The fighting was hard this time. We were killing our foes in one blow, the boosts Lord Bowman provided were proving more than a match for the forces arrayed against us, even without exploiting every enemy's weakness. But their numbers were unceasing, and for every slain foe that fell to us, a dozen more would fall from the skies, their bodies vanishing as we slew them, but leaving the forests around us torn and sundered.
Still, before, in the Second Wave, he'd been with us, all the Heroes had…well, The Spear and Sword had. Their power, his backing, we'd torn apart the enemies, regardless of their power. Better, Lord Bowman's skill at reading the enemy helped us to create breaches, kept us all safe as he warned us of attacks. Ray, she was doing her best, trying her hardest, but in the end, she was merely an Adventurer, and not a Hero.
Without his support, we took hits. Not big ones, and she, being a Paladin, took the worst of it, her new gear boosting her ability to not only heal from her injuries, but giving out the heals as well. I don't think anyone in our party dropped below ninety-percent of our max HP, and the rest weren't getting much lower, even with Myne's complaints that she should be in charge, being a royal and all.
She didn't have much time to complain, luckily. Even better, she was okay with her spell slinging. We even did a sync cast of a big fireball with the other mages in the group, clearing a huge swath of those before us, allowing the group to keep pace with the ship above us, as it sailed lazily through the sky, sometimes coming JUST in sight of one of the bluff tops, but never long enough for us to jump onto it.
Not that we would have. While they thought they were being quiet, we'd heard what the Heroes had said. This monster, a Soul Eater, was something that consumed MP, the very essence of a spirit. That was a horrendous thing, and would have put anything with that trait on the Guild's monster list as 'immediately destroy', with whatever force is necessary, causing them to bring in every adventurer they could to deal with it promptly.
If the Heroes could deal with that, we were fine with it, and to be fair, over the course of a few minutes, we saw from below a great battle, as forms were tossed from the ship's sides, mostly undead. The creature that had pierced itself through the hull, its tendrils trailing along behind it like tassels from a bridle, found itself vaporized by a bolt of light from the heavens that tore through the ship to smite it.
And yet, the ship remained, the boards of wood floating in the air, before sweeping back into place, giving us a glimpse of the Heroes on the deck, looking around themselves, obviously searching for something. What, we did not know, but we wished them luck, as the death of the tentacle creature seemed to drive the Wave to spew out its foul rain even faster, forcing us to fight even harder for every inch of progress along the ground.
It was hours of this monotony going by, hours where we did damage, moved forward, and did damage again. Oddly, despite EXP pop ups, they were…less than they should be, if we were fighting normal goblins. Even a single specimen from our assault on their den had given more than a hundred of these, and in a spare moment, I confirmed the same with the Sword Hero's party, saying that, perhaps we were out of range of the EXP boost effect.
The first thing to break it up was a loud squawk of some kind coming from out of the tree line, then a lizardman flying overhead, Shadow reaching swiftly enough to reach up and tear the thing to bits with his stripes, before we all turned to find another Hero, the Shield Hero, mounted on the back of a truly massive filolial, charging into our midsts, his look at all of us saying he was searching for the others, before he slammed his Shield into the ground, and a few of the glowing green shields appeared in the air, stemming the tide of monsters for a moment.
"Where are the others? This one's been going on as long as the last one, and these monsters are no joke, Lafan Village is going to be overrun if this goes on too much longer," he declared, and Myne was about to tear into him, rightly so given his attitude, but Ray held up her hand, and even the Princess Malty, bad as she was, wasn't about to disrespect her commander in the field at the moment.
"We are aware these monsters are stronger, Hero Naofumi, and the others are onboard that ship right now, trying to summon the beast at the center of all this. It apparently drains mana, and thus, we were left behind for them to deal with it. If you wish to aid them, and hasten the end of the Wave, that is where you must search," she told him flatly, and Naofumi, looking at her, then at the rest, nodded.
"Okay, keep up with these things then. Hopefully with four of us, we can get this fight over with before anything bad happens," he said, as he turned back to the filolial he'd rode in on.
"Filo, think you can make that jump?" he asked the fowl, and she nodded.
"No problem, Master!" she declared in a very human voice, shocking those of us not in the Spear Hero's party. Apparently they'd had a run in with her previously, and she was a Royal Filolial, a real one, like that once every hundred years type. That said, as he left, the Shield Hero's defenses vanished, and those monsters that had been clawing that them surged forward, forcing him out of our minds as we dealt with the backup.
Luckily, our attack buffs were still active, and so we carved through the horde with only minor wounds, allowing us to focus once more on the ship, which suddenly let up with a dozen or more points of light, flashing like lightning briefly, before a foul, chill wind came down from it, and we heard an unearthly noise. It was the growl of a monster, mixed with the wail of an undead, sending a chill down the spine of everyone present.
When it was over, a monster appeared above the galleon in the sky. A fish that floated in the air, and looking like a specter of death itself given a kind of ghastly white flesh, with black flames flickering on its body. It wobbled in the air in an unsettling manner, but before we could do anything, it vanished above the deck, and we could hear and feel the electricity in the air as the Heroes did battle with the beast, its power clashing with their own.
We had the boss' HP bar in our vision, and for a time, it was going down. Not as quickly as the chimera's but it WAS going down, which was good enough for us, but then there was an odd…tinge to the air. We could all feel it. Even the monsters could, as some of them seemed to go limp for a moment, like…they'd run out of energy for just a second, and needed time to get back to speed…not that we gave them that, vaporizing those around us, before looking up and seeing…something.
It wasn iron maiden, but one that was huge, and coming out of a hole in the sky, and for just a moment I was afraid that it was another boss of some kind, that had somehow torn its way into the Wave, and was going to do battle, but then I noticed a ball of steel rising up to meet it, the way it twitched and moved showing there was something within, something quite large, about the size of the Soul Eater.
We heard it cry out, and then the iron maiden slammed shut around it, the doors, lined with horrid spikes, digging into the metal prison, before it shut completely, and with a crack of power, the HP bar in my vision emptied completely, the boss dying to this attack instantly, and bringing a cheer up from the others and myself, only to be silenced as the bar refilled once more, and we heard another roar of the creature.
Then…something odd happened. It was a Wave after all, oddities were to be expected, but this was…none of the scriptures I'd read, or the Guild reports on it had said anything about this. The boss died again, the bar shattering this time, showing it was well and truly gone, making us all look at each other, for a moment, confused, wondering what was going on, only to start as another HP bar appeared.
? was written above this one, and it was…an odd color, like it was shifting between HP and MP, and it emptied, not completely but not insignificantly, as something happened above. The other parties cried out, and we learned that their Heroes had been injured, only lightly so, but it had been enough to knock them cold. Quickly, we rushed, as a group, slamming into the line of monsters before us, racing towards the bluffs, hoping to hop aboard and lend them some aid.
It was far away, however, the ship had been at the farthest point in its circular path when this happened. Worse, my heart skipped a beat when the sky opened up once more, the Iron Maiden consuming another metal sphere…but this time, it failed. Hinges and scraps of metal flew from its form, as the visage of a woman in a kimono floated here it had been, wielding twin war fans.
She descended out of view once more. I wasn't sure what it meant, and for the moment, I didn't choose to care. Instead I charged into the thick of a group of Lizardmen blocking our path, and loosed a blast of air so cold it froze every one of them into crystalline statues that shattered as I followed up with a blast of raw magical energy, a draining tactic, but we had no time for subtlety now.
We were still climbing towards the back of the bluff when my heart stopped. Lord Bowman…Bard's HP went down. That had never happened in all our time fighting. He stayed safe, he stayed out of combat, but something here had injured him. And gravely so, causing those of us in his party to ignore Ray's calls for calm, as Fast surged into the midst of the enemy, not bothering to fight, and Shadow constantly tried to teleport to him, while I simply felt my breath catch in my throat, and ran with all the speed I could muster. My Hero needed me.