The next morning, Mark was awoken to the smell of bacon and eggs. The scent of spiced eggs and baked bread caused Mark to seemingly float out of bed, but in his dreamy stupor, he forgot that he had grown quite a bit. He banged his head on the doorframe once again.
"Damnit", he muttered as he rubbed his forehead while ducking his head to step out into the hallway where the tantalizing smell was coming from. When he made his way into the kitchen, he noticed it was spotless and surprisingly so.
Anabel was drifting from the stove to the table, which had already been set with two plates and a couple of steaming mugs.
"Look who's awake," Anabel said with a cute smile. She grabbed a wooden plate from its setting and heaped it full of eggs, bacon, and what looked like a tender piece of monster meat. Handing it to him, she said, "You'd better eat it before it goes cold."
Mark reached out for the plate, but his eyes were stuck on her. He couldn't help but notice her hair had been done up to work, but it just caused her eyes to sparkle even more than usual. His breath caught, and he had to cough a little to bring his voice back.
"It's so clean in here . . . did we get a maid or something?"
That caused Anabel to chuckle before leaning in to kiss Mark. Mark blinked, obviously caught off guard, but he kissed her back firmly. When they parted, her cheeks were a little flushed.
"I just wanted our first morning together to be nice," she said as she sat down at the table with Mark.
After the meal, they both headed off in their own directions. Mark to the forge, and Anabel to the bakery. They agreed to meet back up at the house for lunch.
Mark had a few items to forge for the villagers, a few repairs, and a couple of new items. He forged them and then reinforced them while just reinforcing the items that needed repair.
'Eventually, these items should stop coming in so often; the reinforcement should hold for quite a while.'
When he was done, he cleaned up the forge and headed home for lunch with his wife.
She was already cooking when he walked through the door, and after cleaning up a bit in the restroom, he came out to find the food ready on the table.
"That was delicious, Anabel. The breakfast was great, but this monster meat stew for lunch was something else. I didn't know you knew how to cook, but I suppose it makes sense with Cecil raising you."
Anabel smiled, "I am glad you liked it, I . . ."
And that is when it started. Like a violent lurch, the mountain shifted, and the bedrock audibly cracked.
Mark shot up to his feet, and Anabel was still reeling from being so rudely interrupted. But she soon found her bearings.
The air itself seemed to shift. Mark felt like the density in the air was increasing or something, like it was pressing down on his shoulders. But it was more of an imaginary pressure, he thought, since he was having no trouble moving to get his hunting gear.
Another crack resounded throughout the village, as another piece of the bedrock split open slightly. The villagers were in a panic, since the bedrock had never done this before, not since the founding of the village.
As the mountain shifted, the ground beneath the villagers' feet shifted, causing many to fall over.
Mark staggered through his house, equipping the gear he was going to need to defend the village.
"It's another Growth, but this one feels different . . ."
Mark was talking to Anabel, who nodded in understanding, using a chair as support, with the color having visibly drained from her face, eyes wide in fear.
"Stay in the house, Anabel. It is reinforced with an alloy designed for the Growth. It will hold up better than the bedrock chasm. If I could bring your family here, I would. But the gates are going to be under attack with such a violent Growth. Use this latch on the door when I leave in case any monsters infiltrate the village. It will hold, even for an Unikuma."
Anabel nodded firmly, still shaken by the sudden earthquake caused by the Growth. Mark pressed a quick kiss to her forehead before grabbing his spear from a rack and running out through the door.
The village was in chaos.
Guards were shouting, trying to herd the villagers toward the chasm. The rest were headed for the gates.
Mark went straight to the East Gate, which tended to see the least action during the last few Growths. Hoping for a quick check-up since it was near his house.
It was already under attack.
'Wargs, too many to count. Likely over three dozen . . . no time to think. Kill'
Mark had some sporadic thoughts that quickly went through his head before he identified the problem with the scene before him. Not only was there a massive amount of Wargs, but the men defending the gates were dying left and right. He had to do something this instant.
He shot from his position, reaching a speed he had never reached before through sheer physical power. His starting position was solid bedrock, so all of his force propelled him up and over the gate in what was essentially a single bound.
Before he had even landed, he grabbed his spear from the end of the shaft with one hand and swung it around like a whip. The effect was devastating for the Wargs. At least six had died before his feet touched the ground, and three or four more were seriously injured.
They had been grouped up, trying to get their fangs around one of the gate guards. This was good for Mark, but bad for the guard.
'Not sure if he will make it.'
Mark didn't get a great look at the guy, but what he had seen was enough to make him doubt the man's survival.
Upon landing, he quickly pushed off the hard earth, which gave way slightly due to the immense force he was moving with. It didn't slow him much, though, as he quickly rammed his spear through the head of a warg before swinging it into another of the beasts.
Before it had crashed into the ground with its fellow on top of it, Mark was already slicing through the skull of the remaining wargs in the area. When passing the downed warg, he simply finished it off before it could get back up.
He tried to make it to one more guard, right at the gate, but when he took the warg's head off that had pinned the gate guard, he found the guard with his weapon in front of him, with the gate behind him. The man died on his feet with his weapon in his hands and his village at his back, defending what he loved.
Mark silently mourned the dead guard as more men poured over the gate to clear out the dead and take up defensive positions.
"Alright, men! Use this time Mark has given us to re-secure our defensive position!"
Alex, the scrawny captain of the east gate, nodded to Mark as he dashed past. Mark was too focused on the task at hand to notice, though. But the man would have it that way rather than keep Mark away from a gate that still needed him.
'God above, let this village make it out of this in one piece . . . this is a Growth like we have never seen . . .' Alex was making a rare silent prayer as he witnessed the bodies of his men being brought back over the gate.
Mark was headed for the North Gate, knowing it would be attacked by the Unikuma.
'No one else on this mountain could fend off the Unikuma. Hopefully they were able to stay behind the gate to protect it with spears and arrows . . .'
He quickly made it to the North Gate and noticed there were no guards on his side of the gate. But there was blood flowing under the gate.
'Not a good sign.'
He could hear Unikuma on the other side of the gate as well as a single person yelling, trying to intimidate the Unikuma.
Upon hopping over the gate, Mark noticed that there was an entire pack of the giant bears in front of it. Standing between them and the gate was Sid. The last guard alive. He was missing an arm with the stump tied up in his shirt in a makeshift tourniquet. With his good arm, he had a lit torch which he was waving wildly at the nearby Unikuma.
The bears seemed wary of the flame, and one of them was standing off to the side with parts of its fur around its eyes burned, while its left eye looked useless.
Sid was screaming his head off, just trying to keep the bears back for one more second. All of his men were at his feet or scattered around the gate. They were in pieces, as if the bears toyed with them as they were slaughtered.
Shortly after landing on the other side of the gate, several things happened at once. Sid noticed Mark, and his look of despair turned into a savage grin of revenge. The Unikuma all looked at Mark, realizing that there was a newcomer. And Mark flung his spear right through the skull of one of the Unikuma before anyone knew what was happening.
Mark and the Unikuma that was now missing a brain both landed at the same time, and all hell broke loose. The good news was that Sid was now being ignored as the bears thought of him as a non-issue.
Before any of them could reach him, Mark shot through their ranks and retrieved his spear, slicing some bear tendons with his alloy knife along the way.
'There are 7 of them, one is dead over there, and one is dead here. Looks like a full pack attacked the gate.'
While moving, Mark was thinking out some logistics, but in the end, he simply killed the giant bears. Several were poked right through the skulls, a couple took a spear to the heart, and one of them even got its throat sliced when it managed to take Mark by surprise after he threw his spear once more.
He was on his own after all, but the bear claws only managed to scrape his new armor.
After finishing off the last and smallest Unikuma, there was a mighty roar from the opposite direction of the gate. When he turned to see what had approached, Mark noticed the Elder Unikuma he had run from all those years ago.
'Looks like I finally get to slay this thing. That pelt is even bigger than the one in the living area of my house . . .'
Mark turned to see Sid slumped against the gate, but the wary captain gave him a big thumbs up as he tried to smile.
Then, Mark turned to the giant beast that was quickly approaching, and he drew his spear into a fighting stance.