Forged By The Apocalypse - A LitRPG With Draconic Potential

Trial Wave Spawned

Faction Quest - Survive The Trial Wave - 428/428

Ascentown has reached the threshold to be declared an Outpost, which means becoming a bastion against the dangers outside. Protect the population and drive back the assault.

Reward: Passive income to Ascentown coffers +250 gold per day

“That… cheered me up a bit actually,” I confessed to Naea, showing her the quest screen. “Remind me to check out the faction inventory at some point.” I knew that if I checked right now, I would either get lost in thought or excitement and there were more pressing matters.

First on my list was the clash of energies I could feel somewhere on the outskirts of Newtown. Neither of the Dao were ones I recognised, which was interesting on its own. The fact they were clearly fighting made it worth checking out all the more. I burst onto the scene without caring for any kind of etiquette. If whoever it was wanted a fair fight, they could do it another time.

Of course, my humour died upon seeing the scene. Encased in what seemed to be a protective layer of ice, a heavily bleeding Tom lay shivering. Defending him, with a sledgehammer made of compacted snow, was a pretty blonde woman I hadn’t met before. She looked terrified of both me and the bald man standing against her. “Naea, can you go help Tom?” I asked quietly. She did so as I held up my hand to the woman, who looked ready to swat the fairy with her hammer. “Don’t do that. Tom’s my friend.”

Glad that she listened quickly, I turned to the man. “If I remember right, there was some nasty Dao on show the last time I was here. I thought Tom could handle it without too much trouble but it looks like I miscalculated there.” I was talking to myself at this point, as the man had turned to sprint away. He was surprisingly fast, which I guessed was the result of a skill.

“Had to use Cleanse,” Naea said from behind me, tending to Tom. “There must be some poison on his knife or something.” I wasn’t planning to let it touch me. I’m sure there was an interesting story behind all this but Newtown wasn’t my problem. There was no impulse to find out his tale, or help him come back to the path of good. I had foisted a lot of my responsibilities onto Tom and it had gotten him hurt. This world was dangerous, and half-measures were akin to cowardice.

This guy wasn’t going to stand a chance.

Quite thematically, I landed in front of the knife-wielding man while he darted through an alley. Having to resist making my voice deep and gravelly, I simply held up my finger like a gun. I smirked as he raised his hands. “Relic of the past,” I muttered. I wasn’t sure if it would work when I activated Retribution and pulled my imaginary trigger. I needn’t have worried.

Skill - Retribution (Dragon)

Few creatures are as fearsome in their revenge than a dragon. Anyone brave or foolish enough to stand against them faces destruction.

All I needed to use the skill was to feel like I was taking some form of retaliation against a slight. The invisible impact caught the bald man in the chest and pressed him into the concrete paved floor like a thumb pressing into dirt. The immediate sense of catharsis that ran through me was hard to describe. Like I had cut off a really annoying problem before it even began. I debated cleaning up the mess but decided it was ultimately Newtown’s problem and I had more important things to do.

“He’s in an alley behind a bakery and a pizza place?” I told the woman where the body was, my words a question as I hoped she knew where I meant. She nodded and looked between Tom and the direction of the scene. “No rush whatsoever, unless you think someone’s going to freak out after finding the body…”

I hadn’t considered that when I left him. I was mostly in a rage and a hurry. “You feeling okay there, bud?” I knelt down next to Tom, who was still receiving ministrations from Naea. “Sorry you got stabbed.”

“‘S my fault,” he grumbled. With Naea’s healing magic and the natural recovery of being a Grade One, Tom would be absolutely fine. I still felt guilty seeing him lying next to a pool of his own blood. “Did you get all of those boss monsters? You’ve been gone for nearly a month.”

“A MONTH?!” I shouted, causing everyone around to wince. “Sorry, Naea. Sorry, new lady.”

“Stephanie,” she said with an awkward smile and wave.

“Sorry Stephanie. I only got one of them, so far, still three to go. We’ve been gone a month?” I wanted to smash my head into a wall, but there was nothing I could do about it now. Anxieties and dark thoughts about what could have happened to my family in that time rose up and I cast them away. There were people to help here that needed me first. “That explains the progress, I suppose.” Now I had even more to apologise for. Even Harry, who I had been a bit shitty to, might deserve one. Okay, so I wouldn’t go that far, but I had some work to do for sure.

“Can you take care of him?” I pointed to Tom while looking at Stephanie. She seemed flustered but mostly nodded so I turned to Naea. “Got a whole Outpost to save over there. Will you make sure he’s alright? I’m sure I can handle things there.”

Naea laughed, sensing the hidden reason underneath my words. “Go have fun and blow off some steam.” I smiled, having been caught. The battles against revenants on Badaila were not the fights I had been looking for, and I had a lot of leftover emotions to get out of me before I felt normal again. “Grant, you did really well in that dungeon. I’m proud to be your familiar.”

I walked back over to her and held up my fist. “Partner,” I corrected. Naea smiled and nodded, giving me a fist bump back. With that sorted, I began my run back to the awfully named Ascentown. Tom was almost lucky he had been stabbed, it meant I couldn’t lay into him about his awful naming. I considered what I’d call the place in my head while I quickly cleared the miles between the two towns.

Before the arrival of the System, the idea of running for miles for pretty much any reason was so far outside of my worldview I’d have laughed if you suggested it. Now, with the strength I could wield casually, clearing such distances was a thing of minutes, not hours. I consistently marvelled at my new prowess, exhilarated constantly by my abilities.

I soared across the new English countryside, if that’s even where we were anymore. Arriving at Ascentown, I was pleased to see that there wasn’t much movement going on. From the noise inside the guild hall, almost everyone must be inside. “Harry!” I called, seeing him gathering up an elderly woman and running her inside. “Good job, man. Sorry about my energy earlier.”

“It’s okay, same.” We both nodded at each other, two manly men. Him, a six foot four mountain of muscle in a suit of awesome lion motif armour, holding a huge shield and a hefty warhammer. Me, a few inches shorter, wearing flowy mage’s bottoms with a simple t-shirt and a leather jacket on top. With a big stick. His tight cut of blonde hair somehow looked good still a few months into the apocalypse, while I had an absolute bird’s nest of brown knots.

We didn’t quite cut the same silhouette, now that I thought about it.

Still, I could be far more impressive. “Anyone who can protect themselves can come and watch the lightshow. I won’t let the wave get anywhere near the guild hall.” Harry didn’t question my capabilities, just nodded with a slightly confused look on his face. I had just told him to get everyone to safety, after all. “Like I said, the ones who aren’t scared. There’s going to be a lot of Dao on show, they could learn something.”

Realisation ignited in Harry’s eyes and his expression tightened. “Got it. Fighters.” That was pretty much what I meant, so I nodded. I could leave the rest up to him now that he was serious. I still hadn’t seen Aaron or Ellie but it didn’t matter. It was time to let loose.

———————————————————

Harry did as Grant asked, gathering up only seventeen of the over four hundred people. Everyone else looked at him like he was insane for asking if they wanted to go back outside. It wasn’t like Harry didn’t understand, but he also knew if he could just figure out the words to explain why they should, he would have everyone sprinting for a look.

In the end, it was a pretty small group compared to the people in the guild hall. Sanjay, a fierce looking man originally from Pakistan pointed towards a dust cloud in the distance. “Is that your man’s work?” He aimed his point with a spear he had received from a dungeon before arriving in Newtown and eventually moving here. He was one of the few people who seemed to actually enjoy the fighting the new world entailed.

“No, I think that’s probably the stampede of monsters.” Harry put a spring in my step and made sure he was in front of everyone. The trial wave was a level lower than himself, but that meant potentially dozens of monsters or more, all with Dao of their own. A valuable experience to see and be near, but worryingly dangerous all the same. If he made sure that he was between these people and the horde, they could at least get back to the guild hall if things went wrong.

That thought resonated like a church bell at a funeral in Harry’s head. Damn… if Grant can’t hold this back, then I definitely can’t… and if I can’t then everyone behind me is dead, aren’t they? His thoughts threatened to become very morbid, but before he could spiral too far, the lightshow which Grant had promised began.

The air became heavy with magic, his magic, and Harry buckled slightly, his approach stopped. A few of the men and one of the women joining me outright collapsed to their knees, but they would be okay. Harry couldn’t help feeling proud as the world started to break for Grant. “Yeah,” Harry nodded, “That’s the guy I was talking about.”

———————————————————

As my mana gathered, the skies themselves darkened. What had been a clear night turned into inclement weather within moments, a vicious downpour kicking up. The world itself reacted to my power, because for right now, I was stronger than the world. That wouldn’t last forever, but I needed to use my strength while I could, overpower the System and use it to keep myself and those I cared about safe. While this wasn’t the lesson I internalised from Badaila, I did learn one thing about the Storm Dragon.

One way to keep yourself safe was to destroy everything that rose against you.

A typhoon of mana descended upon the trial wave intended for Ascentown. Like a localised hurricane, a cloud of mist and electrical energies exploded into being from the end of my hand, engulfing the wave completely. Within the massive sphere, my mana was running rampant. Both of my Dao coursed through each strike, each buffet of wind and each biting slice of hail. Every hit was intentional, destructive and ultimately final.

Conflux Skill - Dragon’s Tempest

Snap, crackle, drop. The Dragon’s Tempest doesn’t stop.

The System had clearly taken my dumb sense of humour for the description to this one. The wording wasn’t important. I knew how potent the skill was, which is the reason I hadn’t even tried to practise with it. Just keeping the arcing energy from hitting the small crowd Harry had gathered took all of my attention.

Luckily, I didn’t need attention for the storm to do its work. With mixed emotions, I watched as my magical cyclone stripped skin from bone and scorched the earth with its blisteringly hot strikes. Of course, with every monster being above level thirty, none of them went down easily.

With Dragon’s Tempest forming a zone of control and ruination, I stepped into the cloud. I doubted the wave could challenge me, but I would treat it seriously all the same. I would not let what happened to Badaila happen to my home. My heart tightened as vivid memories of the lost planet surfaced. I pushed the thoughts of the looming threats from my mind. They were real, but I could only do one thing. No doubt great powers were already waiting for the chance to take whatever tiny portion of power Earth had to offer.

I simply had to be strong enough to stop them.