Chapter 79

The next day, after preparations were finished and everyone was given a night’s rest to remember their roles in the upcoming journey, I found myself exiting the gates with a steady trickle of other Awakeners in the dim yellow glow of the rising morning sun.

It was cold enough inside the walls near the pillars of fire, I could only imagine how cold the Unawakened must have felt outside the walls, huddled around fires and warmth stones, guarded by a few Awakeners who drew the short straws that night.

By some miracle, nobody perished overnight. If the storms had picked up or it had been any colder, we would have had to cram everyone into the city, which would have made leaving again only take longer.

People stood around outside the walls in clear groups of the Awakened and the Unawakened.

“I wonder if I’m going to get enough experience from this to level up?”

“Nah, forget experience. Think about the gold from selling monster parts! I hope there’ll be lots of them to kill.”

Most of the Awakeners chatted about how much they hoped to gain from the quest in plain earshot of the Unawakened, who, only a few days prior from their point of view, had just been going about their lives on Earth.

Of course, they weren’t acclimated yet, and talks of monsters only made them warier.

To them, all of the Awakeners probably looked bloodthirsty. They did to me, too.

“I’m telling you, we got transported into a video game! Levels, classes, stats… Hell, this could pretty much be what I was playing back home before all this!”

A young Unawakened man in sweats and a hoodie gestured, speaking with enthusiasm to the middle-aged man next to him, who wore a suit and tie and had probably been in the middle of a workday right when the Merge happened.

“They say that we just have to kill a monster to Awaken like them. Can you imagine? You could literally have Superman-levels of power! All it probably takes is a good kick to kill a goblin, anyway.”

He seemed better-acclimated than the rest. I’d seen his type before, ‘game-freaks’. Despite the derogatory-sounding name, they tended to fare better than those who tried to see everything with Earth’s logic.

Unfortunately, they also tended to get themselves into more dangerous situations. Something about their mindset made them not fully realize that they couldn’t just ‘respawn’ or ‘reload’ like in their games on Earth until death stared them right in the face.

Passing them by, I found the others near the front of the crowd. Bernard, Velle, Koise, and Rhil were waiting for me, and it looked like I was the last to arrive.

The dwarf and Lein were going to continue to look over the city after we left. They would have an easier time managing things with fewer people, but I worried about how well they could defend if the city was attacked.

I couldn’t get the image of the demon camp over the mountains out of my head. Were they still there? Had they moved or given up after our little raid? Were they watching the city even then and waiting for us to leave it?

Pondering such questions would only make me anxious for no reason, so I decided to keep myself busy.

“Perfect timing, Aizen. And here I was worried that we would have to leave without you.” Bernard smiled to show that it was just a joke.

“You’ll stay behind with me to help deal with any threats that make it through the roving scout party that Koise will be leading to eliminate monsters before they can get close. Velle is going to watch over the food and warmth stone distributions to make sure we don’t have anyone starve or freeze to death, and Rhil will be helping her with that.”

Rhil still avoided my gaze, angry with me about the thing from the previous day. I would have to ask her about that sooner or later, but there were more pressing matters at that moment.

“If everything goes well, Koise and the Awakeners under his charge should be the only ones that have to fight. If not…”

He let his sentence trail off.

“Then there’s nothing left to do but get going, yeah?” I clapped my hands together and tried to lighten the mood.

When we started off, every Awakener was greeted by another System window.

[Quest ‘Guide the Unawakened to Safety’ is underway.

Unawakened: 76/76

Quest Percentage: 1%]

‘How convenient,’ I thought.

The tracker would at least tell us if someone died and give us a hard number of how close we were to the end. It was probably better that the Unawakened couldn’t see it, though, as panic could set in if they thought we were farther than they hoped or if anyone passed away.

Koise decided to split his group up and his scouts roamed in small groups, picking off any stray monsters they could find or guiding us around larger groups that could cause trouble.

I couldn’t help but wonder if the monsters had ‘spawned’ specifically for the quest, been guided to their positions from elsewhere, or simply had already been there.

I doubted the last option, as there was nothing for monsters out in the frigid wastes.

‘Do they have quests or a System of their own?’ I wondered.

After all, I had already seen a separate type of System from the one most were aware of.

Regardless, the scouts did their job well, and my anxiety started to fade as the quest percentage went up and our main group was never attacked.

[Quest Percentage: 9%]

[Quest Percentage: 12%]

[Quest Percentage: 17%]

[Quest Percentage: 25%]

We experienced our first ‘true’ wave of monsters exactly when the percentage hit 25.

The sun was high overhead, signaling that it was about noon, the light wisps of snowy wind caressing our faces were only slightly chilly, and we found the most difficult aspect to be the snow that reached up to knee height, making every step a struggle.

‘At least there aren’t any monsters, though,’ was what I thought at the time, perhaps jinxing it.

The scouts were visible through the swirling snow on the horizon, and we were traversing over a large, flat plain, relaxed because we would be able to see any monsters long before they reached us.

[Monster Wave!

A wave of monsters has detected your party and set up an ambush in advance. Do your best to defeat them and defend the Unawakened!

Monsters Remaining: 100/100]

Then the snow started moving ahead of us.

Snow goblins…

They muscled their way out of the snow that they had burrowed under to hide, light enough to run along the top whereas we sunk into the snow to our knees.

“WAAAAAGGG!!!”

Letting out battle cries, the massive goblin group split up like a wave and converged around us on either side.

Koise’s scouting parties engaged in battle with a few groups of goblins, but there weren’t enough of them to distract them all, and the goblins headed straight for the Unawakened group when they could have overwhelmed Koise’s scouts.

“Run to the other side!” I shouted to Bernard as I sprinted to the right side, where one of the largest groups of goblins was rushing.

“Got it! Velle should provide some cover shortly!” He yelled as he gripped his massive sword and took off toward the other group of goblins.

Sure enough, a rumbling sound shook the ground, and the sky darkened overhead.

A small formation of black clouds obscured the sun and crackled with electricity—Velle casting a large-scale magic.

Other Awakeners gathered at the edges of the group of Unawakened, who shouted and pulled in close to each other, even trampling over each other, trying to frantically get away from the edges where they were most likely to be attacked if goblins made it through.

***

He watched, his heart beating rapidly in excitement as the goblins he had slain in so many video games emerged from the snow and charged at them.

Of course, he was confident that he could just kick one or two of them to death, but even he knew that a horde surrounding him would be his death. Even though they were tiny in comparison to what humans wielded, their rusty swords and crooked spears could still tear into flesh and kill him all the same.

The other Awakeners nearby gave him some confidence, though, and he edged near the front of the line, waiting for his moment. He only needed to get one good hit in and the ‘System’ they spoke of would be his.

The Awakeners and goblins clashed, and many of the goblins were sent ragdolling through the air as the Awakeners used their various skills and overpowered the small creatures.

Perhaps the biggest advantage the goblins had was their speed. They could run over the snow far faster than most of the humans could slog through it, though he did notice one person soaring over the battlefield to land amidst the goblins with a wristblade on one arm and an earth gauntlet of some sort on the other.

The Awakeners started moving forward into the goblin horde, slashing through them and sending goblin bits everywhere.

Feeling the adrenaline of the battle around him, the young man moved behind a few of the Awakeners who surged into the monsters, trying desperately to keep up with them with his mortal legs.

One of the goblins sprinted through the gap left in the Awakeners’ paths, running at him.

‘Finally! This is my chance.’