The Guest

Aeolia quickly adopted a defensive posture and rocketed into the air, flying above John and Vivian, eyes peeled.

“Damn it!” she cursed, her voice kept low. “We did jinx it.”

“I don’t think we’re in that much trouble,” Vivian pointed out. “John, do you still have control over the Barrier?”

John looked at her perplexed and she clarified, “When you make a Barrier, it’s keyed to you. It’s how people can trap others, by denying them the ability to leave. If whoever came in was strong enough, they’d have taken control.”

“I don’t think I’ve lost control,” John said hesitantly. “My mana did go a bit crazy but it's settled now and that’s the only thing that’s felt off.”

“Sounds like whoever barged in hasn’t, or can’t, take control,” Vivian surmised. “That first headache was likely their first attempt to break in, which failed.”

“Then they pushed harder,” John assumed. “If they had to struggle to get in, maybe they aren’t all that strong.”

That notion caused a new fear to settle into his gut. “What if they’re not strong enough to deal with level four to six monsters? How can we find them?”

“Shit,” Aeolia cursed as that possibility conjured horrible images in her mind. “Keep quiet for a second. I’ll see if I can hear anything.”

She landed on a low branch and calmed her breathing. John and Vivian held their breath as well, more in anticipation than to limit unneeded noise. A few seconds later, Aeolia snapped her head back towards where they’d started.

“Back that way,” she stated. “Sounds like whoever’s there already ran into something.”

“Of course they’d pop in where we started,” John remarked as they rushed back. Aeolia naturally took the lead, her small size and ability to fly letting her quickly rush ahead. Years of being tormented had left John faster than he appeared and his recent boost to Endurance let him keep pace behind his winged lover.

Vivian, on the other hand, was starting to fall behind. Sweat began to bead up on her forehead and her breaths came in heavier and heavier pants. As a result, her steps slowed far before they neared the entry site.

“I’ll,” she wheezed out, “hang back.”

“Alright,” John replied as he dodged around a tree. He came to a sudden stop as Aeolia flew in front of him, wings beating to hover in place. The growling of a tavaren sounded beyond a close grouping of trees that blocked his view.

“One person,” she whispered as she glided to peer around the trees. “She’s in a standoff with one of those tavaren things. Doesn’t look like she needs help.”

John shifted to look around a tree. On his left, a tavaren crouched, its dark fur standing up along its spine as it tilted its head upward. Following its line of sight, John’s jaw dropped. Their uninvited guest was standing on the trunk of one of the trees, at least a meter off the ground. She was completely parallel to the ground, black hair obscuring her face as she presumably looked down at the taraven.

John quickly cast Observe on the hostile beast, finding it to be another level five, then turned his attention to their guest.

John blinked. That name was familiar and the ‘Relationship’ blurb painted her as someone who knew him. Then it clicked: the girl from the library!

“I know her,” he whispered to Aeolia. “She’s one of the people I Observed back at school.”

“Doesn’t look like much,” Aeolia remarked, peeking at the sheet. “Level ten seems pretty low, no offence.”

“It’s day two for me,” John shot back with a smile. “And I’ve already doubled my level. But enough about that, what are we going to do about her?”

“Let’s see what she can do,” Aeolia advised as a somewhat recovered Vivian caught up to them. “No point in getting involved just yet. We need that critter dead and getting a feel on what miss spider there can do will mean if she decides to be hostile we’ll know how she fights.”

John wasn’t too thrilled to just let the battle happen, since Beth wasn’t a member of the party and that would cut the experience he would gain.

‘Actually, I don’t think I’ll get any experience,’ he realized with a sinking feeling. ‘I didn’t get any for the two vine hounds Aeolia beat while I lured the alpha away. So that’s about forty points down the drain.’

Back at the standoff, Beth swept her hair out of her face, giving the voyeuristic Barrier owner a good look at the ecstatic grin she wore. Then she crouched low on the trunk and jumped into the air at an upward angle. She crossed the short distance to a branch and wrapped her hands around it. Surprisingly, she easily spun around it, flipping herself atop it.

Then she pulled out of her hoodie’s front pocket…

“Is that a yo-yo?” Vivian asked incredulously. Their eyes weren’t lying and Beth bounced the metal toy against her palm. She slipped the string around a finger, then with a flick of her wrist, launched it at the tavaren. The yo-yo cut through the air surprisingly fast and with a string more than long enough to reach the tavaren below.

It reacted to the approaching weapon by springing backwards, letting the yo-yo crash into the dirt. While Beth jerked her odd weapon back up, the tavaren charged towards the tree she was on. With its sharp claws, it quickly clambered up the tree, forcing Beth to abandon her perch, leaping to another tree before trying another yo-yo attack.

John and the girls watched the battle for a few minutes to see if their guest could strike the tavaren, but the beast was too agile for her unique weapon to hit, each dodge causing the interloper’s face to twitch with annoyance. John let out a sigh and pulled out one of his Fire Crystals. After checking that it was the one he’d been using, he took aim at the tavaren.

“This is painful,” he muttered. “We really don’t have time to waste and I don’t want to give up the experience. Be ready to finish it if I don’t one-shot it. No point in delaying any longer.”

He waited until the tavaren landed back on the ground after dodging a branch to branch attack and fired off a Blaze Shard.

26 DMG

The tavaren let out a scream as the shard embedded itself in its side. Aeolia quickly dashed towards the wounded beast and deftly slashed with her wind coated blade, cutting into its side.

43 DMG

38(4) EXP Gained

That strike killed the tavaren, causing it to fade away, leaving behind another claw. John and Vivian walked into the small ring of trees and Aeolia shouted up to a surprised Beth, “You know, it’s not really polite to just barge into someone’s Barrier!”

Beth’s surprised expression morphed into an annoyed one and she walked down the tree she was on, a display John thought might have been her showing off.

‘Would probably be more impressive if we hadn’t watched you fail at tagging the tavaren,’ he thought cynically as she reached the floor and regarded them cooly.

“Well, if you didn’t want anyone barging in, you should have made it harder to get in,” she responded dismissively, placing her hands in the pouch pocket of her hoodie.

“Says the person that needed two tries to break in,” Aeolia shot back.

Beth’s brow twitched at that dig at her ability, and she opened her mouth to continue when Vivian forcefully coughed and took a step forward, slipping between the party and Beth.

“Now, now,” she interjected in a smooth, diplomatic tone. “No point in going after each other’s throats. How about we take a step back and talk things out?”

Aeolia landed on John’s shoulder and let out a heavy breath, her posture relaxing slightly, though she kept her eyes locked on Beth. Their acrobatic interloper, however, maintained her dismissive stance.

“Look,” she said, “this is a pretty big Barrier, right? How about we just go to separate ends and do what we want to do?”

“Yeah, ‘cus you were dealing with that critter just fine before we stepped in,” Aeolia said dismissively.

“You’re not helping,” Vivian chided her with a reproachful glare before turning back to address Beth. “She’s not wrong, though. You weren’t exactly doing well against that tavaren and there could be stronger ones around. Going off on your own isn’t really a good idea.”

Beth scoffed, pulling her hands out of her pocket to cross them over her chest. “Well, it's on me if I can’t handle it then,” she said cockily. “I was just getting warmed up. Ya know, getting a feel for its moves. If you hadn’t barged in, I would have taken care of it.”

John could tell that was a lie. He was almost positive he’d made similar expressions of frustration when failing against boss battles in every game he’d ever played. Aeolia clearly didn’t buy it either and let out a short laugh.

“Don’t lie to us or yourself,” she said seriously, her eyes narrowed. “Playing around, especially in someone else’s Barrier, is a sure way to get yourself killed. Want to train? Go make your own.”

Beth’s eye twitched and something clicked in John’s mind. Her failed attempt to break in, inability to take control of the Barrier, and unrefined and ineffective combat style led John to one conclusion.

“She can’t,” John said, drawing everyone’s attention to him. Aeolia and Vivian bore curious expressions while Beth’s icy glare intensified. His mouth already open, he continued, his focus solely on her, “I’m right, aren’t I? You fought to get in here because you can’t make a Barrier of your own.”

Beth looked uncomfortable for a second then schooled her features with a mask of incredulity. “That’s ridiculous,” she scoffed. “Of course I can open my own Barrier. I just happened to come across this and thought, ‘Maybe I’ll check out what's inside?’.”

“Well, you found us,” Aeolia cut in. “Now you go.”

“I don’t know,” Beth said, an edge of irritation creeping into her voice as she surveyed her surroundings. “This place looks like it’d be a pretty cool place to do some running in. And those weasel things sure aren’t like anything I’ve ever seen. What’d ya call them? Tavaren? I think I might stick around.”

“Or we could **** you out,” Aeolia leveled her threat. “We’re busy and we don’t want or need to play babysitter.”

Beth’s eye twitched again, and a thought drifted across John’s mind. ‘I wonder if the sister Observe mentioned is some overly protective mother hen type.’

“How about I make a counter-offer,” Beth said, shifting her arms to rest her hands on her hips, a sly smile on her lips. “I’ll leave, if you can make me.”

She turned sharply to her right and bolted away, quickly running up a tree and branch hopping out of sight.

“Does she really think she can outrun someone who can fly?” Aeolia muttered.

“Can we really just **** her out?” John asked. “Just go ‘goodbye’ and, poof, she’s gone?”

“No,” Vivian cut in, leveling a serious glare at Aeolia. “Only way out of a Barrier, to my knowledge, is willingly stepping out. Well, that or brute forcing your way through while dragging an unwilling someone along. I wish you would have just let me talk things through.”

“She wasn’t going to listen to anything we’d say,” Aeolia remarked, before she ran a hand through her hair and let out a weary sigh. “You got a look at what her sheet said, right?”

“Yes, I did,” Vivian answered. “I knew she was going to be hard to reason with, but antagonizing her has turned this into a needless chase.”

“I’m going to agree with Aeolia here,” John interjected. “I think she’s got some issue with following rules. Everytime we tried to tell her to do something, she got more irritated and her eye twitched. And I don’t think she’s above doing petty stuff like this. I’m pretty sure she used whatever sort of ability she has to stick a playing card to a table just to mess with the school librarian.”

“So she was one of the people for that quest of yours,” Aeolia stated.

“Most likely,” John mentioned. “Probably didn’t recognise me out of uniform and not being bullied.”

Vivian shared a look with Aeolia while John sighed, and then he continued, “We should probably hunt her down. We’ve got no clue how big this Barrier is or how many monsters there are. Since she couldn’t really deal with one level five, I really don’t want her **** to a pack of tavaren to be on my conscience.”

He took a single step when a popup blocked his vision.

Quest Update: Unexpected Visitor
Well, she’s not hostile, but is a bit of a pain, isn’t she? But you’re right, letting her run around can’t be good. But she could have run anywhere. Maybe you should split up, sticking together might entice stronger creatures to emerge.
Chose a path: Track Beth together and increase Barrier Level and spawns
Track Beth separately and maintain current Barrier settings.

Quest will update once Beth is found.

“That’s great,” John groaned. “A difficulty spike if we go after her together.”

“And an increase of dangers,” Vivian added. “I don’t like that increase of spawns either.”

“Looks like we got to split up,” Aeolia said. “As annoying as that punk is, I don’t want her to get eaten or anything. Plus, I’ve got a bad feeling that anything that’ll spawn if we’re together would be closer in power to what was in the machine Barrier.”

“I concur,” Vivian said. “Speed and safety are paramount. At least Beth can keep away from the top tier of the current monsters.”

“Are you going to be alright going off alone?” John asked the redhead.

Vivian smiled. “I’ll be fine. I can construct some kinetic arrays and have them on hand in case things get hairy.”

“Alright,” John said, her pun slightly lessening his worry. “Let’s get going.”

The three set off, Aeolia flying directly in the direction Beth had started in. Vivian took a path to the left, her trek at a forty-five degree angle to Aeolia’s. John did the opposite, taking the right-hand side.

The quest was locked in, and all three hoped it was the right play.