“Also, look at this!” Blackstone giggled, holding up a bag that already looked heavy. It made small clinks as it moved, similar to glass. It was filled to the brim with tiny, unhealthily red-looking potions.
“Later, I will carry the potions”, Ice suggested after a moment of contemplation. “I’m farthest behind and don’t need both hands.”
Spiderlily’s long eyelashes fluttered. “I’ll… make sure you’re safe.”
Ice was about to thank her, when a low chuckle interrupted him.
“Ah, you’re stealing our job.” White Light stepped up, a cloak of white fur around his armor. There were three people behind him who kept a respectful distance. “Shouldn’t us close-combat fighters keep an eye on the mage’s and the archer’s safety?”
“You can protect me”, Little Droplet joked with their cute, high voice. “I’ll appreciate it.”
“God, don’t let the healer die. Little Droplet has learned resurrection. They’re like a joker.” Bloodless Sunset seemed to have solved the situation with his friends and came over. He looked at Little Droplet like a precious treasure.
“Only started, though. It takes me forever to chant and I don’t have enough mana to do it more than once”, the healer hurried to clarify.
“Doesn’t matter, an extra life is an extra life. I have a guild – you can’t imagine how much I appreciate healers!”
“Certainly.” White Light nodded. “We really do appreciate the hard work that a healer does. We also pay very well! And did I mention that my guild has whole parties focused on helping healers level up?”
“Excuse me?! Little Droplet, don’t fall for it!”
Little Droplet looked between Bloody and White Light, then gave a sheepish smile. “I have to say, White Light looks very reliable when he talks like that…”
“Then what do I look like?” Bloody pointed a clawed finger at himself.
“…Messy?”
The wolfman cried softly. He turned to his friend for support, who gave him tiny pats on the head without a word.
White Light held back a laugh that broke out anyway when he noticed Little Droplet winking at him.
“How peaceful”, Blackstone sighed with content. “To think we’d be so relaxed while working on a world quest.”
Spiderlily’s small nose scrunched up. “I would not say so.”
After all, there were still two people missing.
The atmosphere changed noticeably when Absinth joined everyone. She managed to look even more annoyed than the past days. Judging from how sluggish her blinking was, she must have hated waking up so early.
“So, we are gonna dry-run this now?”, she said, twirling her hair around a finger and looking at it. It seemed like a habit, considering Haven didn’t feature split ends. Either that, or she had scorched some of her hair again.
“Yes. We have to figure out how to best approach this.”
“This shouldn’t be too hard”, Knightrider said with unshaken confidence.
The Ice Emperor had a bad feeling.
…Reaching a suitable campsite took longer than expected. Little Droplet stuck out their tongue at the taste of the mana potion, but at least everyone was fully healed. Bundled up, they left Blackstone, Little Droplet and the tag-alongs behind and approached the inner ring.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
During the first try, they attracted the attention of ice wyverns and ran back in a hurry. Sitting in the safety of their little cave, they waited until the monsters were gone.
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The rest of the party carried on, but Knightrider almost got stuck under the ledge due to his thick clothes and his struggling caught the harpies’ attention.
They sprinted back again, towards the camp where hopefully the monsters’ territory wouldn’t reach. Ice was too slow, so he woke back up in the city.
The fourth try was cut short when the wild boss started its daily walk right around where they had to go.
Players had long trickled in, fighting near the camp and slowly beginning to attack the higher level monsters in larger groups.
Seven hours.
Blackstone had to leave after a while, but everyone else stayed for nine hours. Seven hours and four tries. Physical exhaustion aside, mentally they were done.
Bloody and Ice sat back to back, holding each other up. Spiderlily sat hunched against the cave wall. Absinth tried to look like she was sitting casually, but her body was too limp for it to be convincing.
“Okay, how far did we get?”, White Light asked everyone as he rubbed his forehead. He was speaking slowly like someone with an incoming headache.
“There.” Knightrider’s usual smile had fallen away, revealing his naturally slightly grim expression. Because his eyebrows were a bit downturned, he looked a bit fierce if he wasn’t smiling.
The area he pointed at was still a good bit away from their target. They had seen the edges of the hole, but couldn’t reach it. By now, the map was marked over and over with notes about which monsters were where.
“How high is the chance that we could just wait for a blizzard to appear and run through that area while the monsters retreat?” Bloody threw the thought into the room… cave, but only got head-shaking in return.
“Too easy. Either the blizzard isn’t going to affect that area, or they won’t flee. I don’t think we are that lucky.” White Light smiled wryly and rolled up the map again.
“I would prefer being done before we find out”, Spiderlily whispered. The archer was checking her bow, making sure it hadn’t gotten damaged. Although she kept a slot in her inventory open for it, it did fall into the snow a couple of times. “We have… thirty days? Several are gone already and we have yet to reach the castle. Let alone gather hints of whether the owner is dangerous or not.”
“Which reminds me…” Bloody creased his eyebrows and sat up straight. Everyone glanced over in confusion. “Didn’t the prince say that his scout had seen people patrolling? We’ve been stuck here for hours now and haven’t seen a single NPC. What’s with that?”
“There are so many possible reasons for this that it’s absolutely useless to think about it!” Absinth scoffed and threw down her gloves. Her fingers were a bit red – the gloves were stylish, but not too good at keeping her warm.
Ice flinched at her sudden outburst.
Everyone was getting exhausted, which wasn’t surprising. They had been going at this for so long and had gotten nowhere yet. He could understand that she was prickly, but… There was no reason for her to let it out on them.
“World quests aren’t supposed to be overly tight on time”, White Light tried to calm her down. “After all, it’s not supposed to discriminate against people who might have less time to play for reasons. I’m sure we can find our solution in the coming days.”
The warrior turned towards his guild members, who had been completely quiet this whole time. At first Ice had wondered if this was a soldier-like obedience, but then he noticed that they were simply busy playing cards together.
“Can you ask around if there are people willing to watch this area? We’d need to find out if there are NPCs around here, and if a blizzard does come, whether it affects the inner ring.”
One of the players thoughtfully tilted her head. “Pretty sure there’s gonna be some guys who are willing to do that if it’s for you and a world quest. Might have to offer payment, though.”
“Ask our treasurer about giving out credits for the guild storage.”
Like many other guilds, White Light had set up a credits system. With these credits – an imaginary currency – you could borrow more precious weapons or equipment from the guild storage. You gained these sorts of credits by doing tasks for the guild, for example.
The treasurer was usually the player who managed these storage and the credits.
“Sir, yes, sir!” The player giggled and left the cave to contact the guild.
“Tsk.” Absinth clicked her tongue. “Whatever. We wasted so much time on nothing… I’m going offline. I gotta eat something.”
“Not the worst idea, to tell the truth. I believe the capsules are about to call for a break anyway. We did make progress though, we have tried going together now and have a rough idea on how to coordinate. We can go back to exploring in little groups whenever we can. I will just take a little break, how about you, Ice?”
“I’ll… also eat”, the mage said slowly.
“I-” Bloody started to say something but stopped and pulled a face. He messed up his hair and shot the mage an apologetic look. “I gotta go offline for a couple of hours, probably. My little brother just said that our parents want to come over for a meal.”
“I’m going to take a break and then deal with my guild first before I’ll return here”, White Light answered after some consideration.
“I’m gonna go on my own.” As usual, Absinth decided to do things her own way.
“I’m… free. I’d come along”, Spiderlily said, looking at the Ice Emperor who gave a nod.
Little Droplet bobbed up and down where they sat. “Me too. I’m free.”
“Then the four of us will meet back here in an hour?”
“Do you want us to leave your things somewhere, Ice Emperor?” One of Bloody’s friends spoke up. He scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “I don’t think we can stick around for longer.”
“Can I leave them at your guild?”, Ice asked Bloody, who waved his hand.
“Sure, sure. No problem. Just put it in my office, guys. He can fetch them whenever. I mean, you’re probably not going to need it anytime soon.”
The mage showed a forlorn expression. His usual equipment was quite high on defense and gave him agility and mana buffs. It was useful for when he was travelling and leveling, but right now, the cold resistance was more important. He was going to keep on wearing this set of equipment for a long time if the quest would continue to drag like this.
As promised, an hour later the smaller group re-assembled.
Little Droplet breathed some air on their hands, eyes roaming around. “What’s the plan?”
“Try to save your mana as much as possible. I’ll lead the way and act as a tank, Spiderlily will cause as much damage as possible. Ice, I want you to prepare smaller spells and shoot them when I call for it. We can test how to time the debuff best for us to advance”, Knightrider declared. He clapped his hands together, shooting a smile at everyone. “Let’s try getting through this as far as possible without fighting.”
“Alright.” Spiderlily checked her bow in what appeared to be a habitual manner. She tugged her gloves into position, then noticed Ice was looking at her. Her head tilted the tiniest bit, revealing her pointed ears, and she gave him a determined nod.
“I’ve got a lot of mana potions, if you need any”, Little Droplet told the Ice Emperor.
“Thank you”, Ice responded. He didn’t plan on taking the youth up on the offer – he had enough potions, and Little Droplet still felt a bit weird to him. Maybe it was that smile that didn’t always seem to reach the healer’s eyes.
“Don’t talk too much while we move”, Knightrider ordered. “It will distract us.”
“Yes…”
The mountain area was a cold place, but the mage was beginning to think that the temperature wasn’t too bad once he got used to it. In fact, the mood in the group made everything seem much colder than the snow.
They did indeed not talk at all, mostly because whenever Little Droplet said a single sentence that wasn’t useful for the mission, Knightrider would just silently stare at them.
It felt tense, like a hunt, which was exactly the kind of mood that Ice did not like. He was fine with being serious, but this was after all a game – they didn’t have to move in silence for such a long time, did they?
Knightrider snapped out single orders whenever he pleased. His tactic worked, but it felt uncomfortable.
Not all monster types were willing to give chase after a fleeing target. The Fear debuff increased the chance of a monster being unwilling to follow, so Knightrider began to skillfully maneuver their enemies into the best position for fleeing before ordering Ice to attack.
Spiderlily helped keep small-fry away and keep control of monsters. Little Droplet only intervened with healing spells when it was actually necessary.
The healer’s eyes were dull, eyebrows creased. In fact, they looked quite unhappy and according to Spiderlily’s downwards tilted lips, they weren’t the only one.
“We will stop here”, Knightrider said with a satisfied laugh. “Good. If we do it like this, we can minimize both the time and damage we will get from reaching the inner circle. This will be useful. We should practise this again.”
Ice held back a sigh.
So far, their plan had various small stages:
Together with some players that came along as storage spaces, they’d make their way until the second circle. At the edge of that place, they’d set up camp – this area was still safe enough for the other players to wait, considering their levels. Because this was a pretty long walk, they’d pause at the camp to warm up and eat a meal made by Blackstone.
The second stage was that next ring. They could fight these monsters, try to sneak past or use their new tactic. Because the levels were higher, fighting was bothersome, but they were also quite numerous and more annoying to avoid, which was why Knightrider’s tactic might save them some time. After all, this ring was quite thick as well.
The last ring was the one where fighting was impossible. One way or another, they had to avoid the monsters.
As for what would follow once they came to the edge of the chasm…
Who knows.
Knightrider made them run up and down the second ring one more time before he was satisfied. At that point, Spiderlily declared she had to leave, which destroyed the possibility of any further tests he might have wanted to run.
“By the way”, Knightrider interrupted Ice as he was about to leave as well. He said a string of numbers, causing Ice to look at him in confusion. “My phone number. Give me a quick call! I know we spend most of the time in the game, but I’m sure it will be fun to meet up in reality sometime.”
The man did not move an inch while Ice hesitated. It was like an old-style game – the NPC would not react until you had said your lines.
“I got it”, Ice gave in.
Once again, he fled from the game.
They spent the next days hopelessly trying to breach the third circle and failing every time. It seemed to be impossible.
Author’s Note
Soon.
Bonus release? Bonus release!
Thanks to Ethereal Mushroom for choosing the extra two chapters 🙂 This is the first one, and the second one will come out Friday evening~
Little Theater
Bloody: “Do I really look messy?”
Ice: longingly looks at furry hair
Ice: “…Yes.”
Bloody: “QAQ”
Although he looks messy, its because his hair is floofy pat pat
Thanks for the chapter!
I hope the quest won’t take them too long, even I feel so uncomfortable already and I’m just reading it lol (Okay, maybe bc I don’t like it to play with unknown people online.. I still prefer single player games haha ^^°) Whatever, guys, good luck :’D
Thx for the bonus ch ٩( >ヮ<)۶
thanks for the chapter <3
OMG hahahaha Bloody and White Light trying to get Little Droplet to join? This kind of thing with people offering you a job…so good….
!! HEAD PAT! ICE GAVE BLOODY TINY HEAD PATS!!! YESSSSSSS CUTEEEE
….White Light’s guild members playing cards together…HAHAH
Thank you for the chapter 💜