Chapter 50: Chapter 50: Touring Wutsch

[ Discovered Zone: Wutsch - Western Great Forest of Ildhena ]

[ Discovered Area: Wutsch Eastern Edge ]

While the forest was still the forest, Sara was able to detect a shift in the atmosphere as soon as she crossed the zone border. Not to mention the unsettling sensation of losing the effect of her buff. She'd need some time to get used to that.

Gloria seemed very happy to have someone to show around, as she had probably never interacted with anyone in that way before.

Her wolves were of the Dire, and Shade varieties as well, though she seemed to have a higher ratio of the latter than Sara had. They were also level 25 at the most. She did vaguely remember Aina mentioning that this was a 15-25 zone, yet Gloria herself was level 30. They probably wanted to make the zone bosses equal, so it was likely every boss in the north, west, and south were level 30. In the east the elves had the forest under very tight control, so as far as she knew there were no zone bosses there. At the very least there was no wolf boss. There were wolves, but there was no room for a boss for them.

So while Gloria's pack members were not as strong, it would still be difficult to take her down.

Building upon that logic, the other boss in Sara's zone would also be level 30. Her suspicion was that it was either a bear, or a deer, and that it was in the north-west. The only place in Nyolund where the wolves had no place.

While they were walking, she was able to take a look at the skills she had been curious about.

[ Smokescreen (Active): You are able to summon a cloud of smoke that fills the area, to allow you to escape, or to gain an advantage in combat. Your opponents struggle to see, and their actions may be interrupted by coughing from the smoke. Effect increases with skill level. It is possible to use Stealth if they completely lose sight of you, and have no other means of detecting you. Radius: (5+(0.5*skill level)) metres. Duration: (15+(0.5*skill level)) seconds. Can be dispersed with wind. Cost: 12 MP. Refresh: 1 minute. ]

[ Shadow Movement (Active): Rogue branch exclusive. While stealthed you are able to warp between locations so long as they are in shadow. Warp range increases with skill level. Scales with Dexterity. Requires line of sight. You are almost impossible to detect while in shadow. Cost: 20 SP. Refresh: 8 seconds. ]

[ Conjure Mist (Active): Ninja branch exclusive. You blanket the surrounding area in magical mist that obscures perception. Continuous effect. You and your allies will be hard to see, and detect as it interferes with all perception skills. The mist has a chance to cause mirages for your opponents, for instance seeing false images of you, or seeing their own allies as you or one of your allies. Effect increases with skill level. Scales with Wisdom. The opponents' chance to resist the mirage effects depends on their Wisdom score. Critical hit chance: +(10+(1*skill level))% for all allies within the mist. Mist radius: (20+(1*skill level)) metres. Activation Cost: 5 MP. Drains MP while active. Drain decreases with skill level. Refresh: 20 seconds. ]

While they had significant cost, and took a while to refresh, Smokescreen and Mist probably made Gloria quite hard to pin down, not to mention she had Vanish on top of that. Shadow Movement sounded fun, so she wondered how restricted it was.

Wutsch was interestingly different from Nyolund, and Sholan. Probably by intentional design it felt like a halfway point between the openness of the east forest, and the density of the north and south. So the west was still dense, but not not as much as Sara had become used to. There was more opening between the trees, more sunshine that filtered in, and the air felt fresher.

It was also interesting that the corvids of this zone were not ravens, but crows.

[ Gale Crow (Performer Lvl 24) HP: 145/145 ]

[ Skill List ]

[ Active: ]

[ Drill Peck Lvl 4 | Rend Lvl 4 | Death From Above Lvl 6 | Gust Lvl Max | Gale Arrow Lvl 4 |
Wind Enchant Lvl 6 | Gale Tornado Lvl 4 | Wind Swiftness Lvl 4 | Tempest Blade Dance Lvl 4 |
Glide Lvl Max ]

[ Passive: ]

[ Night Vision Lvl 14 | Keen Vision Lvl 14 | Flight Lvl Max | Air Control Lvl 4 | Wind Element Up Lvl Max |
Mana Manipulation Lvl 4 | Intelligence Up (Small) Lvl Max | Dexterity Up (Small) Lvl 8 | Wisdom Up (Small) Lvl 8 |
Wind Resistance Lvl 4 ]

[ Gale Arrow (Active): You fire a magic arrow with wind element property. Damage value: (1.2+(0.04*skill level))*magic power. Splash radius: 1 metre. (Reminder: Only direct hits have a chance to inflict critical damage.) Inflicts Bleed(?) status for 12 seconds if the target is not sufficiently armoured. Minor knockback force on direct hit. Cost: 5 MP. Cast time: 3 seconds. Refresh: 3 seconds. ]

[ Gale Tornado (Active): You trap a target within a magical tornado for 12 seconds that does damage over time. Wind element property. The trapped target has a hard time seeing, and moving. Other opponents in close proximity will also suffer damage. Damage value: (0.3+(0.01*skill level))*magic power every 3 seconds. Cost: 6 MP. Cast time 3 seconds. Refresh: 20 seconds. ]

[ Wind Swiftness (Active): You imbue a target with the power of wind for 15 seconds. Wind element property. Attack speed, and movement speed: +(20+(1*skill level))%. Cost: 8 MP. Refresh: 30 seconds. ]

[ Tempest Blade Dance (Active): Performer branch exclusive. You perform a dance that summons a tempest of sharp blades of wind that tear into opponents in a line in front of you. Wind element property. Channelled effect. Base damage value: (0.4+(0.02*skill level)*magic power per blade hit. Line width: (3+(0.1*skill level)) metres. Range: (10+(1*skill level)) metres. Opponents caught in the tempest have more difficulty moving. The better your performance is, the stronger the tempest will be. Activation Cost: 4 MP. Quickly drains MP while active. Drain decreases with skill level. Refresh: 15 seconds. ]

Sara had never had the chance to Identify a Performer until now, and her first one was a crow. Aina had said that Performers used to be only ones with wind spells, so if you wanted a wind crow at launch, then Performer was the only option. She wondered what it looked like when it did the dance. Did it have to land, or could it do it in the air? Probably the latter.

According to Gloria she mostly hung out in the north-east of the zone. That was where her den was located, but the wolves had general control of both the north-east, and south-east. The south-west was cat territory, and where the boss of the cats hung out. Apparently it was a very big cat, who could shoot water. The elves had decent control of the road that headed towards the ocean in the west, but not as good as they did in the east. She said that the wolves mostly left people who stuck to the road alone, especially if there were many of them. Apparently they tended to travel in groups. Sara figured that was for safety reasons. Sometimes the patrolling city guards were nearby as well, and they were very strong.

Not that Gloria had any problems crossing the road if she wanted to. She could go pretty much wherever she wanted, so she had scoped out the entire zone. She seemed like she was very curious about all sorts of things.

She also said that they used to have better control of the north-west, but there was a camp of people there who sometimes attacked the people on the road, and they had been slowly growing in number ever since the world started. They had made certain areas of the north-west hard for the wolves to stick around in. Sara inferred that she was talking about bandits.

Can't have a big forest without a bandit camp, I guess. But they have been growing? So they're different from the goblins, then?

"Can you show me this camp?" she asked.

"Sure!" Gloria sounded more than happy to.

* * *

While there was a clearing around the camp, it wasn't as large as the one the Merwyn goblins had made. It seemed like these bandits preferred using the woods as cover. Their walls weren't very impressive. Maybe they had to keep expanding them if their numbers kept growing, so they didn't have time to make them too solid, or they had never improved them in the first place. It looked like a couple of well-placed blows could punch a hole in them, but maybe she was underestimating them.

They had several lookouts wandering around, which made Sara wonder if it was like with the goblins. There had to be someone out in the open for the Adventurers to fight for quests. It became a weird line of wondering how much was enforced by the system, and how much was the Residents making their own decisions.

Unlike the goblins, she could see several different races among the bandits. Humans, elves, trolls, and beastkin. All the neighbouring races, as far as she knew. If there were any that had come from further away, she couldn't see them. Actually the camp was situated well enough that she couldn't see inside at all. It was basically at the highest point in the area, so it was presumably easier to defend that way. Though Sara had her ways.

"Wait here," she said to Gloria, and then hopped her way up into the trees to find a good vantage point at the top with a clear view of the entire camp, and its surrounding area. In a way it would have been helpful for them to clear out more trees, but they probably didn't expect spies from the treetops.

From up there she could see that the camp was bigger than she had thought. She wasn't sure if it was supposed to be some old outpost that they had fixed up, and expanded, or if they'd built it all from scratch. At least it wasn't an old fort.

There were several buildings. Five large ones, and one smaller. She would guess two, or maybe three of them were barracks for the bandits to stay in, and they had to have somewhere to eat. The place with the chimney seemed like a likely bet. Unless they had a smithy. They had to have somewhere to store, and fix their equipment at least. That warehouse looking thing was probably where they kept their loot, among other things. And she guessed that the smaller cabin that stood aside from the rest that probably housed their leader, or something equally important.

[ Intuition Skill Level Up! ]

Yes, yes, thank you.

Overall it seemed like a solid place. It would be hard to make any ingress with a mere party. The Adventurers would probably need a raid to break through.

A raid, huh...

Sara had a flashback to her time in Merwyn, and what she had done to the goblins. She had talked to Gloria about the alliance as they were walking around. She had tried to not be too pushy about it, especially since she wanted the other wolf to keep showing her around, and didn't want to interrupt her too much. It seemed like Gloria had gotten gradually more intrigued, but she hadn't fully agreed to it yet. However if she found these bandits annoying, then maybe doing a raid would help her vent some of that by turning it into a fun activity. And maybe that would be the final push she'd need to agree to work together.

Sara could bring a bunch of her wolves, to team up with a bunch of Gloria's wolves, and they could storm the camp. Maybe even do it again every once in a while. They couldn't do it every day, and they probably shouldn't make their timing too predictable, since the bandits would be able to prepare. She wasn't sure how many bandits there were, but if they brought about a hundred wolves each, that should probably be enough. Maybe even the elves wanted to take part. It might not be necessary, but it might be nice in the spirit of cooperation. Though the first time should probably be all wolves.

She hopped back down to the ground, and used Slow Fall to make sure she didn't hurt herself. Even if she hadn't used it herself, the auto-activate thing probably would have saved her, but it wasn't the right time to test out that feature.

"Hey, I have an idea," she said to the impressed Gloria.

"An idea?"

"How about we attack the camp?" Sara suggested with a grin.

Gloria blinked. "Right now?" she asked.

"No, after we gather a bunch of our wolves. I'll go get like a hundred of mine, and you bring as many as you want of yours, and we attack them together when we're ready," Sara explained. "It might be fun. What do you think?"

"Ooo, fun..." Gloria clearly liked the sound of that word. "Okay! When will we be ready?"

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Sara thought it over. "If I'm gonna get a hundred, it might take a couple of hours."

"Hours?" Gloria looked puzzled.

"Ah..." The mobs probably didn't have that kind of understanding of time. "It will take a little while. I'll show back up at the border once we're good to go. And... maybe I should have asked this first, but are you okay with my wolves coming into your territory?"

"Sure! You're going back home afterwards, right?" Gloria asked.

"Yes, of course," Sara confirmed.

"Then there's no problem!" Gloria seemed quite eager.

"Alright. I'll be back when everyone's ready to go."

* * *

It didn't take Sara long to find a couple of wolf packs once she got back into Nyolund, and she asked them to spread the word to have about a hundred of them gather at the border to Wutsch. That was really all she needed to do, but she wasn't going to just wait around. She intended to let the elves know what they were doing. Not to let them join in (this time), but just so they were aware. She didn't want to create a panic in case any of them happened to see it.

She was also trying to plan her approach. The gate to the camp was big, so it was easy to storm through, but if they closed it, it would be hard to breach. So she wanted to create multiple breaches. If Rock Shot had enough impact that it could dent armour, and those walls were as shoddy as they looked, then if she used a larger amount of copies all focused around one spot, she figured it should be possible to create a hole. At the very least it should be possible to break down the gate. Or maybe a bunch of Greater Fireballs could literally burn a hole through the wood.

She could try both ideas, since this was somewhat of a test run anyway, and she would have to wait for cooldowns to refresh. It would really eat through her MP though, so she couldn't do too many salvos. She had to save something for when she went inside.

And she had to take into account that she would be without the boss buff since she was in a different zone, but that shouldn't affect her Leadership skill over the other wolves, at least. A quick check let her know that All Attributes had already gone up one level, so that little boost was welcome.

It would be very funny if she could actually Burrow her way underneath the wall, but that would probably take too long, depending on how deep she had to go. It was probably set quite firmly into the ground. That would have to be a last resort if nothing else worked.

When she reached the border where the North Way crossed into Ethuun, she was curious if this would actually work. Whether they would actually realise she wanted to talk, and would come out to meet her. She would have to run away fast if they chose to attack, since it was definitely not the right time to wait for a respawn timer.

The Hunting Post itself was interesting. She had jumped right over it last time she went by, so she hadn't gotten a look at it. Compared to the bandit camp she had just looked at, this place didn't have walls in the same way. It was more like a large fence, with pointed bits to make it hard for mobs to try to jump over. There was a lookout tower, so she stopped in clear view of them. She probably shouldn't go too close, in case they took it as provocation. And it was easier to run away if she kept her distance.

Now what? Do I just wait? Do I howl? Do I bark at them? Like, try to shout 'hey I want to talk' in order to get the Druid to hear me? Oh, they've spotted me.

She tried barking anyway. Maybe that would get them to hurry up even further.

The ones in the lookout tower called out to those below, and some scurrying started to happen. She wasn't interested enough in what precisely they might be saying to try out her telescopic hearing. At least she wasn't sensing any incoming danger, but there was a sense of tension in the air.

After a few minutes a nervous looking man dressed similarly to Laroni came out of the camp. Well, he was basically pushed out, with two guards, or hunters maybe, following behind him. So they weren't completely abandoning him, but they were clearly making him walk first.

He looked quite young, but that probably didn't mean much when it came to elves.

[ Perrunil Murkweed - Elf Naturalist Society Speaker (Druid Lvl 24) HP: 123/123 ]

He was a higher level than Laroni, if only by one, but she had a hunch that he was probably another 'sacrifice'. Surely they had Druids among the hunters as well, but maybe none of them were present at the moment.

[ Identify Skill Level Up! Level Max Reached, Bonus Unlocked! 1 skill point gained. ]

She would look at that later.

"A-are you the Guardian Beast?" Perrunil asked when he was about five metres away. It didn't seem like he wanted to get closer. If he had used Identify he should have known, but maybe he was just that nervous. It sounded like he had been briefed, if nothing else.

"Correct," Sara said. "You don't have to summon anyone, I merely came to deliver a message."

"A message?"

"Yes. Later today I am going to cooperate with the wolf boss of Wutsch to attack the bandit camp over there." In a little over an hour if her calculations were correct, but no need to be that specific.

His eyes went wide. "W-what?"

"I just wanted to let you know. Perhaps in the future the elves would like to join us for a raid as well, but this time it's just going to be us wolves. Please pass along the message. I wouldn't want to worry anyone unnecessarily should they see us. That is all. Farewell."

Sara turned around, and walked away as the man just stared after her. She could hear the others ask what she had said, but she quickly reached running speed, and zoomed out of range. She wanted to practice her shot grouping a little before the raid started.

"The Sara!" Someone called out from above once she was back in Nyolund. A trio of Night Ravens, of course.

"What are you doing, The Sara?"

"What are you up to?"

"What are you scheming?"

Sara sighed. "I'm not sure if scheming is the right word, but I'm going to join the boss of the west forest to attack the bandit camp over there together." She knew there was no use trying to hide it, since they would just follow her regardless.

"Attack?"

"Yes! Attack!"

"Battle!"

"Battle battle!"

"We will also battle!"

"We will also together!"

"Together together!"

"Attack together!"

"To battle!"

It's not like I'd be able to stop you even if I wanted to, Sara thought to herself. Maybe the crows had told them that she had been over there. The 'communication network' as they called it probably included all corvids, not just other ravens. Corvid Communication Network. CCN. It had a certain ring to it.

Well, their firepower was going to be helpful. She might as well head over to the west border, and try to nail some tree trunks or something along the way whenever her MP was full. Just placing all the shots in exactly the same location wouldn't create a very big hole. She'd have to land them in the same general area so they would weaken the same location, and break open a hole large enough for a wolf to fit through. As soon as they managed to pour in, they'd be able to swarm faster than the bandits could beat them back.

She was starting to feel a little excited.

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