Jay understood the general sentiment of the message. Still, looking at his pet screen, he was unsure of the technical ramifications. There didn’t seem to be anything about a bond. There was no friendship meter. Nothing indicated a change with the pet.
Casey shook him out of it. “Jay, are you okay?”
“Huh? Yeah. What’s going on?”
Looking around the battlefield, he saw tons of defeated animal mobs. Jay noticed they weren’t under attack anymore; the Willbender was beaten. Fighting through the haze of recent events, Jay made sure to add the Willbender to his Bestiary.
While he was glad they had won, he felt disappointed about missing the ending.
Casey was still watching him with concern, whereas Lucille’s eyes were already peering around the area. Jay looked around but didn’t see any other goblins threatening the party—at least, not yet.
“You kinda zoned out there for a bit,” Casey said.
“Yeah, sorry,” Jay said. “I didn’t want to fight Cuddles, so I had to focus on getting out of the way. Did your quest get completed?”
“Not yet,” she said. “We found a key ring on the Willbender’s body, but we need to make it back to the cages to free Zenya’s mom. Are you ready to go?”
“What happened to the Matriarch?” Jay asked, nodding.
“I dunno, really. Disappeared after being freed with the keys,” Casey said. “Hopefully, she went to cause some havoc in this camp. This place is huge, the size of a superstore, and filled with goblins. I really wanna get back to Zenya.”
“Let’s go, then,” Lucille said. “And keep your head on a swivel.”
As they started to leave, Jay noted that, even though he hadn’t completed Casey’s quest, the Willbender fight was worth a nice chunk of experience on his way to level 18.
Together, the party made their way back through the goblin outpost. Jay didn’t even need his Survival skill to tell him where the Matriarch went. He saw signs of her path through the camp, visibly marked by a trail of slain goblin guards. A few minutes in, the trail suddenly disappeared.
Jay was able to see their own previous trail using his Survival skill.
At one point, a goblin citizen surprised the party by walking right down their current alleyway. Casey defeated it with a bear claw before either of the others could attack.
“Nice work,” Lucille said. “That’s a handy spell.”
The first real fight was when they made their way into the building where the dire wolves were being kept. There was a goblin guard in there that held Zenya. The little dire wolf was wrestling with it but losing the battle due to her small stature.
Casey lost her head, seeing the goblin manhandling Zenya. She rushed forward, not even taking the time to cast a spell. Using the top of her staff, she attacked the enemy goblin.
Casey repeatedly smacked the goblin in the head, fueled by pure rage. Casey wasn’t strong but clobbered it repeatedly with such efficiency that the monster didn’t even strike back. Jay and Lucille could only watch with a mixture of fear and respect. Jay knew Sarah would have been proud.
Casey grabbed the dire wolf pup up into a hug. Zenya licked her in the face, sending the young woman into giggles. Casey set her back down to be reunited with her mother.
“I’ll watch the door,” Lucille said. “Here’s the keys.”
She handed the key ring over to Jay, who inspected it. There were over a dozen keys. There were more keys than cages, so he tried different keys to find the one that would release Zenya’s mother. When the lock finally clicked on the fifth try, Zenya’s mother pushed Jay aside as she left the cage.
Zenya howled in protest as her mother licked the top of her head. The dire wolf pup continually tried to run from her mother to Casey. The attempts failed as Zenya was pulled back by the scruff of her neck.
He watched Casey staring at the dire wolves, looking like she was about to cry happy tears. With Zenya giving up, the two wolves started communicating with a series of yips. They seemed like two real creatures, mother and daughter. It was strange and intense for video game characters.
Jay fumbled with the keys and started helping all the other dire wolves escape their cages. He couldn’t work quickly, struggling to select the proper key as he went through the ring.
After three cages, he found a way to speed up the process. He pulled the keys he successfully used off the key ring and tossed them away.
Finally, he released the last dire wolf.
Jay looked up to see that all the wolves except Zenya and her mother had already fled. The quest still wasn’t completed yet. Jay figured the party needed to help Zenya’s mother escape the whole camp. After all, the area still wasn’t safe, even with the Willbender defeated.
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“Come on guys, we gotta hustle,” Lucille said from the doorway. “All the wolves are free, right? Let’s get out of here before these monsters realize what hit them. I can already see some of them looking around this area.”
“I’ll lead the way,” Jay said, tossing aside the useless key ring and making for the door. “I can follow our tracks from when we got here with a skill. It’ll help us find the spot we entered at. Who knows if there are any other exits.”
“Good,” Lucille confirmed. “Do it.”
Jay led the way, keeping his eyes trained on the tracks, highlighted by sparkles. The group followed the tracks of his skill, but he quickly became baffled. He didn’t recognize his surroundings—the tracks were taking him on a different path. The areas they moved through looked wholly unfamiliar, but the sparkles of the skill were clear.
And yet, Jay absolutely knew the party had not been to the area. He slowly realized something was wrong with his skill and decided to follow his memory, trusting in his own mind. He froze in place as he recalculated their path.
“What’s going on?” Lucille asked, tension simmering underneath her voice.
“I’m redirecting. The path is weird. My skill was taking us in the wrong direction, so I had to adjust.”
“Why would that be happening?”
“I don’t know,” Jay admitted, suspecting an illusion or foul play. But he couldn’t prove it. He only knew what he knew. Absentmindedly, he reached for Cuddles to make sure the Strogian Death squirrel wasn’t about to attack him again. Instead, the squirrel nuzzled his face into Jay’s hand.
The party finally found the entry point with a large group of goblins blocking it.
There were enough that Jay couldn’t really count them without trying to concentrate. Most of them were much more well-armored than the goblins they had encountered. They weren’t raiders, scouts, guards, or citizens.
Goblin Soldier, Level: 14. Health: 150/150.
These goblins were wearing proper armor. The iron armor was obviously forged for them, instead of the foraged armor worn by the raiders. They were an army.
Standing before them was a monster that reminded Jay of goblin shamans from other games. There was some kind of paint or tattoo pattern all over the body. It wasn’t wearing a headdress. A distinctive, strange hat reminded Jay of a top hat but with poorer structural integrity. The cylindrical top part was leaning backward.
Goblin Pathfinder [Elite] [Rare], Level: 20. Health: 1,000/1,000.
As he read the tooltip on this goblin, which seemed to be the leader, everyone was offered another quest.
Quest Offered: Camp of Destruction. You have located the Goblin Pathfinder, the spiritual core of a goblin camp. Without this leader, the goblin camp will be destroyed. Defeat this enemy to free Elven lands from goblin attacks. [Recommend Party Size: 5+]
Jay searched the area with his eyes as they accepted the quest. There didn’t appear to be an easy way out of the mess. They were going to have to fight their way out.
Both wolves glared at the goblins but, surprisingly, remained patiently by Casey’s side.
“This is going to be loads of fun,” Lucille said without a hint of sarcasm. “I’ve even got some potions on deck in case things get hairy.”
Jay leaned over to whisper to Casey, “Listen, this will be a tough fight. You need to complete your quest and secure the pact with Zenya. When you see an opening, run out of here while we’re distracting them. Prioritize the quest, okay?”
“It feels bizarre to run away,” Casey said. They both watched the enemies advance slowly. The goblin Pathfinder waited in the back, but even the soldiers seemed uninterested in being the first to reach Lucille. “But okay. For Zenya.”
Since all dozen or so goblin soldiers were advancing slowly, Jay took the time to activate Analyze on his opponents. In his history analyzing them, different goblin types all gave similar information with extra flavor. The soldiers were the same. The Pathfinder also indicated that it could be used as a respawn point for allied players.
Lucille didn’t allow the enemies to meet her; she surged forward to meet them. Both her blades flashed through the air, delivering death to goblins. These goblins were heavily armored, so each took a couple hits to bring down.
Jay aimed through the sight of his crossbow, firing a Wild Strike at one of the goblins. The attack struck through the front of its helmet. The shot blasted the soldier, causing it to crumple completely from a critical hit to the head. He didn’t let up the pressure.
He fired the rest of his clip thoroughly, the clinking sound of the metal moving to drop new bolts into place. He felt fortunate that the repeater didn’t seem to have any misfire mechanics. In two seconds, he blasted four shots into another goblin soldier. Despite the armor, it couldn’t withstand the flurry of shots.
Jay activated Rapid Reload, which affected the rate at which he could switch out the clips on the repeater. The new one slotted into place much more quickly than he was used to. He only had two clips left, so he promptly emptied both, quickly killing two more soldiers.
Two soldiers managed to land glancing blows on Lucille. She wasn’t in danger but summoned her healing flowers to keep her health maxed. Casey used the field of healing power as an opportunity to make her escape. She took a hit but was healed quickly by the effect of the flowers.
The dire wolf mother took a side swipe from the Pathfinder, although the flowers also repaired her damage. The attack wasn’t enough to stop her, even from the elite. Jay held his breath, waiting for Zenya’s mother to endanger herself by retaliating, but she didn’t.
Casey took her opportunity to leave, leading the dire wolves away from the fighting.
Jay ignored the quest completion notification and drew his dagger to wade into the melee fighting. Lucille was in the middle of moving so quickly that she was blocking attacks from four different soldiers simultaneously. The remaining soldiers outside Lucille’s whirlwind realized Jay would make an easier target.
In preparation, he drank the potion he had acquired that reduced damage. As he traded blows with the rest of the soldiers, he fell into the groove of fighting. The damage reduction potion helped him immensely, but he still needed to drink a novice healing potion after a particularly nasty gash to his thigh.
The Pathfinder seemed content to allow them to tire out against the soldiers, and Jay didn’t mind. Casey had completed her quest, which meant he had already helped Sarah’s friend.
Jay and Lucille tore through the last pair of goblin soldiers. After the fighting, Jay took a moment to check his weapon and see how Lucille was doing. Both required repairs, but Jay was still flying high on the rush of destroying the soldiers.
“That was fun,” Lucille commented as she drank a potion. “I almost needed a potion after getting caught in that group of four. Couldn’t block every attack. A single enemy is going to be a cakewalk after that.”
Jay and Lucille walked confidently forward to engage their single enemy. The goblin Pathfinder—muttering the chant to a spell—summoned the spectral spirit of a fallen goblin chieftain to battle alongside it.