Chapter 20: Monster Horde
Allen's team reached Central city after a week.
They are part of the squad that patrols the northeast border of the city.
They have to patrol 50kms daily. Some of the border areas are very close to the forest.
Since they are on day duty, they get good combat experience as the monsters mostly don't come near human settlements at night.
Only powerful monsters come out at night, but will not come close to city borders.
Allen was upset as he is unable to purify his mana continuously due to mental exhaustion.
He is making progress as he is now able to purify mana three times continuously before exhausting his mental energy.
His purity also reached 60% and he can feel the difficulty in purifying the mana.
He was also able to create his second mana seal 2 days back when they fought a pack of lightning wolves.
His teammates discarded their quiver because after reaching the Specialist stage, they purchased grade-2 bows which do not require arrows.
Grade-2 weapons are more powerful than grade-1 weapons as they can be used with monster cores.
A low-level specialist core and be used to fire up to 100 arrows with less mana from the bow user.
Grade-2 weapons can be used only by the Specialist stage and above as it will cause so much pressure on the Private stage.
When they were patrolling outside the city wall which is 15 feet high and 8 feet thick. "Stay alert guys. I can sense something." Kumar warned us.
We were accompanied by 10 warriors in which most of them are high-level specialists and the rest are in mid-level.
They all carried grade-2 weapons and wore grade-2 armour. In grade-2, warriors get different types of armour depending on their needs.
The team accompanying Allen's team were all wearing heavy metal armour suitable for close combat.
Since archers don't go into close combat often, his teammates did not purchase grade-2 armour.
They saw a troop of monkeys containing about 50 in numbers coming near the border. Those monkeys were in peak level private stage.
The warriors took a defensive formation since they are outnumbered and had to protect the archers.
Allen started showering arrows at the monkeys along with his team. Serina shot a fireball towards them.
Allen on the verge of levelling up felt the sensation and called Serina to integrate with him. Serina did it reluctantly.
She was starting to enjoy the battles too much which is not going to end well for her if she continues.
Allen started levelling up and he drank a vitality potion from his bag to help reduce the mana conception during level-up.
In the next 10 minutes, he levelled up to the peak level private stage. They wiped out the troop with little difficulty as the monkeys are agile.
The warriors had minor injuries thanks to their armour.
Allen started to collect his arrows and mana cores from the monsters he killed.
They kept patrolling the border of the city for another 3 hours before their replacement took over.
Allen went to the barracks, took shower and wore casual clothes. He left immediately for a food shop nearby.
When he was nearing the shop, he saw Kim already waiting for him.
They planned to meet in the shop every week to be in touch as they are on different platoons and can meet only when they are off duty.
They spent some quality time together remembering their school days which seems to be a lifetime ago.
Allen knows that Kim also has a fiery wolf. They mainly meet whenever possible so their pets can spend time with their race.
One day during their patrol, Allen's party sat near a small lake to rest.
"Awooo... Woof woof"
After some time Serina growled signalling danger nearby.
Allen informed others about the danger and they all became vigilant.
They saw about 20 big head turtles coming out of the lake. They are all private-stage monsters.
Turtles have low agility, their attack is water element. But their defence is too strong.
Allen was not sure even his Death Strike could scratch the shell of these turtles.
The only way for him to kill these turtles is to aim for their head.
Allen started attacking the turtles along with other archers.
Allen fired a death strike towards a turtle and it hit the shell. Not even a scratch was visible on the shell.
Even the grade-2 arrows from specialist stage archers were unable to make a dent in their shells.
Allen has used all of his arrows and was able to kill only 2 monsters.
Even though their head is big, they will retract their head immediately into their shell. This made them harder to kill.
Allen took out his two-handed sword and went to the front line to support the warriors.
While fighting, they saw another bale of big head turtles coming out of the lake.
This time the number of turtles coming out of the lake was numerous. More than 100 turtles were coming toward the soldiers.
"ALLEN, SIGNAL THE CITY. EVERYONE RETREAT TO THE CITY." shouted the leader of the squad.
Allen took out an arrow from his shoulder bag that has a pink colour pouch with a small thread attached to it.
Allen used his fire ability to light the thread. He waited for a few seconds before shooting it directly above his head.
The arrow reached a height of 20 feet before exploding creating a ping cloud in the air and signalling the city about the impending Monster Horde.
Allen started to run with the warriors to the city. He did not care about collecting his arrows as the arrows are provided by the military for patrolling assignments.