Chapter 46.

"I'm going to drop you three off over there," he said, pointing towards an area East from their location, "two of the rifts are closeby so you should have a reasonable number of monsters come into play and it's central so I can reach you swiftly in case of an emergency. Remember your tactics and don't hesitate to simply run if need be. Understood?"

His tone of voice convinced them all to answer instantly.

"Good." he said and then moved the Disc to the position they were meant to hold, "the monsters will start flooding in within about a minute, Good luck."

Then he vanished, leaving behind the disc and a small collection of potions, weapons and other objects. Most likely a precaution.

Both Raphtalia and Trystan turned to Isis, who immediately turned towards the Rift and noted, "The monsters will be here in about two minutes," she said, "I'll set up some barricades. Please take the front lines, I'll stay here at the back."

Raphtalia nodded and then felt a little awe as the filolial casually reshaped the earth, felled some trees and then had Trystan create some barriers to create some terrain that could protect them. Once she was done, the whole area was far easier to defend, she hoped that it wouldn't be needed but Mr Adrian had insisted that they practice making fortifications like this. It would be useful for when they needed to protect vulnerable targets.

She felt a surge of grief as she realized that had Mr Adrian been summoned just a few weeks early her village would have been safe.

Then, there was no time for thought as the monsters arrived.

The first four that she fought were wolves that had glowing red eyes and were as large enough that their heads were on level with her head. Raphtalia found herself gripping her sword tightly and preparing herself to chant, she only had two magics but both Zuerst Light and Hide would help here.

Isis didn't share her fear. The filolial barely looked at them before a lightning bolt emerged from her body and struck the first wolf which howled him pain before collapsing, twitching from the massive current running through its muscles. The other Wolves stopped, wary, but ended up dead as the lightning jumped from wolf to wolf killing them all.

Raphtalia smiled at their success but found her focus sharpening as more monsters emerged. Some of them were wolves, but it didn't stop there, she could see wolf-bird chimaera's, some flying insects, and several other types of monsters.

"Trystan, Raphtalia," said Isis, her tone cold, "Please work together to stop them. I'll support you from the back. Trystan, buffs, now."

The bird nodded and Raphtalia felt her body lighten as he cast enhancement after enhancement on her, but the time he was done she felt invincible. She did her best to dismiss the emotion, she knew that it was only a 30% increase in her attack, defence and speed. She couldn't get arrogant about that.

The first target she attacked was one of the Wolves, a single slash cut through its snout, skull and a portion of its body, but its packmates took advantage of her being busy and tried to attack her.

Trystan landed on top of him and then bounced off the crushed body without a backward glance.

Raphtalia felt her thoughts fade away as she simply hacked away at monster after monster. On occasion, she felt the heat from a massive blast of fire or her hair standing up thanks to lightning near her thanks to Isis but she ignored those. Her friend wouldn't hit her.

The demi-human took in a deep breath as she faced off against a bear whose body was at least three times as large as she was. Four powerful limbs tipped with Claws and saliva that seemed to be quite acidic. A moment of thought and she blitzed towards it, and in another second she had cut through its' limbs on the right side, while it was roaring in pain, a sound that made her ears ache. Then, she executed the bear, ignored the blood splatter on her and looked towards her party.

The monsters had been removed from the area. She could still see them at a distance but she knew that it would take them at least two or three minutes to reach them here. Raphtalia turned her focus towards her teammates and found that Trystan, like her, was covered in blood and other monster remains. It wasn't easy to see over his black feathers but she could tell that he was positively covered in them.

Isis was pristine. Her equipment was clean, as if she had just been taking a walk, rather than fighting for her life and she was simply sitting down on a raised platform of earth, while a massive orb of fire floated above her.

Raphtalia knew that Isis had been fighting as well but it was hard to believe when she saw the girl as relaxed as she was.

"Drink your stamina potions," said Isis, "we have another large batch coming in soon."

Raphtalia nodded, while Trystan answered with a cheerful 'got it, sis'.

She took a deep breath, drank the potion, wiped her sweat with the small cloth attached to her belt and then prepared herself. The fight had been both easier and more difficult than expected. None of the monsters had been a threat but their numbers were a concern. If it hadn't been for Isis, she and Trystan would have been forced to retreat and fight a running battle, probably exhausting themselves for almost no reason.

Raphtalia noted that the monsters were coming in close, and got herself ready, she could already identify some of the monsters but others were new. A glance at her sword and the feel of it in her hands let her calm down even as she felt a sort of thrill rise.

Then a thin beam of golden light cut through most of them in an instant, the following glowing swords which proceeded to explode simply finished off the rare survivors that could live despite being cut into two pieces.

She knew it had to be Mr Adrian and his sudden appearance in front of them proved it, but it was still jarring to see him casually slaughter a group of monsters than would have taken them a couple of minutes to kill. She felt herself relax and winced as her fatigue hit her, stamina potion or not that had been tiring.

His eyes strayed to the numerous corpses littering the area and he smiled before he said, "Well done. Any concerns?"

"Nothing father," said Isis, answering for them all, "the monsters have been weak and their numbers manageable."

He smiled, "Good. Please get on the disc, there's another high-density region, I'll deal with this area."

Raphtalia almost winced at the thought but she moved onto the disc, "Mr Adrian," she asked, as they moved into the sky, Mr Adrian still occasionally shooting off blasts of energy "has the boss monster emerged yet?"

What she was really asking was if he was having trouble with it? It should have come out by now.

"It has," he admitted, "I've crippled it but it's still alive."

She frowned, feeling alarmed as she wondered what sort of monster could survive Mr Adrian, "Do you need our help fighting it?"

He laughed, "I can kill it at any time. I'm keeping the poor beast alive so that I can continue to study the Wave and gather some experience-." he cut himself off, frowned and then created a couple of dozen swords and sent them flying.

The subsequent screeches and explosions were expected.

"Right," he said, "As I was saying, this is a unique chance to study a wave in a controlled environment. I was planning to end it as soon as possible but the Wave is more manageable than I had anticipated."

"Mr Adrian," she said feeling both angry and worried at his casual behaviour, "you can't just do…" she didn't even know what to say. She hadn't ever imagined the incredibly cautious man she had come to know do something so stupid.

The Sword Hero looked amused, but he sobered up quickly, "Raphtalia take a look at your level."

Raphtalia Lv 55

Adrian Black Lv 58

Isis Lv 55

Trystan Lv 55

Rifana Lv 50

Her eyes widened at the numbers. Adrian was quick to notice her surprise.

"We have only been fighting for about 25 minutes." he said, his voice serious, "we've gained more experience in the last twenty minutes than we have in the last week."

"But-"

"It'll help us in future Waves if we're higher leveled and know about the patterns of monster release-" he cut himself off, "we don't have time for this. Another large batch is being released. Isis help me out with a combo we'll talk later Raphtalia."

Raphtalia nodded. Unhappy but willing to play along for now. They needed to fight right now. Even if it was frustrating to see Mr Adrian extend a Wave for some experience.

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Adrian

Adrian had Isis in his arms, chanting in preparation for their combination spell, prior to her Class Up and Fitoria's blessing this would have been impractical, a technique that simply cost Isis too much to be used, but, here and now, Blade Storm was incredibly useful.

Isis' power combined with his coursed through him. Every inch of his body felt like it was on fire but despite the novel sensation, everything felt amazing, his senses were operating at their maximum, he didn't need to think, to try to do anything. Instead, he was simply aware of everything around him, there was no need to activate any of his skills deliberately, it was like they knew what he wanted before he knew that he needed it.

So, when they shaped their spell, Adrian casually held it back, delivered Isis and his party to their new location. A place where they would face a reasonably large horde of monsters and then returned to his standby position. A location nearly a kilometre up in the air in the middle of the rifts.

Then he slowly unravelled the spell. It was like he had ten thousand swords stored inside of himself and he had to release them and then choose if he wanted them surrounded in Fire or Lightning. He drew on five hundred, split evenly between Fire and Lightning, and then directed them at his foes.

He didn't bother to observe the aftermath, instead, he simply made sure to compare the corpses to his experience gains and then moved on. On occasion, he would have a survivor, but a single, momentary Sword Beam or Explosive sword removed them from the game and allowed him to continue.

He kept on moving. His attention shifting to and from multiple concerns. One was the Wave Boss, a massive crocodile-like beast that was nearly 40 meters long, that he had pinned down, enslaved and then electrocuted continuously to keep it in line after all that Boss was the reason he could harvest experience so easily.

The other of course was the rest of the Wave which had proven to be quite underwhelming.

Adrian had received information on the Wave from many sources, all of them biased, but he had assumed some truth from each of them. Fitoria had called these early Waves to be annoying but easy and he had taken her words with a healthy dose of scepticism. Easy for the strongest being on the planet didn't mean easy for anyone else. Most humans he has spoken to had spoken about it in tones of fear. So he had assumed millions of monsters flooding out of a portal. And of course, he'd had the light novel, which had provided almost no real information, focusing on Naofumi's struggles and rarely on the Wave as a whole.

The truth was different.

At first, after the Wave opened up around 15,000 or so monsters had been unleashed. Significant in number and nothing else. His combination technique with Isis had crushed nearly 13,000 of them and he had annihilated the remainder over the next two or three minutes. Frankly, the fact that they were clustered near each other after they came out of the rifts was insanely useful. It let him kill them in droves with ease.

Still, he had continued his slaughter even as the number of monsters dropped and only a slow trickle continued. He had placed his party where the largest number of monsters were emerging from and taken care of the other ten rifts with ease. Sure while he'd take care of one rift, the others would continue spitting out more monsters, but that just meant having a larger target for bombardment when he decided to kill them.

Even the Wave Boss had been underwhelming and easy to cripple. His biggest limitations in dealing with the Waves were his cooldowns, skill limits and stat limits. The monsters themselves had absolutely no tactics, no strategy or skill. Their only advantage, numbers, was squandered since it meant that they were simply throwing living bags of experience at him.

Adrian loved this. Loved simply spamming his skills while directed with a little bit of logic and reaping a disproportionate harvest of experience.

It was nearly an hour after the Wave had started that he realized that the rifts were closing. He frowned, realizing that this was one of those cases where the rifts closed on their own. Adrian shrugged it off and decided to end this.

A moment of thought detonated the swords embedded within the Boss. Another moment and he had summoned up his Ten Thousand Sword Skill again to crush several widely distributed targets. He used Dash to reposition himself rapidly to crush as large a fraction of the remnants as possible and then used Sword Beams, a series of massive ones for once, to clear the skies. He created the beam using a dozen projected swords at once and the massive golden beam that resulted was one that he rotated all around himself in four different locations.

Everything in the sky, except for him, died, annihilated in an instant.

As the sky turned back to blue and he crushed the last remnants of the monsters that his party were facing he found himself smiling and planning.

Adrian Black Lv 62

Raphtalia Lv 57

Isis Lv 60

Trystan Lv 57

Rifana Lv 54

Adrian looked all around the area he had just been slaughtering in. Tens of thousands of corpses, hundreds of different types of monsters and more experience than he had gained since his entry into this world. It didn't take a genius to realize one simple fact.

He needed to fight more Waves.

However, before he did that he needed to boost the power of his party members or get more of them.

Adrian used Dash to arrive at their location and wondered how to increase their power. As it stood Trystan and Raptalia had been of very limited use. It had been Isis and himself who had crushed the Wave. Sure Trystan's buffs were useful and both of them had fought valiantly...but that wasn't really needed. Their lack of area of effect attacks and limited mobility ensured that they had only killed around 2000-3000 monsters and most of that was only due to Isis' area of effect strikes and the fact that he had been herding monsters towards them.

He would need another 15 party members or so to perfectly suppress the Wave and he needed a way to boost their mobility. It was time to focus on recruitment and versatility of techniques rather than individual power gain.

"Mr Adrian," said Raphtalia, her tone rather...displeased. He turned to look at her and found her completely covered in monster blood, guts and sweat.

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