Name

Gwen Baird

Armour

3

Class

Hunter

Health

25

Level

5

Dodge

1

Species

Half-Elf (Wood/Human)

Species Skills (Half-Elf)

Strength

6

Elf Sight

5

Agility

5

Base Skills (Hunter)

Body

5

Stealth

4

Mind

6

Perception

5

Sense

6

Tracking

6

Charm

6

Archery

1

The Adventurers seemed to have been given free rein over the hay loft and had thrown blankets and cloaks over mounds of hay to try and make decent beds. Gwen was very grateful that she had been able to sleep in an actual bed at the inn, the hay looked like it would scratch even through the multiple layers of wool.

The building was large and square and here beneath the roof it was a sharply angled set of eaves that sat over them. The windows were on one side, which helpfully pointed out over the gate, revealing the roiling mass of monsters. They seemed to be moving around in unhappy confusion. Gwen almost missed the last step of the ladder when she saw them, there were definitely more than there had been when they had arrived. Either that, or they were all concentrating around the front of the farm because that was where the action had been.

The demonspawn female gestured to a pair of crates. She seemed to be the more talkative and she shared a look with her companion, before taking the initiative and leading the conversation, answering a question from Marina.

She ran her hands over her hair, hair that was a deep black and tightly braided to the shape of her skull, showing off the curling horns that rose out of her forehead. "Sure, but there isn't much to tell. I appeared in the game, didn't know what was going on for a few seconds and couldn't have been much easier prey. I was in the middle of a densely forested patch near here, and that turned out to be incredibly fortunate for me," She took a breath and ploughed on, "I'm sitting – well, lying practically prone against a tree is closer to the truth and it's harder than you would think when you have a tail – and this thing comes out at me from between two big trees. Or at least it tries to, it had the head of a deer, massive antlers, and the body of what can only be described as a very angry spider, with extra pincers because, apparently, why not? Anyway, I was laid out on the ground, already thinking 'Oh, I'm dead, that's unlucky to go this fast' and the thing gets its antlers stuck in a tree. Its head gets yanked back, which slows its run at me, and this gives me enough time to get out my sword and stab it as many times as I can." She paled a little, the red of her skin turning to a dark pink, "It was entirely instinctual, it was quite frightening how I went from trying to figure how to sit with a tail to just going at that monster with my sword. Then it disappears, leaving behind some unpleasant-looking material that I hope was its blood, because it could have been any part of the animal. And I stood there in the forest for a good bit longer, in shock, I suppose, then I heard a noise behind me and I'm getting ready for the second attack of antler spiders, so I turn around, and Theo here comes out of the forest looking about as shocked as I felt."

Theo gave a short wave.

"My story is pretty much the same. I appeared in the middle of nowhere, head spinning, only for some thing to jump out at me from behind a bush. I'm a Mage, an Enchanter specifically, I'm not really meant to be on the front lines of a fight. But I do have some good spells for fire, and um, that's what I used. I blasted the thing away from me and then just kept hitting it with everything I had until it disappeared. Uh, after that I ran as far away from that spot as I could get. And then I stumbled across Jin Ae and honestly I've never been so glad to see someone else."

"Same here, believe me, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. But between us we got onto a road, walked for several kilometres and saw the farm. Jessica was in one of the fields outside, we told her what we had seen and she brought us and the animals in. She seemed pretty shocked, not as though she thought we were lying about it, they do get monsters around here sometimes. But never something like what we had seen. She let us sleep up here for the night, we needed the rest, we were both pretty badly beaten up by everything. I had a flourishing bruise where my monster had kicked me in the shoulder, and Theo had some slices taken out of him. That was yesterday. Within an hour or so the first monsters started showing up and they haven't left since. We've tried to get as many as we could from within the farm, but they figured out how close they could come to the walls pretty quickly. After that they stayed out of range of our spells. And then, this morning," she sighed and looked back at Theo.

Theo' face looked pinched and deeply stressed. "Everything we killed reappeared like it was respawning, like an Adventurer. And more keep coming." He sent a look out the window before taking his own seat, "There's probably some more getting here already."

"Shit." Gwen said eloquently.

Jin Ae nodded, "That's pretty much how we felt as well."

Theo snorted, "Yeah not the best thing to wake up to. Herds, or flocks, or whatever, of monsters sitting outside watching the walls of the farmyard. Deeply unsettling."

"Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but why haven't they attacked? The walls aren't that big or defensive?" Gwen asked.

Theo grinned, "That was some of my work. Enchanter magic has some serious force behind it when it comes to defence. Having levelled up to Five, I unlocked Repulsion, which I've put on the wall itself and then I've spent the last day making eldritch caltrops that I've chucked over the wall so if anything comes too close they'll wish they were just getting stabbed in the feet." His face turned serious for a second, "There is some nasty stuff in the Enchanter's tool kit, let me tell ya. If you see me chucking glowing red streaked green orbs don't even try to get out of the way, just like hunker down wherever you are. Nasty stuff."

"And anytime something has come to test if Repulsion is still up, we've chucked everything we have at it; so now they're just waiting outside of our range, which is an improvement, in some ways," Jin Ae said.

"Yeah, the sizzling noises those orbs made kind of freaked me out," Theo said in a low tone.

"I was meaning more because of the fact that it made us safer," Jin Ae said with an amused look, before adding, "though that sizzling was an uncomfortable sound to hear, you're right."

Gwen looked at her sister. Marina took charge.

"Well our story is a lot alike the both of yours, Gwen jumped out a tree onto a beetle thing, and then turned up right when I needed her in a fight with some wolf scorpion beasties. Have I said thank you?" she asked, suddenly frowning.

"Yes," Gwen said.

"Right, good, because by the sound of it without our team up I would have been even more fucked over than I thought I was, and I thought I was pretty fucked up. But we got to the nearest village, nice place, called Starlingrise, and we spoke to a couple of people there. One of whom was Jessica's dad who asked us to come out here and check on her, because it turns out all these monsters are really not normal for this area. It's generally pretty quiet," Marina finished.

"Aside, apparently, from the occasional undead that wanders over from a cursed battlefield near here," Gwen added.

"So what's made this all happen, then?" Theo asked, leaning forward from his own seat on a nearby upturned bucket.

Gwen spread her arms, "Our idea is that with all of us Adventurers arriving the local area was needing more drama. Peaceful wasn't part of what we signed up for, I guess, though I don't think giant terrifying bug monsters was what we signed up for either."

"It certainly wasn't on any of the introductory material," Jin Ae agreed.

"Maybe it's a sort of hazing thing? Make us think we're going to die so we get into the game more? I mean the four of us all lived, " Theo asked, "And we're a lot more levelled up than we would have been otherwise, so it could just be a way of getting new Adventurers past the awkward stage when you don't have enough health to take more than a couple of hits."

Gwen shook her head and pulled the scrap of fabric from her pocket. "I think that's just survivor bias, we found some signs that there had been a fight on the road up here. Whoever it was didn't make it out. I'd say we are probably the lucky ones who survived that first attack, rather than being unlucky enough to face an attack at all. With you two here with similar stories, I can't really buy that we just happened to pull the short straws that had monsters attached to them."

The other two Adventurers looked at the scrap of fabric with wide eyes. "Well that's terrifying," Jin Ae muttered. Again she ran her hands over her hair, before forcing them down into her lap and breathing out. "Right then, what are we going to do? I assume we're teaming up for this? It seems sensible to work together," she looked briefly around the group.

No one disagreed.

"If the monsters are hunting Adventurers specifically then us leaving might be all that Jessica needs to keep herself and her kids safe," Gwen said.

"It feels like we'd be running if we left them," Theo protested.

"We would be running. Sometimes that's the safest thing to do for the people you leave behind," Jin Ae said. "But we'd have to kill everything waiting out there first. If they are respawning like Adventurers, then we might have a shot to draw them away. If we were gone when they were set to reappear then they wouldn't have any reason to come here."

"I guess if we're already bait we might as well use that to our advantage and get the monsters to follow us," Gwen said, "though the chances of us killing everything out there cannot be that good. There's a tonne of them for every one of us." That was a grim enough proclamation that it made the others grimace, but they didn't have any way to counter it.

Marina frowned, "You two haven't been to a temple yet, have you?"

Theo shook his head, "There isn't one here, so we haven't been able to."

Gwen winced, "So if you die you just get catapulted off somewhere else in the game?"

"Presumably," Jin Ae agreed. "Along with numerous debuffs and ongoing problems as punishment for screwing up."

Gwen did not like that, especially as it meant she and her sister were more disposable than the other two. Or at least, could be killed off for a few hours with less repercussions than for them. It was also, she reluctantly acknowledged to herself, not just pity for the other Adventurers that was making her regret that. Sacrifice was easier here in the game than in the real world, but that didn't mean it was easy.

"What's the saying? 'Better the devil you know?' Sorry, Jin Ae," Theo said making a face at her, "That's probably rude, isn't it?"

Jin Ae shrugged, "I wouldn't know, I've been in this body for less than two days. I'm not even used to the horns and tail yet; I can learn what sayings are offensive after I've managed to sit down without sitting on my tail three times in a row."

"Right well, I know what the problems are here," Theo continued, "more or less, anyway. Wherever I end up next might be worse, and at least the weather's decent here and the people seem friendly enough even if the monsters aren't. Not that dying ever seems like a really good idea. I mean, it usually isn't, but right now, I'd rather not," he gave a sheepish shrug.

As a statement went, "I would prefer not to die right now" was a hard one to disagree with. And while Gwen had been given more stirring speeches in her life and more inspiring war cries, this was one she could work with. "Alright, so what are we going to do?"

Everyone looked around at each other waiting for someone else to announce their amazing plan.

"Fuck it, let's sneak out there and kill any we can before they notice we're there and then figure it out as it comes," Marina said, standing up with a sigh and a push against her knees.

"Plan to not plan?" Gwen asked.

Marina threw her arms wide, "It's been working so far. Let's see how far we can push this thing."

***

The plan didn't become any more concrete the longer they stayed up in the hay loft. But the sun kept moving and the ranks of monsters outside the farm stopped growing.

"They look settled, I doubt any more will come before tomorrow morning," Jin Ae said to Gwen from a spot she had claimed by the open window.

"How many are out there?" Gwen asked. She had been practising with her bow, shooting arrows one after the other into a mound of hay on the other side of the barn. The repetitive movement of sight along the arrow, draw the string back, shoot, then after a few minutes, go fetch the handful of arrows she had with her, was helping to keep her calm, almost like meditation. She still didn't have enough experience from her skills to level up, but she had at least gotten her Archery skill to a respectable level 5. She wouldn't be doing the Robin Hood trick where you shoot the centre of your own arrow on the target, but she hit things more often than not.

She brought up the tracker for her experience and glared at it. It was closer to getting her to Level 6 and the spells that she would be able to pick up there, but even with all of her practise, she wasn't near that target yet.

"Well, if what I can see is about a quarter of the circle around the farm, then I'd say there was about two hundred," Jin Ae spoke very calmly.

"Shit," Gwen said, less so as her knees wobbled.

"If they bed down tonight we need to go out then; it'll be dark but that will be a problem for them as much as for us," Jin Ae said bluntly. "If they're quietening now we might need to get ready soon." She looked over to where the sun was still not close to setting and frowned.

"Demonspawn can see in the dark, I take it?" Gwen said, walking over to the mound of hay that had been her target and starting to pull the arrows from the mess she had made of it.

"Extremely well, it is a definite advantage," she said quietly, her odd pupil and iris-lacking eyes looking out at the monsters.

Gwen nodded, "half-elves too, and I assume dwarves can see fine in the dark."

"Or else they would certainly have a difficult time of it underground," agreed Jin Ae.

"I guess we'll just have to hope that those monsters out there can't see as well as us, then."

Jin Ae gave a murmur as an answer, but not much more. To Gwen, who was in a similarly scattered frame of mind, it was enough.

They both jumped when footsteps came in a clatter up the ladder behind them.

Turning, Gwen saw one of the kids, one of Jessica's children. "Hello?" The word turned into a question halfway through.

The boy had flat blond hair that stuck up in every direction at the back but at the front dangled into his eyes. "Theo and Marina said to come and fetch you, they've got magic they want to do on you," he said gleefully.

Laughing, Gwen stepped forward, "Then we'd better hurry to join them."

They met Jessica first as they came out of the barn. She had her arms folded and looked scared and furious at being scared.

Gwen stepped over to talk to Jessica, "How does this normally work? Do you get attacked by monsters often or..." she trailed off.

Jessica frowned, "does this farm look like it's built to defend against much of anything? We have walls because otherwise farm animals tend to try and make a run for it, not because we expect monsters and Adventurers to come out of the forest every other day." Her voice made it clear she felt both were equal nuisances, though the ones that could ask stupid questions were particularly irritating in that moment.

Trying not to feel cowed by that answer, Gwen pushed on, "But things have to happen once in a while, in the village they mentioned that you sometimes get undead here from the barrens?"

Jessica waved a hand dismissively. "They're barely any trouble, they can't cross boundaries claimed by the living so they don't even come close to the farm. Too many fences for them to figure out a way past and they're not often smart enough to figure out roads or gates. Typically, they're just old soldiers from the wars between the elves and the dwarves; they're more sad than something to be properly scared of. They wave around swords rusted down to nothing and half their armour has already fallen off so if you hit them a couple of times they'll crumble into dust. Nikolai in the village is pretty handy when they do cause a bit of trouble, they steer clear of him so you can herd them." She gave a shrug, "We don't worry about monsters much around here. There's never been much of a need to!"

"Alright," Gwen said, trying not to feel guilty because, gods this really did prove that it was the Adventurers turning up that had caused all the trouble, "But what do you do when something does turn up?"

"You kill it," Jessica said bluntly. Then she turned away to go back inside her house.

Breathing out, because that answer had felt like a punch to the stomach, Gwen turned to Jin Ae who gave a shrug. There wasn't much she could say to that, so she moved on.

Someone had drawn a rough circle in the dirt of the farmyard, at some points in the circle it bulged or dipped where the artist decided to draw around a stone, or a particularly deep divot in the ground, or, in one case, a particularly obstinate cat who refused to move.

Gwen bit down on her lip to stop a grin from breaking free, "You have magic you want to do to us?" she called out.

Marina looked up from where she had been scoring lines in the earth, she had gone beyond the circle now and was drawing runes around it. "Yeah! Theo and I have a spell in common, so we're going to juice it up a bit by casting it together. It should keep the four of us alive a bit longer, or at least keep us from getting smashed into paste quite so quickly."

"Delightful," Jin Ae said her voice as dry as dust. "What exactly is it you're going to do?"

"What, you don't trust us?" Marina asked, her attention going back to her knife and the markings she was drawing in the dirt.

"I haven't made my mind up yet," Jin Ae said.

Gwen snorted, "You've not known us long, that seems fair. As does asking what someone's going to do to you before they start casting magic in your direction." She gave Marina a look.

Marina shrugged, "Eh, Theo can you explain it."

"Sure," he said, stepping forward from where he had apparently been counting, nails?

Gwen frowned, but no, he had a bundle of them in his hand and was tucking some extra back into a pocket. They were nails, she was sure of it, each about as long as her hand from the bottom of her palm to the end of her middle finger. They were a mix between new ones still shined up and some clearly much older which had a touch of rust.

"The spell will give you more health and should make it faster to heal too, that way if we have to retreat we should be able to go out again pretty soon after. To do it I'm going to enchant these nails with my magic, while Marina asks the gods to keep you from kicking the bucket with her Priest magic. The way ritual magic works you should get two and a bit of what one spell would get you, because they," his voice turned speculative, "bounce off each other and mix and get bigger? Something about amplification? I don't know, I'm still new to ritual casting." He shook his head, "But basically," he looked over at the locals who watching and lowered his voice, "This spell is going to give you an extra level's worth of Health and will half the time it takes you to heal."

Gwen flicked a look at the locals, but they seemed to not even notice that they were being cut out from the conversation. "That sounds useful," she said.

"Well, fingers crossed, it won't be. But better to be ready for anything, right?" Theo said with a shrug.

Marina jumped up and slid her dagger into a sheath at her side, before rubbing her dirty palms over her thighs. "Right, I think that's it!" She grinned, a smear of reddish earth coated one cheek and made her look childlike. "Into the circle, you two, if we're ever going to get started it might as well be now."

Gwen grimaced and stepped forward, doing as she was told and carefully jumping over the rings drawn into the earth and the runes that orbited around them. Even to her untrained senses, she could feel when she entered the magic. It felt like stepping through the bass at a gig where they did not give a damn about the continued integrity of anyone's ear drums or internal organs. She could have sworn that just for a moment, not even the space between a pair of heart beats, she was trapped in the air, her feet both tucked up beneath her as she jumped over the scratches in the surface of the farmyard.

Then she was on the other side of the line and her feet were hitting the earth and it all seemed to tumble away behind her.

Shaking her head she stepped further into the circle, out of the road of everyone else following her.

Theo jumped across after Jin Ae joined her and from the way he blinked she knew he at least had picked up on the odd feeling. But he too shook it off like a dog chasing off an irritating fly and knelt down next to the ring, setting a nail and a hammer down before him. "Ready when you are," he said to Marina who was still standing outside the ring.

"Would music help?" Jin Ae asked.

Everyone looked at her, confused by the segue.

She pulled a stringed instrument from her back, "I'm a bard, we're supposed to play when something inspiring happens, now seems like a good time to give you two some accompaniment?"

"It can't hurt," Marina agreed.

"It would be nice, the last live music I heard was my neighbour practising some kind of brass instrument," Theo said.

"'Some kind of brass instrument'," Gwen said.

Theo shrugged, "He needed the practice, I couldn't tell if it was a tuba or if it wasn't supposed to sound like that."

"Well, I'm fairly certain I can do better than that," Jin Ae said; she pulled a bow out of the same bag from which the instrument had come, then had second thoughts, tucking it back and laying her fingers on the strings instead. Slowly, she started to coax a trembling song from the instrument, one that seemed to pull at the hairs along the back of Gwen's neck with the dedication of a purring cat licking a hand trapped between its paws. Each time the slow strumming seemed about to reach the top of the mountain it was climbing, there would be a fall down to the rocks beneath them and the ascent would start again.

Gwen was the only one who had the freedom to move in that moment; Jin Ae was playing, her whole upper body moving in time to the music; Theo was knelt by the rings; and Marina was standing outside them. And yet she couldn't. She was swept away by the sounds like they were the winds of a hurricane.

Marina let out a huff of surprise, but she didn't seem as taken by the music. She wasn't stuck to the ground where she stood, certainly. Her twin started to walk around the edge of the ring, her feet moving carefully around and over the runes taking care not to smudge a single one.

Marina's mouth opened and her chanting began, she started with words that Gwen could hear fair distinctly, "To Minethena I call, for a favour I ask," but then the music seemed to swell and brush the words away from Gwen's ears. Her teeth started to shake in time to the falls and rise of the music. She could see Marina walking, there was nothing between them but a few steps of air, and yet everything began to blur.

It was almost as if there was a second figure walking in the shadow of Marina, or maybe it was Marina who was following. The figures walked around the ring four times, clockwise of course, though Gwen didn't know why that felt not only right, but the only way it should be. Every time Theo was passed he hammered another nail into the ground, his hammer blows silent in midst of the music and prayers that were claiming all the sound that was available.

Gwen stopped being able to hear her heart or the sound of her own breath.

Once, twice, three times, and finally four. The final nail was driven into the ground and the silence roared into being with the closing snap of Marina's jaw.

For a moment all was still and silent.

"Well," Marina said, her voice sounding husky as if she had been speaking for hours, "That was interesting."

***

The four Adventurers kitted up quickly after the magic faded back into the fabric rather than the foreground of reality. They handed off spare bags and cloaks to the farm's children. Gwen knew that what they would need was stealthy speed, not clunking bags slowing them down or cloaks which could be grabbed and turned into leashes.

Gwen tightened her belt to an earlier hole and checked that her hair was pulled out of the way as completely as possible. It wouldn't do to have it fall into her eyes at the worst possible moment, and given the odds, it would be the worst possible moment.

She wished she could have a few points to put into her Agility, but it was a bit late for that. She wasn't certain, but she thought the others had possibly levelled from their ritual in the farmyard. It was petty to be jealous, but Gwen couldn't quite push the thought down quick enough. She would have liked to get an extra level from helping with a ritual, but she was still several hundred experience points below getting to Level 6 and those sweet, sweet, magical spells. Right about now, as she was preparing to walk out into a dark night for murdering purposes, she was wishing she had Shadow Step to call on.

Or Spider Climb to get over the wall. Or Poison Barrage to take out a huge swathe of monsters at once. Her portfolio was really lacking some Area of Effect tricks.

She sighed, but that would have to wait until her next level.

Fishing the spider silk rope out of her backpack, she went to the spot at the back of the farm that had been chosen for their egress. It was a sturdy stone wall, one of the few sections that used some sort of bonding material between the rocks rather than just trusting in gravity and friction to keep it all in place. Hopefully, that meant it would be sturdy enough not to fall on them when they climbed it.

Whatever building the wall had belonged to had once had a sizeable overhang of stone sticking out the top. If she could just get the rope around that lump. Tying a knot on her rope Gwen started to spin the it around, trying to get enough oomph into it to take it up as high as the wall.

The first time she threw the rope up it missed, falling down to crumple at her feet instead of holding strong. Gritting her teeth, she picked it up and tried again. The same thing happened.

Notifications popped up warning her that she had insufficient rope skills to achieve what she wanted. It was like the Card Sharp thing all over again.

"Oh, come on, I can almost do this in real life, isn't this supposed to be escapism? Get up there and stick," she muttered, running her fingers around the inside of the loop to try and make it run a little more smoothly.

"Almost?" Jin Ae asked.

Gwen jumped, snapping her head back to the other woman who was standing a few feet behind her, looking at the odd show she was putting on with her arms crossed and a quirked brow.

Gwen shrugged, "I was at a business retreat on a ranch, I spent a lot of time with the horses and the people who worked there instead of my colleagues." This was an approximate description of the event. It lacked some of the nuance, like the fact that they had been using the ranch as a base to assess how to steal everything out of the secret vault under their next-door neighbours' faux-medieval castle, but it got the basics across.

"You didn't like your colleagues much?" Jin Ae said with a laugh, before bowing her head and going back to sorting through the things in her bag.

"Eh, they were fine," Gwen said. The memory of Roxy muscling her way into her Edinburgh apartment and the way her body fell back after Gwen had tasered her rose like a shadow in her thoughts. "Some were better than others."

"Oh? What work did you do?" Jin Ae asked.

"IT," Gwen said with a smile; that bit was easy. It was also almost true. Some kind of thief you are, Gwen thought, there's a line between using the truth to hide your lies and just giving up on lying at all and you crossed it long ago.

Jin Ae looked up with surprise covering her features, "Really? But you look so comfortable in," she waved a hand around them, "Nature? Historical surroundings? What am I trying to say?"

Gwen laughed, "I just throw myself into things, I guess."

Jin Ae nodded, appearing to give her words some thought.

Gwen turned back to the wall, "Right, let's try this again, shall we?" She started to swing the rope in a slow, languid way that felt familiar, yes, this was how you did it. The loop sped up in her hands, circling faster and faster, before she released it and saw it fly up and catch on the projection she had been aiming for.

Gwen fist pumped with a hissed, "Yes!" Then she swept away the notifications of the skill levels she had gained and stepped forward to make sure the rope was securely in place.

The other Adventurers were soon clustered at her back, looking up at the rope with differing levels of trepidation.

Jin Ae looked at the climb as if it was an unpleasant task that had to be done and was best done quickly. Like doing the dishes.

Theo had his arms folded and was looking at it with clear scepticism, he didn't have to say he wasn't confident at being able to make the climb, it was written on his face.

And Marina, well Marina turned to Gwen with a shake of her head. "I'm in metal armour, how exactly is this going to work?"

Gwen puffed out a breath. It was true, Marina was going to have the hardest time of it. Jin Ae and Theo were wearing armour that was mostly fabric and leather based, it might not be the easiest thing to do the splits in but at least it wouldn't sound like a cutlery drawer getting thrown down a set of stairs if you banged up against anything.

"How much of that armour is entirely necessary?" Jin Ae asked.

"It's not exactly stealthy," Theo agreed.

Marina's face was turning red, "I need it! I could get chewed up otherwise!"

"You mean like how we might," Gwen pointed out. "We're all in a lot less protective gear than you."

"I'm a healer, I need to be able to shrug off attacks."

Gwen couldn't disagree. "Well, if you can't get up there under your own steam without alerting the monsters then we'll have to help you." Sighing, she walked over to the wall, it was about nine feet tall at the start of what might have once been a stepped gable. "Jin Ae, Theo, which one of you is stronger?"

"Me, most likely," Theo said. "It's not how you're meant to build a magic user, I know, but I put a couple of points in Strength thinking I would be in the forge a lot."

"Right, well, see if you can get up to the top there, I'll boost Marina and if you can give her a hand up then at least some of the banging should be quietened down," She turned to Marina, "Just try not to smack into us too much as you climb, we might not go clang but we do bruise."

Bracing herself against the wall, beside where her rope dangled, Gwen put a knee forwards, "You first Theo," she said, prompting him to move.

The Enchanter gave her knee a sceptical look, before taking a breath and stepping forward to wrap the rope around his hands, "I hope this works." He muttered the words quietly enough that it was probably only meant to be to for himself, but Gwen's elvish hearing meant she could pick the words out easily.

Bouncing off the ground and boosted by Gwen's knee, Theo scrabbled up the side of the wall, his thick boots finding purchase on the unevenly weathered stone, sending bits of stone and dust scattering over the Adventurers below him. Gwen shut her eyes and bowed her head to let them bounce off her hair.

After a moment, Theo seemed to settle himself on the top of the wall. Looking out across the fields outside the farm he gave a slow nod to himself, then looked down and gave the group a thumbs up. The monsters evidently hadn't called in any reinforcements just yet.

"Right, you next," Gwen said, looking at Marina who grimaced. "Go on, Jin Ae if you can help me shove her up towards Theo then that would be a help, too."

Jin Ae gave her a nod, then hid a hint of a smile as she stood behind Marina.

"When did we put you in charge, again?" Marina asked.

"When you didn't look like you were going to get anything done if I didn't step in: be faster next time," Gwen said briskly.

"Will do," Marina said, before she attempted to follow Theo up the wall. It was not a graceful attempt, and if it were in the real world Gwen would likely have had a couple of foot-shaped bruises the next day on her knee and shoulder, but between the group of them they managed to get Marina up into Theo's arms and onto the wall beside him. A low swear and a lot of gasps followed Marina up, but eventually Gwen was able to stand up straight again.

She let out a few gasps of her own as she moved back into a shape that felt a bit more natural. Jin Ae gave her a sympathetic look, before she too grabbed onto the rope and shimmied up to the top of the wall.

What are the odds that I could slip back to the farmhouse now and have a cup of tea? Gwen thought, before getting her hands on the rope and clambering up.

With the rope the wall was probably easier to climb than the trees she had been finding her way up the day before. And she had more ranks in climbing than she had then. But, somehow, the absence of any life in the stone of the wall meant it felt far less secure to her than the lichen-encrusted bark and wood she had climbed then. If there was a downside to all this new elf magic, it seemed that this was it. When it wasn't around to give you a hand it felt a hell of a lot worse than she had expected.

Her grip on the rope seemed to be hardly enough and she nearly slipped a few times back down, but eventually Gwen made it up to the top. The view of the land on the other side was almost enough to send her back down, however. She hadn't gotten a good look at how many beasts had been circling the farm in their headlong bolt into the farmyard. Now, from her vantage point, she was getting a much better look. And she didn't have the distance that had given her a false feeling of safety like there had been when she was in the barn. Now she was above them, with the slumbering bodies sprawled out beneath her in every direction.

An arm looped around her, hooking her into place on the wall more securely. Theo looked at her from where he sat, leaning into her he whispered, "It looked like you were about to tumble back down."

"Thanks," she said, giving him a smile. Then she turned her gaze back onto the morass of monsters that were covering the ground that she would somehow have to cross. "Right, let's fucking do this," she whispered.

Sitting up on the wall gave her a pretty good view of the itemised list of dangerous foes on the other side. And the challenge was dozens of monsters, of different types, spread around the fields and roads leaving the farm. With Jin Ae and Theo having taught a lesson to any that got close enough there was at least a halo around the farm of empty grass, but outside that halo the monsters lay in orbiting lines.

From what Gwen could see, and that was a mixed bag (her dark vision was better for things close up than at a distance), there seemed to be more of the arachno-wolves; some deer like the one Jin Ae had mentioned; and a collection of beetles with mammal bits. She shot a glare in their direction, she had levelled up a few times since the fight with the beetle thing that had attacked her when she arrived, but she had won that battle thanks to luck and gravity more than anything else. She would be on a literal level playing field with them this time around, and one of the things you learned from worshipping a luck goddess, she was figuring out, was that skill and careful planning was more reliable.

Gwen shot a look up to the stars, hoping that that hadn't been overheard. She didn't need whatever happened when a god didn't like you happening as well.

Careful planning, that's the goal, she thought. Pulling the rope over the wall took a couple of seconds, Theo made certain it was secure for her as he was closest to where it was attached, and then Gwen started the climb down.

The outer wall was rougher than the inner one, the unchecked power of the wind and rain had done a number on the weaker stonework. That meant she could easily claw her way down, the beds under her nails filling with sandstone residue and bits of moss.

She hit the ground earlier than she was expecting, the stones falling from the wall had built up a lip around the outside so it was actually a bit higher than within the walls. Sinking down onto her heels she tried to make as small a target as possible, hoping that if anything was awake enough to see her then it would assume she was nothing more than the shadow of a cloud.

Her rope skill had risen to Level 4 by this point and her general climbing one had reached 5. It was still not enough experience to see her into the next level, so she pouted and ignored the notifications in favour of concentrating on the monsters.

Jin Ae followed her down, crouching beside her a few moments after Gwen had settled. Then it was Marina's turn. Somehow the three of them managed to get her somewhat silently down to the ground, and what noises there were weren't massive clanking crashes, so there was that. It was lucky.

But Gwen was starting to feel like they were running up a debt in that currency, and out of everything in all the versions of reality she had lived in: luck was not something you wanted to run out of. Theo joined them, his heavy boots making a soft crunch on the dirt when he landed.

While there was a halo of intact grass around the farm, where the monsters had been in range of Jin Ae and Theo's magic, the ground beyond had been churned into mud. It was, Gwen was relieved to note, completely free of anything other than evidence of the presence of the monsters. Well, aside from the monsters themselves, of course. There were a lot of them, possibly more than she had thought even, and Gwen reluctantly raised her estimation of the numbers upwards. There were some deeply unpleasant monsters which seemed to be asleep in the mud and had been hidden from their view.

These looked worryingly like flayed woodlice. She had never before realised how lucky the world was that woodlice were not the same shade as raw chicken, but now she was very, very aware of it. She made a disgusted face and turned to the rest of her group.

Jin Ae's expression had become blank but with a burning fire beneath the surface that spoke to her grim determination to get the battle started. Theo was alert, eyes warily following the lines of the forest and the road, keeping watch for reinforcements. Marina had her hand on her mace and looked like she was already mentally tallying the kills she could expect to claim.

If there was ever a moment for a big speech this would be it, Gwen thought, then smiled and turned back to the monsters, well thank the gods that we have to be quiet.

The first few kills were easy.

The monsters were deeply asleep, the soft noises of their executions were hidden by the sounds of the wind and the raspy breaths of those still living.

As well as the experience from the kills she was getting a steady trickle in from levelling her stealth and sword skills. The higher level of stealth was making the world change around her, the shadows and dark hollows were easier to find and once, when she was about to put her foot down on a dry twig that would have surely cracked like a gun shot in the silence, she felt a tug. It was hard to explain, it was kind of like the feeling you get when your sleeve catches on a door handle. Slowly she lifted her foot away from the twig and set it down beside it.

Breathing out slowly she moved on, paying a bit more attention to what was happening underneath her feet.

Gwen was pulling her sword from the neck of a particularly ugly arachno-wolf, one with the fuzzy hair of a tarantula and the stinger of a scorpion attached to the half-starved and mangy looking body of a wolf, when she heard it. Or didn't.

The rumbling snore of the monsters had stopped. All in the same moment.

She pulled her sword more quickly through the neck meat and muscle and turned to the rest of the creatures. There were too many, far, far too many. If they had started at twelve then they had barely made it around to a quarter past three, with the rest of the clock still full of monsters both large and small. Beasts that were now very aware of them and probably displeased by the very rude awakening they had received.

"Warning: Stealth Failed!" Flashed in red across her vision.

"They're awake," Gwen said, not bothering to whisper and not needing to shout in the sudden silence.

"So they are," Marina said.

From Jin Ae, "How unfortunate."

Instead of agreeing with them, Theo turned and with a cry sent a shot of blue light out of his hand in the direction of the monsters behind them.

After that it was a lot more difficult to keep track of where everyone was. Theo and Jin Ae were behind her and taking care of those monsters that were coming from that direction, but Gwen didn't dare look around and check on them.

Grabbing her bow, she started pulling arrows from her quiver, shooting with more speed than caution. It took her precious moments and too many arrows to realise that there was no point to her shooting at the larger, more armoured creatures.

One arrow was scattered off into the night in pieces after an alert of, "Insufficient Archery Skill Versus Armour" rang out like a bell across her vision.

She swore blisteringly, then switched to the smaller monsters, those with the furrier of the wolf parts and the flayed woodlice, which gave her a better run of luck. Bracing herself, she stood solidly in the muck and started to build a rhythm of pulling the bow string back and shooting in the pause between her breaths, taking in a gulp every time her hand moved to her quiver to claim a new arrow.

She wasn't claiming a kill with each arrow, but she was getting close to it. The larger wolves were easier targets to hit, but needed more than a single blow to strike down. The woodlice were fast, but whatever had made them pink and fleshy looking had also ruined their armour so as long as she could strike them they were soon nothing but spoiling meat.

Every time she killed something a notification would pop up with a congratulations, telling her how much experience she gained from the death. It was the easiest way to tell when she had been successful in killing a foe. But aside from that, she drove any of the awareness of anything but her bow and the creatures to the back of her mind.

Marina let out a horrendous scream and ran forwards, sweeping her mace back and forth into the melee, tossing many of the smaller monsters left and right, many were stunned if not killed but most were soon dissolving into the muck from the force of her strikes.

Gwen's hand sank into the open maw of her quiver. "Shit," Pulling the bow over her head to free her hands, she pulled her sword once more and dove in behind Marina. It was quick and easy work to follow in her trail and finish off anything left behind. The sword sank deep into the necks and bellies of the monsters, her blade cutting through the skin and fur and even the chitinous armour when she put her weight behind it. Glowing numbers appeared in the air after she hit them, the blows hitting hard and devastatingly to put them down. Their foul looking blood was soon coating much of her, the splashes and spurts of the dying creatures covering her in a noxious oily fluid.

Pulling her blade from one such armoured creature she was almost struck by the stinger of another. Luckily, the scare made her jump out of the way of the barb and pull her sword free in the same movement.

The creature had a wolf's head except for a pair of pincers where its lower jaw should have been, its back legs and tail were those of a scorpion, covered in dark brown and oily looking armour. There was a wound to one side of it, it had clearly been struck with Marina's mace, but the blow hadn't been enough to do more than make it bleed.

Gwen had trouble moving her gaze from its stinger, it was a particularly nasty looking one with a barb more than long enough to kill her with a single strike, even without the poison that was glistening from the end of it. It would, she could see it clearly in her mind's eye, skewer her like a butterfly in some Victorian collection. This should have been more than enough of a reason to keep her eyes on it, unfortunately, the rest of the creature was also a terrifying monster from the kind of dream that made people swear off cheese before bed. She couldn't allow herself to get distracted by one threat to the extent that she was ignorant of all the others.

The threat of what might else be coming after her had her looking into the growling face of the beast itself. Its eyes seemed to focus on her right leg; flashing her sword in front of her she caught its attention, breaking its focus, so that the stinger was more easily deflected by her sword.

The scorpion-wolf growled again, flecks of spit dropping from its jaw.

Gwen moved back, trying to get out of a range where it could easily hit her. But the creature followed her, the motion was off putting as the back legs and the front were not quite in sync in style of movement nor in timing. The front wolf legs seemed trapped in a loping position, while the back, scorpion legs scuttled in a more grounded way. With every step or so forwards there was a bounce up to accompany it. Noticing this, Gwen lunged forwards at the next clumsy lurch, angling her sword up and into its chest, wrenching the sword through the flesh as best as she could.

The growl cut off and turned into a splutter, blood dripped from the wolf's mouth, dark green and alien, and it fell to the ground.

Gwen whirled around, the creature already forgotten, as she looked for the next monster trying to kill her. The blood was dripping off her blade and leaving a puddle at her feet as she glanced around and grabbed deep breaths whilst she could.

For a moment all was still around her. So she took the opportunity to see what her allies were doing. It also gave her health bar, which had been limping along at about twelve out of twenty five, to refill.

Theo was doing well, from the looks of all the dissolving, burnt bodies of monsters around him he was proving more successful than she. He was driving the monsters ahead of him with his magic. Jin Ae was mixing her own magic with her blade work, embers of fire fluttered behind her sword as she danced between enemies, leaving them cut and burned behind her. Her sword was starting to look more and more like the wick at the centre of a candle, the edges burning red while inside the lines everything looked all the darker. Her tail was clinging to her legs and every so often a line or lyric would whisper its way to Gwen's ears.

Theo too was fighting like a demon; his staff was a long soot-blackened piece of iron that was beginning to burn all the brighter from the regular use he was putting it to. Together they were a literal bright spot in the darkness, their fire magic setting the night aglow around them.

She felt better at leaving them to their fighting, they clearly had it under control.

Marina was still running around like a berserker, smashing her mace into anything that came close. Gwen started to jog after her twin again; Marina was leaving fewer stunned monsters and more bodies behind her now, so even though she looked like she was giving into mindless rage she must have figured something out or levelled up enough that her hits were killing instantly.

Catching up to her twin who had halted Gwen asked, "What is it?"

Lifting her mace, Marina pointed out a moving black morass on the edge of the farm, "Please tell me that one is actually closer than I think it is, that it's not actually that size?"

Gwen's eyes focused on the beast moving towards them, "Ah, fuck."

"Right, so it is massive, good to know," Marina started to ease back, not quite running but there was no point. They were far enough from the beast that it was not going to reach them for a few seconds, but there was no point in running. It was faster.

Gwen looked around. They were in the middle of what had once been a field of something green and leafy, but which was not grass. She didn't have the time or the care to work out what it actually was. What was important was that there was nothing to get behind, no trees to climb either, though that probably wouldn't work a second time.

The creature lowered its head and let out a bellow, the dim lights of the fire magic behind them shone off its carapace and the horns sprouting out if its face. The barbs were everywhere and were an ugly burnt orange that suggested bloodshed.

"What is it, some sort of stag or, or, moose?" Gwen asked. Desperately she tried to think of what to do. Time seemed to be stretching in some bizarre way, the creature was still running and she didn't have time to run likewise, but she had plenty of time to watch it. Watch it and come up with something like a plan.

"No," Marina said, she had a tone to her voice like a death knell. "That is a woolly mammoth, by my guess."

The creature bellowed again, it's beetle-like head all that Gwen's eyes could latch onto. It had oblong-shaped eyes that pointed down to its chomping mouth. The monster apparently had not been able to decide between the slicing mandibles of a beetle and the grinding teeth of a mammoth and so had decided to get both. And extras, just in case they came in handy. The carapace covered it's back and front, but if it was anything like the other creatures it would have an unprotected belly.

Gwen couldn't quite stop herself from letting loose a high-pitched giggle. Terror warred with relief, and stubbornness sneaked up for a surprise triumph. She felt more than saw Marina look at her in confusion.

"We'll each run in a different direction, go!" Gwen shouted, but when Marina started to run at her order Gwen did not.

There was a dip in the field just ahead of her. It wasn't big, but it was big enough for what she needed it to be.

Marina was still running and hadn't looked back yet to work out that she wasn't being followed.

The mammoth beetle abomination thing was still running towards her.

Gwen stepped forward, the creature lowered its head and seemed to look at her with surprise, but then with glee. It wanted to kill her. It thought she was being helpful.

"I've never been helpful in my life, sorry to disappoint you," she muttered, making a show of it she made as if she was bracing herself for the fight. She pushed her feet into the soft earth of the field and bent her knees.

Shouts started to go up behind her, the others had seen what was going on. She could hear them shouting her name. But she put it out of her mind. Two of them couldn't be risked because who knows where they would end up if they were killed. The other was their healer. And more importantly, she was Marina.

The risk had to sit on Gwen's shoulders. She couldn't die after all, not for long anyway, not in a game. And pain was impermanent here too. So really it wasn't that big a deal, she told the Marina in her head who was arguing against her plan.

"Not a big-" the mammoth reached her.

Quicker than she had ever moved in real life and faster than she had moved even under the Blessing of the Falcon, Gwen threw herself forwards, bent double at the knees. She slid under the lowered head and mouth of the animal, under its grasping mandibles and grinding teeth, into the hollow in the ground.

The mammoth kept running with a storming bellow, before it realised that she had disappeared. The unprotected belly fell over her head like a bulging, fur-covered ceiling. Using muscles she had barely understood the use of before, Gwen pushed up out of the hollow she had put her body in, jumping back to her feet. With both hands wrapped around the hilt of her sword to give it power she started to stab repeatedly at the stomach above her. There was no time for slicing now, it was all stab, retreat, move a little out of the way of the new blood that was falling and try again.

The numbers coming at her were larger than anything she had beaten out of a monster before, and yet it was still holding on to life. A stab into an unprotected armpit area sent a stream of blood flowing out and 15 health points jumped out at her.

The legs around her started to move; the monster was trying to get out of the way. But she didn't let it get far. Every time it started to move out of her reach she would slice at legs on that side to cause it to jerk back into the patch above her where she could reach the belly easiest.

Blood was raining down on her, making her body slick along with the weapon in her hands. The dip in the land was becoming a pond of the stuff, she was up to her ankles in what felt like no time at all. She was slowing, but so was the monster, the legs around her were moving more jerkily as it tried to get away from her. One hand left the hilt of her sword and went to her belt, and she lunged right to the shadow behind a leg. She drove a knife into the back of a knee, stopping the beast from moving that leg again. Using that moment to gain her breath, Gwen whirled back into the centre before clamping both hands around the hilt of her sword, and angling up and forwards, hoping that the approximate spot of the heart was the same as in most mammals.

She didn't hit the heart, but when she pulled the sword free the wound started to bubble with air leaking from the creature's lungs. It stopped moving. Gwen, too exhausted to move fell, to her knees once more with one hand braced against the ground.

"Gwen!" She heard Marina scream.

She was barely strong enough to turn her head, she couldn't see Marina out in the dark. The bottom of the hollow was too full of liquid to lie in, even if she could reach it.

The creature let out a last rasping groan and fell.

The last thing she saw was the notification that she had finally reached level 6 being swept out of sight by the declaration, "You have died, you will now return to last the respawn point you visited."

Then everything went black.