Chapter 95: Dark Fall Conquest (1)

Darkness swallowed all one hundred players in the same instant, absolute and total, no ground underfoot, no sky overhead, nothing at all until golden words tore themselves into being across the black.

```

[ Dark Fall Conquest Rules]

> All fifty teams, a total of one hundred players, will each be assigned a tower. One player must remain on the tower at all times. The other may leave.

> Towers sit one kilometer apart. Players cannot surrender or harm one another during this event. Only the winning team exits with the reward. The remaining ninety-eight players will be eliminated, their kills credited entirely to the winner.

> The winner is decided by the score earned by killing the monster waves that will attack every tower from the great dark forest surrounding them. Monsters can harm players freely. Players cannot surrender to them either.

> Monsters that kill a player evolve, growing significantly stronger.

> Five hours. Fifty waves. Survive them, and the highest-scoring team among whoever served wins, or none may win of all die.

> All the best.

```

The darkness lifted a moment later, and Logan found himself standing atop a stone tower rising forty feet above a black, tangled forest, Alice already beside him, fifty identical towers scattered across the visible horizon in every direction.

"No surrendering, no fighting each other, and the only way out is winning outright." Alice looked out at the nearest neighboring towers, expression calculating. "That’s a brutal way to run an event."

"Monsters get significantly stronger if they kill players?" Logan drew Grimlord’s Blade, testing its weight. "How strong exactly?"

"We’ll find out even if we don’t want to." Alice looked at the rows of towers. "Even if we kill monsters from our neighbours for more score, and indirectly protect them, the same can’t be said for the towers further away."

Logan felt a certain trepidation as well as thrill.

"Let’s win this."

Logan turned his head and almost laughed out loud.

The tower to their immediate east belonged to two dwarves Logan recognized instantly, the same pair Alice had shot down back at the gathering point.

```

[ Borga Ironvein ]

[ Thrain Stonewrath ]

```

Borga caught Logan’s eye across the gap and spat over the tower’s edge, message clear enough without needing words attached to it.

The tower to their west held a pair of beastfolk, wolf-eared and broad-shouldered, one of them already pacing the parapet with restless energy.

"Fresh meat towers on both sides of us!" The pacing one called it loud enough to carry, grinning wide enough to show teeth. "Rourke Fangmane! This one’s my partner, Thessa! Let’s see who actually earns their spot on this leaderboard!"

Thessa didn’t bother looking up from sharpening her own claws. "Ignore him. He’s loud before every fight and useless during most of them."

"Rude." Rourke didn’t sound offended in the slightest.

Further along, a pair of elven siblings held their own tower in near-perfect silence, twin bows already strung, watching the treeline with an intensity that suggested they’d already calculated exactly how this whole event was going to go.

```

[ Sylvana Emberleaf ]

[ Corvin Emberleaf ]

```

Neither of them acknowledged anyone else at all.

The forest below started moving before Logan finished his own survey of the field.

---

```

[ Wave 1: Incoming. ]

```

Shapes broke from the treeline in every direction at once, snarling things with too many limbs and hides the color of old bruises, Normal and Uncommon-rank alike, swarming toward the base of every tower in sight.

Overgrim Slash!

The dark arc swept the first wave off its feet before they’d covered half the open ground, and Alice’s own arrows thinned the rest before they ever reached the tower’s base at all.

"Nine more waves before the real numbers start climbing." Alice loosed another volley without looking away from her own targets. "Might as well make this one count too."

She didn’t stop at their own tower’s perimeter. Arrows crossed the gap toward Rourke and Thessa’s own wave, thinning it before either beastfolk noticed the help arriving.

"Hey!" Rourke called across the distance, delighted rather than annoyed. "Steal my kills, why don’t you!"

"Score’s shared across the whole leaderboard!" Alice called back, already turning her attention toward the Emberleaf siblings’ own wave. "Might as well spread it around!"

The waves kept coming, each one slightly larger than the last, Rare-rank monsters mixing in by the fourth wave, tougher hides forcing real effort out of every kill.

By the seventh wave, Logan had settled into a rhythm of his own, Severed Step dropping anything that got too close, Grim Harvest cleaning up whatever dropped below the threshold, Blade Veil Counter catching the occasional monster who released fast enough projectiles.

```

[ Wave 8: Incoming. Rare-rank Field Commander per tower. ]

```

Fifty distinct roars rose from the forest in the same instant, one massive shape breaking free per tower, each one considerably larger and meaner than anything that had come before it.

The one heading for Logan and Alice’s own tower came low and fast, chitin plating dark as pitch, mandibles the length of a grown man’s arm.

```

[ Ashfang Trencher ]

Rare | Level 40

```

Alice met it first, three arrows converging on its exposed underside before it finished its own charge.

Overgrim Slash!

Logan’s own strike caught it across the mandibles as it reared back, the dark arc opening a wound deep enough to slow it properly for the first time.

Grim Devouring Slash!

The ethereal edge halved whatever defenses it had left, and Alice’s follow-up shot punched clean through the weakened chitin, dropping it for good.

```

[ +200 points. ]

```

The Field Commander wave hit every tower at once, fifty separate fights playing out across the field in the same stretch of minutes, and from what Logan could see, every single tower held.

"Everyone’s still standing." Alice sounded almost surprised by it, already turning toward the next wave building at the treeline. "Guess the first hour’s meant to be the easy one."

By the time the tenth wave finally cleared, the leaderboard settled with a number neither of them found particularly surprising.

```

[ Rank 1: Leon Flanke & Ruby Starviel. Score: 4,850. ]

```

"First place, one hour in." Alice grinned, wiping a thin sheen of sweat from her own brow. "Not bad."

"Forty more waves to go." Logan glanced toward the treeline, where something considerably larger was already stirring in the dark beyond it.

---

2nd hour’s first wave, the 11th wave, began with a bang.

This wave broke from the forest with a sound like the ground itself tearing open.

Giant, bug-like frontliners led the charge this time, carapaces thick as armor plating, and the moment they cleared the treeline, spiked projectiles launched from their own backs in a hissing volley aimed straight at every tower in range.

The first one struck a distant tower’s wall and detonated, a blast of poison gas billowing wide enough to swallow half the platform in green mist.

"Incoming!" Alice’s own voice cracked sharply across their shared tower. "Cover!"

Logan threw himself sideways, Reaper’s Stride carrying him clear as a spike buried itself where he’d been standing a half second earlier, the explosion that followed close enough to singe the edge of his own sleeve.

More shapes emerged behind the bug-line, monsters unlike anything the first ten waves had thrown at them, and somewhere in the darkness beyond the trees, something vast finally started moving toward the light.

"This wave already started with Epic-rank monsters? Nice." Logan grinned, his eyes sharpening with Sword Intent. ’I should practice other techniques now. I feel it is time I can explore them and further my progress in Sword Intent.’