I

Eva glanced back at them. They would learn to be cautious or they would die. Unlike what happened to her during the Training, there were no second chances. Not anymore.

She rushed at the edge of what her Stamina could maintain. With all the Stat increases lately, maintaining a decent run wasn’t all too difficult; but without bottoming out her Stamina, reaching the village before the monsters arrived would be a challenge.

Trees flew past as she ran. The way was mainly clear, and it was becoming more and more like a trail. With her perception, she could see the broken branches, disturbed soil, and scattered leaves where others had tread going to and from the dungeon. Finally—with just eight minutes to spare—the walls came into view ahead of her.

Eva slipped into the lines. She sat on her haunches to catch her breath and wait out the remaining time until whatever murderous monsters would be heading their way. She let out a deep breath and slipped into Meditation▲. It was a superior way to regain her Stamina, but it was also difficult to drop into with how winded she was.

II

There are 24 days remaining

6944/10000 are still alive

New Quest: Defeat a monster wave. 0/1617 killed

The village had lost a few people in the last day, but not too many. Humans in general were down around three hundred. It wasn’t good but it could certainly have been a lot worse.

Eva didn’t have to wonder for long what the monsters would be. Shambling from the wood surrounding the village were skeletons in their many varieties. They carried weapons ranging from swords to bows to simply the bones they were made of. Observe✦ indicated that they were around level 8 on average. The challenges were definitely getting more difficult as the days wore on.

She remembered the day before where she’d come in second and missed out on a good reward. She would make it her mission to come in first again. The experience was the same, but she didn’t want to miss out on something good because she didn’t put in enough effort!

Remembering her lessons from the Training, she knew that earth would work best on the skeletons. Eva walked towards the skeletons. The most dangerous she could see were the skeleton archers. Not enough of the defenders had shields, which made the archers a top priority to save as many lives as possible. Blocking her from getting to them were ones with swords and shields. On the one hand, those shields would be a pain. On the other hand, she had around thrice the strength and could power through them with some effort.

As soon as she was almost within reach of the closest group of sword wielding skeletons, Eva Infused★ her blade with earth and Charged★. The first skeleton warrior she came across got shoved back by the impact of her shield slamming into it. She Dodged★ its counterattack and broke its body with a swing of her blade. The downed skeleton warrior was replaced with another and the dance began again.

While Eva focused on the warriors blocking her way to the archers, the archer skeletons would take pot shots at her when the opportunity presented itself. Most of them were blocked by her shield or skittered off her armor; but every once in a while, one snuck through and did some damage. With her armor covering her vitals, the damage was primarily done to her extremities. She had high enough regeneration that she could shake off most of the hits within a minute or two, even if that meant painfully pulling out the arrows when they stuck in her so she could heal.

After downing almost twenty of the warriors in two minutes, a slight gap opened up in the protection around the archers. Eva Charged★ the skeleton archers and smashed them to pieces with her earth Infused★ attacks. They were much easier to kill since they did not have shields to defend with. They did have daggers for melee combat, but that just meant Eva had a range advantage in addition to her Stat advantage.

With the archers destroyed and the warriors disrupted, she glanced back at the defensive lines. The defenders were much better prepared than in previous days. There were a couple of towers just behind the wall for archers and slingers to fight from—not that they were of any use against skeletons. The melee fighters had better barricades that they could slide into place. The ditch in front of the wall did a good job of routing the monsters to where they could best be killed. All in all, it was a fairly solid defense all things considered.

Unlike in previous days, there were no one-off elite monsters or bosses with the skeletons. The skeletons were much more organized than the other monsters they’d killed. So it came as only a small surprise when out from the trees thundered sixteen skeletons on horseback. Fifteen of the skeleton horsemen wore light armor atop their skeleton horses. They had lances and sabers at their disposal. The odd one out was covered in heavy armor and looked larger and more imposing than the others. Eva Observed✦ the new enemies.

Skeleton Champion Lv 18

Skeleton Horseman Lv 14

These skeletons would be a challenge even for her. Without the added mobility of the skeleton horses they rode, she could probably take them down individually. The biggest issue—mobility aside—was that they worked as a team. The champion commanded the skeleton army, and that made the army much more deadly than 1600 skeletons would have been on their own.

Deciding that she would not be able to do much against the riders, Eva made her way to the next group of archers to begin her slaughter anew. She kept an eye on the champion whilst she busied herself with crushing her enemies.

Halfway through beating the third group of archers, the horsemen decided that she was a juicy target. Even though she had a fair amount of Stats to her name, she knew those higher leveled skeletons could kill her quickly enough. She wasn’t so full of herself as to think herself invincible. She knew her limits—it was time to retreat. Eva took a couple more hacks at the archers in front of her to gain a little space, before Charging★ towards the defensive line where she would be safe.

The pressure of the horsemen beginning to catch up, when combined with the great targets that skeletons facing away from her presented, made for a good balance of risk and reward. There were only a handful of skeletons on the way back to the lines that she had the time to kill. She pushed her way into the lines and prepared for the charging skeletons.

The first to hit the defenders was one of the skeleton horsemen. The spears of her comrades slipped in between the bones of the skeleton horse, locking it in place. Its rider kept going. It went over the head of the horse and crashed upside down into the ground behind the lines. The back line turned and assaulted the now horseless horseman while the horse itself didn’t fare much better.

The next couple of horsemen suffered similar fates. However, there were enough horsemen that a couple were able to breach the lines to deal significant damage to the ranks of defenders. Eva wanted to help against those monsters, but the champion was the big challenge. She had some Skills that could harm the champion while many of the defenders did not; so instead of getting involved with the horsemen, she leapt at the chance to take on the champion.

As soon as the champion crashed against the defenders, Eva Charged★ the skeleton. She Pierced✦ the champion, which was both more and less effective at the same time. It got through the armor, but poking a skeleton with a sword was not all that damaging. The earth Infused★ part of the attack increased the overall damage somewhat, but the main effect of the strike was that it dislodged the monster from its mount.

The champion turned in her direction. It dropped its lance and drew a longsword. Eva Dodged★ its first strike and Pierced✦ it in return. The skeleton came down hard against her shield with the next attack, knocking a large chunk from the rim—a result of the poor quality materials it was made from, she guessed.

The next few clashes were much the same. Eva was doing damage to both the armor and to the skeleton behind it; but at the same time, it was difficult to see how much she was really doing. Her own armor was starting to show some wear from the strong enemy she faced. It was what she couldn’t see that would end up being the skeleton champion’s undoing. Every time she Pierced✦ its armor, she cracked the bone underneath. With repeated strikes, the skeleton became weaker and weaker to the point where one last Pierce✦ was enough to shatter what remained inside.

Skeleton Champion killed, 36 Experience awarded

The mop up afterwards was fairly straightforward, though it took a while as there were a lot of skeletons to get through. Eva Meditated✦ after she killed a few more monsters—her Stamina having been drained in the effort.

Congratulations on completing the quest!

Top contributors:

Eva Greene

Cillín Tarpinian

Mo Fan

Pradip D'Aramitz

Li Po

Zoran Losnedahl

Wu Guanyu

Takemoto Hideki

Karolina Hummel

Nikita Crnčević

George Banks

Bryan Pierce

Ellie Ross

Fang Min

Swapnil Anker

Sabah Mac Duibhshíthe

George Russel

Reward: Double experience to the top contributors, 162 experience to all others. First place receives a Shard Ring✹. Second place receives a Tome of Waterball★.

III

The Shard Ring✹ turned out to be quite interesting. As it was an item with only two effects, Eva was able to Observe✦ it.

Shard Ring✹

Soulbound

Stores shards

She gazed at the ring. It was a silver band with a golden stripe in the middle. At the top, where a stone might go, was a rectangle of deep blue that had minute silver sparkles throughout it that reminded her of a starfield. She slipped it on her left index finger and gave the ring her focus. She could immediately see that it held a space separate from the world around her. This space was fairly large and empty. Eva attempted to put one of her Stamina Potions✦ into that space, but was rejected by the ring.

Although it had space, it wouldn’t hold anything besides shards. To confirm this, she pulled out a couple of shards from her backpack and attempted to move them into this empty space. Like a black hole, it sucked them into the ring. Looking inside again, she could see the two shards she’d placed there floating. If nothing else, it was a decent way to store her money.

Eva felt someone tapping her on the shoulder. She turned to see that it was Hideki.

“Oh, hi Hideki,” she said.

“Nice ring you got there. What’s it do?”

“Stores those shards we’ve been finding in the dungeon. Pretty handy.”

“Interesting… So I was wondering if you wanted to go run the dungeon?”

“Asking a girl out on a date? I accept!” she laughed. “I’d like to grab some food and I need a bath in the worst way. I’ll meet you there in around two hours?”

“Ok. I’ll see you there.”

Eva was really excited to get clean. She hated being dirty more than anything, and she needed it after so many bloody days. That she had soap was great, but it would have to last her a whole month, which meant she’d have to ration it if she couldn’t get her hands on some more. Barring that, maybe there was some shampoo she could requisition for her hair. The problem was that with so many people, it would be in short supply if there was any left. Maybe someone had figured out how to make some. With that hope in her mind, she toured the market.

Though soap was in the forefront of her mind, picking up some more potions wasn’t a bad idea either. The man she’d bought them from before had a larger selection than what seemed to be the first experimental ones she’d purchased. This time, there were potions of many colors. The obvious ones like health and stamina were there, but there were different intensities of color between the potions of the same type. A casual Observe✦ told her that the more intense the color, the more potent the concoction was.

“Hello again,” she said to the vendor.

“Welcome back. What can I do for you today?”

“I see the new potions you’ve come up with. I’d like a couple of the more powerful stamina ones. What do those go for?”

“Two Novice Shards✦ each.”

“Not two for one like the others?” she wondered.

“These take more materials and effort, so they cost more,” he confirmed.

Eva pulled the four Novice Augment Shards✦ she had from the Shard Ring✹ and gave them to the man. Pulling the shards out was an interesting feeling. The ring was smart enough to store each type in its own place. That made it easy for her to take what she needed without sorting through all of her shards each time.

“Thanks. Oh, any chance you have any soap, shampoo, cleaning potions, or anything like that?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t,” he shook his head.

“It was worth a shot,” Eva shrugged. “I’ll come back if I need any more potions.”

“Have a good day.”