Monstergirl Quest, page 19
First, I spent some points to bolster my sneak skill. Even though Felaxia would keep us safely hidden from the Darkwood forces, eventually I’d have to break off from her and put myself out of reach of her illusion magic.
Next, I boosted my short blade skill. It irked me to blow points on a skill that I would hardly ever use, but my Dayfire longsword and orcish war axe weren’t exactly inconspicuous weapons.
Sir Lucien had gifted me one of the silver daggers he’d kept on his hip during our trip to Aegis Winterhollow’s keep. “If I don’t get this dagger back, it better be because you’re dead, Earthman,” the old knight had said to me, smirking.
Pandora, still a short distance ahead of us for the sake of recon, popped up from some bushes ahead and signaled that it was time for Felaxia to flex her illusionist muscles.
“Very well,” Felaxia said. She closed her eyes, focused, and within seconds, we were all enshrouded with plumes of green illusion magic smoke. She used a specific spell, however, that rendered us invisible to anyone that wasn’t in our group.
Thankfully, we could still see each other, albeit through a faded green shroud of muted light.
She cast similar spells to mute our voices, except for when we spoke to each other, and cast a silence spell on our bodies, so that the Darkwood forces wouldn’t be able to hear our approach.
Finally, the red-headed blood mistress muffled our scent, so that not even the most keen-smelling bloodhound would be able to detect us by smell.
Of course, these spells would only last as long as Felaxia’s mana. Luckily, being a seasoned illusionist, casting these long-duration spells didn’t cost as much mana for her as they would a less experienced mage.
Also, I made sure we had a good stock of restore mana potions on hand. Sephara and Felaxia would use the bulk of them, plus a little leftover for me, However, with my passive skill that let me recharge my mana over time, I didn’t think I’d need very much.
I laughed to myself. I remembered all the times people told me I was wasting my time with MMOs and RPGs, but my knack for inventory management made keeping track of our supplies easy.
Concealed by Felaxia’s magic as we were, we still had to tread carefully. We sidestepped anything that might give away our positions, careful not to rustle any bushes or rattle any tree branches.
As we crossed from the southern Silverhome Woods into the northern section, we immediately heard movement ahead of us. Pandora kept closer to the group, but was still several paces ahead of us, scanning the forest with her life detection goggles.
“Hold up,” she called back to us.
Felaxia and Pandora stayed in place while I crept up next to Pandora. “What do you see?” I asked.
“Life auras, lots of them,” she said. “Here, take a look,” she said, then thrust the goggles into my hands and pointed down to a gully, just below a sloping decline in the woods head.
With the goggles on, I saw exactly what she was talking about. There were around twenty smallish figures standing in a rough circle. Darkwood elves, I assumed. But there were more auras standing within that circle, and almost double in number.
“Do you think those are prisoners?” Pandora asked me.
“If they are, there’s a lot of them,” I said. “Close to fifty, if not a little more, by my count.”
Pandora grinned. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
I nodded. “If those are Silverton soldiers, we can free them, arm them, and then suddenly we’re not the only hostile force hunting the Spriggan King.”
The four of us crept onward, though now I stayed at the fore with Pandora. I had Sir Lucien’s dagger firmly in my hand and I was itching to use it.
Sure enough, we found about fifty Silverton infantrymen bound and shackled in wooden cages, with the twenty-or-so Darkwood elves standing guard. The vicious wood elves were arguing about what to do with them.
“I say we sell them off to the goblins!” one ugly elf said. “They’ll pay good money for such a lavish feast!”
“No, no, you idiot,” another elf interjected. “We keep them as slaves. Silverton will fall any day now. We can use these ugly humans as servants.”
From the looks of them, the Silverton prisoners were roughed up, but none appeared to be mortally wounded, at least not at a glance.
The Darkwood elves weren’t especially cautious with them. Though the infantrymen had all been disarmed, their weapons were laying just a few feet away, in a messy pile. A few wood elves were poking through those belongings, seeing if there was anything expensive among the pile.
The elves were armed with shortswords and bows. The bows were what worried me. Deadly shots, the wood elves were. As I made a save point, I considered our options.
Though Felaxia was a good illusionist, her concealment spells would still wear off the moment we launched an attack. Though we could probably route the wood elves – with me charging in for melee combat, Pandora picking them off from the shadows, and Felaxia raining destruction magic down on them – I didn’t want to give up our position so soon.
Even more importantly, there were no doubt hundreds more enemies prowling these woods. A big, stand-up battle, even a quick one, would surely get their attention.
With Felaxia and Sephara keeping close to us, Pandora and I did a careful recon of the area. They had lookouts out in the woods, along the perimeter of the small clearing where they’d made camp.
The lookouts were in pairs of two, which meant approximately half of their twenty-something Darkwood elf soldiers were on the periphery. That boded well for us.
“So, how do you want to work this?” I asked Pandora.
I saw she was grinning and already had her daggers out, itching to fight. She nodded to the far end of the camp. “I’ll start from that end, you start from this end. We meet in the middle.”
I kissed her, hard and passionately, and she giggled as our lips parted. “I love the way you think, lady,” I told her.
We had a pretty air-tight plan. Me and Pandora would do the grunt work then, when the lookouts were dead, Felaxia would hassle the main force with fireballs while we moved in for a quick melee.
Easy peasy, I thought.
Still, both Pandora and I had to be on our toes. Though we kept close enough to Felaxia’s position so that her illusion spells would continue to conceal us, the moment we attacked, those spell effects would end.
I crept along my edge of the camp. I spotted the first lookouts. They knew the woods had been relatively safe, so they weren’t the sharpest at keeping guard. I used that to my advantage.
One of them was gutting a rabbit corpse that they’d caught. The other watched intently, smacking his tongue against his lips.
“Hurry up and gut the fucking thing,” the hungry elf said. “I haven’t eaten since before dawn.”
The other elf scowled as he dug his dagger into the rabbit’s belly. “And who says I’m sharing this with you, huh?”
Before the hungry elf could answer, I crept up, swift and silent, clapped the Soulguard over his mouth to muffle his screams, then opened his throat.
CRITICAL STRIKE!
I held him until he went limp, then I gently placed him on the ground.
The other elf grunted happily. “Yeah, that’s right. You ain’t got much to say now, do ya?”
Neither did he, once I did the same to him. Bright red blood shot forth from the wide, ragged mouth I made in his throat and I dropped him softly to the forest floor.
CRITICAL STRIKE!
Now, I’d have to use my wits as concealment, as the illusion effects were gone. I crept quietly through the trees, toward the next pair of lookouts.
“…and I’m telling you,” the shorter, uglier one was saying. “The Spriggan King won’t give two shits about us once this battle is won.”
“Ah hell,” answered the other. “What’s it matter one way or the other? We plunder the city, fill our bellies. It ain’t like the spriggans’ll ever take residence in no town, anyway. Ain’t enough sunlight for them.”
“You just don’t understand no concepts about a lack of respect and anti-elvish sentiment among the trees, you damn bastard,” the ugly elf said.
While the sociopolitical woes of the Darkwood elves were certainly fascinating, I cut their conversations short, using that silver dagger once more.
The notifications flicked past my field of vision, one after the other.
CRITICAL STRIKE!
CRITICAL STRIKE!
SNEAK SKILL INCREASED +1
SHORT BLADE SKILL INCREASED +1
I paused, frowning. I should have leveled up by now. I’d gone up more than five skill increases, after all.
It was something I’d have to worry about later. The last and final lookout on my end was alone, resting against the tree and smoking a pipe. I let the poor bastard have one more puff from his pipe before I slammed the dagger into his neck, killing him instantly.
CRITICAL STRIKE!
Taking a more stealthy approach to combat was fun. Not quite as fun as a full-on melee, though. I looked through the bushes. On the opposite end of the camp, I caught Pandora, peeking at me through the trees.
I gave her a thumb’s up. She did the same.
My God, I loved this girl so much that it hurt.
I rushed into the camp, slipping the dagger back onto my hip then unsheathing the Dayfire blade. The first Darkwood elf that saw me didn’t even have time to scream before I plunged the fiery sword into his chest.
Above us, up on a small hill, Felaxia roared to life, literally, hurling down two small fireballs that each burned a wood elf to cinders.
Pandora dived into three of them head-on, scowling her adorable scowl as her daggers glinted in the sunlight coming down through the leaves, blood flying around her as she completed her deadly dance.
Then, I saw movement off to my right, in some thicker bushes. A lone Darkwood elf, trembling in fear as he pulled his bow back, deadly little arrow pointed straight at me.
With hardly a moment to react, I quickly cast a fortify speed spell just before he could release the arrow. By the time he did, the spell had taken effect, and I easily caught the arrow in the Soulguard’s grip.
“Shit!” the Darkwood elf said.
He was just about to run off when I hurled the arrow right back at him, piercing him through the back of his neck, and he collapsed into the bushes, dying as he choked on his own blood.
LONG BLADE SKILL INCREASED +1
BLOCKING SKILL INCREASED +1
EVASION SKILL INCREASED +1
Again, I frowned. Three more skill increases yet I wasn’t leveling up. What the hell was wrong? Some sort of bug in my Second Sight, maybe?
Pandora had just killed the lead wood elf. She dipped her hand into his pocket and came away with the key to the prisoners' bonds. The men were about to cheer when we approached, but I silenced them, putting my forefinger up to my lips.
Their ranking officer grunted in agreement. He was a middle-aged guy with a long, pale scar running down the side of his face. “Quiet, grunts,” he said. “These woods are full of these bastards, and worse.” The officer nodded to me. “Thank you, Gamelord.”
I cocked an eyebrow as Pandora unlocked their cages. “How the hell do you know my name?” I asked.
The officer grinned and gestured toward the Soulguard. “Word of your exploits traveled to Silverton quite quickly,” the officer answered.
Sephara and Felaxia came to join us. Sephara went about tending to the wounded soldiers while Felaxia worked on concealing us. Though there were far too many now for her to cast an effective invisibility spell, she resorted to a lighter camouflage spell. With that, at least we’d be more difficult to spot, at least at a distance.
“Were you part of the Silverton force that got cut off from the city?” I asked the officer.
“Aye, we were,” he answered. “Fuckers routed us quickly, after they took us unawares.”
Now, the men who starting to arm themselves again. This was good, but I didn’t want to waste our newly-bolstered numbers by being too hasty.
“I’ll take my men at once,” the officer said. “We’ll charge those bastards that are attacking the city gates. We’ll fight to the last fucking man if we have to!”
“Having you and your men die so quickly wouldn’t do anyone any good,” I said. “But…do you think you could get back to your buddies hiding in the mountains?”
The officer frowned. “That would be a death just as quick. Last we saw, the goblins and spriggans elders and sprites, plus those damnable wood elves, were throwing themselves at our comrades in the mountains.”
“Well, if those men are fighting from an elevated position in the hills, they’re probably going to last a while,” I said. “If you and your men could creep through their patrols in the forest and surprise the forces attacking the mountains…”
The officer grinned. “Aye, Gamelord, good thinking,” he said. “But I don’t know how we’ll get past all the patrols in these woods. We can step light as we can, but there’s still fifty of us.”
I grinned right back at him, because now this plan was coming together almost on its own. I called Felaxia over and told her what I was thinking.
“I know you won’t be able to cast an invisibility spell over all of them, but how long can you keep up a good camouflage spell?”
She furrowed her brow and checked her supply of restore mana potions. “If we hurry, I can keep them hidden well enough for a few hours,” she said. “But we’ll have to go a roundabout way through the edges of the northern woods. Camouflage spells are effective, but a keen-eyed spriggan would be able to glimpse us, if it got close enough.”
I nodded, then looked up at the sky, through the thin canopy overhead. It wasn’t even noon yet. “The spriggans probably fight better during the day,” I said. “The sunlight gives them energy.”
Pandora grinned, once more realizing my plans before I even had a chance to finish saying them. “That’s true, they are weaker at night,” she said.
“Felaxia,” I went on, “you take these men, see if you can get them to the mountains in one piece by nightfall. Sephara will go with you.”
Sephara grinned and thrust her spear toward an imaginary enemy. “And hopefully I get to run through some spriggans along the way!” she said.
I laughed. “Preferably not,” I chuckled. “Sephara, you keep them as healthy as you can.”
“But what about you and Pandora?” Sephara asked, looking a little worried.
“Pandora can move more quietly than anyone,” I said. “And in a pinch, I’ve got an invisibility spell that I can use. Once you guys link up with the other soldiers at the mountains,” I said to the officer. “Just fucking charge! Get their attention. I want every damn footsoldier of the Spriggan King distracted so Pandora and I can take that fucker out. His troops have no loyalty to one another. They’ll scatter once he’s dead.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was rough going in those woods, as Pandora and I were careful not to take the road, knowing that the Spriggan King’s forces would be patrolling it.
Luckily, we met almost no resistance. But the resistance we did face gave me some precious information in regards to why I hadn’t been leveling up.
As we crept up on a trio of goblins fighting over some chicken bones, I got a notification.
SNEAK SKILL INCREASED +1
We made short work of them. I took down two with my silver dagger, with Pandora finishing the third on her own.
SHORT BLADE SKILL INCREASED +1
LEVEL TWENTY-TWO REACHED!
What the hell? I thought. That was exactly ten skill increases. I should have gone up two levels by now!
But then something occurred to me. The better I got with learning these skills, the quicker I’d been able to increase them.
I had a feeling that, due to my quick skill increases, the number of them I’d need to level up had doubled, going from five to ten.
Alright, that was a little frustrating, I’ll admit. But then again, my favorite part of an RPG was level progression. Getting too OP too quickly just made things boring.
We paused to loot the corpses and take a water break. Pandora went up ahead to scout the area, came back a few minutes later.
“The immediate area is clear,” she said. “But there’s a lot of movement up ahead, in the distance.”
She offered me her life detection goggles so I could see. Sure enough, I saw a blob of wriggling auras far off in the distance. I frowned at that, because I knew what I was looking at.
I was looking at the siege of Silverton. There were clusters of movement, which I assumed were Darkwood forces throwing themselves at the city walls. Above those clusters, I saw little twinkling auras, which must have been the soldiers manning the walls.
“Shit,” I said. “Hopefully they can hold out for just a little longer.”
We trudged through roughly one more mile of woods, unmolested, until we finally made our next contact. Of course, Pandora saw them first, with her goggles, but I heard their approach easily, no magic necessary.
The ground rumbled with each step the elder spriggan took. The leaves littering the forest floor skipped and jumped from the force of them. As we got closer, I finally saw the creature, a towering mass of branches and tree bark, thick as any heavy armor.
Its arms and legs were like mid-sized tree trunks. Its torso was thick as a California Redwood. The elder appeared to be male, or so his wooded, contorted face seemed. A crown of tree branches sprouted from his head.
Shit, the elder must have been thirty feet tall. And he wasn’t alone.
Though they seemed tiny by comparison, the three spriggan sprites escorting the elder weren’t exactly small. Each was roughly eight feet in height, with skin the color of blooming leaves. They had tree bark armor coating their slender, feminine bodies, and their eyes glowed a dull emerald shade.
Though they were far enough off that we could let them pass without them noticing us, they were headed due east. Which meant they might stumble across Sephara, Felaxia, and the Silverton infantrymen.
