We spent the next hour or so hunting down and clearing out groups of Terror Chicks one after the other. Thanks to Tylie keeping an eye out for ambushes we were prepared whenever another group of Terror Chicks decided to join the fight and we actually only had one time that things nearly went sideways.

The incident occurred while we were fighting a particularly annoying group of Terror Chicks that had decided to focus their attention on Warren instead of Jameson despite the latter using a taunt to try and get them to attack him instead. The taunt had been partially successful but when two of the three Terror Chicks that had been ravaging Warren had peeled off to focus their attention on Jameson another group of Terror Chicks had decided to attack Evie and the others behind us. As such I was forced to leave Warren, Fern, Tylie and Jameson to take care of the three we had already been fighting so that the ranged members of our party weren’t killed.

This also gave me a chance to use my new Lightning Stream spell. The continuous bolt of lightning that had leapt from my fingers to hit the lead Terror Chick had been awe-inspiring to witness. It also allowed me to deal a significant amount of damage while I was running towards our ranged party members. I did receive a dirty look from Yarrol as I ran past though. I couldn’t really blame him for being upset; the lightning bolt had gone right past his head after all. It was entirely possible that had even been on purpose.

As soon as I got close enough I had activated my Lunge Skill which had allowed me to quickly close in and put the blade of my naginata through the open mouth of one of the Terror Chicks which had been about to attack Katy who was currently fighting off the one that I had blasted with lightning.

While Katy and I killed the Terror Chicks that had attempted to ambush us Yarrol and Kelly had backed us up with magic. While we were fighting the ambushers, Evie kept the others healthy with her healing magic just in case more Terror Chicks ambushed them. In the end things actually turned out fine. Well other than the bellyaching from Yarrol who was full of things to say about both my methods of dealing with the ambush and Tylie’s lack of ability to prevent the ambush from happening to begin with.

In the end no-one had been able to refute what he was saying but his words hadn’t exactly done anything to endear him to the others any more than any of the other things that he had done so far today had.

Even now everyone else was avoiding the sullen guard while they quickly ate the food that they had brought with them. We had killed enough Terror Chicks now that Everyone had unlocked new Skills except for me. I was approaching halfway to my next set of bonuses from my Soul Cores, but Jameson had decided that we would be making a move on the Adolescent Terror Birds after we had finished our break so I probably wouldn’t unlock them today. Not unless something went horribly wrong.

When he had unlocked his last set of Bonuses Warren had chosen to increase his Constitution since he was a tank and his Spirit to increase the amount of damage he could do with his sceptre. On the other hand, Kelly had increased her Spirit and Spirit regen so that she could cast more powerful spells more often.

Two of the other three members of our little party had also unlocked new Skills and spells as well. Evie had unlocked a spell that allowed her to cleanse someone of a weak status effect like poison or paralysis which would be extremely useful when we went to kill the toad things later on. Fern had unlocked the same Skill for both of her daggers again that allowed her to attack multiple times in a single second which would massively increase her ability to deal a lot of damage extremely quickly. Katy hadn’t quite managed to reach the next level of bonuses yet, but she was really close.

Once we were done eating, we made our way closer to the field where the Terror Birds were waiting for us again. As we got closer the foul stench of rotting meat filled the air which surprised me since I hadn’t noticed it the other day.

“What’s that smell?” Kelly gasped as she quickly covered her face.

“That’ll be the piles,” Jameson replied with a disgusted grimace on his face.

“Piles?”

“You know how owls cough up pallets because they can’t digest bones and stuff?” Jameson asked. “And adult birds chuck up partially digested food for their chicks. It’s like a cross between those two things; Terror Birds don’t always digest everything before chucking it back up so that the hatchlings can eat the partially digest meat. This is actually part of the reason why Terror Birds are so hated; those piles of partially digested food are full of diseases that spread like wildfire through the local ecosystem because Terror Birds are simply breeding grounds for all sorts of things that you really don’t want to get infected with. On that note be really careful when we start fighting the Adolescent Terror Birds because you will get poisoned, they manage to peck you.”

“Holy shit,” I muttered. “I’m really glad that Evie unlocked that new spell now.”

“Well even if she hadn’t Yarrol has a better one,” Jameson replied before lowering his voice and continuing. “But yeah I agree.”

“Yeah, there’s no way that I’ counting on that prick when any of us need help,” I whispered back, and Jameson nodded in agreement.

“He’s always been a bit troublesome, but this is different,” the big man agreed quietly. “Normally he isn’t this bad. But I agree; don’t rely on him if anything goes wrong for any of your party.”

Once he had finished talking Jameson moved on leaving me looking after him with a frown on my face. It was a bit odd to me that Jameson was talking like this about one of his subordinates. On the other hand, it was even odder that Jameson had brought this particular subordinate along with us when Jameson already knew he was difficult to deal with. Something was going on here and I wasn’t sure that I liked it at all.

The smell only got worse as we crept closer and by the time, we had reached the same break in the stone wall that I had hidden behind on the first day we were all basically gagging with every breath. It was at this point that Jameson called (or rather choked) for a halt and pulled several bottles out of a small bag on his back.

“Drink these, we can’t fight like this,” he told us as he handed them out. “These potions will shut down our ability to smell the stench so that we can actually fight. There’s also something mixed in that should increase to resistance to any airborne diseases. It won’t stop you from getting poisoned by a Terror Bird’s saliva though so be careful.”

Quickly chugging down the odd tasting potion we gasped in relief as our sense of smell completely shut down allowing us to breathe properly.

“Why didn’t you give those to us earlier?” Yarrol grumbled and for the first time that we had met I found myself agreeing with him on something.

“Because these potions will only last for ten minutes,” Jameson replied. “So, it was best that we hold off on using them until the last minute because I don’t know how long it will take to defeat the Terror Birds.”

Well that made sense, but it didn’t stop Yarrol from grumbling some more as Jameson and I peeked around the broken part of the wall to see the once verdant field covered in plies of partially digest meat and eggs. Some of the eggs had already hatched and there were some incredibly ugly hatchings feeding off of the repulsive piles of flesh and bone that had been strewn around the field.

But it wasn’t any of these things that caught our attention. No, it was the small group of Terror Birds that were considerably larger than the ones that we had already fought today. In this small group there were two members that were even larger than the rest that I immediately identified as our targets. Checking the Levels of these Terror Birds I was forced to bite back a curse when I saw that even the weakest among them was now Level 21 and the strongest was now Level 27.

“Holy shit they’re growing fast!” I hissed at Jameson who nodded calmly.

“Don’t worry my Level is still higher than theirs is,” he replied quietly. “So is Tylie’s for that matter. We’ll be fine. Besides Tylie and Yarrol should both be carrying some stuff that will help us cut down their numbers a bit.”

“Okay,” I nodded as we turned back to the others in time to see both Yarrol and Tylie carefully removing several round vials made of different coloured glass from their own satchels.

“May I ask what those are?” I asked Tylie.

“Various alchemical solutions,” she replied. “The green ones are acid and the red and blue ones will explode upon impact.”

“Ah, that explains why you two are carrying them instead of Jameson then,” Fern nodded. “But why didn’t you give them to us so that we could put them in our Inventory.

As soon as Fern mentioned this, I heard a slapping sound followed by a loud groan from behind me.

“Yeah that would’ve been a better plan,” Jameson sighed. “I completely forgot that you guys could do stuff like that. That would’ve been much safer than us carrying around dangerous compounds.”

“Yes, yes it would’ve been,” Warren said as he slowly edged away from the dangerous vials of liquid. “More importantly though. I’m not sure that those are going to be enough to make it so that we can be useful in this fight.”

“The potions Yarrol had been carrying with him should help with that,” Jameson replied as Yarrol glared at him. Apparently, he hadn’t been told that he was carrying the potions for us. “Thankfully I made sure to pack some extras so there will be enough for all of you.”

“Well that’s a relief,” Warren nodded. “Which ones are which?”

Once we had sorted out who got what potions we went over the plan for this fight. As one might expect the only one who was going to directly engage the Terror Birds was Jameson as he was the only one who was going to be able to take more than one hit from the powerful monsters that we were about to fight even if Warren drank every single last potion that increased defence or HP. Thankfully most of us had the ability to attack from range so the main plan was for the rest of us to focus on the weakest Terror Bird in the group until we had killed it and moving onto the next one. In the end we decided to give most of the acid and explosives to Fern since she was the only one who didn’t have any ranged attacks.

“This is going to be a tough one,” Jameson told us once he had finished explaining his plan. “I know that you can all deal with it when things go wrong but let’s do our best to try and keep things from going too terribly wrong.”

“We’ll do our best,” I agreed. We all knew that he was right; no plan survives first contact with the enemy. It was good to know that he had faith that we would be able to handle it. When we had started off today, Jameson had been making sure to keep an eye on us to make sure that we were going to be fine but that had changed as we had slowly proved ourselves over the course of the day.

“I know you will,” Jameson nodded. “Right no point wasting any more time. Let’s go.”

We all got into formation and ran out into the field behind Jameson immediately attracting the attention of all of the Terror Birds and Terror Chicks and we charged towards the group of more powerful monsters. We all took swings at the hatchlings as we ran past them but most of them managed to get out of our way in time to avoid getting killed by us.

As soon as he was close enough Jameson activated a taunting Skill to make sure that he was the only one who was going to be attacked and then immediately chained two Skills together; the same Shield Bash Skill that Warren could use which he used on the Terror Bird that we were targeting quickly followed another Skill where he smashed the pommel of his axe into the most powerful Terror Bird.

As soon as she got close enough Fern tossed a vial at each of the stunned Terror Chicks. One of them splattered the surrounding area with a surprisingly viscous fluid that started dissolving whatever it touched instantly and the other exploded with a surprisingly powerful thumping sound that nearly made me miss my step and go tumbling to the ground from surprise as the Terror Bird that it had smashed into burst into bright green flames that didn’t look like they were going to go out any time soon.

Jameson used another taunting Skill to make sure that none of us attracted any unwanted attention as he was showered with healing spells from both Evie and Yarrol which quickly closed the wounds that the Terror Birds that hadn’t been stunned had caused.

Casting Jolt at the weakest Terror Bird as it shook off the stunning effect of Jameson’s Shield Bash caused it to start convulsing as the electrical charge travelled through its body which left an opening for me to take an advantage of. I immediately did so and cast my Lightning Stream spell as the others joined in by attacking the Terror Bird with their own ranged attacks.

As we whittled down the health of the Terror Chick Jameson did an excellent job of keeping all of the Terror Birds focussed on him despite all of the damage that they were dealing to him. It was now that Yarrol showed us why he had been brought along by constantly chaining healing spells that ranged from the faster healing of light spells which were the type that Evie used to the slower types like Water and Nature Magic. In fact, if it wasn’t for his attitude, I would be very happy to party up with him again from this showing of his skills alone. He even managed to use his magic to slow down several of the Terror Birds with vines that erupted out of the ground and wrapped around their legs.

Tylie was also doing extremely well. Her chakrams were extremely effective weapons in this particular case. Both of the weapons danced around the Terror Bird that we were attacking leaving long and very painful lacerations in its already burning hide. Every now and again the chakrams would hit multiple targets before returning to her and being thrown again which was another one of her Skills.

In fact, the person who was doing the least amount of damage was Warren since he had to wait for his only ranged attack to come off of cooldown. Even I could do more damage than he could by using Spirit Potions whenever I ran out of Spirit. But that was okay because his job was mostly to jump in if one of the Terror Birds if it managed to break free of Jameson’s taunts.

Katy was probably the best at dealing damage out of the non-guards in the group and it really was a good thing that it was impossible to run out of arrows in this game since by the time the first Terror Bird finally fell she would’ve run out several times over.

Kelly was also doing a decent amount of damage but her main contribution was creating walls around us so that we wouldn’t be attacked by another group of Terror Birds. If something went wrong and Warren had to step in, then she would also be putting up a wall between them and Jameson so that we could isolate a single bird when we started running out of potions. This was of course the worst possible outcome since that would mean that Yarrol would have to move so that he could keep healing Jameson but hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. Evie would be sticking around to keep our HP up but if Jameson went down, we were all screwed.

We took out the second and third of the birds before we started to run out of potions and things started to get a bit more difficult. As planned Warren, Fern and I entered melee range and started attacking our newest target. As soon as it switched its focus to Warren we immediately backed off and a wall of earth rose up behind it.

Warren still couldn’t take more than one hit if he wasn’t careful but that was okay as I could take a hit or use my Barrier and Ward Skills to block attacks as well. Ward wouldn’t be as effective since even a glancing blow from the beast would tear through it like wet tissue paper, but it would still allow me to take a single hit without dying. As soon as the wall of earth rose up behind the Terror Bird Warren activated his Shield Bash Skill slamming it backwards into the wall and pinning it there. This allowed the rest of us to attack the creature without too much fear of being attacked by it.

It was however able to savagely maul Warren with its hind legs as soon as it recovered from the stun but Evie was able to heal him before it managed to kill him and he stepped away just in time for me to use my Barrier Skill to buy us some more time. Warren quickly downed a healing potion before activating his defence boosting Skill and stepped back into the fray.

It was honestly inspiring to see him doing this even though I had seen him do similar things many times before. Even if the pain settings were lowered by 50% getting nearly disembowelled had to be incredibly painful but he never flinched.

Eventually we managed to kill the Terror Bird but even with healing potions and Evie’s magic Warren was looking pretty beaten up. The good news was there were now only the two most powerful Terror Birds to go. However, this was also the bad news. We had no more Stat Boosting potions or damaging potions remaining, and we were even starting to run low on healing and Spirit ones as well.

We were also all pretty tired at this point, but we also knew that we couldn’t stop now.

“Right,” I said while Warren all but fell on his ass as blood ran from his various wounds. “You wait here for Evie to bring you back to full health. The rest of us will help Jameson out with those last to Terror Birds.”

“Sounds good man, thanks,” my friend agreed. “Don’t mess this up now.”

“Right,” I nodded before looking around at the others who looked back with determined expressions on their faces. “Let’s do this.”