-Alice-

  Our party was set. The doggy lady, that I now knew as Sapphire, brought up a good point. That our current group was unbalanced. We didn’t have a tank, or a solid close combat fighter, which was apparently very important.

  While Kyle was technically a close combat fighter, he was more suited for ambushes, not head on assaults. If he was higher level it wouldn’t be a problem, but he only had the assassin class and it was only at level 13. Honestly, he really shouldn't be here.

  I miss my friend Chugchug. He held enemies off while I blasted them with magic. That’s how we beat up that dragon. I remember him slamming it’s big head on the ground and holding it with earth magic while I stabbed it with ice shards.

  I used to be able to swing around a big sword, but I couldn’t really do that anymore. Even now I wasn’t sure why. I was still strong. The sword just kind of pulled me around too much.

  It was hard to control. The shift between avoiding, blocking, and attacking took too long leaving me open to damage. I still had the phantom pain from when that Oni cut open my stomach.

  Our group headed to the street Izzy was, but that place was covered in flames. If I knew my husband, I knew he had to have done it. I hope Izzy was okay.

  “Hey check this out.” Said Kyle showing us a blue screen. On it we’re fight logs. It looked like Shadow’s fight logs. I had no idea he could access that.

  “Death Soldier?” I muttered.

  “It’s not just that. It’s a rank 1 boss. There’s other undead mobs there too. Looks like she took damage from a monk and assassin.” Said Kyle.

  “That’s why her HP bar keeps dropping. She must be struggling.” Said Sapphire.

  “Yeah, and I know where she is.” Said Kyle. He brought up the map Izzy had gotten from that NPC. It wasn’t very detailed, but it now had a red circle a few streets over from where the flames were.

  “How do you know?” said Sapphire.

  “She took debris damage from a building label as, SW-026. It’s a pawn shop in this location.” He pointed to the red circle. “I looked it up on the way here.”

  “Is that why you were falling behind? And here I thought you were just slow.” said Sapphire.

  “Lets go find our comrades.” Said Kyle.

  “Wait. We can’t just rush in. Our party is no good the way it is. I say we pick up a tank and monk. That’ll round us out nicely.” Argued Sapphire.

  “Yeah I see your point. I can’t exactly protect you guys.” Said Kyle.

  With that we headed to the street on the map, hoping to run into one of the squads. If not, then we’ll just have to rush in and hope there are already troops there.

  From what Sapphire told me, Shadow's HP kept dropping and climbing. It shouldn’t be that hard. She was really strong. What did this mean for Izzy? Was he okay. I need to find him. Once we beat up the bad guy I’ll feed him. Then Izzy will know I love him the most.

  The blue interlocking shields were visible, but we didn’t see any troops nearby. They must have been inside the quarantine zone, clearing a path forward. We finally ran into people when we got close to the street where Shadow was.

  “What the hell are you two doing here!” yelled Sir Boner. His head had a throbbing vein and for a moment, I wondered if it might pop and splash us.

  “Hey… Sir Boner…. Can you help us!” I yelled through labored breaths.

  My words seemed to confuse him. His irritation quickly replaced by reluctant curiosity. We came to a stop in front of him. Everyone seemed to be trying to catch their breath.

  While my physical stats were high I also had the low stamina of a child and every step of mine was like three steps of theirs. We’d also been running for the entire time and somehow slowing myself down so that I didn’t leave them behind was also more taxing than simply going full speed.

  “Shadow’s in trouble. It’s a boss monster. We need to assemble a team and provide backup” Said Kyle.

  “We’re already on it! So what, you two thought you could come in and help somehow? You guys are way under level! What happened with staying safe at the castle!? You’re not supposed to fight anymore! That was the whole point of joining the guild!” he scolded.

  “Look who’s talking! It was your idea to quit all this adventurer bullshit! Then you went off and joined the army, without telling us! What the hells your problem! Did you think we wouldn’t worry! That we didn’t care about you!” yelled Sapphire.

  The drama here was so good. I could watch an entire season of these guys interacting with one another. It was like a Netflix show. I sat down on some rubble off to the side to watch.

  The girl was crying now. It looked so real too. I wish I had snacks. Oh wait! I still have that lollipop Chugchug gave me. I withdrew it from my inventory and popped the mango flavor candy into my mouth.

  Kyle comforted Sapphire while Boner struggled to find a comeback. “I just… I wanted to get stronger. I wanted to get so strong that no one could ever hurt you guys!”

  “Your level 43 now. You’re a lot stronger thanks to your gear and the guild buffs. I get you want to protect us, but who’s going to protect you? We are here because of what happened in Erickdom. This is our home now and we don’t plan to run away this time. We want to fight too.” Said Kyle.

  “I cant protect you guys! You cant stay!” Yelled Boner.

  “Stop trying to fight by yourself. You’ve been different ever since Lina died.” Said Kyle.

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  “She died because of me! Because I was so weak! I can’t let you guys die too!” he cried.

  Kyle punched him. It wasn’t a very powerful punch, but it did inflict damage. Sapphire glared at him before trying to look at the blood dripping down Boners lip. “What the hell Kyle!” She scolded.

  Kyle rubbed his sore knuckles. “Just getting my lick back. Last time words like that were thrown around I was the one punched in the face.”

  Boner laughed. “When did your balls drop?” he muttered before spitting blood onto the ground. He was so cool.

  “Around the same time I began to hate myself.” He answered.

  “Boys are so stupid.” Said Sapphire.

  Boner sighed, “You two are still too weak. That’s a fact. Your better off back at the castle. You could both die.”

  “We won’t. We can level too and besides we have the might of The Raiders behind us. There’s no way we can lose.” Said Sapphire.

  That line was a bit cheesy, but it’s still kind of cool. “Guys this is great and all, but Shadow’s still having a bad day.” I interjected.

  They wrapped it up pretty quickly after that and we formed a proper party. It was me, Boner, Sapphire, Kyle, one of the monk guys, an archer, another assassin, an extra tank, we got a cleric, then there was the hex mage and finally there was the berserker.

  In total, our party was 11 people. It was too large for an actual party, so we split it into two and took formation. First Kyle and the other assassin were in stealth, and sent ahead.

  Then there was the archers that were also in stealth and were up on the roof tops. I gave all those guys the cloak buff, which gave their stealth a boost. I also gave the archers the buff, hawks eye, increasing their perception for better scouting and accuracy.

  The assassin’s got a speed boost thanks to liberation. These four were our scouts. The tanks were at the front of the main group. I gave them the fortress and regeneration buffs.

  Behind them was the monk and berserker. For the monk I gave him a speed boost and attack boost. The berserker got regeneration and fortress.

  I couldn’t give everyone every buff because it was too costly. By the time I put all of them on one person I’d have run out of focus, so I selected the buffs that would best help each individual.

  Behind the melee fighters was support. There was the mage who de-buffed our enemies. The cleric that healed, and me that buffed everyone up. We all had the focus up buff. It basically increased our focus pool by 10% and boosted our focus regeneration by the same amount.

  Behind us was Sapphire. With her upgraded weapon, her fast reflexes, perfect shots and uncanny senses, she was in charge of the supports well being. The last line of defense.

  I gave her hawks eye and a focus up buff. These would help a lot. Her gun used focus to fire after all. It was pretty cool. I hadn’t come up with this strategy, or formation. It was all thanks to the tank guy. His name was Thrud.

  Unfortunately, finding shadow wasn’t as simple, as looking down the road to confirm if anyone was there. For one there was rubble in the way. The other issue was that there were a few centipedes nearby.

  Not many, but they were level 40 and above. The NPCs were pretty strong. Maybe as strong as a literal boss. We might have over prepared to be honest.

  Mr. Thrud even made me pick up a cleric ability called Holy Light. He suggested that since we were dealing with an undead, we might want some holy magic that could break curses. It was an odd spell.

  For one it hurts dark aligned enemies, heals allies, and breaks curses. It’s main focus was on breaking curses, and the other two effects were added on.

  Our cleric apparently wasn’t high level enough to pick up the skill. In order to unlock it you needed to heal 500k HP with healing sacred arts. I’d done way more than that, so it was available.

  I remember dropping the cleric class, because of how stressful it was to keep everyone’s HP full. I used to switch to it when I was playing with Izzy. He was always fighting stuff while I kept him healed and buffed. That’s what made us a great team.

  We had to climb over some rubble to go any further. The melee fighters went first. Then the mage and cleric. I was second to last except when I got to the top I felt the rubble shift. I fell on my butt and too my horror was faced with a centipede.

  It had been buried under the rocks and had been disturbed by our movements. “Crap!” I yelled afraid to move as it’s stinger came out from it’s mouth. I really absolutely hated creepy crawlies. Why wasn’t Izzy here to squash it!

  I kicked it, pushing it away a little. That’s when Sapphire blasted it’s body turning it to ash. Her weapon had done a lot of damage. I watched her level go from 18 up to 20.

  Even I leveled up from that. I was pretty close to be honest and that little bug was enough to push me from level 39 to 40. Of course I still had plenty of levels in other things, magical girl was just the last class I’d unlocked.

  Upon leveling up I got a notification saying my transformation had been upgraded to level 2. It would now give me a bigger boost to my base stats when transformed, and would hold up for longer.

  “What happened! Are you alright!” Boner came climbing back up. He helped me up then gave Sapphire a worried look. “Maybe you two should stay back at the barricade. That was too close.”

  “I refuse to stay behind, I leveled up twice from that.” Said Sapphire.

  “I’m not staying back. I still have more levels than you after all!” I argued.

  “levels don’t mean shit. If that thing had ripped your throat out you would have died.” He said harshly.

  The guy had a point. “I know… but now we know those things can hide in the rubble, so we’ll be better prepared.” I said. Was he actually worried about me? I felt like I was being scolded.

  “Fine, but next time you feel the rubble shifting, jump as far away as possible.” He said before walking back down the rocks.

  Sapphire was smiling. “why are you so happy?” I asked.

  “Because… he isn’t such a bad guy.” She answered.

  As soon as we made it to the other side Kyle made an appearance. “Come on, let’s go! She’s one street over! We need to hurry! Her HP is dropping fast!”

  Ignoring the formation, I activated liberation on myself, and used every bit of speed I had to go on ahead. I had the skills necessary to support Shadow and Izzy. I could hear the others calling out to me, but I knew I couldn’t wait.

  As soon as I popped out of the alleyway, I felt a wave of power wash over me. Dark energy was mixing with the air sending a cold breeze down the street. It all came from the undead boss, 100 feet away.

  I was stunned for a moment, as I saw the skulls and rotten meat shifting under the plate of its broken armor. There was a powerful spell being channeled. Three to be exact. Shadow was on the ground unable to move.

  She had so many de-buffs and was bleeding out. Clearing all that up was my first instinct, but the attack charging up was the immediate issue.

  I knew what I had to do. “Protect!” a blue shield appeared between Shadow and the monster, just as the dark magic went off. I hope it was enough, but I felt my spell creaking under the pressure of the spells.

  That was when both Boner and Thrud came around the corner. They didn’t hesitate to attack, as they rushed forward. Unsure if they would make it, I buffed up their speed.

  “Shield Smash!” they yelled In tangent, activating their skills. Both of their shields glowed a bright blue, as they tackled the undead’s body. Not only did they push it back, but there forward momentum managed to knock it on its back.

  The dark magic fired off into the sky. Shadow was riddled with curses. Now was the time. “Holy Light!” I activated the sacred art and felt a pull inside me.

  The power released, like a flashlight. It covered not only Shadow, but everyone on the street. Boner, Thrud and Shadow all got hit with healing energy. The curses on Shadow’s body were all broken simultaneously.

  Her body was quickly repaired like plastic being 3d printed. She drank a potion, completely healing herself. The healing effects of my spell weren’t strong enough yet, but that was okay because we had potions and an actual cleric.

  I ran over to her. “Hey, are you okay!?” I asked in a panic. Even if she was my enemy, If she died then Izzy would be sad. Besides, how could I get my revenge on her if she died?

  “Mistress! You came to save me! Come here sweetie!” The crazy cat lady then pulled me into a hug and started licking my hair!

  I shrieked. “No, stop it! That’s nasty!” she cuddled me on her lap nuzzling her cheeks with mine. Was this what she did with Izzy? How shameless! Did she have to purr so much! It was so weird!

  Maybe I saved the wrong person…