Chapter 4 – The Goblin King
Having finished her ample meal for the day Nao had faded back into the game right away and continued reading, completely forgetting the time in the process. She only stopped to eat some basic bread whenever her character got hungry. Then a breathless voice could be heard over the party chat.
“S-sorry I’m late… huh?”
Demon smiled and replied “Welcome back, Garry!”
“…”
After a short break when he apparently checked the party information he sighed. “Seems like I’m the first one back, huh. I figured you guys would be waiting for me by now.”
“N-no. Don’t worry, no one else came yet.”
She quickly checked the time. It was past noon already. She had read for about 8 hours. Her gaze wandered over to the small mountain of books next to her. She had finished about 15 of them while waiting for her party members. She stretched and quickly picked up the books, flying over to the shelf to put them back. Flying had nearly become a habit of hers now.
“Should I come back now?”
“Huh? Did you go somewhere else?”
“Yea, just the city a little.”
“Oh, you must have waited long, sorry”
“Please don’t worry about it, I had fun while waiting…”
“Oh, that’s good then” he sighed” Wait. How did you leave the cave? Didn’t those cocoons attack you?”
“N-no. I figured if I can’t get their attention when hitting them with a stone they wouldn’t attack me if I just left… so I flew out.”
“… well, as long as you didn’t die.”
“Y-yea. By the way, Garry?” Demon had taken up all her courage and decided to ask.
“Yes?”
“C-can I ask… w-what lvl is your flying skill?” she managed to stutter out her question.
“Lvl? Still basic lvl 1… as far as I know the flying skill cant lvl, Demon” he hesitatingly said.
“I-I see… but…”
“What is it?”
“… My flying skill… is at B-beginner lvl 2 now…”
“…”
“…” Demon was embarrassed.
“Are you serious?”
“… yes”
“That’s not poss-… wait… What changed in the skill description?” He excitedly asked
“Uhm… Stamina consumption is less, and speed is a bit faster I think” Demon had checked the skill description and told him.
“I see, that’s great! Demon, you found one of the unannounced changes of the extension I think! It was definitely not possible to lvl the flying skill before.”
“O-oh.” ‘I guess you can’t lvl it if you fly with the controller.’ Demon thought.
“Well, anyhow. I think the others should come back soon, so you could start heading back here if you want.”
“O-okay.” Demon had finished sorting the books back in and flew out of the library, heading back towards the Cocoon cave. She got carefree on the way and started executing various flips and somersaults in the air as she went, thoroughly enjoying herself.
Suddenly a system message popped up in front of her
Created Passive skill –Aerial Dodge- Skill has been added to the skill window.—
Skill Information: Evasion rate increases by 10% while in the Air. Skill mastery will increase with
successful dodging attempts.
Created Stat -EVA (Evasion)- Stat has been added to the character window.—
Stat information: Increases the chance of Enemy attacks missing the target.
“Whoa, I guess I should stop playing around… “ Nao then headed straight towards the cave but she decided to keep those two for now.
A few moments later she could hear two other voices over the party chat, excusing themselves cause they were late.
“Sorry, sorry, we got held up helping our dad…”
“Y-you two are siblings?”
“Yea.”
“To be honest, us 5 all know each other through school” Garry explained.
“Ah…” Demon was dejected. She was the only one who didn’t really belong to the group.
“Don’t worry about it though, Demon. You’re already part of our team, right?”
“O-okay.” But she wasn’t convinced. After all they were much closer to each other, being able to hang out in school and in their free time. She unwillingly became sad.
“I think the other two should be here soon, how long till you get here, Demon?” Garry asked.
“10 minutes or so.”
“That was fast!”
“Hey guys! We checked out the website earlier. Did you see it? That video was so awesome.” With those words the last two of the party had logged in.
“Hey, you two!” Garry greeted them. “What video do you mean?”
“The one about the race quest.”
“Nope, haven’t seen it.” The other 3 said.
“Apparently there really weren’t many people who found it… so Furan Corp made a clip showing how one of them found the quest. It was intense I tell you, we’d never have found it.”
“Why?”
“That… you should watch it.”
“Oh, really? Let’s go check it out. Demon still isn’t here, so…” The other 3 members faded out to look at the clip.
“But I figured Demon would already be waiting for us… to think she wasn’t here yet.”
“I-I’m here. I’m on the way” Demon strained her wings to fly faster.
“Ah, so that’s how it was. You just went somewhere.”
“Y-yea, I had a few hours so I went to the city.”
“Ah I see. Then did you see the clip yet?”
“S-something like that.” Nao was too embarrassed to tell them it was her footage.
“Hehe, I can’t wait for them to come back so we can talk about it.”
“Y-yea.” Demon couldn’t think of a way to switch topics now that they were this excited about the clip.
As she was still nervously thinking of a way to avoid talking about the video she finally arrived at the cave still deep in thought and nearly forgot to land. In the last moment she noticed the two party members waving up at her and quickly decided to dive down, landing on the floor with a loud bang causing a huge cloud of dust to whirl into the air. The movement force still caused her to slide along the floor for a few meters until she could finally stop.
“S-sorry, emergency break.” She stammered towards the two alienated party members.
“…”
“… D-don’t worry about it.” They worriedly raised their heads up to look at the cocoons but as expected the ruckus had been completely ignored.
For a few moments they didn’t say anything then one of them started
“But seriously, Demon. I can’t believe you actually found that quest. I mean we don’t know what exactly you have to do to really get it, but how that devil got it… it’s really unlikely for someone to find out about that method… especially out of those not skipping the tutorial…”
“A-ah… I guess I was lucky.” She didn’t have the courage to tell them the footage was provided by her. While they were talking the other 3 had faded back in.
“Whoa. There you are, Nao.”
“H-hi, everyone!”
“Hey! But really, that clip was great! Did you see it too?”
“Y-yea I guess.” Nao blushed
“To think someone would come up with that. But oh well, they showed us a way to accept it now so I guess we can forgive them, huh.”
“Yea, but seriously, that clip was well taken. Are you sure it’s from a user?”
“Yea, that’s what was said on the forums.”
“Hmmm, well anyways. Shall we start?” After a while Garry snapped out of it and suggested
“Huh? Ah, right!”
“I’ve thought about it and figured we should just try attacking the first one from the exit directly to see how the others will react. If they agro on us we can just run off. The question is how we get that thing to the floor so we can fight it.”
“Nice idea… what if we hit it with stones until it falls?”
‘I don’t think that’ll work’ everyone thought.
“Uhm… can’t we fight… in the air?”
“Hm? No, since we all use the controller… right!” Garry turned towards Demon. “Demon. You think you can teach us how to fly without?”
The other party members looked at him confusedly. “You sure this is the time?”
“Yea, apparently you can lvl the flying skill now but it doesn’t seem to work if you use a controller… we’d eventually need to lvl it either way. Plus now there might really be quests that need us to fight while flying to complete them… and we can’t do that with a controller in our hands.”
“You can? Seriously?”
“Yea, Nao’s Flying lvled up so we figured it out that way.”
“Aaah, right. Then please teach us!”
“Yea, please!”
“Ah, uhm. I’ll try.”
Then Nao recalled what the NPC Tim had told her and tried coaching her party how to fly. After about an hour 3 of her party members managed to do it normally but the other two still forgot to flap their wings sometimes. All in all their movements seemed very inelegant and weren’t balanced well, discouraging the party visibly.
Finally Garry sighed and decided “Well, this’ll have to do. We can always practice more later, so for now let’s see if we can beat one of these.”
“Yes!” everyone cheered.
Everyone summoned their clubs and we started flying towards the cocoon closest to the exit and surrounded it. Then Garry gave us a sign and we rushed onto it, hitting it with all our strength.
The cocoon quivered and slowly moved towards Garry but its speed was so slow they could easily avoid the attacks. The other cocoons in the surrounding area didn’t react to their fight, making it possible to easily defeat one of them within a few minutes.
Demon’s movements were uncertain. She didn’t really know how to handle the club well and was hesitated to kill a living being with her own hands. ‘Wait… can a cocoon be called an animal?’ she finally thought. ‘I don’t think so…’ After these thoughts her movements held a new determination.
When they had finally destroyed it its shell cracked and many blue stones fell out of it body towards the ground. Reflexively Demon flew beyond the cracked shell and collected some stones before they could hit the ground and shatter.
Quest item ‘Sapphire Ore’ acquired
Quest has been completed
“They’re the right ones.” She said toward her party members who had landed again to rest.
“Alright! We did it!” they were wheezing from flying for so long, not used to handling their wings yet.
“Damn. This is really hard.” One of them complained.
“Well, but it feels great, doesn’t it? To have done it with our own power.” Garry countered.
“True, true.”
Demon smiled and flew over to them, handing them the stones she had collected.
‘This is really fun! Playing with everyone like this!’ No words could describe what she felt right now. Her heart felt warm and she just couldn’t stop smiling. It was indescribable and she wouldn’t forget this scene for the rest of her life.
“Well, let’s go do the next quest!”
The party had rested up and was ready to go to their next adventure.
With Garry leading the way the team soon managed to complete several quests and over the span of 2 days they had reached lvl 9. Whenever her party wasn’t around Demon would undoubtedly be found in Firchten’s library, reading another book to train her stats or she would fly around an area infested with weaker goblins she had found, trying to dodge their attacks to lvl her passive skill. She nearly died several times while attempting it but barely managed to escape every time. Soon she found a pattern in their movements and it got easier to evade them after a few hours.
She had found out a lot about her party members over the long hours they had played together. One of them was a real klutz. He always managed to get tangled on something or fall over his own feet. Another one would always directly say what was on his mind bluntly but he’d still follow Garry’s decision in the end. And the siblings were inseparable, always knowing what the other was thinking without saying anything. Then there was Garry. He was really great at solving conflicts and good at making decisions and very reliable which was why the other 4 had asked him to be their party leader. They had originally played different races which made it hard for them to advance together. Just when they had been stuck the expansion was announced and they had decided to restart the game together. Demon really envied them but at the same time started feeling at home within their group. They were soon inseparable and their teamwork steadily improved. They had also practiced flying and could now fight in the air without trouble.
But they were still using their starting equipment which was very plain. It consisted of only simple trousers and shirts for male devils and a shirt and skirt of female ones. They were able to pick the color, but it really wasn’t fancy and it didn’t grant them any bonuses. Therefore the party was looking forward to lvl 10.
They would be able to undergo their first job advancement and chose one of the 3 Basic classes of the game, enabling them to get better equipment and weapons. They were still using the club the adventurer trainer Fido had given them.
‘Thinking of Fido…’ since the party was just discussing what to do next Demon said
“Guys? Wouldn’t it be appropriate for us to do Fido’s task now? Since we nearly outlvled the club he gave us…”
“True, there was that quest as well. I suppose we’re close enough in lvl to give it a try now.”
“Then it’s decided, let’s go for it!”
“Yep!” they all raised their glasses and toasted. Actually they were taking a small break in the tavern right now and had chatted casually for a while. But now they quickly emptied their cups, paid and went outside.
They stretched their shoulders and grew out their wings to start flying. Everyone was following Garry as they left the town flying towards the natural hallway leading into the inner parts of the cavern labyrinth. They hadn’t been here before since this place was flooded with goblins and even some aggressive bats.
As soon as they flew past the city gates they got into battle formation. The monsters here were aggressive towards players and you never knew when you might have missed one and it assaulted you from behind. They also advanced slower, sharpening their senses and keeping their eyes open for enemy movement.
The first group of goblins came into view. There were 3 of them. Wordlessly the party landed and split up into two groups. Garry and Demon went ahead to agro the monsters while the other 4 were waiting for them at a safe distance.
One of the goblins ran towards Garry while Demon had dragged two of them. She nimbly lead them away from Garry and the others who were now fighting the first goblin and drew a circle around the group, keeping the other two goblins at bay with occasional hits and kicks as she was flying low above the ground to not lose their attention while the party killed the first one.
They had come up with this strategy beforehand, seeing as Nao was the most agile amongst them in the air she was the best choice for playing the bait. The goblins couldn’t match up to her speed but she sometimes let them come close to make sure they wouldn’t suddenly turn to her companions.
Meanwhile the party was fighting fiercely. The wooden club they had was quite a crude weapon and so the best strategy they could come up with was this: The one who got attacked would concentrate on blocking or dodging the attacks while the other 4 would try to inflict as much damage as possible. They had to be careful not to hit each other since they were fighting in a small space around the short creature.
But eventually the goblin collapsed with a last grunt, leaving only a few items behind on the ground.
59 exp has been gained
Garry quickly picked up the drops and motioned for Demon to come lure the group towards them. She nodded and headed over to her party. When she was in reach they quickly attacked one of her followers and cut off its way, forcing it to change target. Demon then lured away the last goblin, still showering it with kicks and hits from her club as she went.
This way they slowly fought their way through the area, sometimes resting in between the battles and finally completed Fido’s quest.
“Are we really done?” Sweat was running down all their skins and they were resting on top of a cliff, out of the reach of any more goblins and relaxed.
“That took a while.”
“Yea.”
“Say, Demon. How can you dodge them like that?”
“Yes? Uhm, I practiced I guess. But I’m bad on my legs though.”
“Wow, how’s it possible to be better at flying than walking. Are you an alien?” They joked
“Eeehh, no way! How did you find out?” Demon went along and everyone laughed.
“Well, let’s go on then~” Garry said after a while. “We still need to hand in but… I think once we do we’ll finally be lvl 10!”
“Whoaa, you’re right! Though saying that… somehow it took really a lot more effort to get lvl 10 here than when I played an Elf…”
“Same here… I was lvl 10 the first day…”
“R-really? That’s weird…”
“Well, it may be harder. But it’s a lot more fun so I don’t mind.”
“True that, since we’re together now everything seems a lot brighter than when I did it alone.” Another party member agreed.
Since they were immersed in their conversation they didn’t notice the intimidating shadow appearing behind their backs. The shadow stretched and slowly got up, revealing its might. It turned towards the group of unsuspecting adventurers with an evil smile on its ugly face. Then it crept closer to them, lifted its axe and let it swing down on the closest one with all its might, letting out a crazy laugh as it did.
The adventurers reacted promptly but it was too late. As they were getting up and summoning their weapons one of them had already collapsed with a pained sound, blood running down the back of his head. Seconds later his body started disintegrating into white light, sending him back to Firchten, dead.
As the party hurriedly tried to regroup the shadow had already targeted the next one of them, heading closer with huge steps.
“G-Goblin King?” one of them realized, raising his weapon in a protective gesture as the monster headed towards him quickly, raised its axe, still giggling maniacally and smashed it into his head ignoring the club in his hands completely and turning him into light in a second.
The goblin king raised its claws in a victory gesture, his howl echoed through the cave, sending shivers down their spine. Then he jumped towards the remaining three of them, grabbing hold of one of their heads as he was attempting to get behind him and smashing the axe squarely into Demon’s weapon, making her lose her footing and catapulting her right into Garry. Both of them got thrown into the wall of the cave and collapsed dizzily just as the goblin king squashed their comrade’s head like he would a tomato.
“AAaaaahhh” his scream was still echoing in the cave when he had disappeared in white light.
Demon and Garry had quickly snapped out of their daze and got up but they weren’t fast enough. Just as they were trying to regain their balance the goblin king appeared before them, bringing down his axe on their throats with an evil grin and sending them back to the city in seconds, the echoes of their struggle slowly fading.
Demon’s mind went black as soon as she had realized the axe had hit her. A numbing pain spread throughout her body from her throat and she couldn’t breathe. A sickening sensation spread through her body as she reintegrated and suddenly felt her body again. With a loud ‘eww’ Demon came to, carefully rubbing her throat and sat up. She felt sick to her stomach. ‘This is what it’s like to die…’She never wanted to experience it again.
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She held her protesting stomach and looked around. Garry was sitting next to her with a green face, grimacing as he tried to get rid of the lingering feeling death had caused but shortly after he said
“S-sorry, I’ll be right back.” and faded out.
Unsure what to do next Demon swallowed down the urge to throw up and got to her feet, moving her limbs as if to test out everything was still where it belonged after she had died. They had woken up in front of the lord’s palace in Firchten, in the center of the city but away from the devils’ attention.
Then she checked the system message that had popped up as soon as she had regained her senses.
You have died.
Character’s lvl decreased by 1
All skill masteries decreased by 15%
Debuff ‘Death’s Touch’- All stats, skill effects reduced by 50% for 1 hour- Has been applied
Some items carried by the character have been dropped.
Equipped items lost 10% durability.
‘Whoa… that are some harsh penalties. Is the dev of this game a sadist or something?’ Demon thought as she read through them and finally sighed audibly. ‘Well, cant help it, we’ll regain them eventually.’
“Guys?” Demon finally asked through the party channel.
There was no reply.
‘What do I do now…’ Demon wondered. ‘They probably all faded out after dying.’
She swiftly grew out her wings and headed to the library, seeing as she had nothing to do until her comrades returned. She sat down in her usual spot on top of the book shelf for now and started reading. After about 30 minutes Garry came back and talked through the party channel
“Demon? Are you still there?”
“Yea.”
“Sorry about that, I can’t handle the feeling after death well… I usually end up throwing up from it…”
“T-that’s alright. I also felt sick from that…”
“Hehe, it’s nothing to be proud of though.”
“Haha…”
“Yea, I just came back to apologize actually. The others contacted me per mail earlier and said they also had to throw up and can’t fade back in for today. So we’ll be continuing tomorrow.”
“I see” Demon sounded disappointed
“Well, it’ll be Friday tomorrow so we’ll have loads of time!”
“Ah! Right!” Demon remembered that they had to go to school. Obviously they’d have more time on weekends and she cheered up.
Garry noticed she felt better after hearing that and smiled to himself.
“So, now that we can’t continue lvling what are you up to, Demon?”
“You aren’t leaving?” Demon was surprised. He usually always faded out when the others had to go.
“You want me to?” He curiously asked
“Of course not! I was just surprised… “
“Haha, yea, I can stay a bit since school doesn’t start for another hour.”
‘Right, they did always leave together because of school…’
“Uhm I was planning to read up on some things in the library, but if you’re here… w-would you like to do some dodging training?”
“Oh, I didn’t want to keep you from reading, Demon”
“N-no, I was going to practice later anyways, so …”
“Alright then, sounds like a good idea”
They met up in front of the library and headed out towards the goblin area again, Demon leading the way.
“By the way, did you decide on a class yet?”
“Yea, I’ll become a magician since I’m bad with moving my body. So I want to fight from afar.”
“Ooooh? That sounds great. Then I’ll be in charge of protecting you then. I want to be a Swordfighter and later a HolyKnight.”
“What other classes are there after the Magician?”
“Hmm, you’re going for a damage type, right?”
“Yea”
“Then first you’d want to go for a Spellmaster at lvl 50. After that you can decide between a pure damage class, the Sorcerer or the Illusionist who manipulates shadows to create hallucinations at lvl 150. There’s a last job advancement at lvl 300, where you can choose between Elementalist who specializes on dealing damage with elemental attributes or Shaman who harms the soul of things directly. Let me think… for Illusionist I believe you can choose between a Shadow who can turn invisible and confuse enemies and a Necromancer who can raise the dead and make them their servants. Necromancer is the only class able to learn a revival spell for players, although you’ll look like an undead for a few hours afterwards, hehe."
“Whoa, you know so much about it…”
“Haha, not really. I’ve been a Spellmaster before so I do know a bit though.”
“Wow, then I’ll know who to ask if I get stuck on something!”
“Feel free, I’ll try my best to advise you if I can.”
“I’ll definitely keep it in mind! But lvl 300… that’s still so far away. It’ll probably take a lot of work to get there…”
Garry smiled heartily. “Yea, there’s only a handful players close to lvl 300 at the moment… we’ll probably never get there though.”
“Why do you say that?” Demon was disappointed.
“Because of school. There will be exams soon and we only have a few hours to play every day… we also need to hang out with our family once in a while, or they get worried… we just can’t invest enough time to get there.”
“Aww, I’m sure we’ll reach it eventually. We just can’t be negative about it.”
“That may be true… we’ll see!”
“Yea. Ah, we’re nearly there. I always train over at that field.” Nao pointed towards an area surrounded by a small fence. It was nearly completely filled with goblins. The sight caused Garry to pale visibly.
“A-are you sure…”
“Yea, as long as we can concentrate only on dodging it’s a pretty good training ground.” Demon flew over to the field without a care.
“I’m really not sure this is a good idea…” Garry started getting scared, visualizing various gruesome deaths like getting stomped to death or having his throat ripped out.
“To be honest I don’t want to die again today…”
“Don’t worry, Garry. I’ll follow you and if you can’t dodge something I’ll definitely get you out.”
“…” somewhat reassured he nodded, but still had a bad feeling about this. “So what do I do?”
“Uhm well basically it’s a race. Try flying one round around the fenced in area while dodging their attacks. I’ll be right behind you so don’t be scared.”
“Alright. Here I go then…!” Garry took a deep breath, grew out his wings and flew into the field. After 5 seconds he was surrounded by a horde of goblins unable to dodge them and Demon had to drag him out again, flying to a rock in a save distance.
“…”
“…”
“Uhm, don’t stop. Concentrate. Look for a route and then take it. Like a hurdle race? Just you don’t see the hurdles before they’re right in front of you”
“… I see.”
“Try again?”
“C-can I watch you do it once?”
“O-okay” Demon said embarrassedly and got ready.
She stood in front of the gate and watched the goblins’ movements for a moment, wings raised tensely and got to her knees like a sprinter waiting for the starting signal. Then she kicked off the ground forcefully, catapulting herself into the compact knot of goblins. She was relying on all her senses, listening closely to the goblins footsteps while performing long jumps through the field, using her wings as a medium to move in mid-air, somersaulting over goblin weapons one time and rolling below them another time. In just 3 minutes she rounded the field. She had been grazed by their weapons a few times, but all in all her HP hadn’t dropped for more than 1/5th.
After completing one round around the field she flew up higher and described a long curve, flying back towards Garry who had been staring at her wide-eyed and with his mouth hanging open.
“T-the important thing is to not let your speed drop while dodging… k-keep looking at your surroundings even while evading so you know what’ll come next.” Demon got quieter as she noticed Garry was looking at her with an unreadable look on his face.
“…”
“T-their movements are pretty limited since they have crude weaponry and think simply… so predicting what they’ll do next isn’t that hard…” Demon drifted off and stopped talking, blushing under Garry’s gaze.
‘Are you kidding me? Is she Bruce Lee’s daughter or something?’ he thought alienated. ‘Am I watching a movie? How did she even come up with a crazy training method like that? Is this an action movie or something?’
“G-garry? D-did something…?”
“Ah, uhm no.” Garry snapped out of it but still gave her a strange look. “Though I don’t think I’ll be able to do that…”
“Ah… alright” Demon said sadly.
“…”
“Then… what do we do?”
Trying to overcome his surprise he checked his watch again. There were still 30 minutes left until he had to get up.
“For now let’s find a normal group of goblins to train on, not an army” he sighed
“O-okay.”
They flew over to the place they had quested in earlier and Garry started training there with Nao. Of course they didn’t gain any exp since they wanted to lvl with their comrades. Then Garry had to go and Nao was left alone again, picking up her usual training menu.
She continued dodging the attacks of the goblins until her stamina got low, then she flew out and rested. She repeated this until her passive flight evasion skill lvled up. Her Flying nearly reached beginner lvl 9 now as well.
Happily she then went on to the library to read while waiting for her companions to return.
A few hours later they enthusiastically faded back in, calling her up over the party chat
“Demon?”
“Yea, I’m here.”
“Whoa, you’re really around a lot, aren’t you.”
“No, I just came back as well.” She had had to fade out since she had gotten visitors earlier and really just returned 10 minutes ago.
“Ah, I see.”
“Is everyone here?” Garry asked
“Yea.”
“Then let’s go hand in that quest at least.”
“Alright, meet you all there.”
Demon finished her paragraph and quickly cleaned up the books she had read, then departed towards Fido to meet up with her party.
Since she had been in the city already she was the first to arrive at the cheerful devil’s place. He seemed to be drunk today and hadn’t noticed her as he was talking exaggeratingly excited with another NPC. She didn’t pay any attention to what they were saying though. That was private.
She didn’t have to wait long before her party arrived and so they all went over to the old trainer together and greeted him
“Hey, Fido. It’s been a while!”
“Oh! Ya’ll! Ye’re still alive!”
“Whoa, that’s so cold. Of course we would be.”
“Hahaha, I didn’t mean’t like that. So how’d it go?”
“Yea, we got rid of those goblins for you, Fido.”
“Hah, thanks a lot, folks! Here’s yer rewards.” Fido opened a bag that was standing beside him and rummaged through it. Then he took out 6 pouches as big as his fist, handing one to each of them.
“Thanks!”
They opened the pouch, taking out several health potions and some bottles of milk. Since milk could restore stamina the reward was pretty good. The party smiled at each other.
“Bah the waeh, ye folks. Did ye run into some trouble down there?”
This time they exchanged worried glances and finally Garry spoke
“Actually…” he explained the situation accurately to the old devil. ‘Better to be honest here’
“I see… To be frank there’s been several reports regarding that basterd killin devils down there… ‘was hopin ye all could take care of ‘em for me. Whatcha say? I’ll write up a recommendation fer tha next trainers if ya can manage it. Then I won’t have anehthing left ta teach ya.”
“N-no way…”
“Really?” The party sounded discouraged as they were shouting in party chat.
“…” Garry didn’t flinch and his thoughts were racing. The reward was really tempting. If you had the adventurer trainer’s recommendation you wouldn’t need to work as hard to convince the secondary class trainer to take you as an apprentice. He really wanted to accept the quest but the risk was just too high. They just got completely wiped out yesterday. Then a thought crossed his mind. ‘Maybe…’ He whispered Demon.
“Demon, do you think you can dodge its attacks? You’d need to keep his attention away from us. Our reactions aren’t fast enough yet. Can you do it?”
“…” Demon didn’t answer for a moment, overwhelmed by the request. ‘If it fails it’d be my fault we died… but… I want to try… I want to be helpful to them…’
Patiently the party waited for Garry’s decision who was looking at Demon expectantly, his eyes showing he trusted her to do it.
This faith in her person scared her. No one had believed in her before… But it also made her really happy. She decided to try it and nodded at him, determination in her eyes.
‘I have to do this! I want us to get lvl 10 and all have fun together again!’ she had noticed how the motivation of the team had dropped after their deaths. She didn’t want the atmosphere to change though. She really liked her party. So this was the least she could do for them.
A smile spread across Garry’s face and he turned to look at the others simply saying
“Let’s do this.”
Stunned the party didn’t react at all for a while. Then one of them finally managed to ask
“A-are you serious? It just killed us you know…”
“We weren’t prepared that time. We’ll come up with a strategy now.”
“Is this really gonna be alright?”
Although they sounded uncertain they still accepted his decision and the party took the quest. They then headed towards a quiet cave on the way to the goblin king and held a stopped there to rest and come up with a strategy against the bloodthirsty king of goblins.
“This is my plan…” Garry elaborated what he had thought about leaving the party silently listening. Then one of them snapped
“Are you seriously a guy? How can you expect a girl do something like that!”
“Garry, this is far too crazy, even for us.”
“Eh…” Demon didn’t even know what to say.
“Guys, calm down. I’m confident she can do this. Out of all of us there isn’t anyone else who has a chance of doing it. This has nothing to do with gender.”
“…”
“If we fail now we can just lvl some more before trying again, but I really want to finish it now. We’re lvl 9 again and if we finish this quest we’ll most likely be lvl 10. I think it’s worth a shot.”
No one could retort.
“U-uhm, since I’ll be the one who has his attention, you guys should fly away if I get killed. I can easily catch up again once you have to leave.” Demon suggested
“Seriously… how could we do something like that.” They said while painfully rubbing her head. “Don’t even think about saying something like that again.”
“Of course we wouldn’t leave.”
“Owowow, yes!” Demon complained but was actually happy.
After joking around like this for a while and laughing they decided to leave for the goblin king. They flew over to it and landed at the edge of the cliff they had been killed on. Surveying the area for a while they found him. He was sitting leisurely on a throne of bones, watching them with alert eyes, his axe right beside him. When they walked closer it let out a loud snicker and picked up his weapon, and stretched his neck.
Demon went up front and took out her club, getting into battle pose. She had only tried doing this with a club once before, but if something unexpected happened she could always drop it and only rely only on kicks and punches like before. The question was if she’d be able to keep agro then.
“Remember, as soon as any of us get the agro you fly off. Got it?” Garry reminded them quietly in partychat.
“Got it…”
The Goblin King then came over, leaving them no further time to reconfirm their strategy and Demon intercepted it, squarely hitting its knee from the side with her club, causing the already raised axe to miss. She now completely concentrated on evading his continuous attacks, also keeping in mind he would try grabbing her with his other hand like he did to one of them before. It was very hard and required her full concentration. Meanwhile her party members had approached the monster from behind and started hitting it with all their might. Worried about the others getting agro Demon quickly revised her strategy and relied mostly on destabilizing its stance with hits and dodged as little as possible. This was her own damage output would be higher and the chance for it to turn to her team mates was less. She had his full attention. The goblin king soon worked itself into a blind rage, forgetting the other attackers and mindlessly only went after Demon. She noticed the subtle change in his movements resulting from his rage and adapted to it, bouncing around the area like a female ninja while kicking and hitting him as much as possible. One time he nearly managed to grab her but with the help of her wings she performed a backflip, kicking it right into the jaw with her raised feet and escaping his grasp by an inch.
Her narrow escapes caused her team to gasp worriedly several times but soon they soon gained faith in her skill as they watched her repeatedly escape the Goblin King’s assault and attacked with new determination. Thoughts like ‘Impossible… are we actually beating it?’ or ’Whoa, this is awesome’ flashed across their minds and soon they seriously admired Demon for her concentration. ‘It’s been more than 20 minutes and she’s still holding up this well… but we have to kill it soon.’
A thin layer of sweat had formed on Demons forehead and her concentration was starting to slip, as expected. ‘To think we fought for this long already…’ However, she wouldn’t give up like this. She took together her determination and kept her senses sharp.
But it eventually slipped. Demon was inattentive for a second and before she knew it his fist wan in front of her face. With a restricted shout she turned her body right away. But it was too late. The fist had grazed her head and the force of his attack caused her health to drop significantly, leaving her stunned for just a second. She only managed to dodge his next attack narrowly and felt dazed. Sensing her predicament the Goblin King’s attacks intensified, making her panic.
“Demon!” The worried shout from her party made her snap out of it.
Her mind cleared up in a flash and she attacked with new vigor. Two minutes later the monster finally fell, disappearing with an incredulous grunt and defiant eyes.
Quest has been completed
The party dropped to the floor, completely exhausted. Demon just lay there motionlessly, breathing hard and staring at the ceiling of the cave blankly while catching her breath.
Then they all started laughing. This victory truly felt great.
“That… was so AWESOME.”
“Yea.”
Demon’s breathing still hadn’t stabilized do she just lay there, regaining her energy. She closed her eyes.
After some moments of silently resting again she heard her party members sit up and turned her head, opening her eyes again.
They were looking at her. “Hey, Demon?”
“Yea?”
“Thanks… that was all thanks to you.”
“Yea, without you it’d have been impossible.”
Demon was stunned for a moment and stared at her companions dumbly, not knowing what to say.