End Online: Volume 6 (14 page)

I don’t pick any
particular mountain among the several I can see next, just creating an
imaginary path connecting them and systematically choosing which mountain is
“next” on that path.

Gladox, Sir Laurence,
Verde, Fen and I spend two days and manage to reach the summits of four more
mountains. With the distance between them and the amount of enemies, our travel
between the temples is too slow. I try to avoid as many monsters as possible,
but there is almost nowhere to avoid them along the winding mountain paths.

It’s on the third day that
I cry out in relief when we find what we have been looking for. On the fifth
mountain top the Buddhist temple is completely full of demonic beasts. I can
tell before I entered due to there being not only an increased amount of
enemies while ascending the mountain, but several dozen ‘Devil Goats’
patrolling the perimeter of the temple.

“And I was beginning to
think we wouldn’t find the right temple until the very last mountain. Now then,
let us go clean up these demons!”

Without worrying about
strategy I lead our party toward a group of five ‘Devil Goats’ and throw some
daggers at them to initiate the combat. The goats let out a hideous noise that
quickly grabs the attention of two other nearby patrols and they quickly center
their attention on us.

“Fen, slow down the extra
two packs for a while,” I say while focusing my attention on the initial troupe
of demonic beasts.

While the goats still have
some distance to reach us, I cast ‘Dire Starburst’, sending almost a hundred
minor wisps of dire flame at the group. The goats possess more intelligence
than the golems (the last creatures I rained devastation upon with this spell)
and break their formation to dodge. Their efforts are not completely in vain,
but about half of the flaming wisps still hit them to cause considerable damage
to the group as a whole.

Sir Laurence and Gladox
step out front next as the squad of ‘Devil Goats’ finally reach us. Then the
predictable Prince Charming shouts, “My lady, I shall protect you from these
demons,” raising his shield while rapidly casting a holy spell to increase his
defense and greatly reduce damage from the dark element.

Verde rolls her eyes as
she stands behind his protection, waiting for the right moment to attack. I had
expected this from everyone, but to my surprise Gladox approves of Sir
Laurence’s words.

“So bold! Such an
admirable quality to have, perhaps I should try it as well.”

I notice the four-eared
wolf man stealing looks at Fen and can’t help but glare at him. He doesn’t seem
to notice my look however, or at least he pretends not to.

Clearing my head of
everyone’s useless quirks, I charge forward to strike the enemy once they have
been blocked. I take note of Fen, who is currently manipulating small ice
shards to form a minor blizzard that is blowing against the enemies. The two
groups of ‘Devil Goats’ only take a small amount of damage over time, but their
speed is instantly halved by the icy storm.

The first ‘Devil Goats’
collide with Sir Laurence’s shield, pushing him back over a meter and nearly
causing him to collide with Verde. Verde quickly leaps out from behind him and
slashes the goat twice before retreating. She tries to cut the back of its legs
with a Sacred Art, but her attack misses.

Gladox’s large two-handed
sword swings diagonally down gracefully, deflecting the attack of one enemy and
attacking a second before it can hit him. I secretly praise the attack for its
perfection and wonder if I would have been able to do it.

My attack comes next,
supporting Gladox as I rapidly attack the already injured ‘Devil Goat’. Despite
the enormous damage Gladox’s weapon does, I find that my Divine rarity twin
short swords, the ‘Twin Nightingale’, is capable of keeping up over time. It
may take five of my faster attacks against one of his, but they both are
similar in damage.

I don’t get to keep
attacking blindly with my speed for very long. Three of the goats come under
the effect of my aggravation and change targets to blindly attack me. In order
to conserve my stamina and mana for the two other groups that are slowly
getting closer, I take a leaf from Verde’s book and hide behind Gladox, using
him as my personal meat shield.

The three ‘Devil Goats’
try to charge past Gladox and attack me. The top-tier player easily prevents
them with a few short movements and a simple slashing Sacred Art. I have seen
videos on the internet of him fending off four attacking enemies at once, so
blocking three that aren’t even trying to attack him is effortless.

I take the opportunity to
use my lesser Sacred Arts, striking them with ‘Triple Thrust’ and ‘CrossX’
consecutively. I also lead Gladox away from Sir Laurence and Verde to prevent
my auto-aggravation from pulling their enemies too quickly.

The battle is finished
before we even get a chance to get warmed up. The ‘Devil Goats’ have a high
attack and a few troublesome dark magic spells, but their level and health
aren’t overly high. The whole process goes quite smoothly.

The entirety of the other
‘Devil Goats’ arrive just after the first group is annihilated. They instantly
open up with their dark spells, binding our shadows to slow us down, and attack
with dark energy bursts. I take the most damage from the barrage, but I think
of it as slowly training my Mind stat and shrug it off.

We have Fen’s help this
time, so the second wave of enemies becomes entangled in ice attacks that come
from unpredictable angles and throw the goats into disarray. I praise Fen’s
tactics, approving of her yet growing skill. The only thing I worry about with Fen
is making sure that she continues to improve her power so she can protect
herself if somehow I am not there to do it myself.

I understand Fen is
already incredibly strong, but players are extremely crafty and can easily
bridge this gap. It is the experience of those who kill other players for fun
that would be the deciding factor.

The ‘Devil Goats’ have
poor coordination and cooperation, so we systematically take them down one
after another. I lose about half of my health during the battle, but that was only
from the wide-area darkness spell the beasts released periodically.

Sir Laurence, Verde, Fen,
and I are all still around the early 200’s for our levels, and that is fifty or
more levels above the ‘Devil Goats’. Most any other party of four would have a
much more difficult time in killing them. Gladox himself is apparently nearly
level 500, so he probably could have dealt with them all on his own in the
first place.

Despite everything, they
drop a considerable amount of experience relative to their level; enough to
push me over the edge and reach level 228. I have been dedicating a lot of time
to killing enemies lately, but their levels have all been too low and aren’t
giving me enough experience.

“Gladox, how do you level
so fast?” I ask curiously while picking up my portion of the items the enemies
dropped.

The four-eared wolf man
momentarily grimaces before evasively saying, “Leveling speed isn’t everything.
Focus on raising your stats more. Of course, if you were to give me Fen, then-”

“Rejected! I was just a
bit curious.”

“…It was worth a try.”

I don’t bother to banter
with the man who has a fondness for NPCs. Instead, I quickly consume one of my
self-created health potions before strolling around the walls of the temple to
attract some more of the patrolling beasts. The potion didn’t taste that bad,
so I can’t understand why everyone complains about them so much. Potions
created from wild ingredients are completely free of charge, and only consume a
small amount of time for item gathering and potion creation.

It takes me five minutes
to find two more groups of ‘Devil Goats’ and lure them back to the group. While
running I sent a private message in warning so that Sir Laurence and Gladox are
already up front waiting to defend when I get back.

The formation is extremely
similar to the previous two groups of enemies, the only difference being a
minor adjustment due to most of the enemies directly pursuing me thanks to my
aggravation. It’s a considerable hassle for me, but it takes a lot of pressure
off the other members and allows my teammates to easily cut them down.

I take the scouting
position again and repeat this process until the remaining five groups of
enemies that are scattered around are killed. A massive stack of ‘Devil Goat
Horns’, ‘Negative Eyes’, some lesser weapons and armor, and an odd assortment
of other miscellaneous drops fill my inventory. I can’t sell them for real
money, and I don’t have the crafting skills to make anything worthwhile out of
them, but the money will be extremely helpful to the guild.

We group up outside the
front of the temple and wait to recover our mana and health before entering. I
have an ominous feeling about the place, though I don’t believe there will be
any trouble we can’t resolve.

“I’m ready to go,” I
finally say as I choose a broken section of the walls to enter through.

Gladox is the first to
reply. “I’ve been ready for a while. It took you long enough.”

“We can’t all be as good
at deflecting attacks as you are. And even you couldn’t avoid all those dark
magic spells.”

“Two of us aren’t quite
ready yet,” Verde chimes, patiently sitting as her mana recovers.

Fen sits beside me and
doesn’t move even though her health and mana have finished recovering. To pass
the time she unexpectedly asks me questions about what I want in the future,
which I myself don’t even know. As all of our stats except for Gladox’s can be
seen in the party window, I watch Verde’s and Sir Laurence’s bars slowly
refill.

Once they are done, I
order, “Let’s go,” and move toward the opening in the wall.

Slowly entering into the
temple grounds, I notice a few solitary ‘Devil Goats’ wandering around in other
areas, but there is nothing close enough to notice us.

“Move as quietly as
possible,” I whisper to the others. “We’ll scout the area first to find out the
situation before deciding what to do. For some reason, I have a bad feeling
about this place.”

“Agreed,” the rest of the
group reply in unison.

Sticking close together,
we head toward the inside of the front gate. As we get close, a ‘Devil Goat’
comes around the corner and alarms us all. I quickly wave my hand for all of us
to quickly retreat and move around a small praying shrine before it can see us.
I’m not concerned about the single goat, but the alarm it’ll raise will be more
than troublesome.

Unfortunately, not all
plans work out the way they should. As soon as we go around the shrine, another
goat comes out from the other side. Avoiding this one is impossible as it
instantly notices us. The ‘Devil Goats’ shrill call echoes within the temple
and alerts everything in a fifty meter radius.

The clopping of hooves on
stone and grass sound from everywhere but behind us, where we entered. I can
tell from the cacophony that there are at least twenty of them, and decide that
we should retreat to avoid being surrounded. At least then we can hold a
position where the only direction they can approach is through the broken down
section of wall. There isn’t another section like that for some distance, and
the goats are unlikely to be smart enough to go around.

My plan is instantly
foiled. Behind us, the ground cracks open and ten skeletons, of similar
structure to the goats but broader and with tails of fire, emerge. I glance
behind me and my thoughts of twenty ‘Devil Goats’ was completely wrong too.
There are thirty of them coming from different directions accompanied by three
enormous bull like creatures that seem like they might crush the goats in their
charge.