Chapter 174 – 174 – The Provoked Frog, the Leopard, and the Man

The emergency bell rang, but no one who had already woken up was going back to sleep. Those who were still asleep had not yet stirred.

Everyone had stayed awake through the night. The news that the Gnoll group would return was what had kept them up.

And so, the monsters and beasts returned.

This time, it was different.

The creatures charging from one side of the wasteland were not the same as before. Among them, there were new, strange objects.

Two or three of the monsters carried long, strange objects at their sides.

They were “tools,” long and with holes drilled through the middle.

Unlike before, they didn’t just charge recklessly. This time, there was a bit of order to their advance.

The creatures moved in clusters, and there were dozens of them.

Doichi, remembering his early days as a mercenary, estimated their numbers by using a method taught to him by a former military mercenary. He folded his fingers into a circle, then used that circle to count the number of gnoll creatures, estimating how many of these circles would fit into the total area.

“Twenty…”