With the beginning of the second wave, the battle went far more smoothly, the adventurers having adapted to the enormous size of the kaiju, even having developed ways of immobilizing and executing them.

Richard saw some rangers using rope to attack some of them, binding their legs together and causing them to fall before attacking.

Many druids utilized their transformation skills to outmaneuver them, and delivering concise strikes to the neck. For smaller monsters, such a technique would naturally be less effective, but for kaiju meters tall, such a prospect became highly feasible.

This time around, the drop bears were utilized immediately, dropped from the floating castle above.

Richard had to admit it was a smart idea. Most of the kaiju were incapable of flying, and even if they could, the heights they could reach were not high.

As for projectiles, that was also a rare existence amongst the kaiju. Not nonexistent, he still saw a few capable of retching out fireballs or acid, or even just throwing rocks, but the effectiveness was clearly far inferior to the kaiju's own strength, and far from enough to destroy the castle. Something he made note of, as a negative to kaiju. He still had one in the inventory after all. It was worth observing these invading ones to judge the ups and downs of having one.

And to add on to that, the castle paired well with the drop bears, who relied on great heights to leverage their ambushing skills.

Perhaps they were useful in the hollow earth, but on the surface world, such skills decrease in effectiveness, with no appropriate heights to jump from, not for beings whose height could be measured in meters.

The castle hanging in the sky allowed them to leverage the height and drop from above, leveraging their natural adaption to the fullest.

However, it wasn't just the dropbears with their riders which drastically affected the outcome.

A group of Federation soldiers stepped forward, absorbing a solution which was unrecognizable to most. Only the higher ups, those aware of the Federation's full force brought here.

Some watched with curiosity, some with fear, and others with excitement.

Amongst them, Richard noticed Que's wife, returning to full Arachne form.

Sister Alexandria didn't hesitate for a minute, chugging the potion down and then "reverting" back into her wyrm form.

It was clear she wasn't nearly as worried about hiding her true form.

He wasn't so sure on the other hand. It felt... exposed. He felt exposed.

Uncomfortable with the idea of exposing his true self like that.

It was weird, how calm and assured he was in using his true form out in the wild, in front of his friends, yet now he was hesitating to do so.

Richard wasn't prepared to be exposed to the world. Yet he had to be. This was something Richard recognized.

This battle would likely get more difficult, and while relying on sister Alexandria's power was reassuring, it wasn't a guarantee of safety.

When she had no time to protect herself, how could she spare any effort to protect him?

This was just another way of practicing, preparing to survive on his own.

There was another reason. Levelling.

He didn't look at it as much now, with more things to do other than wander the wild, but he never ignored it, a cornerstone of his development.

With evolution, he could boost his own strength greatly and quickly. But that required killing.

And there was only so much you can kill in the wild without attracting negative attention.

Yet now he was offered a wonderful opportunity to let loose and kill.

If anything, people would complain he didn't kill enough!

An opportunity made in heaven for players! If he missed this chance to let loose, practice and grow quickly, he'd be seen as the stupidest player in existence.

That was enough for him to steel himself to exposing himself.

Of course, this was only in his head, only a moment in time.

In reality he made his decision.

Richard acted with some hesitation, before using the potion as well, covering up his undoing of the spell.

Some were surprised to see him acting the same as the federation soldiers and backed away in horror, while others quietly followed suit, doing something similar and popping the same potion. Richard had merely served as the fuse, as countless others soon followed suit.

The transformation was not painful.

Rather, it was quite comfortable.

It felt like he had been cramped this whole time, and as he grew his bones cracked, his ligaments stretched, the feeling akin to when one got up in the morning and stretching, feeling better than ever.

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It was refreshing. Freeing.

Only now did Richard realize how binding his human form was.

Even though the dragonewt form offered more freedom in comparison to the human form, it was ultimately still not his own body.

Not anymore.

Now back in his dragon form, flying over the battlefield, he felt free, unrestricted in any way,

Flying high above, all things seemed like ants and even kaiju seemed small from high above.

It's no wonder dragons are so arrogant.

With a form like this, why would they ever want to remain in human form? Richard himself couldn't find an answer to this question.

Returning his focus onto the battlefield, Richard began crashing from the sky, the Atlas beetle in its armor form.

The speed form didn't help much when fighting against kaiju, who weren't fast in the first place.

In his dragon form alone, he was already more agile than them, so why bother adding more speed?

He'd rather add more armor and barrel dive.

His actions didn't contradict with the other monster soldiers, since he chose a kaiju currently not engaged with one of them.

There were far more kaiju on the field than adventurers or the Australian soldiers could handle.

Choosing to be efficient, he targeted one of the birdlike kaiju, with some semblance to a cockatrice, though it was red and had two heads.

Bird kaiju, especially those who can fly, are famously more delicate than their same level counterparts from other races.

Wyvern versus thunderbird, the wyvern is still substantially more durable than a bird.

Hollow bones and all that. Even though they had evolved beyond the level of mere birds, this fundamental flaw persisted.

So naturally this impact broke some bones.

The two headed kaiju screamed in agony as the multi ton armored dragon barreled into it, instantly breaking its legs.

It attempted to retaliate with a spray of flaming breath, only to wash over the armor to no effect.

Richard's following attack on the other hand, did a bit more damage.

Grabbing one of the wings, he crushed it in the palm of his claws, before emitting sparks of lightning, shocking the poor thing half to death, the air smelling something of burnt rotisserie.

Seeing this, Frodo couldn't help but inadvertently smile.

"He's grown up." Olivia commented with pride, and Frodo nodded, like a pair of proud parents. It was good to see Richard active.

Lysandre looked at him with admiration, seeing the form that her father had once strived to achieve.

And desire.

Desire to become a dragon.

Desire to fly alongside Richard.

Desire to be alongside him.

After doing this, Richard jumped on another, larger kaiju.

This one did not go down so easily, as it was a furry, elephant like kaiju, but its body was an abominable twist of giant sloth and elephant, it's shape a byproduct of an era, being a mighty 30 meters high.

But it was slow, and this, Grant could use.

He commanded Atlas to change forms, trying to use the speed form as a dragon. In this case, for a slow creature, there was no point in comparing defense.

It was inefficient.

Even though he couldn't take down this class 3 kaiju alone, distracting it was already beneficial to the course of the battle.

In fact, for most of the appearing class 3s, the purpose of the monster soldiers wasn't to kill, but to distract or wear down.

In this, Richard was doing excellent.

Only sister Alexandria was doing swell, using her long serpentine form to choke the life out of the unfortunate kaiju before moving on, making no attempt to hide her prowess in serpentine form.

That made sense though, given that she was a lamia for her disguise. Lamias already specialize in such combat, so such an appearance wasn't unusual.

The second wave was going by far more smoothly compared to the second. With the Australians coming in full force.

The Australians, having estimated this would be a minor expedition of kaiju limited to approximately three waves, there was no need to drag out their resources.

Despite their enhanced longevity and reproductive capability, for the Australian federation, people are their most valuable resource, because of their small territory and frequent attacks from kaiju.

With the constant waves people became a scarce and important resource and they acted as such. Be stingy when needed, but do not hesitate to go all out when it could minimize losses.

Because of this they activated the railgun on the floating castle and blasting the head off of the kaiju Richard was fighting, giving him a change to go attack another.

He wasn't special however, as a similar phenomenon occurred across the battlefield, great beams of light showering the battlefield.

Richard dispatched class one and two kaiju with ease, though he struggled to kill class 3 kaiju. They couldn't touch him, but he couldn't kill them. Not easily at least.

The battle had easily tipped in their favor, with the adventurer's now suffering minimal losses as they began to thrive.

Adventurers weren't scared of monsters.

They were scared of the unknown, of being caught off guard.

Dragons can grow up to 50 meters, yet adventurers are still recorded killing them.

The first wave may have been a surprise, but after having already survived one wave, their fear had subsided with the increase in understanding.

It seemed as if everything was going fine.

Deep underground, within the now collapsing tunnels, a group of red haired ruffians were following a gloomy being.

The gloomy being at first glance was a pale and thin man, his body thin and lanky as he overshadowed the large men.

"Must we really do this? It is cowardly to attack like this from the shadows. If our ancestors could see us doing this, they'd spit in our eye and call us bastards." Huffed one of the stubborn men, questioning the man(?) in front. Even though no one else said anything, it was clear that they quietly agreed.

The man did not get mad; on the contrary, he smiled. A genuine smile, yet it seemed crooked and filled with malice in their eyes.

"You seem to have misunderstood something. We're not here to fight the people overhead. Fighting has never been our goal, so this isn't cowardly. We're here to gather the immense vitality of the kaiju, to help lord Thorston resurrect his son.

It just so happens that the adventurers are helping us by harvesting their lives. It's just not enough. To truly get enough vitality to resurrect his son, more is needed than these feeble low-life kaiju.

Something more substantial is needed. Hence why we're expanding this hole.

So I requested the lord's help and he sent you good folk.

Do you understand now?" He asked politely, and the questioning person nodded.

"Good." He said before shoving the man off so fast that no one else could respond.

Looking at the anger and terror on the faces of the others, the unnatural man explained calmly, as if he had done nothing wrong.

"We needed a detonator. An A-rank warrior, when detonated, is more than enough to set off the necessary explosions.

It's only fair. He got to ask his questions and I received my detonator. "

Boom!

"And there it is! Time to go now. We'll be back after all the action is over." He said, waving his hand and teleporting them all out, his magic a nauseating thing, only adding to the warriors hate and distaste for the man, and mourning for their fallen brethren.

A high-pitched screech of surprise echoed throughout the collapsing floor, causing the scrambling men to hold their ears.

The screech turned into a roar, before changing into a deep bellow of hunger and desire.

This roar was like nothing any of these low-level kaiju could produce, a signifier of the appearance of a true kaiju.

The class 10 is occupied by only two beings, meaning that in terms of power, class 5 and above are the true forces of nature, so powerful their roars shake mountains.

And now, a class 5 was approaching this widening hole.

King Crimson had arrived.

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