[F-02] [SP] A Little Dance of Blades <<Long Live The Queen>>

[Tsurei 0]

Spoiler

Stats

Level: 21

Hit Points: 420

Energy: 42

Combat Stats

Damage: 8

Mitigation: 17

Accuracy: 3

Evasion: 0

Weapons

[T1] [Perfect] [Katana] Mizuha (Damage 2, Bleed 1)

Armour/Accessories

[Vanity] [Light Armour] Dark Leather Armour [T1] [Perfect] [Light Armour] Ocean's Mantle (Mitigation 1, Regen 2) [T1] [Perfect] [Trinket] Ice Star Chain (Accuracy 3)

Battle Ready Items

5 x [T1] [Uncommon] Health Potions  (+40hp) 2 x Immolation Potions 1 x [T1] [Rare] Damage Potion (+2 Damage, 1 Thread) 1 x [T1] [Uncommon] Over-Health Potion (+50 Temp HP) 1 x Snake Venom

Barely moments after their last quest in rescuing the child, the 4 man group were more than ready to set off to hunt down the next target, being no stronger than the one before they were fairly confident in taking it down, especially more so since they were now relieved to see the light of day, they wouldn’t be fighting blind anymore at least.

“The last one for today is the Wind Wasp Queen, it’s not any stronger than the Giant Bat from last time,” Rei explained as  he lead the group along the worn down dirt road, nothing but the expanse of grasslands and loomed over by huge mountain ranges on all sides, making the plateau seem like a valley. The sun was hard to see, hidden a veil of grey clouds, up here in the mountains it was chilly as ever with the wind relentlessly pushing at them and biting into them as they travelled.

Edited February 20, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

“More like, aren’t the stats exactly the same?” Yuta frowned in disbelief and uncertainty, glancing over to his side at Rei whilst pointing a finger at his digital guidebook within his UI, something that no one but the user themselves can see, so naturally he was pointing at thin air when Rei looked back,

“Yeah, seems like it,” he nodded and gave an affirmative answer, there wasn’t much to really say but yeah, the stats were completely the same, 50 health and 20 attack,

“At least we’re not fighting in a dark cave this time round,” Takuma smiled without a trace of worry, it seemed that being able to venture away from dark caves filled with unknown crawlies was a source of great relief for him, despite the fact that…

“Hey, you guys were the ones with the light crystal,” Rei shot back over his shoulder, rolling his eyes as he stared off towards the front,

[Tsurei 0]

“Did you guys even do any fighting?” Yuta glanced over at Takuma and Kenji near the back of the group with a dubious expression, more than willing to join Rei in this exchange of levelled accusations, considering that he and Rei were the ones flailing around in the darkness fighting giant bats that were all to happy to do their utmost to bite their necks and drain them of blood,

“Of course we bloody did! We went to get that child and one of the giant bats attacked us,” Takuma cried out in indignation, distraught at their seemingly petty grudge,

“Well, it did run away after it hit Takuma once,” Kenji shrugged, not quite willing to go along with the small lie, his reveal caused Takuma to glare at him with a narrowed look,

“Why did you have to say that…” he sighed in annoyance,

“I mean, you guys  were making a lot of noise, so I think it went after you guys instead,” Kenji looked over to Rei and Yuta,

[Tsurei 0]

“Why don’t you guys take charge this time round, we’ll hang back and relax for a bit,” Rei suggested, sending the pair a small playful grin, “We did all the fighting last time, so we’ll leave it to you this time, it’ll be a doozy anyway,”

“Easy for you to say,” Takuma groaned and shook his head, “We have to `farm` a bunch of these Wind Wasps to even get the Queen to show up, right? … For reference, what does it mean, `farm`, I doubt this game will have us planting seeds and harvesting wasps out of the ground, it’s not that type of farming, right?”

There he shows his inexperience with games like this, considering that Takuma and Kenji were rather normal in that they liked football and sport games, they naturally never had much experience with rpgs and the like. So whilst it was a rather amusing comment, Rei didn’t give much more than a understanding smile,

“It basically means you have to kill the mobs over and over until the Queen shows up,”

[Tsurei 0]

At that mention, Takuma and Kenji exchanged pale expressions,

“Wait, wait, how many do we need to kill?” Takuma quickly suppressed his shock and unease, striving instead to get clear answers and parameters for his problem,

“Who knows?” Rei shrugged dramatically in response, his smile growing wider as he enjoyed seeing the pair grow worried, “Could be ten, hundreds, thousands….”

“You can’t be serious…” Takuma always doubted Rei’s words, after all, he was known to trick them for amusement’s sake, the shark like grin on his face was one of the many tells but he already knew that Rei was well aware of his tells, and had a way of making even his own tells simple traps for another lie, so he faced this reply with equal amounts of dubious mistrust and trusting  reliance,

“… So we’ll have to fight a bunch of them ourselves,” Kenji sighed deeply, his legs shivering, he really didn’t like fighting or the prospect of getting hurt or even hurting others, programs or not, it’s what leads him to instinctively treating npcs like any other person.

[Tsurei 0]

“That’s a bit unfair…” he emphasised further when Rei and Yuta simply turned around with a grin at each other and continued to walk forward nonchalantly, pretending to not notice the implied meaning in his earlier words, forcing him to state it clearly,

“It’ll be fine… they can’t hurt you anyway, just swing away!” Rei waved dismissively, chuckling to himself,

“Oi, we can’t feasibly take on tens, let alone hundreds ourselves, there’s no way we’re doing  that,” Takuma ran up to chase them, giving his clear stance of unwillingness to participate without their help, he no longer had any thoughts about of loading most of the work to Rei and Yuta, but since they were essentially the combat orientated of their group, it was going to be the case, he would be satisfied if they at least helped.

“We’ll help...” Rei sighed, giving in and letting go of the topic, deciding to stop teasing them though he was sure they knew he wasn’t serious,

[Tsurei 0]

“Granted, the guidebook really doesn’t have a specific number, the quest was discovered by players farming for xp and col because the Wind Wasps were good opponents with decent drops for their difficulty,” Rei explained the situation more clearly and with obvious honesty this time, “And after all this time, it’s not like anyone’s bothered to actually count, well, maybe some information brokers,”

“Shouldn’t we actually make sure of the amount before we do this…?” Kenji worried, timidly suggesting a different plan of action even though he knew he was going to be brushed off and ignored,

“Don’t worry, we just need to kill 50 of them between us,” Yuta replied, giving a surprisingly exact number,

“That sounds about right,” Rei nodded, it was a nice round number after all,

“So that’s 12.5 per person,” Takuma instantly calculated and mumbled the new number, rubbing at his chin and frowning, imagining himself fighting 12 to 13 of those flying Wasp Monsters wasn’t exactly dangerous, but it was going to be tiring,

[Tsurei 0]

“How do you know that anyway?” Kenji mused, frowning over at Yuta, he didn’t remember a time when they had gone to a information broker to get this sort of information,

“Well, this guy over here had taken the time to keep his ear to the ground, you know,” Rei turned around and faced the group, stopping Yuta and leaning on his shoulder casually whilst pointing at him, “In short, Yuta here’s a budding information broker himself,”

“What? When did this happen?” Kenji looked over shocked, he was surprised anyone had the energy to do anything other than go on these quests and then go to sleep which was exactly what he did, and ended up being exhausted every day since they started these adventurers, even if they’ve been fun and new experiences,

“About a week ago,” Yuta scratched his cheek, “I wake up early in the morning and I get restless, a jog wasn’t really going to help me train my body anyway, so I tried out gathering information,”

[Tsurei 0]

“That’s… surprisingly intelligent of you,” Takuma gave him a look of mild approval and a impressed expression, however to Yuta it came off as a little mocking,

“What’s with that?” he shot back with an annoyed glare, his tone dark and low like a storm in his best attempts to show a bit of intimidation,

“I mean, I just surprised you thought to do it and managed to succeed,” Takuma shrugged, trying to back out of the sudden heated argument,

“He has a point, this is our dear Yuta who managed to get the pin hole camera question wrong in the most spectacular of ways,” Rei dramatically stated jokingly to swing the topic around, he leaned over and pulled Yuta away, squeezing his arm around him in a playful headlock,

“I swear, could you stop talking about that!” Yuta cried out, his face blushing red with embarrassment, struggling against Rei’s arm and eventually breaking free, “That’s so long ago!”

[Tsurei 0]

“I’m counting around 8 years,” Takuma noted off-handedly, his smile growing since he clearly remembered the incident, they were already fast friends by that point and were seated together during physics class when they were handed their practice test papers back,

“Well, but I mean…” Rei’s grin spread wide with his signature mocking tone, “The answer only needed like two lines to be correct, all you had to do was draw the light rays, but you ended up drawing this here complicated diagram,” he waved his arms through the air, tracing the vague motions of a simplistic correct answer and the awkward answer that Yuta gave,

“I just read the question wrong, and besides, that has nothing to do with being an information broker!” Yuta cried out, desperate to stop the teasing,

“Y-yeah… I guess it’s more street smarts than anything else…” Kenji timidly answered, at the time, he still hadn’t met the trio, so he wasn’t present for the first few years of the group’s friendship, which left him feeling like the odd one out sometimes,

[Tsurei 0]

“Yup, precisely,” Rei nodded, pointing over to Kenji theatrically like a show host pointing to the contestant who had given the correct answer, causing Kenji to jump up startled, “So Yuta here is our resident information broker, we’re counting on you bud,” he ruffled Yuta’s hair and sauntered onwards on the path, leaving Yuta running after him with a small hint of annoyance that can’t help but be betrayed by some fondness, leaving Takuma and look over and meet with Kenji’s awkward lost expression, he could only smile at that,

“Come on, let’s go after them before they get too far ahead,” he waved at him and began to jog to catch up,

“Y-yeah…”

The was path was long and winding, it was a plateau but that didn’t mean it didn’t eventually get hilly, and their information told them that instead of the road, it was off to a grassland field somewhere to the side, that forced them to leave the path and being wandering, meandering across the area until they finally crested a hill and saw their destination before them,

[Tsurei 0]

The land dipped back into a flat plateau and there on the field was a large number of flying wasps buzzing around, they were at least spaced out individually, enough of a distance that if you were careful you could engage them one by one without aggroing any others, but at the same time, they were close enough that if you moved too much you would attract more.

The faint black shapes of all these Wind Wasps fluctuated back and forth down below and the four of them stared down, measuring their chances, distance and imagining how the fight itself would go before it began, they were mentally deciding upon their approach and whether or not they could win,

Naturally they could, these were simple mobs several levels below them, they couldn’t even do damage to them so long as they were careful to not get ganged up on, this should pose no problem.

[Tsurei 0]

“Well then, shall we get going?” Rei drew his katana, a trail of water splashing from it as he glanced over to his friends before he began to walk down the hill towards the field, the others followed, summoning their equipment and double checking themselves, to make sure nothing was out of place and to make themselves comfortable before the fight, there was no sense in charging and wasting stamina after all.

If they were going to kill 12 to 13 of them, then the Queen afterwards was going to be a toll on their energy if nothing else,

“Yuta, what’s the stats on those wasps?” Rei decided to ask out of curiosity, perhaps they could optimise their energy expenditure,

“About 25 health and 10 damage, half of the Queen’s,” Yuta replied with a short moment of pondering, glancing to the side to look at his virtual post it notes on his UI,

[Tsurei 0]

“Dang it,” Rei sighed, if their health was even just one point lower, then with his current attack power, Hi Ougi would be enough to kill them, ah but wait, the next Art up in firepower was Tsuji Kaze, his favourite art, and with the Finesse Mod, it would cost no different than a basic attack, this was indeed the way to go. “Actually no, this is rather good for me…” he mumbled a correction to himself out loud, vexing his friends somewhat,

“We should probably spread out,” Yuta advised as they got closer to their targets, he pointed in a direction, “I’ll go over here,”

“Ah, wait, how about the first person to kill 13 wasps doesn’t have to fight the Queen?” Rei suggested with a small smile, eager to make a small game out of this for some fun,

“It’s obvious you and Yuta will win that, refused.” Takuma rolled his eyes and turned on his heel, turning towards his corner of the field,

[Tsurei 0]

“Oh come on, you might win,” Rei knew the game was off, but he still made a small effort to try,

“Nope,” Takuma didn’t even look back as he called his answer over his shoulder, leaving the three of them together,

“Then I’ll go this way if you’d like…” Kenji timidly pointed in another direction, asking for permission mainly just for confirmation and Rei had no reason to refuse him,

“Sure, then… I’ll take this side I guess,” Rei nodded and gave a small shrug, “Let’s get started then,”

As they split off and Rei began to approach his first Wind Wasp he supposed that the things weren’t all that different from any normal wasp, just a whole lot bigger, if normal wasps were smaller than a pebble, then these ones were watermelon class. They had the signature black and yellow stripes but on closer inspection it actually turned out to be some kind of chitin plating, the heads of the wasps were also more alien, elongated and menacing with sharp mandibles, it’s legs also culminated into large awkward, mantis like claws as well, their stinger were like sharp black blades with a barbed hook,

[Tsurei 0]

The moment Rei believed he got into the range limit of his Whirlwind, he let the art rip, lashing out with a glowing blade, he sent out a turbulent wind like it’s name sake, the shockwave shot out like a bullet shaped in the arc of his swing, only visible due to the water that surged around the energy, when it reached the Wind Wasp, it neatly cut it in half in a single hit, killing it immediately causing it to shatter into pieces of light,

He expected this to be an easy fight so he didn’t act too surprised by the outcome, just satisfied it went that easily, with things at this rate, he supposed  it wouldn’t be too much of a problem for them to wrap this up rather quickly, still, no matter how quickly they finished the quest, he doubted there would be a time for the first third quest in a single day, they’d likely return to the inn and rest up there.

 

ID# 136153
BD: 6 +3 = Hit [Tsuji Kaze]
MD: 1= Miss

Damage Dealt = 8 x 4 = 32
Damage Received = 10 - 17 [Mit] - 10 [Regen] = 0

Rei - HP: 420/420| EN: 41 (-1) /42| 8 DMG | 17 MIT | 0 EVA| 3 ACC| 1 BLD| 2 REGEN
Wind Wasp-- HP: 25/25| 10 DMG

Edited February 20, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

It didn’t take long for his mind to wander, just what quest came after this one? If he recalled correctly, there was 3 left on this floor after this one, First was a rematch against the Wasp Queen, she would be around a whopping 8 times stronger and come with her infinitely spawning minions to boot, other than that was the Venomous Warg, it was a beginner quest meant to teach players about the effects of enemy poison, it had a good amount of hp and damage, and lastly was the second part of the dragon hunt, the Quartz Hatchling,

Well, it was a Hatchling according to the guide, but it was still older than the last one, this time it would be larger, stronger and tougher, if he recalled, the Return of the Queen would be a ridiculously tough fight, it was only on the second floor, but it was a quest that would be very difficult for them to complete at their current level, seriously, it was something that was going to need to be put on hold as they moved onto the third floor to explore.

 

ID# 136154
BD: 3 +3 = Hit [Tsuji Kaze]
MD: 10 = Crit +2

Damage Dealt = 8 x 4 = 32
Damage Received = 10 - 17 [Mit] - 10 [Regen] = 0

Rei - HP: 420/420| EN: 41 (+1-1) /42| 8 DMG | 17 MIT | 0 EVA| 3 ACC| 1 BLD| 2 REGEN
Wind Wasp - HP: 25/25| 10 DMG

Edited February 20, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

So, his current schedule was looking like, hunting the Venomous Warg, then the Quartz Hatchling, would he need two separate days for them? It was possible, the Warg required him to hunt and prowl the area dealing with stray wolves until the mutated Warg showed up, the location it was at was probably quite different from the Zone that the Quartz Hatchling would show up in, he would skip over the Return of the Queen and move on to the next floor, if the stats were that exaggeratedly bloated, it would be simply suicide for them to fight it.

He mused over his course of actions, counting up the numbers to decide his chances as he fought automatically against the several wind wasps around him, they were not much of a threat, using his Whirlwind, he could cut them out of the air with little effort.

The most recent attack even managed to cut down two at the same time, so he was certainly on a roll.

 

ID# 136155
BD: 10 +3 = Crit +2 [Tsuji Kaze]
MD: 8= Hit

Damage Dealt = 8 + 2  x 4 = 40
Damage Received = 10 - 17 [Mit] - 10 [Regen] = 0

Rei - HP: 420/420| EN: 41 (+1-1) /42| 8 DMG | 17 MIT | 0 EVA| 3 ACC| 1 BLD| 2 REGEN
Wind Wasp - HP: 25/25| 10 DMG

Edited February 20, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

Before he knew it, the field was empty and everyone was slowly gathering together, he only realised this when the buzzing sound of the wasps and when he couldn’t see anymore shapes flying around in the sky, knocking him out of his day dream, he looked around and regrouped,

“That was rather quick,” Yuta commented somewhat pleased with the pace they had efficiently completed the quest,

“I-I guess…” Kenji shrugged, he personal had a hard time, making the mistake of backing away from the enemy only to aggro a second one was a rough time, he was able to use his shield to halt the wasps’ attacks before striking with his sword, meanwhile Takuma was more than happy to let the wasps die on his shield without him needing to actually do anything. Mid battle, Yuta had looked over and saw Rei’s slightly ranged sword art and felt a small tinge of jealously, after all, having a distance attack must be incredibly convenient against flying targets like this,

[Tsurei 0]

“So…” Rei looked around at the empty field, devoid of enemies, “Did everyone kill at least 12?” he turned to his friends and asked the question for confirmation’s sake, did they not kill enough? He could see the Queen anywhere, perhaps it only looked like there were enough Wind Wasps to trigger the fight from above,

“yeah, pretty sure,” Takuma nodded, “I took a quick headcount of the number of wasps in the area and there was enough,” he looked around and searched specifically for the hill they crossed, now it was much further in the distance, enough to make it simple landscape now rather than a proper point of interest, during the fight they had slowly moved forward to seek new targets, leading them away from the starting area.

“I’m amazed you can just make headcounts like that from memory,” Rei sighed, bemoaning his horrible memory, having to check things over and over quite often, he eventually turned his eyes towards Yuta, “So? Did you find out if there’s a specific area it spawns in?”