Melissa had just about had it with the scrubs that her team was carrying through this quest. The two parties of bronze rankers were so unfocused and incapable that her head ached every time that she heard them speak. Twice in the last hour, the overzealous female Cleric and the playboy Warlock had devolved into competing to see who could come up with a more offensive insult.

She and her fellow silver rankers were traveling near the edge of the Voskeg Mountains. They had been assigned by the Guildmaster to purge the goblins and kill a vampire that they speculated might be allied with them. The vampire in question had managed to infiltrate and defeat a bronze-ranked team by herself. That part wasn’t all that strange, but the reports indicated that the vampire had fought the adventurers during the day… and that was impossible.

Of course, True Vampires could operate during the day without any problems, but the difference in strength between a True Vampire and a bronze ranked team would be much larger than the reports indicated.

The most probable explanation would be that, rather than a vampire, the adventurers were probably taken out by some sort of Snakekin. It would explain the fangs, the eye color, the level of strength, and also the ability to operate during the day. They usually weren’t very active during the winter though...

Melissa really hoped it was just a mere Snakekin. If they really were about to face off with Evelyn Raymond they would be screwed… and if the rumors were true then the Monarch of Ages knew of a way to prevent respawning.

A gentle hand tapped her shoulder, pulling Melissa from her thoughts. She turned and saw Edwin looking at her with a concerned look.

“How’re you holding up?” he asked.

Melissa rolled her eyes.“I’ll live, though my mental state might be permanently affected.”

Edwin chuckled. “Everybody has to start somewhere.”

She shook her head, motioning slightly towards idiot teams one and two.

“That may be so… but that is a bit much.”

They looked at the two parties walking down the path with them. Though Samantha and Saige were keeping an eye on their surroundings, the fools should be helping watch for roaming monsters or enemy scouts. Both parties had Rangers and Rogues for crying out loud. There was literally no excuse for them to be so inattentive to their surroundings.

The group had a relative guess as to where the goblin camp was located but they didn’t know exactly where it was. Melissa had never been to the area before either, so they couldn’t use her recently acquired Gate spell to teleport... which was a shame because she was looking forward to showing off her level a bit to the newbies. Thus, they had been roaming around the hill for over an hour. There was an itch in the back of Melissa’s mind that told her something was wrong with their surroundings but she couldn’t quite place it…

“Shut it, you judgemental prick!” a voice shouted from behind them. Melissa sighed while Edwin just shook his head. They stopped, turning to address whatever happened before it turned into another fight.

The Warlock was bearing down on Suzy, who was in turn gathering mana to cast some sort of spell. Suzy raised a hand and gathered holy light.

“Divine Retri---” she started when a flash of crimson crossed her vision. Samantha appeared behind her and smacked the purge-happy Cleric on the back of her head, her own crimson hair billowing from her rapid approach.

“Oww! What was that for?” Suzy demanded, covering the throbbing spot with her hand.

“Don’t use holy purge spells on your allies. It’s inefficient.” Samantha reprimanded sternly.

“It’s more than just inefficient. It’s unacceptable. Why the hell would you attack a teammate?” Melissa demanded, stepping forward and pushing the Warlock out of the way.

On a personal level, she actually understood Suzy’s dislike of the lover boy. He laced too many of his words with mind control magic for any magic user to feel comfortable around him. Outwardly, he seemed like a nice enough boy but her intuition warned her that he was actually a predator… albeit, not a very powerful one.

“This creep just tried to use magic on me again. Let me purge him just once! He’ll respawn…” Suzy growled, miffed at being stopped mid-cast.

Melissa’s eyes softened. As a girl, she understood Suzy’s feelings but as an adventurer…

“This behavior is unprofessional. You may do as you wish after the completion of the quest.” Samantha said in her typical monotone. Melissa had been adventuring with the methodical Rogue for almost a decade and she honestly couldn’t remember the girl ever showing more than the most basic level of emotion.

“Now, now” Edwin interjected, “There are bound to be tensions when working with new faces. Both of your parties are here because you were defeated by the vampire, right?”

Suzy and the Warlock both nodded.

“Then you should work together until the vampire is dead.” He looked at Suzy, “That will help you appease your god,” and then he looked at the Warlock, “and it should help you get the revenge that you desire.”

Edwin turned to Melissa and Samantha. “Either of you have any ideas on what's going on? The intel said the camp would be around here.”

Samantha shrugged indifferently. “The paths are strange.”

“What do you mean?”

She pointed at the road they were following. It angled off to the right and continued as far as the eye could see. There were a few trees lining the path and some snow but nothing stood out to Melissa.

“The trees are the same. Somehow we are walking in a loop.” Samantha supplied.

The itching feeling in the back of Melissa’s mind returned and then her eyes widened in understanding. That feeling was her mind reacting to the use of magic…all things considered, that had to mean…

“Illusion Barrier!” Melissa shouted. “We’ve been wandering under an illusion barrier for over an hour.”

Edwin clasped his hands together, the metal armor on his arms rattling from the impact.

“There we go! The little buggers seem to have a powerful Illusionist if it took us this long to detect it.”

He glanced at Melissa. “Can you break it?”

She nodded, smiling. “Easily.”

She closed her eyes, focusing on sensing the magic in the air around her. The magic had an almost ‘tangy’ taste to it that made her mouth water. She ignored the feeling as she drew upon her own internal mana supply. After a moment of gathering mana, she condensed it into a fine point and thrust it into the barrier around them.

A faint buzzing sound reached her ears and then her vision distorted. Their surroundings began to blur and shift as the path bent into its normal position.

The barrier had been surprisingly easy to break. Whoever the illusionist was, they had powerful skills but their mana supply was probably fairly small.

The bronze-ranked adventurers all gaped at their surroundings, mouths agape with amazement. Melissa squared her shoulders smugly as she took in their silent complements.

As quickly as the barrier had broken, all hell broke loose. An arrow flew from a nearby tree and struck Melissa in the shoulder. Burning pain clouded her mind for a moment as she cried out, ducking down and covering her head with her uninjured arm. A scream from nearby alerted them to the presence of multiple attackers.

“Defensive positions!” Edwin shouted, donning his shield and mace in seconds. He stepped in between Melissa and the attacker, smoothly defecting a hail of arrows.

Samantha followed the direction the arrows were coming from and ran towards the treeline, smoothly dodging any attacks aimed at her as she looked for the source. Suzy and the Warlock were both face first on the ground, Suzy was crying with a large slash on her back while the Warlock was out cold, a bloody gash on his head.

“They were waiting to ambush us as soon as we broke the barrier…” Melissa realized, dazed. “They weren’t supposed to know that we were coming though…”

“Get ahold of yourself. We need your magic!” Edwin ordered.

Melissa shook her head, slapping herself to clear her thoughts. She pulled a health potion out of her bag and started to drink it while yanking the arrow out with her free hand. The sharp pain was instantly muted by soothing relief as the injury healed.

She looked around, gathering information about their new surroundings. The other bronze rankers from both teams were scattered, running about like chickens with their heads cut off. They had no sense of order or discipline.

Samantha was moving through the trees, chasing some sort of blur that Melissa couldn’t make out distinctly but she thought it might be a goblin… a really, really fast goblin.

“Mana Well.” she muttered. The air around her seemed to thicken, filling with the overpowering smell of roses. She channeled her own personal mana into the ability, multiplying the output manifold. As she reached the amount she needed, she projected the mana into the surrounding forest.

“Dimensional Barrier!” she cried out. The mana condensed around each of the adventurers, protecting them from the hail of arrows and any other attack that might come.

A few more arrows were absorbed by the barrier before the hail stopped. Then, as quickly as the attack had started, the attackers disappeared. Even Samantha paused as she was unable to find any trace of them.

They waited for several more minutes of tense silence as they waited, prepared to defend against any attacks. Sage used her druidic magic to heal the injured bronze rankers while Samantha, Bill, and Ven swept their surroundings.

Finally, the three returned, assuring everybody that the attackers were gone for now.

Melissa sunk to the ground.

“What the hell was that…” she groaned, massaging her shoulder where she had been injured. Healing potions were great but she would still have a bruise.

“Someone told them we were coming.” Samantha observed dryly. “There is a traitor amongst the humans of Cairel.”

Sage grimaced as she finished treating Suzy’s back. The young Cleric was sobbing, clutching her hands to the side of her neck.

“Why would any human try to protect goblins?” Sage asked, her lips quivering as her normally smooth and melodic voice was betrayed by the slightest tremble.

Edwin reached into his bag and pulled out a bottle of water, guzzling it to wet his throat.

“We’ll have to worry about that later as well. For now, we need to make a plan of attack. We can expect that the rest of the path will have various traps and ambushes laid out for us.”

“Can’t we just use magic to detect the traps?” Jonathan, the fighter asked as he approached. He pointed at his teams Rogue. “Johnny has the skill Detect Trap. Your Rogue should as well, right?”

Edwin motioned for Samantha to explain.

“If our opponent has a Thief-line class such as Rogue or Assassin, then they may use a system skill to set a trap. If they do this, the trap will have a magical signature that can be detected by a Detect Trap skill. However, if they set up a trap manually, we have to find and avoid or disable it manually.” Samantha explained.

Jonathan frowned. “Then what's the point of the skill?”

Edwin smiled. “Good question. Skills are automated processes… therefore they are predictable and easy to counter. If you merely use them as they are programmed, there is not much point to using most skills.”

“We can continue this lesson another time.” Melissa pressed, “We’re in enemy territory and they know we are here. We need to end this quickly.”

Edwin nodded in agreement. He turned to Samantha. “I want you to find the exact location of their base. With the illusion barrier down, this should be simple. Then, find out as much information as you can.”

“As for the rest of you…” he turned to address the rabble of bronze-ranked weaklings, “Let’s talk about a little something I like to call teamwork.”

***

Raymond stood behind a barricade on a raised platform near the center of the camp. This relatively centralized area served as the strategic command center for the goblin defensive forces.

On a small table in front of her sat a hand-drawn map of the village and its surroundings. Aside from Raymond, there were 3 others sitting around the table - Shaman, Frog and another goblin called Nag. Frog was the strategist for the Glitterfart goblins while Nag used a unique ability that allowed him to relay instructions quickly and easily.

She looked out over the camp once more, noting that the sun was reaching its highest point in the sky. The alarm had sounded hours earlier but the adventurers had yet to show themselves. Nag was receiving steady reports about the movements of the adventurers from Og’s assassin troupe but they had yet to actually approach near the camp.

On the other side of the barricade, she could just make out the craggy trees. The dead-looking branches remained relatively still, holding snow aloft.

“They broke through the barrier, right? What are they doing? Why aren’t they attacking?” Raymond asked, with a hint of annoyance.

Frog tapped his finger on the table while observing the map with a critical eye. There were small stones marking the positions of the various defensive groups. There were offensive and defensive lines, archers, assassins, magical bombardment and support groups, and supply lines set up in a circle around the camp. Raymond didn’t fully understand the purpose of it, but there was an offensive line and a defensive line in the center of the camp behind all the mages.

“They are gathering information. As far as they know, we aren’t supposed to be aware of this attack.” Frog replied, his voice tense.

“Why are we giving them time to plan? Shouldn’t we act while we have more information?”

“Og and his group are already engaging in guerrilla fighting. We can’t move our entire force into the forest though… if this turns into an unorganized brawl, we’ll lose.”

Raymond hissed, balling her hands into fists, “We should be doing something. I dislike this waiting game.”

Shaman placed a calming hand over Raymond’s clenched fists.

“Relax, child. All things in their proper time. The only information they have is that which their senses can detect. They will fall for our traps.”

Raymond took a deep breath, forcing herself to relax.

“Will these ‘traps’ be enough, though? Og told me a bit about silver rankers.”

Shaman shook her head, smiling uneasily. “There is nothing we can do that will guarantee our victory… however, we have no choice but to try.”

“The enemy has split up.” Nag reported. “Also, the assassins have lost visual on most of the members. They assume some sort of teleportation magic is involved.”

A flicker at the edge of her vision caught Raymond’s eye and she turned in time to see a hail of snow fall from the hanging limbs of a tree. The horn sounded once more and all the goblins immediately tensed up, searching for the enemy.

Frog clasped his hands, rubbing them together with a gleam in his eyes.

“Looks like things are getting started. Let’s wreck some faces.”

He turned to Nag. “Fire the warning shot.”

Nag nodded and then placed a glowing hand to his ear. He started speaking, though Raymond heard no sound.

After a brief pause, a wave of fire launched over the barricade and into the trees where the snow had fallen. Some of the dead branches briefly lit up but the flames were quickly smothered by a wall of steam from the melted snow.

“Anything?” Frog asked through clenched teeth.

Nag tilted his head, listening to reports.

“One of the Wizards gained a little experience. A single bronze ranker was defeated by the volley.”

Frog smiled. “Good.”

Raymond watched the exchange silently. She had zero experience with large scale conflict like this one and so everything was new to her. She hadn’t expected that they would take out an enemy this early.

But then again, the goblins had numbers on their side. Wouldn’t this actually be pretty easy?

“Don't you dare even think about that. This is not the time to trigger flags” Legion’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

“Huh?”

“There are some things you cannot think or say when it comes to death, battle, and romance.”

“The hell are you talking about?”

She felt Legion sigh.

“I heard that! If it's not important then please leave it for later.”

“Your funeral.”

Raymond shook her head. She felt like she didn’t understand a lot of the things that Legion talked about… stuff like ‘flags’ and ‘plot armor’ and such. Still, Legion was very supportive... even if he hadn’t done much since he made the eyepatch for her. She imagined he was busy doing Overseer stuff, though she had no idea what that might be.

Raymond observed the wall of steam that was slowly dissipating. Three forms stepped out of the mist and approached the front gate.

The man in the center was covered in heavy looking steel armor and had a large kite shield adorning his left arm. His right hand held a mace. The one on the right was Jonathan, the fighter from the first group of adventurers that she killed. To the left of the steel armored man was Jantzen, the cleric and previous owner of Lexi.

Raymond leapt to her feet, staring at the two that she recognized.

“They really did come for me…” she muttered. She felt a tint of guilt taking root inside of her but she shook the feeling off. She didn’t have time to be doubting her past actions.

Jantzen raised a device to his mouth.

“Eve!” he shouted, anger evident in his voice, “You’ll pay for killing Peter and Ven!”

Shaman and Frog looked at Raymond curiously. She grinned in response.

“He’s the leader of the party I freed Lexi from. I heard that torture and mutilation has a chance to prevent complete respawn. Looks like it worked for two of his friends.”

“You’ve discovered a way to kill them permanently… and you didn’t share this information?” Shaman asked, displeased.

Raymond shrugged. “I wasn’t able to confirm it until now. Either way, things should be a little easier without Peter around. He was a Dominator Warlock.”

Frog whistled, “It’s good that you killed him then. Those are hard to deal with.”

As memories of how she had killed that scum resurfaced, Raymond felt a bit vindicated.

“Careful. He’s not dead until you see the body… or in this case, the drone.”

Raymond relayed Legion’s message and Frog nodded in acknowledgment.

“He’s right. We will continue as if this ‘Peter’ is among the enemies. This could be one of their traps.”

The three enemies approached the gate. The goblins on the barricade fired a few arrows but they were all expertly deflected by the steel armored man.

“Raymond, you seem to know about two of their parties. What are we facing?” Shaman asked urgently, “This information could save many lives.”

Raymond scratched her head. “Umm, that one there is called Jonathan. He has a Tier 1 class derived from Fighter, but I’m not sure which one. His party includes a Rogue, Ranger and Cleric.”

Then she pointed at Lexi’s prior owner. “That one is called Jantzen. He’s a Cleric and his party included an Assassin, Ranger and Dominator Warlock.”

“As for the guy in the center. I suspect he’s part of the silver ranked team, which Lexi tells me has a Warrior, a Rogue, a Green Mage and a nearly level capped Wizard.”

“Nearly level capped? Did you know what specialty this Wizard is?”

Raymond shook her head. “No.”

Frog took note of the info. “I’m not sure if they have any other surprises up their sleeves, but at least this is something to work with.”

While they were talking, the three adventurers had reached the gate. The man in the center raised his mace and it started to glow with a strange blue light. After a brief delay, he struck out with the head of the mace, blowing the door off its hinges. The wooden slab splintered into pieces as it crashed into the ground.

Frog frowned, “Offensive line engage the enemy. We need to get a better grasp of what we’re dealing with. Bombardment squads launch a line of fire into the treeline encircling out camp. We’ll smoke out the Rogues and Rangers if they are hiding in the trees.”

Raymond placed a hand on her sword but Shaman grabbed her wrist.

“It is not time for you to go out, child.”

Raymond leaned on the barricade, her eyes glued to the goblins that were now approaching the three humans.

“But it's my fault the adventurers are here. I don’t want to sit back and watch the goblins die.” Raymond protested.

Frog came up on her other side, watching the first offensive line move forward. “That is one burden of leadership. If you truly desire to bring salvation to monsters, you have to be prepared.”

The first goblins reached the adventurers and were cut down in a smooth motion. The silver ranker moved through the goblins, ending lives with every swing of his mace.

“I am prepared to kill anybody who gets in my way…is that not enough?”

Shaman shook her head. “You must also be prepared to be a leader… and sometimes that means watching others die for you.”

Raymond shook her head. “What meaning is there in ‘salvation’ if it's built on the bodies of hundreds?”

She turned and looked at Shaman, freezing as she saw tears roll down the old goblins cheeks.

Shaman met her eyes with a hollow gaze.

“That is for us to decide.” she declared forcefully. However, to Raymond it almost looked like the old goblin was trying to convince herself of her own words.

The silver ranker finished smashing down the first offensive line without suffering a single injury and then paused, assessing the lines of goblins around him. Jonathan and Jantzen stayed back near the gate not yet participating in the battle but also preventing any goblins from attempting to flee.

Another wave of fire flew out from the bombardment squad, but this time it completely ringed the camp. A wall of steam erupted from the trees. A scream sounded from behind the camp and Frog clapped his hands.

“There we go! Report.”

“One wizard gained experience again. Another bronze is down.”

“That should flush out their backline a little bit.” Frog said, glancing down at the map.

A strange buzzing sound filled their ears as a flowing, violet rectangle appeared behind the line of mages.

Raymond noticed it first and pointed at it, tapping Frog on the shoulder.

“What is that?” she asked.

Frog sighed. “Gate. It seems the sIlver ranked Wizard is an Arcanist.”

“What does it do?”

Frog pointed at the humans stepping out of the portal. ‘That.”

There were four of them. A female magic user in a very nature-y robe decorated with green and brown leaves, another female wearing skin-tight black pants and a purple blouse, Peter and Suzy.

Shaman grabbed her staff. “Now it is our turn.”

Raymond placed a hand on the hilt of her sword. She looked to Frog and he nodded in assent. As she and Shaman started to descend from the platform, she overheard Frog’s next instruction.

“Begin Operation: Skyfart.”