The Rising of the Fisticuffs Hero

Chapter 8: The First Wave of Catastrophe (Part 2)

The golden light faded, revealing a semi-familiar landscape. There was a town far to the north-east, but it was too far away for Cadver to make it out. He was about to ask Raphtalia if she could tell, since her raccoon-like senses allowed her to see, hear and smell much better then anyone else he knew. However, he was distracted by the three other Cardinal heroes running up the road, seemingly knowing exactly where to go.

"Those guys..." Naofumi snarled, his shield morphing into a smaller sliver one. He turned to follow, but Raphtalia pointed to the town in the distance.
"Look! It's the village of Lute!" Cadver remembered that little town, they had farmed in the area around it a lot after the black dog was killed. Had the villagers managed to evacuate in time?

A single flair rose out from the centre of the village. So they hadn't been evacuated in time. Naofumi grit his teeth for a moment, before turning away from where the flair had been shot.
"We're going... to Lute village."
"Right!"
"Ok!"

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There were zombies and wasps everywhere, easily overrunning the few village guards. The monsters either flew around overhead, or slowly stumbled their way towards the villagers, who were trying to escape the collapsing and burning buildings around them.

One man had fallen over, and he turned to face a zombie, which brought its sword up to cut into the villager. It's sword descended, then was parried by a silver shield, which was carried by a green cloaked man. He yelled out a name and a raccoon girl jumped in, using her sword to easily slice the zombie in half. Two giant wasps flew at her back, but they were punched, one after another, and sent flying into a nearby burning building by a man in a silver cloak which covered his entire body.

"Sir, are you alright?" Raphtalia asked, helping the poor man to his feet.
"It isn't safe here, take him and the rest of the townsfolk and get them out of here. Cad, look around and inside the collapsed buildings, make sure nobody was trapped within. He found a couple of people, but most of them had died from their injuries. He grabbed the one person that was alive and almost dragged the girl away from her father, who's head had been cracked open by a falling beam of wood.

He took the girl up past the woods and to the group of villagers that Raphtalia had led to the hilltop. He handed the girl off to another villager, then ran back towards the burning village.

As he ran past one of the thickest parts of the wood, his eye caught sight of something as he ran past. There was one Demi-human, finely dressed with an ornate bow over her shoulder and another animal-human thing in the woods. He locked eyes briefly with the bow holder, then kept going. Naofumi couldn't fight monsters effectively on his own, so he had to reach the battleground as soon as possible to assist him. He'd find out about those two later, once the battle was over.

Once he was back at the town centre, things seemed worse than he thought. A full horde of zombies were stumbling after Naofumi, who was dashing towards the bell tower, blocking multiple stingers from wasps as he made his way towards the wooden structure.

Then, a group of adventures started yelling, they were surrounded by multiple zombies and wasps. Cadverus sighed. If you aren't strong enough to fight properly, then don't get in the way on the battlefield.

"Crazy Rush!" He activated the skill, and like a cannon ball skimming across the sea, he zipped past the monsters surrounding the adventures, alternating left and right punches. The first three monsters only took a large amount of damage, but each monster after that was instantly destroyed as the combo racked up. After the 32 kill, he finally missed one, and came to a halt, unable to move. The original three monsters he hit, all zombies, and the five remaining creatures, 2 wasps and 3 more zombies, now moved in for the kill. It was only because of the adventurers that he survived, then charging in to finish off the monster now they weren't surrounded.