“Where’s the moron who filed a complaint?”

  Rede stopped the moron before she could say a word. “Marda, drop it!”

  Ioha watched Nanami go ballistic from where he sat with a bowl of well-deserved food.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? Are you just naturally stupid from birth, or did your mother drop you when you were little?”

  Somehow it warmed that Nanami got so angry for his sake.

  “Nanami, she didn’t know.”

  “Rede, do I look like I care? You come here with an A-rank raid and drop the escort duty to an E-rank squad? How stupid can you get?”

  “There’s no way that kid’s E-rank,” Marda the nagger said.

  “He’s E-rank, you imbecile. I watched his rank assessment with Misaki three months ago.”

  “I bet he was assessed higher.”

  “Yeah, C-rank. So what? He can’t take the test until next summer. You think a full C-rank frontliner would run outer patrols with us for the entire summer?”

  “C-rank?” Rede asked.

  “Yes, barely. He’s the best frontliner I’ve ever seen for collecting critters, but drop something hard-hitting on his head, and he’s toast.”

  Not something he wanted to admit, but Nanami was probably right. Which reminded him he hadn’t opened his display since the mass-charge earlier. He searched for changes between mouthfuls of food. One hard-won extra point in aura. He really needed every single point there. Half a dozen more in his notoriously unreliable multi-target attack. It just upgraded to somewhat useful. Both his punitive mass-taunts grew by a point each. Ioha wondered if he really should call them weak any longer. An extra point to his already nasty razor blades. One long-awaited point to his hard shields, and all gods knew those were desperately needed. Self-healing abilities for closing wounds. And… Oh, I fractured a bone? And a new ability? Multiple spell speed casting and already at a dozen points. He remembered his display flashing madly at the back of his head during the attack. This must have been it. And another new ability at a single point. A third punitive mass taunt. This time the geas was in the form of small bone fractures. All but useless for now, but he’d use it anyway to get more points. He really, really hated it when his teammates got attacked. There was a third new ability as well. One point. A lukewarm hairdrier, slightly warming up the air in a sphere around him. He grinned. Give it another fifty points and he could cook food in it. It overlapped with his razor blades as well. Unsurprisingly, his battle standard abilities rose by a few points each as well, which explained Viking girl's sudden bravery and efficiency.

  “Is that true?” The Harridan just kept complaining.

  “Look, if Hikari says he killed over a hundred critters by himself, then he did. Get a grip, Marda! He’s the first real tank I’ve ever seen.” Nanami sputtered the last words out.

  “Ha! Tank. That’s just a cute game dream. It never worked.” Marda offered them a mix of a smirk and a sneer.

  “Marda, he’s a protector of the line. Just give up. His god knighted him. Dammit, Verina suggested he was one, the very first day we saw him. If the kids in Isekai call it a tank, then he’s a tank.” Rede gave Marda a tired look. “I was halfway to the column when he grabbed just about every critter jumping us. I’m just happy he never used that area spell at the tournament.”

  “Tournament? You can’t mean…”

  “Yes. He was one of my spellsword students. I’ve seen his mass-taunt before. It’s not a pretty sight. He would have shredded the first year knightage students with his area spell.”

  “Spellsword, him?”

  Rede shook his head. “I know. He’s not a cat, but he still learned a lot of the relevant skills, to a degree at least.”

  You know I’m sitting over here. Ioha stretched tired limbs and stood up.

  “Good, the kid is awake. Over here!” Rede called.

  “Yes, Sir Ironsnake?”

  “Could you give us a self-assessment?”

  “You mean against archetype enemies?” Ioha sat down again by the unit leaders.

  Rede nodded. “Yes. I need to know.”

  Ioha bit his lower lip. “Duel against a relevant opponent. I’d say D-rank.” He smiled. “I’m stronger the weaker my enemy is. Against the spiders here I’m C-rank and against the blobs probably B-rank.”

  “That’s a load of crap!” Marda said.

  “Ioha thought about it instead of getting angry. “No, I believe that’s correct.” Another year, and I’m S-rank against blobs, cause an infinite number will die instantly to my razor blades. They didn’t need to know that. They didn’t need to know that a year from now that would apply to average street thugs as well.

  “Are you certain?” Rede asked.

  “As long as my shields stay up, stuff will have a hard time leaving me. Teammates get to kill stationary opponents.”

  “And if your shields break?”

  “I’m toast, and probably my entire party as well. I usually pull everything in sight.”

  “Pull?”

  “Sorry, term from outworld.” He was not going to tell Rede this entire world was part of a game, especially as Ioha wasn’t certain himself.

  “Meaning?”

  “I take an action that results in my target enemy attacking me. Taunt is best, but sometimes an attack works as well.”

  “Ah, you mean to kite?”

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  Ioha didn’t, but in essence, Rede was right. The only difference was that Ioha never moved away. “Static kiting, sure we could call it that.” It still wasn’t the same, since kiting came after pulling, but if he followed that reasoning, he’d get caught in a conversation where he reduced human lives to game statistics.

  “I believe I understand. Young Questingtank, this is a deep zone raid. I want you to join.”

  “Are you utterly insane?” Ioha didn’t need to be a genius to understand that Nanami was less than happy with the suggestion. “He’s E-rank.”

  “Out here he’s C-rank, and with a B-rank party dedicated to keep monsters from actually attacking him, I’d say he’s A-rank for the purpose of this raid.” Rede looked at Marda. “Your previous complaint concerned him together with four E and D rank adventurers. It’s invalid.”

  Ioha couldn’t stay silent any longer. “You’re calling me both E and C rank. It sounds too convenient for me. Why am I prohibited from taking a rank test for a year if the difference isn’t more important than that?”

  “Experience. Without it, you would have been assessed as D-rank most likely. If you spent a month in a bar, you’d still rank up to D-rank. After that, you could join C-rank missions and kill both yourself and your party.”

  There it was again. The ability that lacked numbers. The adventurers guild even had a regulatory prohibition that acknowledged it. Ioha nodded. “I kind of understand. And my experience from this specific zone makes my C-rank assessment valid here but nowhere else?”

  Rede grimaced. “It’s not that easy, but it’s close enough. We’ll need to kite E and D rank encounters to you while we give you a bodyguard, so you don’t die when you learn. Worst case, we’ll drag C-rank monsters your way, but normally, we’ll handle C and B ranks.”

  “And A-rank?”

  “One A-rank monster would take the entire raid to kill. I hope we never see one. You do understand why we’re here?”

  Ioha nodded. “We’re seeing all that activity because a lot of monsters cross over here from that other world, and we need to cull their numbers.”

  “That’s one reason. The main one, actually. The other one is that we need to know what’s happening. We want to avoid an uncontrolled B-rank event if at all possible. They’re labelled breakouts, and I guess you can understand why.”

  The air felt colder. “What do you call A-rank events?”

  “Migration.” Rede gave him a hard look. “Kingdoms fall to them. I’ve experienced it once. Verina as well. The kingdom survived, but many good friends didn’t.”

  “And my role here?”

  “I need you to, what did you call it, pull every low ranked monster we encounter so we can concentrate on C-rank and B-rank monsters and not get overwhelmed.”

  Heimdall told him to get more powerful. This was the perfect opportunity. He’d gain a lot of power in a short time. Or he’d die. “I see. When do we start?”

  They set out the next morning. His entire company gave him unhappy stares when he left camp together with the raid. When they reached the old school camp late afternoon, people no longer shot him disparaging jokes. There were two attacks of the same severity as the day before, and he did manage to grab a few kills for himself, but with two full parties centred around him most of the monsters never even made it to his killing zone. It was still enough for him to upgrade his hair dryer to a very hot one.

  The third attack came during night. At around triple the severity compared to the previous, it barely qualified as a breach. Ioha slept when the attack started and spent the last half of it mass taunting and using his two area attacks for self-defence. Three times something that looked like an absurdly large centipede crawled at him at insane speed, but each time a full party of raiders overwhelmed it. It was over almost as soon as it started, and he returned to bed with a much higher respect for well-trained troops.

  Early morning, the camp was busy preparing for the real incursion. A full fifty were to remain together with the entire baggage train. While the main raid made probing inroads, the camp had to be converted into a proper fortification.

  After a filling but boring breakfast, Ioha found himself flanked by Harvali and Derina together with their parties. For an hour or two more, the old road ran along the foothills until it forked. One leg continued west, but the other climbed into the mountains.

  “Guess we’re heading north?” Ioha guessed.

  Harvali nodded. “If you keep going west another day, the zone ends in warlord controlled territory.”

  “Warlord?”

  “Whoever currently controls the domain, or what’s left of it.”

  He forgot. Wergaist and Isekai carved out chunks of the domain when it fell. One with weapons and the other by simply moving in. “And north?”

  “Old trade route to Remerrin. The estimated centre of the zone lies in unclaimed territory.”

  “Along the road?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think there are many who do. We’re following it for two of your hours.”

  Our hours? Ah, he’s from the capital. Guess they don’t use hours there. “What do you call this month, I mean, where you come from?”

  It took Ioha a few seconds to sort out the answer. Second harvest? Well, it’s warmer here. I should have guessed. At least they had twelve months here as well and almost exactly twelve real ones per year as well, with the local calendar alternating between thirty and thirty-one days per month. A fantasy world, but only one moon. Quite dull.

  “And if we find nothing?”

  “We will. Sir Ironsnake almost guaranteed it.”

  As if to honour the greybeard, a whiff of wind rolled down the mountainside, and with it followed a stench disgusting enough to make Ioha gag. “Make ready!” He extended aura to his sight. The entire under-brush came crawling down. “Incoming! Frontline behind left! Frontline behind right! Derina, Harvali, clean my left and right, two metres distance!” Ioha cast his grid of shields, fields and barriers, spun one shield above his head, activated both area attacks and roared. After that, he cast both his punitive taunts and the general mass-taunt. He had to cast the grids diagonally left and right as well. “Cats, kite!”

  “Peel the worms away from him!” came an order from his right.

  Shit, too many! Ioha threw down another grid on top of his first and readied partisan and shield. Here we go.

  When two spiders slammed into his shield, he almost encased himself in hard shields before he remembered he had people waiting to remove anything that stuck to him. A writhing mass of blobs got caught in his trap and Ioha cast four hard shields above them, released the triggers and pushed them to the ground. Then the next wave arrived, and a few got through and ripped open his cheeks before he got a new set of shields up, and Harvali grabbed the blobs.

  Ioha felt self-healing burning aura, but there was no time to regulate the consumption. A new grid, another set of mass taunts and a continuous cycle of trapping and pushing monsters into the ground. His display flashed multiple times in his mind, and when the air around him heated up, he realised where the points had gone.

  Something slithered through his right grid. He recast it. COWARD! The thing came his way.

  “Peel it! Damn it, peel it!” The same commanding voice from his right.

  Shit! It’s big! It only looked like a centipede from a distance. Ioha grabbed his partisan with both hands, turned his left side forward and braced for the impact. Four hard shields front. They collapsed as quickly as they came up, and then something almost ripped the shaft out of his hands. He crouched and dug it into the ground for support. More teeth than he ever wanted to see again chewed on metal, but it was impaled. Arrows lodged in it, and he swore. No hemming it in then, or else he’d block his own archers. After the arrows, a barrage of magic.

  They’ll kill it! You can’t do anything! Keep tanking! Ioha forced the wriggling horror stuck on his spear from his mind and recast all three grids. Swarms of blobs had passed him when he fought the monster, and he cast all four of his mass taunts to be on the safe side.

  Partisan stuck in the monster meant he had no use for it. Ioha drew his broadsword, grabbed his shield-strap and returned to trapping blobs and spiders and forcing them to the ground. His display kept flashing, and by now the air around him was searing hot. I’m an idiot! An extended shield and some flamboyant cat magic later temperatures returned to normal, or rather for him, they did.

  The world went red and white. Air rolled over him from behind into the mushroom of superheated air that rose into the air. The sound clawed at his ears, and Ioha cast his noise cancellation shield over them to free himself from the torture.

  Then silence and stillness. He released his magic ear protection. Still silence. Then cheers.