Guild Run: The Next Frontier [CLOSED/GROUP]

[Fernweh]

Fernweh felt the drain on his mana plummet as his salamander and golem were killed, followed by a twinge of guilt. He had sacrificed the two of them as a diversion to get to safety, but they were still alive in this world. It wasn’t like before anymore, when you could sacrifice things in a game just because you knew they’d come back. Here you could touch it, give it a stick or something. It was alive. Or at least kind of alive in a sense for the golem. Didn’t that mean that in some regard they had rights just as he did? They surely didn’t want to die being crushed under a giant golem’s fist that’s for sure.

Punching a nearby tree, the Fox Tail stood still for a second as he tried to quell his anger and regain his composure. It had been a close call, a really close call. Probably the closest he’s been to death since he found himself in this world. Opening up the menu and pulling up the party screen, Fernweh let out a sigh of relief. So they both made it eh?~ Albeit just barely from the looks of it. Hiro had been knocked down to roughly a third of his health taking those blows. It did appear that Midori made it away scot-free though. If he was to guess they’d show up around him in a bit. Especially when he considered the fact that going anywhere else would have been suicide.

No sooner had he thought that did his two companions arrive and determined to observe the towering golem till it despawned. Waiting…. Waiting… Waiting… While Fernweh didn’t mind the time to relax and recoup after the near death experience his companions didn’t seem as enthusiastic. Before too long though the hulking figure collapsed to the ground and Hiro was up on his feet, heading for the mountain to set up camp and observe more of the surrounding area. Begrudgingly, the Fox Tail followed after. If we set up camp at least we can get some food and sleep~ he rationalized. Then again, going up the mountain meant a greater chance of finding those Rock Parasite things Midori had spoken of earlier, not a particularly pleasant thought to the summoner.

Grateful for being exempt from the first watch, Fernweh sat down next to the tent and shrugged to Midori’s hypothesis. “I haven’t seen too much of the front lines here, though I wouldn’t be surprised if that hulking bastard had something to do with them. Maybe it’s their mother or something,” he sarcastically reasoned. She did have a good point though; the only problem was they would have a hard time proving it. If they could somehow get in touch with someone back at the forward camp then maybe they could inform them of the reactions on the line in turn with the reactions from the field boss hear. Yawning, he asked, “Maybe if one of you knows someone back at the Forward Camp we can radio in and get some idea? Otherwise we’re going to have a hard time proving anything.”

Word Count: 520
Thread Count: 2579

[Hirosame]

Hiro stopped for a moment, and turned back around, to face his allies, while they were conversing about what to do with the information regarding the Stonehenge Golem. Midori's frozen-dagger stare concerning Hiro's recent actions aside, the Sorceress suggested that the boss would have decreased the number of enemies on the field, and that a clearing group could use that time to clear open a path to the city. Hiro paused to think about it for a moment, before giving it a bit more thought. It was like chess, in a sense, and the Stonehenge golem was the queen. Normally, the queen would have itself surrounded by Rooks, Knights, and Bishops, to defend against enemy attacks, until the queen was ready to make its attack. Once it began, the queen would be an almost unstoppable force that didn't require many other units. So the same could be said about the current situation, in that the queen would lower the number of pawns on the front lines, to make their attacks more effective.

This would, in turn, give the adventurers a bit more of a chance to strike during that period of time. While the queen was off waiting in the distance, the front line can be pushed back. Sure, eventually, they'd need to fight the queen in order to break though completely, but that wouldn't be before they thin out the enemy's numbers. Effectively. Sure, it was useful information, but how could they get others to believe it? One idea was to go out and search the area for artifacts, or something of value, that would help prove the existence of this monster. Another idea would be to bring more people out to witness it. It would all depend on what Hiro would find in a few minutes, when he headed back out there. For now, though, he should probably let Midori and Fernweh know about his ideas. He turned back to them once again, and nodded at their conversation, before taking a few steps back to the camp, and kneeling down.

"Midori's right, the monsters on the front lines would probably be lessened." He began, taking a stick and drawing a rough diagram. He drew a circle, representing the camp, a dashed line showing their route that they had taken, and the Stonehenge site which was represented by a square. The space in between would represent the front lines, and the distance between the camp and Stonehenge. "If you think of this like a chess board, the Stonehenge golem would be the queen, and the front lines would be the pawns. Once the queen is in play, the pawns would be rather useless, correct? So what Midori said makes sense, and that the time to strike would be when the golem is active." He put the stick down, and looked at the two. "I'll come back here in a few days, with a couple others, to determine about when it spawns and respawns, and the distance a group would have to fight the golem in. Think of it as the battle radius." He stood back up, and looked to the site. "As for right now, we should think of stuff to help prove that the existence of the Stonehenge golem isn't just folklore."

Hiro turned to Midori, and beckoned her to follow him. "Midori, come with me, and let's check out the site, since it looks inactive now. We have a bit of time before it hits night, so we should probably be able to find something of value." He turned to Fernweh, and thought that he should make up for his earlier actions. "Fernweh, if you could, you mind jotting down that diagram on a piece of paper or something? Afterwards, I'd like it if you could watch over the camp while we're gone. You can go ahead and summon up a familiar to watch it for you, if you wanna take a rest, too. Just make sure that you get the diagram down." Turning to Midori, and motioning towards the site, Hiro started to walk. "The reason I need you with me is because you, being a Half-Alv Sorceress, would probably be able to detect magic better than I would. Plus, Fernweh needs some rest. He probably used up more mana than you and I combined against Stonehenge. He needs a break, I guess." Hiro turned back to her, gave her a slight smile, before turning back to the site. The Magicked Ruin Golems were still patrolling, so he'd need to keep Midori safe while they searched. That was what he decided on himself to do, whether she liked it or not.

[775 Words]

[Midori]

[attr="class","polaris"] [attr="class","girtab"] [attr="class","gif"] [attr="class","backgroundsinister"] [attr="class","stardust"] [attr="class","lockedroom"] [attr="class","murasak"] Pay the price of karma and let's go together. If you thought about it, an active Queen in play meant that people were less likely to notice the other pieces making any moves. They would be too focused on the queen and how to defeat the queen that they would eventually corner themselves in the long run. By the time you managed to defeat the Queen, there were plenty of other sacrifices that had been made. Many of your Pawns were gone, leaving you wide open to that Rook. Or perhaps you had expended both your Knights, only to cause the Queen to retreat for a couple of turns before regrouping back into a renewed assault. Either way, Stonehenge was the boss of the valley, no doubt about it. But this statement was counterintuitive to the suggestion she had just made and Hiro's interpretation of the message. It was just that this sort of thing was usually typical for a game. Whenever there was a large concentration of power in one area, the game would be fair and be more lenient in other places. Otherwise, there would have been nothing stopping games from practically throwing all their main generals at your party and basically stopping you from winning through attrition after all. Most RPGs would have been unplayable if the main villain had decided to be smart and chose to attack you with all their forces while you were still about one hour into the game. Then again, this trope gets played straight fairly often, and whenever it does, typically something happens to save the heroes at the last second. It was just convenient plot armor, after all. The villains were just unfortunate that they weren't portrayed as the playable characters of the game. Think how frustrating it would be if you were a villain and you were about to beat your nemesis, but then a cheating cutscene stops you just in time. And then the heroes become overpowered and beat you in one hit, spouting some story about friendship. Actually, that sounds a bit familiar. Regardless, they wouldn't be able to really investigate how plausible the idea would have been unless there was evidence that Stonehenge's spawning interrupts other monsters from appearing. They would likely have to contact someone at the main camp and ask whether or not the spawn rate was decreasing at around this time. But for now, since the group didn't have any ways of confirming that the field boss was actually a real being, they needed to investigate the area while it was safe. Stonehenge had materialized, and so with it, the golems were also present. Fortunately, there were no golems that had spawned extremely close to their position, so they were mostly safe as long as no loud footsteps were made and if magic was kept to a minimum.  Touko followed her co-leader's suggestion and walked up to the mystical ruins. For the most part, she didn't really notice anything other than the sign of some kind of magical rune that was embedded in the stone. It was faint, but she could sense that something was there. Call it an intuition much like the feeling that you were trying to guess what was in someone's luggage simply by looking at its size and shape. Clearly nobody other than airport security would really understand, but she could feel that there was indeed some sort of mana connection between the rocks. Not to mention, when they had seen the field boss earlier, it wasn't just a golem made from rock. It was magitech. Specifically, there had been something underneath the altar that was mechanical in nature. She could tell that the mana from the stones was connected to the altar and whatever lied underneath. "I'm very confident that there's something underneath the altar, if you remember that Stonehenge had that magitech arm. It just seems familiar for some reason, even though we've never really seen any kind of magitech in this world yet..." [attr="class","notesbg"] NOTES SKILLS WORDS 658 CREDIT BY jumpstart! of btn and ote [attr="class","borderradius"] 皐月 冬子

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[Hirosame]

What Midori was saying was very true: Stonehenge certainly had some sort of a mechanical arm or something. Something Hiro hadn't seen before. It was definitely magitech. But, who made it? Where did it come from? Why was it here? There were so many questions surrounding the idea, that Hiro just had to look into it. But, before he could do much about looking, Hiro looked up at the party monitor, and saw that Fernweh's name had been removed. Hiro gave a disgruntled sigh, figuring that the guy went ahead and assumed that Hiro meant that he should just go ahead and head back to town. That was the exact opposite of what he meant. He wanted Fernweh to watch over the camp, to make sure that none of their stuff got stolen. But, it couldn't really be helped, Fernweh being the kind of guy he was. Seriously, Hiro was surprised that there was an even more laid back person that he was, so much so that the laziness went so far as to have him misconstrue the words Hiro said and took it as "Take the rest of the day off."

Hiro shook the thought from his head, and started to look around the site. The other golems were still far enough away that he and Midori would be able to take their time when it came to finding anything. But, it looked like there wasn't anything on the surface, let alone on the rock faces themselves. It would probably take some excavation to find something, but he figured that he might as well search the exterior before trying to get into the dirt. Hiro took a few moments to look around, and saw that there wasn't really anything else to look at. He frowned a bit, knowing that he and Midori wasted a bit of time here. Sighing, he turned back around to the girl, and gave her a defeated look. "I guess there's nothing that we can quickly access, in order to look into anything. I can come back tomorrow and look more, but I'm not sure if we can find anything today. Besides, the golems are approaching."

He wasn't lying, the golems were getting closer. So, he started to walk away, with Midori following, more than likely. He went ahead and started to clean up the campsite, noticing how Fernweh left almost everything there, save for a few articles of food. He sighed again, and started to clean things up. There was plenty of time for them to get back to the campsite before much more time passed. They'd probably get back to London by nightfall, if they moved from here at an even pace. After packing everything up, Hiro started back to the campsite, where he would fill out a paper to show that he, Midori, and reluctantly Fernweh, went out to the fields today, and found out things. After finishing that up, he started to walk back to London, wondering if he'd be able to find anything in the next day. He already knew who'd he invite, and he had sent them both messages before, so he should have their responses by now. Focusing on getting some sleep tonight, Hiro returned to London.

[539 Words]