Wishlist Wizard: The Rise of the Zero Hero [Isekai LitRPG / Now releasing 3x weekly!]

Today's Earth date: October 14, 1991

This has become quite the sidequest. We haven't found the girl yet, but we're certain she wasn't kidnapped by run of the mill bandits. Each time we get close to catching up with them, a wave of skeletons attacks and delays us for at least a day.

We've found a few ceremonial markings, makeshift altars we believe. The current theory is that the bandits are working for a cult of some sort. What would they need a noble daughter for?

Nothing good, probably.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

***

The Underway Forest had a cemetery stillness to it, like a permanent gray pallor dulled the color of everything in sight. No birds sang. No insects chirped. The entire valley had the same illness: a ratman infestation. The monsters killed and ate everything in their path.

For the first hour of their hike along the road to the dig site, Wayne worried the Mayor's intel on the width of the path was too conservative. He could be riding on Outlawson now, for certain.

Right when he convinced himself that they should have brought the wagon, the terrain became rugged and rocky. The road wove between enormous boulders, a sort of constant wobble in the path on his HUD. Their wagon would not have fit through here if it was pulled by a team of horses. Outlawson would have gotten stuck immediately.

Probe picked up red dots, closing from ahead on both sides of the road.

Wayne signalled the party and Blitzed to the top of one of the boulders for a better look. He glanced back to see Armond pointing to positions for each member of the party. Pushing him to lead the Zeroes looked like the right call, Wayne thought. The old medic took to the position with natural confidence.

As expected, the red dots were ratmen, and also as expected, they had no sense for strategy or tactics. They smelled humans and came running. Fergus and Margo lobbed Missiles and arrows at the rats while Hector went out ahead of the party. Not far, but far enough to be a tempting target.

He had his tower shield and shortsword ready and unleashed a warcry. Armond called out enemy positions as he spotted them.

Wayne cast Defense, an ethereal shield appearing in front of each party member. The trees were too dense for Skycat, so Wayne charged Sword of Water to join in thinning out the incoming pack with ranged attacks. When the rats started to close on Hector, Wayne flanked, coming at their side in a series of Blitz blinks.

And seconds later, it was over. The early barrage of attacks at a distance dropped enemy numbers significantly. The moment Wayne cut into them, the encounter turned from a fight to a clean up.

The party was out of breath from the excitement of battle, but no one was injured, and they had plenty of energy left for more. Like a proper RPG party, Wayne thought to himself.

They put down a few more wandering ratmen and soon came upon the dig site.

The palisade surrounding the camp was covered in gouges and scratches. Some from weapons, but most were from rat claws. The air was heavy with rotting flesh. All of the ratmen the camp killed in defense stayed where they had fallen, surrounding the small refuge with dozens of corpses in various states of decay.

It wasn't pretty, but the walls had held. Soon, Wayne's party heard shouting and the gates opened, shutting quickly behind them.

Miss Kryss' willingness to invest in her projects was immediately apparent. Wayne expected a campsite, as in fabric tents and little rocks forming circles around campfires. Instead, he found a hamlet of about a dozen structures, most of which were quarters for soldiers and for excavators, just like the tunnel dig near Teagaisg but larger. One structure was a cafeteria. One was devoted to research. Another was a war room where the leaders from the dig and the leader of the soldiers coordinated their efforts.

Under normal circumstances, the camp would be bustling, but all work and research was at a standstill with ratmen owning the ruins.

The soldiers who let Wayne's party inside had dark rings under their eyes. Their gear was covered in grime, and their movements were heavy and lethargic. These men signed up to chase off the occasional wild monsters, but what they got was more akin to an active warzone, a neverending siege of their tiny little fort.

Wayne and Fergus followed a soldier to the war room while the rest of their party were escorted to empty dorm beds that would be their quarters for the duration of their stay.

The war room Wayne pictured had dramatic lighting with shadowy figures surrounding a long, oval table, a mysterious overlord joining remotely, their head on a giant looming television screen. The war room he saw was a storage building, all of the shovels and bags of beans pushed against the walls to barely fit a table in the middle of the floor.

The captain of the soldiers was retired military by the looks of it, perhaps early 40s by Wayne's estimation. That made Wayne realize that "mercenary" was a more appropriate term for the men Kryss hired, but even the captain described his men as soldiers. Once a soldier, always a soldier.

The leader of the dig was a young woman wearing glasses and a dark red headwrap. She looked like a college student from his world, but despite her age, she was neither timid nor unsure of herself. She said her name was Penelope.

Fergus looked at Wayne. The old scholar clearly wanted to comment about this woman sharing a name with their test chicken, but Wayne refused to look back. Breaking into childish laughter was not the way to make a good impression, so he summoned all his strength to ignore his friend.

"There's five of you? That's all?" she asked. The captain seemed similarly disappointed by the reinforcements, but didn't voice it.

Wayne nodded. "I'm sure you hoped for a small army, but we're here to help. I have to ask after the Governor's son first. He's worried."

Penelope and the captain both frowned. "He got dragged into the ruins during the first wave."

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Ah." Wayne knew that meant the boy was almost certainly dead. "Alright. Tell us more about what you're facing."

Referencing the map, Penelope explained that the ruins themselves were forty yards out the back of camp. They used to have a second gate there, but when it became clear they would need to replace gates more often than palisade, they closed that one off. They didn't have the manpower or the resources to keep two sets of gates in proper condition.

The entrance to the ruins themselves was about the size of Cuan's main gate, an imposing stone door decorated with dwarven reliefs. The explorers opened it, poked their heads in, and out came the rats. They knew that there was a large receiving chamber beyond the door, but they knew nothing else. Several workers perished in the sudden surge, and their bodies were never recovered. The soldiers didn't have enough men to attack the ruins and protect the camp at the same time, so they hadn't even seen the entrance since that day.

Wayne asked what their research said about the ruins themselves.

"We believe it's a settlement built by the first dwarves, but that's not confirmed. We worked out this location from two footnotes, essentially. Just finding the door was a minor miracle."

"If you had to guess, how many rats are there inside?"

"They attack the camp in groups of twenty to thirty," the captain said. "That would put a hundred or so in the nest, at least. If they're coming out in those numbers, the nest is out of space, so the overflow gets pushed out to dig their own burrows."

"What do you think?" Fergus asked Wayne, who stared at the map, studying the layout.

"I'd like to put eyes on the entrance today," Wayne replied. "I doubt that will mean going in. I want a little bit more intel on what we're up against." After thinking for a bit longer, he continued, saying, "Get the others. Let them know we have another fight in about an hour. You, me, and Margo will be on the walls. Armond and Hector will be on standby to defend the camp."

Fergus nodded and left the war room.

"We appreciate the help and all," the captain began, "and I mean no offense, but your party is… umm…"

"Old? Untraditional?"

"Yes."

"We can hold our own. Our information gathering attack will start in about an hour, but before that, I need to explain a sort of 'pet' we have. His name is Outlawson."

***

Wayne stood with Fergus and Margo at the top of the back watchtower, the one closest to the ruins. They had orders to attack ratmen on sight. A soldier was with them, but he had orders to preserve his arrows for emergencies, making him more of an observer in this particular plan. Currently, no ratmen were in view, but that would change when Wayne knocked on their door and ran back to camp.

Armond and Hector stood on the ramparts below, watching the same area as their rogue and their wizard above, ready to attack anything attempting to climb the palisades.

The soldier in the watchtower yelped when Wayne jumped over the edge. Seeing someone fling themselves off a three story building could be startling, Wayne realized in retrospect.

He hit Brake as the ground rushed toward him, and he jogged down the path to the ruins.

The excavators cleared a small area around the entrance to the ruins, making space for supplies and giving themselves room to manage all the dirt and stone they removed. Probe told Wayne there were fifteen ratmen outside. Wayne hid behind a fallen log, hoping he was downwind of their noses, and confirmed the count. Seven of them were in a mass together, sleeping on top of one another like normal rats are known to do.

The others sat around camp. A few slept where they sat, and three huddled around a small campfire using bones to pick at their long fangs.

Skycat swooped in, pelting the sleeping rats with Missiles. Wayne couldn't confirm how many he killed with that first pass as the rest of the camp jumped to their feet, screeching and chittering. He brought Skycat back around. Three ratmen lost their heads in that strafing run, but a spear flew out of the chaos and pierced Skycat. The plane twirled to the ground and exploded.

Nee. Nee. Nee. Nee.

The deluge of ratmen emerging from the nest paused as shrubbery appeared in the entrance of the ruins. It wouldn't last long, Wayne knew, but he wanted to maximize confusion while culling as many as he could.

He Blitzed out of his hiding place, using Sword of Water to crack ratmen in the face with giant balls of ice. When two dozen charged his position, he dashed in with Blitz, sliced up three or four, then tapped Easy Out to create distance again. He repeated that tactic until the red dots on his HUD looked like a storm cloud on a weather radar.

He ran back toward camp, aware that the mass of monsters was giving chase.

When the watchtower came into view, Wayne yelled to warn them of the approach, but that wasn't really necessary. The mob of hissing rats behind him was easy to see and hear as they crashed through the forest.

Wayne stopped a few feet short of the wall and turned to face the horde. Arrows and fireballs rained down from the tower, and Wayne added Missile and Sword of Water to the volley. A dozen ratmen fell in the span of a deep sigh, but their bodies quickly disappeared beneath more ratmen running forward.

Looking up, Wayne adjusted his position a few steps, putting himself at the center of a gap in the forest canopy.

The ratmen closed quickly, beginning to surround the Zero Hero.

Insect Flute.

As soon as the melody finished, Wayne used Blitz to launch himself over the wall. He ran under the watchtower and tapped Rise twice to appear next to Fergus, Margo, and a very confused soldier.

He made it on top in time to see Outlawson drop from the sky and splat several ratmen. The soldier in the tower stumbled backward at the scene while Armond and Hector cheered.

Arrows and spells continued to rain down from the tower, and Wayne smiled when he saw the rats scrambling to get away from Outlawson. The giant insect didn't move or attack–and Wayne wasn't entirely sure the bug was technically "alive" in biological terms–but its appearance and size was enough to make several rats flee the battle outright.

When more ratmen fled rather than charge, Wayne went back to the ground to run down as many as he could. He chased the monsters halfway back to their nest before he spun and returned to camp.

Outlawson sat where Wayne left him. One ratman under the bug seemed to still be alive. It struggled to push the bug off its crushed legs, which was futile. Wayne poked it in the head with his sword and went back over the wall.

He called for Fergus and Margo to join him on the ground when it was clear they had no more targets to strike. The wide-eyed captain followed Armond and Hector down a rampart ladder and stayed close when they formed a circle around Wayne.

"Good work, everyone. Clean up, eat some food, and get some rest. We'll have a better idea tomorrow of how much of a dent we put in their numbers. If it was significant, they should be reluctant to engage. If they can attack with the same volume again, we'll need to restrategize."

Fergus whispered in Wayne's ear that he went up a level. When Wayne looked at the faces of the rest of the party, he saw level-up grins on their faces as well. They could talk about that later, though. He dismissed the party for the rest of the evening.

The captain stayed behind. "Where did you say Miss Kryss found you?"

"Met her in Teagaisg."

The captain nodded. "I've been in my share of trenches and would say I'm well-traveled. How have I never heard of your group before?"

"We're new to this."

"New?! The old man seemed outright gleeful with those spells. You're telling me he wasn't military?"

Wayne said that Fergus was a scholar, as was he.

"I've never seen rats go down that fast, even with a proper number of archers on hand. You're doing this again tomorrow?"

"I'm hoping we go into the ruins tomorrow, but we'll see. In the meantime, please ask your men not to bother Outlawson. If he disappears overnight or the ratmen lose their fear of him, I'd like to have that report first thing."

The captain nodded. Wayne thanked him and ventured toward the dorm buildings to rejoin his party.