Extra's Survival: Raising SSS-Rank Characters Is My Only Option

The eleventh Far Watch party followed the Rackhorn for two days.

The first thing that began to trouble them was that it never stopped.

The Rackhorn did not sleep, it did not eat and it did not even slow down. On the second morning, it walked straight through a stream that was too deep for it. When it came out on the other side, its legs were shaking from exhaustion but it still kept moving.

And soon, they began to encounter other creatures.

That was the second thing that disturbed them.

By noon, there were already four different roamers in sight, all following the same path and moving through the trees as calmly as people walking toward a market.

By that evening, there were more roamers than their fingers could count.

A pack of Reevers came from the west and joined the same line without attacking anything. They even passed within thirty feet of a Rackhorn calf without showing the slightest interest in it.

Sena had stopped counting the animals aloud.

But Corr did not stop counting.

He wrote down every creature they encountered in his book, but for the first time in nineteen years, his handwriting had started to become messy.

On the evening of the nineteenth day, they reached the top of a long ridge, where the trees became thinner as they climbed.

Dorn was walking in front when he suddenly dropped flat onto his stomach so quickly that Brey nearly walked into him.

When he looked at Dorn silently questioning - Dorn pointed at the land ahead with his eyes.

At that moment, Brey wished he too would have laid flat on the ground.

Below them, the land opened into a huge basin.

It was roughly two miles across and shaped like a shallow bowl, with a stream running through the bottom.

Corr knew the place, he had been a twice in his long services to the Wall - he remembered the number because the place was simply too hard to forget.

When he had come, this place had been nothing more than an ordinary forest and an extraordinary view.

But now, there was almost nothing left of the forest.

Something had torn the trees down.

And the basin....it was full!

Corr took out his viewing glass because his hands needed something to do, to stop shaking.

He raised it to his eye and forced himself to look carefully.

Then he started counting.

Counting was the only thing keeping his mind from thinking about what he was actually seeing.

He counted the creatures along the nearest edge in groups of ten.

Then he started counting them in hundreds.

Then he stopped.

There were thousands.

There were Reevers lying together in packs.

There were Gorehorns standing in long lines like cattle waiting beside a fence.

There were entire herds of Rackhorns.

And among those herds were roamers that normally hunted and killed Rackhorns.

They were lying beside one another without fighting.

Along the stream, there was a large dark mass of Sumpers gathered around the water.

Talljacks stood completely still in the middle of everything, their heads rising above the other creatures like tall poles.

Not one of them was fighting.

Not one of them was eating.

Every single creature was facing the same erection and that was not even the most frightening part.

Along the edges of the basin, more creatures were still arriving, slowly ut of the trees in long, single-file lines and entered the basin without making any trouble.

”What in the name of Lord Vessa, is this?” Sena whispered as she stared at the basin.

No one had answer for her question.

Whatever it was - it looked like all these roamers were gathering here for something - almost as if they had been instructed to come here, stay still and wait till they received their next command.

”They’re gathering here,” Corr said quietly. ”They come here, gather together, and then... there must be something that they are waiting for.”

He watched more creatures enter the basin.

”This doesn’t seem to be the end of their journey.”

He swallowed.

Corr had heard of something similar before. There was an old phenomenon that happened whenever the World Tree bore fruit. During that time, roamers from across the Great Green Forest would gather around the World Tree and fight each other for the fruit.

But this was different.

Completely different.

First of all, this was not the direction of the World Tree.

More importantly, the roamers never behaved this calmly when the World Tree bore fruit. They would become frenzied, driven mad by the scent of the fruit, and would fight anything that stood in their way.

But here, thousands of roamers were gathered together without fighting, hunting, or even showing signs of aggression.

They were simply waiting.

Corr looked down at the basin again.

Every creature was facing the same direction, as if they were all waiting for something to arrive.

And that was what frightened him most.

This was not a gathering caused by hunger, instinct, or the scent of the World Tree’s fruit.

Something else was bringing them together.

”How far is the Wall from here?”

”Two hundred and six miles,” Dorn answered quietly looking down at the basin.

”How many roamers do you see in that bowl?”

None of his party answered that question because there were more roamers than they could count.

Corr nodded, ”There is no report this party can bring back that is more important than what we just found.”

He looked at the basin one last time.

”We are turning back. We have to reach the Wall as soon as possible.”

Corr turned around and looked at the others.

”That is our top priority. We need to inform the Commander about this. Something huge is happening in the Great Green Forest, and we need to-”

Corr stopped speaking.

One by one, the members of the party had gone completely silent.

All of them were looking upward. Their faces were filled with absolute terror.

Corr immediately noticed that something was wrong.

Then he noticed it before he actually saw it.

The light was disappearing.

It was late afternoon, and the sun was already low behind them and slightly to the left. For the past hour, it had been casting the five of their shadows across the slope, making them long and thin over the fallen leaves.

But now, there were two more shadows.

They came from behind Corr.

They stretched across the ground, sliding over the ridge and spreading across the fallen leaves in front of him.

Corr stopped.

His eyes remained fixed on them.

There were two shadows.

They were long and curved, and each one gradually became narrower until it ended in a sharp point.

’Tusks...?’ Corr thought.

He had seen the tusks of Gorehorns before, and he had even measured some of them himself.

The largest Gorehorn tusk ever brought back to the Wall was nineteen inches long. It was now mounted above the door of the mess hall at the fifth mile.

But these were not tusks like those.

These were enormous.

Beside him, Wick made a small, frightened sound.

Corr’s entire body went stiff as he realized something was wrong, but his mind continued working.

He measured the shadows. Then he measured the distance between them.

’That’s forty feet.’

For a moment, his thoughts stopped and instincts took over.

”RUN!”

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