She’d said she was going to give it a shot, but that didn’t mean that the next little while was going to be easy, either. While nobody outside of LJay and the NPC up front had really had any reason to keep track of her, that didn’t mean that she could just log out and be safe, either.

With what she knew of The Alliance, given that it was one of the bigger guilds out there, there was a good chance that any attempt she made to log out would land her in a pile of shit when they closed sown the area and hired the NPC police to keep track of anyone leaving the area.

Deyana was nowhere near the completion of her quest, but it wouldn’t be difficult to do it elsewhere, then send it in. The turn-in would have to be at the location here, but if she was coming in after a lock-down they wouldn’t necessarily be suspicious of her– and if it were particularly bad, she could pay an NPC to turn it in for her, then collect the rewards at a different DMQ location.

She had to get out of this building before they managed to encircle it, though, so that was the first priority. Second, actually, because she did stop to complete the second of the boots she’s been making, swapping out her shoes with practiced speed. Less than two minutes later, she gathered up everything that was still on the tables into her inventory, then took off out the door.

This whole thing was completely dependent on LJay managing to pull them away, but she could only be so concerned about that. He’d either manage it or he wouldn’t. She was already lucky that The Alliance tended to keep their reserves far enough back that they couldn’t sweep the room she’d been in immediately following LJay’s entry into the room, and probably their front line as well.

Not that she would have stayed to finish her work if they didn’t, but it was nice to be able to do that.

It was a good thing that the sword she’d made earlier would last her much longer, at least.

Once she’d gotten into the main rooms, leaving was just a matter of quickly pushing through the people outside, though this time making more of an effort to hide her face. It was different from her real life one, but she could still be recognized within the game, so long as someone was willing to put in the effort.

And for a Legendary rune? She had a strong feeling that The Alliance would be willing to put in the effort.

Not even just a feeling, really; they were already chasing down LJay.

Deyana was thankful for the time she’d spent doing the runes already, because it meant that is was only a ten minute wait at their agreed meeting point for Don to show up, carrying with him a new bow and quiver.

She had a strong feeling she knew what was in the quiver– basically every archer and everyone who even dabbled had used Durability/stopping arrows. The only people who hadn’t, actually, were those that had tried the playstyle out later and used Durability/Returning ones instead.

“Hey, you got your thing done?” he asked, an easy smile on his face.

She nodded at that. “Yeah, had to talk to a bunch of people though, and I heard something about The Alliance making moves to lock down the area.”

He got a disgusted look on his face when she said that. “Ugh. Bunch of uptight pricks, too. Maybe if it was Arrow Keys or the Smurfs… but you just wanted to leave anyway, right?”

“I don’t really have any need to end up on their radar so early. I figure we can just go a town over and finish my quest there, so it’s not like it’s that much of an issue overall.” Deyana said, which launched into a discussion of the nearby towns.

Two of them had goblins in them, but the decision was still basically made for them.

Torail had larger scale and lower-level invasions, where Chanmo was essentially overrun with fairly high-level monsters at the moment.

Which meant travelling.

It wasn’t exactly difficult, travelling between cities in Rune. While there wasn’t the same time-skipping as closer-range, intra-city teleports, the designers had made genuine consideration for the way that a society would develop around monsters that could appear basically anywhere that wasn’t specifically prevented.

And even some places that were, if the otherworld currents changed unexpectedly, as had been known to happen from time to time.

Mostly, it meant fences, walls, and the occasional gunnery turret in particularly vulnerable areas. Conventional weapons could be effective against lower-level monsters, even if it did generally fail to do anything against anything even as tough as the average level fifty monsters and area bosses, to say nothing of roaming or world bosses.

But as long as you stayed on the road, watching the sides carefully in case a monster troupe appeared, you were generally just fine riding in one of the cars– even walking, sometimes, which was what they were doing now.

Because it was only five miles between the two cities before they’d hit a teleport point in the new city, specifically, they’d opted for the walking instead of waiting for a cheap ride to appear or farming up the credits to pay their way.

It was nice, just talking with Don as they walked the distance. There were even a few goblins along the way, allowing them to farm one more of her fragments without even really slowing down– it was mostly a matter of Don pulling a group, taking a few of them out along the way, while she functioned as a barrier to prevent them from damaging him.

No other drops of particular value, but that wasn’t too much of a surprise. Goblins weren’t exactly known for their high-value drops to begin with.

With the jogging that they’d been throwing in for the latter half of their travel distance, it didn’t even take a full hour for them to reach the teleport point, bringing them to the center of the city to once again mark down the teleport stone there.

And now that she’d been taught it, it was showing up everywhere. A link rune, this one with the city crest.

The way it was built, it wouldn’t allow someone to draw mana off of it remotely, but would absolutely accept supply that way.

Still, it stung her pride somewhat. They were all around, yet she’d still forgotten them.

Oh well. She knew them now, at least, so that was no longer an issue.

From there, given that they were already geared, Don and Deyana headed out to the south of the new city, where they were dealing with a similar goblin problem as Dunlap had been.

Larger, even. There were fewer people here than in the other city, and the goblins were slightly higher level.

Arriving on scene was simple enough, and the NPC area controller stood out of the goblins’ spawn area waved to them as they approached.

“Yo! Y’all looking to join in this raid here? We could always use a few more non-diers on the scene.”

“Yup. Do you have a group for us to sync up with or are we just getting thrown into a raid?”

“A bit more structure than that. First big group on the scene this rotation set up some groups and others have been sticking to it. We’ve got a melee damage group, a ranged damage group, tanks, and simps.”

Don snorted and Deyana tried to keep herself from smiling. “Simps is support and heals, right?”

“That’s what it looks like to me,” the NPC responded. “But I never can tell with you all. The names are honestly nicer than usual.”

“Set him up with ranged and me with melee,” Deyana said, “but leave us in a secondary private subgroup.”

“Can do,” he said, and the subtle blue barrier around the area with the goblins fell away to her eyes. “Good luck.”

Getting through the two or three spawns from behind the group wasn’t particularly difficult, but syncing up, to a degree at least, was.

The group systems marked them with subtle highlights, but it was still difficult to tell the lime green of the healers apart from the neon green of the damage dealers.

Especially because it was all mixed up, in the middle.

The red highlight on tanks and blue on melee DDs was even more confused, directly clashing with what appeared to be a new wave of goblin spawns, and Deyana left Don to get on that line, syncing up with the left side.

The woman next to her tried to step around to cover the side, given her better gear, but a quick word from Deyana let her step back to where she had been.

The end of the line was difficult, but she could already see the guy on the woman’s right was struggling, even with her shield darting out to catch goblin spears fairly regularly.

It would be better for everyone if she was able to keep providing that support, and Deyana had the skill to prevent the basic flanking maneuvers that the goblins tried.

Especially given that most of them were just an excited one screeching and trying to run around her fairly quickly, without even bothering to strategize at all.

She was even starting to tune out when a yell from one of the support players brought everything back into sharp relief.

“Area boss!”

Her eyes basically completely diverted from the goblin she’d just dispatched, instead scanning the area ahead of them.

It wasn’t always easy to tell where an area boss was, given their propensity for hising in and around other monsters, but this one was one of the easier ones. Two and a half times the height of the other goblins, it was also horrifyingly obese, almost round in a way that made it seem cartoony even while it was rendered in so much detail. It had a crown on, and gold jewelry hung off of it everywhere, even the ratty, gray, torn at the bottom t-shirt that it wore.

Goblin King. They weren’t particularly fast or deadly on their own, but they had one of the more annoying abilities, upping the spawn rate of goblins all around– and particularly so anywhere it pointed, usually behind any lines that were being set up.

It was one of the weaknesses of the simplified line-fighting raids, where it would spawn bosses like that.

“Do we have anyone overequipped?” one of the other supports asked.

They didn’t get a response for three seconds, so Deyana cut in, yelling. “Looks like no! Change to a circle formation, alternating tanks and DD’s where possible. He’s going to try for harassment so we need to push him.”

Not everyone followed her directions, and she saw at least one overconfident damage dealer from the right side completely fail to follow, resulting in a healer “missing” him with her magic.

It was pretty obviously intentional, though, from the fact that it hit the goblin to his right that he’d hit, knocked over, failed to kill, and ignored, resulting in him getting gored in the side with one of the spears, followed by his death and shattering into shards.

It was a shame to lose a player. It wasn’t a shame that he got killed afterwards.

Circular formations weren’t nearly as fast to move, requiring near constant talking on the part of one of the support players in the middle to keep them moving towards the Goblin King. On the back of the circle as she was, she was only seeing the goblins whenever they were spawned near her, but things fairly quickly changed when the King himself came waddling into her field of view.

He was fairly damaged, but not nearly as much as he should be.

For a moment, Deyana fought against the temptation to just go running at him, but sense eventually won out. It wouldn’t do them any good if she went out on her half-stamina and got herself killed, tightening the circle even more around the ranged players in the middle.

A fireball shot over her head, making contact with the King.

It splashed almost uselessly against his skin.

Actually… a little bit above it.

“Move towards six!”

She could start moving now, slightly ahead of where the King was currently walking. That fireball had told her something though, and nobody else had mentioned it.

“King’s enchanted! Cylinder Air Shield!”

“Shit” a woman’s voice from behind her said as a bunch of arrows followed that fireball. “I’d hoped I was imagining it.”

She raised her voice. “Anyone here have piercing?”

A bunch of noises of confusion followed that. Not too surprising. Most of the players here would have gone through the raid fighting tutorial as they entered the area rather than having prior experience.

“I do,” Deyana answered. “But I’m going to need some space for regen.”

“Off the line then, and outside needs to cover! Keep hitting him, but she’ll be breaking the shield.”

It was a simple matter to pull back the few feet required for that, allowing the two people next to her to space into where she’d been. The sixty second combat timer started ticking.

She had a job to do in the meantime. Just hitting the King wouldn’t be enough to break his shield, she’d have to find the enchanted item and either break it or remove it from him, with the understanding that she’d only be able to do moderate damage to the King himself.

The fireballs were what eventually tipped her off. Even as the King was moving, no part of him seemed to be out of the shield, and it seemed to move with him.

So it was either a belt or…

His crown.

“Found it,” she said, tipping off the woman who had been calling the shots, “It’s on the crown.”

“Got it. Combat timer?”

“Thirty seconds.”

“Got it.”

Waiting that time was agony, though. She couldn’t really afford to do much more than walk slowly, with the group.

Finally, her timer ticked over and the out-of-combat regeneration started. Her stamina was capped.

“I don’t need to go out through the line, but I need a break in attacks.”

“Got it. Hold fire!”

Deyana was no new player, so she didn’t immediately trust tha the players would follow the direction quickly.

It was a good thing, too, as two more fireballs and four arrows went off before finally stopping.

The king was close, now, but she had a trick up her sleeve.

Well, more accurately, on her boots.

Jump-activate-jump-deactivate-activate-jump-deactivate-activate-stand took her above the heads of the players in the crowd, and she took five steps forward, focusing carefully on each one to ensure that the air stop was formed at the right time of each.

The King took a swing at her with the large bone it was using as a club, but it wasn’t the most threatening speed in the world, forcing her to take a step forward, making contact with his barrier and nothing more.

With being level fourteen now, she had enough mana to fully run her sword as she swung, cutting through the shield to make contact with the crown, cutting somewhat into the Goblin king’s head as well but not doing all that much real damage to it.

What did deal damage was the crown melting on his head. Like most runic items, it couldn’t hold together when heavily damaged, and running mana through it resulted in the destruction of the item. Unfortunately, it was also a monster magic item, which meant that even if she’d wanted to take it, it would have been slowly destroyed by a person’s mana anyways.

She was almost out of mana between the sword and the boots, though. Two more steps brought her above the open spot behind the line, then she deactivated the boots, falling to the ground.

Not a particularly difficult landing, but she still had to move more quickly than she would have liked to avoid running into anyone.

At least all that was left was cleanup.