Chương 466: (459) 6.73. This is Going Great!

The crowd of Terrans who had been shouting and hyping themselves up all seemed to freeze as one, turning and staring up at Vin with a mixture of shocked and awed expressions on their faces. Vin winced slightly as he realized he certainly wasn't doing himself any favors when it came to keeping that cult of his underground, but he couldn't help it. To him, Meteor was a spell riddled with inefficiencies. It took a solid few seconds to cast as the projectile had to be formed and densely packed.

It was incredibly obvious what he was doing due to the bright flames radiating off of it. And it ate up a rather significant chunk of mana, officially replacing Redirect Gravity as his most mana-hungry spell. However, none of the thousands of people watching him thought about any of that. All they saw was Vin rain death and destruction down upon their enemies, wiping out half-a-dozen elite monsters in the blink of an eye. Their slobbering, hungry forms instantly replaced with that of a smoking crater.

Just as quickly as they'd gone silent, the crowd erupted again, twice as loud as before as warriors smashed weapons against shields and others stomped their feet. Vin felt his face growing a little too warm at the sheer amount of attention and basking he was getting, but luckily for him, he didn't have to suffer it for too long.

"Enough!" Alka's voice roared, startling everyone out of their cheering as she utilized her golem body to scream over all the cheering.

"They're coming!" Sure enough, while Vin had blasted apart the fastest of the monsters, he'd only killed a sliver of the force bearing down on them. Even as Alka shouted, hundreds upon hundreds of monsters were loping, rolling, and sprinting in their direction, tongues wagging and claws clicking as they raced toward their prey.

"Slayers!" Alka shouted, starting off each combat as they always did.

"Kill!" Like a jet-black spearhead, thirty-some Slayers sprang into action, sprinting ahead of the other combat classes as they threw themselves straight at the largest and deadliest of the monsters. A creature that looked like an elephant covered in jagged bone-spurs was stopped dead in its tracks by Tall Phil and his Monster Bulwark, before Trod leapt up and brained the large beast with a powerful blow to the head.

A slimy, dripping eel slithering through the air somehow tried to take a bite out of Trod's exposed side, but Tiffany blurred into position beside it, faster than any other warrior in all of Terra with her spider-half carrying her. Slashing down, she cleaved the eel in two, before darting away to dodge the deluge of liquid that erupted from the eel's corpse.

Curash and Alka fought side-by-side, working together flawlessly to hamstring what looked like a large ogre of all things, before slicing forward and removing its head at the same time, their blades actually scraping along one another.

"Warriors! Forward!" Phil shouted, not willing to let Alka and her Slayers take all the glory. At the Challenger's cry, thousands of combat classes ran into the fray, smashing into the front line of monsters and keeping them from getting anywhere near Terra and the innocent people within. As the battle began in earnest, Vin was astonished to find Terra truly had come into its own over the last couple of months.

While the combat classes held off the front line, archers and ballistae rained havoc down upon the monsters continuing to form and reinforce them from the back. Vin was shocked to realize they even had their own small spell corps, consisting of a dozen mages capable of casting Stone Shot who were firing hardened projectiles in-mass over the warrior's heads.

They didn't seem to be able to supercharge their spells in the way Vin could, but still, a dozen rocks thrown with the force of a sling was no joke, and countless monsters fell as their bones were shattered and flesh was burst open. The mana trees Shia, Mary, and Casper had come up with were working wonders, drawing a non-insignificant number of monsters straight to them as they clawed and bit at the trees, reducing the number that the warriors had to face at any one time.

In that same vein, explosions continued to ring out across the battlefield one after another as traps were triggered and monsters were blasted to shreds, riddled with spears, or trapped in pitfalls before they could get anywhere even close to the front line. Mai and Spur commanded from on high, using a new passive Mai had taken that allowed her to speak directly to the commanding officers scattered around the battlefield.

Spur directed his Commander aura outward, filling their frontline troops with additional vigor and strength to aid them in their battles. Anytime a monster appeared that looked like it would be a problem, Mai and Lumel worked together to redistribute troops and change the battlefield. Warriors facing off against a large slime would be replaced with ranged specialists with appropriate alchemical concoctions, freezing the slime solid and shattering the pieces.

Monsters burrowing through the ground toward the backline would leap out of the ground, only to discover the frail, supporting fighters had been replaced with armor-clad, heavy hitters, eager to bring their hammers down on them and crush them into paste. Elite monsters were smarter and craftier than regular monsters, there was no doubt about that. But Terra was prepared for just about anything. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Vin got over his shock of not really being needed quickly enough, instead turning his attention back to the battlefield as a whole. Seeing as he didn't have to run around the wall looking for people in trouble and dragging them out of the fire, he was free to utilize his magic to his heart's content. As it turned out, it was surprisingly cathartic blowing up dozens of monsters at a time over and over again.

Yet even as he stood there, hurling down Meteors as quickly as he could summon them, he never quite took his eyes off the bubbling cloud of magic he could see gradually coming together behind the vast monster wave. At this point, the magic had reached roughly the same size as what he'd seen turn into the ring of flesh, and yet even now, it was still growing. Whatever it was going to transform into, it was going to be big.

He knew Terra had taken down a five-story-tall tyrannosaurus rex-looking monster while he and his friends had been busy with the ranker king during the previous wave, but at the rate this thing was going, he was afraid it was going to make that monster look like a chew toy.

"We might have a problem!" Vin called out to Spur through Whispering Wind.

"The mana is still growing, and it's showing no signs of stopping! It's going to be the largest thing we've ever fought!"

"That's why we're saving our heavy ordinance for last!" Spur called back, his laughter actually coming through Vin's spell before he turned and shouted an order at a few warriors down below.

"Don't worry, Vin, just keep doing what you're doing! You're the greatest morale boost I could have ever asked for! Throw more flaming rocks!" Shaking his head, Vin did just that, deciding to place his trust in the Commander of Terra as he continued blasting monsters apart from on high. He'd been briefed on all these 'heavy ordinances' of course, but he was still doubtful as to just how effective they'd be against something rivaling that giant flesh worm in size.

The minutes ticked by, and monsters died by the hundreds as the battle raged on. Shia had her section of the wall locked down with Living Giant, and Curash and the Newer Guard backed her up, ensuring that she didn't get overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The main entrance was also stronger than ever thanks to Alka, the Old Guard, and Vin all focusing their efforts on it. The Other two fronts, however, on either side of Terra, began to flag after the first fifteen minutes.

The left side had the New Guard, Shredder, and the Stone Mages as the heavy hitters, but that still left plenty of normal combat classes to hold the line. They were doing the best that they could, but it seemed every few seconds another warrior took an unlucky claw to the chest, or a beak through the eye, and were either forced to fall back or have their bodies dragged away. Whatever injuries could be healed with health potions were quickly done so, before the warrior was shoved back into the fight.

The right side had Phil, Trod, and even Waltz, the Scout barely recognizable as more than a streak as he utilized his mobility to its fullest, sprinting around and between monsters as he picked them off two at a time with his dual crossbows. Yet despite all three of their strengths, they had the largest concentration of standard combat classes without much magical support, and they were clearly paying for it.

Based on all the flashes of purple radiating from over there, it seemed Lumel had her hands full trying to rescue fallen warriors whenever she wasn't being directed elsewhere by Mai. Even so, they were still managing to hold the line. For the first time in all the waves they'd fought through thus far, Vin felt like Terra was winning. And not just a little bit, but quite handedly.

Yes, bodies were dragged away from the fighting and screams of pain rang out here and there, but all in all, they were getting the better of the monsters. If things kept going as they were, they might even manage to get out of this with less than a hundred casualties. Naturally, it was in the middle of that thought that the giant blob of mana began to shift and condense, indicating it was nearing completion.

Vin didn't even bother calling it out, the nervous, golden-eyed infernals did that for him as they pointed at the swirling mass of mana that took up a rather large section of the field between walls and began shouting to one another. For the first time, Vin was glad that they'd stayed their hands with the prepared rituals. Even if it meant more people had fallen in the current battle below, he had a good feeling they were going to need every ounce of power they could muster.

Vin paused his barrage of Meteors, taking a moment to breathe in and borrow from the surrounding mana as he replenished his stores. Beyond the Veil wasn't giving him anything special regarding what was happening, and he already knew how monster creation worked. The moment that mana finished congregating… New epic monster discovered! 10, 000 exp gained.

The wall beneath his feet shook as a monster larger than anything he'd ever seen outside of the sky fragment practically popped into existence out of nowhere, falling a few dozen feet before landing with enough force to topple some of the sturdy mana trees that had been planted nearby. Its creation triggered four or five explosive traps that went off beneath its feet, but the monster didn't even seem to notice.

Raising its head to the heavens, the epic monster roared, an actual gout of fire blasting up and wiping away the nearest clouds before dissipating. Most of the warriors along the top of the wall froze and forgot about what they were doing for a moment, and Vin didn't blame them. Whenever monsters formed during these large-scale waves, there was no telling what they would end up becoming.

They'd fought against everything from explosive foxes to acid-spraying birds, and countless monsters that looked like nothing anyone on Earth had ever even considered might possibly exist. This beast, however, was definitely one that every single person recognized without fail the moment it came into existence. It's scales had been replaced with fur and there were four wings on its back rather than two, but neither of those facts did anything to stop it from being recognized.

The epic monster they needed to beat in order to survive the battle for wave seven, was an honest-to-God dragon.