Carious Swamp

The water was knee height as Sven waded through it, flies were buzzing around his head and the earth seemed to move with the never ending scuttling of insects crawling up and down its banks. The air was fetid and foul, the sight of bloated monster corpses was becoming a more and more common occurrence as the party waded through the filthy warren-like pools. Just how had it all come to this?! Ignis was taking refuge from the nastiness below by swinging from Sven's neck, Elise would occasionally shoot the high elf jealous looks, no doubt she too didn't want to have to wade in these waters, Sven thought to himself.

"How much longer until we reach solid ground?!" Elise grumbled, tired of her shoes being waterlogged with mud and the never ending, merciless attack by the flies and insects that flew and crawled around them.

"Not long now, it should be just beyond that treeline." Sven pointed to a row of trees off into the distance, but truth be told he was starting to doubt himself - they had gotten lost in the fog earlier, and where they're heading right now could be completely off course. The Carious Swamp was encircled by a moat of warren like pockets of water in the game, and then flat land in its center where monsters and rare herbs would be. The change of local was due to the fact that training in the deep woods was giving significantly diminishing rewards ever since they did away with the bandits, it was time to move onto a new zone, and Carious Swamp had a level of 10 in the day time, 15 at night - a perfect place for the party of levels 13, 15 and 16 to train with minimal risk.

The problem now was finding land, could they have been steered off course? Were they just following the moat around in a circle? Sven hoped the thicket of trees ahead of them signaled land, because Elise wasn't the only one getting sick of slapping flies against her face.

Then out of the fog, a man frantically waded through the water heading in the exact opposite direction from the trees, his face was pained and terrified - eyes wide open and pupils barely visible, streaks of blood dripped down his damp face. His right arm clutched at his stump of a left arm, torn away from him recently Sven observed - he was heavily breathing but hadn't noticed them yet, he had tunnel vision and couldn't see anything other than his salvation: anywhere but the way he had came from.

Sven shared a look with Elise before they carried on trudging, they weren't about to be discouraged now that they'd traveled all this way. Past the thicket of dead willows and sap filled swamp trees with gnarled, twisted branches and visible roots there came a sight for sore eyes - land! Not so solid land but a respite from the boggy waters never-the-less! Sven sighed in relief, he had been right to come this way and he was needlessly doubting his sense of direction .

The party lifted themselves up onto the muddy earth and did their best to fight the urge to sit down and rest on the still watery earth, no sooner had they 'landed' Sven noticed a pack of swamp toads at their 12 o'clock, heading directly towards them.

"The welcoming party is here." Sven half complained, Elise and Ignis perked up at the promise of battle - they'd waded long enough! Now was the time to fight! "Swamp toads are vicious if you let them get close, their tongues are barbed with many fine and sharp protrusions, which are lathered in a paralyzing agent that when introduced into the bloodstream, can shock your nervous system and slow your reaction times - enough of that stuff enters your body and you're as good as a rock, a dead rock mind you." Sven explained somewhat darkly, it was times like these where he felt mostly useless, ranged attacks would definitely have the advantage here and until he got some decent armor - he didn't wanna caused his team any unnecessary trouble by charging in there and letting himself get poisoned.

Elise readied her arrow and Ignis her hands, Sven really needed to find or make her a stave to use - she must have lost her own weapon when she was captured by Olaf. Elise let loose her arrow, it flew through the air majestically until it connected with one of the swamp toads head, the pierced toad opened its giant mouth and died then and there, releasing toxic fumes from its gaping mouth as it did so.

It was Ignis's turn now, raising her hand she conjured a warping plume of flames and let loose the smoldering fireball in her hands - as it burned through the gassy air it connected with just one single toad in its body, however the radius of the blast also took out the toads to both its left and right: a triple kill. Ignis gave a smug look to Elise who returned the look with a disdained, envious glare - not to be outdone the pair continued to send attack after attack at the group of swamp toads until none remained.

"I got 7." Panted Elise as she propped her heaving chest up against her new white oak bow, a 35+ damage bow in place of her old +15 damage bow from before.

"Only *pant* 7? Well I got *wheeze* 11." Ignis chose instead rest her tired body against Sven's, much to Elise's added frustration.

"Well that's because you have a class and I don't! It's not a fair test!" Elise raged, Ignis stifled a giggle.

"A support class, I'm a fire enchanter after all - a bow user is a DPS class you know? and you want to claim that the test was unfair?" Ignis covered her smile with one hand as Elise seethed in place, Sven however perked up at the sudden conversation about classes.

"How did you receive your class anyway, Ignis?" Sven inquired, Ignis looked at him strangely however, how did he not know this already?

"I paid the guild the admission fees to undertake a quest." You had to pay the guild to take the quest now?! Sven was shocked but intently listened on. "At the end of that quest, we must pray to a pantheon - the gods deem fit to grant the person praying with the skills and abilities of the statues depicted class. Didn't you know all of this already master? As a hero, and stuff?" Well the praying to a pantheon part was still the same at least, but Sven found it really odd that you would have to pay the guild to choose a class, given the power dynamic between humans and monsters it seemed strange to Sven to paywall stronger and stronger warriors used to fight off the more powerful monsters.

"I knew you would have gotten it from the guild, I just wanted to hear it from someone who has experienced it first hand is all." Of course the real reason was just to confirm whether or not there were large discrepancies between the game world of AxioM and the real life experience he was living now.

The sun was high over their heads and they still had a ways to go until they reached their destination, deciding the group had rested well enough, Sven moved out with the other two following not too far behind.

Toads would occasional aggro the party, only to be dispatched by Ignis and Elise while Sven would dodge and jump out of the way of their paralyzing lashes. When slain, Sven pocketed their tongues into his inventory. The glands could be used to apply poison attributes onto weapons and armor, and the barbed spikes could be used to enhance cutting weapons. For a time they walked seeing nothing but toads until finally they reached it, atop the high growing swamp trees there was built a small village, growing among the leaves and branches and safe from the perils below.

Tree Top Village was the second stop on most noobs travels, at least for none warriors anyway - the toads and their poisonous jabs made it unnecessarily hard for low level warriors to grind out experience to leave, so most melee classes didn't come this route - but because Sven had 2 ranged party members, he thought this way would be better for everyone. Ignis and Elise's eyes lit up when they saw the village, squealing with delight as a vine rope ladder descended to the floor just in front of them. First Ignis ran to the ladder, then Elise, Sven laughed jovially at their antics before he followed them up, however as he climbed and looked up to gauge the distance left to go he blushed at his innocent mistake; he could see her white panties!

"Freedom!" Ignis bellowed as she ascended to the top of the ladder onto the wooden platform, the villagers gave her a brief look until they went back to their duties. Elise was next, stars in her eyes at the sight of society after that awful, muddy trip all the way here.

"I wonder if they have public baths here!" Elise and Ignis both swooned at the thought, Sven was last to reach the summit, having seen all the stars he'd needed on the climb up. The tree top village was bustling with life, the 'streets' were littered with peddling merchants and food stands, the people wore fabrics made of plant fibers and flowers, covering most of their modesty as they could with such primitive means. The rope bridges connecting platform to platform creaked as they swung in the wind, all the while the sounds of the swamp bellow filled the air.

Elise and Ignis pulled on either of Sven's hands as they dragged him to explore the village with them. So much for a quick stop, Sven sighed to himself.