Keeper didn't grace Alex's question with a response. It stared at him quietly, evidently waiting for the confirmation that he was ready to begin the trial. Alex dug through his thoughts for a moment to see if he'd missed any potential questions that could make a significant difference in the trial.
"I don't suppose you can tell me what kind of monsters I'll be fighting?"
Keeper continued to stare at Alex.
Evidently not. I get the feeling I've run out of questions.
Oh, fuck it. I can't be bothered with all this. Even if I knew, what would it change? Waiting any longer is just going to burn through my adrenaline and leave me tired before we even get to the good bit.
"Right then," Alex said, interlacing his fingers and stretching his arms out before him. He shook himself off and rolled his neck.
Then he sent a mental command out to his monsters.
An errant thought struck him.
What if summons somehow don't work in the trial? That would be awkward.
Fortunately, his fears were unfounded. A crackle buzzed beside him, overlaid with the sound of shattering glass. The empty darkness before him bubbled as a pool formed upon it. Princess rose up before him, joined by Spark and Glint.
"Are you prepared?" Keeper asked.
"Yes," Alex said with a firm nod. "Bring it on."
Ground solidified beneath Alex's feet. The strange feeling of weightlessness that had filled the empty void around him faded away. A thrum passed through the air and rolled over his skin like a passing wave of static electricity.
A purple scar cut through the air about twenty feet away from Alex, like a rift in existence had been ripped open by an invisible claw. Faint pressure emanated from the opening as it pulsed with dim light.
Then the portal popped, expanding into a large disk several heads taller than he was. A pincer emerged from the light. It was followed by a bulbous body covered with chitinous armor plates. Sharp legs tapped against the newly formed ground. A second pincer was the final thing to emerge, this one smaller than the first — and Alex's eyes narrowed.
Even with the spikes rising up on the back of its shell and the dripping mandibles twitching around its mouth, there was no mistaking the origin of his opponent.
Interestingly enough, there was no indication from the System as to its level or name. The crab was simply a crab. A very large, ugly looking crab. One that was considerably taller than he was.
"It is an evolved lifeform," Keeper said.
And with that, the crab charged. Its legs blurred across the ground like the rolling beat of army men marching. It came so suddenly that Alex almost got caught off guard. For some reason, he hadn't expected the crab to be nearly as fast as it was.
But almost wasn't quite enough.
Princess lurched forward. She slammed into the large monster before it could arrive beside Alex. Sludge splattered across the ground as one of its pincers dug deep into her body, but she ground the crab's advance to a halt before it could reach him.
Glint was upon the monster an instant later. His wing-blade sliced deep into the monster's shell, shearing through chitinous plate and meat alike. A loud shearing screech filled the air as he pulled his weapon back.
The crab tried to free itself from Princess' grip, but to no avail. Her huge hands clamped down on the other monster with enough force to crack its armor. She was squeezing it like a nut in an attempt to get to the prize underneath its shell — and Spark wasn't about to be outdone.
The Knight Wraith drove his hands deep into the wound that Glint had made in the monster's carapace. He pushed them in until they were buried up to the shoulders. And, with a single sharp motion, Spark ripped the crab in half.
Blood splattered across the dark ground as Princess released the monster. It clattered to the ground, legs falling still, and Alex tried not to stare in too much surprise.
He'd known Spark was fairly strong, especially for an assassin. But he hadn't been expecting his monsters to kill their opponent quite so easily. That almost felt wrong. Then again, he didn't have the slightest idea as to how powerful it had been meant to be.
Keeper wasn't giving him any hints. Its face was flat and expressionless, silver eyes giving absolutely nothing away.
The body of the dead crab shimmered like a mirage in a desert. Then it vanished, leaving behind nothing but darkness. Even its blood disappeared.
Alex glanced up at the glowing words floating in the air above him.
Town Potential: 0.1/100%
"Seriously?" Alex asked, squinting at Keeper. "There's a fine line between a challenge and just a straight up annoyance."
A buzz filled his ears. The hair on the back of his neck rose on end. Purple lines carved through the air. There were dozens of them scattered through the darkness at varying distances, but the end result was the same.
Ah, fuck. I was kind of hoping we'd stick to the one enemy at a time thing.
"You know, it's a lot more fun when I'm the one that gets to abuse numbers," Alex drawled. "That's kind of my whole thing, you know? Tossing a bunch of monsters at me out of nowhere feels a bit petty."
"I suggest you focus on your trial," Keeper said, but there was something that just might have been amusement in its voice.
More crabs emerged from the portals. Dozens of them. They chittered, legs clicking against the ground as they emerged to surround Alex and his small group in a sea of crustacous flesh.
There was only one thing to do.
"Kill them," Alex said.
Town Potential: 31/100%
Alex wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of a sleeve as he looked down from the words floating in the air above him. He couldn't let himself get distracted for long. His monsters were holding their own, but it didn't seem like the System planned on letting him take things at his own pace.
He'd seen more crabs show up and die than he could count. Their bodies would have been piled into hills around him if they hadn't faded after death. They weren't particularly powerful, but their sheer numbers were ridiculous.
Every time one died, another one showed up. They came from every direction and charged at Alex with no regard for their own survival. There were so many of them that there was no way his monsters could kill them all before they reached him.
Alex only had one saving grace. For all their numbers, it seemed that the crabs collectively shared a single braincell. They had the internal processing power of a rodent that had been dropkicked down a flight of stairs.
The only thing that the crabs had a mind for was attacking him. They didn't seem to be particularly aware of their fellow crabs that had the exact same missive. The monsters often charged straight into each other with enough force to crack their own shells in their attempts to reach him.
And thus, his main strategy was born. While his monsters tore through the ranks of the crabs, Alex ran the ones that got past them into each other. He wove between clattering legs and turned the army of crustaceans against themselves.
They didn't seem to have any problem attacking each other in attempt to get to him, so Alex indulged them.
He wasn't sure how long the fight went. It wasn't long before the world was nothing but a haze of crunching chitin and clattering legs. Alex had to keep his head on a swivel. It was impossible to hear when a crab was getting close to him with the cacophony filling the darkness. He had to spot them before they arrived.
I need to conserve my energy as much as possible. Even though these things aren't too strong, if I'm only 30% of the way through the challenge right now, then every scrap I can save is going to be vital.
A loud crack echoed out, splitting through the sounds of battle. Energy rushed into Alex's body.
One of his monsters had died.
Alex spun toward the source of the noise in time to see several crabs fade out of existence. Princess, Spark, and Glint had taken up something of a triangle formation around him. They hadn't fought any monsters strong enough to need them to work together, so he'd had them separate to stem the flow of attackers that could grow near him.
It was Spark who had fallen.
Alex only needed a moment to see why.
Buzzing in the air above him, more than twice the height of the other portals that had cut themselves into existence, was an enormous purple scar. And emerging from the scar was a freakishly large pincer.
Fragments of Spark's armor clattered to the ground as the pincer raised and a huge crab stepped out into the darkness. Its shell was a deep crimson red and its swaying eyestalks turned to locate Alex.
The flow of smaller crabs had not lessened in the wake of the new monster's arrival. It seemed that the System wanted him to fight all of them at once.
His new, enormous opponent let out a chittering screech of victory. It had managed to take one of his pieces off the game board.
Then he activated Exhume.
The air around him was positively laden with death energy. He'd killed so many of the smaller crabs that it might as well have been a thick fog — and he wasn't about to leave that much power on the table.
Shadows twisted. Spark rose up, wholly formed once more, before him. The new crab's chittering changed to what Alex liked to imagine to be protest. Its surprise attack had been completely wasted.
"Bummer," Alex said. This was still only the first part of the challenge. He wasn't even halfway through it yet — and he was certain that his opponents would only get stronger. Using more power wasn't an option yet. He had to save everything he could for when things got real. He pointed at the huge monster. "Spark, that one's yours. Don't get surprised this time."
The Knight Wraith's shadow rose up from the ground and both copies of his monster burst into motion.
He couldn't watch for long. Several small crabs broke past Alex's summons and ran at him, forcing him to duck past their attacks. With his enhanced body, it was surprisingly easy.
Kind of like playing a really intense version of one of those dancing games in an arcade.
His lips twitched in a grin as he wove between the monsters' legs. They crashed into each other and Glint arrived to dispatch them a moment later, carving through their bodies with lethal precision.
"Nice," Alex said. He was about to spin back to Spark to see how the Knight Wraith's fight was going when he noticed something rather odd.
There weren't any more small crabs. The last of the monsters were fading away from the dark battlefield — and in their place were four huge portals.
From within the portals, four more enormous crabs emerged.
It looks like we're getting to the more serious enemies, huh? I've still got a whole lot of death energy to work with from the small ones, but it looks like the System realized tossing a bunch of little shitters at me isn't the way to go about things.
That's fine with me. It wouldn't have been fun if I just stomped the fight. I shouldn't be too far from the good part now.
Alex's grin grew wider and he beckoned the crabs forward. "Bring it on. Let's see what you've got."