D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

— Nixilei —

Nixilei was wondering if she’d stumbled into the worst region. When she first landed it wasn’t so bad. A mostly open plane with a few large ball shaped trees that almost looked like dandelions at times. This would become somewhat more pronounced after the sun started to rise… but there were other issues with that. The fields however, were beautiful. Filled with flowers of all colours making Nixilei feel like she’d stepped into a world of colour. Finally, you could also find some absolutely giant flowers and the two mountains but such obvious landmarks were too likely to contain other contestants. Not worth heading that way just yet.

Though Nixilei was starting to reconsider. You see, about an hour after arrival the wind started to pick up. It wasn’t too bad at first, but soon it got to the point that Nixilei had to be more mindful about the occasional bit of pollen getting in her eyes. Large clumps of the stuff were starting to gather and swirl…

Which really should’ve been a warning sign. Now that it was just barely morning the wind had picked up and Nixilei felt like she was in a sandstorm. Nixilei thanked her paranoia that she’d packed some old equipment meant for dealing with poisons. Nixilei found herself wearing a large facemask that sat tight against her face and filtered the air out through an enchantment. It was a great bit of kit… and that was focused on ensuring the user didn’t die to poison. Mana exhaustion though? That was a different issue.

Nixilei knew she had maybe an hours use out of the thing before she’d need to stop and rest. Technically it wouldn’t drain her completely, just down to fifty percent but any less then that and Nixilei didn’t feel she would be properly combat capable. Especially not when the increased activity would cause her to breathe more and potentially up the cost of the mask. She hadn’t used it in a long time so the specifics of the enchantment eluded her.

At the very least it wasn’t all bad news. Nixilei had managed to find a three hour top up hidden behind a series of challenges. There was a door that had a number of flowers growing out of it, set into the side of a hill. The edges were the only thing that gave it away and a less observant individual might have missed it completely. Nixilei had been thankful for the break from the pollen and gotten a nice reward out of it.

It’s not like the challenges were particularly hard, just a bit of a pain to get through them quickly. They started with a sliding puzzle of only four tiles, then each door doubled in ‘size’ from four, to eight, to sixteen and all them way up to one hundred and twenty eight. That last one had been a pain more because so much needed to be moved and it wasn’t always easy to find the piece she was looking for with just a glance.

The lesser orbs had been scattered around the place as well. A number of flowers had their centres replaced by orbs, though some larger flowers that were shaped like roses and tulips simply had them hiding inside. Nixilei had only managed to find seven of them, but considering she could hardly see more than a dozen metres ahead of her at any given time and the underground puzzle took an hour to get through Nixilei felt quite confident in her progress.

Nixilei scratched at the edge of her mask as she go close to one of the trees. No real respite. Those damned things had plenty of flowers of their own and were giving off ample amounts of pollen already. Simply resting underneath one would soon see you covered in a dusting of the stuff. *Dammit! Who thought this was a good idea. It’s like a sandstorm or a snowstorm but so much worse. At least snow melts if it’s in contact with you for too long and sand is small enough to brush off. This CLINGS to you and it’s just awful.*

Nixilei let out a long sigh as she noticed something moving in the trees. Of course. No relaxation for me. Nixilei pulled out a dagger and started to carefully walk forward. Watching the monsters in the corner of her eye, pretending she hadn’t seen any of them. It was a group monsters resembling sugar gliders except they all had large engorged cheek pouches. Nixilei had a good idea what was in them.

She also wasn’t surprised when she pretended to lean against the tree that three of the little things launched themselves at her. Nixilei let herself fall slightly to the side and launched backwards past the tree to avoid the monsters and their follow up attack. Spitting a thick, yellow goop that had to have been processed pollen. Nixilei ducked behind the tree and slashed above her head, not even needing to look up to predict the next attack from the swarm.

Nixilei rolled to the side as the corpse fell down in front of her, another barrage of yellow spit bullets came her way and Nixilei deftly avoided them, using the trunk of the tree as a great source of cover. She was able to lash out and stab one of the less attentive monsters in the side. Not even to kill it in that moment but soon.

They were trying to surround her so the tree couldn’t be used as a shield… but they were also aa bit stupid. At this point all but one had jumped down from the branches so Nixilei simply jumped up, reaching out to one of the thicker branches and using that to propel herself with one hand towards the lone monster in the trees. It took only a moment to dispatch the thing by crushing its skull and from there it was just a matter of cleanup.

They were fairly simple pack, ambush hunters that didn’t really know what to do once someone started to fight back. *I wonder why they were moved here though? I’ve never heard of them and Thyme said that all the monsters were here because they caused issues elsewhere. These guys were easy to kill though… is their spit particularly toxic? Or do they have something to do with the rampant overproduction of spores?*

As Nixilei was considering this she noticed the telltale glow of an orb… in amongst a particularly dense patch of pollen spit. It looked to be larger then a one hour orb, but definitely wasn’t a three hour one. Two hours then. Am I willing to risk potentially getting poisoned to reach in there and grab it?

Nixilei sighed and cast a spell on her arm. It was essentially a glove spell that worked better than unenchanted gloves. A rather useful spell for all healers looking to move into the… grittier side of the profession of more than just holding a hand over the affected area and casting a basic healing spell. It was a mana hog though.

Still, Nixilei only needed to use it for a moment, zipping her hand in and out she was able to quickly retrieve the orb and then leapt down to the ground as she started to dust off the muck as best she could… when she noticed movement in the corner of her eyes. Nixilei dropped the orb and readied her weapon… only for a Timmy to walk back into view. Nixilei felt her eye twitch.

*That… would’ve been a better way of going about this. I’d forgotten about this little guy. Hmmmm… really not sure how to feel about the fact I couldn’t sense its presence.* “Clean that up please,” said Nixilei pointing towards the dropped orb. The Timmy simply zipped over and started to dust it down, picking at the pollen and flicking away most of the muck without issue.

*That is disturbing. How did I forget this thing was following me? I mean the ‘weather’ didn’t help… but… hmm… I felt as though I was keeping a good eye on things. Was it regularly avoiding my eyeline? Following from outside of my visibility window? Is there some sort of enchantment meant to redirect attention away from it that I didn’t notice?* “Disappear for ten seconds, please,” said Nixilei. Might as well be polite to the terrifying thing.

Because it was terrifying. Nixilei watched as between one blink and the next the Timmy vanished and she had no idea where it went or high. The nearby flowers seemed undisturbed. There was no obvious air tunnel from the Timmy pushing aside vast amounts of pollen. If Nixilei didn’t know better she would have assumed herself to be alone in this pollen storm.

Then, after exactly ten seconds, it simply reappeared in front of her. Nixilei didn’t think she’d even blinked this time, it was just there. Then. Slowly, Nixilei started to smile. “I have so many… devastating ideas to make use of you!”

A memory of Thyme saying “Timmys can’t help with fights at all,” surfaced in Nixilei’s mind but still she smiled. *We’ll see about that.*