Chương 102: Chapter 100: The forest's edge

The five of us moving together tends to scare off any monsters we might come across. We're not trying to be quiet, and most beasts don't want to attack a large group. If we ran into a herd of beasts, it would be different. But for the most part, when animals can tell we're coming in their direction, they go in another direction. It makes for a peaceful three days of moving through the forest. But right now we're in that point where the trees have just started to thin out.

It's miles yet before the edge of the forest, but the space is opening up a little bit. This is the space where wyverns and the like live and hunt. This is the area where we might find dragonoid, or even potentially a dragon. This is the area where monsters are level thirty and higher. Where in theory they can actually be dangerous to us. I don't much care about the fact that the dire bears turned away and avoided us.

I don't much care about the creatures who decided that it was best to avoid a group of adventurers, especially adventurers in the level thirty to forty range. The things that we avoided weren't worth that much experience, and weren't really a threat to us. I want something to fight that actually fights back. I want something to fight that can put me in danger, at least a little bit. So I want to fight a drake, if possible.

Maybe I'm tracking subconsciously at this point, but not twenty minutes after having that thought, I come across dragon tracks. They look just like lizard tracks, only the tracks are the size of your outstretched hand instead of the size of your thumb. I don't know if this is going to lead us to a pure blood dragon or not, but I tell everyone to get ready as I point out the track we're following. I use Find Path and follow the track of the dragon as it moves through the trees.

I find one tree with the bark torn off on one side, right where the dragon would've passed by. Does that mean that the space was tight for the dragon? If so, I think this thing is at least as big as Wrax. Maybe bigger. If not, then it at least wove close enough to grind along the tree. We're getting closer. I can hear it, faintly. Sounds like it's fighting with something. Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll be something interesting. I draw my bow and nock an arrow as we get closer.

It's not long before the others can hear what I'm hearing. It sounds like the dragon is attacking a tree. I think about the tree that it tore the bark from and wonder if it's just doing more of that. Is it the sound of a battle I'm hearing, or just a dragon molting and scratching its itchy scales? We're still pretty far when I get the answer, but Observation does its thing anyway. Treeant. Very rare rare elite monster, level 41. HP: 367, 429/410, 000. Forest Wyrm. Legendary elite dragonoid, level 44.

HP: 412, 720/440, 000. I turn to look at my friends. I wish we had a way to speak silently, but the message system takes way too long to be useful in a situation like this. So I have to resort to a sort of stage whisper.

"Do we interfere, or do we wait and take out the winner?" I ask.

"I say we get in there," El says. Her axes are already in her hands. Of course she'd say that.

"It's probably better to wait until they wear each other out, but I have several spells that can effect them both," Vincent says.

"Will we get all the experience if we let them keep wounding each other, or will part of it go to them?" Gigi asks.

"If they turn on us and fight together, I'm not sure how well we will do," Ash says. Ever the tactician.

"Maybe we should join one of them and attack the other. Help them win. That way, we're only fighting one of them at a time."

"Are you suggesting that we fight with one of them to the kill the other, then we turn on the first one?" Vincent asks. Ash nods.

"I don't see anything wrong with that tactic."

"I can use Mab's Rage and take about twenty thousand from each of them," I say.

"But otherwise, I'm lucky if I can do a thousand damage in one hit. This is going to take a very long time, however we slice it."

"It'll be fine," El says.

"I say we come in on the side of the dragon. Let's fuck up the tree monster."

"Why?" Gigi asks. El just shrugs, but I think El has an actual reason. I think El is worried about the dragon dying. Or maybe that's just me. Why am I worried about a dragon dying? Well, the dragons are the minor gods, right? The god slayer slew a dragon that had become a minor god. And if the major gods die, the world dies with them. So maybe dragons are really closely connected to the world itself. Or maybe they're like the embodiment of magic. Like when the last dragon dies, so does magic.

I know they did that in a Simpsons episode at one point, but I'm pretty sure I've read stories about that sort of thing as well. The dragons are the magic in the world. That's why our old world had no more magic, according to these stories: we'd already slain all the dragons. If dragons are that important to the world, then I naturally want to come in on their side in just about any conflict. And while this isn't an actual dragon, it is a dragonoid, and that's pretty close.

Or maybe El just wants to use her axes on a tree. That would make sense too.

"Okay," I say.

"Let's attack the treeant. I'm guessing fire should be the order of the day?" I look at Vincent for confirmation.

"Fire sounds like a good idea," he says.

"How about you and I provide the fire while the three of you get up close and personal?" A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. The girls all nod, and we start moving closer to the battle. When we're within about eighty feet, Vincent stops walking and starts casting a spell. The ground in front of him erupts into a tiny little volcano, shooting up a steady stream of magma.

He reaches out and grabs the stream, pulling a spear of pure magma out of it, and then hurls the spear at the treeant.

"That's so cool," I say. Then I fire my little Fire Bolt at the treeant. My hit deals 1, 524 damage. Which is double what it should be. I guess the treeant is weak to fire. Which makes sense. Fire would be one of a tree's few natural enemies. I mean, wood burns.

"Impressive," he says. I'm guessing he's watching the life bar and knows more or less how much damage I did. He throws another spear, and I try doing the same. I can't tell for sure, but I think he did close to the same amount of damage that I did. Which, realistically, is also impressive. I keep shooting Fire Bolts, launching one every three seconds or so. It takes some time for the fire to reach the treeant, so I'm close to firing the next bolt before the first one actually hits.

Vincent's attacks are more frequent, and it seems like his are doing consistent damage, not just the damage from the impact. The treeant is on fire, and it's not from my Fire Bolts. El charges right into the battle, ignoring the wyrm completely and screaming as she gets into melee range with the treeant. The wyrm takes a laze swipe at her, but I think that was more out of confusion than malice. It doesn't look like it did all that much damage, anyway.

Gigi and Ash circle around, one in each direction, and move to flank the treeant. Do they get a flanking bonus too? Once they're in position, they start chipping away at the treeants massive hit points. I try to relax and just keep an eye on things. None of the girls are likely to go down any time soon, but I still keep an eye on them, wanting to make sure that their health pools don't start to plummet.

I know that El constantly forgets to recast Shell, but I also know that she has more than twenty three thousand hit points, so I'm not really worried about her. I'll worry if she takes a hit that makes her stagger, but for the most part, I don't think she's going to. The treeant does redirect its attention from the wyrm to El, though. It swings massive limbs at her, pounding her to the side a few steps, then back in the other direction.

I can hear the impacts, even from this far away, and I can tell that they're massive. But they don't slow El down. She just keeps chopping away, cutting gouges into the treeant like she's trying to actually fell the tree. The treeant's health starts to absolutely plummet. The wyrm hasn't stopped attacking it; it just moved a little bit around the trunk so it wouldn't get in the way of El's attacks. It keeps striking with claws and with just ramming against the treeant.

Between the wyrm's attacks, El's chops, Gigi's slices, Ash's bashes, Vincent's lava lances and my Fire Bolts, it takes damage fast. It was at 367, 000 hit points when we started. Now, not even a minute later, it's down below 250, 000. I've cast the spell twenty times, leaving my mana pool still ninety five percent full. And the treeant is having a very, very bad day. I can't tell how much damage its blows are doing to El. Clearly not enough.

She dodges a few of the blows, but most of the time she just takes it and keeps on fighting. I think El has a talent that reduces blunt force damage pretty significantly, so I'm not all that worried. More impressed. And when her health starts to actually go down, it only drops by about a thousand before she casts Shell again. I'm proud of her for remembering. So the treeant is doing at least a thousand damage per hit. That's pretty impressive. I mean, three of those will kill Vincent.

But I can handle a dozen of them. Not that we're up close and at risk of getting hit. Vincent and I are the ranged fighters. That's how it's always been. We are very rarely put at actual risk in battles. Which probably means he's never going to die. If he dies, that means that the monsters have already gotten through the rest of us first. He's always going to be the last one to go down, because I kind of move back and forth between the ranged and the melee. I'm the utility infielder. Wow, I really am.

That's kind of how I've built my character sheet, if you think about it. I've been focused on trying to get good at a whole lot of things, so that I have options for what role I fill. I'm good with a bow, but I'm also good with a sword. And I'm pretty good at magic. I can do it all. If any of the other four go down, I can step right into their role. That's kind of always been how I prefer to go about my life. I like being a problem solver. I like being able to step in and make things work.

I like being reliable without having a specific role that I'm locked in to. Maybe it's an ADHD thing, but I never liked having a set and defined role. I liked stepping into one role after another, solving the problems and making things work again before stepping out into another role. It's how I always preferred to work in an office, and it's how I still prefer to work while adventuring. Two minutes later, the treeant is on its last legs. Or last roots, or whatever.

It isn't really a threat anymore, and it clearly would be more interested in running away than in continuing to fight. I don't blame it, but there's nowhere for it to go. No way for it to get away. For one thing, treeants aren't that fast. It probably couldn't outrun any of us on its best day. For another, we have it pretty much surrounded at this point. All that's left is the death throws. When it does go down, there's a brief pause.

A momentary respite as we try to decide if we want to go through with this plan, and if the wyrm is going to attack us and take the decision out of our hands. The wyrm growls at us, spikes around its neck flaring outward in warning. But it doesn't say anything. I don't think it's intelligent. I don't think it has the capacity for speech. It's a dragonoid, not a dragon. It hisses at El, darting forward and leaping back in a display clearly meant to intimidate her. Unfortunately for it, El is not easily intimidated.

She stands up to her full height and waves her axes around in a display of her own. I don't know if the wyrm can even understand what she's doing. I think the wyrm wants us to back away so that it can eat the treeant. But El is between it and its meal. We probably could've avoided this fight if we wanted to. We probably could've just backed away and let the wyrm have its meal. But we didn't. Oh well. I cast Mab's Rage, moving a bit closer than the seventy foot distance I was keeping.

The wyrm is still well within the range of the spell, but I think somehow it will be better for me to be closer. The wyrm still has 412, 720 hit points. But it starts to take 139 per second as the icy wind picks up, and it does noticeably slow down. And when I do Rapid Shot, my first time shooting the Bow of Dawn and Dusk, it takes another 3, 607 damage. My regular shots do 555 damage, or 1, 110 damage if my party members are surrounding the wyrm.

With the shooting speed increase that my bow gives me, I can shoot about two dozen times in a minute. That equates to 26, 640 damage per minute, just from the bow. That's actually a lot more damage than Mab's Rage is doing. The spell is doing 8, 340 points of damage per minute, and only lasts for two and a half minutes. I'm much deadlier with the bow. But that's the point of Mab's Rage, or rather the trade off. It's great against groups of enemies.

Twenty thousand damage is a lot, but doing that much damage to the drake is just one target. If there were a hundred drakes here, they'd all take the twenty thousand damage. Which would mean about two million points of damage. The spell gets exponentially more powerful the more enemies there are caught in its radius. Of course, if there were a hundred drakes here, we'd all be dead. As it is, I think we're going to be okay.