Karif and Penny were the only ones who could understand the signs that George made to us, so Karif translated for us as George gave us the information. He explained everything from the moment he had split from the group and until he got back to the inn.
George had found a demon that had slipped away during all the fighting, so he followed it. What had confused him initially was that there were a lot of demons around in both the village and in the cave. And yet there was no sign of any supplies being moved back and forth between the two locations. That gave him the impression that there was another camp of demons and that camp was the one that was bringing supplies to the cave. Sure enough, following that demon brought him to an encampment that was practically overflowing with demons. Once he caught sight of the camp he instantly turned around and left.
And that brought us to now. We all just kinda sat there in a daze. Another encampment of demons? And according to George, it was at least several hundred of them and they were preparing for something. This wasn’t good, to say the least.
“We need to stop Garrus and Warren. Or at least meet them on the way here. There’s no way that encampment isn’t watching Vinwood. And if the others have started moving by now then they might get ambushed. George, did it look like they were preparing to move out?” Karif asked.
George shook his head in response.
“My thoughts are that if we attack the village that will provoke the larger group of demons into action and that’s not something we accounted for when we made this plan. I really think we should head to Garrus and warn everyone, does anyone disagree?”
Nobody said anything to disagree with him.
“Alright then,” Karif said, “It’s late now so we’ll move early in the morning.”
With Warren there it hadn’t taken much convincing, Garrus thought to himself. It did certainly help to have an investigator from the capital when you were trying to convince the guildmaster and the captain of the guard to do anything. Although the situation was also extremely unusual. It had been several hundred years since a group of demons this size had all congregated in one place.
“Alright you lazy pieces of shit, let’s hurry up and get a move on. The longer we take, the more risk is involved!” The guildmaster yelled.
Everyone redoubled their effort of gathering supplies for the short trek out there. It wasn’t that far away, and it shouldn’t take them very long to deal with the whole situation. But they were going to have to camp out at the location for a few days reestablishing the town. Assumedly the townsfolk were all dead as it was so there wasn’t much to do with the place after they had taken over, but maybe a few were still alive.
There were roughly fifty adventurers and about six times that many guards being led by the commander, Malcolm Neese.
“It was good of you to come bring this to my attention Garrus. Knowing you I figured you would have just dealt with the entire situation on your own even if it ended up being more than you could chew.”
Guildmaster Olivier Stark was the one who spoke to Garrus, bringing him out of his inner thoughts.
Stark was on the smaller side for a male, standing around 5’6”. People had learned very quickly to not mistake his height for weakness, however. Stark was an unparalleled Spellblade, the somewhat unofficial term for someone who fought using magic to supplement their sword-fighting. In Stark’s case, it was more like he was a full-fledged swordsman and archmage combined. It helped that he was a tier-five combatant.
“If I could’ve forced them to face my group in a head-on fight I would have dealt with it alone. But as it stands I wasn’t able to do that and we have already suffered injuries that we couldn’t heal. No casualties, but we risked running some if I had tried to push us further.” Garrus replied.
“Injuries? Are the demons that strong?” Stark asked with a concerned look.
“Yes and no. Penny got captured as we were implementing our plan and one of the others lost his arm saving her from being sacrificed in a ritual. Honestly, if he hadn’t been willing to lose a limb to save her she would have died.”
“Was it George? I doubt it was Karif, good as he is he wouldn’t have the speed necessary. That’s a shame, it’s gonna make it harder on George than it already is for him.” Stark said, shaking his head lightly.
“It wasn’t George actually. The other week we picked up a new member, slowly showing him the ropes. And for someone that has never had to put his life on the line he acted completely without hesitation, if he hadn’t been with us Penny would’ve died and we wouldn’t have been there to save her.”
“A new member? What tier is he?”
Garrus gave Stark a mischievous smile. “He’s tier one.”
Stark frowned, “Quit screwing around Garrus, you’re telling me a tier one did something that you yourself wouldn’t have been able to do?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. It’ll be better if you just meet him in person, you’ll understand when you do. I think you’ll like him.”
Stark just nodded slowly in response before addressing everyone in the guildhall.
“Alright, are we ready? Let’s get out of here. We’ve got a village to cleanse.”
We raced through the forest as fast as we could. We had to slow down just a bit for Karif, as he still lagged a little bit behind me in speed, but not by much. He was still two tiers ahead of me after all.
“Hopefully we should be coming up on the other adventurers from the guild. Assuming Garrus and Warren were able to convince them to move on the demons.” Karif said.
Nobody said anything in response. The mood was tense, George had noticed that the demons had been gearing up for something in their camp. Our assumption was that they were planning on ambushing the adventurers coming from Vinwood.
We heard them before we saw them. It wasn’t ground rumbling, but it was definitely loud enough to hear. After a few more minutes we saw them walking in the distance, roughly three hundred people walking, give or take about fifty.
We eventually came within eyesight of the front of the adventurers and what looked like several platoons of guards from Vinwood. Standing in the front were Garrus and Warren along with what looked like to be the Guildmaster and Captain of the Guard.
“Garrus!” Penny yelled, waving frantically at him. We saw him lift his hand waving back at us but it was clear our urgency wasn’t apparent to him. We picked up the pace to close the distance between us just a little bit quicker.
Eventually, we came to a stop in front of the marching column and they came to a stop as well, as Garrus stepped forward.
“Why did you all come out here? I thought you were going to stay at the village and make sure they didn’t see us as we approached.” He said with a little bit of confusion evident on his face.
“That’s just the thing,” Karif spoke in response, “The village is not the only group out there. George found an encampment hidden in the forest. There was a whole army of demons hiding out there.”
Warren stepped forward as well, “Jalen is this true.”
Jalen just shrugged in response. “I didn’t see it myself, George saw it. But I doubt he has a reason to lie about it.”
“Hell they could already know you guys are here, we didn’t find out about it until about fifteen, maybe thirty minutes ago. They could be monitoring this whole situation right now and amassing a counterforce to come ambush you.” I interjected.
Attention from everyone who could see and hear the conversation came to rest on me as I finished speaking. It was almost borderline unnatural the way everyone turned to look at me.
I frowned slightly as the silence started to become deafening. After a few seconds, I broke the silence.
“What? Never seen an elf before? We’ve got bigger things to deal with right now.”
“No, actually we haven’t. Most people haven’t in fact, and any elf that has ever been spotted has had overly inflated levels the likes of which humans generally don’t reach.”
The man who responded to me was relatively short, he stood at about 5’6”. He had short brown hair and a clean-shaven face that gave him a younger look than his level insinuated.
[Level 122 (T5)]
“Ah guild master, this is the one I mentioned, Alex,” Garrus said, introducing me to the man. “Alex, this is Guildmaster Stark of the adventurers guild.”
I raised an eyebrow at Garrus before I stepped forward and stuck my hand out, “It’s good to meet you, sir.”
I honestly didn’t care to meet the man, but the least I could do was be respectful to someone who was essentially Garrus’ boss.
“I see you deliberately chose not to mention some key details about him.” The guildmaster said, eyeing me up and down. His expression was stern and impassive, belying nothing of his feelings underneath.
After an exaggerated moment of him staring at me, just as I was about to withdraw my hand, he clasped it in his and gave me a firm shake. I nodded my head as he did so.
He then turned back to face whom I assumed to be the captain of the guardsman.
“We’ll need to devise a new plan, Malcolm. If they do have an army sitting out there we can’t just stand by idly as they continue to prepare. And even worse, as they say, they could already know we are here and preparing.”
Malcolm nodded, “Yes, we need to reevaluate the situation. Warren, Garrus let’s meet again, George is your name? You come as well. Everyone else situate yourselves for the time being. Lieutenant set up a perimeter and make sure we have a rotating guard while we discuss.”
The man he turned to saluted him, clapping his fist over his heart before he moved off yelling orders to the nearest guardsmen to him. George walked off following Garrus as they went to discuss plans with the bigwigs, Jalen walked off to join Warren doing the same.
That left just Penny, Karif, and myself. For the first time in a while, I let myself relax and just sat down. For the last few days, it’d been nothing but high-stakes and high-tension fights and situations. I was mentally exhausted from everything that had led up to this moment. Penny and Karif joined me in sitting down and just taking a moment to not be stressed. There would be plenty of time for that when we fight the demons.
“Surprising to see an elf all the way out here. What’s even more surprising is that I thought they were all high-level, but here you are, barely past your first ascension.”
I turned my neck to glance at who was speaking to me. A man wearing a guard uniform.
Now I wasn’t going to say this man looked like he had rude intentions, but after my last run-in with any sort of guards, even if they were demons in disguise, I wasn’t too hopeful. On top of that, this would be a very cliche situation and this world so far seemed to thrive on them for whatever reason.
“Can I help you sir?” I asked him as I stood up
[Level 22 (T2)]
‘Ping’ [Identify] has leveled up 7 > 8
Well, he was more than likely in the range of strength that I could… I stopped my thoughts before I went any further. Why was I already thinking this man was a threat? He quite literally hadn’t even done anything yet. Was I just looking for a reason to be angry at someone? Maybe something I could think about later when I had the time. If I remembered.
I tried to focus back on the man in front of me and realized he was halfway through a sentence.
“-so I was curious to see who it was.” The guardsman finished saying.
I just sort of stared blankly at him trying to piece together what he might’ve said in my mind. I also thought about asking him to repeat himself but then just decided I didn’t really care at all.
“Alright, well listen. I’m not trying to be rude, but I’m exhausted, mentally and physically. So I’m just gonna try and use the time we have right now to rest before we have to go back to fighting demons again that almost killed me.” I said as I plopped myself back down on the ground.
The guard just kind of looked for a while longer before he nodded and walked off.
“You alright Alex?” Penny asked as she sat herself next to me.
“For the most part, it does kind of suck to be missing an arm right now, but other than that I’m as healthy as I can be. I’m just not quite used to all this excitement. Normally around now I’d be hiding myself in my room to avoid any contact with people, I don't really have the luxury to do that here.”
She nodded her head slowly as I finished.
“Well, whenever everything starts going down just make sure to stay close to us. We’ll help keep you safe so you don’t have to over-exert yourself this time. Can’t have you lose your other arm to save me again.” She said with a wink.
I chuckled softly. I closed my eyes while we sat there, just as I was about to doze off a loud voice rolled over the group.
“Alright form up! We’ve made our decision!” It was the guild master that was yelling.
“The guardsmen will handle the group stationed out in the woods along with a small detachment of adventurers. Marty, Kelsi, and Born, your three teams will join them. The rest of us move towards Muldren, we’ll occupy the town clean up as fast as possible, and then move to assist the other group. Any questions?”
Nobody said anything as the guildmaster looked over the crowd.
“Very well then,” He said with a nod. “Let’s kill some demons.”
Karif and Penny were the only ones who could understand the signs that George made to us, so Karif translated for us as George gave us the information. He explained everything from the moment he had split from the group and until he got back to the inn.
George had found a demon that had slipped away during all the fighting, so he followed it. What had confused him initially was that there were a lot of demons around in both the village and in the cave. And yet there was no sign of any supplies being moved back and forth between the two locations. That gave him the impression that there was another camp of demons and that camp was the one that was bringing supplies to the cave. Sure enough, following that demon brought him to an encampment that was practically overflowing with demons. Once he caught sight of the camp he instantly turned around and left.
And that brought us to now. We all just kinda sat there in a daze. Another encampment of demons? And according to George, it was at least several hundred of them and they were preparing for something. This wasn’t good, to say the least.
“We need to stop Garrus and Warren. Or at least meet them on the way here. There’s no way that encampment isn’t watching Vinwood. And if the others have started moving by now then they might get ambushed. George, did it look like they were preparing to move out?” Karif asked.
George shook his head in response.
“My thoughts are that if we attack the village that will provoke the larger group of demons into action and that’s not something we accounted for when we made this plan. I really think we should head to Garrus and warn everyone, does anyone disagree?”
Nobody said anything to disagree with him.
“Alright then,” Karif said, “It’s late now so we’ll move early in the morning.”
With Warren there it hadn’t taken much convincing, Garrus thought to himself. It did certainly help to have an investigator from the capital when you were trying to convince the guildmaster and the captain of the guard to do anything. Although the situation was also extremely unusual. It had been several hundred years since a group of demons this size had all congregated in one place.
“Alright you lazy pieces of shit, let’s hurry up and get a move on. The longer we take, the more risk is involved!” The guildmaster yelled.
Everyone redoubled their effort of gathering supplies for the short trek out there. It wasn’t that far away, and it shouldn’t take them very long to deal with the whole situation. But they were going to have to camp out at the location for a few days reestablishing the town. Assumedly the townsfolk were all dead as it was so there wasn’t much to do with the place after they had taken over, but maybe a few were still alive.
There were roughly fifty adventurers and about six times that many guards being led by the commander, Malcolm Neese.
“It was good of you to come bring this to my attention Garrus. Knowing you I figured you would have just dealt with the entire situation on your own even if it ended up being more than you could chew.”
Guildmaster Olivier Stark was the one who spoke to Garrus, bringing him out of his inner thoughts.
Stark was on the smaller side for a male, standing around 5’6”. People had learned very quickly to not mistake his height for weakness, however. Stark was an unparalleled Spellblade, the somewhat unofficial term for someone who fought using magic to supplement their sword-fighting. In Stark’s case, it was more like he was a full-fledged swordsman and archmage combined. It helped that he was a tier-five combatant.
“If I could’ve forced them to face my group in a head-on fight I would have dealt with it alone. But as it stands I wasn’t able to do that and we have already suffered injuries that we couldn’t heal. No casualties, but we risked running some if I had tried to push us further.” Garrus replied.
“Injuries? Are the demons that strong?” Stark asked with a concerned look.
“Yes and no. Penny got captured as we were implementing our plan and one of the others lost his arm saving her from being sacrificed in a ritual. Honestly, if he hadn’t been willing to lose a limb to save her she would have died.”
“Was it George? I doubt it was Karif, good as he is he wouldn’t have the speed necessary. That’s a shame, it’s gonna make it harder on George than it already is for him.” Stark said, shaking his head lightly.
“It wasn’t George actually. The other week we picked up a new member, slowly showing him the ropes. And for someone that has never had to put his life on the line he acted completely without hesitation, if he hadn’t been with us Penny would’ve died and we wouldn’t have been there to save her.”
“A new member? What tier is he?”
Garrus gave Stark a mischievous smile. “He’s tier one.”
Stark frowned, “Quit screwing around Garrus, you’re telling me a tier one did something that you yourself wouldn’t have been able to do?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. It’ll be better if you just meet him in person, you’ll understand when you do. I think you’ll like him.”
Stark just nodded slowly in response before addressing everyone in the guildhall.
“Alright, are we ready? Let’s get out of here. We’ve got a village to cleanse.”
We raced through the forest as fast as we could. We had to slow down just a bit for Karif, as he still lagged a little bit behind me in speed, but not by much. He was still two tiers ahead of me after all.
“Hopefully we should be coming up on the other adventurers from the guild. Assuming Garrus and Warren were able to convince them to move on the demons.” Karif said.
Nobody said anything in response. The mood was tense, George had noticed that the demons had been gearing up for something in their camp. Our assumption was that they were planning on ambushing the adventurers coming from Vinwood.
We heard them before we saw them. It wasn’t ground rumbling, but it was definitely loud enough to hear. After a few more minutes we saw them walking in the distance, roughly three hundred people walking, give or take about fifty.
We eventually came within eyesight of the front of the adventurers and what looked like several platoons of guards from Vinwood. Standing in the front were Garrus and Warren along with what looked like to be the Guildmaster and Captain of the Guard.
“Garrus!” Penny yelled, waving frantically at him. We saw him lift his hand waving back at us but it was clear our urgency wasn’t apparent to him. We picked up the pace to close the distance between us just a little bit quicker.
Eventually, we came to a stop in front of the marching column and they came to a stop as well, as Garrus stepped forward.
“Why did you all come out here? I thought you were going to stay at the village and make sure they didn’t see us as we approached.” He said with a little bit of confusion evident on his face.
“That’s just the thing,” Karif spoke in response, “The village is not the only group out there. George found an encampment hidden in the forest. There was a whole army of demons hiding out there.”
Warren stepped forward as well, “Jalen is this true.”
Jalen just shrugged in response. “I didn’t see it myself, George saw it. But I doubt he has a reason to lie about it.”
“Hell they could already know you guys are here, we didn’t find out about it until about fifteen, maybe thirty minutes ago. They could be monitoring this whole situation right now and amassing a counterforce to come ambush you.” I interjected.
Attention from everyone who could see and hear the conversation came to rest on me as I finished speaking. It was almost borderline unnatural the way everyone turned to look at me.
I frowned slightly as the silence started to become deafening. After a few seconds, I broke the silence.
“What? Never seen an elf before? We’ve got bigger things to deal with right now.”
“No, actually we haven’t. Most people haven’t in fact, and any elf that has ever been spotted has had overly inflated levels the likes of which humans generally don’t reach.”
The man who responded to me was relatively short, he stood at about 5’6”. He had short brown hair and a clean-shaven face that gave him a younger look than his level insinuated.
[Level 122 (T5)]
“Ah guild master, this is the one I mentioned, Alex,” Garrus said, introducing me to the man. “Alex, this is Guildmaster Stark of the adventurers guild.”
I raised an eyebrow at Garrus before I stepped forward and stuck my hand out, “It’s good to meet you, sir.”
I honestly didn’t care to meet the man, but the least I could do was be respectful to someone who was essentially Garrus’ boss.
“I see you deliberately chose not to mention some key details about him.” The guildmaster said, eyeing me up and down. His expression was stern and impassive, belying nothing of his feelings underneath.
After an exaggerated moment of him staring at me, just as I was about to withdraw my hand, he clasped it in his and gave me a firm shake. I nodded my head as he did so.
He then turned back to face whom I assumed to be the captain of the guardsman.
“We’ll need to devise a new plan, Malcolm. If they do have an army sitting out there we can’t just stand by idly as they continue to prepare. And even worse, as they say, they could already know we are here and preparing.”
Malcolm nodded, “Yes, we need to reevaluate the situation. Warren, Garrus let’s meet again, George is your name? You come as well. Everyone else situate yourselves for the time being. Lieutenant set up a perimeter and make sure we have a rotating guard while we discuss.”
The man he turned to saluted him, clapping his fist over his heart before he moved off yelling orders to the nearest guardsmen to him. George walked off following Garrus as they went to discuss plans with the bigwigs, Jalen walked off to join Warren doing the same.
That left just Penny, Karif, and myself. For the first time in a while, I let myself relax and just sat down. For the last few days, it’d been nothing but high-stakes and high-tension fights and situations. I was mentally exhausted from everything that had led up to this moment. Penny and Karif joined me in sitting down and just taking a moment to not be stressed. There would be plenty of time for that when we fight the demons.
“Surprising to see an elf all the way out here. What’s even more surprising is that I thought they were all high-level, but here you are, barely past your first ascension.”
I turned my neck to glance at who was speaking to me. A man wearing a guard uniform.
Now I wasn’t going to say this man looked like he had rude intentions, but after my last run-in with any sort of guards, even if they were demons in disguise, I wasn’t too hopeful. On top of that, this would be a very cliche situation and this world so far seemed to thrive on them for whatever reason.
“Can I help you sir?” I asked him as I stood up
[Level 22 (T2)]
‘Ping’ [Identify] has leveled up 7 > 8
Well, he was more than likely in the range of strength that I could… I stopped my thoughts before I went any further. Why was I already thinking this man was a threat? He quite literally hadn’t even done anything yet. Was I just looking for a reason to be angry at someone? Maybe something I could think about later when I had the time. If I remembered.
I tried to focus back on the man in front of me and realized he was halfway through a sentence.
“-so I was curious to see who it was.” The guardsman finished saying.
I just sort of stared blankly at him trying to piece together what he might’ve said in my mind. I also thought about asking him to repeat himself but then just decided I didn’t really care at all.
“Alright, well listen. I’m not trying to be rude, but I’m exhausted, mentally and physically. So I’m just gonna try and use the time we have right now to rest before we have to go back to fighting demons again that almost killed me.” I said as I plopped myself back down on the ground.
The guard just kind of looked for a while longer before he nodded and walked off.
“You alright Alex?” Penny asked as she sat herself next to me.
“For the most part, it does kind of suck to be missing an arm right now, but other than that I’m as healthy as I can be. I’m just not quite used to all this excitement. Normally around now I’d be hiding myself in my room to avoid any contact with people, I don't really have the luxury to do that here.”
She nodded her head slowly as I finished.
“Well, whenever everything starts going down just make sure to stay close to us. We’ll help keep you safe so you don’t have to over-exert yourself this time. Can’t have you lose your other arm to save me again.” She said with a wink.
I chuckled softly. I closed my eyes while we sat there, just as I was about to doze off a loud voice rolled over the group.
“Alright form up! We’ve made our decision!” It was the guild master that was yelling.
“The guardsmen will handle the group stationed out in the woods along with a small detachment of adventurers. Marty, Kelsi, and Born, your three teams will join them. The rest of us move towards Muldren, we’ll occupy the town clean up as fast as possible, and then move to assist the other group. Any questions?”
Nobody said anything as the guildmaster looked over the crowd.
“Very well then,” He said with a nod. “Let’s kill some demons.”
