Project: TheirWorld - Chapter 020 - Part 2

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The Gobos and the Ghost

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TheirWorld

The voice laughed. “I’ll make a deal with you, mortal. If you can guess the answer to my riddle before you finish the last of the Harbinger’s quests, then I shall tell you who I am - and perhaps, I might even bring you to Wise myself - after all, their riddle is mine own.”

Guin blinked. It couldn’t have been that easy, could it? She thought about the riddle, and she thought about the fools themselves. Could the answer be the one that she had been looking for since she met them? How stupid...

“How many chances do I get?” she asked.

“You only get one life,” it said. It was easy to imagine the voice smiling. It made her think of the Chesire Cat.

“Do I get any other hints?”

“We shall see how I feel as time goes by,” it told her. “For now, take this, and kill these creatures. They offend me.”

The spirit which haunts you has given you a riddle: “I am truth. I am like. I am… All that which is and isn’t. Here you find me, there you find me. You find me in babies. You find me in the old. You find me in the fire. You find me in the dark. I am immortal, but I am not alive; not really.”

This quest is optional. It can be skipped.>

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In addition to the quest, a light shone over her and she felt stronger. Pulling up her status window, she saw that she had gain a buff called [Battle Ready] with a 30 minute timer.

Out of her own curiosity, she check her notification window.

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“Hmm,” she pondered aloud. Gobos. Definitely a cousin of the goblin. Guin sighed as she wondered how much XP she would be getting if she could get experience points for this. The experience itself, however, was worth its weight in gold. She had read plenty of stories about people who went right into the game without any actual combat experience; they had had a hard time. Losing stat points and items when you died was only the beginning.

Walking through the cave, she killed off another group of Gobos. A half an hour and roughly fifteen Gobos later, she came to… something different.

Rounding the corner in fox form, she saw a large Gobo, dressed in a robe of ragged, patchworks silks of various colors. It held a wooden staff with a sparkling orange gem focus. Alone in the room with seemingly no way out, surrounded by what looked to be treasures of gold, silver, and gemstones, Guin could only assume that this was the boss. She also assumed that this was a caster-type creature.

While her experience with combat was pretty average so far, she wondered about how she would deal with a caster. Magic in any game was a wildcard of mechanics, and having no experience or magic of her own made it difficult to predict how the caster would act. She had also lost her haunting buff.

Hoping that it wouldn’t be that different from the archers, Guin decided to go with the ‘go for the throat, then the back’ tactic she had previously relied upon and pray for the best.

As soon as her paw entered the room, the torches flickered. The gobo flipped around to face her, bright blue eyes settling on looking down a her. It looked confused; it didn’t seem sure if Guin was an enemy or not. Guin didn’t wait for it to decide, casting [Backstab] and beginning her combat motions instead. It’s throat wasn’t exposed like the others had been, so she quickly changed her tactics, using the walls to catapult herself to it’s shoulder. The gobo still looked confused as Guin morphed into human form, and planted her dagger into the area of it’s spine.

The creature jerked with a screech, spinning around and holding it’s staff up, now recognizing her as a threat. Guin didn’t want to give it time to think beyond that though, and held on as well as she could as it spun, performing [Backstab] after [Backstab] as long as her stamina held out. The gobo shrieked and began to chant. Gritting her teeth, Guin kept her attacks up. It seemed while it was chanting, it couldn’t move, which allowed her to get several more, accurately aimed [Backstabs] in - but it didn’t seem to do much damage. At this point, Guin was starting to feel like all she was doing was drenching herself in the spraying blood.

The creature suddenly stopped speaking, and lifted its staff up. The orange gem spun in the air, and the air seemed to gather to it. Guin felt the blood drain from her face as she watched the gem, and furiously began hacking at the creature until she couldn’t breathe anymore. Distracted and winded, she watched as the wind around the staff’s focus formed a fast moving ball of wind. She could feel it sucking the oxygen out of the area, and the pressure it emitted made her dizzy. She fell off the gobo’s back and staggered back. The creature glanced over at her with a mad grin, and said one last word. With that unintelligible word, the air released, and Guin was sent flying back into the cave wall with even more force than when the Gobo Club Thugs whacked her. The rock wall crumbed around her even as its shards stabbed into her back. Even though she was convinced no air could escape her lungs, she cried out; it was a tiny, pitiful cry. Tears welled up in her eyes and she collapsed like a rag doll. A sharp, delighted laugh came from the center of the room where the caster was, and he began to chant again.

No, Guin told herself. That wasn’t happening again - fuck that.

She pulled herself out from the hole in the wall with all the strength she could muster. It would have been helpful if she could see health bars, but supposedly they don’t appear until you achieve a combat rank of ‘C’ or greater for any given monster. Biting her lip, she took a moment to consider what she could do to stop the thing from casting. Would [Trip] serve as an interrupt? Rushing up to it, she swiped at the monster’s legs.

It was a success! Her action sent the gobo up head over heels with a screech and a loud thunk!. It babbled in whatever language it spoke as it struggled in its silks. Guin took the chance to grab it by the ears, exposing it’s soft throat. Doing her best to ignore the look in her eyes, she swiped the blade across its throat.

The creature gave out a blood curdling sound from deep in its throat as it struggled and shook - and eventually, died. As it did so, all the treasures that she had seen in the room melted away into rocks, dirt, and a few wooden boxes.

Unable to stand, Guin pulled herself away from body and leaned against the wall, catching her breath. Covered in blood, she started to sob in a mix of pain and relief. Even though she knew that she couldn’t die, she had been afraid. Even though she knew it to be a monster, there was some part of her that was moved by the eyes of the creature. She really needed to get rid of this dagger. Close combat was just not for her. At least not that close.