[Mandatory quest generated. Quest auto-confirmed as James lacks the Admin Tier required to edit this quest.]
James imagined a chill running down his nonexistent spine at 61-3's declaration of another mandatory quest. We've had copies of that "complete the tutorial" quest sent out every night to the latest batch of climbers, but it's the middle of the day right now!
[Displaying details for the quest: "Secure The Safe Zone!".]
61-3 pulled up the quest details, recalling James's request to see any quests he didn't create that weren't intentionally hidden from him.
{Secure The Safe Zone!
Quest Type: Mandatory Party-Participant
Recipient(s): Anyone within 2 Meters of the Safe Zone
Description: You've encountered an occupied Safe Zone. Safe Zones are places where monsters will not engage or interact with your party for as long as you stay within its borders and do not attack anything outside of it. Defeat the monsters who have made the Safe Zone their lair in order to free it for your use!
Safe Zone Monsters Slain: 0/25
Reward(s): Safe Zone becomes Available}
So the quest is to create another zone like the village. If it only goes to those close to the safe zone, then…
"61-3, which screen shows the party that received this quest?" James asked, 61-3 responding by having the border of one of the screens shimmer as the screen grew slightly bigger than the ones around it. James muttered his thanks as he focused on the screen, noticing that the group was already in combat. 2 Meters is too close to the safe zone to avoid detection if you weren't trying to be stealthy before finding it.
James watched as the observer switched between focusing on their climber's individual fight, and occasional sweeps of the battlefield. It's one of the five person veteran parties that went off alone. They have... A Warrior, a fool, a mage, and two rogues. All level 3. There are five goblin archers, five horned rabbits, five magic deer, five large birds, and five goblin warriors, all at level 2. At least the party has a level advantage, but they're outnumbered five to one, and without a healer…
James pushed his worries aside as he chose to focus on the fight. The warrior and one of the rogues formed the front line, the warrior with a shield and sword, and the rogue with two daggers. Another rogue held a crossbow, further back where the mage and fool stood. The mage wielded a wand, while the fool held a walking stick in one hand and a goblin's axe in the other.
The monsters, previously scattered about the space haphazardly, were forming ranks. The magic deer prepared to cast magic projectiles while goblin archers readied their bows in front of them. The birds flew overhead to attack the party from behind, and the goblin warriors and horned rabbits charged forward to engage the party's front line.
"I'll handle the birds." The fool said, the crossbow rogue nodding before moving to the left while the mage moved to the right, positioning themselves so they wouldn't risk hitting their allies on the front line while they attacked from a distance.
With their superior speed, the rabbits approached the front line before the goblin warriors. Three leaped towards the warrior, while two jumped at the rogue, as they tried to impale their targets with the horn on their heads. The dagger rogue dodged one before stabbing the other, positioned so the rabbit's own momentum served to impale itself. A skill allowed the rogue to blur as he was suddenly turned to the rabbit that had landed behind him, and cut into them with their off hand weapon before shaking the first rabbit off of his blade.
The warrior swung her shield, hitting two of the three rabbits with a shield bash skill that sent them flying behind the approaching goblins. From the way they sailed through the air and how they're limply rolling on the ground, I think their impact with the shield killed them. The third rabbit hit her in the side of her torso, their horn glistening with blood as it used her as a springboard to jump away, the warrior trying to swing at the rabbit before it escaped, but swinging a hair too low.
Meanwhile, the large birds dove towards the fool, seeking to attack the weakest looking person at the back of the party's formation. In response, the fool pointed the end of their walking stick at the birds, before shouting "Wind Blades!"
That's the spell the mage from the slime cave used, but the movement is different. James thought, as he watched the crescent shaped blades fly up towards the birds, spinning upwards in a spiral, as if mimicking a tornado. The wind crescents glowed with mana as they soared through the air, their light dimming and size shrinking the further away they moved. Nevertheless, the bird at the front of the dive died instantly when a wind blade cut it in half, and two birds further back each had a wing cut off, while one near the tail of the birds' formation kept its wings intact, but had been hit hard enough to lame the wing anyway, forcing it to fall to the ground. Only one bird dodged the blades entirely, having pulled back as their allies met the spell, and began circling the fool from the air, waiting for its moment to try again.
The crossbow rogue fired two bolts at two separate goblin warriors during this time, killing one goblin and nearly tearing off an arm from the second. The mage cast a fireball, aimed not at the approaching warriors but the archers and deer further back, one archer bursting into flames and running away from the formation before burning to death.
Another goblin archer let out a shout of rage, the others taking it as a sign as the goblin warriors dropped to the ground. The magic deer and goblin archers both loosed their arrows, magic or otherwise. Rather than all of them aiming at a specific target however, they each shot to create a volley, a wave of magic and sharpened stone meant to sweep through the party, with the warrior and dagger rogue in the middle.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
"Behind me!" The warrior shouted as she adjusted her footing and braced herself against her shield. The name of her skill went unsaid, but it was obvious a skill was used when a golden shimmer of her shield, three times its size, formed in front of her. Many of the projectiles crashed against the shield, the barrier holding strong even as the warrior slid backwards an inch from the impact. The dagger rogue hid behind the glowing shield, the lone surviving horned rabbit jumping after him and stabbing him in the side, only to receive a dagger in its own side in retaliation, the rogue acting before it could leap away. As the rogue pulled a health potion out of his inventory and flung the rabbit off of his dagger, the fool rushed to position himself behind the glowing shield as well. He had embedded his goblin axe into one of the birds that had survived its crash landing, and noticing the rapidly approaching projectiles, chose to carry the axe with the bird still attached instead of leaving the weapon behind.
The mage and crossbow rogue had rushed towards the cover provided by the glowing shield, but neither had been close to it from where they had positioned themselves earlier. The crossbow rogue was hit in the leg with a plain arrow, as they narrowly ducked under a magic one. Another magic arrow was aimed to hit the mage right in her torso, but her wand glowed as she swung it through the air between herself and the spell, a purple fog forming where the wand had moved. As the magic arrow reached the fog, its size and brightness were rapidly reduced, until the spell had disappeared entirely before reaching the mage.
With the volley over, the goblin warriors scrambled to their feet as the warrior woman ended her defensive spell, a sheen of sweat visible on her forehead as she steadied her breathing. Does the spell take that much energy to maintain, or does it sap strength depending on the attacks it received? James wondered, as he watched the dagger rogue rush out from behind the warrior, using the skill James suspected was double strike as he blurred from one swing to the next. He keeps alternating which dagger he's using, hitting once with one dagger, hitting again with the same dagger through his skill, then another normal strike with the opposite dagger, triggering the skill again. The goblins must be terrified.
Of the four goblin warriors. The rogue took three down in the same time the warrior had killed the fourth, parrying the attack from the one armed goblin before decapitating it with a swing of her sword. Together, they sprinted towards the four goblin archers and the five magic deer, which released another volley, this time aiming at the rogue and mage further back.
"No!" The warrior shouted, the projectiles on either side too far for her skill to block. The dagger rogue muttered an expletive as he too realized there was nothing they could do but continue to move forward.
Three magic arrows, and one mundane one, flew towards the crossbow rogue. James prepared himself to witness another climber's death, when the rogue suddenly bent back as if he was about to limbo below the projectiles, the crossbow disappearing into his inventory to free his hands up to aid his balance. That move looks weirder in real time than it does in slow motion. James found himself thinking. The magic projectiles all flew overhead, hitting the ground several feet behind the rogue. The mundane arrow, however, was low enough for the rogue's dodge to do nothing, hitting its target in the thigh just above the knee and causing him to fall to the ground.
"Shit! Damn it! I should have known it wouldn't be able to dodge all of them." The rogue complained, as he sat up and pulled out the arrow with another curse, before downing two health potions and trying to get back to his feet.
Meanwhile, the fool saw the projectiles, and rushed towards the mage. The mage created more of the purple fog with another swing of her wand, and while it continued to make the two magic arrows heading for her disappear, the three mundane arrows were not affected at all.
The fool grabbed the mage as he put himself in front of the arrows. He's going to use fool's luck to force the both of them to dodge the attack. I would have guessed he'd have used it up already in an earlier fight. It was at that moment the remaining large bird swooped in from overhead, the fool letting out a shout of surprise as his body twisted away from the bird's dive, using up the skill that could only save him once every several hours, and leaving him defenseless as two of the three arrows hit him, one in the stomach and the other in the leg.
"Oscar!" The mage said, as the fool dropped his axe to clutch at his walking stick with both hands, putting all of his weight on it as he leveraged it against the ground to keep him on his feet. The bird had stuck its beak into the ground, briefly immobilized by its dodged attack, and despite the mage's concern for her friend, she capitalized on the moment to punt the bird with her boot, dealing the last bit of damage it took to kill it.
The fool used a healing spell on himself, as he removed the arrows, the mage tried to help for a moment before the fool waved her off. "They need you more than I do." The fool said, the mage nodding before running towards the battlefield, the gem at the tip of her wand glowing as she charged up a spell.
The warrior and dagger rogue reached the goblin archers before they could prepare another volley, the goblin archers abandoning their bows to wield an arrow in each hand, while the magic deer scattered, but didn't flee, their spells still charging as they remained close enough to have a direct line of sight to the climbers closest to them. The rogue and warrior made short work of the goblin archers, the rogue's double strike-like skill and the warrior's shield preventing them from taking any damage. The magic deer fired off their spells without any coordination, each targeting either the warrior or rogue depending on who they were closest to as they tried to weave around the area without leaving it. The lack of coordination aided them however, as it meant their attacks no longer came from a single direction.
The warrior deflected two projectiles, a third missed, and two more hit, one in the legs and one in the shoulder. The rogue dodged three with a flip through the air, but received one hit in the leg that interrupted his landing and caused him to faceplant into the ground, the only solace being the last projectile missed as a result. The warrior made it to the closest magic deer and swung her sword, but the deer danced away, and they all began moving around the duo while they charged another volley of spells. Their specialty is dodging while casting spells.
As three deer taunted the warrior by moving in and out of range, one deer leapt out of the way of a swing of the rogue's dagger as he got back, unsteadily, to his feet. But as the deer landed back on the ground, a fireball blasted it in the side, the entire deer instantly catching fire. Another deer fell to a crossbow bolt, as the ranged fighters, minus the recovering fool, reached the battlefield. From there, the tide of battle shifted firmly in the party's favor. The deer are almost untouchable when dealing with a few close combat opponents, but either they can't dodge ranged attacks as well, or they can't handle watching multiple enemies at once.
As the last magic deer fell, the party each received a message from the system.
{Quest “Secure the Safe Zone” completed!
Reward(s): This Safe Zone is now available for use.}