“Dammit! Drakov! Where is that support fire!” Guin shouted, whacking a couple of arrows out of the air with her spear midway through her [Dance] ritual. Successfully dodging them, she rushed toward the Corrupted Stick Shooters. She tsk-ed as she only managed to graze one of them before being forced to retreat again. This isn’t gonna work... Shit! She growled in her head and shouted in no general direction, “StarShine! BronzePaw! Guys!”

“Duck!” an answer finally came in the form of BronzePaw’s husky voice. Her bronze scales glinted in the sunlight as she leaped over Guin’s head and landed with a great crash! Her fist hit the ground perfectly with her favorite [Earthquake] ability. The ground around the dinosaur woman began to quake and break apart, knocking the group of six gobos off balance and even trapping some of them as they slipped into the cracks. As her ability ebbed away, her long serpentine tail whipped around, grabbing one of the stick shooters by the neck so quickly and so tight that Guin was not at all surprised to hear its neck snapping like a twig. Fine. Forget those two—focus, Guin, she told herself, shivering at the sound. Find an opening...

Smirking, Guin started changing her course to run directly towards her teammate with a quick, “Stay!”

Using BronzePaw as a springboard, Guin jumped up onto her broad back and launched herself toward one of the gobos, which was trying to free itself from the wrinkled earth. Thrusting her spear into its chest and deep into the ground, she spun herself around the shaft, smoothly tripping an adjacent gobo who had been about to take a shot at BronzePaw. Pulling her spear out of the ground and the gobo, Guin kicked up the dazed archer’s chin and separated its head from its narrow neck with a thrust that went clean through its spine.

“Incoming!” came BronzePaw’s voice. The three remaining stick shooters had raised their bows and readied another volley.

Quickly recasting her [Spirit Shield], Guin signaled BronzePaw her plan with some hand gestures and shot off, restarting her [Dance] ritual. BronzePaw gave Guin her twittering-screech-like sound in approval and ran off in the opposite direction once the arrows flew past, Guin stopped. Reaching her hand toward BronzePaw, she began to sing. From around her feet, a breeze rushed upward as [Hymn of the Light] activated. BronzePaw’s body began to radiate a delicate, yellow light as she fell down to all fours and picked her speed up into [Rush], setting her body into a flurry of movement as she barreled toward the remaining three gobos.

Two of the gobos managed to jump out of the way, but one was hit with the full force of the attack and flew several feet back, over by where Guin was singing. The impact had put a pretty dent into BronzePaw’s health, though Guin's hymn was working toward pulling it back up. 50%... 55%...

BronzePaw herself staggered a bit, shaking her head to overcome the [Dizzy] side effect Guin knew [Rush] had in addition to impact damage. The two stick shooters who had dodged before had picked themselves up and drawn daggers.

65%...

One of the brave creatures went up to the dazed garule women and raised its arm to attack—but BronzePaw’s arm shot out toward its face, and—bare-handed—she crushed it. Guin could hear the sound of the crunching of its skull even from where she was standing. In an ordinary battle, the enemy’s AIs should have suffered some sort of moral debuff for that kind of thing - but these things were somehow not normal.

75%... 40%? Oh shit!

The other gobo had screeched out a challenge at the garule woman, stabbing her as she stood up back on her hind legs. Letting out a frightful screech of challenge, BronzePaw’s tail whipped back around and pulled up the creature by its neck.

The shooter that had been hit during the [Rush] earlier had finally stood back up. Guin was honestly impressed that it had survived, but her awe quickly turned to worry as it notched its bow in her direction. Does it know that I’m healing her? Guin twitched as she watched BronzePaw’s health bar rise to 75% as the body of the last gobo she was fighting went limp, strangled by her powerful tail. As the body hit the ground, Guin stopped her song and rushed at the gobo—who had been closer than it should have been for a ranged class—and swiped at it. It must not have had much health left, as she barely hit its cheek, and it died with a miserable gurgling sound.

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Guin sighed as BronzePaw walked over to her, dusting herself off. “That was beautiful,” said the dinosaur woman with a toothy grin. “I thought you said that you weren’t a fighter? Your instincts are quite good...”

“Yeah, well, video games aren’t real life,” Guin told her, watching as the body of the gobo nearest to her popped into a treasure chest. “Don’t give me credit for game mechanics. And where the hell are the other two?”

BronzePaw shrugged, “I’ll admit, I can’t cause an earthquake in real life. I do find it quite satisfying. I can understand the attraction to magic now. As for the other two... I’m not sure. I thought I saw Drakov break off, and then StarShine followed him...”

“Oh, for the love of—” Guin pulled up her party feed and shouted: “Drakov! StarShine! Where the hell are you two!”

“Scary,” BronzePaw smiled.

“I’m really not cut out for this shit,” Guin growled. She wasn’t sure how she had ended up as the designated leader of the group, but given the unexpected circumstances, someone needed to step up.

A video feed of a young Asian man running through a wooded area popped up. “Gomen, Noona!” Drakov said in a rather pathetic voice. “We got separated!”

“I told you not to run, damn brat!” StarShine’s angry voice came through in reply even before her video feed popped up on the screen. “Penny-Guin, any chance you and PawPaw can give us squishies a hand here? We could have taken a couple of these ugly things, but Mr. Robin Hood over there decided to take a walk in the woods and back up into another group of pathers!”

“It was an accident!” Drakov told her. “I didn’t know they were there!”

Guin sighed, mustering up what little patience she had left, “Drakov, you should have known better and stayed with the main group so we could help each other. Star... Aren't Witches supposed to specialize in crowd control? Why didn’t you just root them?”

“Sorry, Noona...” Drakov said.

StarShine put a finger on her lip with an ‘mmm’ and checked her skills list. “Oh, look! I do have an ability that can do that!”

“...You two, get your asses back to this location if you can manage to do that without dying. Paw and I will recover so we can deal with your new friends. Help. Each. Other.”

“Okay!” went StarShine, closing her feed.

“I’ll try,” went poor Drakov as he focused back on running away.

“I’ll rest and be ready to pick some guys off them,” BronzePaw said. “Did you want me to pick up the chests, or do you want to get them?”

“Just go ahead and get them,” Guin told her. “I want to look over some things.”

BronzePaw nodded.

Good lord, help us all... Guin thought, already regretting bringing them along for this. At least Paw is worth something.

As far as the current group balance went, their team was sorely lacking—and their levels in no way reflected their skill. A level 15 mage who played like a tank. A level 20 witch who really just liked to run around making bubble shields and cursing things. A level 17 ranger who didn’t trust himself to stay put in a fight. And then there was Guin herself, level 12 with a bizarre skillset and an even more bizarre class.

And here they were, blundering through what looked to be a haunted forest, like children—and they all seemed to be looking at Guin for answers.

Guin’s foxish ear twitched. “How did this happen... We were just supposed to have been hunting Cat Foxes,” she moaned, looking around at the blackish-blue corruption they had stumbled into.

Guin pulled up her character screen with a sigh. Gods, grant me the patience I know they deserve... It was her quest—and one she couldn’t even share with them. They were here to help her. Still, she knew she should have waited until she was at least level 15 to try to do this quest. Nothing she could do about it now, though! Should I tell them to leave until the corruption subsides? She had to assume that it was a timed event.

Then again, the experience was excellent. Drakov and BronzePaw had already gained levels, and she was about to ding 13. The worst that could happen, she supposed, was that they could die pointless, painful deaths!