As they traveled, the terrain shift became more pronounced until there was little that resembled a forest at all. Before midday, Galuk informed them through Vult’s translation that he was leaving them and heading back to his village. They all thanked him for guiding them and promised to visit when they were back this way. He promised to work on his Common speech so that he could speak with them more easily when they did come back. He advised them to be careful in the next stretch of their journey, warning them that Goblins and Kobolds lived in the region. Orcs were typically much farther north, but they were sometimes seen as well. Galuk mentioned other creatures, but he said that most should be easy enough to avoid if they were careful. They bade him farewell, and watched as he hopped back in the direction that they had come, traveling at a much faster rate than they could have ever maintained.
With Galuk gone, they moved at a much slower pace, as Taloc and Vanya, their only skilled trackers, took the lead. Given the potential dangers of the area, they even went so far as to limit their talking. They followed a stream for about an hour until they came across some kind of bear tracks. Given the impressions that were left, they estimated it to be very large. They filled up their waterskins and left the area as a precaution, heading west to get away from the stream before taking a northwestwardly route towards their ultimate destination.
By the first setting, the party had successfully avoided any encounters, but they felt as if they had traveled little more than half the distance that they had on the previous day. A look at Vultressant’s map showed them that in reality they had traveled nearly two thirds of the distance, and they decided to maintain their current pace and careful strategy going forward. They couldn’t find an ideal spot to camp, but they finally stopped in the valley of a small set of hills. They decided to split up Taloc and Vanya for the watch schedule, since Vanya could see in the dark and Taloc had super senses.
Vultressant and Vanya shared the second watch and mostly just talked in whispered tones between brief scouting rounds. When they were done, Vultressant crawled into his bedroll while Vanya went to wake up Taloc and Ewtain, who had the last shift.
Only a short time after beginning their watch, Taloc heard some barking in the distance. He quickly and quietly alerted the rest of the group. They packed up and prepared themselves for an attack, all the while hoping that their lack of a fire and relative concealment of the small valley would be enough to keep them safe.
After a few minutes, the barking sounds had come close enough—or had grown loud enough—for everyone to hear, and the sounds were clearly coming from the north. Vultressant whispered, “They’re Gnolls.”
“How do you know that?” Isla asked in a loud whisper.
“Because I can now speak Gnoll,” he replied simply. In the moonlight, he could see recognition on her face. He continued, “The writeup on them is what you would expect: warlike, tribal, not real bright, aggressive, etc. They’re generally pretty weak, but if it’s a pack of them, we’re in trouble. Running is likely not an option, since they can track us by smell if they decide to focus on that, so if they do come this way, we’ll likely have to fight.”
The rest of them took in the information. “All of us have a bow or crossbow except for Ewt, and he can sneak,” Taloc said. “If we can surprise them and have Ewt positioned behind them when the fighting starts, we can thin their ranks quickly.” The others were nodding, either because they liked the plan or because they liked that he had a plan at all. Encouraged, Taloc continued, “They’re coming from that direction.” He pointed toward the hill to the north that was discernible by the light of the full moon. “Why don’t we climb that hill and see if there’s a good ambush spot around there?”
There were a few trees on the other side of the path, so Ewtain went to hide among them. The barking got much louder as Ewtain made his way to the trees. He considered climbing up one, but he wanted to avoid being stuck in a tree when the fighting started. Instead, he chose the thickest one and hid on the side that he hoped would not be visible to the Gnolls as they approached. He did have the stealth skill, but it was still at level one—better than not having the skill at all, but little comfort to him currently.
The rest of the group readied their bows and crouched so that they could just see over the hill. Vultressant and Vanya cast their buffs in addition to nocking arrows. Vanya’s blessing spell had to be cast on each member individually; she had no need to cast her warding spell since it only warded against the undead. Vultressant gave everyone his fire resistance buff—it was not likely to be needed against the Gnolls themselves, but it would protect them from a stray fire bolt spell from him, so he could be less cautious when firing at enemies engaged with his friends. He had to wait until they engaged to activate his personal shield because it gave off a soft blue light that might be seen by the approaching Gnolls and would make the ambush less effective.
They didn’t have long to wait for the Gnolls; not only were they making no attempt to be quiet, the light from the torches that the Gnolls carried could be seen long before they themselves came into view. It was also easy to verify their numbers, which were nine. Only two of the Gnolls had weapons drawn; these were carrying spears. Both were being used as walking aids and not at the ready.
The Gnolls were keeping to the path and were nearing the bend when Taloc motioned for the others to be ready. He waited until the first few were past the point where Ewtain was hiding, and then he whispered, “Now!” to the other four with him. They stood up, mostly as one, and fired at the Gnolls near the back of the line. Three of the five connected, two arrows hitting the same Gnoll, and the four of them who had bows were able to get off another volley before the Gnolls knew what had hit them. Two of the Gnolls were on the ground, possibly dead, and two others had arrows sticking out of them as they began to charge up the hill towards the party.
They hastily readied their weapons, and Taloc shouldered his bow and drew his longsword, which would be more useful for the rest of this battle. Maroftis fired his crossbow, and the bolt took a charging Gnoll just under the chin. It dropped in its tracks, and Maroftis too took out a longsword. Isla had her shield equipped, and she stepped out with her sword and shield to meet the remaining Gnolls. Vanya kept firing her bow, as she had no other weapon. Everyone still had her blessing buff active, which gave a bonus to stats and skills to those she cast it on. There was a timer for her buffs in her HUD, which still showed just over two minutes remaining on the spell, so it didn’t need to be recast yet. Next to Vanya, Vultressant dropped his bow and opted to cast his bolt of fire spell at the leading Gnoll; it staggered back as the bolt exploded on its chest, and it howled in both fear and pain.
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In the meantime, Ewtain had been able to surprise two of the Gnolls before they were able to join the assault up the hill. He stabbed one in the back using his eviscerate attack, and its cry alerted the one next to it, but all that one had for a weapon was a whip. Ewtain stepped out of the way of a whip crack and stabbed his sword deep into the thigh of the dog-faced humanoid creature. The Gnoll, now hindered by its wounded leg, was no match for the speed of the uninjured Ewtain, who was able to circle and strike without fear of the whip landing at all.
By the time the Gnolls made it up the hill and engaged the group, there were only four of them to face Taloc, Isla, and Maroftis, who had all stepped over the hilltop and had put themselves between the enemies and the casters. One of the four had an arrow sticking out of its weapon arm, and another one’s shoulder was still smoking from Vultressant’s spell. The injured Gnolls didn’t pose much of a threat, but one of the uninjured ones had a spear, which allowed him to press Taloc with the longer reach of his weapon. Taloc wasn’t able to fully deflect a stab, and the blade of the spear sliced him across his side, which would be the only injury suffered by the party in the encounter. Vultressant, seeing the difficulty that the spear was causing, focused on taking that one down quickly, so he sent a fire bolt into its chest. The strike didn’t appear to cause much damage, but the hair or fur that surrounded its head like a short mane caught fire and distracted it sufficiently to allow Taloc to get close enough to land a sword blow across its midsection. The assault was too much for the Gnoll, and it turned and ran, only to be struck down by an arrow to the back from Vanya, followed by another bolt of fire from Vultressant.
They quickly defeated the rest, and after the battle, Vanya went to help bandage Taloc. She really wanted to learn some sort of healing spell so that she could be more useful, but she had to settle for helping out in a more traditional manner now. There was no need to use a healing potion on the Ranger; his HP would come back reasonably fast without it, and the wound was not very deep. Other than some scarring, he would be fine unless infection set in. Infection was something that she would be able to help with by using a potion on him if it came down to that.
“We should loot bodies,” Maroftis said to no one in particular.
Taloc went into the loot options in his HUD. “The only thing that the loot window brings up is the essence, but they clearly have weapons. Van and Vult, go get the essences, and we can grab the stuff off the ones that they’re not working on.”
“What about your side?” Vanya protested.
“The essences may not have a long shelf life, so fix me up after.”
Vanya and Vultressant went about extracting the essences from the corpses while the others began looting. They received a total of five of the regular essences, and each received a skill upgrade for their efforts. The weapons were generally of poor quality, but they might be worth something, and there was space in their inventories, so they kept those as well. There were only a total of 26 copper pieces among all the Gnolls, so unless the essences were valuable, the monetary gain from the encounter was minimal. The experience wasn’t enough to level anyone—not surprising given the fact that they’d all leveled on the previous day fighting the ballowsans. They did get a few skill points in the fight: Ewtain received two levels in stealth, putting him at level three; Isla was now level two in her bow skill; and Vultressant made level three in fire magic.
“We should scout the area or just leave,” Isla said after they had finished looting the bodies. She was carrying one of the torches of the fallen Gnolls, and she wore a concerned expression on her face.
Vanya, who had let Vultressant get the essence of the last Gnoll while she bandaged up Taloc, looked over at Isla and asked, “Do you think that there are more coming?”
“Maybe, but I’m more worried about the noise that we made fighting,” Isla said, gesturing to the Gnoll corpses that littered the ground. “I also don’t want to hang around the bodies for the rest of the night.”
Taloc stood up. “I can scout ahead. My sight isn’t as good as Vanya’s in the dark, but my senses are much better than they were before we got to this world, and the moon gives some light.”
“I still need to finish that bandage,” Vanya protested.
Taloc held up his hand that was not holding his injured side. “I agree, but can we do the rest of it with me standing?”
“Sure,” Vanya said. “I was just trying to make sure that you were still while I worked on you. I didn’t want to hurt you. Which way should we go?” she asked before going back to work on his injury.
“We could track the Gnolls to see if we can find more to hunt. These were pretty easy opponents,” Ewtain offered.
“We did ambush them,” Vultressant said. “In a fair fight, it might not go as well for us.”
“My assess skill tells me that they are pretty weak, but I don’t really know how to fully judge what it tells me,” Maroftis said in Koraken.
“Well, what does it say about them?” Vultressant asked.
“It just says, ‘This creature is below your skill level’, which is more than I get from it most of the time. I think for the mummy that we fought, it said, ‘this creature is dangerous’, or something like that.”
“What level is the skill at?” Taloc asked after Vultressant finished translating.
“It still level one,” Maroftis said in Common. He looked like he was sulking, and that looked odd coming from a big lizard man.
Taloc thought for a moment and said, “I’m sure that when you do level it, it’ll be more useful.” Vanya finished her medical aid, and he looked down to inspect her work. “Good job, Van. Thanks.”
“We need to level, and the Gnolls are something that we can handle. I say we go see if there are more around,” Ewtain said.
“I still believe that this would have gone down differently in a fair fight,” Vultressant said with confidence. “I agree that we would still win, but we’d likely suffer more injuries. Now, we do need to get some experience, but I would rather not do it at night and against an unknown number of Gnolls. What happens if we have to face twenty or more of them at once?”
“That’s why I’m going to go check it out,” Ewtain replied. “If there are a bunch of them, then we’ll know to run, and if I find a small group, then we try to jump them. I have stealth, and if Taloc comes too, he has stealth, and he can track. It seems that actively using our skills is the only way to level them, so we should try to do that.”
“The Anurans said that only a tiny amount of experience comes with practice. There could also be some sort of experience requirement for the skills, so you make a good point. We need information, so go scout and bring us back some.” Vultressant looked over to Taloc. “You going with him?”
“Sure.”
“All right, the rest of us need to move away from these bodies.” Vultressant looked around. “Why don’t we head towards where the Gnolls came from and find a spot to hide and wait for the two of you to come back?”
“You really want to split the party up again?” Isla asked incredulously. “Remember what happened the last time we did that?”
Vultressant ran a hand over his now-bald pate in what looked like frustration or helplessness. “I’m a fan of safety in numbers, but we need to be strategic, and we can’t do that without information. Taloc and Ewtain are the best equipped among us to get that info. If we all went with them, then Maroftis would almost certainly give away our position. You have some noisy armor on as well, Isla. I don’t see a better option.” Isla shook her head and turned away, but she made no further protests.