Game’s Dogma

​​​​​​​The moment the army of monsters appeared, Drako Yau’s look immediately turned extremely sour. If one could see through the clouds shrouding Empyreon and take a glance at Chau Yu at the same time, it wouldn’t be hard to notice that their expressions were similar.

Beastmen, wolves, and the dual-coloured monoeyes; they weren’t the reason for the bitter looks. Up in the sky, densely packed dark spots filled the horizon. On closer inspection, they turned out to be countless flying demonic beasts.

Aerial troops!

The sour look on Drako Yau’s face only got worse as he hastily shouted into the voice channel, ‘Dispatch some paladins or warriors to the city walls! Protect the ranged players! Quickly!’

However, there was a thing which he found strange about.

Compared to the east gate, the west gate’s assault appeared to be a lot weaker, be it numbers or the variety of monsters. The aerial troops weren’t present, nor could the red-eyed monoeyes be seen. Yet for some reason—perhaps it was his instinct—the peril which the west gate faced was comparable to the east gate, if not greater.

The monster army couldn’t care less about Drako Yau’s contemplation. Beyond the east gate, the air force breezed past the sky like dark clouds in a storm and led the charge towards the gate.

At the same time, the monsters outside the west gate also started their march. However, compared to the east gate, the monsters on this side seemed rather lax as they casually strolled towards the gate like tortoises.

‘Hades, the west gate’s yours. The east gate is in more of an emergency. Let me know immediately if something happens.’

‘Got it.’ Hades nodded and started mobilising his forces. He was in no hurry either, with how slowly the monsters were approaching his stronghold. He had plenty of time to set up his defences.

Drako Yau ran down the city walls and headed straight for the east side. As he ran, the NPCs and players residing in the Yoda all showed terrified looks as they stared at the dark clouds approaching the city.

He had no time to spare and couldn’t afford to care for them, so he continued to take the shortest route towards the east gate.

‘It will be nice if the Castellan is willing to help…’

From among the hustle, Drako Yau could vaguely hear an NPC mutter such a thing. Still, each NPC had their own designated dialogue which they would repeat over and over again, so he paid no heed to it and continued on his way.

While he was rushing over, the swift air force had already arrived at the city walls. The monsters turned out to be ravens! Not ordinary ravens, but larger, demonic variants called ravons which had crimson pupils. Together, the ravons robbed the land of sunlight and replaced it with flickering spots of red.

At that moment, the mages and hunters started firing off their attacks into the sky. Their attacks were extremely effective, especially the mages’ magic spells. Even the simple Fireball spell which could be learnt at Level 5 was an area-of-effect spell; no wonder mages were the powerhouses in wars.

But the ravons were all about numbers! Having been on the receiving end of the players’ bombardment, the ravons also returned the favour.

It was as if clouds were pouring down from above when looked from afar.

The moment the ravens started nosediving, some of the female ranged players started shrieking. At that moment, the melee players who rushed over to support placed their bodies in front of their ranged comrades—even if it cost their lives.

The wall was veiled by a dense, dark smoke. The specks of blackness were thousands of ravons that were raining attacks upon the players stationed on the city walls.

Just like that, the players’ entire ranged force was rendered useless by the monsters’ aerial force. And without their ranged support, things were better than ever for the monsters on the ground. Some players occasionally threw a spell or two beyond the city wall, but under the protection of the red barrier, the monsters were not threatened in the slightest.

Every player was superior to a beastman or wolf. If they fought in a duel, the players would definitely win every time. Thing was, the enemy would never fight them in a duel. Just by estimating with the naked eye, the monsters numbered over 9,000, and that was excluding the flying ravons.

Meanwhile, Sasaki had already rushed down the walls and was slaughtering the monsters left and right. He could no longer use the Fine Steel Longsword which brought about the fight with Zephyrwolf after changing his class. He now used a Level 0 Tattered Katana.

But his hidden class was undoubtedly a powerful one. The class had skills which were leagues beyond that of normal classes. That alone allowed him to slay beastmen like cutting logs and cut down wolves like slaughtering swine. Even so, no matter how strong he was, he could barely make an impact on the overall situation when there were tens of thousands of monsters.

His efforts were not fruitless though. Seeing that even a Level 10 player like Sasaki could butcher monsters one after another, it instigated the nearby players to hold out until the last batch of dead players had resurrected and returned to the battlefield. That was their way of showing their pride.

Still, the army of monsters were pushing forwards as quickly as ever. In no time, they were merely a kilometre away from the walls.

‘Zephyrwolf, head out.’ Drako Yau’s voice rang the moment he appeared on the city wall.

Seeing him arrive, Zephyrwolf howled and dashed down to the battlefield. The walls were too narrow for the demon wolf king to display its full prowess, so he might as well throw himself into the chaos down there.

Drako Yau had a frosty gaze as he unloaded Dawnlight from his back and started stabbing the ravons. It might expose his identity to the players from Howl of the Tempest Wolves whom he had fought before, but that was not a concern which he had the leisure to care about right now. On the ever-changing battlefield, who would have the leisure to care about a spear?

He scanned the situation on the ground on the walls, sending messages to Zephyrwolf and Sasaki so they could relay his commands to the players through global chat. Whenever a ravon entered the corner of his sights, several red flashes would flicker in the air along with a dead corpse.

Killing the ravons was just a piece of cake for Drako Yau. They weren’t strong at all, or rather, they were weak. Their attacks consisted merely of lunges and pecks, but their strength lay in numbers. And just like how ants could kill an elephant when there were enough of them, plenty of ranged players had already been sent back to the resurrection altar by these pesky creatures and were rushing back to the city wall.

After Drako Yau arrived, the situation at the east gate began to settle down. As Zephyrwolf relayed Drako Yau’s commands to the players, the monster army’s advance slowed down considerably. The reason was the command which Drako Yau had given: target the wolves.

Wolves were agile and had high attack speed, but their defence and health were poor. With the players focusing their attention onto the wolves, some of the beastmen had to go out of their way to assist their wolven comrades, which ended up slowing down their advance.

Drako Yau let out a long sigh—he finally had the time for a breather. It was fortunate that the monsters didn’t receive commands from their strategist, unlike the second wave. If they did, the strategist would surely tell them to ignore his guerilla-ish tactics and just steamroll their way to the east gate. Even he could do nothing but watch the east gate fall in that case.

But from the looks of it, the enemy were in shambles and employed absolutely no tactics whatsoever. This gave the players an opportunity to regroup and rest up themselves.

‘Zephyrwolf, Sasaki. This wave’s different. Once a commander shows up, immediately initiate a duel and kill it!’