He also found that he was able to modify his Raid Group settings to display each of the member's nameplates along with their respective Level along with their Health and Mana bars in a semi-transparent grid along his peripherals. It didn't impede his vision much and it would allow him to keep a closer eye on how the group was doing as a whole and on an individual level.
At 20:30 as defined by the new GST, the perfunctory prompt appeared… With an alarming new addition.
Monster respawns will be halted for the next 30 minutes as the next wave is prepared. Rest and hone your skills, human. The Culling continues at 21:00(GST).
The Culling Totals
Global Death Count: 6,799,463,123
Community Death Count: 101,982
The final wave of The Culling brings with it the first new, permanent residents of Earth - the Dragons. A beautiful and sentient race, the Dragons were promised a new home on Earth. Before they search for a suitable habitat, the mythical reptiles are tasked with lowering the population of humans. Avoid them at all costs.
Garath swore loudly.
“Wow,” gasped Sharon, a cough drop falling from her open mouth. Garath’s neighbor looked seriously impressed. “In all my considerable time on this earth, that was the single most profane string of words I have ever heard, young man.”
Garath didn't respond. He didn't want to explain that it wasn’t the increasing number of deaths he was swearing about. That had more or less stopped affecting him somewhere between alot and four billion. He was swearing because he had spent the last hour learning about the other Classes he was fighting with to strategize for the final wave, when all he really needed to do was tuck his head between his legs and kiss his ass goodbye.
Chapter 21
Apocalypse 3/3
Exhaustion had set in on The Band of the Hawk in the nervous silence between the death toll and final wave. The fighting force was battered and bruised from hours of combat. Even the children were drooping, their previously adrenaline-induced mania petering - everyone was running on empty.
At 21:00GST - the scheduled start time of The Culling’s final wave - nothing happened. For long minutes The Band of the Hawk waited, wary and weary near the doors of the battered stronghold. The chain link fence that had been so useful during the initial waves of The Culling was now nothing but a few metal poles sticking out of the ground at seemingly random angles.
At 21:09GST Garath and the others started growing restless. The ranged fighters and healers came out to join the Necrologist and melee fighters on the asphalt outside, cautiously scanning the burning city. Children pressed their faces against the windows of the old school building, watching and waiting.
The night did not lend itself to observation though. The smell of burning rubber and plastic filled the air. Heavy smoke hung low, limiting visual range. Everything was still until a throaty roar from the south pierced the silence, ripping the battered Raid Group from their sleep deprivation and trauma induced melancholy.
Garath's glowing eyes darted in every direction, frantically seeking out the source of that roar in the smoke filled sky. Scarcely visible - yet somehow still unmistakable - the Necrologist spotted what could only be three Dragons. They were flying parallel to each other from south to north, a few hundred yards between them. The massive winged lizards seemed to be moving at a relatively slow pace, arcing their destructive beams left and right to spread the damage to as much of the surface below as they could.
Directly above the coastline, and making a beeline in their direction, Garath could make out a white Dragon hurling a storm of ivory death from its open mouth. A few hundred yards inland, east of The Band's stronghold, a blood red Dragon spewed large gouts of flame that seemed to spread in wider and wider as they glided toward the land below. East of that still, Garath could just make out a glimpse of an electric blue Dragon and - though he couldn't be sure - even farther to the southeast, he thought he could see a fourth Dragon hurling magic as it made its way north. The Raid leader cursed under his breath as the massive white draconid drew closer. Every member of The Band stared open mouthed and wide eyed at their impending demise.
''Avoid them all all costs' my ass,' he thought bitterly as the school-bus-sized flying reptile got just close enough for Garath to see the area of effect of its torrential attack - a half-mile-wide world of white in its wake. In place of houses where families once lived and parks where children used to play, now lay a white-washed, crystalline forest of jagged ice pillars. Out of context, the scene could have been beautiful - like some fairy tale Christmas in a magical wonderland. Nobody saw that beauty though. Most of the people who used to walk to work or school through these streets would never see the light of another day.
Garath rushed everyone back into the building as death came on white-scaled wings to within 1500 meters. The Dragon continued its attack, sending wicked ice spikes the size of baseball bats to rain murder from the sky as the last members of The Band of the Hawk hurried through the double doors and into the brick school building.
The savage spears of ice shattered on impact when they hit the asphalt outside the building, sending pointed shards hurtling through the air like frigid shrapnel. Garath slammed the glass doors behind them. Just as the handles came together, dozens of the frozen projectiles crashed into the glass, sending spiderweb cracks stretching across the doors.
‘Hail has got to be my least favorite form of precipitation…’
