RETURN OF THE SHADOW - Chapter 225

Balthazar went along with Barnabus to the town head’s place where the two guards escorting him departed and he waited for Agua and the rest to join him. A few seconds later, Agua and his team joined them and during that time a number of other players kept pointing at him and Barnabus.

“You took your time,” said Balthazar as saw Agua and quickly shared his quest with them.

“Only four of us can take the quest,” said Agua looking at the description. There were close to ten in his team. “Fine, we need others to handle the issues of the antivenom anyway,” he said as he set a few members aside to join the quest and Shadow quickly distributed the antidotes to the remaining.

After that they started to move into the forest from the town. A few players looked at them like they were crazy while others in admiration or anger. Luckily, none of them disturbed the team as they could see that Barnabus was moving along with them. He was dressed as a coastal guard and though they could see him as a level 15 NPC, no one wanted to fight with him unnecessarily especially after they looked at his description that he was the town head’s son. Attacking him or his team in their view could even result in being kicked out of the town.

Balthazar understood that no one would attack them now because of Barnabus’ uniform, but his concern was about the future after they were done with the mission. So, he was a bit concerned that there were many looking at them, but he couldn’t avoid it. He could only put on a brave face as he was leading the team.

The team had a fae elementalist, a guardian and a priest along with Agua and Shadow. Before went into the forest, Shadow turned towards Barnabus to tell him a few things. It was always better to make the NPCs aware of their plans otherwise, the quests might become unnecessarily complicated.

“Young master, Barnabus,” said Shadow stopping the others. “There are a few ground rules you need to follow. I will be leading the team from here on and everyone would have to listen to my orders. I welcome any suggestions that you have during the mission, but you are not to act on your suggestions or assumption without my explicit permission.”

Hearing him command, the NPC Barnabus was grinding his teeth in anger, his eyes shooting daggers at Shadow. “Don’t push it, you mongrel,” said Barnabus. “You better not mess with me.”

“I won’t do anything of such sort as long as you do as you are told and work effectively with the others to finish the quest,” replied Shadow. “But first, tell me how you fight?”

“Better than someone like you,” replied Barnabus in anger.

“I doubt that, and I am not asking about how good you are fighting. I want to know what your speciality is. What weapon you use? You are a magician of physical combatant? Can you identify the different plants and beasts?” asked Shadow.

“An archer. My trainer says that I have great eyesight and would be a very good scout,” said Barnabus proudly but Shadow greatly doubted that. He found it hard to believe the word of a self-entitled rich kid, but he was glad that he would fight from a distance if necessary and wouldn’t get near the monsters in a conflict which makes his work much easier.

“A good sight is not the only thing a scout requires, but I will let you search for the herbs once we get to the area marked on the map,” said Shadow. “Till that time, you will be in the back along with the Agua. He is in charge when I am not near.”

“Handle this one carefully,” he whispered in Agua’s ear. “He is a bit of a spoilt prince type character and is a pain to control.”

With that the group began to move into the forest. Shadow took lead in scouting along with a fae elementalist. The elementalist called wings of fire could fly up and stay on the trees giving him a better view of the area ahead. With the pair of them on the lookout, there weren’t any problems as they made their way to the location specified on the map.

Shadow scouted the path ahead and continuously sent them information so that they would not come across many beasts. This came as a disappointment to the players of the team as the quest clearly told them that the greater number of beasts they killed, the better their reward, but Shadow didn’t think the same.

He considered the safety of the NPC to be most important. So, he wanted to avoid any beast if possible. Moreover, he noticed along the way that the low-level beasts in the way were being easily killed by them. Barnabus himself was a level-17 NPC. He was able to shoot at the lower level beasts with relative ease like a professional. So, Balthazar believed that killing them wouldn’t probably earn them any decent rewards.

He was sure that the rewards would be calculated based on the level of the beasts they kill. Shadow had enough experience with quests in his previous life to know the things which would be considered by the system to be important for the quest. Knowing that the reason for Barnabus to be on the quest was to make him understand fear and the need for teamwork to survive, he was sure that the level of the beast they kill would be important.

Shadow actually was looking for any level 17 or higher-level beast to fight but he didn’t find any till they reached the area marked in the map. The area was in a part of the forest which had a plain terrain and a thin stream passing through it. It was a grassland with the tallest of the plants being less than 3 feet tall.

This was good in a sense that they could easily find out any big beasts that were dangerous. The bad news was that the fae became useless. He couldn’t keep flying continuously as it would drain his stamina points. Apart from that, they were all tall figures and were easily visible to the other beasts.

“Keep close to the ground,” said Shadow. “We don’t want to attract any unwanted attention from the beasts. Keep on lookout for the star blade grass.”

“That stuff is usually found close to the stream. They would appear as blueish green grass which sparkle during both day and night. They will be as lone stalks in middle of other grass but finding them like that is very hard. The star deer like them and we can find the grass by following the star deer,” said Barnabus surprising them.

He had been sulking and scowling all the way angry with both his father and the lieutenant for sending him on this mission with whom he considered pawns to be used as required. So, he started to teach them about it. “Those beasts even take care of the brass by pulling out all other vegetation near any star blade grass they find so that the star blade grass gets more nutrient and water. Why else would the star blade grass be in isolated spots?”

“You have quite a good knowledge of the beasts and the grass, young master,” remarked Balthazar.

“Of course, I do,” replied Barnabus in a haughty tone. “Everyone thinks that I am just sitting and giving orders without doing any physical work. I don’t need to do any. I know many things about the vegetation and the beasts around the town and few others nearby.”

“So, we will probably get into fights with the star deer when we go for the grass,” said Agua happily. He found it to be a good thing as he found the NPC Barnabus to be quite adept with his bow and he didn’t think that it would be hard to kill those beasts if they encountered them.

“Yes, the only problem is that we don’t want the ones in a herd. The ones taking care of star blade grass usually are isolated and not in large groups. Even beasts know that more deer imply a good chance of trampling on the grass. They used their antlers to pull out the vegetation surrounding the star blade grass,” said Barnabus. “So, look for two to four deer with their antlers scratching the soil.”

“That is quite useful. We will keep a lookout for it,” said Agua excited. “We don’t get much useful suggestion in a quest usually.”

“But are the beasts really intelligent enough to farm grass like that? It is like a society?” continued Agua. It was common for beasts at higher levels to have a modic.u.m of intelligence in many games, but he found it hard that beasts could farm.

“Well, there are some rare ones. Most of the star deer don’t form large herds except in plain areas like this one,” said Barnabus pointing at the field. “Most beasts that herd have societies. It is just that these managed to find a way to help their society grow without fighting other beasts.”

“Enough biology lessons. Let us search for the grass,” said Balthazar. “We will try to steal the grass if possible, rather than attack the deer.”

“That won’t help against our quest,” messaged Agua.

“I doubt it will work perfectly. I will scout ahead for the grass,” said Balthazar loudly. “You guys keep close. With a fae in our ranks, he could quickly spot any skirmish and quickly lead you to help if necessary.”

“Let us first get the grass,” he messaged to his team. “After that we will try to kill a few deer.”

Shadow pulled out a scope and asked Agua, ” You have one of these?”

“No.”

“Keep it and keep an eye out for me. If you find any of star blade grass, inform me this will make it faster,” said Shadow went into stealth and moved ahead towards the stream.

Though Barbabus informed him that the grass could be found by following deer, he didn’t want to do so. He preferred to search for the blades of grass which the deer missed. It was hard work as he had to keep avoiding the deer while he searched for the grass. After half an hour he finally managed to find a blade of the grass and quickly plucked it.

“Acquired an adolescent blade of star blade grass.”

“Herbalism proficiency +1.”

“An adolescent blade of star blade grass?” wondered Balthazar and then a thought struck his mind and he checked the status of the quest and found the number of blades collected to still be zero. Suspicious, he went to Barnabus and asked about it.

“Of course, you would find an adolescent one. They are hardly useful to the coastal guard. The smell of mature ones would attract the deer and it would be shocking if they are left alone,” said Barnabus as if it was an obvious thing to know. Balthazar immediately understood that the NPC was getting back at him by hiding that information and making him work all this time.

“You couldn’t have told that before?” snarled Shadow.

“I didn’t expect that one wouldn’t something so obvious,” answered the NPC.

“This means we have to fight the deer,” said Agua. He was glad about the fact that they had to fight the deer. He was taking a big risk and didn’t want to lose any extra experience of points they might get. He was already at level 17, the same as the deer and didn’t think that they would pose much danger as they had already killed few star deer before

“Fine. Let us attack directly,” said Shadow.

“Hopefully, Barnabus is good at evading the beasts,” he thought as they decided to start attacking beasts directly.

“We need to kill them quickly,” said Shadow as he started arranging the team. He was in the front along with the guardian. They planned to distract the deer while the fae elementalist flew in from the sky and harvested the grass.

They soon found a small group of three deer behaving as Barnabus explained. Shadow went into stealth and got close to one and put the daggers into its ears causing it to shriek in pain.

“Quick attack them before any others come,” shouted Agua as he commanded his team to attack the deer.

“Not an issue. The deer in the group work with each other, but the other deer won’t reinforce them. They usually assume it is a predator and keep away,” said Barnabus. “If it wasn’t so then the entire plain would be ruled by this deer.”

“There are predators that can kill them in this plain?” asked Shadow. This was very important. All this time, he didn’t find any beasts other than deer which were level 17.

“Sure, grassland tigers are one of the dangerous ones in this area, but we will kill them too when they come,” said Barnabus. Balthazar wanted to slap the NPC, but he put his focus on quickly killing the deer as they were the priority.

It took them only ten minutes to kill them and get the blade of grass. This time the grass was luckily a mature one and the quest got updated accordingly. Satisfied with it they continued to kill the deer. For every blade of grass, they had to kill a few of the star deer.

But no one cared. It wasn’t hard and no one lost much health. Even Barnabus proved to be quite competent and managed deal as much damage as a player. The NPC was better than two other players in the team in terms of damage.

They were farming peacefully and over the time, there were a couple of instances when the NPC was attacked. As expected, he was not good at evading and took a bit of damage from the deer, but the guardian took over for Barnabus and kept him safe while the priest healed.

In this manner, they continued and quickly gather the required amount, but none of the team were satisfied and Barnabus also was helpful without grumbling. So, they continued to farm on the grassland, when the NPC received a sudden attack from behind.