Spiteful Healer-Chapter 117: Ruins of Kolz Pt.2

Rakkan unequipped his longsword and put his spear in his left hand, then tapped it with his right hand to create an echo copy of it. Aegis saw what he was thinking, and quickly touched Rakkan’s shoulder to give him a bless buff. Then, Rakkan threw the echoed spear at the ooze that was approaching them. When it pierced into the blob of ooze, it did proper damage, but the spear was still destroyed.

“That seems to work, but casting echo runes on my spear over and over is going to empty my mana pool fast, I’m not a proper spellcaster.” Rakkan said as he repeated the attack, throwing a second echo spear.

“I don’t really have much for spells either…” Lina looked to Aegis as the three of them continued to back away from the road between two of the ruins buildings, whilst Pyri and Darkshot were forced to back away down the ruined street from the direction they’d came from.

“Holy damage is working though. Throw me a bless, Aegis!” Darkshot shouted over the street to him.

“It’s a touch spell, I can’t really get to you right now. There’s two big deadly puddles of acid ooze between us.” Aegis called back to him.

“Luckily they’re really…” Rakkan said as he chucked another echo spear. “Slow.”

“Do you have another type of spell you can try?” Darkshot turned to Pyri.

“Uh. I don’t know. Fire doesn’t work, and lightning makes it explode and multiply. What if the next spell is worse?” Pyri replied anxiously.

“Either we find another way to deal damage, or Rakkan’s gonna be throwing spears all day trying to kill it by himself.” Aegis replied to Pyri across the ruins.

“Aren’t you a spellcaster too?” Pyri replied to this, and as she did, Aegis remembered he had a damaging spell as well. He’d never bothered to use it because of pacifism though.

“Smite!” Aegis shouted, holding his right hand forward, and a ball of holy energy formed in his hands. After two seconds it shot forward and pierced into the ooze puddle.

You deal 10 Holy damage.

Level Up!: Smite has reached Level 2!

“Uh, well, I suppose I can spam it, it’s not like I’ll run out of mana…” Aegis said apprehensively, before casting another smite.

“Try ice magic, I think ice works really well against these types of enemies.” Lina suggested to Pyri.

“Do you have any ice magic?” Darkshot asked her hopefully.

“Yeah, I think so. The Archmage made me learn a bunch of beginner spells. Let’s try this one… Icelance!” She shouted, waving her staff towards the ooze, and a gigantic icicle formed in the air in front of her before shooting into the puddle like a bullet. It worked, it did proper damage, and not only that, it froze over the surface of the ooze.

“That’s good, do that again!” Darkshot egged her on.

“Multicast, Icelance!” Pyri shouted, and this time two shot out at it, freezing more of the surface of the ooze.

“Multshot!” Darkshot fired six arrows at where it had frozen, and this time the arrows did proper damage on impact. “I think we found the solution!” Darkshot said excitedly. “The acid’s not slashing when you hit it where its froz-” Darkshot was interrupted by a sudden acid fist forming from the puddle and shooting out towards him. This time, it didn’t grow outwards as an arm, it shot at Darkshot as a proper projectile, but both Darkshot and Pyri saw it coming and moved to the side at the last second, causing the blob of acid to fly past them and crash into the wall of a ruined building lining the street. “Phew, that was close.” Darkshot said.

“Aegis, these things have ranged attacks!” Pyri warned him, and just as she had, the puddle moving towards Aegis, Lina and Rakkan did the same attack. They quickly dodged away to avoid it, and seeing this, Aegis knew he needed to quickly heal everyone up in case they took more damage - both he, Rakkan, and Lina were close to death.

“Heal, healing wind.” Aegis began casting as they backed up further. “Pyri and Darkshot, just focus on taking out yours from a safe distance for now using that ice and arrow combo. We’ll figure something out with ours.” Aegis shouted to them as the groups got further and further from each other.

As he said this though, suddenly the ground they stood on began to quake violently, and a large crack began to form that spread through the walls of the nearby buildings.

“What was that?” Darkshot shouted after the shaking had stopped.

“Look, there!” Lina replied, pointing anxiously at the ground underneath the ooze that was slinking towards them. Without the group realizing it, the ooze had moved on top of a large thick branch of the tree that had been holding up the island, and the branch was quickly being dissolved due to the acid of the ooze monster. Within a few seconds, the large branch lost all structural integrity, and it had apparently been a fairly significant contributor to holding this ruined chunk of land up on the top of the canopy, because once it had dissolved, the ground quaked violently again and began to shift and fall.

It was a terrifying sensation, having the ground beneath your feet suddenly shift downward like an elevator who’d lost its suspension cable. The ruined land split down the middle, with the eastern chunk of land falling down 10 meters deeper into the canopy before being caught by thicker branches down below. Aegis, Lina and Rakan stumbled backwards and lost their footing as their bodies fell and caught up with the falling land, but it didn’t remain upright, it began to slant at an angle in such a way that caused the ooze enemy to start sliding down towards them with gravity.

Meanwhile, on the western side of the land, Pyri and Darkshot experienced the quake, but their half of the ruined island remained where it was.

“Ah shit, we just lost Aegis!” Darkshot shouted in a panic as he watched the entire eastern side of the ruins drop down from his line of sight.

“We’re okay!” Aegis shouted back up to him. “Don’t let the oozes go over the branches though, or this tree will drop us all the way into the abyss!” He shouted up to Darkshot and Pyri, causing them both to start glancing around at the ground to make sure there weren’t any large branches of the tree around. Luckily, near their ooze on the ruined street, there weren’t any.

“We’re okay, let’s focus on killing this thing so we can go and help them out.” Pyri said before casting more ice lances, and Darkshot nodded and began firing arrows at the frozen surface of it.

“Smite. Smite. Smite.” Aegis continued to cast as he stumbled backward down the slanted ruins.

“Rune:Echo.” Rakkan repeatedly threw blessed spears up at it as the ooze slid down towards them quicker and quicker, but suddenly the ground quaked a second time and jutted down violently, increasing the downward slope to nearly 80 degrees and causing the three of them to go into a freefall down to the branches and leaves below them, the ooze falling down towards them from above.

“Shit!” Aegis shouted as he flailed around and panicked, trying to find something to grab onto, but as he spotted a pillar jutting out of the ground he could grab, he looked up and saw the blob of ooze coming towards him from above and opted not to grab it. Rakkan, on the other hand, managed to jab his spear into the walls of a ruined structure and use it to not only stop himself from falling, but to swing out of the path of the falling ooze.

Aegis and Lina eventually landed on the wall of a building that stood vertically below them, and the moment they landed they jumped to the sides as the ooze barreled down out of the sky behind them along the heavily slanted ruins land which now stood more beside them than it did below them. The acid of the ooze's body splashed outward but luckily didn’t hit Lina or Aegis, and they were now on opposing sides of the creature.

“Hey, up here ooze thing!” Rakkan shouted down to it from the building he’d managed to land himself on above, and from that safe distance he threw another echoed spear down at it to get its attention. That, however, was his last spear, as he ran out of mana.

The ooze began to slime its way up the vertical ground of the ruins, climbing without issue despite the angle as it made its way towards Rakkan. Aegis and Lina were at least lucky that it was ignoring them, as the wall they were on had almost no room to move, and all around them they were surrounded by the giant leaves and branches of the canopy of the tree. Due to the overabundance of leaves it was hard for them to tell just how much further the foliage went before they’d be in a freefall into the abyss below.

“That’s all I got, I can’t hurt it anymore.” Rakkan shouted down to them.

“Do you see any way back up?” Aegis asked him, and Rakkan looked around.

“Uh, maybe, I guess. I can try.” Rakkan shrugged as he started grabbing cracks, jutting stones, and branches to try and climb his way back up to where Pyri and Darkshot were. As he did, the ground shook again but didn’t drop any further yet.

“Wait, Rakkan!” Lina called up, causing him to turn and face her.

“Shadow steal!” She shot her mist up at him. “Shadow copy, Rune:Echo!” She said, and this time she’d copied one of her daggers. “Can you bless me?” She asked Aegis and he nodded, tapping her shoulder to give her the bless buff. “Shadow step!” She said, teleporting up a few buildings above Aegis and the climbing ooze so that she was looking down on him, then threw her copied dagger down at the ooze to deal a bit of damage.

“I can’t really do much else. I think if I throw the real daggers, they’ll be destroyed.” Lina looked down at Aegis worriedly.

“It’s okay, just focus on getting back up top. Help Pyri and Darkshot kill the other ooze, then they can shoot this one easily.” Aegis instructed her and Rakkan. “It’s chasing you guys right now anyway, so I should be fine.” Aegis reassured her as he saw her worried expression.

“Okay…” She replied hesitantly with a nod, then shadowstepped her way back up top. Within second's she’d arrived where Pyri and Darkshot were to see them dealing a good amount of damage to the Kolz Ooze in front of them. They were nimbly moving on their feet avoiding the bolts of acid that the ooze was shooting out at them.

“What’s going on, where’s Aegis and Rakkan?” Pyri asked as she spotted Lina.

“They’re okay, they’re coming back up.” Lina replied with her daggers drawn, angling around the ooze trying to think of a way she could help. As she did this though, she watched as Pyri multicasted two more icelances and shot them forward, but the icicles vanished mid-air before hitting the ooze.

“Heh?” Pyri looked at it confused.

“Multishot!” Darkshot shouted as he he fired an arrow, but it didn’t split - the spell didn’t cast. “What’s going on?”

“Multicast, Icelance!” Pyri tried again, this time her icicles didn’t even appear. “The spell stopped working.” Pyri said worriedly.

“Something’s blocking magic.” Lina said anxiously as she started glancing around.

“Don’t tell me this thing can block spells now too.” Darkshot groaned as he dodged another bolt of acid.

“No, if it was the ooze it would’ve done it sooner.” Lina replied. She scanned the tops of the buildings and looked in the windows of the ruined structures, and only saw stones, blocks, pillars and walls entangled with moss and branches. She looked in all directions, and then looked again, and the second time she looked over the area, she spotted something strange.

As Pyri and Darkshot continued to try and manage the ooze, Lina drew her attention to a large rock on top of one of the ruined buildings she could’ve sworn wasn’t there a second ago, but still, it was just a rock. The likelihood of a rock canceling magic was low - it didn’t have a red name above it, so Lina kept looking around, but when she looked back at the rock, it was suddenly much closer to the party and on the street rather than the ruined building's roof.

“Oookay, I saw it for sure that time.” Lina said to herself. “It’s that rock, that rock is moving!” Lina pointed at it urgently, and the moment she had, suddenly the rock expanded, revealing that it was not a rock at all, but a creature camouflaging itself using plates on it limbs that resembled a rock when it pulled them into itself. Once its limbs were expanded, its nameplate was revealed and it charged towards Lina with a loud roar.

[Kolz Gargoyle(Elite) - Level 55] stood above its head, and it had strange pale red glowing eyes that were emitting a cone of light in Pyri and Darkshot’s direction. It had the body of a dog, but rather than paws it had hands and instead of fur it had black rocky jagged skin. Its face too was humanoid in shape, but for a small snout and an oversized jaw with razor sharp jagged teeth and a black tongue that flailed outward as it let out a deep roar.

“It’s the eyes, when it’s looking at you, it blocks magic!” Lina shouted as it rushed at them. “Shadowstep!” Lina tried casting, but the spell failed as the Gargoyle was looking in her direction. This confirmed her theory and she decidedly dashed away behind a building. Once it could no longer see her, it turned its attention on Pyri and Darkshot and charged around the ooze still slinking forward on the street.

“Uh, I can’t do anything without magic!” Pyri shouted at Darkshot as he fumbled his arrows and took aim at the gargoyle closing in on them quickly.

“Don’t hit it!” Lina shouted, as she’d appeared behind the gargoyle, having shadowstepped once it wasn’t able stare at her anymore, then quickly dashed out from the shadows she’d teleported to and slashed her daggers into the leg of the gargoyle, causing it to lose balance and stumble forward. “It’s elite but I’ll try to get it to focus on me so you guys can hurry and finish the ooze, then go help Aegis!” Lina instructed them.

Her attack was enough to aggravate the gargoyle and caused it to glare at her, but it did a double take and turned back towards Pyri once she casted Icelance again, causing her icelances to disappear once more.

“I think the magic is attracting it!” Darkshot pointed it out as he saw this behavior.

“I’ve got some magic! Smokebomb!” Smokebomb!” Lina shouted as she started bombarding the gargoyle with balls of black smoke. The gargoyle angrily turned at her once she started this, and simply looking at the smoke was enough to dispel it with its anti-magic gaze. At the very least though, this caused it’s full attention to turn to Lina and it pounced towards her, forcing her to dodge roll out of the way.

“Ah, I’m not really good at tanking!” Lina panicked as it began pouncing towards her repeatedly and she desperately rolled and dodged out of the way. She had a feeling that one or two hits from this gargoyle would be her end, and she couldn’t use smokebombs or shadowsteps to help her dodge. She relied entirely on her agility to keep up with it, but her stamina was draining fast.

“I got you!” Rakkan shouted as he crested over the top of the ruined ledge, finishing his climb up from the fallen section of the island and spotting Lina dodging. He chucked his spear with full force towards the gargoyle, causing it to pierce into its side. This made it suddenly flick the spear away as it lifted up and revealed a pair of large stony wings on its back and turned to roar at him.

“Of course it has wings.” Darkshot groaned as he saw it. “We gotta hurry and kill this damn thing.” He motioned at the ooze while speaking to Pyri.

“I’m casting as fast as I can, ice isn’t exactly my strongest type of magic.” Pyri replied back frustrated. With his spear knocked to the ground off to the side of the ruins a few meters away by the gargoyles spread wings, Rakkan was forced to equip his longsword and battleaxe and prepared for the gargoyle to reach him.

No magic to rely on, only his weapons, out of mana and no healer to support him against a higher level, elite enemy. In the seconds he watched it charging at him, he took a deep breath and focused, posing into one of the fighting stances that Travis had taught him. Once it reached him, he sidestepped its lunging bite and slashed his longsword and axe into its side with great force, knocking it off balance, but it was quick, it rolled along the ground and moved itself into position to pounce again within seconds.

But Rakkan could keep up, he kept his balance even after putting great force into the strike and because of that he was able to sidestep the next pounce attack as well, and retaliate. This did great in pissing the gargoyle off and drawing its focus, allowing for Lina to slip the gargoyles sight and use shadowstep to teleport to the shade of a nearby structure and plunge her daggers into its back.

The gargoyle flailed out its wings as a reaction to this and cautiously began to back away. It then lunged at Lina, and as she dodged, Rakkan hit it in the back. The two took turns maneuvering around the creature like this. Whoever it was attacking dodged, and the other attacked, and it was working. Despite the monster being elite, it was still just a monster and did not have a very high intelligence.

Eventually though, after it had taken a significant amount of damage, it let out an angry roar and jumped up off the ground, flapping its stony wings to try and take flight. It didn’t get the chance to build up enough momentum though, as several arrows and a cinderbolt flew at it from behind.

“Ooze is dead!” Pyri declared as the cinderbolt wrapped around the backside of the gargoyle. The gargoyle desperately flailed around as the arrows pierced its wings and it crashed down to the ground out of the sky. Off balance from its bad landing, Lina and Rakkan took advantage of it and landed several good hits on the creature before it could recover. Due to the weight of the large stony beast though, as it crashed into the ground, the ruined island shook violently.

At first, it appeared as if nothing had changed despite the quaking - the land they stood on remained upright. But in the distance the sound of breaking branches and falling stones could be heard.

“Aegis!” Lina shouted worriedly, as she suddenly abandoned the gargoyle to run to the eastern edge of their chunk of land to check on him. A few more strikes on the downed gargoyle was enough to finish it off, but sure enough as Lina got to the ledge she saw that both Aegis, and the eastern end of the ruined island were gone, it had fallen down a great distance and dropped down below the mist, taking the branches and leaves of the tree with it, leaving a large hole in a section of the trees canopy.

A few moments earlier, before his party members had defeated the gargoyle and ooze on the upper island, Aegis watched the second half of the ooze as it slowly slimed its way up the land that stood at an 80 degree angle, making its way towards where the others were.

“Smite.” Aegis casted repeatedly at it. It was doing minor damage, but he thought he might as well start gaining experience for the spell skill since he had nothing else to do, but after a few moments of this, the gargoyle crashed into the land above, its heavy stone body shaking loose the last few branches holding up the vertical land that Aegis was standing on, causing it to break off and begin plummeting into a free fall.

At first, as Aegis looked up and saw the ooze falling with him, he put some faith in perhaps the falling land to be caught again by the nearby branches of the giant tree, but as it picked up speed and fell faster than him, he saw the branches around him lessening and his faith faltered.

“Guard!” Aegis shouted, projecting his shield beneath his feet to catch himself. As he did this he was able to stop himself from falling and watch the rest of the ruined land freefall down into the abyss below, disappearing in the black mist, but he couldn’t stare too long, his projection would only last 2 seconds. He quickly looked around and spotted a huge thick branch of the tree a few meters away, and as his projection was fading he made a great jump towards it. “Guard!” he recasted it, catching himself midair. He continued this for one more cast until he’d made it to the branch, but he was not a fan of relying on his guard skill to make it across bottomless pits.

“Aegis!” He heard Lina call out to him, looking down from above at the hole in the canopy that the falling piece of land had left behind.

“I’m okay!” Aegis shouted up to her and his friends, drawing their eyes to himself. He was now opposite the giant hole in the canopy from them, and below them a good 15 meters. Looking around he saw that the branch he was on, as wide as a 4 lane street, was one of the main branches of the tree that was holding up the land the party was standing on. It extended out of the main trunk of the tree that was visible protruding out of the black mist to the south, where most of the large branches were coming from. That was where the largest ruined island, the island with the ruined castle on top of it, was.

“I can follow this branch over to the main part of the ruins, over there. I bet the book is in that castle anyway.” Aegis pointed.

“What about us, what should we do?” Darkshot called out, but as he did Aegis could see Lina was already looking around for smaller branches and leaves that she could use as a foothold to shadowstep her way over to him.

“There’s a bridge, right there.” Aegis pointed out a stone bridge, in poor condition, that connected the island they stood on to the island where the castle was. The bridge spanned between two large bunches of the tree canopy that were holding both ruined lands up, several meters in length. Rakkan, Darkshot, Pyri and Lina all glanced over to look at the bridge.

“You guys cross the bridge, I’ll cross using the branch, and we can meet at the cas-” Aegis was interrupted.

“AEGIS WATCH OUT!” Lina shouted as a large winged gargoyle flew up from the dark mist below. Aegis saw it at the last second thanks to Lina pointing, and jumped out of the way as the gargoyle slammed its stony claws down on the branch where he’d been standing.

“Be careful, you can’t use magic if it's looking at you!” Pyri warned him as Aegis lifted his shield.

“I’ll shadowstep to you to help!” Lina said worriedly.

“No, wait, that’s suicide!” Aegis shouted back to her as he held up his shield towards the gargoyle and it began prowling in front of him, looking for an opening to strike. “It’s elite, it’ll look at you if it sees you using magic, right? If it looks at you guys while you’re trying to use magic to get to me, you’ll just fall.” Aegis said, causing Lina to hesitate with anxiety in her face.

“I got him, don’t worry.” Darkshot said as he saw her worry, pulling an arrow back in his bow and firing it across the hole in the canopy and hitting the gargoyle in its side, dealing decent damage and causing it to roar angrily as it pounced at Aegis. Aegis braced the attack and nudged the gargoyle backward off of his shield.

You take 1940 Slashing damage.

“At least it’s not bludgeoning.” Aegis sighed as he took a few more steps backward. “Come on, let’s meet at the castle, cross the bridge!” Aegis shouted as he evaluated the situation. He could take some hits from this thing, but his armor enchantments and his Aura of Beauty were no longer working, and he wasn’t able to heal himself. The situation was not good.

“Move guys, I’ll cover him from up here.” Darkshot insisted, and everyone reluctantly nodded, making their way through the ruins as they reached the unstable stone block bridge that spanned the dark abyss between the two treetops. Darkshot stayed near the eastern end of the bridge where he had a good view of Aegis running along the gigantic branch roughly 15 meters below and east of them. The branch went parallel with the bridge though, and wasn’t obscured by any leaves, meaning Darkshot could keep firing arrows at the gargoyle pursuing Aegis.

It wasn’t going to be that easy, though, as Lina and Rakkan led the charge across the bridge and had to stop midway as a bubbling puddle began to form in front of them, blocking their path. Another Kolz ooze formed and overtook the narrowest, most unstable part of the bridge where very little of its structure remained intact and there was a large hole in the bridge on one side of it.

“Pyri, Ice it!” Rakkan said as Pyri stopped looking towards Aegis and the Gargoyle and looked forward at the ooze.

“I’m on it. Multicast! Icelance!” She shouted, firing two icicles out at the puddle and freezing it over. As she did this, it fired out a blob of acid at Rakkan but he was able to sidestep it, causing it to fly off of the side of the bridge and disappear into the mist below.

Once the surface of the ooze froze, Rakkan took a risky attack with his spear and tried piercing the frozen part of it, hoping it wouldn’t splash acid back at him. It worked, the frozen part didn’t splash him.

“Lina, we can hit it as long as Pyri keeps freezing it over.” Rakkan said hopeful, and Lina nodded.

“We have to kill it quick!” She replied urgently as she glanced off the side of the bridge to check on Aegis.

“Multishot! Piercing Shot!” Darkshot said, trying to get more damage in on the gargoyle while it focused on Aegis, but it was too smart for that - one simple glance from the gargoyle was enough to cause all of Darkshot’s spells to cancel. “Was worth a try.” Darkshot said in frustration as he went back to firing arrows.

Aegis continued to run and did his best to avoid taking any hits from the gargoyle as it continued to pounce forward on him, crashing its hand-paws into the wood of the sturdy branch whose rough bark cracked and tore up from each impact. Ahead, Aegis saw the branch would soon be moving into a thick patch of branches and leaves growing out of another of the larger branches of the tree, and he started trying to think of ways to utilize this to his advantage - that is, until he saw that one of the branches started moving and suddenly lunged out at him, causing him to stop running towards it abruptly. He skidded a bit on the bark, but luckily it provided enough friction that he didn’t have too much trouble stopping in time as he watched a sharp needle-like branch stab down into the tree where he was heading.

He followed the branch that struck out of him to see it went up into a hard to see, but now visible 6 legged stick bug creature, nearly the size of a giraffe. It slowly made its way out of the cluster of leaves and twigs it had been hiding in to step onto the branch, cutting off the path in front of Aegis. [Kolz Stickbug - Level 55].

“Of course, there’s more enemies.” Aegis groaned as he saw it. Now with the stickbug in front of him, the gargoyle behind him, and unable to use magic, he was in serious trouble.

“We’ve got company too!” Darkshot shouted from the bridge, pointing behind him. At the start of the narrow bridge that they were now midway across, Darkshot was pointing at two more Kolz Treebugs that were stabbing their sharp stick limbs onto the bridge, approaching them from behind.

“Okay, everyone, stop!” Aegis shouted as he rolled out of the way and dodged two strikes. “If we keep running around, we’re just going to keep aggroing more enemies. This is getting out of hand.”

“So what do we do?” Darkshot asked him.

“Hold your ground and kill these damn things.” Aegis shouted back with determination as he gritted his teeth. He was no longer a pacifist, he’d spent months using this shield and dodging strikes. These enemies were tough, but he took a deep breath and focused.

“Stay on the ooze, I’ll handle the stickbugs.” Lina said to Rakkan and he nodded, she then threw a smokebomb at the stickbugs to shroud them in black smoke, then shadowstepped into the smoke. Using it, she was able to deal a lot of damage to them while avoiding their strikes, but she was running low on mana. One more smoke bomb, and she was out completely, and Pyri, whilst casting Icelances at the ooze, saw Lina take a hit from one of the stickbugs and lose a good chunk of her health.

Pyri had a moment of clarity set over her. She knew that these stickbugs were probably extremely vulnerable to cinderbolt. She also knew that, if she was careful enough, she could manipulate her cinderbolt around the vision of the gargoyle, while simultaneously hiding herself from its vision, so that she could burn it from its back without it being able to stop her spell using its anti-magic gaze. She saw it all play out in front of her, how she could easily burn the gargoyle, and use her cinderbolts to knock the stickbugs off the bridge and the branch, into the abyss. This was such an easy situation for her to get the party out of, and as she thought this, she watched Lina struggling to fight the two bugs at the bridge's entrance. She watched Rakkan desperately trying to kill the ooze where she’d frozen it, and watched as Darkshot desperately fired arrows down at the gargoyle to try and help Aegis, while Aegis was sweating trying to avoid the strikes from two monsters.

And for a brief moment, she hesitated, with a look of indecision on her face. A look that, as Lina jumped away from the bugs to avoid their strikes, saw. Lina locked eyes and saw the odd expression on Pyri’s face, but Lina didn’t understand what was behind it. The truth was, it was fear. Pyri was suddenly extremely terrified of doing too much in a situation she knew should be impossible to survive. She was terrified of saving the party, she was terrified of what would happen if she used everything she had to survive the seemingly otherwise unsurvivable situation.

“We didn’t come all this way to die to some stupid bugs!” Aegis shouted with ferocious determination, snapping her out of it.

“Come on, Pyri, more icelances!” Rakkan urged her. She nodded, and casted several more at the ooze.

“I got your back, Lina!” Darkshot turned to the treebugs on the bridge. “Vinerope shot!” He shouted, and managed to hit them without drawing the gaze of the gargoyle across the way. The vines wrapped themselves around the treebugs and tangled them together, causing them to stumble and lose their footing.

“Handle that shit first Darkshot, I’ll be fine.” Aegis ordered him as he glanced up and saw how effective the vinerope was against the bugs on the bridge up above him. “Everyone has so much fun attacking, but all the fun stops when I attack-” Aegis said angrily as he sidestepped a strike from the tree bug, its sharp leg sticking into the branch where Aegis had been standing. “BACK!” he bashed his shield as hard as he could into the leg of the bug, dealing 700 bludgeoning damage and causing it to let out an obnoxiously loud squealing sound, and following that he jumped backwards to dodge a pounce from the gargoyle, then bashed his shield into its head, dealing a critical 1100 bludgeoning damage.

After hitting them both, he hopped away and pulled a lynx steak out of his inventory and bit into it, preparing for their next strikes. He did this a few more times, and got into a flow of dodging and striking. The treebug’s pattern was very predictable, and became a joke to Aegis to avoid its strikes. The gargoyle, on the other hand, he had to pay extra attention to, but he noticed it was prioritizing striking at him anytime it thought he was preoccupied. He ended up taking another pounce attack and dropping dangerously low on health, but from there played it incredibly safe.

The ooze was the first enemy to go down. Rakkan was relentless, draining his stamina as low as he could without dying to barrage it with strikes, whilst Pyri did her best to repeatedly blast it with ice. Darkshot and Lina worked on the bugs at the start of the bridge. With his vinerope shot and pinning shot he could stop them from moving, giving Lina time to regenerate her mana, and whenever she had enough to use a smoke bomb, she’d use it to go in and stab them for as much damage as she could.

Once the ooze went down, Pyri turned to the stick bugs and sent her cinderbolts at them, dealing bonus damage whilst Rakkan did extra damage using his slashing battleaxe, and the two bugs went down quickly. Then, it was just the gargoyle and the stick bug attacking Aegis left.

Rakkan took out his crossbow and helped Darkshot take down the gargoyle alongside Aegis’ bash attacks, and once it was down, Pyri sent a cinderbolt at the treebug and burned it up, ending the fight and granting everyone enough experience to hit level 51, save for Lina who was already 52.

“Phew!” Aegis shouted with relief the moment the bug collapsed and burned up due to the fire damage from Pyri’s cinderbolt.

“Holy shit, I can’t believe we survived that.” Darkshot sighed with relief as he leaned against a large block on the bridge. Lina looked down at Aegis, and he looked up back at her, the two smiling at each other, and Pyri saw them do this and smiled as well whilst Rakkan grabbed his knees and gasped for air.

“You guys are all so tough, you didn’t even need me.” Pyri whispered to herself, relieved, but Rakkan heard her say this.

“What’re you talking about, of course we needed you.” Rakkan smiled at her, but as he did, he saw tears swelling up in her eyes. “Ah, sorry, did I say something wrong? Is everything okay?” Rakkan asked worriedly, this caused the others to turn to Pyri.

“Mom, you okay? Was that too stressful?” Aegis shouted out to her worriedly from a distance, unable to clearly see what was happening on the bridge.

“I’m okay… I’m okay. I’m just so happy to play with my son.” She said as she forced a chuckle, smiling while she wiped a tear away.

“Jeez, mom, weird time to get all mushy.” Aegis sighed as the others giggled seeing Pyri’s overjoyed expression. Aegis dropped to the ground, landing on his bottom as he too needed to catch his breath, whilst lightly tapping his own chest to cast healing wind on himself. “No one moves a muscle until we are full of mana and stamina.” Aegis ordered them all, his voice carrying across the void to reach his party on the bridge many meters away from him.

No one needed to be told this twice, and they all did exactly that. Eating lynx steak provided by Aegis helped with the recovery process, but it took nearly 5 minutes of idling before everyone’s resource bars were all filled back up. The party then continued forward. Across crossed the branch and entered into the thick branches and leaves, whilst his party made their way across the narrow bridge.

Once they’d arrived on the other side of the bridge they found themselves standing in front of a large open gate that lead into the courtyard of the ruined castle. It was standing on the chunk of land held up by the largest portion of the giant trees canopy. More importantly, though, is that just outside the walls of the castle courtyard, off the side of the bridge, was a shambly looking stone staircase that descended downward into the thick canopy, overtaken by branches, leaves, and vines.

“Aegis, there’s a staircase up to us, can you find a way to get to it?” Darkshot announced as he took a few steps down the stairs and pulled the nearest branches out of the way to look further down.

“Way ahead of you.” Aegis replied from the bottom of the staircase, as he’d hopped to it from a nearby branch and was climbing up to meet them. Before he’d gotten to the top, though, Lina rushed forward past Darkshot and threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly.

“I was so worried.” She said anxiously. Aegis was caught off guard by this, but lightly hugged her back and watched as Darkshot, Pyri and Rakkan all looked away awkwardly at the top of the stairs. After a moment of this, Lina pulled back with red cheeks. “Sorry.” She said shyly.

“You don’t have to apologize for something like that.” Aegis smiled back at her, making her blush even redder. “So this is the ruined castle of Kolz, huh?” Aegis said as he climbed the stairs to stand on the bridge with everyone else, peering through the gate at the ruined castle beyond.

“There’s definitely ancient runes in there somewhere.” Rakkan said excitedly as they stood side by side, preparing to step through the gate together.

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