When William and the others returned to the surface, they found the sky was pitch black.
Which was strange – William could see the sun rising to the east. However, there appeared to be a large, round shape blocking it.
"Is that... a solar eclipse?" Meg said.
"I sense the moon has been moved," Zop'a said.
William looked to him. Unlike in real life, the sun and moon were always on opposite sides of each other, the sun only being visible at day, and the moon at night. The fact that they were now both appearing at the same time was unsettling. He wondered if it was the Cultists' doing somehow.
Or... Cthulhu?
His thoughts were interrupted by a series of growls and roars, unlike anything he'd heard.
That was when a shadowy form leapt from one of the houses' roofs and grabbed onto Meg. It looked like a demented human girl with a mess of black hair and a ragged white dress. Meg cried out and shot her Inferno Fork at point-blank range. It incinerated the creature while leaving Meg unharmed – the Inferno Fork's explosions didn't harm its user – but she came out of the attack shaken.
"We're being attacked by supernatural creatures!" Nissa the Dryad shouted, stepping out of her house and casting her green aura around her.
"We noticed," Sid said just as two spikey metal spheres flew out of the darkness and slashed at his Hallowed Armour. He sent his Twins summons to chase after them, but was then jumped by a humanoid thing that looked to be made completely out of green slime.
William ran forward but a man wearing a white mask and holding a bloodied knife suddenly appeared in front of him. A Psycho. It landed one blow on him, dealing massive damage, but he lashed out in return with his Starlight, quickly obliterating it.
He heard the sound of a Pylon being used, and saw Jeff the Guide had appeared.
"Every village is being attacked!" he shouted. "The citizens are all congregating to the Forest Village since it is the most fortified, and so you can all defend them from there."
"Okay, good to know," William said. "Let's go!"
They all ran towards the Jungle Pylon and quickly teleported over to the Forest Village. William's first move was to fly up onto one of the walls to look out at the surrounding area. However, a red-and-white bat flew out of the darkness and morphed into a darkly-dressed human with pale white skin – a Vampire. More Starlight swipes were quick to dispatch it, but more Vampires began flying down from the sky, accompanied by some of those spiked Deadly Spheres.
Sid jumped up next to him. "What I wouldn't do for a stake right now," he said. "Or a weapon that shoots them."
He snapped out his whip at the Spheres. One of them dropped a dark metal staff upon being destroyed, which Sid picked up.
"Deadly Sphere Staff! Even better!" He replaced his Twins summons with a collection of Deadly Spheres. The ones he summoned looked different to the enemy Deadly Spheres, being covered with red and blue lights, but flew with deadly precision, tearing through the ranks of their counterparts and then into the Vampires.
William glanced back out at the forest outside, which was so dark he could barely make out the closest tree, just as a Swamp Thing oozed up onto the top of the wall.
"They're climbing the wall!" he shouted. He stabbed at the Swamp Thing with his Starlight, knocking it off, but more enemies got up. Frankenstein, Creatures from the Deep, a pig-masked Butcher with a chainsaw.
He and Sid kept on fighting them off. It looked like they were keeping them at bay, until William glanced into the village and saw more enemies were climbing over other sections of the wall and swarming into the village.
Sid must've noticed them too, as he said, "I'll take those ones out!"
He got out his Rocket Launcher, aimed, and fired. His aim did not need to be true with explosions of that size.
There was just one problem. He was running out of rockets – he'd used a lot of them in the Dungeon and most of what was left against Golem.
The Cyborg must be somewhere in the village, right? Let's quickly pay him a visit.
He dropped down and ran down the village's streets, glancing in the windows for the Cyborg. He used his Morning Star against any enemy he saw and sent his summons after them. There were some wraith-like enemies holding dark scythes named Reapers, some men in lab coats but mutated with a fly's head named Dr. Man Fly, and then an enemy named Nailhead whose head, surprisingly, had loads of nails sticking out of it that kept being shot out in all directions. Sid kept at a distance and shot it with his Rocket Launcher while his Deadly Sphere summons damaged it, but it had a considerably large amount of health. By the time it was down, Sid had fired his last rocket.
At that same moment he spotted the Cyborg down the street, standing in the town square and blasting Fritzes with his rockets.
"I need rockets!" Sid shouted once he got close enough.
"My combat efficiency has been critically reduced because a nail impacted my locomotive actuator," the Cyborg said.
Sid wasted no time opening his inventory. He was selling Rocket I's and III's as usual, but also had Rocket IV's up for grabs. He was in a hurry, so immediately bought as many Rocket IV's as he could. He was going to need as much explosive power as he could get if he was going to take out all the enemies.
***
William was doing his best, but he kept on being assaulted by Vampires and Deadly Spheres. They were extremely difficult to see due to being small targets in the darkness, and were thus even difficult to hit, unless they got close enough for them to strike. His Starlight and Paladin's Hammer could only do so much when they were coming at him from all directions.
He cried out, then took to the skies. He reached for his True Night's Edge, his longest-ranged weapon, and began swinging glowing swords at the Vampires and Deadly Spheres as they pursued him, but there were too many.
He reached for another weapon in his inventory, one that he hadn't tried yet. The Possessed Hatchet – he'd only glanced at it briefly after it had dropped from Golem. He threw it, and watched as it curved through the air and slammed into a Deadly Sphere, striking it out of the sky, before the hatchet returned to him.
He then found he could throw many of them in succession even if they hadn't returned to him yet, and that they homed in. And the best part – because of the Fire Gauntlet accessory he had crafted, it also set the enemies he struck on fire, allowing William to finally see his attackers in the eclipsed sky.
He landed down on the wall to refresh his wings, right as an enormous orange creature slammed into him from the side.
It was a massive, monstrous moth. Its orange and brown wings hummed, its beady blue eyes locked onto William as it turned to him, and its mandibled mouth twitched in anticipation of its next meal.
William.
The moth made another charge, but he was ready for it. He threw Possessed Hatchet after Possessed Hatchet at it, dealing constant damage to it, but it had a lot of life.
The moth then landed on the red stucco roof of a nearby house and seemed to lay a large egg that quickly hatched into a baby moth. William stabbed out at it with his Starlight as the baby flew at him, quickly squashing it like the bug it was, then he got hit again by a charge from Big Mother Moth.
He drank a Greater Healing Potion, then kept on throwing his Possessed Hatchet at it. Its life was soon exhausted, causing it to burst apart into bug parts, and William caught a glimpse of a sword dropping from its body.
He flew towards it and managed to catch it in his inventory.
It was a Broken Hero Sword. It did not seem to be usable as a weapon – likely because it was broken. It just said it was a material.
He made a mental note to ask the Guide about it later, and flew back down to rejoin the fight.
He found Meg using her Magnet Sphere and Shadowbeam Staff to decimate entire lines of enemies. Her Spectre Armour made it so that when she damaged an enemy, a white spectral orb would pop out that would either rush to damage another enemy or fly to Meg to heal her, depending on whether or not she wore the Spectre Hood or Mask. Right now she had the Mask on, meaning her magic weapons were dealing extra damage.
"I think the sun's getting close to setting," Meg said. "Hopefully the solar eclipse will be over when that happens and these scary enemies will stop spawning."
"Hopefully."
William saw another orange moth fly into the village, though it looked like Sid was handling it, blasting it with rocket after rocket.
Before too long the sun had set. When that happened, the supernatural creatures all retreated, to be replaced by the regular night-time monsters.
William breathed a sigh of relief and looked to Meg.
"Let's check on Sid and the citizens."
The town looked to be decimated. Many of the houses had walls blown out, and there were craters in the grassy ground. This confused William – the solar eclipse enemies had been strong, but none that he had seen had packed any explosive ability.
He soon spotted Sid standing with some of the citizens, including Durim the Demolitionist. Had Durim gone a bit too crazy with dynamite again? He saw they were all standing around what looked like a toilet plated with reflective green metal.
"Seriously?" Jeff the Guide exclaimed. "That is what you used your Broken Hero Sword for?"
"You took the words right out of the mouth of whatever God wrote the label for the items," Sid said. "Besides, I couldn't resist, okay?"
"Sid?" William called.
"Hey, Will- WATCH OUT THERE'S STILL A PSYCHO THERE!"
The lone remaining solar eclipse enemy, still lurking in wait even after its end, leapt forward at William. He reached for his Starlight, but a rocket blew the Psycho apart.
"Thanks, Sid," William muttered, right as he saw the crater where the Psycho had been.
Then he looked to Sid.
"Um... so you're probably wondering about all the destruction-"
"It was you?!" Meg exclaimed.
"Yeah, but it was an accident," Sid said. "The Cyborg sold me these special rockets! He didn't tell me that they blew up blocks!"
"Well, I thought it was obvious," the Cyborg said from near him.
"Always read the label," Gilbert the Merchant quipped.
Sid looked like he had more to say, but Meg stormed forward and shot him in the crotch with her Shadowbeam Staff.
"Ow! What was that for?"
"Get out! You're always so reckless! What if a citizen had perished because you blew up their house?"
"Ow!" Sid cried again as another shadowbeam hit his knee. "Alright, I'm going! I'm going!"
William stared at them as the incident unfolded, but was not sure what to do about it. Meg was clearly furious beyond belief. He was too – he had worked hard on the houses, and had only recently had to rebuild some of them after the Destroyer had torn through them. Sure, the first time someone had accidentally blown something up he hadn't been too bothered about it since he'd been planning to rebuild anyway.
But this time... it had just been downright dangerous.
Something that's not downright dangerous, which you probably could see coming, is voting!