Aykroyd's Got Nothing On Us [Mentor/Invite]

[Valerie]

After Valerie’s strike, the skeleton monster was about to hit the Swashbuckler with the handle of the hammer and the girl arched her spine back to narrowly dodge the incoming hit, but a powerful shockwave exploded from the monk, and caused the axe wielding skeleton and the hammer skeleton to disappear into anima. The girl had quite a bit of experience fighting, though her current level was very low and knew that a hit from the handle of the hammer would have at least halved the damage that would have been normally dealt and with her movement to dodge the attack, would have either ended with weapon grazing the Swashbuckler or simply missing the girl entirely. But Valerie never had the chance to see what would happen as the skeleton in front of her disappeared before she could see.

Shuwen apologized for kill stealing, though it made no difference since they were in a party together. Valerie shrugged it off, but her expression was cold. The Swashbuckler had purposely led the monster away to fight it alone, but the monk had killed her target before she had the chance to finish it off. She was not particularly happy about it, as it felt like a job not finished. This was one of the reasons the Swashbuckler didn’t like fighting alongside other people and preferred soloing. But the girl said nothing at that moment since it was not time. Not yet, but soon.

She watched Sunny shoot the shield user and blast it away before she turned to face the spear user. "Sunny and I got this." Valerie said emotionlessly to the monk without facing him before she refocused her attention to her target. It had little health remaining, but its weapon had a much larger reach than Valerie's daggers, which could be dangerous for the close combat fighter. The dancer sheathed her left dagger as she planned her attack. Darting over, she ran and slammed her right shoulder into the skeleton's side, as it was still focused on Shuwen, and used her free hand to grab onto its weapon to prevent the sharp end from hitting her and sank her dagger into the monster's side. The skeleton focused its attention onto Valerie and moved its boney elbow to jab into the girl's side, trying to free its weapon from the adventurer's grasp. Reluctantly, she left go, but she pushed the spear away from her, using it to push herself behind the skeleton. As she faced its back, she caught the blunt end of the weapon and raised it up before pushing it downward into the earth in front of it. Then the swashbuckler repeatedly slashed at the back of the monster, taking out her anger on the monster in front of her with a blank expression, concealing all the negative emotions swirling inside of her.

Soon the skeleton disappeared into anima and the girl panted softly. When she caught her breath, Valerie stormed over to Shuwen and glared at the monk. "There is no reason you need to be kill stealing from your party members." She said, her voice dead and empty. "I know you're some level 36 monk who can pretty much clear everything in one move, but I think you are forgetting that Sunny and I are still level ones. But if you're planning to fight by yourself and get all the kills, then I see no reason to be in your party." The Swashbuckler stated cruelly before continuing her rant. "I joined this quest to learn how to fight better and practice fighting, not to get more gold or experience points, which is what will end up happening if you keep fighting like that. So you better change something or I'm just going to leave this party because no one likes to party with someone who steals all the kills." Valerie finished, rather breathless after from talking nonstop for a long time.

After a bit, the girl began to feel bad for suddenly yelling at someone he just met. Valerie lowered her head and allowed her hair to veil her face. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have yell at you." The girl said quietly, "But if you don't want to kill steal, I heard some higher level players talking about lowering their level... So I guess you can do that if you want to." The girl suggested timidly. She still felt incredibly bad for blowing up, but her weakness was her low tolerance for people looking down on her ad taking her targets, kills.


Words: 756
OOC: new. I'm sorry if this is really crappy, writing on mobile sucks.

[Shuwen]

Words: 584

As Shuwen feared, they both appeared to be angry at him. Sunny gave him the same look she gave the enemies to be defeated, before knocking away the shield and swordsman with a ranged skill, Valerie coldly requested he sit it out for the remainder of the battle, while the two of them finish off the remaining opponents. The monk sighed. Unfortunately, he still couldn’t do nothing, as his attack had drawn quite a bit of agro. He’d Valerie even as she attacked it, but for some reason it continued to focus on her instead, so she simply traded blows with it, somehow managing to avoid taking any damage. Honestly, Shuwen was beginning to get awfully curious about her ability to avoid damage. Swashbucklers had high attack speed and an interesting skillset, but their evasion and other stats were nothing special for a damage dealer. As a monk, a class noted for having high evasion, he’d had a fair amount of luck dodging enemy attacks, but that luck was very limited when he fighting them head on; the only time he’d been able to successfully dodge everything being thrown at him were when he was putting his all into evading, a sort of trade off for not attacking at all. I guess these perticular mobs haven’t yet been able to adapt to marital techniques and things that couldn’t be done when it was just a game. Long stabbing attacks were hardly the only way to use a spear. Still, he could have sworn spear-wielders had some animations of sweeping attacks, used quarterstaff blocks, and had some ability to track moving opponents. Maybe he was mistaken? Then again, these are skeletons. Maybe their lack of brain matter started to effect them after the apocalypse? It was certainly something to contemplate. I should bring it up during my next meeting with Jacoben The Foxtail would probably be interested in hearing of this.

Unfortunately, once the fighting was complete, it was time for the talking to continue. He didn’t know about Sunny, but Valerie was still definitely mad him him for kill stealing, as she began to rant at him.

“What do you mea-”

“Wha- I’m not-”

“I wasn’t try to-”

Fortunately, she seemed to calm down once she’d had a chance to let off steam, and even apoplogized, before suggesting an alternative. “What do you mean lev- ah, wait.” Shuwen brought up the menu on his interface. It had been explained in the guide, but he’d never bothered using it, due to him never before partying up with someone significantly lower leveled them himself, so he’d all but forgotten about the function. Having been reminded of it, Shuwen began to manipulate the menu, having some trouble finding it, as he’d yet to use this particular function. After some fumbling around, he found the proper way to use the function, and the number that indicated his level began to drop. Honestly, it made Shuwen more then a little nervous to see his stats dropping so easily, but it was irrational, and he managed to shove that fear aside for the time being. The traveling shoes on his feet disappeared, replaced by the default footwear, and the Stratford throwing knives at his waist also vanished, replaced by the default throwing knives. On the interface, his level was replaced by a shiny white “4”.“Satisfied?” He asked. “I didn’t pick up my first agro-drawing skill until this level, so I thought it would be the best point to stop at.”

[Sunny]

Fortunately for Sunny, she didn't have to wait nearly as long this time around. The cooldown for Magnum shot was a measly six seconds. Coupled with the fact that she'd shot the skeleton from a comfortable and long range, she didn't have to worry so much about playing tango with the monster. As it came for her, the Ritualist lifted her palm and activated Holy Banishment once more, knocking the skeleton back and down for the count. After watching its life force bubble then dissipate, the Swashbuckler turned to examine the rest of the area, only to find that she'd been the last to defeat her monster. Valerie and Shuwen were currently having a heart-to-heart, so to speak, which made the Brazilian grimace. She had a good idea of what it was about and was not looking forward to hearing what they had to say to one another. Approaching the pair, she fiddled with her head-band, tightening it. She locked her hands behind her neck and waited for Valerie to finish saying her piece.

As far as their situation with kill-stealing went, Sunny wasn't as bothered about it as she thought she'd be. The fact that the guy had apologized meant that he hadn't intended to do it, which meant that it had been accident. It tended to happen with groups that were unfamiliar with each other's skills and fighting styles. Maybe if they had a strategist on-board, they could come up with great fighting tactics. Anything to keep them from tripping over one another and causing more problems.

When it seemed as if the two had come to a happy-medium, the Swashbuckler came up behind the pair and slapped them each on the shoulders, grinning in good-humor. "Heey, fique tranquilo, friends. S'no big deal, eh? What's done is done. Just gotta make sure it doesn't happen again, s'all." Perhaps, now would be a good time to reveal more about her abilities. Maybe they could come up with a good strategy. It'd give them all a chance to cool off ,at any rate, and encourage a sense of teamwork. "While we've got the time. . .I know a skill called Crash Shot. It targets multiple enemies Only thing is. . .it can't tell the difference between friend and foe. I'm thinking. . ." She motioned towards the Monk. "While you distract them, Valerie and I could use skills that target multiple foes before going in one-on-one." Or something like that. It didn't matter as long as her teammates knew to get out of the way before she used the skill. Last thing she wanted was to take-out a member of her own party. Now that'd be in just plain, bad taste.

---

Words: 451

Shuwen
Valerie

[Valerie]

The Swashbuckler’s face was dark as she debated what to do after she yelled at a party member, it was simply a horrible way to start it off, right after the first fight. The monk beside her began to fiddle with his controls, and Valerie turned to look at him curiously. When he stopped, seemed to be finished whatever he was doing, the identification panel that hovered about Shuwen showed that he was a level 4 monk and her dark violet eyes quickly took in the newly changed monk once more, noting the basic equipment he had on at the moment, ones that were similar to Valerie and Sunny’s. He asked if she was satisfied with it, adding on that that was the level below his first agro drawing skill. Valerie smiled and nodded, but quickly looked away, still feeling uncomfortable about what she had done and mentally slapped herself multiple times for acting so irrationally. She no longer felt hatred or dislike toward the monk, but instead, she was overwhelmed by a sense of regret and sorrow for blowing up.

Then Valerie noticed Sunny standing close by but not involving in the conversation, which was noticeably tense. Then the girl walked up behind Valerie and Shuwen, slapping them both on the shoulder playfully, making the Dancer smile a bit. Sunny spoke with a slang that Valerie was not familiar with, but she still managed to understand the Exorcist from the context. The girl suggested a skill that she had, called Crash Shot. Valerie vaguely remembered the skill, but she only noted that it was a ranged skill for firearms and bows, and did Valerie, a dagger user, no good. Sunny kept talking, bring up a strategy that the Dancer though was a pretty good idea, it gave every member a change to use their skills and make kills. Valerie nodded and turned to face the other Swashbuckler directly to asked her a question.

“How does your skill work? Crash Shot?” Valerie asked, tilting her head to the side a bit as she questioned Sunny. It would most likely benefit Shuwen and Valerie to know more about her skill to prevent taking unnecessary damage from Sunny’s skill. Well, she didn’t know about Shuwen, but Valerie didn’t like the idea of taking unnecessary damage from an ally without having a heal skill, it would just be reckless.


Words: 396

[Shuwen]

Words: 591

With his level decreased, Valerie expressed her satisfaction and they went back to working on the job at hand. Sunny brought up one of her skills, Crash Shot, and quickly explained it’s benefits and dangers. Shuwen was actually familiar with this one; in fact, he’d briefly possessed it before he’d changed his roleplay subclass from Hunter to Priest. It was a useful skill, at least as far as he could tell. However, he decided to hold his tongue regarding that; it wouldn’t really contribute to the discussion, and they’d taken up enough time as it was. There was another potential problem with the skill though, one he figured ought to be addressed. “It looks like we’re about to head indoors. Can you use a skill like that with a roof over everyone’s head? ” As he recalled, the skill worked by firing a projectile over the targets’ heads, and letting the resulting shrapnel come down on them from above, useful for dealing with opponents who were hiding behind cover, but not so useful in tight spaces or under low ceilings where there wasn’t enough room to use it.

Once there was nothing more to discuss, Shuwen would suggest they briefly split up and investigate the outbuildings; while it was unlikely they’d encounter any more skeletons or other nasties until they entered the building, Elder Tale had been a game to reward exploration at times; there was a chance there might be a key or something important hidden in one of the seemingly unimportant places; only to be revealed to those to had the diligence to check everything. However, it mostly turned out to be a waste of time; though the buildings were beginning to fall into disrepair, the buildings weren’t terribly old, and didn’t have any interesting looking places where something might be hidden. Only the estate’s owners had disappeared; the servants and other occupants had simply left after the people paying them had vanished, and had taken most of the loose items that had been necessary to run a household with them. Actually, now that I think about it, why were there skeletons there? It’s not like there should have been any dead bodies laying around in this place. It was yet another thing for him to contemplate once he had the time. Once they’d more or less scoured the entire grounds (or if they didn’t), they’d meet back up by the main building’s front door. “Well, shall we go in then?” The Monk asked, his voice tense. Moving slowly, he opened the front door (which was unlocked for some reason) and walked inside.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler - Click here to view}

The first room they went into looked like something out of an old movie; a large lobby that looked reminiscent of a ballroom, it’s high ceiling took up two floors’ worth of vertical space; a large staircase in the center of the room drew the eye, leading up to the second floor, while side always presumable led to other rooms on the first floor. A dusty chandelier hung from the ceiling.

“Get ready for a fight.” He said in monotone. In his experience as a dungeon crawler, level designers rarely made this much space unless it was for a dramatic fight. Shuwen quickly moved towards the center of the room, expecting something to leap out at him, while the others presumably made their own preparations. However, to the Monk’s surprise, nothing happened. “Or not.” He added, exhaling the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “So, you girls want to start by going upstairs or downstairs?”

[Sunny]

Seemed she'd taken the situation by the reins, which meant it'd give her teammates time to cool down. Valerie, at the least, seemed curious about the technique, asking about its execution and all that. Sunny obliged happily, explaining how Crash Shot was performed and what the main gist of it was. Shuwen had brought up something that the Ritualist hadn't really given much thought, that most of the fighting would probably be taking place indoors, a fact that could potentially throw a wrench in the works.

Sunny nodded, considering his words, but her demeanor showed that she didn't think much of the problem.

"It should be okay so long as I aim at an angle." Fortunately, the skill didn't require that the user shoot for the sky, just at an upward direction. The ceiling wouldn't be so much the problem as the closed-in spacing would. It would have to be used at discretion, when Sunny figured that her team would be able to squirm out of the way. Considering the size of the estate, she wasn't too terribly worried about spacing. Of course, Sunny rarely worried about anything. . .Regardless, it was an ability worth mentioning, since they had no way of knowing exactly what they'd find in that house. "We'll just have to wait and see." With that, she was ready to continue so long as they were.

At the Monk's suggestion, Sunny moseyed around the surrounding area in search of anything that could prove interesting. More-than-anything, she used it as an opportunity to case the main building, get a feel of it from the outside; although, she wasn't sure just how useful her investigation would prove to be. Video game logic hardly matched that of the real world. Just because it was a large building on the outside didn't mean it would be on the inside. Coming away empty-handed, the Swashbuckler floated back to her party and mentally prepared herself for the fights to come.

Inside, the estate kept true to its outward appearance, at least as far as the lobby went. Hollow and cold, the atmosphere both chilled and excited the Swashbuckler all at once. Experience and the Monk told her to be prepared. Her hand touched the handle of her gun, muscles poised for attack. When nothing seemed to be happening, she relaxed but only slightly, eyes going from Valerie to Shuwen to the surrounding area.

"I vote we head downstairs first, start from the bottom-up," not that she really minded where they started. It was a suggestion all the same.

---

words: 426

Shuwen
Valerie

[Valerie]

The monk had asked if the skill, Crash Shot, could be indoors, which Sunny answered with a yes. Then the trio walked toward the front door and Shuwen asked if they should go inside and he reached for the door, which was strangely unlocked, and he walked in. Valerie followed them wordlessly, slightly confused with what was happening. The girl turned to look at the Exorcist, wondering if they were seriously just going to go into the house. Apparently, they were going in, as both seemed to walk in without another thought. Her mouth dropped open for a moment before she snapped it shut and quickly followed them without a word.

They entered the mansion and Valerie’s dark violet eyes scanned the interior of the abandoned building. There was a large staircase in the middle that split into two as it curved up the second level. It was similar to any mansion in an anime she had watched, or some wealthy mansion one of her rich friend owned. The monk told the girls to get ready for a fight and the Swashbuckler drew her weapons obediently. She didn’t know what Shuwen saw, but the area in front of her seemed to be free of monsters. When nothing happened, the Monk sighed a breath of relief and a corner of Valerie’s mouth twitched slightly as she tried not to grin at the male. Then he asked if they wanted to go up the large staircase or downstairs. Valerie didn’t know if there was a basement, so she simply nodded, not at all answering Shuwen’s question. When Sunny said she wanted to go to downstairs, Valerie shivered slightly. While she wasn’t afraid of monsters, she didn’t like the idea of having to climb her way to the top of a mansion. It was like something she had read in a book, the characters always run up the stairs, which was not exactly something she looked forward to. But if they wanted to, then it was fine with Valerie.

“I’m fine with anything. You two decide.” She said, looking around for a staircase that led down to a lower level. She wasn’t afraid of being in the mansion or being killed. The Monk could always change his level if things get bad, so Valerie was quite confident this quest was going to end alright.

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OOC: Sorry for the bad reply... I wasn't too sure what to write.

[Shuwen]

Words: 521

Sunny said that it probably wouldn’t be an issue, as long as she could aim at an upward angle. Shuwen wasn’t entirely convinced, but then, he didn’t really need to be, so he shrugged and simply dropped the issue.

With the front lobby apparently clear, Sunny suggested they start with the first floor, and work their way up from there. It was a sound plan, so Shuwen nodded in agreement. They started with the leftmost room, and began to work their way through the house in a clockwise direction. The first room they found themselves in was a dinning room, one with a fairly large table able to seat a fairly large number of people. Next, they came through several other rooms containing various things obviously intended to help with the upkeep of the owner’s lifestyle; a kitchen, a room for doing laundry, and other facilities.

However, as they entered a hallway between rooms, about halfway around the house, they quickly realized they were no longer alone. As the entered, four black orbs would materialize around them. Their appearance was accompanied by HP bars corresponding to each one; they were monsters. Specifically, low level Black Essences, which were normally found in the Miasma realms.

“Corruption, hmm? At least they’re weaker then usual.” Shuwen commented amicably. He promptly threw a throwing needle at the closest one, but it quickly became apparent that the Black Essences possessed resistance to physical damage, as they attack only dealt a tiny amount of damage to the monster. “Looks like Valerie and I aren’t going to be much use here.” He added. “Sunny, we’ll be relying on your Exorcism attack to take them down; you’re the only person among us with non physical attacks, and it’s pretty likely they’re weak to light attacks.” He’d waited a moment in case Sunny wanted to use Crash shot as she’d mentioned before, but once he was finished talking, he began to move before he even heard their reply. He started off by breaking through the Essences’ line onto the opposite side of them. Once he was more then a meter away from Valerie and Sunny, but less then a meter away from the spirit monsters, he used Aura Kick to strike them and draw their attention. It didn’t deal a large amount of damage, but it did draw their attention, and managed to hit all four of them.

Sunny and Valerie would find that like with Shuwen, their physical attacks would do very little damage to the monsters, likely do to their nature as spirit type monsters, however, if Sunny used her Exorcism attack as the Monk had suggested, she would like as not kill which ever one(s) she managed to land a hit on in a single shot, or at least nearly so. Assuming Sunny did so, Shuwen would follow up with Tiger Echo Fist. Since the effects of his skills were largely muted by the Black Essences’ physical resistance, he tried to compensate by using his area of effect attacks to hit as many of them as possible and maximize the amount of damage he dealt per attack.

[Sunny]

With a direction decided, the team bounded along. Sunny kept her eyes keen and her ears sharp, fingers clenching as if they were itching to hold the gun at her side. The Brazilian was a mix of excited and tense. There was something decidedly unsettling about the environment. The house was every bit as big on the inside as it had appeared on the outside, or at least, that was the impression that the winding halls and clustered rooms left on the Ritualist's mind. Occasionally, she would look to her party members to see how they were holding up but made no attempt at small talk. For now, she was all business.

In the hallway, the party was welcomed by a gang of orb spirits, a monster Sunny did not recognize. Interface offered the name of the creatures -Black Essence- and low levels, a fact that helped the Swashbuckler relax a bit, especially when they revealed themselves to be resistant to physical forms of attack. She didn't know if Valerie had any way of assisting; she seemed to have taken the more traditional route -ie. the route that made sense- when building her Swashbuckler character, so Sunny supposed she'd have to make this one quick. At least the Monk had a way to distract the monsters, what with the Ritualist's not-so-little problem of having precious amounts of HP. She'd just have to keep her distance and spam, spam, spam light magic., maybe throw a bullet or two in there.

And so, with their aggro drawn towards Shuwen, Sunny went through the familiar motions of Holy Banishment, aiming the light lazer for the Essence closest to her teammate. She'd keep this as a tactic, attempting to prevent as much HP loss throughout the party as possible, weakening the opponents without over-stepping her boundaries. They were only just getting started on the quest after all, and who knew what lay beneath the floor boards and from within the walls of the estate?

When Shuwen performed his next attack, it finished off the remaining HP of the Essence Sunny had targeted.
With cool down required, Sunny glanced at Valerie's progress.

---

words: 357

Valerie
Shuwen

[Valerie]

The girl silently followed the Monk and the Exorcist into the left wing of the house, entering a dining room like area. The room was quite large, not big enough to host an enormous banquet but a very large family dinner. With nothing there, the trio traveled through various smaller rooms, rooms that appeared to be workrooms to maintain the estate.

They were about halfway through the main level of the house, when Shuwen seemed to spot something. The girl’s back stiffened as she tensed for a fight. As she watched the Monk’s throwing needle impale one of the monster, dealing little damage, her eye brows furrowed in worry, not sure how to fight them. Then the blue haired Adventurer spoke, saying that both he and Valerie would not be able to do anything and explained why. The brown haired girl nodded and backed off as the Monk stepped forward to draw aggro, as his role as a tank.

The Swashbuckler was not able to do much in this fight since her skills included were all physical attacks, with not element based damages. As the Monk used an area of effect attack, Valerie darted close the commotion and aligned herself beside the monk and thrusted her right dagger forward and clenched it tight mid-way, activating [Straights]. Her weapon glowed a golden colour as the attack lengthened four feet in front of her, piercing two Black Essences. It didn’t do much, but would hopefully help Sunny a bit by lowering the black blob’s health a bit.

Valerie quickly darted back, getting out of the Monk’s way, allowing Shuwen to use any attack he wanted. The girl counted five seconds in her head as she scanned the fight in front of her. Sunny seemed to be doing okay with no loss of health, and Shuwen was taking on his role as a tank, though no damage seemed to be taken from what Valerie had seen.

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Shuwen Sunny

[Shuwen]

Words: 358

Shuwen pursed his lips when he saw that his attacks were barely doing any damage. Even though monks did have a handful of elemental attacks, they were all higher level skills he didn’t have access to yet. Geez, Sunny wasn’t an exorcist, we’d be in deep trouble. While priests also possessed skills for fighting dark monsters, he hadn’t really leveled it yet, and the base ability wasn’t of much use on it’s own. He’d have to level it up more to get much use out of it.

Valerie, meanwhile, darted in once his second area of effect attack was complete, and used a range-extension skill via her dagger to hit two of the black orbs. All Shuwen could think was Why didn’t she use that skill before?! That would have made the fight with the skeletons much easier!

However, the remaining orbs definitely had no intention of going down without a fight. The ones nearest to Shuwen and Valerie began to expel black mist, inflicting darkness damage and briefly stunning them for about a second each. During that time, the third black essence bodily slammed against them both. “Ah, they damage on contact, forgot about that.” Most likely Valerie was already launching a counterattack on the nearest one. However, as Shuwen’s unarmed attacks would most likely do as much damage to himself as they would do to the spirits, he decided against that option.

Instead, he pulled out another throwing needle and tried to hit whichever one looked like it was about to launch an attack. He wasn’t expecting it to do any real damage, but he figured fighting defensively and interrupting their attacks was his best option. However, once again their physical resistance prevented them from having much effect. Meanwhile, the orbs would attempt to counterattack by shooting concentrated clouds of corruption at Valerie and him. Come on come on come on. He thought anxiously. How much longer until Sunny can use that Exorcist skill again. He attempted to dodge the cloud that was coming at him, but it was too large, and was fired from too close for him to have any chance to dodge it.

[Sunny]

A gun sounded off, a shot ringing true as it hit one of the monsters spewing corruption at the Swashbuckler and Monk. It wasn't an effective hit alone against the ghastly fiends, but damage was damage in a fight like this. Sunny was just aiming to buy herself time as her body recovered from Holy Banishment's cool-down, and with the creatures swarming her teammates, she'd have to do whatever it took to keep them from getting knocked out, even if it took bullet-after-bullet in order to do so.

The Essence she had attacked changed its course then. Aggravated by the shot, it came for Sunny, who was still counting down until her next helping of holy magic. Another bullet loaded, she aimed and fired. The HP bar lowered agonizingly slow. Being at such a low level, her physical attacks were having even less of an effect on the monsters as those of Valerie and Shuwen. She grit her teeth, bracing herself as her mental clock ticked at a molasses-dripping rate.

The Black Essence sped its course, knocking itself into the Swashbuckler and whittling away at her health points. There was a bit of pain, not quite what Sunny had been expecting, but the hurt wasn't so much a big deal as the knowledge that she'd just lost HP. That was annoying. She felt the cool-down take its course. The Ritualist wasted not another second in activating Holy Banishment and -with great pleasure, mind you- watching the monster fade out of life.

Ten seconds counting. . .Nine. . .

Bullet loaded, Sunny waited for her teammates' next moves.

---

words: 265

Valerie
Shuwen

[Valerie]

Though she was standing at a distance, the black blobs radiated a black mist from their bodies and cause a bit of damage onto her, and stunned her for a moment. When Valerie couldn’t move her body, cursed inwardly, hating how she couldn’t do anything to stop it. During that one second, one of the Black Essences slammed into the Monk and the Swashbuckler. The girl inwardly growled at the monsters and steadied her weapons for an attack the moment the stun wore off. The moment the effect disappeared, the girl slashed at the closest orb with her left dagger and gripped her right dagger tightly, activating [Straights] once again before darting back to stand by Shuwen’s side.


Being a duel wielding dagger user had multiple disadvantages such as being only useful in a close combat fight, unless she wanted to use her weapons as a throwing weapon, which would result in the girl being unarmed after two strikes, that is, if she didn’t miss. She had debated whether to change her weapons to long straight swords for a bigger range, but lacking the stealth and mobility of a small weapon like a dagger.


The Weapon specialist and Warrior were being targeted by the remaining three Black Essences that attempted to use the same stun skill from before, but Valerie knew better and quickly backed up trying to avoid the dark mist. However, the Swashbuckler didn’t get far from the concentrated black cloud and quickly raised her weapons up in front of her body in defense, preparing for the Black Essences to physically slam into her. As both Shuwen and Valerie were stunned, the brown haired girl heard a gunshot fire behind her from Sunny as it hit one of the three black orbs, drawing aggro toward the Ritualist, and the hit monster changed its path and headed toward the other Swashbuckler and slammed into her. Valerie flinched as she saw Sunny’s health bar shrink from the hit, but it didn’t seem to faze her, and the Exorcist used her skill, Holy Banishment, to blast that same monster to its death.


Just as the monster disappeared after Sunny’s attack, Valerie was released from the stun and thrusted her left dagger forward, gripping the handle tightly, activating [Straights] on her non dominate hand, aiming for the Black Essence that was rushing toward her.



Words: 392

[Shuwen]

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Sunny followed up with a gunshot. Since Shuwen and Valerie were stunneda t the time, that caused her to briefly have the highest amount of hate from the Black Essences, and she was briefly attacked by one. Shuwen clenched his teeth. We’re too reliant on specific skills for fighting these monsters. Not good. Fortunately, ten seconds was not only the cooldown time of Sunny’s exorcist attack, but of his own area of effect skills. He made a shooing motion towards Valerie intending to get her out of the line of fire, he once again made a small hop, and came down axe kicking the floor, unleashing his Aura Kick skill, which he then followed up with a punch at the ground, activating Tiger Echo Fist. Despite their physical resistance, the amount of damage the dark floating blobs were taking as beginning to take it’s toll on their Health bars.

The ten seconds passed and Sunny fired off another beam of light, blasting another Black Essence out of existence. With only two of them left, Shuwen felt the pressure on them slacken. Aura kick renewed the blob’s agro against him, so despite the fact one of their comrades had fallen, they charged at Shuwen. However, since he wasn’t bothering to attack any further for the time being, he simply focused on dodging those attacks, rolling back and pushing himself to one side to prevent the monsters from bodily attacking him. He wasn’t entirely sure Valerie would be able to get a fix on either of them due to their face-paced and agitated movements, but she wasn’t exactly the mainstay of their damage dealing anyways, so he wasn’t particularly worried about it. Still, if we focus on doing damage to a single one of those blobs, we may only need Sunny to fire off her Exorcist attack once more. That would be nice. After he dodged a second attack, Shuwen reached out and backhanded the Dark Essence with the least amount of HP left (about 60%, it was probably the one Valerie had struck earlier) with Zoom Attack. “Leave this one for last Sunny, focus your attacks on it Valerie.” This just might finish the battle a bit sooner then otherwise. At least, that was what Shuwen hoped. Generally speaking, the ideal tactic in a group fight was to reduce the enemy’s numbers as quickly as possible to reduce the number of attacks that would be coming at you for the rest of the fight. Shuwen had been using his area of effect attacks whenever they could because he was trying to compensate on the low amount of damage he could deal per attack, but except for the purpose of drawing agro, perhaps that had been the wrong way to go about it?

[Sunny]

For the most part, Sunny was a pretty chill player. She rarely let things get to her most days. Today was not that day. Today, she was taking an issue with not only having to spam one attack just to make the fight fair but also having to wait ten seconds to use it. She hadn’t anticipated the crippling blow of being the only one capable of dealing severe damage to these monsters. That said, she couldn’t be more thankful that she was tackling this quest with a team instead of on her own. With Valerie and Shuwen taking turns attracting the Essecenses’ aggro, they were saving her a lot of trouble of having to defend her own HP and just focus on the taking down the ghosties.

Still –she rebuttled as she fired another bullet at one of the two remaining Essences- she couldn’t wait to level-up Exorcist. Well, level-up any of her classes, to be honest. There were bound to be very valuable skills she could use against spirits and demons. Patience was key, but this fight was burning away at that particular fuse.

As Valerie and Shuwen teamed-up against the Essences with the least amount of HP, the Ritualist took the Monk’s advice and kept her attention glued to the other, counting down the final seconds of her Banishment’s cooldown. As she waited, the Swashbuckler raised her hand, the other clutching her reloaded pistol, and aimed.

3. . .2. . .1 . .The glow of holy magic enveloped her manicured hand. Sunny grinned, twitched her fingers, and fired the beam at the bogy. It bobbled in the air, knocked back by the attack, and refocused its blood lust on the Ritualist. Lowering one arm, she raised the other, cocked the pistol, and fired another shot at her target as it began its beeline for her. The shot dwindled at its remaining HP, taking it down to zero.

Heart-racing, the Ritualist let go of the breath she’d been holding and began reaching for another bullet.

---

words: 337

Shuwen
Valerie

[Valerie]

The moment the Monk gave a brief command for Valerie to mainly attack the Essence with the least health remaining; the Swashbuckler nodded and focused most of her attention onto that particular black orb. “Stand back.” The girl warned Shuwen as she darted close to the Black Essence, slashing it once before activating [Shuffle Windmill] and spun rapidly for four rotations with her weapons level to the orb, her blades hitting the monster eight times. The moment the skill finished, Valerie hopped back about a meter and used [Straights] on her right dagger to pierce the monster when she thrusted the weapon forward from her distance, gripping the handle tightly. The Swashbuckler balanced her weight onto the balls of her feet, keeping herself agile and ready for darting toward the Black Essence or jumping back to avoid the black mist again to avoid being stunned once more. There was nothing more that Valerie hated that being utterly useless and unable to move when needed in a battle field.

After her attacks, the Dark Essence was down to about 45% health remaining. The Dancer was not too sure, but from her guess, it was a bit below 50% after the attacks. The girl groaned slightly, tired of being so useless against a physical damage resistant enemy, but at the moment, all they could rely on was Sunny’s Exorcist skill that seemed to be a Light based skill that was perfect against the Black Essences which were, from Valerie’s guess from simply looking at the monster, was Darkness.

Standing back from the Essence, Valerie nodded toward the monster, telling the Monk to attack the orb. She had previously told him to remain back to prevent her skill, Shuffle Windmill, from hitting him, but now that the skill was on cool down, and she would hopefully not have to use it again in the fight, the Swashbuckler could fight alongside Shuwen without accidentally hitting her party member. The girl bent her back leg and launched herself back toward the monster, sticking her foot out in front of herself before sliding into it and slashed both her daggers downward on the orb before stepping back to prepare for any attack that may come from the Black Essence.


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[Shuwen]

Words: 402

Considering how reliant she was on that specific exorcist skill, he figured she ought to consider getting an accessory that would shorten it’s cooldown made. Even though at her level, it probably wouldn’t be potent enough to make a huge difference it battle, it would still be useful during situations where every second was an agony, like right now.

He was slightly surprised she was willing to do as he said; her earlier attitude indicated she had little but disdain for him doing anything that flaunted his higher level or experience, but perhaps he was mistaken. Instead, she jumped right into it, hitting the Dark essence with a four hit attack, then jumped away and followed up with her range extension skill before backing away and motioning to him to come forward. The Black Essence unleashed the stunning cloud as she backed away, hitting Shuwen right in the face. Fortunately, Shuwen didn’t mind the extra second to think, and hadn’t been doing anything that would cause him to lose his balance upon being stunned. If he’d been in the middle of a skill or something, it could have been bad, but as he was still merely between actions, losing a second wasn’t a big deal, though taking another hit from the monster was somewhat annoying. Well, it’ll be finished soon either way Once the stun wore off, he pulled out another throwing projectile and threw it at the Black Essence from point blank range. He felt a little silly doing that, but unless he was using a skill, he felt that the damage he’d take from coming into physical contact with the monster made the damage he’d deal in turn not really worth it. Blah, I wish I could use more of my skills right now. He didn’t mind the loss in stats from using the teacher system, but the loss of usable skills was beginning to get to him.

Shuwen wished he could use Bullet Punch, which consisted of eight strikes just as strong as normal attacks, but he hadn’t taken it until much later then level four, so he couldn’t use it now.

As they attacked, Sunny fired off her exorcist skill once more, finishing off the other Black Essence. That makes this one the last. He thought grimly. He jumped away, using Zoom Attack to strike it as he moved away, and gave Valerie a chance to move forward.

[Sunny]

Man, this was rough! Three down and one more to go. Sunny had hoped that they’d at least be able to take it down with a combination of physical attacks, but considering their lowered levels, perhaps that was a high hope. She wasn’t sure how much more of this quest they’d be able to handle without being able to do more against phantasm monsters. There was a chance that the party would be encountering more of these throughout the rest of the estate. Holy Banishment was useful, but spamming attacks was boring and made winning less fun and unsatisfactory for her. At least bullets worked against skeletons.

The Ritualist fired bullet-after-bullet, pausing between her teammates’ attacks for safety precaution. The Essence’s hit points fell sluggishly. The Brazilian bit her lower lip, growling against grit teeth as she reached for another bullet. She didn't know about Valerie, but Sunny would not be offended if the Monk decided to increase his level a bit more after this fight, at least equal to that of Valerie’s level. He’d mentioned earlier about being a Priest. Surely, he had something in his repertoire that could help make things less painful as they ventured through the area. They needed as much man power as they could get at this point.

With attacks coming from every which direction, the Black Essence bobbled in the air in confusion before making a beeline from one party member to the next. As a long-range fighter, Sunny remained nestled as far away from the bogy as she could afford to without fuddling with her aim. As it came for her, the Swashbuckler managed to squeeze in one more shot from her pistol before slipping to the side. Unfortunately, she’d waited seconds too long to dodge, and the monster clipped her shoulder as she landed back-flat against the wall of the hallway. Holy Banishment wasn't even done cooling-down yet.

---

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Shuwen
Valerie

[Valerie]

There was only one Black Essence remaining and the Swashbuckler danced around the monster warily as her party members attacked. When she was the opening, she darted in and slashed the monster twice with her daggers, without using a skill, before bringing both weapons above her head and slashed them down onto the black orb in front of her. All three members were attacking from all sides, Shuwen on the opposite side of Valerie and Sunny a few steps behind to keep out of the Black Essence’s range. All three Adventurers were drawing aggro, but in between the Monk and the Swashbuckler’s dagger attacks, the Darkness monster found and opening and headed for Sunny, gliding against her shoulder when she wasn’t able to move fast enough to fully dodge the attack. Valerie grimaced from the hit, as if she was hurt as well.

The brown haired Swashbuckler hurried to Sunny’s side and slashed the monster’s back twice, drawing aggro toward herself, before she whirled around quickly and dashed to Shuwen’s side, leading the monster away from the ranged fighter. Since the Exorcist just used her skill to kill the third monster, they had to wait once more for the cooldown of the skill. Valerie had not counted the intervals between each one of her shots, but she felt it was a long wait in a fast paced fight they were in and she knew she wasn’t alone in feeling the pressure of waiting for each cooldown. Sunny seemed to project a slightly impatient aura as she had to wait every time for her skill to refresh, and Shuwen seemed to be waiting on the Exorcist’s skills, like Valerie herself.

While the Swashbuckler headed toward the Monk, she cranked her head back a bit to watch the Black Essence and saw it coming towards her at full speed. Valerie grimaced and stomped her right foot down, pivoting around to let the monster pass by her side, but it skid by her right arm in an attempt to swerve toward the Swashbuckler before speeding into the wall behind the girl. The Dancer’s health bar decreased a bit from the graze, but it didn’t hurt as much as it had hurt Sunny. Valerie tightened the muscles in her arms and she whirled around to face the monster, ready for another attack.


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Shuwen Sunny

[Shuwen]

Words: 542

The combat was beginning to get repetitive, most of all for Sunny, who had been restricted to simply repeating the same attack over and over. Shuwen had a slightly better time of it, though his inability to touch the Black Essence without taking damage was aggravating. When playing RPGs and MMOs like Elder Tale, one of his main strategies for reducing the annoyance of grinding was to make minor goals for himself, while simultaneously trying to come up with ways to finish the fights he was repetitively going through more efficiently. In addition to leveling up his character, it could also be a good opportunity to improve his skill as a player as well. In this case, hi’s overall goal now was to finish the mob before Suny finished it off with her Exorcist skill. Their current bottleneck was their inability to do any serious damage to the Black Essences without Sunny’s exorcist skill. They hadn’t managed to finish off a single one thus far without using it. He wanted to change that by the end of the encounter. Since if Sunny ended up finishing it off again, it essentially would have meant that most of the attacks they’d made in the ten seconds leading up to it were essentially useless, which he disliked. If they could finish it off before then, not only did that mean they could cut a few seconds off the amount of time it took to finish them off, and prove they were capable of meaningfully dealing damage to the Black Essences.

Valerie’s and Sunny’s attacks had brought the Black Essence’s health down into the red. As Valerie hit it a few times, he pulled out two more throwing needles and threw them at the monster whenever he saw a suitably large opening. Sunny appeared to be doing the same with her gun, much to his relief. He was a little curious about why she wasn’t also attacking with the crystal ball; it would have increased her damage output somewhat, but he figured she was either trying to keep the enemy’s agro off of herself, or avoiding getting in the way of the other attackers. That made sense; if too many of them went at the Black Essence at once, they might have a hard time moving comfortably. The last thing they could afford was to get in each other’s way.

Okay, I think we’re just about ready to finish this! As Valerie reached what appeared to be the end of the series of moves she’d planned to use, Shuwen moved to the edge of the fight, and attacked with both of his area of effect attacks again; Aura Kick and Tiger Echo Fist. The distance wasn’t really important, but they allowed him to deal damage to the creature without actually touching it, which was fairly important since the monster did damage upon physical contact. Then, he followed up with another punch via Zoom Attack, which finished off the monster. “So how many seconds until that skill’s cooldown ends Sunny?” He asked curiously. He hadn’t been keeping track of the seconds, and he wanted to know if his tactic had really saved them time, or if Sunny had simply forgotten about it in the heat of battle.