-Aghhhh!! Help!
A young man screamed, tripping on the ground and crawling on his back as he hastily tried to flee, but following him was a big 4 armed Gorilla with red fur and red eyes, it roared and stomped as it glared at the young man without a doubt intending to kill him in its enraged state.
The young tried to get away as fast and as far away as humanly possible, but he hurt his leg when he was running and tripped to the ground, crawling away he quickly reached a dead end as he was backed to a wall quickly coming to the realization that he had no way to run.
Scared the young man looked at the gorilla, immediately closing his eyes the moment it was about to turn him into a meat paste on the paved road.
-YAA!
Unexpectedly though things didn’t go as the young man thought, out of nowhere from behind the gorilla a woman with red hair appeared wielding a sword and shield, glowing with some kind of magical energy as the sword transformed into a flash of light as it passed through the neck of the Gorilla.
[Charge Strike] variant, [Golden Flash].
As soon as the flash went through the Gorilla stopped mid smash with its 4 arms before the head separated from its body and collapsed onto the ground with blood spurting out in a disgusting fashion.
The young man still couldn’t believe what just happened, but he knew that his life was saved, looking up towards his savior he spotted the red haired woman once, looking at her closer he saw her heroic vestige and knightly aura, for a moment he mistook her for one of the knights send by the lord of the region.
But before he could even say anything the woman turned around to go elsewhere before speaking to him.
-Run away, hide in a building and don’t come out and defend yourself with all you have if you don’t want to die.
And with those words she quickly sprinted away likely, being needed elsewhere.
The young man blankly looked at her disappearing back, before immediately snapping out of it and going to hide somewhere, as the young man started to run he saw from a distance stray monsters that had gotten into the city from the main fight in front of the gate where everyone else was fighting, most of the monsters were flying types while the few land dwelling ones were adept at climbing like the Gorilla which is how they got over the wall.
The red haired woman, or rather Gabriella was fighting these monster from within the town as that is where she decided to stay and do her job.
It had been a while since the beginning of the battle, like 15 to 20 minutes when the giant fireball hit the monster horde and the monsters clashed with the adventurers, soldiers and knights at the front.
Gabriella was originally thinking that she should have joined the battle over there, but considering that Avian was not present, she automatically became the temporary party leader and responsible for everyone’s safety which is why she was protecting the town from within.
Running through the streets, Gabriella took out any monster she could reasonably take out with a single slash of her sword.
Gabriella was like an elegant dancer when she fought, cutting through enemies like cutting through vegetables the eyes of many people drew to her as she hacked and slashed left and right without losing her moment for even a second.
As someone who was born as the vassal of a noble and trained like a true knight, Gabriella possessed experience and skill not proportional to her actually Rank as she was still Rank 1 even though people at her age if they worked hard would be Rank 2.
But this was simply the way of the blessing of the [Knight], Gabriella had always postponed choosing a master, all because it was an extremely difficult decision that would last her a majority of her life and had some very high risks involved with it.
There were countless candidates though almost all of them excellent but she still didn’t chose them not even her own lady who she was under, but her lady didn’t mind being understanding with her.
Unfortunately, Gabriella realized that by the time her lady had been killed and her daughter was nowhere to be found, she was too weak to do anything causing her to be captured and send away to be sold as a slave.
By a stroke of luck, god still had not abandoned her as he still gave her one last chance, with the Arrival of Avian who became her master.
His words while cruel made her realize her mistakes, her master was no good person at that, she knew that from the beginning with how deeply shrouded in darkness he was, but he had more principle then any person she met, his words were true while she believed he would one day keep his promise which is why.
-(I have to grow stronger, for my lady’s daughter and for my master)
She wanted to rescue her lady’s daughter, but she also wanted to protect her master who she swore herself to, she hadn’t spent much time with her master, it had only been 3 days, but she felt incredibly close and connected to him as if an invisible string was keeping them tied to each other.
And really it was exactly that, all because of the connection the blessing of the [Knight] provided she was feeling she was close to Avian.
-Who is she?!
-She killed so many monsters!
-Hey! If you have time to stare how about you take down the monsters that lady injured for us!
Within the city, there were a lot more other adventurers who were doing the same job as Gabriella, they were mostly those who were considered weaker and not fit for the hectic battle outside the walls, killing monsters left and right, Gabriella heavily injured those that she couldn’t kill with one slash to leave for everyone to deal with.
Her reputation soared in the eyes of these newbies while Gabriella herself was heading towards a certain place where the rest of her party was.
TWANG!
The sound of a bowstring releasing could be heard as she started to come closer, arriving at the place she saw Deborah firing at flying monsters, her aim wasn’t that great, but she made up for it using her blessing and the ability [Aimed Shot], which was similar to Gabriella’s [Charge Strike] as it gathered a type of energy to fulfill a purpose, Gabriella’s could be interchanged between speed and power while Deborah’s ability increased her aim and penetrative might of her arrows.
Looking at the ground, she already killed 3 flying monsters with this ability, a specialized [Archer] or [Crossbowman] could have very likely done better, but this was still very good considering a [Hunter] wasn’t a pure combat specialist.
-Ah! Gabriella!
Cornelia shouted out, noticing Gabriella having come back, Cornelia herself seemed to have just dealt with a monster together with Ogra, seeing the monster corpses a lot of them were turned into flat paste very clearly Ogra’s piece of work, while a few of them had countless cuts and stabs on them which was a fighting style Cornelia seemed to prefer as she was fast and nimble.
Upon closer inspection though Gabriella noticed that these cuts and stabs started to get a lot less with each individual body and more concentrated on lethal areas like the face and neck area, these cuts were also found on the legs clearly showing the malicious intentions behind them.
-(Great they are getting used to fighting, I was worried the practice in the forest wouldn’t be enough to make them fight monsters head on, but clearly I was wrong)
Nodding to herself as if she was satisfied, Gabriella joined up with her party.
Ogra was also nearby, she wasn’t fighting any monsters as it seemed like they already killed the monsters that came here.
Ogra had actually done almost all of the work fighting the monsters while getting supported by the other 2, to be honest, Gabriella still didn’t have a good handle on Ogra, not that she disliked her, it is just that she didn’t know much about her and while she asked Ogra in private about her life she would never be able to get much out of it as Ogra while not hiding anything wasn’t very good at explaining herself.
Her fighting ability alone suggested that Ogra understood combat and fighting techniques, she even admitted as such as she told Gabriella that she was taught her tribe, but then why was it that she was still unranked when she was 23 years old?
Most people if they worked sufficiently everyday would already be Rank 1 by the age of 21, but the fact that Ogra never made progress beyond unranked as a [Barbarian] was puzzling.
Avian himself knew this as well, but he didn’t seem to care as all he cared about was Ogra’s contribution to the team, though Gabriella could have followed her master’s way of thinking she had a different way of looking at her party or comrades.
-What is she doing?
Gabriella asked, watching Ogra carry the monster corpses and gathering them into their alley where their store was, Cornelia and Deborah who were nearby smiled wryly at the question before Deborah replied.
-She is picking out the meat she wants to eat so when master comes back she can ask him to cook them for her.
-(sigh) I should have known, but you know I think we shouldn’t rely on having master do simple chores like cooking for us.
-Why not? He seems to love it, in fact when he is here he won’t let anyone in the kitchen as if its his own room, and do you remember how we suffered yesterday? We still made some grilled meat, but the disappointed look on Ogra’s face still haunts me!
-Someone call Ogra!? ~
-ARGGH!!!
The 4 woman continued to talk and interact like this lightheartedly, Gabriella had left this area because she wanted to help other areas since hers could be dealt with by Ogra and the other 2, none of them knew the current state of the actually fight in front of the gate, but as they talked the ground suddenly rattled as if something huge and heavy hit the ground.
The 4 of them quickly got quiet after that looking at the direction where the fight was happening, they felt that something huge just happened and they weren’t wrong as indeed something did happen.
A few seconds later another ground shaking impact was felt through the ground, followed by a 3rd a 4th and finally a 5th as it then suddenly stopped and became quiet.
The sound of fighting near gate quickly became a lot less noisy from where they stood, no one knew if this was a good or bad thing, but soon enough that question would be answered as a adventurer after a few minutes started running down the main road yelling.
-THE MONSTER HORDE! THE MONSTER HORDE HAS BEEN DEFEATED!
The amazing news took a few seconds for everyone to really process, but soon enough the adventurers on the street started to smile before loudly crying out together.
-HURAY!
The normal citizens hiding in their houses also heard the news and started to come out as the monsters outside were being cleaned up extremely quickly with the morale of the adventurers boosted.
While Gabriella and the others didn’t really know what happened, they really felt that it was over.
The town had won.
The monster horde was defeated.
Cornelia and Deborah immediately jumped in excitement to that while Ogra and Gabriella merely smiled happy that everything went fine.
Still that didn’t mean they could start celebrating, there were loads of injured people from this fight, to really celebrate they had to go and help as much as they could.
A soldier in fact had come out to announce that very thing, now that the fight was seemingly won, they needed to concentrate on saving the people who were injured.
-WAIT! WHAT IS THAT!
As this was about to happen, someone suddenly shouted and started pointing at the sky far away.
The people, including Avian’s party immediately looked at that direction, only to see a giant beam of dark light shooting up into the sky ominously.
For a moment the people were quiet and still as a sign, no one knew what this was, but Gabriella instantly noticed something when she looked at that direction.
-(Wait, isn’t that where Master went with the adventurers to find the kobolds?)
This thought wasn’t just shared by her alone.
Back on the front line or the main battle field, the area where the clash between the adventurers, soldiers and knights were devastated and looked extremely terrible.
Countless corpses littered the ground, mainly of that of monsters but with very few humans mixed in showing how tragic and vicious this fight was, but compared to the losses were all the monsters were killed and only 1/10 of the fighters fighting against the monsters had died or were either critically injured, it was completely the towns victory.
And as a cheery on top, there was a humongous insectoid monsters at the very middle of this field of slaughter.
5 very distinct and huge palm prints could be seen on the body of this grotesque monster, each one seemingly stronger than the last and causing huge amounts of damage as even the terrain wasn’t spared, the palm strikes looking like they went through body of the insectoid monster and then onto the ground where the shock was absorbed.
Either way the insectoid monster that was Rank 3 was without a doubt dead, all the other monsters were mostly dead, but there were still some who were alive getting cleaned up by the fighters who were still fighting.
And standing in front of this giant insectoid monster was Averos, the adventurer guild master of Alimdal.
He didn’t look the same as before though, clearly exhausted and catching his breath, Averos found it difficult to stand as if he was lacking oxygen, but he would not fall, his training since he was young would not allow him as such even when he was old.
Furthermore, he too had noticed the giant black pillar of light coming from a long distance, he also knew that the direction was where Revan and his party were looking for the kobolds.
While almost everyone present didn’t know what that pillar of black light was, as an old man who experienced a lot in this world, he exactly what that pillar of dark light represented.
And he was terrified as he realized that all their struggle against the monster horde may have meant nothing at all.
-Guild master! Guild master are you okay!
From a distance, Almira with a few other individuals approached calling for Averos.
Averos himself didn’t look at them and instead continued to stare at the pillar, by the time these people came to Averos, they noticed how tired he was, but were glad to see he didn’t have any obvious injuries.
-Are you seeing this or am I getting old?
Averos suddenly asked, his question seemingly an attempt to a joke, but not working very well as the personality Averos showed didn’t very well mesh making people unsure how to react as they all decided to just ignore it.
Almira and Melinda the leader of the knights were here and they too saw the pillar.
They were also aware of what the pillar meant as they were more educated than most while Almira had even personally seen a similar pillar appear before destruction soon followed.
Almira was also the only who could fully connect everything together as she quickly spoke.
-This pillar, it’s the kobolds, they are attempting to open the gate to the Dragon Realm from this side, but they couldn’t possibly do this, very likely its all the Dragon behind the gate doing the whole heavy lifting.
-If so can we stop it somehow?
Melinda asked, looking extremely pale when she asked, it was Averos who answered as he shook his head, tired.
-We can’t make it over there, the gate will be complete in 4 or 6 hours, by the time we get there it will long be complete, the only ones who had stop this are…
-Revan and the other adventurers.
Almira finished, and with this causing everyone present to go quiet as they all silently thought about something.
Back to Gabriella and the others.
Gabriella felt an extremely terrible omen looking at the pillar.
Most importantly she felt extreme danger to her master as if her connection with him was alerting her of something making he feel in fidgety as she couldn’t look away from the pillar.
A Place Of Legends 