Today's Earth date: November 6, 1991

It never ends. There's always another floor. There's always another pack of demons. Killing all day and waking up to do it again is making me loopy. Am I losing my mind?

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

Citizens pounded on Cuan's main gate, begging to be let in. Archers and wizards shot from atop Cuan's battlements, desperate to kill the monsters running loose and feeding on any human they could find. The once sprawling encampment of dealers and customers was now a field of smashed cages and overturned wagons. Wayne thought it looked like the aftermath of a Kenny Chesney concert, like a stadium parking lot covered in garbage.

A woman floated above the monsters, looking down on Cuan and the destruction. In the dimness of the setting sun, she was a lit beacon. Her body radiated pale light with a wave of green pulsing through her with the tempo of a heartbeat.

Rebecca had recovered her body and her ability to speak, and she was pissed.

If we fight her in an open field like this, we're dead.

"On me!" Wayne said. He tried to lean to steer his mount, but the wolf didn't respond. "Tell him to listen to me!" Wayne yelled to the druid.

"Her."

"Tell her to listen to me!"

As if autopilot had disengaged, the wolf responded to Wayne's movements. Instead of running directly for the main gate, Wayne made for a specific part of the wall to the west. On one of his rides on Outlawson, he noticed that portions of the wall jutted out over air. At the time, he thought that was a clever way to make climbing the castle walls more difficult for invaders while giving soldiers on the battlements better angles for attacking downward.

Right now, however, it was a shortcut.

Wayne skidded to a stop and looked up. He saw the underside of the overhang. He yelled for the party to line up with him. They didn't know why he wanted that, but the party listened. Wayne looked around for the druid but saw no sign of him or the giant wolf. No sense waiting for him.

"Grab hands!" Wayne snatched Fergus' hand on one side and Hector's on the other.

Fergus looked at Wayne with terror paling his face. "No, we don't–"

Rise.

Five wolves with riders appeared on Cuan's battlements. Before Wayne could take in the full scene around him, he saw arrows soaring through the air at his party.

Armond!

A barrier of air blocked the incoming volley.

Given that monsters were eating people outside the walls, giant wolves materializing out of nowhere was likely a touch upsetting to anyone fighting for their lives, Wayne realized.

"Hold!" Wayne yelled. "We're allies!"

One of the nearby soldiers recognized Wayne. He turned and waved his arms. "Don't shoot! It's the Zero Hero! It's the Zero Hero!"

Wayne jumped off his wolf and told his party to stay together. "Don't let the monsters into the city!"

He cast Defense on his allies. Then he Blitzed across the battlements toward the main gate. He hit Brake when Rebecca's light suddenly intensified, the change more stark with the sun nearly down.

He saw a hellhound missing half its skull climb to its feet. A cockatrice with three swords in its chest raised its head. A giant serpent reared, the bones of its body exposed to the air. Everywhere Wayne looked, dead monsters reanimated and rejoined the fight.

A horse with a unicorn horn dissolved the way the Skeleton Lord had dissolved. Good, Wayne thought, Armond was on it, using his Undead spell to banish the reanimations.

But they needed thirty Armonds to deal with the sheer number of monsters. Their single cleric would never have the mana to stop them alone.

A cold chill ran down Wayne's back, like a frozen tarantula crawled down his spine from the inside. He looked up.

Rebecca's eyes fixed on him. She shrieked. Wayne ducked behind a parapet and covered his ears. He felt needles rocketing through his brain and his teeth rattling in his gums. Flipping his system menu open, he saw his hitpoints rapidly ticking down. The soldier next to him fell over, his mouth frothed with blood, and black liquid leaked from his ears.

Wayne's hitpoints reached 80 and kept falling.

Skycat.

A fighter plane banked down from the clouds, firing Missiles at Rebecca. The screaming stopped, her focus now on hurling balls of blue flame at the model plane.

Skycat descended rapidly to avoid the fire, and Wayne told his plane to cast Fanbi on a bear-shaped creature with stone plates instead of fur. It was one of the few monsters that was alive and had not been reanimated. Yet.

It worked.

Casting Fanbi through Skycat steadily refilled Wayne's hitpoints. As long as Auto-Target kept that little plane alive, Wayne had a source of passive healing.

But the monster numbers were overwhelming. The humans who had perished in the chaos outside the walls began to rise as well, their gruesome wounds from monster teeth and claws on full display. No person down there was still alive, and he heard a soldier somewhere nearby call that the gate was beginning to fail.

Hippo-looking monsters with flat, metal heads rammed them.

Wayne charged Sword of Water but thought about using Flame Bracelet.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The ball he shot at the living battering rams wasn't ice. It was boiling water. The monsters didn't flinch, but Wayne had an idea.

He looked at the ground and cast Nee will thinking about Flame Bracelet. The bush that sprouted was on fire even as it grew.

Fanbi had his hitpoints nearly to 100. Screw it.

He changed Skycat's orders. Fanbi shut off, and the plane sped away from the battle before turning and speeding back. Skycat strafed across the ground immediately in front of the wall and a few feet away from the gate.

Flaming shrubbery rose like a fence. The ramming stopped as the fire consumed the undead monsters. He told Skycat to repeat that pass indefinitely and shifted his focus back to Rebecca. She chucked more blue fireballs at Skycat, trying to bring the pesky distraction down for good.

Wayne charged Sword of Water and hurled a ball of ice at Rebecca. Her form shifted as if it was a reflection on moving water before returning to normal. The ice passed through with no effect.

A soldier near Wayne said, "Nothing can hit it! We've tried arrows and every spell we have. Nothing!"

Shit.

Sometime during the fray, Wayne's party had decided to make for the main gate, and he caught sight of their efforts now. Along the way, Hector stopped in front of wounded soldiers, putting himself and his shield in the path of Rebecca's blue fire. She didn't appear to be targeting his party specifically, though. They were simply there when she sprayed spells along the wall.

While Hector shielded the wounded, Armond healed them, but the old army medic wasn't looking great. He was pushing his mana pool too hard. Margo, meanwhile, put her silver arrows to use, pausing against a parapet next to Hector, popping out to loose an arrow and disappearing back behind cover.

Fergus saw Wayne and ran toward him.

"Banshee!" Fergus screamed. "It's a banshee! Silver! Use silver!"

Margo was too far away to bring Rebecca down with arrows. Wayne frantically searched his mind for ideas.

Skycat exploded in a ball of blue fire.

Several lines of burning shrubbery formed a barrier between the undead monsters and Cuan, but that would only delay the inevitable. If Rebecca realized she could reanimate the soldiers she killed inside the walls, Cuan was done for. Enemies inside and outside of their defenses would break them completely.

Wayne jumped off the battlement and held his silver sword tight.

Blitz-Blitz-Blitz-Blitz-Blitz.

Rebecca dodged his flying thrust. Wayne returned again with another stream of Blitz activations.

Right before his sword reached Rebecca, she shifted out of his path, forcing Wayne to brake, turn, and Blitz back up at the banshee only to miss again. That repeated five times, Wayne crisscrossing in mid-air, never touching the ground between passes.

Wayne felt his muscles failing and pressure in his head building. He was burning every bit of energy and mana he had to stop Rebecca, but he only had so much. When it was out, he'd pass out, losing consciousness until Rebecca revived his corpse and forced him to fight for her instead.

Rebecca unleashed another painful wail, halting Wayne's Blitz mid-dash. He felt himself fading.

Dum Dum.

The banshee's shriek suddenly turned into a sort of gurgle. Instead of a noise so high-pitched that it ruptured ear drums, the banshee said, "Derrrrrrr" with its head tilted.

Wayne felt his sword drive through Rebecca, a strange mix of stabbing meat and stabbing a bucket of gravel. Instead of blood, grey dust sprayed out of her ribs as Wayne's sword drove all the way through. Her body pulsed with the white-green light one more time and went dark. After a beat, a green shockwave burst outward from the banshee, peeling stone off the parapets and flinging soldiers off the battlements. She and Wayne fell out of the sky.

Eyes barely open, Wayne thought to tap Brake. He stopped for an instant, and then fell again, his face landing in cold dirt.

For some time, Wayne was aware that lying still on a battlefield was unwise, but his body wouldn't move, like he had a key but kept missing the lock. Opening his eyes revealed a dizzying blur, his body clinging to the surface of the world as it spun through space, trying to throw him off. His ears felt full of fluid, hearing only ringing and the scratches of his own breathing echoing in his skull.

He felt the soothing warmth of a healing spell. The world slowed, and his awareness gradually returned.

"Sir! Sir! Are you okay?" a Cuan guard knelt next to Wayne, looking down on him. Wayne couldn't focus his eyes, but he was reasonably certain the blurry talking shape was not a zombie.

Wayne managed a nod.

A moment of terror seized his heart. He opened his system menu and went to the Party section. Everyone was injured, but none of their hitpoints were at zero. They were alive.

And he was level 11 now, but that was too much reading right now.

Wayne relaxed, thinking that staying right here for at least a day sounded nice.

New blurry faces appeared over him. He recognized the shapes as his party members.

"Stay still," Armond said.

"If you insist," Wayne whispered.

"We should probably have a quick discussion about liability," Fergus said. "Sure, we released a banshee that killed dozens of people and destroyed thousands of gold in property, but is it really our fault? This wouldn't have happened if the nobles weren't dicks to druids in the first place."

"Would that work?" Hector asked.

Margo scoffed. "Not when nobles will be doing the judging."

Fergus sighed. "Okay. I'll make the argument, and if they don't buy it, I'll take responsibility. None of you knew anything like this would happen because I kept you in the dark, so the fault is mine. No sense all of your young…" Fergus looked at Armond. "No sense all of your young and younger-than-me lives going to waste over this."

"Fergus," Wayne said.

"I can find a purpose in prison. Inspire wayward minds with my dazzling range of knowledge, perhaps."

"Fergus." Wayne grabbed the old scholar's wrist. "Stop. We'll be fine."

Wayne sat up. Torches moved across the battlefield, a search for survivors, Wayne assumed.

When he confirmed his arms and legs were still attached, Wayne's love for leveling up resurrected itself.

He opened his system menu and checked his stats:

Hero: Wayne the Guy

Level: 11

HP: 73/171

STR: 20

AGI: 22

VIT: 15

LCK: 24

He had a series of new unlocks as well.

Railroad Tycoon: Ferryboats – It is possible for your trains to cross tidal estuaries, the ocean, or large lakes with the help of ferryboats.

Pat Riley Basketball: BGM Switch – In the ON position, this function provides background music throughout your game.

It Came from the Desert: Fire Extinguisher – excellent for quenching overcooked pot roasts, cooling overworked feet and drowning small apartment fires.

Super Monaco GP: Super Soft Tires – The softer the tires, the higher the traction and so the faster your car will be.

Super Soft Tires was a passive skill he could toggle on or off via his system menu, but that's as far as Wayne got. His head throbbed from reading and attempting to decipher his own upgrades. Wayne closed his system windows. He needed rest, badly.

His party leveled up as well. Digging into that would have to wait as well.

The party looked toward the main gate when they heard the sound of soldiers running in heavy armor, like a dozen kids with way too much loose change in their pockets. They headed toward Wayne's party.

"I got this Fergie," Wayne said.

"I do not approve that nickname."

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