The pile of snacks and drinks beside Danika slowly dwindled as she played. It had been awhile since she'd played like this, and it gave her gaming session a sort of nostalgic feel. Her usual habits were no doubt better for her, but she thought that it was okay to splurge once in awhile.

When Shrubbery logged on, Danika didn't need to transport her, because SaltySiamese had already made sure that there were suitable trees planted in the village. Using her tree for transportation drained it of some energy, but it wasn't as dangerous as the health drain of ZipZing's assassin skill.

Shrubbery laughed when she arrived and said, "Of course there are, I grew these for her!"

Danika was a little happy to see evidence that the two of them were still playing together at times. She had been a little dismayed by the apparently reduced communication between them after SaltySiamese and her brother had moved away with their parents. They'd been friends for as long as she'd known either of them.

When Kit logged in, Danika discovered that she didn't have to collect her either. The Empress simply flew down from the Jade Palace on her own wings. She did remember to use the skill that hid her title when she transformed back into her human shape, but Danika hoped that no one had noticed the flag on the second fairy dragon that appeared.

Shrubbery and Kit both had difficulty finding ways to help out with their skills. The armored suits were too powerful to be easily entangled, and too sturdy to take any damage from any of Kit's animal forms.

Danika put some thought into it while she kept ZipZing zipping back and forth to help those who did have powerful attacks make them more effective. She asked Kit, "What about your new mending skill? I've seen you use it long distance. Does it just restore to a previous state? Or can you mend together things that weren't already connected? Or maybe even mend them all the way back to an incomplete state?"

Kit replied wryly, "Neither. I can only restore them to their best condition after they were completed, and it really takes too much time for mid combat use. But now that you brought it up, I can switch to mending the gear of anyone who can retreat for a bit!"

Shrubbery overheard and exclaimed, "I feel silly, give me your garden Zip! We don't have anyone to boost the healing right now, but those berry bushes will still help anyone who can retreat for a bit to heal up!"

Danika expected the new guild member, Night Owl, to need transportation into the village… but he teleported himself right to ZipZing, which made her eye him suspiciously for a long moment when he arrived. He didn't seem perturbed by her expression though, and simply joined in with the battle, like everyone else.

ShinZing and the other members of Underneath eventually returned, as promised. When they exited ZipZing's stone space where they'd logged off, SaltySiamese demanded suspiciously, "Do you already have a portal that can function inside a spacial enchantment!?"

"Not yet," Danika replied teasingly, before admitting, "as far as I know it won't be possible. They just logged out inside it."

The reinforcement gave the members of EmeraldHearts their first real break. ShinZing's legendary sword that could cut through anything might be small, but it was as though it had been designed for destroying the armored suits. Once the suits were cut open, Nao1 and SilentSky both had deadly one shot type skills to take out the occupants. Edwardian and Saaki helped keep a surprising number of attackers occupied, while the other three steadily cut their targets down one by one.

MatchlessMinion was actually the first person who needed to be fetched and brought to the village, but after he arrived, he made himself very useful. He had stocked up on sleeping darts recently, and he only needed a tiny hole to shoot through with the accuracy he had these days. ShinZing stopped having to stay in close combat range of the armored suits long enough to cut away whole sections, and just bounced back and forth punching holes into them.

Once their targets were immobilized, everyone else had a much easier time of it. They could actually walk up and quietly open the suits before smiting the occupants. If the members of Underneath had been able to stay for longer than an hour, Danika thought that they might have been able to end the battle all by themselves.

--

She finished off all the snacks and drinks that she'd piled beside her, and other demands from her occasionally inconvenient human body were making themselves known, before EmeraldHearts seemed to have driven off the besiegers for good.

"I need to take a break,'' she announced. "But that was ridiculous! How could they possibly have crafted so many powered suits already? There were more of them than there are dwarven players!"

Not every armor had been piloted by a dwarf, but at least half of them seemed to have been. Danika was fairly sure that some of the pilots had died and revived, and then returned to the battle in a new armored suit. There were ways to instantly repair gear the way her restore prayer could repair people, even faster than Kit's new Mending skill, but it would be very expensive.

Justin said with a trace of real fatigue, "My spy says that they were crafted by dwarven NPCs."

Danika thought about that while she was away from her devices. When she returned, she cheated, and simply asked her assistant dragon about it.

Her assistant's voice explained cheerfully from the app on her phone, "The suits were designed by players, but all but two of the enchantments used already existed. They are crafted as individual pieces and then assembled. There are a number of dwarven, goblin, and gnomish smiths who have been creating even more complex things (like swords that block by themselves, boots that evade, and even entire golems) for as long as the empire has existed."

Danika had used golems in a story design herself, without ever considering how they would be made in the first place. The armored suits were actually a rather clever adaption, because the biggest flaw in a golem was that it was kind of dumb. They would accept a limited number of relatively simple commands, and didn't adapt well to unusual tactics.

The members of Justin's guild were celebrating their victory when she returned. Quin even told her with satisfaction, "No one will whine about all the construction we've been doing for you guys anymore! I really didn't expect that having your help in combat was going to do much for us."

"Thanks?" Danika replied uncertainly.

Justin said calmly, "It went a lot better than I feared. I don't think they'll be able to afford to attack again for quite awhile."

Danika dithered for a long moment before deciding to tell him what her assistant had told her. "The pieces of those things were apparently crafted by NPCs, with standard enchantments."

He didn't ask her how she knew that, he just replied calmly, "I see. We should still have time while they rebuild."

SaltySiamese asked with interest, "Do you think they have anyone as good at repairing stuff with only energy as Kit Tay? That's seriously a god-like skill. I had no idea Druids got anything like that at high levels, but I suppose it goes with the material sorting and stuff!"