Spiteful Healer

Chapter 112: The Grind

“That’s it, there’s the den right ahead.” Darkshot pointed at the rocky cavern entrance jutting out of the forest floor, a large gnarled tree growing atop it with its roots dangling over the entryway. There was a small clearing in front of the cavern where no grass grew, it was hardened rocky dirt, flattened by the repeated traffic of the lynx that wandered about it.

They had a decent vantage point to see the cavern and around it, spotting countless numbers of lynx. They varied in size and level, from as low as level 40 to as high as level 47. There were likely more within the cave, deep inside, but they couldn’t see very far in due to the lack of light.

Aegis’ party used the trees of the forest as cover as they took in this information, and Aegis began to ponder a plan.

“You know, I’ve been thinking…” Aegis whispered to the others, trying not to garner any aggression from the keen hearing of the nearby lynx. “If we really want to start leveling up quickly, we oughta be as efficient as possible, right?” Aegis said, and the others nodded.

“What do you have in mind?” Rakkan asked curiously.

“I’m inventing a new strategy. It’s special, just for us.” Aegis grinned as he went into his inventory, and he pulled out one of his lure mixtures, and some uncooked lynx meat. The moment Darkshot saw it he pulled back.

“Oh hell fucking no. No.” Darkshot protested, but Aegis ignored him.

“You didn’t even hear the name of the strategy yet.” Aegis said as he began mixing the lynx meat into the lure bottle. As he did, a nervous grin grew over Pyri’s face, while Rakkan and Lina both looked anxiously at Aegis.

“Aegis, those are high level, if they hit you a couple times you will die really quickly…” Lina warned him with a look of worry.

“Yup, so you better not let them hit me. This strategy is called… hmmm.” He said as he pondered, finishing the lure mixture.

“I’m going to have gray hair. At 18 years old. I’m going to step out of my Simbox, and my hair will be gray.” Darkshot mumbled to himself in disbelief as he watched Aegis pouring the lure on himself.

“We’ll go with that, let's call this strategy, the gray hair strategy.” Aegis pointed at Darkshot enthusiastically with one hand while he discarded the bottle using his other, and the loud growling cries of nearly a hundred lynx could be heard coming from the den, the stampeding of their paws causing the ground of the forest to vibrate as they charged directly at the party.

“Whelp, that’s it, see you guys in 24 hours when we can log back in.” Darkshot sighed.

“Multicast, cinderbolt!” Pyri shouted, creating a ball of cinders over each of her shoulders, she then shot them forward towards the den and flattened them into large wide pools of cinders overtop of one another, causing all of the lynx to run through both cinderbolts and start taking burn damage.

“Bless, bless, bless, bless. No need to bless myself, cause, you know. If I stop to hit them, I’ll die.” Aegis smirked awkwardly as he tapped their shoulders to buff them. “See you guys when they’re all dead!” Aegis cheered, then took off dashing, and a second later, the stampede of lynx ran past them, chasing Aegis into the forest.

“Rune: Echo!” Rakkan shouted as two of himself ran into the stampede and began swinging wildly at them.

“Aegis, keep them under the shadows of the forest. This skill is really hard to control…” Lina shouted out after him as she watched the beasts run past her. “Shadow Dance!” She called out, and suddenly she began shifting and teleporting all over the forest and repeatedly appearing, slashing at the lynx nearest to her, then disappearing and reappearing somewhere else.

“Multishot, piercing shot!” Darkshot shouted, firing three arrows into the herd of cats, enlarging the arrows and making them pass through the targets to hit as many as possible. He had to repeatedly redirect them to avoid having the arrows collide with any trees.

“Try to keep circling back to keep them in my Cinders!” Pyri shouted out.

“Got it!” Aegis called back to her, but as he did, he’d realized he severely underestimated just how fast they would be. He’d gotten confidence from outrunning the abysslings back in Arallia, but they were not coordinated and lower level than these. Not to mention, they weren’t cats. Aegis had to utilize the trees around him in the forest to full effect to avoid several pouncing attacks coming at him from behind, making sure to zigzag around the trunks as much as possible as he began to do a wide loop through the forest.

It took awhile for him to get a sense of how wide to curve himself to avoid getting cut off from any stragglers that were joining the stampede late from inside the den, but his party was able to keep up and continue to barrage them with an endless stream of attacks.

“Aura of beauty!” Aegis shouted, looking to convert his mana into stamina for himself. To add to that stamina recovery he pulled out his highest quality lynx steak and bit into it. It wasn’t long before Aegis finished his first full wide loop around the nearby forest, arriving back at the clearing in front of the den. It was here that he could look behind him and get a clear sense of how many lynx were still alive.

Pretty much all of them, but the red damage numbers kept ticking on them. Pyri and Darkshot were jogging along beside the stampede to maintain control of their spells while staying a safe distance away. This meant that they were being hit repeatedly by both of Pyri’s cinderbolts and all three of Darkshot’s piercing arrows.

Rakkan and Lina took to focusing their attacks on the ones in the front, dealing damage and disrupting their movement to help keep Aegis safe. With their help, and the use of the trees in the forest and their large overgrown roots that protruded out of the forest floor, Aegis was able to stay ahead of the pack. Lina's smokebomb in particular saved his life several times, whenever the lynxes had gotten too close for comfort.

“I’m getting so much piercing shot experience, and longbow experience. Holy shit! Two levels already!” Darkshot shouted excitedly.

“All of my skills are going up really fast too! I love AoE grinding!” Pyri squealed with joy.

“Are you okay Aegis?” Lina called out to him worriedly after he’d kited them for a third loop around the forest.

“Yeah, I think I’ve got a good path to run them around now.” Aegis called back to her, audibly out of breath.

“They’re starting to go down, the lower health ones are dropping.” Rakkan announced as the party began to get experience messages pop up in their interface.

“Try to leave one alive for me if you can.” Aegis asked the group. One more full loop around the forest, and by the time Aegis had made it back to the clearing in front of the den a fourth time, there was only one lynx still chasing him.

“Last one.” Pyri said as she canceled her cinderbolts and Darkshot crashed his piercing shots into the ground.

“Ok, phew.” Aegis said with relief as he spun around with his shield ready. “I want to get some skill experience too. Kill it when I’m out of mana please.” Aegis said as the others moved to stand around and watch, all catching their breath. The last lynx remaining pounced forward into Aegis’ shield and he braced it.

You take 1360 slashing damage.

“Healing wind, heal.” Aegis cast on himself calmly as he redirected the momentum of the lynx’s pounce away from himself and towards the ground of the clearing around him. The lynx rushed forward a few steps before turning and picking up momentum again to pounce once more. Lina watched Aegis’ mana and health intently in her interface as he blocked and healed through several more attacks to train his defensive skills.

With his pain threshold, Lina’s marriage experience bonus, and his new class skill, he was gaining massive amounts of experience very quickly, particularly due to this last lynx being level 43. He was able to take the hits and heal himself through it for a full minute before he’d run himself dry of mana, and everyone of his party members stepped in to finish it off quickly.

With no enemies left, it was time to look at the mass of notifications that Aegis had gotten from the single clear of the lynx den.

Congratulations, you have reached Level 33!: 5 attribute points available, +256 health, +95 mana!

Level Up!: Leather Armor Proficiency reached Level 33!

Level Up!: Shield Mastery reached Level 33!

Level Up!: Aura of Beauty reached Level 7!

Level Up!: Avatar of Eirene reached Level 4!

Level Up!: Bless reached Level 33!

Level Up!: Heal reached Level 32!

Level Up!: Healing Wind reached Level 33!

Attribute Up!: You’ve gained +1 Constitution

Attribute Up!: You’ve gained +1 Agility

“Did you see that damage? I was doing so much damage.” Darkshot cheered excitedly.

“I’m pretty sure Pyri did most of the damage.” Rakkan pointed out.

“No way, it was all me.” Darkshot bragged.

“Thanks for the defense, Lina and Rakkan. Really good damage from everyone.” Aegis praised them all.

“Nice kiting.” Lina praised him back with a big smile.

“Man, that was intense. I need a tea break or something.” Darkshot said as he took a seat on the ground of the clearing.

“No time for a break, we gotta round them up before the bodies despawn, need the leather and meat.” Aegis said as he walked over to the last lynx they took out. He pulled out his creature harvesting tools and got to work, whilst Lina was the first to start scanning around and looking for lynx bodies. Once she’d spotted some she started dragging them towards Aegis, and Rakkan watched her for a bit before joining in.

“Not even a little break?” Darkshot complained as he watched Pyri join in as well.

“We don’t know how long they take to respawn. Once the originals respawn, the body will despawn and Aegis won’t be able to harvest it.” Rakkan explained as he dragged one over, minimizing the movement Aegis would need to do to get around to all of them.

“Fine… but only because I know you’re gonna make some sweet lynx leather armor upgrades for us after.” Darkshot relented as he joined in, and Aegis threw him a thumbs up. Five minutes of quickly dashing around along the area that Aegis had been kiting the beasts, they managed to round them all up. In total they had defeated 65 lynx beasts.

When Aegis had gotten to the last few in his harvesting, he saw a couple of them despawning in front of his eyes whilst he worked in the clearing in front of the den. Glancing around, he saw that inside the den, they’d begun respawning. Luckily they hadn’t noticed him yet, though.

“Whoa, ok, back up guys.” Aegis motioned everyone out of the clearing and they all quickly rushed back into the cover of the forest. “Because we didn’t beat them all at the same time, they’re respawning sporadically.

“That’s like, what, 30 minutes to respawn?” Rakkan asked.

“Sounds about right.” Pyri nodded.

“Good thing I’ve been gathering common herbs… I’ll run out of bottles soon though.” Aegis said as he started fiddling around in his inventory, preparing another lynx lure.

“Wait, we’re doing that again?” Darkshot asked with eyes opened wide.

“Of course! Over and over, until we’re all high enough for the poacher camp.” Aegis spoke as though this was something obvious. Everyone in the group looked at Darkshot with an expression that said ‘how did you not think that was what was going to happen?’.

“Ok, I guess I’m the weird one for needing a break.” Darkshot stared at them in disbelief.

“Round two, let’s go.” Aegis said as he, with little warning, poured the next lure on himself and started buffing everyone.

“Finally, we can relax.” Darkshot sat on a log around the campfire at their campsite. The group was winding down that evening after the sun had set.

“It sucks that you and Rakkan don’t have dreamstate Simboxes, otherwise we couldn’ve kept going all night.” Aegis said as he started working on cooking some lynx steaks over the campfire. Pyri had taken to feeding Melon who was no longer invisible, and Lina was gathering twigs and branches to kindle the flames.

“Yeah, yeah… real shame Rakkan had to log out for the night.” Darkshot replied, clearly lying. The group of them were now all level 37 from having been AoE grinding the lynx beasts all day and harvesting them. The experience slowed down drastically during the last few levels, and Aegis had run out of materials for lures so instead took to repeatedly using his challenging roar skill to keep them all focused on himself.

He’d also leveled up his defensive skills quite a bit from taking hits from the lynx as long as he could before he ran out of mana, and was now able to take hits from one of them and heal through it for almost 10 minutes, so he’d upgraded from leveling up defensive skills off of one lynx at a time to two. His ultimate goal of course being to be able to tank them all endlessly, but he imagined he’d need to craft better armor for that.

“Well, I guess I’m gonna hop off for the night too and get some shut eye.” Darkshot said as he leaned back and watched Aegis cook for a moment. “What’re you guys gonna do?”

“I’m going to prep all this meat so we’ll have plenty for the upcoming quests.” Aegis replied.

“I need a shower and to do some stuff around the house.” Pyri said as she finished feeding Melon. “Take care of my horse, okay?” She said to Aegis.

“Yup.” Aegis nodded.

“Cya.” Darkshot waved, and with that, both Pyri and Darkshot logged out, leaving Aegis alone with Melon and Lina. Once Lina had finished gathering a big bundle of sticks and branches for the campfire, she dropped it near the fire and sat across from it from Aegis, watching him cook in silence. Once he’d finished a batch, he leaned back and looked at her.

“Do you think we’re making good time on those lynx monsters?” Aegis asked her curiously.

“Yup.” she nodded with enthusiasm. “I did some AoE grinding like that in my guild, but usually it's with a big raid party so the experience is split more. With five people, it’s going really fast.” She added.

“How long do you think until we move on and find a better place to get experience?” Aegis asked.

“Hm…” she thought for a moment. “The lynx monsters are pretty easy to manage, and easy to gather up. It’s hard to say if we’ll be able to find another spot with higher level enemies like this, but of course higher level monsters are always better. Though, higher level monsters in this game don't just get bigger health and damage numbers, they are harder in general. Most of them have really tough abilities to deal with... It's the main reason why it is hard to reach high levels. That's why most high level players get experience in big guild groups, to make fighting the monsters easier... but of course being in a big group slows the experience down a lot.” Lina went on excitedly, and Aegis could see the twinkle in her eyes she got whenever she could talk about the game freely.

“As long as what we're fighting doesn't deal bludgeoning damage, I'm happy.” Aegis replied.

“Maybe the ruins to the south have enemies like this. Darkshot said the poachers had crossbows though, so they wouldn’t be good for this strategy.” Lina said.

“Yeah, good point. Things that shoot are not easy to kite or group up.” Aegis replied as he thought on it. After this exchange it went silent for a moment as Aegis found himself staring up at the stars through the canopy, the leaves swaying in the wind above their campsite. After thinking for a while on what to say next, the fact that he was sitting alone with Lina at night sank in and he felt himself starting to get nervous. He thought about what couples do in situations like this, and that made him think of their kiss, but he knew what would happen if they did something like that again.

“I should… I wanted to say sorry.” Aegis said awkwardly.

“Sorry for what?” Lina asked curiously.

“Well, when I did the Hrath’mir quest, I got kicked out of the Simbox for mental stress when that Avatar of Suffering used his attack on me. So, when I think that you felt that same mental stress because of me, it makes me feel bad… so, sorry, I shouldn’t force you to do stuff like that.” Aegis said awkwardly, his face blushing red as he avoided looking at her. He pretended as though he’d spotted something really interesting to stare at in the night sky above.

“Oh, n-no… you don’t have to apologize, you didn’t force me…” She replied nervously, staring down at her toes as she wiggled her leather shoes across the ground in front of the campfire. “It’s just…” she paused, but Aegis' interest was piqued and he looked down from the stars at her curiously. Partly worried, partly excited, he waited for her next words eagerly, but she hesitated for a long while.

“It’s just, when we… you know…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. “It’s just my game character. I don’t really look like this in the real world… so… I get scared, thinking how…” She paused again with hesitation. Aegis was used to her shy way of talking now though, it didn’t bother him, he waited patiently for her to finish. “I get scared and think, how you wouldn’t want to kiss me, if it was me and not my character.” She finally got the words out.

“But, why would you think that?” Aegis asked her, confused. He thought about her in the real world and how she looked. He remembered she wore braces but, through his long studying of medical science, he knew all of the practicality behind them and that they weren’t permanent - nothing about that bothered him.

“Because you are so… pretty, and I'm not really…” She had a sad look on her face as she forced the words out, continuing to fidget anxiously with her feet in the dirt.

“Heh? What are you talking about? I think you are.” Aegis replied. She blushed red but her sad expression didn’t go away. “If you don’t believe me, we can go on a date in the real world.” Aegis continued after seeing her sad expression.

“Wha?” suddenly life exploded on her face, a flustered anxious stare as she looked up at Aegis in panic. “N-no, no no, we shouldn’t do that. T-that’s not-” She blurted out.

“You don’t want to?” Aegis looked at her worriedly, getting the impression he’d said something wrong.

“Well, I want to, but… not yet, I’m not ready, yet…” She managed to explain herself, and calmed down a bit afterwards. “I’m sorry… I am being weird, right? I’m… I don’t know what a girlfriend is supposed to do…” Lina said weakly as she went back to staring at her feet and fidgeting.

“No, no it’s okay. It’s not weird. I don’t really know what a boyfriend is supposed to do either… but I know I like being with you.” Aegis replied as he joined in the foot fidgeting.

“I like it too. I like being with you too.” She smiled back, the two glancing up at each other for just a moment before looking away again.

“We can go out in the real world whenever you are ready, but don’t worry about what you look like, I like you for who you are, not your character’s appearance.” Aegis shrugged.

“Okay…” She replied softly, and it went quiet once more from there, save for a few clops from a wandering Melon around the campsite as she ate patches of nearby grass. Aegis went back to looking up at the sky, and there he spotted the star he'd named his character after.

“Oh, there is Aegis.” Aegis pointed up at it, and Lina tried to look up as well.

“Aegis?” She looked around at the night sky, confused.

“Yeah, it’s the star of Eirene. It’s what I named my character after.” Aegis explained.

“I don’t think I see it…” She said, as from where she was sitting the canopy blocked her view of the stars. Aegis noticed this, and motioned her over.

“That tree is blocking it, you can see it from here.” Aegis said, and Lina scooted around the campfire to where Aegis was. Once she was seated closely beside him, she spotted it.

“Oh, I see it! It’s so bright.”

“Yup. There was another one up there before, but the Avatar of Eirene brought it down and it's what makes the islands float now.” Aegis explained and Lina nodded while continuing to stare. Aegis turned to see her sitting beside him and saw the light of the stars reflecting in her eyes as she looked up at them, but as he did this, she spotted his eyes on hers and slowly turned to look back at him. Then, as their heads got closer, their eyes both moved to each other's lips.

“Do you want to try again?” Aegis asked nervously.

“Okay…” Lina whispered back weakly as they stared intently at each other. But this time, as Aegis leaned in to kiss her, she vanished before their lips even touched. A second later, she re-appeared just as Aegis was hitting himself on the forehead.

“Sorry, even though you just told me all that… Now it’s even worse. I’m stupid.” Aegis groaned at himself.

“No, it’s my fault! Because we talked, I was so excited…” She replied weakly.

“It’s not painful?” Aegis asked her, confused.

“No… mental stress warnings don’t just come from bad mental stress, it can be from being overwhelmed by excitement, or fear, or lots of other stuff…” Lina explained as she looked back down at her feet.

“Do you want to try easier stuff instead? You know, what isn’t so stressful…” Aegis suggested.

“Yes.” Lina replied quickly and enthusiastically. “Like, what?” She then asked.

“Uhm…” Aegis shrugged as he looked around, not really sure what to do next. He tried remembering the things that Darkshot had suggested to him, but handholding didn’t seem appropriate here. “Like this, maybe…” Aegis shifted himself to sit closer to Lina, so that their legs were touching, then put his right arm around her waist. She sat stiffly next to him, but shifted her weight slightly in his direction. After a moment, she slowly and cautiously began leaning her left shoulder onto his chest, and Aegis couldn’t help but stare closely at her as her hair brushed against him. His focus went on her breathing, the lifelike realistic breathing of her character inhaling and exhaling could be felt by the arm he had around her waist.

But from here, he was at a loss of what to do next. It took awhile for it to feel comfortable, both of them extremely nervous to be so close, but at the same time happy to be so close to one another, and as moments of silence went by, it slowly began to feel okay.

“So… my quest was all livestreamed but, I didn’t really ask you much about what you did for yours. What did you have to do to become a Shadow Dancer?” Aegis asked her.

“Oh… well…” Lina began her story of her quest to become a Shadow Dancer. It involved stealing several rare items from heavily guarded locations, and she went into great detail. Aegis listened intently to the entire story as the night went on. He’d expected that Pyri would’ve logged back in at some point, but she never did, and after a while he stopped expecting it, figuring that his mom fell asleep on the couch in their living room or something.

Once Lina had finished her story, Aegis started telling her details about the Hrath’mir quest and Arallia. Though Lina had watched most of it through the video clips and the livestream, she was excited to hear it from Aegis himself and asked him questions about what it was like.

Eventually, the stress from the day caught up to them, and the two found themselves leaning back on the ground staring up at the stars as the flames from the campfire died down.

“We should probably sleep, so we’re ready for more lynx grinding tomorrow.” Aegis suggested.

“Yeah…” Lina replied. “Can we…” she hesitated asking as she remained laying closely beside him. “Just sleep like this?” She asked with a reddened face.

“Yeah.” Aegis replied as he looked away, his face blushing red now too. She gently nestled her head on his right arm and pulled herself in close to his right side, whilst looking up at the stars. “Good night.” Aegis said politely as he tried closing his eyes.

“Good night.” Lina replied shyly, and she shut her eyes as well. The two remained laying together like that throughout the night, and while both pretended to have fallen asleep rather quickly, they both stayed awake for quite some time before Lina fell asleep first, followed by Aegis, and the two remained in each other's arms for the entire night.