The day before the kaiju and its shambling legion entered the Ivory Plains was a solemn affair.

  The air was charged with tension as the settlement began its final preparations to defeat an enemy unlike any that had come before—a threat on a scale that would have been unthinkable only a few short months ago.

  Before the disaster, the titanic squid would have obliterated Puppet Town and slaughtered every woman and man who called it home. Now, they just might have a chance, which drove home how much Edge had changed since leaving for the Savage Garden. And he wasn’t the only one.

  His people had undergone a remarkable transformation after the anomaly upended the old order, marking the beginning of their new lives as settlers on the most dangerous world in inhabited space.

  They had dealt with ravenous monsters and unliving beasts. Won a war with an infamous jailbird gang. They had adapted battle by battle and hour by hour—honed by the trials that arrived on their doorstep every day.

  They had conditioned their bodies and trained their minds. Cycled up their cores, ranked up their skills, and learned how to fight with their lives on the line. The town’s elites had ventured into hazardous frontier biomes, defeating deadly creatures and unearthing rare resources along the way.

  The crafters and alchemists had labored around the clock, pushing themselves past their prior limitations to bolster the settlement’s defenses and arm the warriors with gear worthy of their resolve.

  Now it was time to lay their cards on the table and find out if their best was good enough.

  While there was no guarantee the pioneers of Puppet Town were strong enough to prevail, they were ready to give it their all—determined to protect their new home from anything that came their way, no matter how big that invader might be.

  The settlement’s four thousand residents had come together as one, spending every waking minute over the last two weeks doing everything in their power to prepare for this moment. The crafters had distributed packages filled with consumables to every warrior in town, and the alchemists had handed out medicines and potions.

  All that was left was to fight like hell, remember their training, and pray to any gods who happened to be listening.

  For his part, Edge was ready. He had stolen three skills earlier in the day, organized the contents of his vault, maintained his gear, and conducted a strategic review with Rue and the avatars living inside his core. He had received a package from the mayor’s office containing ten mana seeds, since his aura would be instrumental to winning the battle.

  He had replaced one of the skills in his Auxiliary slots, swapping out Sense Fruit for Second Wind—the same skill Jumo used to convert mana into stamina. This would be a prolonged engagement, and he needed to be able to fight for hours without running out of steam. He didn’t have as much Endurance as a pure warrior, and his new power would take care of the problem.

  After completing the last item on his checklist, he spent some quality time with his friends, making his way across the settlement to visit everyone who was important to him. While he was proud of his people, Edge was worried too. Despite their bravery, there was a good chance that for some of them, tonight would be their final sunset.

  As dusk fell, everyone in Puppet Town assembled on the public green, where Dialla and Earl were holding a meeting to discuss tomorrow’s battle. In part to make sure everyone understood the scope of the operation and knew what to do during a range of contingencies, and in part to bolster morale during the tension-charged hours before the big moment arrived.

  Able and Mel had stopped by the lodge and briefed Trapper’s crew, so they already knew what roles they were going to play.

  Trapper and Violet were leading the team that had been tasked to take a bite out of the horde as it crossed the Ivory Plains, making sure the fire they planned to light didn’t spread.

  Jumo and Edge were culling the elite beasts that needed to be eliminated before they reached the settlement and would engage the kaiju later in the battle.

  Everyone else was part of the wall team, where they would wipe out the bulk of the lesser undead and any stage-threes that slipped past the warriors in the field.

  He knew what they were up against from talking with Sakura, but he was curious to learn the full scope of Earl’s plan. He’d picked up bits and pieces over the last two weeks, but this was his chance to learn how they all fit together.

  Only the town’s cored residents would be participating in this engagement, barring a last-ditch defense if the wall was breached. Even still, everyone had turned out to listen to the address, offer their support, and steady their nerves.

  The chatter died down as the sheriff and mayor stepped onto the stage that had been erected along the border of the public green. “Hello,” Earl began. “I know you’ve been working hard ever since we learned about this threat, and at long last, it’s finally time to wipe the horde off the board.

  “Let’s begin with an overview of what we’re up against and then dive into the details of how we plan to overcome this ordeal. I’m sure you already know that we’re facing a titan-class kaiju and roughly one thousand Reanimated beasts. By our best estimate, the stampede is comprised of seven hundred stage-ones, three hundred stage-twos, and eleven stage-threes, which we are calling bosses for reference.

  “That sounds bad, and it is, but there is a silver lining. Undead creatures are dumber and more predictable than living beasts, and for reasons we don’t fully understand, these ones only have access to half of their skills instead of the full collection.

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  “On top of that, some brave hunters who ventured into the Sweltering Green have been assassinating the most dangerous critters over the past few days—the ones that can snipe, fire wide-area attacks, generate supportive auras, and the like. The others are plenty deadly, and we couldn’t eliminate every beast that fits our criteria, but it’s a start.”

  The crowd nodded along with Earl’s words, drawing strength from his presence, which was even more impressive thanks to the stone arm and leg serving in place of the limbs he had lost. Sasha found Edge in the crowd, and she walked over and took his hand as the sheriff continued his announcement.

  “Thanks to the outstanding efforts the town’s crafters have put into upgrading our defenses, we can handle roughly three hundred beasts at the wall without being overwhelmed—more if they arrive in waves, although I’d feel a lot better if we only had to deal with half that number. That means our first objective is to eliminate roughly two-thirds of the horde before it reaches the settlement, including most of the stage-three elites.

  “We’ve implemented several strategies to make that happen, including skirmishers who will meet the stampede en route and whittle it down from range, and the trap field our hunters have worked tirelessly to install.

  “Although it’s riskier than I would like, we’re planning to burn down a wide swath of the grasslands to kill several hundred undead at once. We think we can pull it off without the fire spreading across the biome, but it’s going to be dicey. Regardless of the risk, we don’t have a choice under the circumstances.

  “Moving on, the most dangerous members of the horde are the stage-three bosses. There were twelve of them to begin with, but thanks to some amazing work by our teams in the field, we’ve managed to eliminate one of them already. Eleven is still eleven too many, but it’s a strong step in the right direction, and we hope to take out several more before engaging any of the elite critters directly.”

  Sakura and Momo were standing at the base of the stage—ready to use their powers to provide a visual aid. As the sheriff continued his presentation, both women ignited their cores, and Momo’s magic projected an image of the kaiju and its horde onto a screen that had been wheeled in for that purpose.

  “That being said, there’s a chance that you will find yourself fighting blade to claw against any of them. It’s important to understand what each boss can do, although we’ve only seen a fraction of their skills so far. Four are serving as the kaiju’s elite guard, and it’s vital that we take them down before tackling the big squid pulling their strings.”

  While Earl spoke, the picture panned across each of the stage-three beasts in turn, revealing everything from an albino rat the size of a whale to a colossal badger made of roiling green mist. “Most of them are early or middle stage-three, thank the gods. However, three are at the peak—the giant snake, elephant crab, and this ominous bastard.”

  At this point, the image zoomed in to focus on a jet-black spider the size of a house. The beast exuded an air of lethal brutality, causing the hairs on Edge’s arms to rise and stand on end.

  “I don’t need to tell you that this thing is bad news. We know it’s powerful, but so far, the only skill it has revealed is a passive that accelerates its movement. There’s no question that this creepy crawly can climb over the wall and wreak havoc, so it’s imperative that we eliminate it before it gets a chance—a threat second to only the kaiju itself.”

  “That leaves us with the biggest problem of all, quite literally in this case. The turrets should be able to scorch this supersized pile of calamari, but they aren’t designed to handle stage-four opponents and won’t have time to do much damage before it reaches the walls and destroys them. We have a plan to deal with a breach if the other aspects of this operation go well, but if the horde is still alive when that happens, we won’t survive.

  “We intend to kill the kaiju while it’s crossing the plains—well before it reaches the settlement—but there’s no guarantee that’s going to happen. No matter what, we can’t let it inside, or it will level the town within a matter of minutes.

  “We’ve whipped up a device we think will do some serious damage, although it cost us two weeks’ worth of aether production to get it ready. With any luck, our little surprise will wipe out a few of the kaiju’s guards in the process, making the final fight easier on two separate fronts.

  “Other than Reanimation, we have no idea what skills the big bastard is packing. However, we can make some educated guesses. Almost every kaiju has a range of hard-hitting attacks to battle other titanic predators and a few geared toward dealing with swarms of smaller enemies.

  “The titan is likely to have something on the defensive side of the equation too, which will make it tough to take down with conventional attacks. Given how mobile it is despite its lack of legs, it likely has a movement skill that’s augmenting its agility. One final note. While this thing resembles a squid, it’s an alien life form with no earthly equivalent. It has a skeletal structure, which means we’ll have to break through bone to reach its brain, and its limbs will be difficult to sever.”

  “I’ll end my overview with a final bit of good news. None of these creatures work together in the wild, and their skills aren’t designed to support each other in a synergistic manner. Combined with their limited skillsets, impaired cognition, and compulsion to attack the settlement, they are far more manageable than a stampede comprised of living beasts. We plan to milk that advantage for everything its worth, limiting the casualties we suffer during the battle.

  “That concludes the tactical overview portion of this presentation. I’m going to turn this over to Dialla for the rest of tonight’s address, but I want you to know how fucking proud I am of each and every one of you. We’ve come so far since the anomaly hit us like a sledgehammer to the testicles, and I know deep in my bones that we will emerge from this shitstorm stronger than ever.”

  With that, the image on the screen faded away, and the sheriff handed his microphone to the mayor, radiating calm confidence as Dialla began her speech.

  Edge let her words wash over him without focusing on their meaning. Instead, he listened to the earnest emotion resonating within every syllable—the passion that spread from the extraordinary woman to everyone in the crowd, strengthening their resolve and soothing their fear. Our mayor is an amazing individual. We’re lucky to have her.

  If Earl was Puppet Town’s rock and Sakura was its knife in the dark, Dialla was the settlement’s brains and its beating heart. She was a logistical and administrative genius, and that was only half the story. The empathy she displayed in every interaction merged with her considerable charisma and unwavering dedication to create a leader in every sense of the word.

  He tuned back in when she reached the end of her brief but rousing address.

  “Get a good night’s sleep, eat a hearty breakfast, and meet me here as soon as the sun rises. We’re going to show the horde what happens when you mess with Puppet Town, earn that reward from the System, and obtain the resources we need to survive the trying days ahead. Upgrading the manufactory will be a gamechanger, and I won’t rest until every last one of you has a core burning behind your ribs.”

  That last line elicited an enthusiastic cheer. Obtaining cores for over 3,500 people in a year’s time would have been impossible before acquiring the manufactory, but the confidence in Dialla’s voice convinced everyone that goal was now within their grasp.

  The crowd dispersed with smiles on their faces—ready to face the ordeal to come with clear eyes and steady hearts.