Page 164 of I Ran Away to Evil 3
Beside me, Julian said, “John.”
The rogue nodded. “I see them. Three wargle wolverines on the tree line heading toward us, and one para-para snake hiding in that rocky outcrop.”
“Visha, you and Pram handle the wolverines. Jeffry, stay here with Gerda. Tully and I will take on the snake,” Julian directed as everyone jumped into action.
Except me, who stood beside Jeffry.
“Do you normally split the party?” I asked, this time aloud. Our vantage point gave me a good view of Julian tanking a snake twice as long as he was. It spat paralysis venom, hence the imaginative name.
“Yes?” Jeffry replied, surprised at the question.
“I thought it was bad luck.” I shrugged, recalling that it was a sure way of getting killed on tabletop quests.
“First I’ve heard; is that a troll thing?” He wasn’t really interested, I could tell. His eyes were tracking the fight and flitting to his notification logs.
Combat was neatly wrapped up within five minutes.
“Are we going to fight all of the monsters on each floor?” I asked Julian when he returned from his one-sided bout.
“Only the ones we come across,” he replied, signaling to Visha at a distance to stay where they were. We started walking toward the forest. “It helps finance the trip.”
Noted.
[I don’t wanna fight those.]
Sir Tully posted over the chat logs. He was peeking over the edge of a cliff on the dungeon’s third floor. He’d wanted a better look and had crawled over himself. In plate.
Below, there was a valleyfullof pine-tree treants.
Or was it a valley full of pine trees, andsomeof them were treants? Judging from the wiggling branches and shifting foliage, either option was bad.
[We could burn it all down?]
That was Pram, asking hopefully.
The group, as I discovered, rarely used the chat. They liked anything that drew in more monsters to fight …that didn’t apply now. Everyone was being extremely careful.
John shook his head as Jeffry pointed out,
[It would take hours to set up the flare traps, and they might just turn around and smother the flames with ice magic. Treants are one of the more intelligent monster classes, even if they suffer from dungeon madness.]
[We could skip this level?]
I made the offer. I didn’t see the platform to the next level anywhere in the valley below, so we could probably just skirt the fight completely. I hadn’t had a chance to do it yet, but now seemed like a good time to offer.
Jeffry replied,
[That’s an uncanny number of treants. At this rate, they might cause a stampede … Either way, we should clear some of them out.]
Visha added,
[What if we set up traps to divide them long enough to pick them off? We can have John’s shadows light four or five fires around the edges of the forest but focus our ambush on one.]
Julian considered for a moment, then,
[It’s still risky. Let’s try this instead …]
After reading the plan, we all left to get into place.
