100X Returns: Starting with 1,000,000 System Points

Chapter 18: Chapter 18: First Wave

The horde crossed the open ground faster than I’d braced for, a churning, screaming tide of goblins and kobolds surging toward the silo’s narrowed chokepoint with the mindless, forward momentum of creatures who understood only the charge in front of them.

"Loose!" Rennick’s voice cracked across the dawn air, and the first volley of arrows arced out from the barricade’s flanks, dropping a ragged handful of the front runners into the churned mud. It barely registered against the sheer mass still coming.

"Hold the line!" Thorne’s voice, steady despite everything, cut through the rising noise. "Let them funnel — don’t chase, don’t overextend!"

I planted myself at the chokepoint’s mouth exactly where the silo’s stone wall narrowed the approach to barely three bodies wide, sword raised, Qi flowing clean and steady through channels two weeks of hard, honest practice had finally taught me to trust.

The first goblins hit the line like a wave breaking against rock.

I met the lead creature with a controlled diagonal cut that opened its throat clean, hot blood spraying dark across my forearm as it collapsed, choking, into the goblin behind it. I didn’t have time to process the kill before the next one was already lunging, crude spear jabbing toward my ribs, and I pivoted with footwork that finally, properly held, driving my blade through its exposed side with a wet, grinding resistance that I forced myself past rather than dwelling on.

The chokepoint did exactly what Thorne had designed it to do — funneling the horde’s numbers down into a manageable, murderous trickle, three creatures at a time meeting a wall of villager spears and two adventurers’ blades instead of overwhelming sheer mass. Bodies piled at the narrow stone opening, forcing the creatures behind to climb or shove past their own dead, slowing the charge into something we could actually contest.

Still, the fighting was brutal, close, and endless. A kobold’s claws raked across my forearm, drawing a shallow line of fire that I answered with a downward strike splitting its skull. Another goblin got past my guard entirely, and only Thorne’s blade, driving in from the flank, saved me from a spear thrust that would’ve opened my side to the bone.

"Watch your left!" he barked, already turning back to his own section of the line, blood spattering his forearms in a steady, grim accumulation that mirrored my own.

I lost count of the kills somewhere past the tenth, the fighting narrowing into a brutal, repetitive rhythm — strike, pivot, strike, the smell of blood and voided bowels thick enough now that I’d stopped trying to fight past it and simply let it become background noise to the more immediate business of staying alive.

A village hunter to my right went down hard, a kobold’s claws finding the gap beneath his raised arm, and I broke rhythm just long enough to drive my blade through the creature before it could finish him, hauling the wounded man back a step with my free hand before returning to the line.

"Position’s holding!" Rennick shouted, voice raw. "Keep the volleys coming, don’t let them regroup at the mouth!"

The first wave broke against the chokepoint for nearly twenty minutes before its momentum finally faltered, the goblins and kobolds at the rear hesitating as the mounting pile of their own dead made the narrow approach increasingly difficult to push through.

I stood amid the brief lull, chest heaving, blood — mine and theirs, indistinguishable at this point — soaking through torn leather, and felt the true cost of sustained combat settle into muscles that had never been tested this long or this hard.

[Level Up! Lv. 24 → Lv. 31]

The notification barely registered through the exhaustion, though some distant part of me noted the number with a kind of grim satisfaction. Real growth, hard-earned, exactly the kind that mattered.

"That’s the easy part done," Thorne said grimly, wiping his blade clean with movements that had grown noticeably slower than the fight’s opening minutes. "It’s testing us again. Won’t send the rest carelessly after seeing how the funnel’s costing it."

I extended Sharp Soul Perception toward the tree line, past the churned carnage of the chokepoint, and felt it immediately — the orc’s dense, cold presence, still holding the bulk of its horde back, watching, calculating, exactly as Thorne predicted.

"It’s recalculating," I said. "Same as before Shadowfang’s guardian did, in a way. Testing our weaknesses before committing everything."

"Then we don’t have long before it finds one," Thorne said, glancing down the strained, exhausted line of village defenders. Two more had fallen in the first wave, and several others were bleeding freely, still standing only through sheer stubborn will.

I felt the weight of Berserker and Focused Qi Detonation sitting quiet and untested behind my ribs, and understood, with a cold certainty, that whatever the orc chose to send next would likely be the moment I found out which one I actually needed.

"Second wave forming!" a hunter called from the barricade’s flank, voice tight with fresh dread. "And—" a pause, longer and more frightened than the first. "It’s coming with them this time!"

I turned back toward the tree line, and felt my stomach drop at what Sharp Soul Perception confirmed a heartbeat later — the orc itself moving forward now, heavy club in hand, tusked jaw set in cold, deliberate purpose, the remaining bulk of the horde surging forward behind it with a coordination the first wave had entirely lacked.

Thorne’s jaw tightened beside me, blood-slicked blade rising back into ready position.

"Here it comes," he said quietly. "Whatever you’re holding back, kid — now’s probably the time."

I took a slow, steadying breath, feeling exhausted muscles protest, and planted myself back at the chokepoint’s mouth as the second, far more dangerous wave began its charge.

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