Chương 77

Forest Trolls"Auroria may have explained how the quest classifications work," said Rel, "but having something explained to you is not the same as experiencing it. The first thing we should do is get a feel for the different difficulty levels in terms of the star ratings and recommended group sizes."

"That is very wise, Grandmaster," said Kaelis before turning to me.

"Master, the Ursak Vileclaw quest was Tier Three. If I remember correctly, it had a three-star difficulty rating and a recommended group size of three to five Trialists. How difficult would you say the quest was?"

"Well…" I replied, scratching my chin.

"I bitch-slapped the bear twice, but that wasn't really about dealing damage – at least not of a physical nature, anyway. That was more about disrespecting the furry bastard and delivering a little retribution for the villagers it'd already harmed or killed. Once that was done, I punched it."

"The punch, Master," said Kaelis.

"How much force did you use? And did Ursak manage to attack you? If so, was it capable of causing any harm?"

"Ah, well, it wasn't just a simple case of punching Ursak. There were a number of factors I had to take into consideration. I made a new friend in the village who'd had a bit of an accident and pissed himself. I could tell from his face that he was embarrassed and would've felt awful if the other villagers found out, so I promised to make sure that didn't happen.

"After I'd slapped Ursak around a little bit, I needed to make sure I kept my promise. I positioned myself so the villagers were directly behind Ursak – maybe thirty or so metres away– and then I had to do a little bit of mental maths.

"You see, I needed to hit the bear hard enough that there'd be plenty of blood and that it would reach the villagers to hide the piss stain. But I also had to make sure I didn't use so much force that the resulting shockwave reached the village and injured the defenders." Rel sighed.

"It's impressive how you managed to use so many words while somehow failing to answer the question. If you were to compare Ursak to the enemies we faced in the Tower of Potential, which Floor would it belong on?"

"Hmm," I said.

"Probably somewhere around Floor Seven. I could easily imagine Ursak being one of the enemies that came through the portal by the goblin village."

"In that case, it would've been a tough fight, but we should've been able to handle it," said Allaria.

"When we left Oakreach a few weeks ago, we were already making decent progress through Floor Six. After all the questing we did on the journey here – and the battle against Lokta'Inif's force – we're definitely much stronger than we were back then." Voklum withdrew Avatar's Judgment from his inventory, causing several Trialists to glance nervously in our direction.

"There's a saying on my world," he said, raising the warhammer to gesture towards the Quest Boards.

"Wisdom earned through experience is almost always more valuable than wisdom imparted through words."

"Good man," I said, clapping Voklum on the shoulder as I moved towards the Tier Three quest board.

"We need to test the waters a little. Let's find something around the same difficulty as the Ursak quest and give it a go. You three can handle it while Rel and I hang back. We'll only step in if things go to shit." We fell silent as we browsed through the quests on offer. There were at least thirty available with a wide range of objectives. One in particular caught my eye and immediately gave me flashbacks to my World of Warcraft days. An escort quest.

It brought back memories of desperately spamming right-click on an NPC, trying to accept the quest before the other fuckers who were doing the exact same thing. A dumbass NPC walking at a snail's pace. Getting swarmed by random mobs while the NPC fucked off and left me to it. Nope.

"I've found one that's perfect!" said Kaelis, the words carrying far more enthusiasm than seemed appropriate. I turned to see him staring intently at a quest's description, a glint in his eye that conveyed both unhinged excitement and murderous intent. When I moved to stand beside him, I immediately understood why. Trolls. Forest Trolls Tier: Three Rating: ★★★ Recommended Group Size: 5 Due to their abhorrent behaviour, a clan of forest trolls was exiled from their homeland.

This is no small feat considering the species' already well-earned reputation for brutality, violence, and cruelty. Reports suggest the clan's crimes were so severe that even other trolls consider them monsters. The clan has spent the last several months roaming the land, leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake. It recently established a camp within a forest fifty miles east of Stonehaven.

Based on the latest scouting reports and the clan's previous actions, nearby settlements are expected to come under attack in the very near future. They must be stopped before that can happen. Rewards: 17, 000 gold Troll Bone Blade 70 Expedition Centre Points Kaelis had never quite gotten over his near-death experience at the hands of the trolls back on Floor Two of the Tower of Potential.

Based on his current expression, it looked like he intended to process some of that deeply unresolved trauma through extreme violence. The fact that these were forest trolls, while the ones in the Tower had presumably been cave trolls, did not seem particularly important to him. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. Kaelis Unleashed: The Sequel?

"Hmm," said Rel, hovering in the air beside Kaelis.

"Yes, this will do nicely. Based on the rewards, it appears to be a little more difficult than the Ursak quest, but that should not prove an issue with Pete and I accompanying you."

"Yeah," I said.

"Besides, we'll need to get involved at least a little bit to make sure we qualify for the rewards." After all, I had one hell of a shopping list. * An hour later, we found ourselves wandering through the stretch of forest marked by the red circle on our Quest Maps. The trees in this part of the forest were sparse, allowing plenty of sunlight to reach the ground below.

Birds sang in the branches overhead, bright flowers grew here and there, and the occasional wild animal would stare at us for a few moments before fleeing deeper into the woods. One might even have gone so far as to call the place idyllic… right up until the troll camp came into view. There were around thirty tents dotted about. Each one was enormous, easily capable of sleeping ten regular-sized people. That wasn't the issue. The issue was that the trolls were utterly disgusting creatures.

Rotting animal carcasses littered the ground. There were mounds of what I'm fairly certain was shit. The smell was so bad that if the camp had been on Earth, the vile bastards would've been found in violation of the Geneva Convention for chemical warfare and dragged before an international court. And to top it all off, there was the constant buzz of insects flitting around as if they were in heaven.

"Holy shit," I said.

"Maybe the abhorrent behaviour mentioned in the quest description was referring to their hygiene." Kaelis slowly nodded as his gaze swept across the camp, as though everything he was seeing merely confirmed his existing worldview.

"I cannot say I am surprised by any of this," he said.

"I have long known trolls to be disgusting creatures." One of them must have heard Kaelis's words and taken great offence because, a moment later a tent flap was flung open and an enormous head poked out. The troll raised an enormous hand to rub the sleep from its bulging amber eyes, then squeezed through the flap and rose to its full height, letting out a deep, rumbling sigh as it stretched.

The creature looked loosely related to the cave trolls we'd seen in the Tower, as though they were distant cousins rather than siblings. It had a similar height and build, standing nearly eight feet tall with a powerful body more reminiscent of a manual labourer than a bodybuilder. Its jaw was hidden behind a thick beard with a wet, slimy texture that looked more like seaweed than hair. Apparently satisfied with its stretching, it reached a hand beneath the tatty brown cloth covering its unmentionables…

and started pissing. Judging by the dark-brown colour of the stream, the creature was severely dehydrated. The liquid hit the ground and immediately began to steam.

"It's still standing at the entrance to the tent…" said Allaria. The troll's head whipped round at her words, and it stared at us for a few moments in dumb, sleepy incomprehension. Then its lips slowly curled into a savage grin. It was exactly the expression I imagined a cat would have after spotting a pigeon land in the garden. It was still pissing.

"Wake up, lads!" it roared.

"It looks like we won't need to go hunting today. Our breakfast has delivered itself." It knelt down beside the tent, dipping a knee into the steaming puddle, and reached an arm through the flap. When it pulled it back out, the creature was gripping a wooden club with jagged metal spikes jutting from the weapon's head. Kaelis had seen and heard enough. He tossed his axe aside, let loose a battle cry, then charged. The troll had probably imagined us reacting in any number of different ways.

Perhaps some whimpering and crying? Begging for mercy? Turning and running as fast as we could? Based on its dumbstruck expression, it clearly hadn't been expecting its breakfast to fight back. It had barely started to raise its club when Kaelis's fist crashed into its stomach. The punch carried so much force that the troll was lifted clean off its feet, tumbling through the air before crashing into one of the nearby tents. And then all hell broke loose.

The commotion had woken the rest of the clan, and trolls started pouring out of the tents, their confusion quickly turning to rage as their sleepy brains put two and two together. Kaelis, apparently unfazed by the sudden appearance of thirty more trolls, charged once again.

"What… is happening?" said Voklum, his warhammer hanging limply at his side as he watched his friend wade into battle like a mindless berserker.

"It's a long story," I said.

"Let's just say that he has a complicated history with trolls." Unfortunately for Kaelis, these were not the weak trolls from the Tower of Potential. These were the Tier Three, three-star difficulty, recommended-group-size-of-five sort of trolls. He may have caught the first one off guard, but the rest were ready for him. Kaelis leapt at another troll, arms outstretched as if intending to strangle the creature, when an enormous green fist slammed into his side.

The blow knocked Kaelis clean out of the air and sent him crashing into the ground. He bounced several times before rolling to a stop… directly into the path of another troll. The creature launched him back off the ground with a kick so powerful it left a nasty dent in his armour.

"Voklum, Allaria," said Rel mildly, "I believe Kaelis may require assistance." His words seemed to snap them out of the spell they'd been under. Voklum charged, his dark silver metallic skin gleaming in the sunlight. He swept Avatar's Judgment through the air in a wide arc and unleashed the weapon's ability, Avatar's Breath.

As the ability scaled with the user's strength, the effect was nowhere near as dramatic as when I used it, but the rush of scalding air was still enough to stagger the trolls in its path and make their skin blister and bubble. And then he was among them, bones crumpling beneath the force of his swings. Allaria unslung her bow and reached over her shoulder to draw an arrow. Within the space of a heartbeat, she'd nocked it, drawn back the string, and released.

The arrow cut through the air and buried itself several inches deep in a troll's back. The creature stumbled several steps before reaching over its shoulder to rip the arrow free. Green blood gushed from the wound, but the shot hadn't done enough damage to put the troll down. It turned towards Allaria, eyes widening in comprehension as it looked from her bow to the arrow clutched in its hand. It grinned, its lips parting to reveal blackened teeth sharpened to points.

It lifted the arrow and licked the blood from its tip. The second arrow buried itself in its eye. It didn't grin this time. Its lifeless body slumped to the ground, the arrow slipping free from its limp fingers.

"Help them out for a minute while I get Kaelis back on his feet," I said to Rel.

"For a guy who normally comes across as so serious and composed, he does some seriously dumb shit sometimes." Rather than responding with words, Rel simply raised a paw. A bolt of lightning tore through the air and slammed into a troll that had been preparing to cave in the back of Voklum's head with its club. I darted forward, flung Kaelis's barely conscious form over my shoulder, then darted back out.

"Sorry, Master," he wheezed as I laid him on the ground.

"I allowed my anger to cloud my judgement."

"You can say that again," I said.

"I allowed my anger to cloud my–""Jeez, Kaelis. I didn't mean that literally. One of them must've given you one hell of a smack to the head." He reached up with a trembling hand to probe the side of his head. When he pulled it away, his fingers were soaked in blood.

"I think you might be right, Master." I sighed and withdrew a healing potion from my inventory. As I cradled him in my arms and tipped the glowing red liquid down his throat, I couldn't help but feel a sense of déjà vu. I'd definitely lived through this moment before. The healing potion surged through Kaelis's body like electricity. He jerked upright a moment later, his eyes suddenly clear and focused. He leapt to his feet, then turned to bow low before me and Rel.

"Grandmaster, Master," he said.

"I apologise most profusely for my foolishness. Please allow me to re-enter the battle and make up for my failure."

"Very well," replied Rel, "but maybe take your axe with you this time." Kaelis flushed, but did as he was told, dashing over to snatch up his axe before charging back into the fray. * Even after sensible, non-berserker Kaelis entered the fight, it was by no means an easy victory. The trolls were strong, tough fuckers, and they knew how to fight. Rel and I had to intervene several times to stop Kaelis, Voklum, and Allaria from being overwhelmed.

It's possible that if Kaelis hadn't gone full Leeroy Jenkins mode and had actually stopped to plan things out, they might've managed it without us, but even then I don't think it would've been a sure thing. There were definitely some lessons to be learned. It was time for a debrief.