Hearing a scream always put me on edge, no matter how many times it happened. To be honest, I didn’t want to become the kind of person who wasn’t rattled when they heard a scream. Frightful screams had a nasty habit of becoming infectious. Why are there monsters flooding the streets? We’d just come back from completing Holy Maiden’s Trial, and we’d been thrust into chaos. At first I suspected that the trial quest wasn’t really over, but the lack of a quest window suggested this wasn’t a quest of any kind. That left me with no clue as to the cause of this monster outbreak.
With a sickly feeling of uncertainty, I leaped out into the hallway with Kent and Cocoa. We scanned the halls, ready to fight anything that came our way...but there were no threats in sight. It was too early to sigh in relief, though.
“It’s too quiet in the house,” Kent pointed out.
“Usually, the staff are walking the halls,” Cocoa added.
Seeing how nervous they were, I tried to keep a reassuring tone. “It’s okay. I’m sure they’ve evacuated. We employ private guards just for the house, so they can deal with a few monsters.”
“That’s good to hear,” Kent said. “Let’s make sure there aren’t any monsters left inside!”
“Agreed,” I said.
With Kent taking the lead, the three of us made our way through the house. As Cocoa had pointed out, there were no staff to be seen—they must have evacuated to the basement.
We carefully descended the stairs and spotted a Goblin and Cat Swordsman on the first floor. One of our private guards lay motionless beside them.
Forcing myself to stay calm through the rush of dread and cold sweat, I used my Skills. “Heal Absolutely. Protective Light. Holy Maiden’s Boon!”
“I’m going in! Taunt!”
“Awaken from the World of Dreams—Lightbird!”
While I healed the guard on the floor, Kent drew the monsters’ attention and Cocoa attacked. Lightbird—the most powerful AoE attack available to Lyrical Sorcerers—summoned a bird made of light that attacked any monsters in the vicinity. It took out the pair of monsters without a fuss, letting us rush over to the guard. Luckily, I’d used my Skills in time—his injuries were healed, and he was conscious again. Oh, thank goodness!
“Miss Charlotte! Am I glad to see you safe...!” the guard said the moment he awoke.
“I’m sorry it took me so long. Do you know what happened?” I asked.
“No... Suddenly the city was full of monsters, and no one knows why. Any monsters in the house did not spawn here—they came in from the streets.”
“Okay...” I breathed, allowing myself to feel a little relieved.
Goblins were a common type of monster that appeared in various areas, but Cat Swordsmen usually only appeared in Cattail Field. Under normal circumstances, these two monsters would not have been found in the same place. That meant that the citywide outbreak had been manufactured—either by someone in this world, or as a kind of special event coded into Reas. The timing seemed too coincidental for my trial to be unrelated, but considering that monsters had spawned all over the city—and not in my room where I’d used the key to trigger the trial—that possibility was seeming less and less likely.
“Mana Detection... There aren’t any more monsters nearby.”
“Thanks, Cocoa. Is everyone else in the basement?” I asked the guard.
“Y-Yes. Except those who can fight, everyone in the house has evacuated downstairs. The guards are sweeping the house and fighting monsters in the city.”
“I see. Thank you for your courage during this chaotic situation,” I said.
“Only doing my job, miss!”
No one else in the house had been injured, by the sound of it. “My brother went to take command of the Order of Knights. It won’t take them long to get this under control. Could you guard the house until then? And I’ll be directing anyone in the street who doesn’t have a place to go to come here. Can you take them in?”
“Yes, miss!”
Leaving the healed guard at his post, we went out into the city. We stood there for a moment, overcome by the madness of people fleeing or fighting the monsters upon monsters filling the streets.
“How did this happen...?” Cocoa murmured, mirroring my thoughts exactly.
The streets were filled with everything from Jigglies and Flower Bunnies to Goblins, Venom-Spewing Witches, Beetlers, Rats-in-Hoods, Sand Golems, and even a single Wyvern in the sky. Dealing with monsters in the sky as well as on the ground was going to be a little tricky.
“Taunt!” Kent shouted before I could gather my thoughts. He was right, though. We needed to take out the closest monsters first. Using an AoE Skill, I healed those collapsed around me while I raised my voice in hopes of reassuring them. “We are high-level adventurers! You’re okay now! Everyone’s going to be okay!”
“W-We’re saved...!”
“Take out those monsters, please!”
Hope seemed to spark within those who were fleeing the monsters, although they still seemed to whisper, “Quickly, quickly...” out of fear. These monsters were nothing but fodder to adventurers like us, but for the townspeople who weren’t adventurers and didn’t have jobs suited to combat, they were plenty terrifying.
“Leave some for me!” With easy swings of his sword, Kent began taking out the weaker monsters while Cocoa focused on the stronger ones.
My task was to heal and protect the injured. I ran over to a woman on the ground holding a child in her arms—she must have protected him from the monsters like that. “Can you stand?” I asked her. “House Cocoriara is just down the street, and there are guards. You should evacuate there.”
“T-To the duke’s residence...?! Th-Thank you!”
“There’s no need to thank me. Hurry.”
“I will!” Carrying her child in her arms, she ran off in the direction of my house.
“It’s over!” Kent shouted while I watched the woman go. “Most of the monsters around here are taken care of.”
“Yeah, I think we should keep moving and take out the other monsters, but... Mana Detection. There aren’t many left at all,” Cocoa said.
“In the whole city?”
“I can only sense a few,” Cocoa said. “Do you think the others took care of them?”
“These aren’t strong monsters to begin with. I mean, they are to normal people, but to us...” Kent pointed out.
“Right,” Cocoa agreed.
They seemed to think that the others in our party had wiped out most of the monsters in the city already, and I was starting to agree with them. Wasn’t it too easy, though? Any monster outbreak like this wasn’t good news, but it was such a negligible threat that I didn’t see the point of it all. “I don’t think it’s related to me, then,” I said. “If it were a quest aimed at the Holy Maiden, it wouldn’t be full of weaklings. If there were Fallen Angels in the streets, I might have thought differently, but the strongest of this bunch is that Wyvern.”
“You didn’t see a window for a quest either, did you?” Kent asked, confirming my point.
“Let’s take care of that Wyvern before it decides to come down on the city!” Cocoa pleaded.
“Good point,” Kent and I agreed in unison.
“Taunt won’t work from down here. How do we take it down? Cocoa rides a Dragon and fights in the skies?” Kent suggested.
“No way.” I laughed. “There’s a much easier way. Smiting Light, Protective Light, Holy Maiden’s Boon, Moonlight, Starlight.”
“Wait, I’m going to take it down alone?” Kent asked as I buffed him to the max.
“Ding ding ding! It’s just a Wyvern, Kent. You got this. If you use a Skill, you’ll take it down in one hit. I guarantee it,” I said.
“Okay,” Kent said, summoning his Dragon and taking to the skies.
“You can do it, Kent!” Cocoa cheered from the ground.
“Yeah!” Kent answered and swooped into battle. Immediately, the Wyvern exploded into light, drawing cheers from all over the city—apparently, many townspeople had been watching the terrifying monster up in the sky.
Most of the danger is taken care of now, I concluded. We still had to find out what had triggered this attack in the first place, and I had one guess—even if I didn’t quite believe someone would have actually pulled the trigger and caused this kind of chaos.
Kent landed on the ground. “Sharon, from what I could see from up there, there are still some straggler monsters in the streets, but they’re no match for the rest of our party. It won’t be long before the monsters are all wiped out.”
“Yes! I knew they could do it,” I said, thinking that we should start taking out the remaining monsters and scope out how the city had fared.
A voice shouted from down the street, “Is everyone all right?!” Frey was sprinting toward us, with Luna close behind.
“Frey, you came to already?!” I asked. “How did you wake up so quickly?”
“Who cares?! Let’s fight monsters!” Frey exclaimed fervently.
“I care...” I muttered and turned to Luna.
“I gave her an Energizer Potion,” she explained with a smile.