NOVEL NEXT Chapter 77: Getting Ready
The forest itself was dangerous enough. The undergrowth concealed pitfalls and thorny vines that could entangle an unwary student. Certain plants released paralyzing spores when disturbed.
The paths shifted, somehow, making it nearly impossible to backtrack the way you came. Players had complained about that mechanic endlessly on the forums, calling it "artificial difficulty." Lucas had a feeling it would be significantly less artificial when he was actually in there.
But the real threats were the monsters.
Arvsen was home to three distinct "boss" creatures, each controlling its own territory within the forest.
The exam thankfully didn't require them to venture that deep into the forest where they'd risk running into them but the truth was that, as long as they were in the Arvsen Forest, the risk of running into on of the boss monsters were low but never zero.
The first was the Iron Tusk Boar Matriarch, a massive boar-like creature that stood nearly eight feet tall at the shoulder.
Her hide was covered in bony plates from which razor-sharp thorns protruded at irregular angles. In the game, she'd been a tank-type boss with devastating charge attacks.
The key to defeating her had been dodging her rushes and attacking from the sides, but that required precise timing and significant mobility. She commanded a pack of lesser Iron Tusk Boars who were still dangerous in their own right, each one the size of a large wolf with similar thorn-covered hides.
The Matriarch's territory was in the western section of the forest, where the trees grew more spaced out and the ground was churned up by constant rooting and charging. Anyone who encountered her unprepared rarely made it out unscathed
The second boss was known as the Widow's Crown. It was a spider of truly nightmarish proportions. Her body alone was the size of a carriage, not counting her legs, which could span fifteen feet when fully extended.
Her web-territory dominated the northern reaches of Arvsen, where the trees grew closest together. Massive webs stretched between the trunks, some strong enough to stop a charging horse.
The Crown herself was a hunter of terrifying efficiency. Unlike many giant spiders in fantasy stories, she didn't wait patiently in the center of her web.
She actively stalked prey through the trees, moving with impossible silence for something so large. Her venom could paralyze a grown man in seconds, and she had a habit of wrapping her victims in silk before they even realized she was there.
In the game, the Widow's Crown had been an agility-type boss, all about precision dodging and timing your attacks between her strikes
. Her weak point was the underside of her abdomen, but getting there meant either luring her into attacking and rolling beneath her, or finding a way to position yourself above her.
None of those was easy when you were also trying to avoid her webbing, her venomous fangs, and the dozens of smaller spiders that served as her "court."
The third boss, and by far the most dangerous, was the Wyvern Alpha.
A wyvern-class monster, the Alpha was the undisputed apex predator of Arvsen Forest. He ruled the skies above the eastern territories where the trees had been broken and bent by his passage.
His scales were the color of old blood, and his wingspan measured nearly forty feet. The game lore suggested he'd been a juvenile dragon once, mutated by proximity to some ancient magical corruption that permeated the deeper parts of the forest.
The Razorwing Alpha was fast, hitting hard with both his claws and his tail. But his most dangerous feature was his breath weapon. It wasn't fire like you'd think, but a spray of razor-sharp scale fragments that he could project with explosive force.
In the game, that attack had been nearly impossible to dodge without specific abilities or equipment. It could shred light armor and leave even heavy armor badly damaged.
Worse, the Alpha was intelligent. He'd set ambushes, using his coloration to blend against the darker tree bark before dropping on unsuspecting students from above.
He'd separate groups, picking off stragglers. He'd even been known to fake injuries to lure would-be heroes into traps.
In the original game, defeating the Razorwing Alpha was what made the Arvsen Forest basically impossible to clear until mid game. If you ran into him, the best you could do was try to survive the encounter and escape with enough points from lesser monsters to pass.
Lucas reached the gate, showing his identification to the guard who waved him through with barely a glance.
Finally, the three bosses didn't get along. They were territorial, yes, but more than that. It seemed they actively hated each other.
The game had included several rare scripted events where two bosses would fight, usually triggered by player actions that drew them into each other's domains.
Smart players had learned to exploit this, using one boss to weaken another. Or, more commonly, using the threat of one boss to escape from another.
Lucas dashed to his dorm room, he grabbed his pack and headed toward the northern gate.
When he arrived, other students were already gathering,.
Lucas spotted his group standing together near a large oak tree. Damion waved him over.
"Everyone ready?" Damion asked as Lucas approached.
A chorus of affirmations answered him.
"Then let's go over the plan one more time," Zacard said, pulling out a rough map of the forest's outer regions. "We enter here, at the northern border. For the first few hours, we move east along the forest edge, putting distance between ourselves and the main group of students. Less competition for resources, and less chance of running into trouble caused by others."
He traced a path on the map. "Once we're far enough east, we move deeper into the forest but only to the middle regions. We find a defensible location, preferably near a water source, and establish our base camp. That's where we spend the first night."
"Day two, we split into pairs for resource gathering and hunting," Celeste continued. "We stay within shouting distance of the camp at all times. No wandering off alone, no matter what."