Stuck as a Dungeon Mob

The theater room appeared to be the same as last time. It was the inside of a white cube passing off as a theater room. But only after Ed grew closer to the center did this change and a projector appeared.

Yes, it truly was just like last time. He approached it and ejected the records of struggle. The record however appeared to be somewhat different from last time.

'It's semi-transparent' The videotape had to be indicating he had already seen that one. This made Ed curious, where were the other ones?

Suddenly, a bunch of new tapes appeared beside Ed. They were all labeled under the records of nostalgia but in no particular order. They all just shared the same name.

'Inefficient labeling...' Ed grumbled inwardly but he grabbed one of the videotapes and inserted it into the projector without hesitation. The whole ordeal took only a matter of seconds and soon enough, the white room seemed to be changing.

The light was replaced by darkness and the entire room now had a nighttime hue. But there were no starry skies for he was inside a messy room. A child was watching television- No, he was playing on a video game console with fascination.

Although the sound was off on this platformer on account of the late time, Ed could see this small child humming the music in his head. 

Ed suddenly felt… nostalgic.

'Yes… this was the feeling' The feeling of nostalgia which he could previously only date to a couple of months back. This nostalgia that dated years was that much better.

Apart from child Ed, there was not much else to see. Child Ed was laying down on the bottom bunk of a bed grasping a game controller and keeping the TV one close by for emergencies.

'Wait… bunk?' There had to be someone else in the room!

Ed floated off the floor and peered into the upper bunk. The darkness hid most of the notable features not someone that looked not too dissimilar to himself lay peacefully sleeping.

Suddenly, the lights flashed on and an angry woman appeared.

"Go to sleep!" She yelled to the sleep-deprived kid.

"I- I-" There was no covering up the fact that he was playing games but who could have expected a late night visit?

It was at this point that the memory was finished and Ed was back in the theater room. He couldn't help but sigh. He got no attributes.

'Maybe that memory was a bit abstract' More than anything the memory was short. It provided little to him other than feeling good for a moment.

With the failure in mind, Ed eyed the other videotapes. He had a short inner struggle before finally deciding to just speed through them all.

The short tapes did not last even more than a minute each and they just highlighted some nostalgic or simply memorable moments.

Without an order to enter the tapes, the timeline was off for each one. This meant Ed was able to see his growth out of order and was forced to connect the dots in his head. This allowed him to see how much better he got at fooling his parents into not knowing he was playing video games late at night.

There were also non-game related nostalgic moments however which were all usually part of his childhood years. The nostalgia didn't seem to reach further than freshman year of high school, not the ones he received this time anyway.

But even after he sorted through all of these tapes, there was no mind attribute to be gained.

'Was it really the length of time?' For some reason Ed felt this was not the right answer but he had to leave it at that all the same. In the end, he watched these nostalgic memories for no reason whatsoever.

It didn't seem like his personality changed either.

'It's funny' Although the theater room allowed him to be in a way much more immersed into his memory, it offered this immersive experience from a third-person perspective. Needless to say, Ed did not feel too attached as he sifted through his own memories.

He was already too deep into everything dungeon related for the memories from before to make any drastic change in his personality.

Exiting the system space, Ed was greeted by a message.

[Assimilation is off cooldown]

Nothing new, Ed just dismissed the notification and left the shanty rock hut he had taken refuge in.

Before long, he had Bloody follow him and walked back into Sanctuary. The inner walls were still being built but they seemed almost ready to defend against an attack. Ed was stopped at the gate but on account of being him, he was let in without a wasted second.

'It's good that the wall has progressed this far, the humans might attack now that they know we planned to leave' Ed was thinking it would be smart for him to shorten the size of the human extermination army.

'Maybe I can make use of Bloody's capabilities too' The merging with W told Ed Bloody had a very special ability. To not make use of it would seem dumb.

But before Ed could think too hard about ways to use Bloody, there was a loud sound reverberating throughout Sanctuary. This sound was the sound of orcs shouting in unison atop the wall as a form of warning.

Ed immediately felt something was wrong. He felt a faint sense of danger and instinctively turned towards the sky with narrowed eyes.

[Instinct has leveled up]

[Arrow] [Arrow][Arrow] [Arrow]

There were faint black outlines streaking through the sky which Ed assessed to be arrows. This meant... They were about to be struck by a large volley of arrows!

Ed's mind raced for answers and he quickly started a chant. He was going to cast a spell!

The arrows which were now racing down towards them unfortunately were far quicker than Ed's chant. His attempt to summon a vacuum of wind was foiled by the complexity of such a task.

The arrows showered down upon them and scattered around every facet of Sanctuary. The inaccuracy and quantity of the volley meant that it would hardly catch anyone.

"DAMN IT!!!" Ed heard a shout. He turned sideways only to see an orc holding a much younger orc in the distant with a tearful expression.

But, hard was not impossible.

'What's going?' Ed asked himself silently as he burst off into a sprint towards the new inner walls. He didn't forget to tell Bloody to protect himself for a while. Things were urgent!

Bob had told him the number of humans in the camp, so where did all the arrows come from? Reinforcements? Unless everyone suddenly gained archery proficiency, Ed found it hard to believe that a mere 50 or so humans could bombard an entire town of orcs.

Ed quickly walked past the armored orcs on the walls and peered over the edge. The taller and original outside walls had been trespassed by the humans.

"But we stationed orcs there…" Ed knew that they must have been killed. Most importantly however, another volley!

Ed's eyes widened having witnessed what was happening live. There were contraptions! The humans had set up a bunch of weird devices that catapulted arrows over their walls.

But Ed was not going to have things go their way this time, before the arrows could reach their highest point a wave of heat expanded outwards from Ed's body startling some orcs near him.

The bright red flames then shot out in a quick burst and blew up a large aggregate of the arrows. Unfortunately, some arrows slipped past and they did so on fire. But luckily, they extinguished themselves rather easily either mid-flight or by hitting non-flammable parts of Sanctuary.

That wasn't to say the choice of fire was harmless, there were patches of grass that caught fire. Left unchecked, they would expand towards the homes of some orcs. They didn't have firefighters! It was an oversight, Ed had to choose between jumping off the wall to put out the fires or challenge the contraptions out on the field.

Just a couple of volleys weren't enough to incapacitate the Sanctuary orcs, however. Most of them got on their suits of armor and ran towards the main gate of the inner walls en masse. They were already thirsting for battle!

This allowed Ed to quickly find his answer. He jumped off towards the enemy side while chanting a spell. The arrow dispensers or arrow cannons as it was apt to call them were all lined up neatly.

Without hesitation, Ed finished his chant.

'Sinkhole1!' The ground started to cave in under the majority of the dispensers and with it down went any humans arming them. Though at first glance there didn't seem to be any.

"Where did they go?!" Ed asked himself. There were no real signs of the humans anywhere. He grit his teeth and bolted right back into Sanctuary. There was something wrong with this attack! There weren't any attackers!

Ed could only figure a few reasons why and the most obvious was a distraction.

***

Not much earlier, the humans of Aspiration were not willing to sit back so they did indeed follow Bede's instructions to a t. That meant that when the end results were not cannons, the one to blame was obviously Bede!

"We can't make cannons" Bede said practically admitting he had shamelessly lied to get people on his side.

"So these arrow dispensers, will they be enough?" Bede's cannons were out of the picture so what else changed in the plan? The number needed should have been higher, right?

"More than enough, we will only send a few people. The main goal is finding and extracting the king" They had to execute the plan both smoothly and quickly, any delay would be a risk to the king's life.