I quickly made my way through the forest. Tilon and Lytri were still fighting from what I could see. I had no eyes on our other two members or even the last ranger on the other team.
Not necessarily my problem though. I just needed to keep my eyes on the two that I captured and help take out Balthin and Ran.
Keeping my eye on the confrontation happening in the middle of the forest I ran around the outskirts. Once I got fully behind them I would jump in.
In the meantime I started rebuilding my arm, the acid had done a number on the arm. Honestly, I was actually a little surprised that my arm even fully stopped the blade. I was expecting it to just slow it down so I could slip around it.
But this had worked out better. I’m sure there probably would’ve been some complaining about it if the rogue had been able to, but obviously, broken bones made it hard to speak. I double-checked through [One With Nature] just to make sure they were still breathing and fine where they were lying on the ground.
Seeing no changes in the last thirty seconds I split my focus back away from them, leaving the two minds I had on the two bodies in the background.
It was still strange seeing [Parallel Minds] at work. The closest description I could give for it was like if you could actually multitask but give 100% of your attention to both tasks rather than just doing one of them as muscle memory and the other as a conscious effort.
So even if something ended up in the background, it wasn’t actually. For all that it makes sense. It was like I was a hive mind, but I was both the hive brain and the sub-processes. I don’t know. The analogy is starting to fall apart here.
Needless to say, my full attention was on the two bodies I had left and I would know instantly if they were being messed with.
After finishing the repairs on my arm I quickly made myself a new weapon as well. I finished it just in time to make it to where I wanted to be to make my appearance in the fight.
I fired a [Storm Explosion] and jumped into it to [Ride] it to the engagement.
Both Ran and Balthin reacted with the speed and calmness of experienced combatants. They were surprised initially to see the ball come out from behind them, but it didn’t cause them to panic. They quickly moved out of the way of both the ball and Lytri, while staying defensive from Tilon’s blades of winds that he was sending after them.
Once the ball got as close as it was going to I detonated it, it just barely missed Balthin as he was a little slower than Ran at getting out of the way.
I hopped backwards landing next to Lytri.
“What took you so long, elf? we’ve been fighting them for a solid minute.”
Despite her words, Lytri’s tone didn’t hold any bite. Instead, it seemed more like a good-natured jibe than anything else.
I chuckled in response, “Oh you know, I figured I’d take a quick nap after dealing with two of them out in the forest. Maybe took a stroll to see the sights. Looks like you both had everything under control anyway.”
That actually got a noise of surprise from both her and Tilon.
“There were two? I thought it was just Tory!”
“The female ranger, Liz I think her name was, was hiding a little ways away. she waited for you to leave before they both engaged me, they just didn’t expect me to have the kind of range or abilities that I do.”
Tilon snorted but didn’t say anything.
“So what’s the game plan here?” I asked cautiously, as we slowly started to circle each other.
Ran and Balthin both looked like they were discussing something, so I panned my hearing over to them to listen in.
“-ory and Liz failed, fuck. We needed that win.”
Balthin just grunted.
“I guess we should just wait to see what happens with Riker, if he can nab the other two by some stroke of luck we’ll at least be on a level playing field.”
“Right, Alex, Lytri, you’ll go in upfront and engage them in melee. Alex, try to conserve your mana for the time being, we don’t quite know where the last ranger is yet so they may be somewhere nearby waiting for you to start running low or get sufficiently distracted before trying to take you out.”
I tried not to scoff at the idea of being distracted with the skills I had now. It just wasn’t possible.
Something must’ve shown on my face though ‘cause Tilon gave me a raised eyebrow.
“[Parallel Minds],” I explained, “Unless they have a couple dozen people on their team, they can’t distract me.”
Tilon raised his other eyebrow in surprise. Man, these people must be hurting for skills more than I thought. I figured a skill like this would be a hot commodity, and people all over would be striving to get it. And yet it seemed like next to no one had it.
Strange.
“Alright Balthin, we’re just gonna need to hold out here. Play defensively, don’t let them in, I’ll cover your sides to make sure they don’t get around.”
“They’re looking to make a hold out here,” I said, leaking their plans.
“You can hear them from here?” Lytri asked.
“I have localized omniscience through flora. I can basically hear and see anything within around two-thirds of a mile.”
Lytri just grunted approvingly.
“Handy.”
“Indeed.”
I then launched myself forward, spawning a bunch of tendrils out of the ground all around, and had them fire at Balthin and Ran who had just been standing still on their side of the clearing.
Once my spells had made it close enough I boxed them in with [Ramparts] to keep them from moving too far. As expected they tried to dodge into one of them, but it held and stopped all their momentum.
Which then kept them in range when all the balls of lightning exploded.
I kept rushing in though. I could easily see that they hadn’t been stunned by the paralyzing attack. There had to be something at play with vigor and the chance to affect people with various statuses.
It just didn’t make sense otherwise.
I closed the rest of the distance and engaged Balthin, swinging a blade at his thigh. Balthin quickly stepped back and then threw a punch at me, since I was too close for him to use his greatsword.
Ran stepped up to engage me but was quickly intercepted by Lytri who had been hot on my heels the whole way forward.
I danced around Balthin letting loose a flurry of cuts with my dual swords. Each time I connected with his body I left red lines in his skin, but it didn’t go nearly as deep as I would’ve liked.
“Fucking barbarian DR bullshit,” I growled as I continued weaving around him avoiding getting squashed by his overwhelming force of strength.
While I was up close and personal with the nearly seven-foot barbarian, I took a look at what kind of levels he was working with.
[Level 29³]
Huh, a little lower than the rogue. But not that far off, all things considered.
His greatsword came down in an overhead swing, I used both swords to redirect the blow to the side by letting it slide down the length of the blades.
The blow itself was still nearly overwhelmingly and thoroughly numbed my good arm.
Nothing that a small pulse of healing couldn’t fix though.
I started making generous use of activations of [Lightning Strikes], the speed of my blades increased almost imperceptibly, but every little bit helped. And every little bit of lightning magic discharged into the local atmosphere increased the effectiveness of [Lightning Blade’s Guidance].
I kept up the effort of using my tendrils to try and both trip up Balthin and Ran while we fought, making sure to quickly dismiss them afterward so Lytri didn’t trip over them.
Despite how aggressively we fought, Balthin and Ran covered each other perfectly, we never got more than a couple of swipes in here and there before we had to back off while one or the other came forward to push us away before Tilon would then push them back, leaving us in a kind of stalemate.
Every now and again I had to replace a barrier around us as one attack or another would cause it to break, thankfully they were relatively cheap. I was starting to get a good sense of where my limits lay with my new power jump into the third tier.
I quickly rushed in throwing out several attacks at Balthin as he tended to stay in front. As usual, he dodged backward and Ran came forward to engage, this time I didn’t back off. Once he got a couple of feet in between him and Balthin I slapped several barriers down cutting them off from each other.
Four barriers meant that Balthin would have to burn through 40% of my life or spend time running around the barriers which would waste precious time and I could always just shift the barriers to wherever I needed them or place new ones.
With Ran cut off from aid Lytri approached as well and we started to lay into him. He did really well despite that and it was difficult to break through his defenses.
I threw caution to the wind and started using skills with reckless abandon.
Dozens of tendrils sprouted up in the area around us and started firing off various skills or trying to trip him up, the bombardment was so fierce that Lytri had to back off because she couldn’t safely navigate it.
As I got in close and started harassing him with my blades I activated [Lightning Stream], the speed of my blades ratcheted up immediately, and I slowly started overwhelming Ran. He tried to put distance between us but despite his…
[Level 45³ Human]
44-level lead on me, my agility was still enough to keep up with him, especially as bloated as my current stat was.
The fact that I had two swords and could use them with near-perfect skill? Ran didn’t stand a chance. He certainly tried though, our blades slammed together and parted to come to meet at different angles, and dozens of blows were exchanged in just seconds.
His shield was always perfectly positioned to deal with awkwardly angled blows, it didn’t stop me from occasionally sneaking a quick kick in from the other side though while his blade was distracted as well.
More and more my weapons moved, constantly slipping under his guard and scoring hits. I could see the frustration mounting in his eyes, and I could also see the intent behind them. He was planning on making this a war of attrition.
I wasn’t planning on giving him the chance.
I started placing out [Storm Points] as well. I saw Ran’s eyes widen in surprise. I activated two things at the same time, the line of storm points he was currently intersecting causing him to receive a nasty shock and step back, almost involuntarily.
I also activated [Bind], and roots immediately sprang up from where he had stumbled back to, they quickly built up all around his body only for him to tear through them with a not inconsiderable amount of effort.
It was good to know that they were actually pretty sturdy.
Ran gave me an approving look.
“You’re pretty good, a lot stronger than one would think just from looking at you. You seem very unassuming, but you have a lot of experience fighting people don’t you.”
It sounded more like a statement of fact rather than a question being posed, I didn’t really feel like answering it even if it was so I just smiled.
“Well, it is how it is. I was kind of trying not to use this 'cause it’s kind of unfair, but given how this is going it seems like it looks like I might be able to stretch my [Wings] a little.”
Something about the way he said that made me uncomfortable.
“I generally try to just fight with the physical parts of my classes, but it’s nice to always get a chance to do a little bit more on occasion,” He said with a smile.
I lunged forward trying to cut off whatever it was he was about to do.
His sword glowed golden and as it met my wooden blade it both exploded into flames in my hands and was cut through like it was made of butter. Right before the blade would’ve hit my head I activated [Dodge] and managed to thrust my bad arm in the way of the attack.
Thankfully Ran had turned it to the flat of his blade so as not to hurt me, but my wooden arm still burst out into flames, which I quickly disconnected from my body and let burn to ash.
As I was working on growing my own arm back, Ran put some distance between us. He knelt down and planted his shield in front of him with his sword behind it and a dome of translucent gold surrounded him.
And then he began to pray.
***
“Wellin. Where are we?”
“Fatri, if I knew, or cared for that matter, I’d tell you. But asking me six times in the past ten minutes hasn’t changed anything.”
“Maybe if you weren’t fucking high all the time this wouldn’t be a problem!” Fatri retorted angrily.
“Oh please, like you haven’t gotten high before.”
“Not on the job I haven’t, dumbass! Get your crap together, we need to figure out how to at least get back to the rest of the group before we get ourselves into further trouble.”
“Ugh, fine. Whatever, I don’t really care.”
Fatri just scoffed. Not only had they not managed to find any of the three stealth opponents, they’d managed to get themselves lost in the forest somehow. Sure if they just ran in one direction long enough they’d come to one of the edges.
But there was a sort of… unspoken rule that you weren’t allowed to use the edges of the forest grounds to navigate. People tried to stick to the spirit of the agreement on things like this. After all, in a real forest that wouldn’t be something you’d be able to do reasonably.
However, if they couldn’t figure out which direction they were facing they might do that accidentally regardless. The trees were thick everywhere except the clearing in the center where most groups tended to converge their fighting.
Sound didn’t particularly carry well from there, in all honesty, the only thing they had heard since they started their little traipse was a massive lightning storm that was localized over a separate portion of the forest.
They honestly should’ve made their way over there, but at the time it hadn’t seemed like the best idea, now they weren’t sure where to go.
Fatri let out a long sigh as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Lytri and Tilon are gonna give me so much shit for this later.”
I quickly made my way through the forest. Tilon and Lytri were still fighting from what I could see. I had no eyes on our other two members or even the last ranger on the other team.
Not necessarily my problem though. I just needed to keep my eyes on the two that I captured and help take out Balthin and Ran.
Keeping my eye on the confrontation happening in the middle of the forest I ran around the outskirts. Once I got fully behind them I would jump in.
In the meantime I started rebuilding my arm, the acid had done a number on the arm. Honestly, I was actually a little surprised that my arm even fully stopped the blade. I was expecting it to just slow it down so I could slip around it.
But this had worked out better. I’m sure there probably would’ve been some complaining about it if the rogue had been able to, but obviously, broken bones made it hard to speak. I double-checked through [One With Nature] just to make sure they were still breathing and fine where they were lying on the ground.
Seeing no changes in the last thirty seconds I split my focus back away from them, leaving the two minds I had on the two bodies in the background.
It was still strange seeing [Parallel Minds] at work. The closest description I could give for it was like if you could actually multitask but give 100% of your attention to both tasks rather than just doing one of them as muscle memory and the other as a conscious effort.
So even if something ended up in the background, it wasn’t actually. For all that it makes sense. It was like I was a hive mind, but I was both the hive brain and the sub-processes. I don’t know. The analogy is starting to fall apart here.
Needless to say, my full attention was on the two bodies I had left and I would know instantly if they were being messed with.
After finishing the repairs on my arm I quickly made myself a new weapon as well. I finished it just in time to make it to where I wanted to be to make my appearance in the fight.
I fired a [Storm Explosion] and jumped into it to [Ride] it to the engagement.
Both Ran and Balthin reacted with the speed and calmness of experienced combatants. They were surprised initially to see the ball come out from behind them, but it didn’t cause them to panic. They quickly moved out of the way of both the ball and Lytri, while staying defensive from Tilon’s blades of winds that he was sending after them.
Once the ball got as close as it was going to I detonated it, it just barely missed Balthin as he was a little slower than Ran at getting out of the way.
I hopped backwards landing next to Lytri.
“What took you so long, elf? we’ve been fighting them for a solid minute.”
Despite her words, Lytri’s tone didn’t hold any bite. Instead, it seemed more like a good-natured jibe than anything else.
I chuckled in response, “Oh you know, I figured I’d take a quick nap after dealing with two of them out in the forest. Maybe took a stroll to see the sights. Looks like you both had everything under control anyway.”
That actually got a noise of surprise from both her and Tilon.
“There were two? I thought it was just Tory!”
“The female ranger, Liz I think her name was, was hiding a little ways away. she waited for you to leave before they both engaged me, they just didn’t expect me to have the kind of range or abilities that I do.”
Tilon snorted but didn’t say anything.
“So what’s the game plan here?” I asked cautiously, as we slowly started to circle each other.
Ran and Balthin both looked like they were discussing something, so I panned my hearing over to them to listen in.
“-ory and Liz failed, fuck. We needed that win.”
Balthin just grunted.
“I guess we should just wait to see what happens with Riker, if he can nab the other two by some stroke of luck we’ll at least be on a level playing field.”
“Right, Alex, Lytri, you’ll go in upfront and engage them in melee. Alex, try to conserve your mana for the time being, we don’t quite know where the last ranger is yet so they may be somewhere nearby waiting for you to start running low or get sufficiently distracted before trying to take you out.”
I tried not to scoff at the idea of being distracted with the skills I had now. It just wasn’t possible.
Something must’ve shown on my face though ‘cause Tilon gave me a raised eyebrow.
“[Parallel Minds],” I explained, “Unless they have a couple dozen people on their team, they can’t distract me.”
Tilon raised his other eyebrow in surprise. Man, these people must be hurting for skills more than I thought. I figured a skill like this would be a hot commodity, and people all over would be striving to get it. And yet it seemed like next to no one had it.
Strange.
“Alright Balthin, we’re just gonna need to hold out here. Play defensively, don’t let them in, I’ll cover your sides to make sure they don’t get around.”
“They’re looking to make a hold out here,” I said, leaking their plans.
“You can hear them from here?” Lytri asked.
“I have localized omniscience through flora. I can basically hear and see anything within around two-thirds of a mile.”
Lytri just grunted approvingly.
“Handy.”
“Indeed.”
I then launched myself forward, spawning a bunch of tendrils out of the ground all around, and had them fire at Balthin and Ran who had just been standing still on their side of the clearing.
Once my spells had made it close enough I boxed them in with [Ramparts] to keep them from moving too far. As expected they tried to dodge into one of them, but it held and stopped all their momentum.
Which then kept them in range when all the balls of lightning exploded.
I kept rushing in though. I could easily see that they hadn’t been stunned by the paralyzing attack. There had to be something at play with vigor and the chance to affect people with various statuses.
It just didn’t make sense otherwise.
I closed the rest of the distance and engaged Balthin, swinging a blade at his thigh. Balthin quickly stepped back and then threw a punch at me, since I was too close for him to use his greatsword.
Ran stepped up to engage me but was quickly intercepted by Lytri who had been hot on my heels the whole way forward.
I danced around Balthin letting loose a flurry of cuts with my dual swords. Each time I connected with his body I left red lines in his skin, but it didn’t go nearly as deep as I would’ve liked.
“Fucking barbarian DR bullshit,” I growled as I continued weaving around him avoiding getting squashed by his overwhelming force of strength.
While I was up close and personal with the nearly seven-foot barbarian, I took a look at what kind of levels he was working with.
[Level 29³]
Huh, a little lower than the rogue. But not that far off, all things considered.
His greatsword came down in an overhead swing, I used both swords to redirect the blow to the side by letting it slide down the length of the blades.
The blow itself was still nearly overwhelmingly and thoroughly numbed my good arm.
Nothing that a small pulse of healing couldn’t fix though.
I started making generous use of activations of [Lightning Strikes], the speed of my blades increased almost imperceptibly, but every little bit helped. And every little bit of lightning magic discharged into the local atmosphere increased the effectiveness of [Lightning Blade’s Guidance].
I kept up the effort of using my tendrils to try and both trip up Balthin and Ran while we fought, making sure to quickly dismiss them afterward so Lytri didn’t trip over them.
Despite how aggressively we fought, Balthin and Ran covered each other perfectly, we never got more than a couple of swipes in here and there before we had to back off while one or the other came forward to push us away before Tilon would then push them back, leaving us in a kind of stalemate.
Every now and again I had to replace a barrier around us as one attack or another would cause it to break, thankfully they were relatively cheap. I was starting to get a good sense of where my limits lay with my new power jump into the third tier.
I quickly rushed in throwing out several attacks at Balthin as he tended to stay in front. As usual, he dodged backward and Ran came forward to engage, this time I didn’t back off. Once he got a couple of feet in between him and Balthin I slapped several barriers down cutting them off from each other.
Four barriers meant that Balthin would have to burn through 40% of my life or spend time running around the barriers which would waste precious time and I could always just shift the barriers to wherever I needed them or place new ones.
With Ran cut off from aid Lytri approached as well and we started to lay into him. He did really well despite that and it was difficult to break through his defenses.
I threw caution to the wind and started using skills with reckless abandon.
Dozens of tendrils sprouted up in the area around us and started firing off various skills or trying to trip him up, the bombardment was so fierce that Lytri had to back off because she couldn’t safely navigate it.
As I got in close and started harassing him with my blades I activated [Lightning Stream], the speed of my blades ratcheted up immediately, and I slowly started overwhelming Ran. He tried to put distance between us but despite his…
[Level 45³ Human]
44-level lead on me, my agility was still enough to keep up with him, especially as bloated as my current stat was.
The fact that I had two swords and could use them with near-perfect skill? Ran didn’t stand a chance. He certainly tried though, our blades slammed together and parted to come to meet at different angles, and dozens of blows were exchanged in just seconds.
His shield was always perfectly positioned to deal with awkwardly angled blows, it didn’t stop me from occasionally sneaking a quick kick in from the other side though while his blade was distracted as well.
More and more my weapons moved, constantly slipping under his guard and scoring hits. I could see the frustration mounting in his eyes, and I could also see the intent behind them. He was planning on making this a war of attrition.
I wasn’t planning on giving him the chance.
I started placing out [Storm Points] as well. I saw Ran’s eyes widen in surprise. I activated two things at the same time, the line of storm points he was currently intersecting causing him to receive a nasty shock and step back, almost involuntarily.
I also activated [Bind], and roots immediately sprang up from where he had stumbled back to, they quickly built up all around his body only for him to tear through them with a not inconsiderable amount of effort.
It was good to know that they were actually pretty sturdy.
Ran gave me an approving look.
“You’re pretty good, a lot stronger than one would think just from looking at you. You seem very unassuming, but you have a lot of experience fighting people don’t you.”
It sounded more like a statement of fact rather than a question being posed, I didn’t really feel like answering it even if it was so I just smiled.
“Well, it is how it is. I was kind of trying not to use this 'cause it’s kind of unfair, but given how this is going it seems like it looks like I might be able to stretch my [Wings] a little.”
Something about the way he said that made me uncomfortable.
“I generally try to just fight with the physical parts of my classes, but it’s nice to always get a chance to do a little bit more on occasion,” He said with a smile.
I lunged forward trying to cut off whatever it was he was about to do.
His sword glowed golden and as it met my wooden blade it both exploded into flames in my hands and was cut through like it was made of butter. Right before the blade would’ve hit my head I activated [Dodge] and managed to thrust my bad arm in the way of the attack.
Thankfully Ran had turned it to the flat of his blade so as not to hurt me, but my wooden arm still burst out into flames, which I quickly disconnected from my body and let burn to ash.
As I was working on growing my own arm back, Ran put some distance between us. He knelt down and planted his shield in front of him with his sword behind it and a dome of translucent gold surrounded him.
And then he began to pray.
***
“Wellin. Where are we?”
“Fatri, if I knew, or cared for that matter, I’d tell you. But asking me six times in the past ten minutes hasn’t changed anything.”
“Maybe if you weren’t fucking high all the time this wouldn’t be a problem!” Fatri retorted angrily.
“Oh please, like you haven’t gotten high before.”
“Not on the job I haven’t, dumbass! Get your crap together, we need to figure out how to at least get back to the rest of the group before we get ourselves into further trouble.”
“Ugh, fine. Whatever, I don’t really care.”
Fatri just scoffed. Not only had they not managed to find any of the three stealth opponents, they’d managed to get themselves lost in the forest somehow. Sure if they just ran in one direction long enough they’d come to one of the edges.
But there was a sort of… unspoken rule that you weren’t allowed to use the edges of the forest grounds to navigate. People tried to stick to the spirit of the agreement on things like this. After all, in a real forest that wouldn’t be something you’d be able to do reasonably.
However, if they couldn’t figure out which direction they were facing they might do that accidentally regardless. The trees were thick everywhere except the clearing in the center where most groups tended to converge their fighting.
Sound didn’t particularly carry well from there, in all honesty, the only thing they had heard since they started their little traipse was a massive lightning storm that was localized over a separate portion of the forest.
They honestly should’ve made their way over there, but at the time it hadn’t seemed like the best idea, now they weren’t sure where to go.
Fatri let out a long sigh as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Lytri and Tilon are gonna give me so much shit for this later.”
