New Quest! Wood Fiend Raid

You have been recommended to join a party of senior adventures and aid them in slaying the terrifying wood fiend, a monster that has taken up residence in the Southland Forest. Join them and ensure victory over the monsters!

Objective: Prevent ambushes from tree stalkers and help take down the wood fiend

Reward: Variable Level Progress, 1 Point

The quest had appeared soon after leaving the guild hall with the rest of the party. Matt wouldn’t explicitly describe how he left as being dragged along, but it wasn’t that far from the truth. It seems like Florven and Drost just went along with whatever the other two members get excited about and have long since accepted the type of people that they adventure with. Matt has yet to have this experience, so he was caught a bit of guard and disoriented for the start of the adventure.

Karen had let him know that the quest would likely take two days; One day to travel through the forest that was apparently known as the Southland Forest, how original, and get close enough to the monster's territory before setting up camp, and then actually attacking the monster the next day before walking back to town. Lovely.

The party did at least ask if Matt had enough supplies for camping out, which he did not. They took him over to some of the merchants setting up shop for the day and helped him get a few necessities; A compass, firestarter, field rations, and utility knife for twelve more of his silver, breaking his last gold coin and leaving him with eight silver to his name. Thankfully he could Shape anything else that he might need so he didn’t spend too much.

He placed the rations into the main sack of his pack and the compass and fire starter into a more accessible side pouch. For the knife, which was a simple iron blade five inches long and a cheap wooden handle that he improved the moment he purchased the knife in a simple leather sheath, Matt changed slightly the plating on his outer left thigh so that the sheath was held in place on his leg where he could reach it.

After letting Matt get the necessary equipment for the journey, Karrn led the party out of town and back to the forest. Matt wasn’t expecting to return so soon but life has a way of surprising you. While they were heading back to the forest, they were heading towards a slightly different direction than where Matt and Bishop exited the treeline yesterday.

Heading towards the forest, both Matt and Florven ended up taking the lead. Matt, because of his ability to feel ambushes from the main threat, and Florven because he had a lot of experience and was knowledgeable on how to traverse a forest safely. Being back in the forest was nice for his material perceptions since he wasn’t overloaded with information like back in town, and focusing on one type of material made it much easier to ignore the others he could feel. This was nice because as it turns out, being able to feel the shape of fabric people wore was super uncomfortable and made him regret his choices slightly. Thankfully he had to bond with things to get any detail for his perception, so it wasn’t that bad.

Karrn and Drost were taking up positions in the center and sides, constantly looking around as their eyes glowed slightly; Karns eyes glowing a deep green and Drosts glowing a soft amber. Apparently that was something that Knights could do, which made sense since the system said that Knights could enhance a lot with Aura, so they were keeping watch for regular threats.

Janica was slightly behind the two knights but definitely in between them, and she was just playing with her wand by throwing it up so it spun and then catching it. Unfortunately, while she did catch it most of the time, sometimes it fell out of her hand and made Matt's heart freeze up with fear for a split second as he felt the constantly moving wood rod suddenly changing direction. Despite the intellectual ability to understand that it was probably fine, he still had no idea how spells worked and his instinctual fear of what fire magic could do almost tempted him to spend his point on Flammability so that he wouldn’t be set on fire. Almost.

She was also chatting up the group occasionally, which while not impossible to reply while focusing on his senses, Matt was still untrained and unfamiliar with the abilities so it was definitely a learning experience. The knights seemed to not have any issue paying attention to both.

“So Matt, where ya from? Your continental is pretty good but there’s an accent I can’t really place.” Oh no. Oh dang oh jeez. Matt really should have looked at a map or something before he started talking to other people. Okay, what does he know about the world? Bishop didn’t pry too much but he did mention how the land past the forest and everything was called the Wilds and that people were moving near them a lot so…

“Oh, I was traveling north from further south and Jylen is the first place I came across.” Please please please-

“Oh wow, you’re from one of the holdouts in the Wilds? Crazy. I know it's always been dangerous out there, but I’ve been hearing that more people have been migrating north since the demons have been getting more bold. Usually most keep going north to the cities but some stay in Jylen. Is that why you left?” Okay, that is a lot, but useful.

“I um, was kind of sheltered so I didn’t have much experience with the dangerous parts of living out there, but things did get worse so I had to leave in a bit of a hurry. I'm pretty lucky to have gotten this far on my own.”

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Drost nodded at Matt's statement with a grunt of agreement. “Needin to travel away from home on your ownsome is quite the task. Still, you’ve done quite well for yourself, you don’t see Shape weaving like that outside of the mountain holds.”

“Shape weaving? I didn’t have the most formal training, what's that?” Matt asked, unsure on how Drost meant the term. Obviously it was something to do with his equipment but he wasn’t sure if he meant how he made his fabric or some other thing he unknowingly did. Instead of Drost explaining further, Florven answered.

“Shape weaving is the art of turning uncommon material into fabric. Of course wood fabric is fairly common in the elven forests, but that is really all we do there and we definitely don’t add plates like you. Even for forest sentinels, they prefer regular plate armor made of wood. But the holds are very well known for their woven metal and stone.”

That was a lot of interesting information, but the fact that stuck out the most to Matt was confirmation that they were in fact called elves. Focusing on the actual word that Florven said was something like ‘lothrinae’ but the translation turned it to elven, so whatever the actual word for dwarf would probably also be translated. That was convenient.

He didn’t know what forest sentinels were beside some kind of elven job where they wear heavy wooden armor, which was interesting since he hasn’t seen a single elf in Florven where anything heavier than leather so they must be rare. The fact that shapers could turn stuff like metal into fabric as well was very interesting and he was excited to figure that out.

“Speaking of your gear, is that all ivor wood? There isn’t any further in the Wilds until you get to the edge of the southland, did you have something else before then?” Karen asked, joining the conversation. Huh, so the white wood is called ivor, cool.

“Oh, no, I didn’t have anything until I got to the forest. Actually, this is my second set I made last night with the ivor I had collected while traveling north. My first set wasn’t as good.”

“Really? You must have been pretty lucky not to encounter anything then on your way, it’s pretty hard to get through the wastes without any equipment.” Oh dang, he should have said he had worse stuff until he got to the forest, that would have been more believable. Scrambling his brain for a good response in the seconds he had before it would be a noticeable pause, Matt suddenly froze when he felt something move through his perception.

The other adventurers noticed his actions and immediately followed in turn, stopping and getting into formation, a small square with everyone turning their backs to each other so they can cover the most area visually and holding their weapons out at the ready.

“Where's the threat kid?” Karrn asked, holding his sword in front of him as he scanned the environment. Matt focused back on where he felt the odd moving wood and after trying to pass his bond though the various branches and twigs of the bushes around him, he found it. A mass of wood that his bond refused to connect with in the same shape as a tree stalker hidden in the brush.

Matt bonded with the surrounding wood in the bush and much like the first stalker he killed, he squeezed tight around the creature and trapped it within the bush, entangling its own viney body with the branches and twigs it so easily hid against.

“There!” Matt called out as the creature began to thrash in its cage, hissing loudly as it tried to tear itself free. What startled Matt slightly was that despite this stalker being a little bigger than the ones he has fought with before, it was barely able to move at all while being restrained. Matt could feel it in the way his Connection flowed through the wood, his force of holding it down was much stronger. It must have been his upgraded Scale he realized after a moment, a fact that made him excited for how powerful he could become.

The creature was around ten feet away in front of Janicas position on the formation, so she leaped into action while Matt was thinking. Stepping forward and falling into a steady stance, she held both of her hands in front of her, the left hand open and palm forward while the other hand had her wand in a closed fist, the fist pointing forward and the wand to the left across her palm. A bright orange circle about a foot wide, made of glowing energy manifested itself a few inches in front of her open palm as she spoke.

“Restrained Fire Arrow!” She yelled with a strangely resonant tone to her voice, and as each word left her lips the circle changed. At the word ‘restrained’ an equilateral triangle with its points touching the circle's edge appeared within the circle, and then the symbol of a circle with a dot inside it appeared.

At the word ‘fire,’ the triangle shifted into a square diamond inside the circle with a line cutting it in half, the first symbol still within the left half and a new symbol of a small flame appearing in the right half. And finally, when she said ‘arrow’ the diamond turned back into a single triangle, however it was split into three slices with the previous symbols in each area and a new symbol of an arrowhead in the bottom left area. It looks like new symbols appear clockwise around the spell circle or glyph or whatever it was called.

After forming the spell, Janica flicked her wand forward through the glowing circle where it disappeared and condensed into a single glowing ring wrapped around the gem with no obvious symbols. Continuing the motion, Janica brought the wand back like she was getting ready to throw it and pointed the wand towards the trapped, skill hissing tree stalker with a flick. As the wand pointed forward, the circle glowed brighter for a moment before a bolt of blazing fire shot forward from the crystal and slammed into the bush and creature's body, instantly catching the shrub on fire and causing the now burning monster to fight harder against its prison but it was too late. After only a few seconds, the creature slowed in its thrashing and died.

The fire continued to rage as it consumed the bush but it interestingly did not spread to any of the nearby foliage. Turning to look at Janica, Matt was frozen still in fear as he watched the firelight dance in Janicas wide eyes as she looked at the blaze with an almost holy reverence, and a slightly manic grin growing on her face.

Faster and harder than he has ever thought of anything, even when he was fighting for was life against that second tree stalker but only yesterday, Matt focused his intent in the system and purchased the property of ‘Flammability’ and threw as much connection as he could against the concept in his equipment so that nothing he wore could be set on fire. Hopefully…