Is this really a Game?!

It didn’t take the five Tier I Tainted fighters long to arrive. Judging by how near the battlefield they were, Reign could infer that they had been there for a while, seemingly waiting for the best time to appear and fight.

Five Tier I combatants were enough to completely turn the battlefield over as they could deal with most of the monsters present by themselves. It seems that the five had already had suspicions of the horde of monsters being drawn over to them and waited in order to see who was doing it.

Beast’s arrow was the one thing they needed in order to confirm their suspicion. A Tier I attack that killed one of their brethren made it clear that there was someone pulling strings from the shadows. The Five quickly went out of the array and immediately started a slaughter as they made their way toward Reign and the others.

“Coming straight at us huh?” Reign smirked as he watched the five mowing down the monsters. Each of the five used a different weapon, one used a spear and it was clear that he was quite proficient at it. The spear stabbed, twisted, and made the monsters fly away with a single horizontal swipe. The footwork of the spear-wielding Tainted was also quite good and Reign could see that his proficiency at using the spear was by no means low.

Two Tainted used swords, but different ones. One used a normal longsword and slashed his way through the monsters with great efficiency and without any flashy moves. The man’s breathing was controlled very well and he used no more strength than needed to kill his enemies.

The other Tainted used two swords, but compared to Reign whose two swords were both longswords, with the rank SS sword being a bit longer, this Tainted used a style that was a bit familiar to Reign.

A longsword in one hand, and a short sword in the other. The Tainted used the short sword for the enemies that had come too close or to block and parry attacks while the longsword was used to deliver fierce slashes that took the lives of the monsters immediately.

“Damn, this guy copying Musashi or something?” Reign commented as he glanced at the style that was incredibly familiar to the nitō ichi-ryū that Miyamoto Musashi, the man hailed as the greatest swordsman of all times had created.

The last two Tainted used weapons that were a bit far from conventional. One used a giant scythe that was similar to the one Tank had used a long time ago. The way this person wielded the scythe however couldn’t be compared to Tank’s sloppy use of it. The scythe was a blur as the Tainted lady spun it around herself, and decimated all monsters that were nearby before delivering a fierce two-handed slash at the front that cut dozen of monsters in half.

The final Tainted used two chains that ended with 4 small spiked balls of steel. It was the first time that Reign and the others were seeing such a weapon and they stared at the man with great interest. The two chains were wrapped around both of the man’s arms and the four spiked balls could be seen at the end of the chains, each of the spiked balls was about 6cm in diameter and were about 3cm away from each other, taking up the last 33cm of the chain.

The man was quite proficient with the weird weapon and he was able to fight from range or in melee with the use of his chains. When monsters would come near, he would simply wrap one of the chains completely around his arm and grab and hold the last spiked ball.

Thanks to the tough gloves the man had on, the spiked ball didn’t hurt him at all and he could deliver powerful punches with the ball. His other arm still had the chain down and he would use it in order to entangle the monsters he was fighting or to simply smash apart any that were trying to get close to him.

“Alright, they’re close, we’ll wait just a bit longer in order to have them create more distance between themselves and the base before attacking, by the way, the one that uses two swords is mine.” Reign said as the others simply nodded at him.

They were waiting for the Tainted to come closer as they didn’t wish to see them flee from the battle. Although Reign and Shadow were incredibly fast and highly doubted that any of the five could explode with speed greater than theirs, there was no way of them knowing if one of the Tainted had an item or skill that would increase their speed greatly or even teleport them somewhere.

“Let me handle the spearman,” Aelrinder said as the other nodded at him in agreement. Since there were only five enemies, only five of them were going to fight while three would be left here to guard the elves and, if needed, to help them out from long-range.

Laura and Beast were staying as both could help them out greatly from long-range, not to mention Laura’s healing that would be much needed if anybody got injured.

Wolf was going to take on the sword-wielding Tainted while Tank would fight against the one with the scythe. Only Shadow and Greenie were left and upon seeing the look that Greenie had as he stared at the chain-wielding Tainted, Shadow simply sighed and chuckled as he gave Greenie a thumbs up.

“Go get him, man.”

Greenie simply nodded to Shadow as the five got near the place they were at. Reign and the others quickly jumped toward them as their auras were on full display. Upon sensing five more Tier I auras, the monsters, that had already been a bit demoralized from the slaughter that the five Tainted had made them go through, completely lost the will to fight here and charged at the base with great fervor.

Even though the item was making all of the monsters enraged, when facing such powerful enemies, even the enraged monsters were quite reluctant to fight them.

“An elf, and humans.” One of the Tainted scoffed as he looked at the five enemies in front of him.

“It is like we thought, you used the totem.” The Tainted with a scythe said as she looked at them with a calm gaze.

“Enough talking, we didn’t come here for a chat, since you dared to attack us, you can forget about leaving this place alive” The chain-wielding Tainted said as he licked his lips in anticipation of the battle that was going to take place.

“Yeah, we don’t need to talk, that much is true.” Reign said as he yawned before lightning appeared around him. He burst forth with great speed as the ground beneath his feet cracked, in an instant he was already in front of the dual-wielding Tainted.

“Shit!” The Tainted cursed as he barely managed to block the attack from Reign, the power behind the attack, however, was able to send him flying back a couple of meters.

Before the others could do anything to help him out, they were attacked as well. Aelrinder attacked the spear-wielding Tainted with his spear and the two quickly moved to the side in order to fight. 𝚍ｎ𝚘ｖ𝚕.𝚝

Upon seeing that each of them had an enemy in front of them, none of the Tainted could afford to look at what the others were doing as they needed to fully concentrate on the enemies in front of them. All ten of them were Tier I and the Tainted knew that the battle that was about to take place was going to be a hard one, even though they were fighting in front of their base, the home-field advantage was completely gone as the horde of monsters continued fighting against the Tainted inside the base.

The one good thing for the Tainted was the fact that the item the elves were using to attract the monsters had broken. Even though Aelrinder had speculated that it would last for about 30 more minutes, only about 5 had passed and it was already gone.

The horde however was still enough to make the Tainted struggle against them. There were now about 300 monsters attacking, and a couple more were arriving. Even though the item was gone, it would simply be unable to draw in more monsters, the ones that were here were already influenced by it and would continue fighting.

“Hey, where did you learn your swordsmanship?” Reign asked the Tainted in front of him as the latter stared at him with caution. The speed Reign had previously shown was enough to make the Tainted know that he was inferior to him in that regard and the power behind the attack made him fearful as the human in front of him was not only faster but physically stronger as well.

“My swordsmanship?” The Tainted asked.

“Yeah, there used to be a human some 500 years ago that used the same style, well, he pretty much created a school for that style to be taught, I never expected to see a Tainted use it.”

“Hmph, the universe is vast, human.” The Tainted said as he got into a battle stance.

“Not gonna answer, huh, well that’s alright, I’ll beat it out of you.” Reign smiled as lightning cracked around him.