Page 91 of I Ran Away to Evil #3

An Uncanny Number of Treants

Gerda

If the Northern Ice Fields were cold, the Forgotten Frost Dungeon was freezing .

The temperature dropped so suddenly and so fast that my nose started burning from the chill.

The first floor looked much like the outside, with patches of forest in the distance and rocky slopes.

A stark straight-cut mountain rose up behind the platform and wrapped around to either side in a gentle arc.

The ground was so cold that the earth was frozen with black ice.

As if to juxtapose the sheer inhospitality of the environs, there was a blue, sunny sky overhead.

I was so wrapped up in looking around that I nearly jumped when Jeffry initiated the party request.

[Jeffry has invited you to his party. Do you wish to join? Yes/No]

I selected Yes . As I glanced through the party interface, I noted that everyone present was in it. By default, parties were locked to groups of four, but high-level [Dungeoneering] perks could allow for larger groups.

Parties were a part of dungeon delving, and they came with chat logs. Simply thinking out the sentence wrote it down, and then I had to will it to send. I sent a quick message to Jeffry to ensure everything was working.

[Six party members, huh? Is it a perk?]

“Yes,” Jeffry said aloud after reading my message. “I also have the ability to control how much experience points everyone gets, and a stat monitor that lets me see everyone’s health and mana totals. So don’t think I won’t notice if you do something dumb, Tully.”

“It was one time ,” Tully protested.

“You charged a drake with only twenty hit points left. While screaming Tulllly Greeeey. ”

“I survived.”

“Is that the time Visha threw a health potion on your head?” Sir Pram asked.

“I was picking glass out of my beard for a week,” Tully grumbled.

“Health potions cost less than a Revive,” Jeffry noted, matter-of-factly.

Beside me, Julian said, “John.”

The rogue nodded. “I see them. Three wargle wolverines on the tree line heading toward us, and one para-para snake hiding in that rocky outcrop.”

“Visha, you and Pram handle the wolverines. Jeffry, stay here with Gerda. Tully and I will take on the snake,” Julian directed as everyone jumped into action.

Except me, who stood beside Jeffry.

“Do you normally split the party?” I asked, this time aloud. Our vantage point gave me a good view of Julian tanking a snake twice as long as he was. It spat paralysis venom, hence the imaginative name.

“Yes?” Jeffry replied, surprised at the question.

“I thought it was bad luck.” I shrugged, recalling that it was a sure way of getting killed on tabletop quests.

“First I’ve heard; is that a troll thing?” He wasn’t really interested, I could tell. His eyes were tracking the fight and flitting to his notification logs.

Combat was neatly wrapped up within five minutes.

“Are we going to fight all of the monsters on each floor?” I asked Julian when he returned from his one-sided bout.

“Only the ones we come across,” he replied, signaling to Visha at a distance to stay where they were. We started walking toward the forest. “It helps finance the trip.”

Noted.

[I don’t wanna fight those.]

Sir Tully posted over the chat logs. He was peeking over the edge of a cliff on the dungeon’s third floor. He’d wanted a better look and had crawled over himself. In plate.

Below, there was a valley full of pine-tree treants.

Or was it a valley full of pine trees, and some of them were treants? Judging from the wiggling branches and shifting foliage, either option was bad.

[We could burn it all down?]

That was Pram, asking hopefully.

The group, as I discovered, rarely used the chat. They liked anything that drew in more monsters to fight …that didn’t apply now. Everyone was being extremely careful.

John shook his head as Jeffry pointed out,

[It would take hours to set up the flare traps, and they might just turn around and smother the flames with ice magic. Treants are one of the more intelligent monster classes, even if they suffer from dungeon madness.]

[We could skip this level?]

I made the offer. I didn’t see the platform to the next level anywhere in the valley below, so we could probably just skirt the fight completely. I hadn’t had a chance to do it yet, but now seemed like a good time to offer.

Jeffry replied,

[That’s an uncanny number of treants. At this rate, they might cause a stampede … Either way, we should clear some of them out.]

Visha added,

[What if we set up traps to divide them long enough to pick them off? We can have John’s shadows light four or five fires around the edges of the forest but focus our ambush on one.]

Julian considered for a moment, then,

[It’s still risky. Let’s try this instead …]

After reading the plan, we all left to get into place.

An explosion rang out on the far edge of the forest from where I was sitting. While I wouldn’t be fighting any treants myself, I did have one important task.

“That’s the signal,” John told me, and I concentrated as hard as I could on the forest below.

Perception forty-five was no joke; I could make out every movement below, every ruffling branch, every swaying tree. Though it was difficult to divide my attention over the entire forest.

“Twelve … twenty … thirty-three … thirty-seven treants, but I can’t be sure that’s all of them,” I said, adding it to the chat log.

[37 so far. I’m counting 154 trees and 37 treants.]

Julian wrote back.

[Alright, everyone, prepare to back up Tully and Pram.]

After the explosion had gone off, the treants had rushed toward the sound, their branches snapping back and forth like whips. It would take them a while to reach the hidden party, which gave me plenty of time to observe them and inform the group.

[The treants are averaging four feet per second. With a ten-foot reach if you include the vines.]

When the monsters arrived at the location of the explosion, they found nothing but some blackened rocks. With nothing to attack, they searched the area for ten minutes then settled down.

I sent another message.

[Two treants fifteen feet from Visha. The next closest is thirty feet back.]

Jeffry came in.

[Perfect. Visha, you’ll have seven seconds to deal damage before John ports you out and Tully arrives. Ready?]

[Ready.]

While Tully traveled toward her, Visha waited for the treants to come directly below her location before jumping from the top of the ledge.

As she fell, she sent two aerial attacks at one treant.

She wasn’t level sixty yet, and so couldn’t manipulate her aura, but she made up for it with perks and sheer brute force.

Both attacks landed right before she alighted on a tree branch nearby, strategically placing herself between the two monsters.

For seven seconds, she used a swirling blade attack and trimmed the attacking vines.

Her goal wasn’t to actually defeat the treants, but to control their reach by reducing their longer branches.

At exactly seven and a half seconds, Tully jumped off the same ledge.

He did not arrive delicately, plowing his hammer straight into the treant on Visha’s left. Its slightly reduced health plummeted further, and it stumbled back into the other treant, tangling it up and preventing it from getting closer.

“Ready,” Visha said aloud. The time it took to write and read the messages didn’t make up for a simple spoken word. The elf was swallowed in a shadow and vanished.

“Alright, come at me!” Tully yelled, in part to enrage the treants further but also to get the attention of others nearby.

[Two more on your left. Incoming twenty seconds.]

Jeffry sent the message, though I wondered if the paladin saw it. He was taunting the two treants in front of him even as he defeated the weakened of the two. Suddenly, a blast of icy leaves smashed against the [Barrier] Julian had on Tully, almost breaking the defensive shield.

The first of the treant’s reinforcements had arrived.

“Again!” Tully yelled, swinging his war hammer. The excitement of battle riled him up, it would seem, because he was grinning like a fool and laughing wildly.

[Should John pull him out? The next wave is almost there.]

Jeffry asked, but Julian replied,

[No. Let him have his fun. I’ll just reinforce the barrier.]

Later, we had to revive Sir Tully, but not before he took down nine treants by himself.