55 Waves
"Question us later, we need to help your skeleton, it will be overwhelmed in no time!" a boy in the group said and the other agreed with him.
"There is no need, they can hold the entrance. If you don't believe me, you can check," Anne said smugly.
"Quit bluffing, there is no way a skeleton and an imp can hold dozens of orcs, this is a serious matter, one of us might get killed if there is no creature to take the hit for us!" the previous boy said in exasperation.
"I'm not bluffing, you can just check! They had held just as many orcs before this, and I believe they can hold more if they need to!" she did not relent.
"Enough, don't argue here," A girl said with her melodious voice. It instantly silenced everyone at once. Not with force, but with dignity.
"Char, I'm sorry for my friend's word, we did not mean to look down on your creatures, but I think it would be safer if we check on them," she said diplomatically.
"Alright, we can check, there is no harm in that," he agreed with her before the previous boy could argue.
He led them out to find the two creatures had their backs against the wall, not because they were losing but because they were guarding their backs.
All around them were piles of dead orcs, although there were still a lot of orcs remaining, it was clear that they could not touch the duo.
Around the skeleton was a group of dead orc with a few light cuts but for some reason, they stopped moving despite their relatively light wound.
On the other hand, the Imp was surrounded by orcs that had lost their head, all of them were crushed by the imps kick.
"Look! What with that red hobgoblin? It can kill orcs with its barefoot, its level should be quite high!" the group chatted in amazement.
"that skeleton is strange too. With a few cuts, it turned the orc's into a vegetable!" they pointed at the skeleton. It just finished another orc with ease.
"Is this enough proof? If you have seen enough, let head back inside and tell us what happens," Char told them when an orc strays from the group and headed toward them.
"It's coming this way!" the group started to panic.
Char shook his head in disappointment as he pulled out his sword and dashed toward the incoming orcs with his quadruple physical boost activated.
He split the orc in half just like he did before; he did not need to use the magic to finish the creature, but he used it anyway so the group would not notice how much stronger he got.
They looked at him like he was a monster to finish the orc in a second, "Alright, let's get back inside before we attract more of them," he instructed.
The group got back to the cave obediently, as they did not want to confront an orc without their summoned creature.
Although the academy taught their students to be able to fight even without their summoned creature, not everyone could be as strong as their creatures, Char and Anne were an exception.
The latter because she was trained since young and the former because he did not want to depend on his skeleton, to begin with.
"Damn it! If only we still have our creatures, then just a group of creatures would be a walk in the park!" the rude boy complained.
"Tsk, then don't lose them in the first place," Anne said in a low voice.
"Alright, let's not start another fight," Char said before they start to argue once more.
"Aya, tell us what happened to you guys," he turned to the girl he remembered, the academy top student and the girl he met at the library; she nodded at him.
"We were about to head back to the outer edge of the hunting ground, but we got ambushed by a big group of orcs, there were so many of them, we kept fighting for hours but there was no end to them," she started their story.
"At midnight, we were still fighting. At that point, there was no causality yet, but suddenly the group of orcs stopped attacking, they just trapped us until a giant orc appeared. It was a knight-tier orc berserker!"
"We desperately fought the orc, luckily the other orcs did not join the fight, we worked together to kill the knight tier orc after hours of fighting but it cost us almost all of our creatures to finish the orc."
"At that point, we thought that the fight was finished, but we were really wrong, the orcs started to attack again! Our weakened creatures could not beat the group and get slaughtered."
"Luckily their sacrifice allowed us to run, we had been running for an hour until we reached this cave, and that's how we met," she concluded her story.
"You heard that? We killed a knight-tier creature! If we still have our creature, then we should be able to finish the orc outside without your help!" the rude boy said, but his friend did not say anything.
"it's only a knight tier, we—," Anne was about to tell the boy that they killed one just by the two of them, but Char stopped her by putting his hand on his shoulder.
He shook his head at her, "Even if we told them, they would not believe us, we don't have any proof that we killed them since the corps is nowhere to be found," he lamented.
"Similar thing happened to us, we met another group of orcs so we ran to this cave so they would not attack us from behind," he told her.
"What do you think is happening here?" Aya asked him.
"I have a guess, but I would rather be wrong in this," he said gloomily.
"Monster wave?" she asked him grimly.
He nodded without a word. The gravity of the situation was really high if a monster wave really happened. Depending on the monster's leader level, a city might get wiped from the map.
