Chapter 194: 23: Dare Something To

Fortunately for Danika, Aishin logged on a moment after they arrived. While the wizard's party was distracted by the gnomish city, she quickly messaged him, and asked if he could return to Kalunay and see which way the Whereabouts compass reported Wise Ardlee to be from there, since the river town would have been a bit to the south of the original compass direction, instead of to the north as they were now.

As the snow leopard cub carried her message away, Danika recalled Lin Hao's revelations about the King of Cats, and then remembered the cat who had asked if she wanted to know how to become the King of Cats back when she'd been transformed by the apple. She frowned and wished that she could access her celestial dragon assistant from her game account. After a moment she sighed and submitted a message through the bug report system. Just in case it didn't go to him, she added a note that said it should go to him or to herself.

Saaki and Nao1 also logged on, and Aishin sent back his message with the cub who looked around with interest again before dropping the message. It read: "Sure, hold on, and I'll accept the other guild mission and we'll portal over. Should be able to complete it there as well as here I think."

Danika winced guiltily over the Karma cost of having more members use a portal, which would likely reduce the profit from this guild quest to nothing, but having taken it on impulse, she still hoped to have it be completed quickly and successfully.

Heftybookboy's party finished looking around and the wizard asked, "Which way from here?"

"He's to the south and east from here, but if we wait here a few minutes, my guildmates will give me a third triangulation angle and I'll be able to be more specific," Danika replied quickly.

"Let's just start in that direction," Aselo suggested. The little loli alchemist bounced on her toes like she had too much energy stored up to keep still any longer.

Fallen North shrugged his little white furred shoulders and said, "I'm game. We haven't explored this region yet."

Kurohana nodded. Heftybookboy shrugged and instructed ZipZing, "Let's go then. If it takes too long because we went the long way, you can just give us the calculated location if you need to leave before we arrive, to keep it fair."

"Alright," Danika agreed, and zipped toward the tall archway that rose in the east, which she suspected to be the eastern gate to the city. All of the racial capitals had the same basic layout, with the portals near the center, and a gate at each of the four main compass points, even the unwalled cities like the fairy capital followed the same general design.

Heftybookboy's party trailed after her like her firefly. They were halfway down the mountain before Aishin's next message arrived, and Danika had surreptitiously marked Heftybookboy, so that if they were separated she could teleport to him. It cost another point of Karma, but at this point she'd given up on making a profit on this job.

Aishin's message read reassuringly: "He's almost straight northwest from here." Which meant that her gamble on direction and distance had come out ok, because the wizard was somewhere between Antikythera and Kalunay.

She pulled up her menu screens and navigated to the game maps posted in the forums. If she drew a line between the city and the town, and then took another line west from Fogton until it intersected, the distance from Kalunay would have been shorter, but they could only have portaled directly there if Heftybookboy's party had already visited the river town, because it wasn't one of the main racial capitals.

Danika called the party to a halt near a stream, where she used her shape cantrip to make a rough watery outline of 'Living Jade Empire'. Then she used her light cantrip and her color cantrip to add glowing dots to several reference city locations and put the rest of her particles on the destination. She pointed as she explained, "Fogton is here, Antikythera which is just behind us is there," she listed a few other towns which she knew of, but that they didn't seem to recognize and then indicated the target, "and Wise Ardlee is currently in this area."

"You're leaving already?" Heftybookboy questioned with a frown.

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"No," Danika replied promptly, "I'm just showing you now in case something happens on the way."

"Ha! I dare something to attack us on the way!" Aselo declared.

Danika didn't think that even five minutes passed before the game took the little girl up on her challenge. They were a coordinated team though, and their party dealt with the attack of the rolling stones swiftly and more successfully than Danika expected. She didn't even have to offer her pebble as a retreat and fly them to safety.

Of course, stones don't just attack out of nowhere, unless they are animated in some fashion. Or, as in this case, someone triggers the trap set to defend a small goblin palisade. Aselo might have been the one who picked up the ankle high string and asked, "What's this?" but Heftybookboy was the one who reached out and tugged on it curiously before Kurohana could stop them.

To be fair, Aselo was also the one who blew up most of the rocks before they crushed her party members. Their icebuckler turned out to be quite effective against large rocks as well. Fallen North conjured low ice walls almost instantly into the paths of the stones that Aselo missed turning into sand and shrapnel. The walls were even cunningly angled to bounce the rocks away and past.

Heftybookboy used a barrier spell of some kind that bounced back the stray shrapnel from Aselo's attacks, and then Kurohana found a spot and hid the party from the goblin skirmishers that dashed down the mountain side after their trap triggered. The only thing Danika contributed was a quick wind slash into a leafy bush in the distance, behind a goblin who had stopped to examine the hiding place Kurohana had chosen.

They changed their direction to due east for awhile so that they'd be less likely to cross paths with the goblin searchers. Danika could kind of see why his friends were so eager to help Heftybookboy regain his curse. He was a quite competent wizard, but probably less trouble when he didn't have hands.

They ran into a patch of restless stinging nettles after they turned south again. They were surrounded before the nettles began to stir. Danika was able to be of more assistance there, since the nettles would flinch away and curl up if a spark hit them. She zipped through the patch like a small firework tossing spark bound light particles in all directions, while Heftybookboy's party raced after her little sparkling form.

Shortly after that incident Aishin messaged: "We turned in three smugglers for the bounty. This was an easy one to do here. But we have another job tonight, so can't stay until you're finished. Is it going OK?"

Danika looked up from her message with embarrassment when she realized that Heftybookboy's party had also come to a halt and spread out warily around her. She quickly replied: "Yeah, hope your job goes well."

"Ah, sorry." She explained, "My guildmates were just informing me that they finished their quest and are logging off for now."

"Oh, OK then," Fallen North replied for them all as he lowered his small sharp sword, which stopped radiating cold and making tendrils of mist tangle around his small white form.

They made smooth progress south again, following the steady direction that the Whereabouts compass displayed, until they stumbled across the leopard teaching her children their ABCs. "K is for kitten, and L is for leopard," the large cat instructed clearly in the common tongue.

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