Every single adult who had heard the bell, even the more far-flung farmers, were gathered in the center of the town. Every single face held great worry as they listened to the news brought to them.

"A swarm. It's a swarm," Huin, one of the hunters said. "While I was out searching for signs of monster and prey, I saw it. This huge mass of shadelings the size of a whole field. They're heading for here." His wings fluttered uneasily.

"Shit!" someone in the amassed crowd said. From the looks of it, one of the further out farmers that Aono didn't know that well.

"Yeah, walls won't even slow them down. Those things are climbers," Thoy noted, "Better to fight them out there, stop them before they get to town. Thau, you're an earth mage, create as many pitfalls as you can. Place them in rows, the swarm will charge blindly ahead. Everyone who can, create traps in between the pitfalls. We don't have too long."

"In this matter, I'll defer to Thoy because of her experience," Phylu said as he drank water in preparation for a long session of bellowing.

Someone Aono couldn't get a clear view of raised a hand. "Thoy, you're level 7, why don't you just destroy them?"

Thoy snorted. "Look at me, I'm an old woman on her last legs. If it was a single dangerous monster, I could just drop a single lightning bolt on it and call it done. But a swarm that size? It'd take a lot of lightning, and I just ain't got the mana I used to. Most of it's tied up just keeping myself alive. I'll do what I can, of course, but I'll have to recover between each bolt."

The crowd muttered nervously at that. Seeing this, Phylu cleared his throat dramatically. "Better get ready to defend ourselves and our important ones! Let's do as Thoy says!"

As people began scurrying to obey further orders from Thoy, Aono found herself caught by the unsettling realization that her good friend Thoy was closer to death than she had thought. But a hand on her shoulder roused her from those thoughts. "Come on," Sardu said, "We're going to start forming the lines of defenders. You can heal, right? I told them you could, so you're in the back rows."

"Ah, yes, I can," Aono said and began hurrying in the same direction the others were.

At her destination, she found a field that had been hastily converted into a defensive setup, with masses of traps and deadfalls being set up in front of where the hundreds of assembled local defenders waited on a rising slope behind outward facing spikes of assorted materials. A small menagerie of summoned companions waited and Aono added her own slime summon to those. Then she stood in the rear rows and noted that because of the slope she still would have a good shot at the incoming swarm.

Many tense moments later, a flying Huin zoomed back from his scouting of the swarm. "They're nearly here!"

Immediately, all the folks who had been setting up traps hurried to their spots in the defensive lines. Aono felt her heart pounding. Shadelings, from what she'd heard weren't very dangerous individually as monsters, often preferring to act in numbers... but this was a huge number of them incoming.

Her heart dropped when she saw what seemed like a small sea of darkness appear in the distance. Immediately, Thoy called out, "Buffs up!"

Everyone who could activate buffs immediately did so, and strength of many kinds filled Aono to her nonexistent bones. She felt great strength, courage, endurance, durability, and more enter her body. Not forgetting herself, Aono activated Enhance Slime. Only herself and her summoned slime would benefit, but it was an all-around improvement to everything they would be doing.

Even as she readied herself for the order to attack, she could hear those with bardic inclinations like Ghei continuing to sing, the songs overlapping. Then the shadelings began screaming as they started running into the numerous traps, many dying and dissolving into a putrid dark goo. This close, Aono could see that they rose only to her knees and she wasn't exactly a tall person. But there was a seemingly endless number of them, many climbing over each other in an attempt to get at their targets faster. And each one of the blobs of awakened darkness had sharp claws and teeth.

It didn't take long for the pitfalls to completely fill up and it was only once Aono could clearly discern individuals (every one level 1) that Thoy yelled, "Fire!"

Immediately, Phylu, in the center of the second row, bellowed a clear challenge to battle as he slapped his flipper hard on the ground. That seemed to hit the swarm strongly as instead of scattering, they began to converge... right into the masses and masses of missiles including conventional ones like hunting arrows and wand bolts to assorted elemental attacks to more exotic stuff like the slime Aono fired toward the masses.

The shadelings died in droves and yet they kept coming. They died in huge numbers to a single arcing and chaining bolt from Thoy that fried nearly every enemy in sight, but still more came and Aono saw Thoy bent over and coughing. She could only throw a healing blob of slime to her friend before resuming her attack.

And yet no matter how many everyone killed, there was more to replace them. And after every round of attacks, after masses of shadelings died, the ones behind them got closer to the front lines. When they had nearly reached the front lines, another bolt of lightning killed every single shadeling in sight, stretching to the distance.

But that wasn't enough. The waves darkness continued to come. And with a glance at her friend, Aono felt great alarm as she saw blood staining the wizened hyena's lips. And still Thoy coughed.

But Aono didn't have time to worry. For she had still more shadelings to kill. It was at that point that she felt herself level up and immediately accepted the prompt to auto-allocate her stat and ability points. Immediately, she noticed that her launched balls of slime had began ricocheting and felt satisfied with what the auto-allocation had gave her. It went off what she would've chosen with more time after all.

She wasn't the only one; other defenders, including ones who didn't have any classes or levels, went up a level in her vision. And everyone fought a little harder, a little more vigorously. Having far more people with actual classes made a big difference.

And yet the shadelings finally reached the front lines, many impaling themselves on the spikes but many others climbing over those spikes. It was then that the fighting really began. Harvester class farmers hacked with scythes and sickles that appeared out of nowhere, while others employed more exotic melee attacks.

Aono could see Sardu punching shadelings so hard they exploded, even taking out other shadelings with them. She saw Tamu activate device after device to assorted bizarre results, some shadelings being launched forward into the distance to splat, others simply disappearing, some even laughing themselves to death. Phylu mixed his bellows of challenges with deadly shouts that turned foes into pulp.

Aono didn't stop shooting, either, and planted some blobs of slime in multiple spots that reached out to slice up the enemies with sharpened tendrils. Her summoned slime bounced from shadeling to shadeling non-stop, never pausing least it be set upon by claws. Aono even extended one flung slime blob into an intensely acidic wall but even that became overwhelmed, collapsing under the sheer numbers.

There simply was too many. Not even Ghei's acidic remarks sending many into tears slowed them down. Not even Aiio's giant tailor scissors cutting multiple in half was enough. Not even the numbers that simply died from Ghaan's glare was enough.

Folks started going down, as the healers, Aono included, began hurrying to save them from the endless masses. Many simply went back into the fight once healed sufficiently, if not completely, but some lives began to slip away. Aono could feel tears streaking her face as she watched the life of Lim's sole adult child flicker away despite her best attempts to smear restorative slime on him.

Then a voice spoke, startlingly clear, saying "Enough. You fuckers are gone now."

As a shocked Aono absorbed the meanings of those words, Thoy's body turned into lightning arcing right into the midst of the battlefield, where it formed back into flesh. And Thoy began laughing. And laughing. "Now is the time! Now is a fine time and place for me to die! You, too, you fucking monsters, I'll send you back to Chaos!"

And there was an absolute sea of lightning. Endless thunder pelted, as lightning bolt after bolt struck without cease. Thoy's body withered away into ashes, and yet she didn't stop laughing. Even after her body was gone, she didn't stop laughing.

The laughter continued and continued, the swarm simply dying as it came. Phylu's voice became increasingly hoarse as he kept yelling to lure the swarm into the field of lightning. He wasn't the only ones, after clearing out the front rows everyone that could contribute a luring or taunting skill did so, taking turns.

Finally, as the last shadelings died hours later, the laughter and the lightning stopped. No other trace of Thoy remained. There was simply a field scorched black with a sour smell from all the fried darkness goo.

Aono wasn't the only one to collapse from exhaustion. As unconsciousness began to hit her, she dimly heard the notification of another level up. Somehow even the sound of the notification sounded sad.