Chapter 62: Everything Accelerates and LEVEL 30

Emily was carving through the kobold line.

She’d killed four of them in the time it took Eren to deal with the bear. Her katana moved in wide arcs that created Wind Slash trails through the air. Each slash hit a kobold or beast in its path.

But the two mounted riders were hanging back. They watched Emily from fifty meters away and they acted like they’d seen combat before. One of them barked an order with a guttural voice. Half the remaining kobold foot soldiers pulled back and made a defensive formation.

They were trying to go around the barricade where there was no wall while defending the leaders from elves.

“EAST SIDE! THEY’RE FLANKING!” Eren shouted.

He nocked another arrow. Drew. His new passive skill adjusted something in his grip and the bowstring felt a bit natural for the first time.

The arrow hit a flanking kobold in the thigh. It stumbled but kept running.

Second shot. This one hit a different kobold center mass. It died for some reason and Eren didn’t know how the hell that happened.

[You gained 100% energy of Kobold Scout (Level 15)]

Third shot. It was a miss. The kobold dodged sideways at the last second. These weren’t stupid creatures running in straight lines.

[Basic Archery levelled up: Level 3 > Level 4]

Another level. From three shots.

What the hell?

Eren was starting to understand something. The system didn’t care about practice targets or little fights much. It cared about real world combat actions. Real stakes including your life. Real intent to kill or be killed.

Every arrow he fired at a living enemy that was trying to murder him was worth more than a hundred shots at a stump in his backyard.

The system rewarded real violence!

He kept shooting. His accuracy was improving with each arrow. Not dramatically but enough that he could feel the difference. Wolf Eyes and sometimes Lovely Eyes skill was active without him consciously turning them on. Everything fast became slightly slower in his vision. The kobolds’ movements were readable in the perception of a shooter.

He would like them to stop moving and stay still but life wasn’t working like that.

A kobold crossbow bolt flew toward his face. He tilted his head two inches to the left. The bolt passed close enough for him to feel the wind of it.

[Wolf Eyes levelled up: Level 3 > Level 4]

“Are you SERIOUS right now?” He said it out loud. Three skill level-ups in five minutes. In the backyard he’d struggled for days without a single level on anything.

Dungeon training with wolves suddenly made so much more sense. Emily had been fighting real monsters since she was a kid. That’s why her skills were at least Evolution League 2 or 3 and around Level 8-9. Close to new skill evolutions. Her skill leagues was the real game changer not her level.

So, real danger accelerates everything.

A pair of howls cut through the chaos from the right side. Rury and Fury burst from the shadows like missiles and jumped into the air to hunt a flying black bird.

Rury missed and changed it’s target and hit the first flanking kobold at full speed. Her jaws closed around its neck and she ragdolled the thing sideways without stopping.

Fury just killed a bird and came down but sprinted like a blur. He came in low to a different kobold his bite crushed the thing’s ankle and it went down screaming.

[We smelled blood and ran.] Fury’s real howling voice and it’s meaning echoed in Eren’s head. He wasn’t calm as always but excited with this chaotic moment. [What is this?]

“Dragon cleans the whole damn mountain and send these cute ones toward us. Bears, foxes, crows and kobolds. Emily’s ahead. Go to East side to help.” His use of Beastin Language looked weird to some elves but nobody said anything. They realized he was communicating with the wolf.

[Understood.] Fury turned to his sister. [East side!]

[But these look tasty..] Rury’s golden eyes burned with something between joy and hunger. She launched herself at the next kobold without waiting for a response.

The eastern flank collapsed in under five minutes. Rury was faster than any kobold on foot. Fury was precise. Between the two wolves and Eren’s arrows covering from the barricade, the flanking group didn’t make it to the village.

After five minutes Emily finally destroyed the stupid formation and killed the first mounted rider leader.

Eren saw it from a close distance. He was ready to join and save her if something weird happened but luckily nothing went wrong.

She just pushed her way through the foot soldiers and reached the command pair. The rider’s mount dinosaur lunged at her with its massive jaws and she simply wasn’t there. She sidestepped, brought her katana up in a rising cut and took the mount’s lower jaw clean off.

The rider fell from the saddle as its mount collapsed. Before the kobold could stand, Emily’s blade came down one more time.

She didn’t stop moving. She pivoted toward the second rider.

But the second rider was smarter. It turned its mount around and bolted into the forest. Two surviving kobold foot soldiers ran with it.

Emily let them go. She was breathing harder now. The baby was making this much combat dangerous for her. Even if she knew this first month of pregnancy wasn’t totally real and it didn’t start yet, she pressed a hand against her belly for half a second.

She still smiled and walked back toward the barricade with her mind filled with thoughts of their baby.

..

The stampede was almost over now.

The last of the panicked bears had either been killed, redirected or had simply run past the village on either side. Dead creatures littered the ground north of the barricade. Kobold bodies, bear carcasses, smaller beasts with arrows or slash wounds all over their carcasses.

Eren counted the damage on their side.

The young elf who got hit by the bear was being carried toward Selena’s place. Someone said he was still alive but badly poisoned or something. But Eren saw the boy from close. He was definitely dead. If there wasn’t a miraculous medicine to resurrect the dead, he would stay dead.

That old grandpa Gereth had a cut on his arm that he was ignoring even if other elves were telling him to stop.

Nimbo’s shield had a crack down the middle. Eren knew it was a dungeon item and wasn’t that important, it sucked. Village didn’t have many defensive gear and that shield saved a lot of people in the last attack.

Mel was covered in green and red blood but none of it was hers. Rabbu-i had collapsed against the barricade from mana exhaustion.

And then Eren noticed the second body.

An older elf woman was on the ground near the eastern gap in the barricade. A crossbow bolt stuck out of her neck. Her basket of dried herbs was spilled across the dirt around her. She must have been walking home when the attack started and didn’t make it to cover in time.

No one was trying to save her because there was nothing to save or any delusional false claims like the other boy. This scene made it clear and she was dead.

Eren looked at her for a minute without blinking, then at his hands, then at the dead kobolds past the wall.

She was just walking home.

He burned that image into his memory while Emily came to his side.

“Good job protecting them.” She climbed back over the barricade with red and green blood on her clothes. She wasn’t hurt but she was breathing in a way that made Eren nervous. Heavy rhythmic breaths through her nose with her hand still pressed against her lower belly.

“Are you okay?” He reached for her.

“Fine.”

He would ask again if she looked wounded. But all the blood on her body came from the first few bears and Eren saw the stains already dried up.

[You gained 100% energy of Spiked Verdant Black Bear (Level 22)]

[You gained 100% energy of Kobold Scout (Level 15)]

[You gained 100% energy of Kobold Scout (Level 14)]

[You gained 100% energy of Feral Shadow Cat (Level 11)]

[You gained 100% energy of Feral Shadow Cat (Level 12)]

He’d been so focused on fighting that he’d ignored the notifications. They hit him now in a delayed wave.

[Congratulations! You have reached Level 30]

-All stats increased by 1

-You gained 1 Stat Point to distribute

One level in one fight. He allocated stat point to Mana without thinking. His mana pool was the bottleneck for everything. Door Master, Clone… all of them needed more mana than he currently had.

“I leveled up.” he told Emily.

“Good.” She was scanning the treelines around the north side. “It’s not over.”

“What, how?”

“That was a stampede with kobold opportunists riding behind it. But the signal that Kobold Pack Leader sent last week?” She looked at him with those adorable eyes. “This isn’t planned or their real response.”

“So, more are coming..”

“I know more are coming. Not a single troll showed up Eren! This is just the beginning!”

Eren totally forgot about trolls. They had to come from north because they lived in the caves there. If Emily wasn’t here, he would ignore troll detail and relax a little.

Eren kissed Emily on the cheek while she cleaned her katana and sheathed it. She kissed his lips for a sudden second before running away.

“Thadric! Where is Thadric?”

Thadric came running from the ranch direction with his wooden spear and a face full of worry. He looked at Emily with respect. “All farm animals are secured. The mounts went crazy when the rumbling started but they’re locked in the inner pen.”

“Good. Take position on the east gap with Nimbo. That’s the weakest point.”

Emily turned to the gathering crowd of villagers. About thirty elves had come to the barricade area now. Most of them weren’t fighters. Bakers, farmers, weavers and crafters who’d never held a weapon in their lives.

But they were here. And their eyes were on Emily.

“Barricade will hold the north. East and west are open. I need anyone who can hold a stick to stand and upgrade those.

You don’t need to fight! You just need to make noise if anything comes and start making a damn wall!” She screamed at the end. “South side has the forest and the dungeon path. Nothing should come from there.”

She was wrong about that, but neither of them knew it yet.

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