A LITTLE HELP! Van sent to Sang via private message. There was no reply. She hadn’t abandoned him, had she? That would suck... especially when it was her fault that he was in this mess.
“I’m gonna kill you!” Kraggoth shouted. “Back off!” he snapped as an arrow barely missed Van. He turned to face his companions and stopped them from advancing. “No one mess with him but me! He’s weak enough to chop into pieces!”
“Hey, hey, hey, listen, I know you’re mad at me!” Van said as he narrowly avoided an axe to the head. “But trust me, that crazy ranger was holding me hostage! I’m a slave to her! You know there are slaves in this game!”
“Quit your yapping—slave or no, I don’t care! You mess with the Kraggoth, you get the rage!” he shouted as he continued slashing.
Van grabbed his flute and began to play it in the middle of the fight. It was the only thing he could do to avoid getting chopped in half. The word STUN! appeared around Kraggoth’s head. The stun wouldn’t last very long against an actual player, but it would give Van enough time to escape. He turned and sloshed his way toward the landmass at the base of the tree. In his panic, though, he completely forgot that the tree was actually a monster in disguise. The Noose Tree immediately turned red and its vines began to whip around, slapping and splashing at the water as Van narrowly avoided the attacks.
“Are you kidding me?” Van shouted as he felt a vine wrap around his leg and pull him up into the air. The razors dug into his leg and he saw the phrase 10 damage! appear over him. His Health dropped down from 150 to 140 points. Sang was still nowhere to be found.
“Hey, put him down!” screamed Kraggoth as he splashed towards the tree and delivered a blow to its trunk. “I’m the only one who can kill him!”
“Kraggoth, stop raging!” Savorn yelled out as she fired a few arrows at the tree. “You’re just wasting time now! That tree’s tough!”
“Screw you, Savorn! I told you guys someone killed me! Why weren’t you looking to avenge me?”
“You said it was two people, not one,” Pullmin replied.
“I said it was a bard and some kind of stupid ranger!” said Kraggoth. “You didn’t think that this freaking bard was working with her?”
“Really? He’s a bard with a charisma of 9!” shouted Pullmin. “And you’re saying that he of all people killed you?”
“His companion did!” Kraggoth replied in between swings against the tree. Fortunately for Van, the tree was busy focusing on trying to kill the major barbarian below him, and so he was left hanging by his leg. He had quickly pulled out his knife and was trying to saw the vine from his leg, but the problem was that he had a beginner’s knife, and it wasn’t particularly strong.
“Right, but we haven’t seen anyone with him; he’s not a threat, so why don’t you leave the moron alone?” Pullmin asked as he waded up to the tree and began to hack at the vines which had restrained Kraggoth’s arms.
Van finally cut himself loose and hit the ground with a thump. He grabbed his flute and began to play it once again, but instead of just stunning the tree, he changed the options of the flute so that it would stun everyone who could hear. He played the tune successfully and watched as Kraggoth and Pullmin were both stunned for a few moments. The tree wrapped its vines around both of their necks and began to strangle them. While Van wasn’t particularly wanting to see them harmed, it was a good distraction to allow him to hightail it out of there. He rushed as fast as he could away from the tree, but since the water wouldn’t allow him to move all that quickly, a long vine reached out and snagged him by the leg again, causing him to fall to the water. His face splashed into the water as it began to drag him again across the murky ground.
Before the vine could hoist him into the air, though, an arrow whistled by and snapped the vine off of his leg. Van quickly dove into the water, avoiding more of the vines as they tried to snag him. The water slowed them down enough for him to dodge and roll out of the way. Yet, the water wasn’t deep enough for him to swim to safety; the further he swam, the more shallow the water became, and eventually it forced him to surface. As he came up from the water, he realized that he was in point blank range of Savorn’s bow.
“Ah crap—come on and give me a break! I didn’t hurt anyone ever! I’m just a dumbass bard!” Van pleaded, raising his hands in surrender. Savorn didn’t seem to be too pleased with him. Before she could release her arrow from the bow, however, several flaming streaks crashed into the side of her leather armor, causing her to burst into flames instantaneously.
“Ahhhhh!” she screamed as she leapt into the water and began to slosh around. Van could see Sang was hiding in a tree, well above him.
“Get moving!” Sang shouted as Van stepped past Savorn and rushed through the water. He could hear the screams and shouts of the other players, all of them cursing Van’s name. He glanced back to see that the two near the tree had broken free, but that they were still battling the tree, and Savorn’s attention had turned to aiding her allies in the fight. He chuckled at the chaos of the scene and made a mad dash for dry land.
Sang quickly caught up with Van, landing on the ground next to him gracefully. “Alright, we need to get out of this godforsaken jungle as soon as we possibly can!” she said.
“This day keeps getting worse and worse!” Van grumbled as he looked at his Health. He was pretty banged up from the entire ordeal, and on top of that he was feeling frustrated with Sang’s choices. “Why do I have to pay for all of your terrible decision?”
“Terrible decisions? We got the root, we avoided fighting that powerful tree, we survived a band of angry adventurers... we’re doing awesome!” Sang said. “The only terrible decision that happened today was you opening that chest!”
“Look, we’re going to freaking die if we stick around, but I’m too mixed up to tell where we are. How do we get out of here?” Van asked, ignoring Sang’s clear disconnection from reality.
Sang paused as she looked at her menu. “Okay, the fastest way out of here is through some kind of… fortress. Called, uh, Junglefoot Fortress.”
“What’s the second fastest way out of here?” Van asked.
“Back the way we came,” Sang replied, “but this whole area is kind of their territory from the looks of it.”
“This whole forest is going to be crawling with these guild guys!” Van groaned. “They’re gonna be combing through this place to kill us.”
“So? Don’t we get experience for successfully avoiding being brutally stabbed by a ton of people?” Sang asked cheerfully. It seemed that she was embracing the sportsmanship of playing a game, but definitely at the wrong time and definitely in the wrong circumstances.
“Look, Sang, if we die, we lose all progress from the last three days. All of our gear is gonna be gone. We’re losing a ton of time and effort. It’s not worth dying here. So, we need to focus as hard as we can on surviving.”
Sang shrugged. “If things get bad for us, we can always just log out.”
“You can’t log out during combat,” Van replied as he nervously glanced around.
“I can, and I might be able to get you out, too, but it would take a few minutes.”
“But how do we get out of this without cheating?” Van asked as he heard some rustling far off in the distance.
“Follow me!” Sang said as she rushed off, turning translucent again. This particular encounter had really highlighted the differences between Sang’s and Van’s characters. He had worked so hard when he’d put the ranger together, but the bard had been so poorly slapped together that even a relatively useful class felt almost completely useless. Now he was definitely paying the price for his tomfoolery. Between his poor character choices and Sang’s poor game choices, he wondered if they’d even be able to make it to the Cave of Visions at this rate.