NWA: Game Reserve - Monster Nest

Blades at the ready and senses on high alert. It's go time!
"All right, let's do this!" Kotono says with a determined smile. She gives a nod to Miyako as if to say, "We got this!" Before going in fast. Her blades flash as she attempts to strike the nearest enemy as she moves like the wind.

Shibuya. A newly sprouting set of ruins. Like a bud of a green plant has been placed in the midst of a ruined city. Slowly growing out and blossoming into something beautiful. And now, it's sprouted its first seed.

The Shibuya Game Reserve. A fenced area filled with various animals that Mikage and her team have managed to populate the area with, whilst constantly clearing the various Monsters that have cropped up in the region. Thanks to the amazing scouting work in the region, they managed to find the signs of a Monster Nest in the region that is stopping the Game Reserve from being the success it's desired to be.

Already, some of the area has been cleaned out. Delving into an earth-cave hidden underneath an enormous tree, a few members of the New World Alliance have led out what looks like be some kind of bear-like creatures! This allows the main party to dive into the earthy hollows beneath the tree and go into the caverns below.

Lights up, people move past a series of deep pits that fall down into the earth, moving on towards the cave further in. Their first resistance soon found in the form of more of these bear-like creatures, with their red manes, and terrifying roars, rushing towards them on all fours.

    Merek looks to the enemies that are rushing them, while he takes a moment to draw his twin blades, swinging them into the enemies while flames dance upon them. He then takes a blast of his magical arcane energy and slings that into the monsters.

    Miyako grits her teeth as she sees the creatures approaching. "Time to get stuck in, I suppose." She slams the butt of her naginata into the ground at her feet, and a series of runes form a tight circle around it, spreading outwards as she chants the spell.

    "Hope nobody's got issues with earthquakes," she says casually, as the ground beneath the creatures starts to tremble.

There had been so much progress with the Game Reserve. Clearing monsters, building walls, encouraging the native wildlife... So, of course, there would be some kind of problem. Well, this is exactly the sort of job that Mikage really is best suited for as a Ranger.

"I'm not sure what we'll find inside, but we'll need to clear it out if we want the Reserve to be at least somewhat safe." As safe as a place filled with wild animals ever is, anyways.

As a light-source, she holds up a small blue crystal dangling from a necklace, the simple jewel giving off a strange internal glow. It's enough of a glow that she catches the movement of the bear-like creatures out of the shadows. Rama growls in warning.

"Incoming!"

She backs up slightly, drawing her sword and then channeling ice magic through it, the blue stone pressed against the hilt as she slashes it through the air, sending a hail of ice at the bears.

Yeowang was part of the initial group that cleared the land and brought in some of the lower-level beasts here, so she's interested in making it successful. Plus she's new to the Guild, and interested in meeting people. "I'm Yeowang," she introduces herself. "How is everyone tonight?" She's proceeding along warily because she's not sure how things are going to go, somewhere in the middle. She's not a tank or tough person, and she's somewhat new to gaming. As new as anyone can be, given that we've all been in for some time now. But this was her first ever computer game.

Advancing with the rest of the group, she looks left and right as we find ourselves rushed by the red-maned bear-like creatures. She leads off with a precise punch, her hands seemingly small next to the size of the monster, her blow none the less quite precice, and she follows up with a weaker strike, but one that should hamper it.

Erufu had long ago offered to Mikage and Pela that she would help clear this place out. So she is here, after all, she wanted to see this succeed after all. They needed to clear out the monster nests one way or another it would also improve the security of the city. So it was time to hunt was on, it hadn't taken too long to track down the nest. It looks more like the monster found then. As the monsters swarm? She's forced to draw her knife rather than make use of her bow for the moment she'll use it on the beasts that get too close as she will use it in an attempt to block attacks launched at her.

"Don't let them pin you down."

Mikage's attacks spears the approaching bears to the ground, while Merek takes care of the flank; his one-two combination attack with magic and blade lopping off some heads! Kotono's Kotono's blade strikes cut into yet another, while Yeowang's weaker strikes end up needing some aid from Miyako's tremmors - pushing them back into her strikes! Erefu is forced to climb onto one of the bears' backs, in order to stop it from getting to Yeowang, and manages to 'silence' it with her blade after a wild bucking ride.

The initial assault almost seems too easy for this region of Yamato. So far from the Root City, one would expect far higher level monsters. But the New World Alliance has been making good use of their time to level up. Still, it almost feels too easy.

A sensation that quickly ends as they press on just a moment further, before more of those red maned bears... suddenly drop from the ceilings above them! The bears drop on them, claws out, roaring their bear-like roars, attempting to lay their maws to peoples' throats!

You know, bears are bad enough on their own, but when they start dropping from the ceiling as if someone modded the spiders in the game to look like bears... that's when it gets bad. With her initial attack finished, Mikage backs off a bit. There isn't much ability to move within the close confines of the underground, but it is enough.

Quick on her feet, she tries to avoid some of the swiping claws and snapping jaws. "Okay. I am not a fan of these bears." Miki explains, even as Rama looks up as if he were trying to find more of them hiding in the darker recesses of the cave.

At that moment, Miki sheaths her sword and pulls out her bow, pressing the blue stone to it as she channels light magic into an arrow. It seems to charge briefly, radiating light as she fires towards one of the nearest of the monsters.

    Merek looks to that counter which the beast swings along into him once he's managed to strike into it, then he begins to back up, bringing what looks like a repelling shield about himself, then he takes a potion from that potion belt to throw into the beast to explode upon it, lighting it into a flame if he can. "Alright, let's see what we can do about it!"

Sometimes, the best offense is a good defense.

Kotono assumes a defensive stance and prepares to use her blades as defensive aids against the incoming attacks. One attack gets through, but it barely even leaves a mark. "Not even a flesh wound!" Kotono says with a smirk before going on the offensive again, this time attempting to stab directly with her blades.

Yeowang is forced to tumble clear as Erufu steers the one away from her. She gives a salute in thanks for the save, she'll have to be more alert. She's never worked with any of the serious fights yet, this is definitely the high-tier business and no mistake. She winces as she takes a bleeding wound, one hand covering the injury, but that doesn't seem particularly effective, so she lets go, and takes a breath to center herself, then finds a target, and unleases a savage spinning back-kick that would stun a moose. Or at least get it's attention. Well, it works nicely in tournaments, only the toughest opponents can stand up to that.

    And sometimes, the best defense is a good defense. Miyako hops back from the charging bear, a swift chant calling up a ring of thorny blue-glowing vines around her, sprouting from the earth and interposing between her and the creature to bar its bath. A second quick spell slides another blue-glowing circle around the beast's head, lightning crackling along it, though it seems to do little enough damage.

So far so good for the party thinks Erufu as the monsters come for them. She's currently on the back of one of the beasts it's pretty wild, before Yamato? She'd never have done something so rash or crash. She was changing and honestly Erufu? Was okay with that. She is thankfully saved from the wild bucking ride, she'll leap off before the beast falls to Yeowang's blade. Who gets a thumbs up from the Pooka. Before she's once again diving into combat, this time she has her bow out and she's rapidly firing shots at the incoming beasts, she also will make ready to defend herself as best she can from counter-attacks.

Mikage, a skilled combattant, is quick to turn on the bears after easily defending the drop-bear attack. The Empyrial Arrow attack that follows afterwards literally incinerates the nearest bear, then continues on to detonate another one right along the line of attack, before it explodes into a bright flash of light further down the tunnels, near a bend. Illuminating a large shadow.

Merek's counter damages one of the Drop Bears, and the flame quickly finishes it off, causing the burning body to illuminate the full cave for a while. There's a few more bears dropping from the ceiling on his allies!

Kotono stabs upwards with her blades, not remotely slowing down her own assault. One of the newly dropping bears explodes upon her bladed fist as it comes down, before another drops nearby, and she hews off its face with a left hook!

Yeowang covers Kotono's back, spin-kicking one of the bears into a wall, where Merek finishes it off with another flaming flask. Mikage's bow finds another target that gets too close to Merek's back, and Miyako creates a thorny wall that halts another, before zapping it!

Erefu then joins in on the cross fire. When the chamber is finally empty, there's some scratches. But nothing a few healing potions won't fix later. The trouble is what comes after. As the team travels down further into the caves, they soon come upon the next area. the actual Monster Nest chamber. At the back of the earthy cave, with roots sticking out of the various portions, is a red glowing crystal that shimmers and shines. A red glow that brightens, before another bear pops out on the side.

But that fails to eclipse the fact that there is an absolutely enormous eight legged bear right in the middle of the chamber. It raises its head and chitters loudly!

                               < SPIDER BEAR >                                
                     - Does whatever a Spider Bear Does -                    

It then immediately sprays a viscous green acid across the party line, before it storms forward. Each bladed leg coming down, threatening to crush people. The massive spider bear is only three times the size of a person. But its mandibles are still plenty big enough to cut off an arm or a leg if it got a good hold on them!

Visciously, it snaps at people, while various drop-bears rush from the sides, flanking the party!

"Okay, that is all kinds of wrong." Mikage mumrurs to herself when the eight-legged bear drops into the middle of the chamber. What follows is a colorful string of cursing, which only cuts off with a yelp as it moves to attack.

Gripping the blue stone in her hand, Mikage is left with little choice but to call on the stone's special power in order to throw a large shield of light energy up in front of her. It isn't enough to absorb even decent fraction of the damage coming her way from one of the bears, however. Thrown backwards, the Were Fang slams against the wall, air expelling from her lungs in a huff.

Rama races to her side, standing in front of her and growling as if he could somehow ward off the monsters. "I'm okay..." She follows that up with a small groan, lines from clawmarks visible across her defensive arm.

Luckily, her sword arm seems intact, and she swipes through the air with it, blades of whirling energy lingering there before she extends her hand outward, shooting them towards the boss creature.

    Merek seem to think about the maneuver of the enemies, while he takes a moment to look to the spider bear. He then backs up while the acid will come upon them, though he doesn't dodge from it. The man begins to swing forward while he draws up magical ice from the marking runes which he makes, drawing that into the beast then shimmering a blast of lightning into it.
    The man follows up while he begins to spin circle disc of water and freezes them, slinging them into the bear.

    Miyako continues backing off, leading her opponent away from the group, another spell calling up a defensive shield in the air before her, that spreads to surround her along her rune-circles. "Bloody monsters," she mutters, then breaks into a spate of coughing and her spell falters, the bear's claw piercing it to rip a line of red pixels along her side. "Snap!" she shouts, and slashes her naginata through the air, cutting down at the beast.

Monster nests are a thing she'd been on clearing some before her life was restarted here. Back then it was a game this is all too real now, she's an Elf now and not what she was before. Something she never wants to be again. She will help clear out the last of the monsters but pauses.

"When there's a nest there's always at least one whose bigger and nastier than the ... rest."

Enter the Spider Bear. She just stares for a moment and she'll break into a run, trying to keep herself on the move as she once more opens up this time with a pair of arrows that are on fire.

Yeowang tries to take cover from the acid attack, but there's not much she can do when the spider bear sprays her and the others. She crouched down, but that just means more fell across her back than hit her in the face, and the net result is about the same. She hurts. But not enough to force her to back down, no. She's been hurt worse before.

So, let's see how some of these new videogame powers work? She's not entirely sure about them, but, being unsure, she'd like to find something better than getting in its face. She channels, or earthbends, she's not sure what it's called, but the earth erupts beneath the spider bear, spikes jutting upward sharply.

Swiftness is sometimes a useful tactic, but sometimes it doesn't work either. Despite her best efforts, Kotono gets caught by the beast's slash, and it causes her to stagger a little. Nevertheless, she manages to regain her stance and go in on the attack again.

"Daring to strike a young lady? Maybe THIS will make you reconsider!" Kotono shouts as she attempts to strike with a downward slash of her blade.

Mikage's miracle shield may not stop all of the oncoming blow, but the massive Spider Bear is at least slowed in its assault. It could have been a lot worse. Luckily, she has a Lynx to protect her! Her whirling energy is then sent out, cutting off two of its legs!

Mixing into Mikage's whirling blow is a sudden burst of electricity that ripples out from Merek's weapon, before another whirling disc comes around to cut off another two of its legs! The Spider Bear falls onto its frontal body, its head flopping into the dirt!

Miyako's Naginata bites into its body not moments later, stabbing into its side, as it tries to bite into Miyako's leg. Only for Erufu to zip a series of arrows right through its mandibles, pinning them in an open position!

That gives Kotono the chance to safely dash in, cutting downwards onto its body, draining its health further, right before Yeowang manages to form her attack from below. Kotono pierces from above, and Yeowang's earth spires pierce from below, pinning the creature, until finally, its health bar depletes and the spider detonates into the usual colorful light!

Leaving the Dungeon Heart to sit on the wall... as another Drop Bear begins to form before it. Slowly appearing amidst red.

Even as the largest of the boss monsters seems to be felled by their combined efforts, it doesn't look like things are fully over, at least not quite yet.

The lingering effect of the poison still seems to run in her system, causing the Were Fnag to wince slightly every now and again. "If I'd been expecting poisonous spider-bears, I would have asked Cyrus to make some antidote potions before we left." She scrunches her nose.

The sight of yet another bear beginning to form has her looking to the others, "We need to destroy that thing." Then, she looks at Rama. "Think you can help with that?" She asks the cat, who moves forward to start attacking the Dungeon Heart while she stands back, still wincing now and again as poison blips at her health bar.

The effect is wearing off quickly, at least.

The fight isn't a joke just due to the size of the party are they able to take this channel down so quickly as Mikage calls out about destroying the heart as another monster is taking shape. She'll now once raise her bow and line up a shot on it every little bit, helps, right? She'll line up the shot and then let the arrow fly aimed right for the dungeon heart to put it out of business and hopefully help bring an end to the monster infestation in this area.

While keeping an eye on her enemy, Kotono swiftly moves around and sizes up the situation. She waits until the moment is right and then attempts to go in with a deep strike, aiming for a possible weak spot. Of course, the target is moving so it may not be easy.

    Merek looks to the place when all of them finish with the boss, then he nods a bit. "Well, that was pretty interesting, I think the place will be safe," he says.

    Miyako scowls as she's pressed back by the bears, her naginata whirling about her as she stabs and slashes at them, every so often passing by the boss creature and chipping off a few more HP from it. "It's going down!" she yells as she twists about for one more slash, cutting deep into the spider-bear before she rolls away from it.

    She grins as she curls to her feet, watching it disappear in a shower of pixels under the blades of her and her compatriots.

    "And that does it," she says, walking over to clap her hand on Kotono's shoulder and pull the taller girl close. "You okay, Ko-chan?"

Catching her breath, Kotono looks to Miyako. "That was a bit tougher than I anticipated, but I'm OK. Honestly, it felt like an intermediate acrobatics training session." She chuckles. "But we did well." She fistbumps Miyako. "Now let's go find some place to eat and relax."

Yeowang lays on the defense, which she has not yet perfected, but she guessed right when she finds out that her defense was partly compromised. Luckily, she laid it on thick enough to compensate. The damage over time she was taking still drains her, bit there's nothing she can do as the party takes out the deadly boss. "Well," she says. "It looks like we've survived. I hope those things aren't a regular feature in our hunting grounds."

And then there's the Dungeon Heart. She's not sure what it is, but the others seem to understand and she'll follow their cues to figure out how to deal with it.

Rama gets to the Dungeon heart, jumping up, and bites, disrupting a protective barrier just moments before Erufu shoots: the arrow hits! The Dungeon Heart shatters into pieces, and a new creature that was starting to spawn... only to suddenly fail to spawn in as the red gem shatters! Immediately, the 'combat suppression' suddenly halts in the area, recovering communication. And this strange 'pressure' they've been experiencing ever since coming into this area suddenly lifts. As Adventurers, perhaps they didn't realize how tense they'd been under that pressure. But... now it suddenly feels like a literal weight has been lifted off of their shoulders. As if the very light in the cave suddenly seems brighter. Everything seems more... managable.

It helps that they suddenly get a message before them indicating that they've cleared a Monster Nest, and have received a Dungeon Heart piece!

Erufu is very pleased with herself, her eats are wiggling a bit as she seem escited and she'll look over the cave.

"That feels a lot better. So everyone all right?"

There's a certain lander she needs to drag on an adventure like this.

"I think we have cause to celebrate now!"

She's put her weapon away at the moment and muses they will need to clear out other nests near their new city in the future...

    Merek looks to the dungeon piece, then he nods a bit, "You know, it looks like the monster nests generally will reward you with these, it looks like. I wonder what it means," the man notes.

Yeowang eyes the dungeon heart piece, inspects it, hrms. "Seems useful," she says, and will place it in her inventory. She nods to Erufu, "I'm OK now, yeah. He hit me with some D-O-T's, but less direct damage. I had to wait for my self-heal to come off cooldown."

"Celebrate?" Well, she won't object. "It does seem pretty significant, I guess. Nothing to compare it to. How do you all normally spend your time?"

Erufu tils her head a bit. "Down time at one Inn or another, trying the local brewers fair. Some times helping out a clerk at the hunter's guild I know. Or trying to get a certain Orcbalg to live a bit more. Also just exploring Yamato in general. I'm thinking we should find some food and drink for this myself Yeowang. I got a deck of cards too if anyone wants to do something with that!"