The Nettle Tea Chronicles

Marissa

Immediately after she had clicked [Begin], a cutscene started up. She glanced over to her other screen, seeing several of her party members mute themselves to focus, and she did the same. If this raid was where she was going to spend her time for the next however long, she may as well dial in on the story of it all.

Especially if DanuSoft was really cooking up something special.

The scene was set with Clan Nettle Tea toward the bow of the ship, in various spots along the ship's main deck, looking out over the water. For Marissa, Hibiscus stood toward the middle, flanked by who she could only assume was some kind of military leader.

"We'll arrive shortly." The grizzled old Corvus said. "You'll all have to be ready. The [Tuatha Dé] have managed to hold the city, but the port we're landing at is an active warzone. Last I heard, we hadn't lost the port entirely, but the enemy was pushing us back toward the water. There's no telling how much ground we've lost since we last reinforced our lines."

The camera panned up and over toward the horizon, showing the land that was approaching. And there was a massive number of smoke pillars rising off the land. Things were no doubt burning.

"Look there." The Corvus said, pointing at a small port on the nearest part of the landmass to the ship. "That's our landing zone. It…doesn't look good." He said warily, as another explosion of flame rocked a building near the water. "You lot may be fighting your way off the ship. I hope you're prepared."

Hibiscus nodded silently to the Corvus, then turned back toward the port town resolutely. The Corvus snorted, then turned away from the bow and Hibiscus. "Prepare yourselves. This is going to be a hot landing."

And then the cutscene transitioned back to the game, giving Marissa control of Hibiscus. Still on the boat. And still moving closer to the dock, and the enemy.

Marissa spun her camera around quickly, trying to get her bearings.

"Oh, shit." Firo said, the first to speak.

"Oh, shit is right." Evan laughed.

"They're just giving us control from here? What do we do?" Jazz asked.

Marissa was still busy looking around the boat. "We can see where we're meant to disembark, at least." She said, eyeing the break in the railings to the port side of the ship. "We can form up there and be ready to jump."

"Yup. Sure." Jazz said, as she and Evan positioned in front of the break in the railing, ready to lead to the charge.

"Everyone be ready." Firo called, "I don't think we've got long before we make landfall."

Marissa glanced toward the docks, and he was right. They were approaching at speed.

"We're going to run aground!" The Corvus called. A text box popped up in the middle of Marissa's screen with the message, accompanied by lines from the voice actor. "Incoming magic! Look alive out there!"

And sure enough, red circles indicating incoming AoEs appeared at everyone's feet.

"Move!" Ash called out, and everyone scattered. "Wait, no! Move together!"

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The second call out came just a moment too late. Everyone had moved in different directions, and the large AoE markers were targeting everyone's positions. The first group had been roughly grouped up, given how everyone had been standing together. That also meant there was plenty of safe space to move.

Scattering, however, left the second volley covering far more area. There was basically no safe zone at all, and the small zone of safety that did exist was on the far side of the deck, only reachable by Mellody, Evie, and Firo - the back line - as they had started a bit back.

"Spread the markers, then stack. Only take one." Ash said. Thankfully, this was a fairly common mechanic, and though they had completely screwed it up to start, as long as the AoEs weren't immediately lethal, they could survive.

As the first group of fireballs exploded by the bow, where everyone had started, the second group of fireball's locations were locked in. Mellody, Evie, and Firo had escaped the red zones entirely, standing stacked up together in the safe area on the starboard side of the ship.

Hibiscus, Caoimhe, Aleister, Fiona, and Nyx were all trapped by the large number of flashing red AoE markers. However, like Ash had said, they all knew what they had to do. With the first set of AoEs going off near where they had started, the whole group ran back toward them after they went off.

They stacked up together as they moved. Because of the way the second set of markers had gone, they had to stand together in one large AoE together. As a small group, they took the damage from one AoE, which brought them all down to around 4,000 HP; if anyone got hit by two they would almost assuredly be dead.

They dropped the third round of AoEs in a stack, while the back line did the same thing on the far side of the ship, leaving the center safe after the second round erupted in flames.

From there, it was a standard dance that they all knew. The entire party stacked in the middle to drop off round four of the AoEs.

"Port!" Ash called, and the party all ran toward the port side of the boat to drop the next set of AoEs.

Except for Firo, who ran entirely the wrong way.

"I don't know which way 'port' is!" He shouted, as everyone started laughing as he tried to course correct to join the group.

"Wait, no, just keep going the other -!" Marissa started saying, but the time simply wasn't there. Firo's attempt to turn and run in the same direction as everyone else left him falling a little short on the distance.

[Flaming Artillery >> 7,238 DMG]

[Flaming Artillery >> 6,834 DMG]

[Flaming Artillery >> 7,143 DMG]

[Flaming Artillery >> 7,297 DMG]

[Flaming Artillery >> 6,923 DMG]

[Flaming Artillery >> 7,174 DMG]

[Flaming Artillery >> 6,894 DMG]

[Flaming Artillery >> 6,995 DMG]

"Well, crap." Firo said to the resounding laughter from the group as they watched their [Mage] get entirely obliterated.

"Go toward the bow!" Ash tried to shout over the commotion. "True north, true north!"

Thankfully, everyone else heard him and reacted accordingly, moving from the side of the boat toward the tip of the bow to drop the next round of AoEs there. If they had gone back toward the middle as would have been the plan, they would've eaten the one that Firo dropped when he died.

"Firo, buddy. You gotta stay out of the red." Evan joked.

"But it looked so warm and inviting." Firo returned, still in good spirits. "And now I'm all toasty and warm. Should get some hot chocolate while I'm chilling here."

Jazz snickered. "Bro, you got completely vaporized. What was that, like over 50K damage? That's enough to kill you almost 5 times."

While they were joking around, Ash kept calling out directions for the party to move as a group, rotating the safe zone around.

"For the record," Evie said, "the port side of the boat is to the left if you're facing the bow. Starboard is to the right."

"I will do my best to remember that." Firo said.

"Easiest way I've found is that 'port' and 'left' are both four letters." Marissa chimed in. "Then you just need to remember which way to face when you consider it."

"Yeah, that should help." Firo said.

"Starboard." Ash called, and the whole party shuffled that way, but what would have been round eleven of AoEs never appeared.

"Brace for impact!"

The message came up in the center of the screen as the dialogue from the Corvus captain played.

"Everyone get to that port side spot." Ash said. "Just in case."

Everyone ran over that way while Evie casted [Resurrection] to get Firo back to his feet. Once he was up again, there was enough time for everyone to gather up by the point that Marissa noticed earlier.

Mellody put up her [Forward March] song, giving everyone a bit of movement speed and the 500 HP shield, as the ship ran into the dock, tearing up the wooden planks. The debris went flying in all directions, the splintered wood even doing a bit of chip damage to the frontliners who were standing right by the disembark point.

When the ship finally stopped, the group hopped off the boat, landing on a damaged cobblestone road.

"Go!" The Corvus captain's message popped up on screen again. "Push through the town. Hopefully if you break through their blockade you should have a fairly easy path to the city. Good luck!"

Marissa then spun her camera to watch the captain and presumably the rest of his crew jump off the stern of the ship and run into the town in a different direction. They were carrying already brandished weapons as they charged off to their own battle.

"Now what?" Evie asked.

"We push forward, I guess?" Marissa questioned.

She was answered by more AoEs peppering their location. Thankfully, everyone ran forward together this time, following the more or less obvious path laid before them.

Whichever town they had landed in was completely engulfed in flames. It clearly hadn't been a large town - likely just a fishing town - and it was made up mostly of reinforced wooden buildings. It unfortunately meant that the whole place was nothing but kindling for who or whatever had started the fires.

"The fires aren't solid." Evan said, as he had Fiona edge into one and then back out again. "If we wanted to, I think we could deviate from the obvious path." He continued, once again weaving through the flames. He ran down the side street a bit just to see before [Sprinting] back. There was a bit of damage from the fire, but not enough to be a concern outside of actual combat.

"Yeah. The map continues down that way, and I didn't see any signs that we couldn't go there." He hurried back up to the party using his faster [Sprint] speed while everyone else just ran normally. He had to dodge a couple AoEs, as well.

"Actually, there weren't any AoEs that way, either." He said.

"Interesting." Nyx said.

"What does everyone think?" Ash asked the group. They were coming up on what appeared to be something like a central square, so they probably had to decide quickly.

"Let's just keep going straight for now." Jazz said. "It's our first time in here, so we may as well take the 'expected' route this time."

Marissa nodded to herself. "That's fine, we're out of time anyway." She said, as they spilled into the fairly large central town square. As they did so, the AoEs that had been tracking them finally stopped as they edged apart to see what was about to happen.

And then maniacal laughter came over the sound of the crackling buildings as a large creature stalked out from one of the buildings.

The thing was larger than any of them, though not by too much. It stood probably a little bit more than head and shoulders above Fiona, though it was hunched over. Marissa couldn't tell exactly what she was looking at, but the thing gave her classic Gnoll vibes, looking something like a mostly upright hyena.

However, its body was warped and scarred almost all over. There were a few patches of fur here and there that seemed only a little singed, but the rest of it was pretty horrendously burned. There were scars and burn marks up and down its face and arms, while the rest of its body was covered in patchwork armor. But even with the armor on it, it was easy to tell the body was warped in unnatural ways. Even the way it stood was somehow off.

As it stepped out from the building, one of its hands grasped a burning piece of wood for leverage but the whole thing just collapsed under the strain. The creature shook off the burning pieces of wood that fell onto its back as it fully came out into the open.

The laughter that had started when it appeared had morphed into something more animalistic, and Marissa had a strong suspicion it was similar to a hyena's laugh, although she couldn't recall what they actually sounded like. Admittedly all that came to mind for her when she tried to think about it was Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed.

"More things to burn? Yes, yes." The voice said through the strange laughter. "Burn them we shall! Burn, burn, burn!" It screeched, and then it leapt from the building toward the party. Marissa had assumed it would land in the center of the square and prepare for the boss fight. Instead, the thing was almost certainly aiming to land on their heads.

Suddenly Marissa was very glad they had decided to do their preparatory buffs before they entered the raid.

"Scatter!"