Zortex woke up when it was half morning. Luckily no one came to disturb him, because he really needed a full rest to get over all the fatigue of the previous couple of days. At the low left corner of his vision there was a beeping light. What is that? Did I get notifications while I was asleep? Zortex wondered.

“Endless, show me what is in that corner”

Team 17

Jake: Hey guys. Since Shad and Gera went their own way yesterday night I have decided that we will reconvene at noon in front of Captain Cvor house.

Gera: Ok, I just woke up. If you guys are free we can already meet there.

Rizza: Come to the other side of the village, on the road we arrived from. Me and Jake are training there.

Gera: Ok, coming.

Jake: Shad, you are the only one missing. Come to our place as soon as you wake up.

A series of vocal messages invaded Zortex’s mind. Ah. So that’s how long distance communication works. This is in the group channel, but probably the messages person to person work the same way. Zortex pondered.

“They have waited until now, so they can wait a half an hour more. I will have my breakfast first. Right Pravin?” Zortex asked his pet who answered back with a squishy sound.

Twenty minutes later Zortex left his place and moved to the position his teammates where having a contest with people from other groups. Gera was fighting with a guy he had never noticed before, quite tall and handsome, and she looked like she had the upper hand. Not far away Jake was boxing with one of the two friends he had come at the beginning of the mission. I think his name is Max. Max was winning the contest and taunting Jake into attacking him, so that he could use an opening if his adversary made a wrong swing. Even Rizza was practicing a particular lightening spell which looked like a frisbee made out of electricity. When he arrived close enough everybody noticed him. He looked quite conspicuous going around wrapped in black and shadows, with a Slime on his back munching on some toast he had prepared for breakfast.

“Good that you are here. We were getting pretty bored to wait and if you arrived too late the guards would just pick us and make us help to build the walls. These guys here soon will need to get to camp and work for the money. Their teams were partially slayed in battles, so now they cannot go out by themselves. Some will just mix to form new teams, but not all are allowed to.” Jake said while making gestures to his friend Max.

“Let’s go to see the Captain” Gera proposed.

Team 17 moved back to the village and met with one of his underlings, who brought them to the maps room.

“Good that you are here. We are lacking groups scouting the zone that you were assigned. Now look at these maps and update yours. You can also see where there were encounters with the enemies troops. Nice, right?” The guard told them. “Now check this part. Team 15 and 18 have not come back last night. It is probable they are dead, either from some beast or a Srenc patrol. You need to cover also their part of the map before they will be back from respawning.”

“Ok boss!” Jake said while saluting. Always showing off. Zortex thought.

“From now on you are not given a time limit to return, but I suggest to not wait too much. We need to get back the information about your scouting and if you wait too long and you die we will be left without data for more than a week. Now go to get some food to bring with you and leave as soon as possible.” The guard dismissed them and went back to check the maps.

“I think that we should retrace where we arrived yesterday and then move either East or North. That way we would have crossed the path of one of the other teams, but if they are dead we may be able to find some traces of their battles and we could follow a track to one of the Srenc camping positions.” Jake suggested to the group.

“Sounds fine to me” Gera agreed.

----------------------------------------

22 hours later

“I think they haven’t noticed us yet” Rizza whispered.

“Of course not. They are cooking. That on the fire is one of the same centipedes we had killed before.” Jake whispered back.

“There are only three of them. I say that Shad and Rizza focus their fire on one of them to get an instant kill. Next me and Jake charge to them while they are still confused and trying to see where the attack was coming from.” Gera was also whispering.

All the members of Team 17 where crawling on the ground hiding in underwood. Just a few minutes before Shad had been able to smell the smoke of a fire and he had simply changed his direction to follow the scent. The others had no idea what was he doing, but when they asked questions he just indicated where he was going and made sign to be silent. A couple of minutes later they also smelled the fire and understood the reason they had been guided to that place. Next they found themselves crawling silently on the ground until they were close enough to spot a Srenc hunting party. Three of the disgusting sub-humans were camped around a small fire and talking in their own language. Hence the discussion on how to approach the attack.

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“Ok, it is decided. Understood Shad?” Jake said.

Zortex shook his head. He then pointed to the top of a nearby tree and made a gesture of an arrow being shot.

“Damn it! There is a fourth there, just lazing around. We risk to be spotted at any moment if it just look in this direction. We must attack right now.”

Zortex pointed at himself with his thumb and then he signed a gun shooting at the enemy with the same hand. Hopefully he understands that I will be the one to deal with the archer. Zortex thought.

“Ok, understood. You and Rizza will attack the archer. Me and Gera will attack the melee fighters.” Jake whispered.

Idiot! I can deal with the archer by myself. I don’t need that useless mage. It is a waste of mana to let her help me. Zortex tried to convey the message, but Jake was not looking at him anymore but to the girls on his right. He moved his hand in front of him and started counting down with his fingers.

5

4

3

2

1

0

Zortex charged a Blind spell. He looked at Rizza, but she was still charging her own skill. Just at that moment the archer spotted them. There was that half a second when both of them just looked at each other eyes, and the Srenc had still to understand his situation, and in that moment Zortex shot his Blind spell.

I cannot wait for the girl to finish charging her electricity. It is now or never. An archer without his vision is nothing. Zortex’s mind was furiously working to anticipate what were the possible outcomes of his actions.

The archer whistled before the spell left Shad’s hand and it jumped down the tree, however it was still hit by Zortex’s Blind on its right forearm.

Not perfect, but still good enough. I put enough mana in the spell to last 30-40 seconds and in about 10 second it will have moved high enough to envelope the Srenc head. I just need to block the Srenc in place so that I can hit it with a nice Acidic Shot before it tries to escape. Zortex reasoned.

Meanwhile Gera and Jake had stood up and they were running against the other Srenc who had just been alerted by the archer. Zortex didn’t pay attention to his melee teammates. Right now he was focused only on the long-range enemy. The archer had looked at the Blind spell attached to its body, and understanding that it could do nothing about it, it started running parallel to him and Rizza.

“Entangle” Zortex whispered and threw the spell on the way of the Srenc, who changed direction and avoided it. At the same time it stringed an arrow and let it go in the direction of Zortex, but it missed him. It was really difficult to ran and at the same time target well the enemy. Zortex threw another Entangle spell, but before it could connect a lightening hit the archer who felled to the ground, its skin smoking. Its level had been 9, but now they could only see the HP bar that had reached zero. It had been a one-shot kill from Rizza. So it is true that she has a lot of firepower as long as she is given the time to charge up the spells. Zortex thought.

Zortex looked back at the fire where his other teammates where fighting. Jake was wounded on his left leg and he was fighting one the Srenc who held a bone spear. They seemed evenly matched. Gera instead was holding away the other two Srenc, and it looked like she was actually winning. Zortex ran to their left to be able to see the Srenc from the flank to not risk hitting one of his companions. In a blink of an eye he charged a Blind spell and he hit the Srenc fighting against Jake. Two more Blind found the other Srenc unprepared. Now that all enemies had lost their vision, thus it was an easy job for his companions to start inflicting wounds to the monsters who were just swaying their weapon hoping to hit something while seeing nothing. Zortex himself shot a couple of Decay Bolts and he finished off one the Srenc with an Acidic Shot. Pravin had nothing to do during all the battle. He had stayed on Zortex shoulder without being in range to do any of his attacks.

At the end of the scuffle each of the teammates had killed one of the enemies. Three level 9 and one level 7 Srenc, who gave enough experience to raise Jake to level 4 and the two girls to level 3. Zortex got an increase in his experience, but he was still quite far from level 9. To slow him down there was the presence of Pravin, who was sucking away half of his experience for himself. His pet had actually leveled up.

Name: Pravin

Class: Slime

Level: 7

Stats:

Strength

7

Health

23 + 0.6/min

Endurance

8

Stamina

73 + 7.3/min

Agility

5

Mana

70 + 3.4/min

Spirit

10

Skill proficiency

Consumption

Level 1

Tentacle

Level 13

The battle was over and they looked at the loot. No crystals were found and the items were so crappy that they didn’t even pick them up. Only Jake had a wound on his left leg and Rizza was using her Light Healing spell to treat him, but to her own words she was not proficient at it, so it would take a while and a large part of the healing would be left to the Health recovery system. The team moved a bit away from the battleground and rested to recover their stats. The first encounter with the Srenc was a complete success.

I was quite disappointing. The archer was killed by Rizza and the other Srenc couldn’t even look at me while I shot them because they were already busy. In my defense if they had let me proceed the way I liked I could have made the archer useless and killed it easily and then I would have been free to join the melee fight. Next time I must take into account that Jake would underestimate my potential. Zortex pondered.