"Hold your positions, they're coming!" Tess stood in the newly-rebuilt tower, the amplification spell cast on it allowing her to be heard. Magical spy glasses were situated around the walls that could be displayed on a System-enhanced tablet that could show any of the "cameras." Madison also had drones hovering in formations above the area around the neighborhood, giving a rough map of movements. Their communication was delayed, since the signals had to be transferred individually from one drone to the next until they reached the table in the Bouchard's backyard. There, another camera had been mounted that would allow whoever held the tablet to switch to a view of the battlefield overall. It was a slow, cumbersome affair, but it was better than being blind. As of now Tess could see a large number of red dots moving towards them at speed.

The entire neighborhood was standing on the walls, facing outward. They held a motley assortment of weapons - Madison and Jason had done what they could to fabricate enough for everyone in the time allotted, but the deadline arrived before they could finish and they'd only had time to fashion crude pieces of bladed metal that could barely be called swords and a lot of wood staves and clubs that had been magically hardened by Jason. White knuckles gripped the weapons tightly as people shuffled their feet, but no one fled the walls. Tess had made it very clear that everyone had better master their fear immediately because anyone who left their post would much rather be out there amongst the creatures than in here with her.

Today wasn't about them fighting anyway, it was a test of the community's defenses. Turret guns came alive and began tracking wakes of snow that were obscuring whatever was plowing through the drifts towards them.

"Rabbits! Huge fucking rabbits!" Came a cry and Tess swiped through the cameras rapidly until she found one.

"Huh, it really is rabbits." The image on the screen wasn't your cute, fluffy bunnies, though. They were massive, for rabbits anyway - roughly the size and shape of Greyhounds, with massive yellow teeth, rheumy red eyes, and long ears that waved behind them as they sprinted. They looked exactly like the fake photos you saw on postcards that advertised big Jackrabbits, only more manic and insane. And they were fast, almost too fast for her to track.

The snow had been cleared around the compound for about 500 feet in every direction for exactly this purpose and as soon as the first of the demon rabbits cleared the drifts the turrets lit up. Rabbits were pelted out of the air mid-jump, flopping backwards in rolling heaps. Dozens fell into the basement pits that had been left open, only to be shredded by Ed's blood magic or impaled by smaller versions of Madison's energy-collection spikes. Most leaped the pits, though, and soon the killing field around them was buried in bodies. Turrets died out, only to be repowered by people placing their hands on the guns and feeding them energy. Madison had rigged them up to absorb spell energy so that all someone had to do was place their hand on the turrets and cast a spell and it would be absorbed and released as more bolts.

The rabbits were gaining ground and Madison's voice rang out as she shouted an order.

"THEY'RE OVERTAKING THE SINGLE-SHOT TURRETS. SWITCH TO LIGHTNING TURRETS!" Her magically amplified voice was calm and commanding and the people reacted with well-practiced motions. Power packs were swapped out and everyone moved to step back behind the turrets as they began to whine. In almost perfect unison the turrets around the walls fired as one, the field around the walls erupting in energy so thick it looked like liquid. Hundreds of rabbits died, smoking and twitching, the ones behind them leaping over them without even pausing.

There was a massive CRACK followed by screaming.

"TURRET TWELVE OVERLOADED. TAKE IT OFFLINE, MOVE TO SECONDARY LOCATION." At Madison's orders the people retreated, dragging three burned and smoking bodies with them. Healing pills were administered and the injured people were carried to the second wall, the gangplanks that were bridging the walls being pulled back behind them as they did.

"TURRETS HAVE HIT CAPACITY. SHUT DOWN ALL OUTER WALL TURRETS AND RETREAT TO INNER WALL. ELECTRICAL PANELS WILL BE ENERGIZED IN 10, 9, 8,..."

The people manning the outer wall beat a hasty retreat to the inner wall, none of them wanting to be standing on the outer wall when the countdown reached zero. As the last of the gangplanks was pulled across the divide between the walls there was a loud hum and everyone's hair stood on end. Cameras on the outer wall began fuzzing, then went out. Tess slapped the tablet in frustration then turned to focus on the wall itself. From her vantage point she couldn't see the front line of the jackrabbits as they approached, but no one could miss the sound of the world's largest bug zapper going off in rapid fire, or the smell of burning fur.

The tension rose as the pitch of the electrical panels increased. Smoke could be seen roiling into the air just outside the walls now, the scent of burning fur making some of the nearest gag. The buzzing, zapping, snapping sounds reached a crescendo and everyone strained to hear the words they'd fear the most - Madison announcing that the outer wall had failed.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The constant electrical sound began to decrease, slowly at first then, with increased rapidity. Like a bag of popcorn left too long in the microwave, the pops were getting fewer and further between until, with a communal sigh of relief, they stopped.

"SIXTY SECONDS SINCE LAST CONTACT. REMOVING POWER FROM OUTER WALL. DO NOT APPROACH UNTIL GIVEN THE ALL-CLEAR."

Tess released a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding as the cameras came back online, showing nothing but a sea of unmoving and charred bodies. Everyone stood, breathless, waiting to see what else would come. When nothing seemed like it was, Tess called Madison to the tower.

The girl arrived, nimbly climbing the ladder to pop up through a trapdoor in the bottom.

"Do you think it's over?"

"Hmmm…" Madison chewed on her lip as she flipped through the cameras. "Hard to say, obviously, since we don't know what's coming, but the drones don't show anything approaching. At the very least I think we're being given a breather."

Tess eyed the tablet skeptically. "That doesn't seem right. That was too easy and it was over in less than 10 minutes."

Madison shrugged, still looking at the tablet. "You could be right, but I don't think it was meant to be that easy. I mean, it definitely should be - this was just the introduction. They threw a bunch of low-level creatures at us to give us a chance to test ourselves, or maybe to clear out some of the weakest right away. This is the opening salvo of a very long war, I think this was meant to be a trial run for both sides. But still, imagine if we didn't have the turrets and walls."

Tess considered, realization hitting her like ice water down her spine. "Oh my god, I didn't think about that. If we didn't have these turrets and electrified walls we would have been overrun."

"My thoughts exactly. These creatures were meant to be fast and to be able to jump or climb over low-level fortifications. It only seems easy to us because our defenses were meant to combat exactly this type of threat, but imagine we were a town without a wall, or even a city? Imagine if our walls hadn't been electrified? Even worse, imagine we were just out there with a small group, no defenses at all."

"We would be fighting for our lives right now," Tess said quietly. "There must have been at least 500 of those things."

Madison only nodded, surveying the area outside the walls. "Yep, we'd have been screwed, that's for sure."

"Oh hey, did you get any experience from that? That was a lot of creatures and I didn't get anything, so I'm guessing you did?"

Madison nodded again. "I actually gained a whole level, but I think it's going to take some more analysis. That number of creatures should have been a windfall of experience, but it was just enough to push me to the next level. I can't be sure, but I think it's probably a combination of factors." Madison ticked them off on her fingers, "First, I don't think I got a lot of experience for the actual killing - my levels don't really come that way. I think it came from me using my inventions in the act of killing. I know it sounds like a distinction without a difference, but the creatures being killed are incidental for my advancement. What's important is that my inventions were used to defeat the creatures. Also, I think that they nerfed the experience."

"Nerfed? Like the gun?"

Madison laughed. "I'm actually not sure where the saying came from, but it could be from that. Nerf darts are weaker than real bullets. But it's a gaming term that says they were made weaker intentionally. I'm sure that if you were out there killing them yourself you'd gain a lot more experience than I did, but I'd be willing to bet that they cut down the amount of experience we get from the kills."

"Why would they do that?"

"Well, this trial is meant to get everyone to level 10, not to level 100. Sure, plenty of us will see a lot of levels from it, but it's going to be from the economics of scale." She looked up and saw Tess's blank expression. "Okay, what I mean is that if killing 10 of those rabbits gave you enough experience to gain a level then you'd be able to jump like five or 10 levels just from this encounter alone. On the first day, during the trial run. They don't want us turning into god-level fighters by the end of the first week, so I'm betting that we're going to see a lot less experience from individual kills than what we would have seen before the Challenge started. And speaking of that, I'm betting…" She pulled out a pair of binoculars and scanned the field. "Yep! Look!"

Tess took the offered binoculars and looked to where Madison was pointing. "What am I looking for?"

"What don't you see?"

"I don't see… huh, the bodies. They're all gone. But that's normal."

"Yep, it is. But what else don't you see?"

Tess exhaled through her nose in frustration. "I don't know. What am I supposed to NOT be see… Oh!" Tess began swinging the binoculars around. "Loot! They're not dropping loot!"

"That's right!" Madison beamed. "I mean, they may be here and there, so we should always check, but there aren't a few hundred Jackrabbit pelts or lucky feet or whatever they would drop. It seems like The System just isn't investing as much energy into these as they do with normal creatures. I'll have to check my spikes to be sure, but I'd bet on that too."

Tess handed the binoculars back to the girl. "I wouldn't take that bet, it seems like you're right. I'll send some people out to scavenge, just in case, but I'm betting we don't find a lot. So anyway, when do you think the next round will come?"

Madison shrugged again. "Impossible to know. Is it every hour? One a day? Once per day and once per night? Random to keep us on our toes? All we can do is stay alert right now. Although that gives me an idea on an early warning system…"

Tess didn't even try to stop the girl as she climbed excitedly down the ladder, mumbling to herself.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.