A monster that once was a humble canine had kept the overall shape of its breed, which had been a labrador retriever. Its brown body had retained the white spots that were common among them, but it had developed much larger muscles like a pit bull. Its jaws had enlarged greatly and it was frothing at the mouth as it charged at a gap in the caltrops that were made across the ground.

 

The moment it got near the van an armored man with tan skin and dark hair appeared with a large shield to stop it in its tracks. The moment the monster hit the shield that was almost the size of a door, the various enchantments on it activated, throwing the monster back into the field of caltrops. The sharp nails pierced through its flesh and caused it to bleed profusely as it cried in agony and began scrambling around trying to get out of the area.

 

Fires were burning in several spots around the junkyard where rodent monsters had swarmed out of their dens. These were the remains of three Molotov cocktails that had been used to seal off the exit paths from their homes. Around and in the field of caltrops a large number of bodies could be seen that belonged to various monsters that had died to the small team, David had tossed several of them into the trailer during the fight to clear space.

 

“Billy, give us more spikes!” David called as he moved forward towards a monster that was slowly making its way through the spikes.  

 

He didn’t have to worry about the spikes due to something he had prepared when he came up with this strategy. Around his ankles was a set of metal bracelets that looked like prisoner shackles without the chain in the middle. They had a rune carved into them that he had to pour mana into them to use but it was a negligible amount. 

 

As David ran forward the spikes under his feet moved as if they were pushed away by a magnetic force. He could almost completely ignore them since they were repelled by the anklets as he took aim with the spearhead on his poleaxe and thrust it towards another canine monster. He didn’t care if it avoided the blow because it would have to move into the caltrops to do so and that would make it even easier to kill.

 

The Edeans who came up with this strategy did it using balls made of spikes that resembled briars. Those were able to roll and these could at most flip, but the cost and skill needed to make balls of spikes were much higher than caltrops. He was also limited since he only had a few boxes of nails that he could use as scrap to complete the project.

 

Lena was standing on top of the van with Pandora who was laughing as she kept sending small fireballs out that would torment monsters and drive them into the spikes or back into the monsters who were trying to push forward through gaps that were made at the cost of many dead monsters. Lena shattered those dreams when she bent over and was handed a small bucket filled with caltrops from Billy who was filling them from several large buckets that were the size of the first.

 

Lena then took these spikes and threw them out into the gap that was made that Harry was using his body to keep closed. They clustered up into piles initially but Harry and David moved around using the enchantments on their ankles to spread them out.  Using the spikes and the closed fence the five people and one cat were able to keep close to a hundred monsters at bay.

 

“Keep the gaps closed!  They won’t go onto the spikes willingly!” David called.

 

“David! Look out!” Jasmin called from in the van. 

 

David turned and looked up to see a set of talons coming for his face and was forced to jump out of the way. He lost his footing as a wing clapped him in the back of the head causing him to fall into the caltrops. Pain erupted in his body as spikes entered his legs and torso but he used his arms to protect his head which saved him from taking fatal damage.

 

He grits his teeth and carefully moved his arms around on the ground to lift himself without getting spiked any further. Blood was seeping out of various wounds that were only being held in due to the nails not allowing it to escape. It took all of his willpower to avoid screaming out in horror and thrashing around like one of the various dying monsters who made this mistake.

 

Just as he felt like he was reaching the limits of his willpower, a calming sensation began to ease the pain in his body. A little ghostly image of a dog with little wings appeared in front of him and he could feel its distress when it was looking at his wounds, it needed to help him! Rollo seemed completely ignorant of the suffering monsters around it, as its sole attention was focused on aiding Jasmin in healing David. 

 

“David, are you alright?!” Harry called.

 

“I need... a minute or two... to heal.” It was hard to get the words out but he had to tell them his situation.

 

Lena was completely ignoring everything on the battlefield as she used her hand to start drawing a rune in the air with mana. Her eyes were cold and her face was blank as she tracked the bird monster that was flying in the air. It looked like a crow that had grown several times its normal size and developed a long sharp beak like a blade.

 

The bird was coming in for a dive on Harry who lifted his shield to block his face, this is when Lena activated the spell she created. The air around the monster's wings was pushed away for several moments, this caused it to fall lower than it expected and it crashed into Harry’s shield causing him to grunt from the impact.  A loud explosion resounded from the shield as a great impact threw the stunned monster to the ground onto the spikes.

 

It immediately began to flap its wings madly as it cried in pain from the various caltrops entering all over its body. Lena wrinkled her brows in displeasure as she finished casting a second spell in half the time she normally used to complete one. This one caused sparks to begin flying, but this was not a spell that caused electrocution, this one created magnetic pull that was the opposite of the enchantments that David placed on everyone's ankle bracelets.  

 

The caltrops began to slide towards the monster that was close until the magnetism caused them to jump onto its body as it flailed around on the ground. The various caltrops sticking to it began to pierce its entire body as it started to bleed from more and more holes. It didn’t have the same help that David did on the side.

 

He could see the ghostly image of a small corgi wearing a small shirt with little wings that flapped furiously as it circled David using its little tongue to lick at his wounds. These were caused by him having to pull the spikes out of his flesh one by one, and a small pile had formed next to the van. Everywhere the little ghostly dog used its tongue would cause the bleeding to halt and the wound to itch as it began to heal. 

 

Removing the last caltrop was a relief and he had to fight to not fall to his knees as he felt a wave of exhaustion hit him. This was caused by the healing taxing his body's ability to heal as he had just gone through many weeks of healing in a very short time. Shaking it off he grabbed the poleaxe next to him in time to hear the bird monster’s tragic cries come to an end.

 

Looking over, he could see a large pool of blood that was formed from countless spikes piercing the large bird monster’s body. He was once again stunned by Lena’s comprehension of the enchanting language and her ability to chain together runes and form spells. It also wasn’t as simple as reversing the order of the runes to get a different effect, as this would be like scrambling the letters in a word and expecting it to sound the same.

 

Just as he was about to say thank you to her he noticed she was casting another spell. This time a gust of air blew as the runes in the air faded away on their activation and a blade of wind flew forward towards the dying monster. It reached its neck and cut deeply enough to sever the jugular releasing the last of the creature's blood on the ground.

 

Suddenly he recalled Jasmin’s warning as he saw a glimpse of an iceberg when he looked at his girlfriend but he quickly shook it off. Looking around the battlefield he quickly took stock of the situation. Things weren’t going bad and they were slowly grinding away at the monster's numbers.

 

Blood dyed the packed earth red from blood and the caltrops shone hungrily amid the pools that were forming from the monster's stumbles. They had killed close to 30 monsters and the trailer had close to 10 bodies stacked on top of it into a pile. Behind the spikes were over 100 monsters with many more of them appearing from various dens and the scrapyard itself.

 

“David, what do we do?! There are so many of them!” Harry called in terror. 

 

The first time they fought monsters David had told him that you will rarely fight them one on one unless you are fighting one who is powerful and solitary. The difference between a pack of mice and a tiger was something an experienced hunter needed to be able to recognize almost immediately. When it came to monsters you couldn’t always judge them based on their physical appearance.

 

“Harry, do you smell that?” David asked.

 

“I can’t smell anything but blood!” Harry called in horror.

 

“It is only when the waters are sufficiently bloodied, that the sharks will come out and play,” David said ominously.

 

Pandora was the first to notice a monster who was slowly circling the battlefield, it was choosing which prey it wanted to eat. It was a feline monster that was the size of a dog with shaggy white fur that covered up most of its features. It was a monster with a smell that caused revulsion to the small cat’s senses as it moved bonelessly with its legs seeming to wiggle like gelatin.

 

“Mrooow!” The cat called through the top of the van to the boy underneath.

 

“Aberration!” Billy called out.

 

David looked at Pandora and followed her eye line to see the large fuzzy creature that was making its way over the wall. Its legs moved as if they were made of rubber and its body seemed almost saggy as the thick fur seemed to hang on the skin underneath it. The head of the creature did not appear to have any features but thick white fur and two tufts that resembled ears.

 

“Don’t worry about it, it will attack the monsters with the most mana,” David told them. “Pay attention though, this is what happens when something loses its mind to mana addiction.”

 

In monsters, it only happened when one of them came across many magical stones, usually in a graveyard where lots of corpses had built up and magical stones were plentiful. less than 1% of monsters would become aberrations and start preying on whatever had the most mana that it could defeat. They usually lost most of their brain during their mutations, as they weren’t necessary to make them better predators.

 

The large fuzzy creature finally selected a target that was a wolf monster in the back with four thick legs and bone armor plates. The aberrations legs began to move in a strange manner where they seemed to stretch forward before they dragged the rest of the body along. The body and head also deformed like a liquid as it stretched its paws forward one after another.

 

The bear monster turned and saw the aberration coming towards it, but it was too slow to do more than run a few steps before the white furry creature launched itself at the large bear that was the size of the van. The furry creature stretched and began to open itself like a bag, revealing a fleshy inside filled with various organs and sharp spines. It was like an octopus trying to catch the large bear within its bag-like body as it stretched from the size of a dog and kept stretching larger and larger.

 

“What the fuck!” Harry yelled in fright.

 

“They don’t have a weak point like the head or a specific body part. Inside of its body is a magical core that possesses the monster's intelligence, what is left of it, and its main bodily functions. You have to destroy it to kill them.” David explained. 

 

“What does it look like?” Harry asked.

 

“Don’t worry, you are going to see it in a moment,” David told him.

 

The white furry creature had finished wrapping the legs of the bear and was slowly trying to pull it into the center. The white furry creature then had what was once the head open up and a spike that looked like bone started to push through the center of the head before it darted forward showing a fleshy tentacle that was thicker than an arm. This spike forced its way through the back of the bear monster causing it to roar in agony before it made a wrenching motion and pulled itself out.

 

The spike was revealed to be a beak that was opened up to hold a magical stone inside of it. It had three segments and in the center of it was what looked like a white larva, or a maggot. It had mandibles that began to chew at the magical stone as its body secreted a thick slime.

 

Just as it was enjoying the meal, a metal blade whistled through the air and buried itself into the body of the larva, causing it to release a high-pitched shriek as the magical stone was spit out and the beak closed on the creature. The tendril then tried to pull itself into the fleshy face before another blade flew out and buried itself into the white fur of the creature’s head. The first throw had missed by a little bit but the second one had been way off.

 

“I got it,” David said plainly.

 

The creature was having issues moving and it was ignoring the dying bear monster and failing its limbs around like whips that were slamming into the monsters around it. The white furry body was boiling like water as it attacked everything around it. One of the furry paws had enough force to hit a lot tier rat monster in the head which caused it to splatter across the dirt ground.

 

“Are you sure you killed it?!” Harry called in horror as he held up his shield by reflex.

 

“Yeah, I am posi-” David began when he was cut off by the sound of an explosion and a wet splashing noise. 

 

The aberrations body expanded before smoke poured out of the hole that was hidden in the head and out of the opening in the stomach. A dark purple liquid that smells rancid began to slowly spew from the holes in the body onto the ground. Harry turned and looked at one of the sheet metal throwing knives and saw runes carved into the body of the knife.

 

He then looked at the spikes on the ground and the various monsters who had been caught in them and turned into bloody corpses. The surrounding monsters were beginning to fight and the smell of blood was getting heavier and heavier. Monsters were starting to ignore them in favor of attacking the monsters who were closer to them.

 

“What is going on?” Harry asked.

 

“This place is a shared territory that many of them fought over to establish supremacy, they aren’t actually friends or even allies. We invaded, but we are a tough meal to get that doesn’t smell very appealing, while the air is now filled with blood and many of the monsters are carrying wounds.” David smiled as he got to this point. “The easiest way to kill monsters is to rile them up enough that they start killing each other.” 

 

“Why would they do that?” Harry asked in shock as he started seeing more and more fights start to break out.

 

“It is all about getting stronger, but mana is particular. You don’t get anything from killing those that are as strong as you, or weaker than you.  The only way to grow quickly is to challenge those that are stronger than you.” David explained. “We have no choice but to kill as many monsters as we can before the winter, not just for food, but to reduce their numbers before they start breeding.”

 

Around the outside of the several meters of caltrops that covered the ground, blood and fur were beginning to fly freely as the monsters were starting to fight in a more and more savage manner. Many rodents and other types of burrow-dwelling monsters like foxes and possums began to rush out as the fires at the entrances to their dens began to burn down. They issued high-pitched squeals as they worked in groups to take out the larger monsters.

 

“We are no longer at the top of the food chain as humans, the only thing protecting us is their hesitation to take on a lot of wounds around all these other monsters. For the amount of work they would need to eat us, we don’t have very much mana to offer them.” David was watching the fighting picking up in intensity as the monsters kept killing each other. “This is only possible because we are too weak for them to see us as anything but air.”

 

“You have said that for a while now, so what happens when humans become stronger?” Harry asked.

 

He had never seen so much blood before, it was starting to pool on the ground and flow into small ponds. Dead bodies were piling all over the ground and some of them were getting thrown into the field of caltrops from their battles. What he was seeing was the monster corpses being replaced by other humans including people like his family.

 

“This will happen in cities and towns if the people living there can’t set aside their differences and fight together. In the modern world, less than 1% of the people living in the country were military or retired from military service. In the world my memories came from 70% of the population were combatants with the rest being old, disabled, or too young to fight.” David stopped here to point at Lena who was calmly looking at the bloodshed from the top of the van. “We also don’t get the privilege of being sexist or racist anymore, we are going to need everyone who can pick up weapons and fight.”

 

“And Billy and Aubrey?” Harry asked even though he knew the answer.

 

“Fighting will be half of the curriculum now, a peaceful future is only possible if you are so powerful that no one will dare fight you. I should remind you that humans can only reach the high tier while monsters reign supreme.” David told Harry. “Some of them can be so dangerous that hundreds of high tier fighters died to bring them down and sometimes they were only able to injure the creatures.”

 

“That statue keeps them away, what if we made more of them and placed them everywhere,” Harry said excitedly.

 

“Do you have any idea what those statues are made of? We could spend our entire lives looking for magical materials and not have enough to make even one of them!” David explained.

“What if we killed them all?” Harry suggested.

 

“If it was possible to do it, it would be the dumbest thing anyone could do.” David paused here and gave a different analogy. “Would you say that humanity should have destroyed all the plants on the planet because some humans were allergic to pollen?”

 

When the Machine Lord overthrew the existing structures on Edea, he had found a problem that the Edeans had created for themselves. They had almost exterminated the monsters in their world from overhunting them in most kingdoms and nations on the land. It was to the point that the average power level of the people of Edea began to decrease, this was a major problem.

 

Hell, the Astral Sea, the void, the abyss, there were so many different invaders that could appear and attack the Earth. Edea had many instances in its history where humanity was almost wiped out due to invaders. If the humans of Earth weren’t able to grow quickly then he was worried they would experience the same woes. 

 

“Keep in mind that this is only possible because all of the monsters here are in the low-tier. If the dungeon wasn’t around to thin the numbers and draw away the strong monsters then we would never be able to repeat this strategy. The moment monsters start to reach mid-tier they take over a larger territory that is filled with low-tier monsters like this area.” David continued to watch the carnage grow as more predators began to move in. “They would never allow the monsters to riot like this and would stop the fighting before it could ever rea-”

 

RRROOOOOAAAAARRRRR!!!

 

A roar that seemed to make his bones vibrate interrupted him as he found his head turning towards the scrapyard. He wasn’t the only one as the fighting among the monsters stopped and they all turned their heads in the direction of the roar. Most of the monsters were shaking in fear which caused Harry to also go on high alert.

 

“David, what is happening?!” Harry called over.

 

“That is the sign that we need to run!” David yelled. “Get in the van now!” 

 

The sound of breaking metal and crunching could be heard that reminded David of a monster truck show that featured them crushing cars. He could also hear piles of scrap the size of small hills being thrown by the creature that was pushing its way to the concrete walls. Many of the monsters all took a submissive posture, laying on the ground and shaking in fear of the monster coming to the scrapyard.

 

Lena jumped from the top of the van and darted into the van followed by David who quickly crawled into the back behind her. He was followed by Harry who shoved his large shield that was fitted into a rack on the wall behind his seat. He climbed in last and closed the door as they heard a loud crash coming from the concrete.

 

A loud crash was heard as the wall was ripped apart and a large ursine head appeared and roared towards the sky. It had shaggy fur that was shades of black and brown and bone plates on its head and large teeth the size of a man’s arm. Its muscles were bulging and rippling underneath its dense fur that had gray furs that looked like metal. 

 

“It made it to the mid-tier… I thought we would still have time…” David muttered.

 

“What do we do?” Jasmin asked with panic in her voice.