Recovery

The arrow sprouted from the Gobu Gobu’s eye in an unusually good shot. While it reeled from the pain, Zena seemed to flicker into existence and shove her blade into its side. It swung wildly, but the elf was able to evade with a quick backstep. It nearly grazed her armor, but it was dead before it could release another bellow.

Zena quickly divested the creature of its shield and spiked gauntlet, as well as a few coins. This one didn’t have a compressed ball of healing leaves, but some did. Before its companions arrived, Zena dove back into the bushes, her stealth resumed. She returned to Keilnei, dumped the fodder equipment into the bag, and held up the real prize: a few preserved pink flower petals that nearly glowed in the early dawn light.

According to the shopkeep, the plant that the healing leaves came from rarely bloomed. There were variants that did so seasonally, but they were more common in other parts of the world. These flower petals would supposedly be around five times as potent as the leaves, and somehow Zena could simply create them from thin air.

She needed to get in close to an enemy, it didn’t always work, and most of the time she created much less useful things like pretty rocks or small stone idols, occasionally normal healing leaves, but Zena had now gotten three of the dried flowers off of about twenty kills. Gil would probably be happy about that, given that he’d come here explicitly for the medicine. That was why they’d hunted through the night, or at least why Zena had. Keilnei really bought into the idea of keeping that town safe.

She preferred to wait until the Gobu Gobu were already in a panic, only half awake, but they seemed slower after the last flash of golden light. Keilnei insisted that Zena was growing faster, but she didn’t feel like she was moving with unusual speed. She just jabbed her knife in wherever she saw an obvious opening and that usually worked. Even when they managed to hit her, like when they’d gone after a pair of the creatures, it didn’t hurt Zena all that much through her armor. She wasn’t some kind of super elf or anything; she’d have no chance if she needed to fight someone like that shapeshifting tauren woman Ireena.

A shimmering bolt of flame soared into the sky, very visible against the moon and stars. They’d worked out the simplistic code before leaving the Skyblock, more for Gil’s benefit than Candress, but either could send signals. A fireball into the sky meant that they needed to go to the designated location immediately, ready for a fight. The blue-white glow of a frostbolt would have meant they could take their time; a request, rather than an immediate order.

The two women glanced at each other only briefly before they hefted their luggage and started jogging towards the portal. They held the bags loosely, ready to drop the useful but replaceable items if a fight broke out.

••••••••••

Noa fell back, hiding in a small crevice to catch her breath. She ate a piece of dry fruit, one of the tastiest things she’d had in a long time, and sucked on one of the healing shrooms Terra cultivated near their home. The aches in her limbs faded quickly. There was a bottle of fresh water near her, which she drank thankfully. Maybe Mr. Gil wasn’t so bad, even if he did hurt Terra.

Miss Candress stood at the back of the cave, looking down the long hallway. If more monsters or mist-crazed piuras or mushrin tried to come down here, she’d throw balls of fire at them. Those worked well, and a pile of corpses were already clogging the end of the passage. The monsters weren’t very smart, but if they heard anything at all they would come and see.

Terra had taught her all about how the Seru hunted, or mostly how they didn’t. They hated humans, so they would come try to kill or possess them if they knew humans were around. If they didn’t know about any humans, they just wandered around. They had short memories, and they didn’t eat or anything. There were bad people that the seru listened to sometimes, and those were the really scary monsters, even if they looked like people.

These Seru seemed to be looking for her and Terra, so there were probably bad people nearby. Noa wanted to go beat them up so they’d stop telling the Seru how to hurt people, but Gil and Terra said that was a bad idea to do unless she really had to, so she was just waiting instead, fighting any Seru that wandered to this part of the caves.

Noa hoped Gil was really good. She was getting tired, even with yummy food and more friends helping her than she’d ever expected. Blackpaw wouldn’t talk to her at all, and Candress only talked a little bit more. Silky was helping Terra somehow, and that was making her very sleepy for some reason.

••••••••••

The two hunters arrived a few hours before dawn to find Snow bent over the prone form of Blackpaw. He’d been kicked in the face, repeatedly, by some kind of giant mushroom spider. Gil had flicked a small amount of dust into Snow’s eyes, repeating as necessary, and the resulting tears were enough to accelerate the wolf’s recovery and get Silky back on her feet. The poor girl’s eyes were bloodshot red from nearly an hour of continuous crying.

“Good, you’re here.” Gil said, breathing a sigh of relief. “The Arcane Sanctum is already mostly charged, and we only have a few hours left before we have to leave. Here’s the plan.”

••••••••••

Last chapter I have ready to go, but the follow up should hopefully be much sooner than (checks notes) Several Months.

Last poll for this segment, with a supplemental poll for a very good doggo that is unfortunately useless to Gil in her current state

What’s the plan, chief?

https://strawpoll.com/GeZAR1w5RyV

Terra the wolf

https://strawpoll.com/poy9kBdeOgJ