Chapter 33: Monster Wave

Between the over-pepped tea and the new fruit tea combinations, a new wave of interest swept over Arthur’s food cart. Enough demons were trying, enjoying, and complimenting his drinks that Arthur felt like he was serving the entire city every day.

After a particularly busy lunch rush, Arthur noticed something strange.

Everyone who was walking in the square was moving oddly, just a bit faster and more determined than normal. He hadn't sold tea to nearly enough of them, so his new over-pepped tea wasn't the cause, or at least not all of it. But there was a definite tone shift in the area. It was loud enough that his perception stat wouldn’t let him miss it.

“You want meat?” Arthur heard a large-sounding voice say as he stooped over his things. “It's just going to go to waste, now.”

He popped his head up to find himself face to face with the large bear woman who ran a honey-glazed meat stand across the way. “Sure thing, Urtha. You don't want me to pay?”

“Naw. Just make me one of those pepped teas you've been juicing people with. I'm gonna need it for the rest of the day, and I bet you have at least one left in you.”

“Long day ahead?”

“Oh, right, I keep forgetting. You are one of those offworlder fellas. You probably don't know.” Urtha sat down heavily in a stool, handing off an over-loaded meat skewer to Arthur, who snacked on it as he put together her drink. “It's gonna be a long day for everyone, Arthur. Whole town comes out for these things and works until they are done.”

“What things? Remember, I don't know anything.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, get ready to learn. Today, Arthur, is gonna be your very first monster wave.”

—

“We found your people where they hid, and bound them with ropes, restricting their free expression of movement.”

Arthur had packed up shop and moved with the crowds towards the wall. The rule, Urtha explained, was that you went to the closest wall outpost you could once you heard about the monster wave, cutting a straight line from your current location to the outer border of the city.

Arthur bent his line just a little to make sure it crossed the water-treatment building where Mizu worked, and it had paid off.

“Hi, Mizu.”

“Hi.” She used his greeting for the first time. The word didn't seem to fit right in her mouth, like a child cursing in front of his friends for the first time to look cool. Arthur grinned like a maniac for a second before catching himself.

“I don't think I know how this works. Any of this. Usually, Milo would explain it to me, but...”

“He would have a different outpost.”

“Right.”

“So should you.” Mizu smiled, very slightly.

“You caught me. Are you going to turn me in?”

“No, you can stay.” She flushed a bit with a few different shades of blue. “I'll show you what to do.”

They were standing in a cleared ring of dirt, watching people walk towards the wall. Mizu grabbed his wrist and started moving, dragging him in the same direction. It was easy to miss from a distance, but once they got closer, Arthur could see that the wall had a set of stairs built into it.

“We have time. I can show you what to do. Climb.”

Arthur blessed his few extra points of vitality as he walked up the stairs. The wall wasn't short, reaching skyscraper-like heights he suspected wouldn't have been exactly possible if it weren't for system shenanigans. Soon enough, they crested the top, where Mizu grabbed his wrist again and led him to the edge.

“Remember Lily?”

“Yeah,” Arthur said. He was about to mention how he had found her sick, but that didn’t seem like what Mizu wanted to talk about.

“Her parents died defending the city. Monsters can overflow from dungeons out in the wild, and they attack the city.”

Arthur nodded. “A monster wave.”

“They might come from anywhere. The scouts didn't spot this wave. The city's runes did. They aren't as specific.”

“So we have to man this whole wall? Are there enough people for that?”

“There are. People will move with the beasts.”

“And once we know the direction, everyone groups up?”

“No. Not necessarily. When the monsters arrive, they spread.” She looked down, tracing a semicircle with her finger that tracked the curvature of the wall. “In big waves, they can surround the city.”

“So how do we defend? Stop them from getting in?”

“Some monsters can dig. A few can fly. And —” She was startled as a loud shout came from below them on the city side, followed by a large mass of red muscle bouncing up dozens of stairs at a time. As Karbo reached the top, he waved briefly at Arthur, then launched himself off the wall, landing hard enough on the dirt below to leave an actual crater.

“Some are like him and don't pay attention to walls anyway.”

“Good to see him out there, at least.”

“Yes. Karbo will hunt the large, dangerous beasts, and so will other hunters. The city takes care of the rest of the swarm.”

“How?” Arthur said. “I want to help, but I don't have anything that can reach from here to there.”

“You do. We all do.” She reached down, pulling a large stone from a pile near their feet and dropping it downward. “Rocks.”

“Really? We chuck rocks at them?”

“Drop. The monsters swarm, and a falling rock is a fearsome thing. Some of us drop the rocks, others carry new ones up. The quarrymasters work all year to make sure we have enough stones to make it work.”

“That must take forever.”

“Days.”

“Do monsters must get through?”

“Some. Hunters guard the inside of the wall, and the city guards are strong inside the city.”

“Hmm,” Arthur said. “I guess that makes sense. But it's just rocks. Not the most impressive weapon.”

“You haven't seen it yet.” Mizu said. “The city is strong in numbers, Arthur. And a stone of storm is impressive in its own way.”

By the end of the day, Arthur saw what she meant first-hand. After Mizu left to supplement the wall-adjacent water supplies, Arthur was conscripted by a large wolverine guard, who set him on throwing stones. Dropping them, really. But he wasn't dropping them alone. As the wolverine barked out orders, hundreds of denizens of the city would grab stones, lift them over the edge, and let loose all at once.

Not every stone hit, but most did. The monster swarm was a writhing, sharp, deadly sort of thing, a moat of death that had gathered at the base of the wall. Those kinds of numbers made them hard to miss. Every volley of stones would throw them back, and defend the city from the attack.

There was an almost, work-like attitude to things. The others acted as if it were normal that the city should be attacked by a horde of monsters, and Arthur didn’t know enough about demon world history to question otherwise.

It still wasn't enough. The monsters advanced faster than the stones, and selection effects meant that after a long enough time, the monsters closest to the wall were also among the strongest the wave had to offer. But every time that happened, Karbo, or another hunter like him, took care of things. Arthur would see a glint of light, then watch as a red shape bulldozed through hundreds or thousands of monsters.

And then the cycle would begin again. And again. And again. By the time the wolverine tapped him on the shoulder and told him to go home, his hands were bloody messes of popped blisters, second only as providers of pain when compared to his poor lower back.

Next time, I'm lifting with my legs.

“But I can't go now,” Arthur said. “The monsters aren't done.”

“We work in shifts. You did a good job. Go home and rest.”

Arthur looked back to his spot on the wall only to find it was already filled. Half-dead, he nodded, then turned to stagger down the stairs and all the way home. Mizu was nowhere to be seen, which for once he was thankful for. He'd probably survive all this, but if he didn't, he wanted to avoid her last memory of him as a hunched, out-of-shape figure moaning in pain.

—

“Look who made it.” Milo said, not even bothering to smile. Despite his superior physical stats, he looked about as beat as Arthur felt. “We had a bet going that offworlders knew not to jump into the monster swarm. Looks like I lost.”

Ella rolled her eyes and put stew and bread in front of Arthur. She didn't look nearly as tired as either of the two boys who lived in her house, probably due to superior stats, or just as likely because she had a job she was better suited for.

“No, I knew that much at least. What I didn't know was what stones would do to my poor hands.” Arthur gave up on trying to use his spoon, lifting the bowl with both of his swollen hands and drinking the stew down directly from the lip.

“You think that's hard? Try pounding on iron all day. I've been making these.” Milo held up a softball sized lump of iron, spiked on every side with vicious looking sharpened cones of metal. “It's an emergency weapon for strength and dexterity classes. If something big manages to get up the wall, they thunk it with one of these bad boys.”

“And that works?”

“Better than rocks. Anyway, you probably haven't checked yet, but chances are you picked up a level or two from today. Once you wash yourself up, you should dump it into vitality. It’ll help your hands close up.”

“Ah, yeah, I'll do that.”

After dinner was over and Arthur had washed and changed clothes, he felt like a new man. Almost. Hands were apparently the last thing vitality got to. But before he got around to assessing his status screen, he had a stop to make.

“Hi, Lily.”

“Hi, Arthur.”

“Still trapped in bed?”

“Yes. That terrible bird woman won't let me help with the monster swarm.”

“I don't think it's just her, Lily. They probably wouldn't let you on the wall at all. It's just initiates and older folks up there.”

“Still. I could do something.”

“I bet you could.” Arthur started making her some tea, juicing it with his majicka as he did. “I think I probably could do better too. I'm throwing rocks, but I have to think I could do more than that.”

“They don't want tea?”

“I don't think they have time for it. Just food and throwing.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Not normal tea, dummy. Magic tea. Like you made me.”

“Hm. That's an idea,” Arthur said. “If I could get a recipe that worked. But it would still be hard. I can't be dizzy up on the wall, and I can't make the tea in advance. It would be stale, if it even lasted that long.”

For better or worse, people in Arthur’s new world would only drink the tea if it tasted halfway decent, and none of the teas Arthur had worked with kept very well. Even at the stand, he needed to refresh his supply every few hours. The taste buds of the demon kind were far pickier than the human equivalent.

“Yeah,” Arthur concluded. “I just don't think it's practical. Even if I could make the tea that fast, I couldn't get it up the wall by myself.”

“They don't have water up there?”

“They do, but I can't bless that much tea that fast. Too much majicka in too little time. Looks like I'll just be chucking rocks.”

“No, you won't.” Lily got out of bed. “I'm helping. You can't stop me.”

“You can't leave the house, Lily. You’re still weak.”

“I'm getting better. And your problem isn't a real problem at all. You don't have to bless the tea, Arthur. You can bless the bobas. The ball things. The pearls.”

—

It was almost dawn by the time Arthur's hands stopped burning. With a huge outlay of majicka on his to-do list, he had to dump the few points he had picked up into wisdom. But it wasn't until he had picked up all the sacks of starch from the nearby stores and worked halfway through the night that some levels in his skills and a new achievement kicked in to fill in the gaps, making his ad-hoc plan realistic in one fell swoop.

Level 13 Teamaster

Stats:

STR 5

VIT 8

DEX 8

PER 14

WIS 14

INT 5

Primary Skills: Teashop Brewmaster (Level 8) Food Scientist (Level 8) Medicinal Brewer (Level 2)

Achievements: Shop Owner, Mass Prep

Mass Prep (Achievement)

You have at least planned on making a food item for a huge number of people, then followed through on that plan by focusing down on one particular component.

After preparing ingredients in advance, it makes assembling the final product a little faster and easier. Effects dissipate once you stop a particular work session.

Between his mass-production capabilities pushing along the process and slightly better majicka efficiency from Medicinal Brewer, he managed to make just a bit more boba than he had thought possible. Was he sick to his stomach from bottoming out his majicka dozens of times? Absolutely. But Ella had cleared it as a one-time emergency thing.

With Lily soundly conked out in bed and his wagon loaded up with thousands of boba pearls, Arthur set out for the wall again. It was going to be a more effective day.