Sandrine sent another animal corpse to AlphaWolf. The forest they were in looked more gentle compared to the dilapidated city of the first offroad event, but in fact there were a lot more attackers and dangers. Poisonous plants and hidden traps were only a portion of the things Sandrine's group encountered, they were also attacked every few steps.
If Sandrine had been a lone player, she would probably be dead without having found a single chest. However, her stats at this point were already pretty high, and she had two high level pets. It was as if a team of rankers strolled around a newbie area.
Gribouille located the chests, Paquerette alerted in case of danger, and Sandrine fought and made the decisions. With the three of them together, this forest didn't pose much of a problem.
Sandrine wiped the blood off her pitchfork and looked ahead. They were about to find the 7th and last wooden chest of the day.
Gribouille had led them in a rare clearing, where the trees' spacing allowed the light to filter through the foliage and project gentle dots on the ground. It was the first place they had found where Sandrine could turn off the manual lamp.
The ground of the clearing seemed to be the same usual green moss, but a whole patch of it was covered in grass and small plants, with little flowers looking like white bells hanging from the stems like bundles of grapes.
"Lily of the valley ? Are we really in Spring ?"
It was rare to see such a sight, because those delicate flowers bloomed towards the end of April but everyone would pick them, and by the 1st of May, you wouldn't see any left. It was because offering a strand of lily of the valley on the 1st of May was said to bring luck, in France. So everyone would go find them when they bloomed towards the end of April, and even kids tried to pick a bunch to sell in the streets.
"The game doesn't give the date, but we can pretend it's the 1st of May, the lily of the valley festival ! Moreover, the 1st of May is Labour day too, so we should have a feast tonight !"
Happy with herself, Sandrine skipped towards the clearing, ready to pick a few stems to send AlphaWolf and MomImThristy to bring them luck. But just as she was bending down to pick the plants, Paquerette neighed loudly and galloped towards her. The mare's eyes were strained towards the sky.
Sandrine sighed.
"Again ?"
In this forest, the most annoying creatures weren't the fast weasels or the strong badgers, those could be easily defeated if you paid attention and hit hard enough. No, the most annoying creatures were the birds.
The trees' foliage was so dense and thick that light could hardly pass through, and without a lamp, you had to navigate in the darkness. In this situation, you couldn't always find the small birds hidden in the branches, and even if you could protect yourself and kill a few that came too close, it was very hard to completely decimate them if they flew to hide in the leaves.
The group had met their first flock of birds soon after finding the first chest, they had pushed them back quite easily but didn't manage to kill them all. However, those birds seemed to have shared the news with other ones, and a new flock came for them. Then another. Then another.
Sandrine was starting to get tired of seeing feathers.
"Don't you dare touch the flowers !"
She couldn't let her luck-bringers get ruined by a few unruly birds !
If Sandrine had one advantage, it was that presently she was in one of the rare clearings, and that she didn't need to turn her lamp on. This allowed her to see the animals more clearly, and to use both her hands to attack.
"You're so dead !"
In one second, the previously calm and silent clearing was filled with the nightmarish sound of hundreds of wings flapping, thousands of feathers rustling, and many high pitched chirping sounds that could render anyone deaf.
Already used to this madness, Gribouille went to hide underneath tree roots, regularly jumping out to bite a bird and then going back to hide before he could be targeted. Paquerette was already too tough and high leveled for the beaks and claws to even pierce her skin, so she kept kicking and biting, protecting her eyes and nose, her few remaining weaknesses. Sandrine was spinning her pitchfork around like a majorette's baton, swatting the birds like flies, sometimes swinging it down and crushing the animals onto the ground.
As usual, after a few minutes of this, hundreds of dead birds covered the ground, and the flock was starting to show signs of retreating. If it had been before, Sandrine's group would have let them go. However, now they had a good view of the full flock of birds, how could they let them escape ?
"Paquerette, to your left !"
The first few birds were flying towards the entrance of the clearing, leading the rest of the flock that started to follow. However, before they could reach the trees, they were stopped by a massive figure, a horse so fast that it seemed to teleport to block their way everytime they tried to flee.
Some birds tried to turn around and go the other way, but a small creature cut their retreat, barking so loud it frightened them. Now the whole flock was stuck in the same place, sandwiched between two terrifying predators.
Just as their small bird brains were registering the situation, a piercing laugh resounded from above them.
"Got you !"
In the next moment, a girl fell from the branches above, dragging a huge piece of fabric with her. The fabric completely covered the flock of birds, making them panic.
"Grab the edges !"
Sandrine fell hard in the clearing, laughing and crying as she felt her body protest. Thankfully, the ground was covered in thick moss, or she would have had a broken bone or two.
Climbing so high in such a short time hadn't been easy, but thanks to her high agility and to her two pets occupying the birds long enough, she had succeeded. It wouldn't have been a big deal if they hadn't caught the flock, but Sandrine was just way too annoyed and didn't want to keep being bothered all day.
She dragged her aching body to one end of the fabric, laying on it. Gribouille had reached another end and sat on it like an obedient puppy, and Paquerette also silently stood on the edge of the fabric.
In the middle, the whole thing moved furiously, as small silhouettes were trying to escape. Panicked chirps filled the clearing.
"We got ourselves quite a few birds ! What do you think we should do ?"
Sandrine's first idea was to tame them and use them as scouts, but she quickly dismissed it. Having a flock of birds could be cool, but she already had two pets to care for, and it took her a lot of time everyday to feed them and make sure they were alright physically and emotionally. Having a hundred more would be a nightmare to manage.
Also, Gribouille and Paquerette had a lot of intelligence and helped her most of the time. They weren't purely pets, they were also team members and family. What about those birds ? Except for flying around, she doubted they could do anything else. And, if they were trapped this easily, they surely wouldn't be smart.
They were too small to be a source of food, so they were not even as good as chicken. Truly, except for maybe scooting, and Sandrine had no idea how they would communicate what they saw, they were useless.
"Let's just send them to AlphaWolf."
If he could change them into a bunch of little snacks or even just gather their feathers, either way it would be better than nothing.
Sandrine took a thick stick and walked towards the middle of the fabric, then swung it towards any moving silhouette underneath. When the clearing was silent again, she gestured for Paquerette and Gribouille to gather the ends of the fabric, tied a knot, and sent the whole bundle to her friend.
"Okay, now we can gather the lilies of the valley !"
Sandrine crouched next to the verdant patch and gently broke a few stems hosting small white flowers. Taking everything was useless and would take too much time, so she only took a few stems for herself, Paquerette, and Gribouille, and then a few more for AlphaWolf and MomImThirsty. After sending them to her friends with a message wishing them a good 1st of May, she turned to her pets.
"Let me pin them to your armors, that will bring you luck. After that, we can take the chest Gribouille had found here."
However, before Sandrine could extend her hand towards Paquerette, a foul odor reached her nose.
Immediately alert, she took out her pitchfork and turned to face the direction where the smell was coming from.
A few hundred meters from the clearing, not that far away, there was an enormous tree. If the other ones in this forest were as tall as 7th story buildings, this one was comparable to the height of the Eiffel tower. It was also quite far from the infinite road, so Sandrine guessed that it was the heart of this offroad environment, the place where the golden chest would be.
However, she hadn't expected that the boss would directly come to her.
"Can't you just let me pick flowers in peace ?"
First the birds and now the boss, this was just too much !
Sandrine didn't show her usual unhinged smile, she was crossing her arms with her lips slightly pursed. Paquerette rolled her eyes. Her human was definitely pouting.
The mare shifted her gaze forward. The giant tree could be seen vaguely in the darkness thanks to its massive size and the soft lighting coming from the clearing, but everything else was hidden in the shadows. The smell was the only strong indicator that the boss, a being corrupted by the black fog, was drawing near.
Branches snapped on the ground, indicating that something big was walking towards them. Then, slowly, a silhouette detached itself from the darkness. The group could slightly distinguish it, the outlines of its form becoming clearer as it slowly made its move towards the illuminated clearing.
There was an enormous body, thick paws ended with giant unretractable claws that dragged on the ground, and a head sporting two round ears on top and a long snout in front, with a lower lip hanging limply underneath, revealing rows of disgusting brown and black teeth. The whole thing swayed side to side everytime it moved, looking both unsteady, but also extremely powerful. Its fur was greasy and covered in strange dark mucus, its eyes wide and cloudy, focused only on the group.
"A bear ?"
Sandrine stopped pouting and gritted her teeth. This was going to be harder than she thought.
Now that she was stronger and Paquerette had evolved, she had wanted to fight a boss head on. If it had been something similar to the llama, it would have been fine. But why now of all times, just when she wanted to train herself and fight bosses to get better, should she face a corrupted bear ?
"That's too much…"
But despite her complaints, the corners of her mouth were slowly rising in a nice arc that went from one ear to the other.
She was getting excited.
Sandrine crouched slightly, tensing all her muscles like a bowstring ready to release its arrow. The air seemed to fill with an electrifying tension.
Then, suddenly, she lurched forward, just as the bear was standing up on its hind legs. An enormous paw came crashing down where Sandrine had just been, with such force that half the clearing was flattened in an instant, the displaced air forming a wind so violent it directly shattered the surrounding trees and sent bark shards through the whole forest.
Sandrine, who had jumped above the bear and stabbed her pitchfork through a trunk to stabilize herself at a good height, was looking at the devastation underneath. Thankfully, Paquerette had already taken Gribouille by the scruff of his neck and fled before the attack reached them.
"If it continues like this, our battle will flatten everything… I didn't even get my 7th chest !"
The golden chest could probably survive such an ordeal, the mystic symbols on it indicated that it wasn't ordinary. However, Sandrine wasn't so sure about the wooden chests. There was still one in the clearing, but the bear would soon destroy the whole area.
"Baby, go with your aunty to get the chest, I'll try to occupy the big bad guy !"
Sandrine wasn't worried about facing such a boss alone. It was strong and powerful, but quite slow, with her agility she wouldn't have any problem dodging its assaults. Moreover, even if she was struck hard, she could heal with her splinters as long as she had a bit of breath left. And if she couldn't walk ? Well, contrary to other players, she didn't have to drive. She would once again rely on her pets like last time.
Truthfully, she had nothing to fear. She was really too high level for the newbie protection period.
"But this will change when the weather gets involved, as long as I don't have a roof above my head…"
Anyway, right now she had to play tag with a big teddy bear.
"Tag really is my favorite game !"
Two times might still be a coincidence, but three times indicated a pattern.
She put her legs against the trunk to push and unstuck her pitchfork, instantly falling backwards towards the ground. Using her flexibility to twist her waist, she spun in the air and stabbed downwards. The pitchfork sunk into the bear's skin just as Sandrine let herself fall with all her weight on it, her two feet landing on top of the fork to drive the teeth even deeper.
Red blood immediately rushed out of the wound, like an exploding rose, and then poured on the matted greasy fur. The bear growled and screamed, the sound so grating that it seemed to scrap Sandrine's brain from within.
The boss swayed to the side, trying to turn back to hit Sandrine, but she had already retrieved the pitchfork, making it disappear, jumped towards a nearby trunk, kicked it to use as footing, and jumped even higher, grabbing a branch to hoist herself on it.
The bear screamed in rage, searching for the insolent prey, but Sandrine had already jumped towards another tree and then let herself fall in order to, once again, stab the monster. This time she was falling face forward, and curiously, she felt this deep, unnerving feeling, that she needed to throw herself backwards. It was like an instinct, like a trauma response, a pavlovian reflex of something that had happened to her long ago, marking her brain enough that she had a hard time suppressing it.
When you fall forward, throw yourself backwards.
It wasn't the first time, during her game of tag with the llama on the rooftops she had felt it too.
Anyway, this wasn't the moment to dive into hypothetical trauma hidden by her amnesia.
Sandrine kept the same tactic, downward stabbing helped by gravity, then fleeing before the boss could hurt her.
Under her tireless assaults, the boss grew weaker and weaker, its blood completely staining the moss red. It had flailed and swung its claws around during their fight, and the whole place was wrecked. Eventually, when it was too tired to fight and had lost too much blood, Sandrine calmly approached and slit its throat.
Everything had ended without sustaining any injury.
"Either I'm getting stronger, or the game is easier than what I thought."
No, the second option wouldn't be true. This was still the newbie protection period and out of the 10,000 players of the server, they had already lost more than half. Then, what would it be like when the real game would start ?