“Ohmigod! What the hell was that?” StarShine said from above. With a loud whoosh from her broom, she landed and poked the creature’s body with her broom. It almost immediately popped into a treasure chest, causing her to jump back, hugging her broom with an echoing yelp.
“Did you think it was going to bite you?” Drakov asked, his voice lined with annoyance as he limped over to where they were. StarShine glared and stuck her nose up in the air.
“Take it easy, you two,” Guin said, her mouth full of liver. “They aren’t really supposed to have Lore Masters in the beginner zones, and Star is a noob.”
“Hey!” StarShine turned to her to protest but paled as she paused, pointing. “Guin... What... What are you... doing?”
“She was doing that earlier, too—or trying to, at any rate,” Drakov said, visibly shivering as Guin shrugged. “Guess this one tastes better?”
Gluping it down, she looked at the bit that remained. It wasn’t all that bad, really, once it wasn’t... inside something. “It’s... a thing,” she told them. “I needed to do it if I wanted to go back into town anyway. It’s a long story.”
Looking rather unconvinced, Stella circled her finger in the air, saying, “Is it a story that you could please take the time to explain? Like now? Because that’s simply horrifying.”
“Mmmm,” Guin went, hardly taking the time to think about it. “Nah. Not now. We have other things that we need to work on.”
“You are never, ever, ever, allowed to give garuli any more of your crap,” StarShine told her with narrowed eyes. “What the hell.”
“Can we move on?” Guin asked, licking her lips as she did her best to ignore BronzePaw’s frozen, open-mouthed response to watching her rip the creature’s body open with her own personal pair of bare claws. There was a certain amount of guilt that came with her act of doing something that she had always judged the dinosaur people for, and she hadn’t yet decided what the best way to cope with that was.
“Go for it,” StarShine drawled. “I’m obviously not going to get my answer now, am I?”
Guin wiped the blood on her hands off on her shorts and grabbed her spear. “The first thing that we need to do is regroup and re-evaluate our tactics. For starters, Drakov, heal up, would you? Never know when’s the next time we’ll get ambushed out here.”
“And from here?” Drakov asked, gulping down a red potion that picked his health points back up. “We came this way for the skins, but how far does this corruption go for?”
Guin shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “In this case, I actually think we got lucky, surviving that mess. I think we are a bit under-leveled for this area.”
Clearing her throat, the unfrozen BronzePaw said, “Should we start by talking a bit about what happened back there? I think there were a few mistakes made that could be avoided in the future. I am fairly new to this game—if there are errors that have been made...” Her face was a bit sheepish as she trailed off.
“We all made mistakes,” Guin sighed. “You and Star are both new and learning a class without having the background knowledge of class or game mechanics is hard enough without having any pressure put on you by people like myself or Drakov. Honestly, we are all still learning—and frankly, I am for sure too low level to be worth much to you guys, class aside.”
“What is your class, anyway?” StarShine asked.
“Honestly? I don’t even know yet,” Guin admitted. “I won’t really know anything until I get to the next stage. And to get to the next stage, I need to get my crafting skills up to snuff.”
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StarShine snorted and crossed her arms indignantly.
“Isn’t that why we are here?” BronzePaw asked, her tail flipping back and forth. “To get you your class? But I think that's not all that there is to it,” she went on. “After all, had we executed the strategy properly, things would have gone much smoother, I’m sure. It might take a little bit to whip this team of ours into shape, but when we do, it really will be worth something—at least, that’s what I think.” Though she only gave the garuli woman her own sheepish grin on the outside, Guin genuinely thanked her for the words on the inside.
“Well, at least you will always be a natural badass in the end, Paw-Paw,” Starshine grumbled. “Why don’t we start by getting the pretty boy over there to stop running away!”
“‘Pretty Boy, ’ my ass. I wasn’t gonna ‘run away’!” Drakov whined back and failed his arms in the air. “I had to run so I could kite him! What, you think I’m just gonna stand there and let him blow my ass up? No thanks! Though you did a great job of doing that for me!”
“What,” StarShine scoffed, rolling her eyes at him. “Were you gonna string him up and fly him on his own wind?” she asked him, turning her hand into a place and going, ‘Whoo! Look at him go!’”
Stunned, Drakov gave her an unwavering blank stare as if he couldn’t compute the input.
“Star,” Guin interjected, sensing Drakov’s inner turmoil. “By ‘kite,’ he meant that he was gonna run and shoot at the guy at the same time. Kiting is something that we should all learn to do properly—especially you, assuming that your Witch class has some reliable combat instants. I’m pretty sure it’s very DoT-based when it's not doing mass CC stuff.” She was both amused and saddened by her friend's lack of knowledge, but all that Guin could hope to do now was give her some tips and strategies to make all their lives easier.
Blushing furiously, Starshine hmph-ed and resorted to trying to defend herself with a very unconvincing ‘men shouldn’t run’ statement.
“Women should be more gentle,” Drakove grumbled back in response.
“Oh? Did you hear that BronzePaw?” she answered dryly.
BronzePaw, however, was not impressed by either of them. “Stand down, both of you,” she scolded. “Let’s not be so childish as to blame others for our own failings! Take this as an opportunity to learn from your mistakes, to grow—and I’d say that's something that can apply to all of us.” Pulling her long, powerful tail around her feet, the bronze-scaled garuli woman looks over fully at Guin. “So, Guin, what’s our next move?”
Guin bit her lip. “As I see it,” she started. “We have two options. One: We continue to do the quests for my class. Two: Stay in this area and see what we can see.”
“Benefits and downsides for each option?” BronzePaw asked.
“Well, the thing about my class is, it’s pretty basic, and honestly, I could probably do it myself—it would just take much more time,” Guin told them. “Even then, it’s a quest chain to get my class advancement, and though I can say that, using logic and experience, it wouldn’t take more than a couple of hours to do, I was in the tutorial for a week with that same logic.” StarShine and Drakov shared a chuckle as Guin continued: “On the plus side, it’s very likely that my class advancement will put me into a much better position for the group and solidify what my inherent role will be. Other possible benefits are that I should level a couple more times, and it’s possible that, now that we know the Corruption is in the woods, we could gather both information and valuable questlines.”
“Option two?” the garule woman asked.
Guin pointed around at the Corruption. “This place is difficult, and we could easily wipe—but I guarantee the risk is worth it. This place is an experience and treasure mine with all these powerful Corrupted beasts. The Corruption that I have known has also been chock full of potential for worthwhile questlines. I say that, but I am not sure what it’s really like for people without Veil Sight.”
“They get the corrupted monsters, but not really the visuals or spirit beasts,” Drakov said. “But with it being this strong, maybe they see dead trees?”
“What are you talking about?” StarShine asked. “The trees are definitely dead.”
“And the ground?” Guin asked, her eyes narrowing. “The smell?” Losing the buff that Liorax provided her was a definite downside of being in the area for her in general—it would be very annoying if StarShine and BronzePaw didn’t have to suffer through it.
And indeed, it seemed as if they did not as Guin watched BronzePaw’s brow furrow, asking, “What smell? I admit the ground feels a little off compared to what it looked like. It makes me think of the forest floor of my homeland, but it looks like the university’s park.”
“Hmm,” Guin winced. “Does that mean they won’t be able to accept Corruption quests?”
Drakove shook his head. “No. They will be able to, but if the quests are spirit-based, we have to get them and then share them with the others. We’ll also have to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to any spirit-based threats.”
Sucking on her lip, Guin breathed in, making a high-pitched squealing noise that attracted an evil look from Stella. “Okay,” she went. “So here is what I think we should do...”