Eli was getting lost in his emotions again, but stopped himself when he realized that he needed to focus on healing and magic regeneration if he was going to be better in time for the next wave. He embraced his pain for a minute using it to sharpen his mind, then pushed it away and focused on his magic. Under normal conditions, it took him about an hour and a half to go from empty to full on magic when not in combat. His open nodes replenished their specific magic at roughly the same rate, but not until his magic was full, otherwise it was much slower.
When it came to healing his injuries, it was just about focusing his vitality using his will to repair things in a chosen order, while pushing his vitality stat to work more efficiently. With enough focus, he healed rather quickly, but it left him mentally exhausted, so he tried to pace himself at first. He could feel Bethany go tense every time a bone cracked as it set and healed, that's what she gets for telling me off while I'm all beat up like this, Eli thought. He wasn't upset with her over it, she was probably just as conflicted about how she felt for him as he was about how he felt for her. It was going to be some time, after things slowed down, before they would have their feelings for each other sorted out.
The others came in to see how he was doing, Audrey had to turn around and walk out to avoid throwing up, Tara looked sad, and Stevens and Cody seemed fascinated at how his body was recovering. Eli focused back on his healing after a kiss from Tara, she then went and sat on the other meditation platform and closed her eyes. The other three didn't stick around for long, it was morning now with the sun fully over the horizon so they went out and walked their new homes in the light. After appreciating its beauty, the three then walked over to the buildings inside the barrier, Audrey had some business to attend to.
"Well, have you decided?" Audrey asked Arinya. They were up on the wall walkway, Stevens and Cody flanking Audrey with the three other women opposite them.
"We have discussed it and we would like to join…" Arinya started to say before she was cut off.
"We?" Audrey interrupted.
"Yes, all three of us agreed to join."
"We only want you, you can join us, get a vote in what actions we take, get training and support from us to grow strong. Your family can live with you, receiving our protection, but they would not get a say and they would be your responsibility," Audrey finished by pointing a finger at her.
"In that case, I agree," she said while getting dagger stares from her mother and grandmother. It would appear that they didn't like being left out, but weren't going to argue it in front of Audrey.
"Good, after this event is over we will each take turns helping you, of course you will be expected to pick one of us to connect with so that you can officially be a member of our group," Audrey explained.
"Connect with? I'm not sure I follow."
"Well, I'm Lord Ash's second servant, but Stevens here is a Minion to Tara, who is first servant. To truly get a vote, you have to pick someone to connect with and, more importantly, they have to pick you."
"So, do you have any recommendations on who I should work with?"
"You need to figure that out for yourself," Audrey said and the three of them walked away.
The three then went to talk to Greyson and pretty much had the same conversation, but he didn't seem to want anything to do with Lord Ash. He did say he would Join Audrey, but not if she was working with 'Lord Ass'. He seemed bitter about how Eli had spoken with his little sister, but he wouldn't talk about it with her and just kept saying no. So Audrey told him to get his family together and once they were, she informed them of Greyson's choice, and that it meant they had to leave after the event was over. None of them seemed to care, so she probed them with her magic sense and started asking questions.
It turns out that the parents were criminals before the system came and they were terrified that Lord Ash would kill them if he found out. Audrey said it was too late for anything to change and informed them that they had to leave right after the event was over. She would need to make sure they left and that it was ok to let them leave like this with all that they knew, but she had confidence that it would be ok. They hadn't killed anyone yet just for knowing things so this was probably not going to get her in trouble with Bethany… Probably, she thought. The three then went back to the smaller buildings they picked out to get some rest.
Eli could not shake the feeling in him that something was off about this event, the undead theme with the toxic haze just seemed to be a little early in the system's difficulty scaling. Something was telling him that the last wave was going to be trouble, more trouble than they were ready for. He felt like he needed to use more strength, do more for the group or they might lose someone. Only two waves left which means one hard wave then a boss wave. He could go all out but he would be out of magic about half way through the wave, a better option would be to work on funneling them and slowing them.
He might not need to go all out if he can just keep the others from getting overrun, the only problem was he didn't really have any control abilities. Without being able to stop, slow, or stun them, he was really just a 'smash things' kind of fighter. Without anything else to do while he was healing and regenerating, he did his best to come up with a plan. Preferably one that didn't wreck him since he would need to be in top condition for the boss on the last wave. Not having any luck he glanced over to Tara and Bethany who were quietly meditating, patiently waiting for him to heal. He would do whatever it took to save them, just like he told Tara, no matter what was thrown at him, he would rather burn the world to ash than let any of them die.
Suddenly, he started forming an idea, he was going to need Steven's help though, and probably Audrey's since he wasn't going to be able to pull it off without her brain. It was crazy, and there would be a price, but if he pulled it off, they would make it. Honestly, Eli was shocked they made it this far, there were only 6 of them and they were fighting monsters meant for half the safe zone. So in reality, it was meant for like maybe 10% of the population to fight these things off, which was tens of thousands of strong fighters. Even with his cheat-like strength and abilities, he was essentially doing the work of thousands, maybe that was why the system was making it harder.
When there was only a few minutes left until the next wave started, and he was mostly healed, everyone was in Eli's building and he explained what he wanted to do, then asked if they thought it was possible. Audrey, Tara, and Bethany were thinking about it, but Stevens and Cody were excited and agreed with the plan almost before he could finish talking about it. Eli then spent another minute explaining that it was dangerous and that they didn't have to participate if they didn't want to, but everyone seemed to be on board.
The next wave started just like the others, a sea of skeletons and zombies coming out of a toxic haze as far as you could see in either direction. As they got closer to them, they prepared for Eli's plan. Stevens was going to shoot his fire arrow at Eli, he would wrap it in his presence and blink the spell high into the air aiming straight down. While working on his skills during these fights, he had been improving his blink skill and with a little trial and error he was able to figure out how to blink magic. At first it was just some of his own raw magic, but the principal was the same with what they were doing now.
They fired off the first one, and it worked, well it mostly worked, Eli didn't get hit with the spell, but it landed off to the side instead of in the middle of them. It seemed that he was having difficulty with the blink image but when it hit the ground it exploded spectacularly, killing hundreds of monsters on the edge of the gathering mass that were all headed right for them. The next shot went to the other edge of the monsters, which caused them to clump up a bit in the middle, again hundreds died almost instantly. The third shot was meant for the middle but was off center by a good margin, but it landed inside the gathering horde and had to have killed thousands.
While his aim wasn't great, it was working as an effective long range artillery, after three more shots, the last one having missed entirely, Eli told them that he would need time for the spell to reset. After quickly explaining that the more he uses chaos magic the more unreliable it gets and they might get hit by the next one, they agreed to go back to the previous strategy. However, because of the damage they had already caused the skeleton's formation and pace got disrupted enough that they were not close to getting overrun. And this was only the first part of the plan.
Next, Eli figured out a way to add the magic from his death node to his air detonation spell. This made the damage much higher, and even those around the explosion got a dose of his death magic and just fell over dead. It was a costly move, Eli was burning through magic but he stopped himself when he was about one-third capacity, then he ran into the monsters and activated his cloak. It killed a few monsters and gave him a decent amount of magic back. After that he went to work as usual, swinging his cudgel in large arcs taking out as many as he could with each swing. He was conserving his magic and letting it regenerate slowly, while using his physical strength and dexterity to destroy as much as possible.
The pure physical nature of his attacking, the violence of it, he was starting to lose himself in the pure animalistic and primal emotions that came with this heavy physical violence. He noticed he was losing himself in these emotions but he needed to save his friends, all of them needed his help. Knowing that they could all be in the safe zone, behind a wall, and be safe, except for the fact that he was out here and they followed him. If they died it would be his fault, so he let himself get lost in the emotions of primal rage and destruction.
What was left of his conscious mind was surprised at how much rage he had been holding back, so many things about his past and his present kept coming up in his emotions. Anger at his parents for abandoning him and apparently wiping his memory of them, his time in foster care, high school in general, it all just circled in his mind, fueling his emotions. Then his time in the military, all the terrible things he saw and some that he did himself, the fury at the inability to stop horrible genocides and cruel barbaric warlords.
Eli's rage was boiling over and his thoughts drifted to more recent sources of anger, some part of him resented his group. Stevens and Cody because they didn't seem to offer him much compared to what they got from him, his most important commodity right now was time, he needed to be growing stronger much faster than he was. Audrey, she was hiding something, she knew something or had pieced something together that he was sure would help him, but she wouldn't tell him. His anger around Bethany was confusing, her attitude and forwardness made him happy, but then he felt guilty and angry with himself because he enjoys her company so much.
Finally there was Tara, a woman without equal, someone he didn't deserve. There wasn't enough time in existence for him to have enough accomplishments to deserve her love. It simply was not possible, in his mind, for him to ever feel like he was enough for her. He knew she was always looking out for him, putting him over herself, sacrificing for him. All the shame that caused drove his emotions into a pit of blind rage, at himself, his friends, and the world. Giving into these feelings and letting loose felt good on a raw emotional level, despite all of the warnings going off in the part of his mind that still held a shred of sanity.