not now that he was mayor, he still found public speaking discomforting and unfamiliar to him. His stomach muscles clenched as he looked around, finally noticing Rolf staring at the map with a glazed-over look. Silas cleared his throat pointedly, and Rolf jumped.

“Ah, sorry.” Rolf brushed his hair back with sweaty hands and tried to regain composure. “So, our plan is to encircle the portal and slaughter the enemies as they come out. As the portal itself isn’t overly large and assuming the horde attacks in waves again, we imagine they’ll be coming out, at most, in groups of five.”

Rolf’s faltering voice gained strength as he spoke of strategy. “We can’t set up barricades in time, so we’ll instead have a formation with a heavily armoured and shielded vanguard. They’ll body-block whatever comes out,” he said, nervously glancing at Dom as he said body-block. “With spearmen backing them up and archers in the rearguard.”

Although most people reacted positively to the plan, a few donned sceptical expressions.

“If we go there, the village will be defenceless, and anyone resting here will be killed,” one man said. Silas recalled that he had a wounded partner resting in one of the outermost houses.

“What if it’s not mastiffs though? What if the things that come out are far bigger and nastier?” asked another.

Silas looked around to see if anyone else would respond but instead found the hall looking to him for an answer. Sighing, he spoke honestly, “We’re taking this risk, not because we want to, but because we have to. Even if it’s the mastiffs from last time, we can’t let them build up and attack as they did last week, because they would instantly overrun us with how few people we have now.”

The murmurs around the hall started again, and Silas prayed more wouldn’t hide away from the battle because of this risky plan as they were stretched for manpower as it was.

****

There were three classers here: Silas, Josh, and Dom. Sabine, Elise, and Faris were too injured to fight, and Iris had fainted after overcalling on her mana to heal the injured. Other than them, there were 46 others as 10 more had pulled out since the plan had been revealed.

They were arranged in a circle around the portal, a literal tear in space wide enough to engulf five men standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Inside, different shades of blue and purple swirled around, giving it a psychedelic aesthetic. It had an attractive force strong enough to suck in a body lying five metres away in about five, maybe ten minutes. They had thrown rocks in and seen them disappear into the rift with a plop, but none of them had been brave (or foolish) enough to stride in and check it out themselves.

“One minute,” Silas shouted, clenching his spear, shivers running down his skin. Although he had gotten stronger since the last horde, he felt more vulnerable than he had then as he now knew how easily he could be beaten in a fight with the right conditions. All it would take was a lucky strike, and he would be a goner.

“Thirty seconds,” he called out, softer than before. He wondered how his siblings were doing and whether they were still alive in this cruel world. All this time, he had assumed they were, or at least desperately held onto the hope, but recently he had begun questioning it, as what was the likelihood they had survived all these hellish events, back-to-back?

If they were, he wanted to muss Ethan’s hair and pull Chloe’s cheeks, then get down on his knees and apologise for what he had done. He hoped that they would forgive him and hug him then, but damn, he knew he was unworthy. Realising he was close to tears, Silas wiped his eyes and took his mind off the subject.

“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five,” he said, reading the timer on his screen. “Four, three, two, one.”

The shielded vanguard pushed forward as monsters poured out of the portal: green humanoids that came up to the waist wearing gambeson and equipped with daggers. These murderous midgets lacked all form of hair and had wrinkled skin, giving the impression of creepily old faces on their child-like statures. They stormed out in groups of twenty every couple of seconds, and as if it couldn’t get worse, it turned out that they could jump higher than double their height and were slippery enough to slide through the gaps in the shield wall with ease.

Despite these factors, it was a complete massacre. No doubt, if they had been able to build their numbers and attack Riverside in the hundreds, they would have brought the village down to ruin as they leapt and jumped and yelled and murdered and giggled through the streets. However, they had no opportunity to bunch up here as they were targeted the second they arrived: the shieldmen crushed them; the archers shot at them; and the fighters stabbed them.

The men and women reaped through the midgets like it was harvest day with the classers doing more than their fair share of work. They rotated as best they could as fatigue got to them, and it was in this manner half an hour later the portal underwent a transformation from blue and purple to red and green. Worried what this change meant, the warriors kept vigilant for a couple of minutes, only to realise that the monsters had stopped coming out altogether.

Silas checked his horde timer and saw that it had changed from active horde to incoming horde in 165 hours, 53 minutes, and 49 seconds. It was over! So why was the portal still here? Sharing the good news with the others, Silas ordered the injured to be carried back, while a small squadron, including him, remained by the portal. It was only after a long and draining hour the portal finally disappeared, spacetime threading over the rift and zipping it up as if it had never existed in the first place.

____

Goblins are humanoids as imagined in fantasy culture on Earth: short, ugly, murderous, and childish. They’re best identified by their slight statures and their mossy green skin. They’ll make use of any weapons they can wrap their grubby hands around and are exceptionally quick and nimble in combat.

Although they appear to be an offshoot family of the hobgoblins from Caen, they’re in fact a species alien to Idroa and (thankfully) don’t share the hobgoblin’s craftiness.

Some villages with low populations faced the goblins as their second horde, and most of them were brought down or gravely crippled by the murderous midgets. If you happen to come upon a goblin’s nest in the wild, I suggest you chuck a firebomb inside (preferably of the toxic variety) and promptly leave.

Lavanya Sanghvi - the Monster Bane - Adventurer’s Guide to Surviving the Idroan Wilderness