As the bell rang, everyone scrambled to get into position. Madeline was on one balcony, and Sarah was on the other with an arrow notched on her bow. Jake stood with his shield ready, and Preston held his sword with both hands out in front of him.
If Jake was a knight in heavy armor, Preston was the opposite. He wore a leather vest and pants, and he had a double edged short sword. By no means was it a rapier that a fencer like Preston would be more used to, but the sword in his hands would probably do more damage than in anyone else's.
Soon, they heard a buzzing coming from outside that was slowly approaching. In the brief moment of peace, Teresa looked at her quest screen.
Questline
Newcomer Tutorial (1/3)
Establish Liberty
Waves of monsters are seeking escape from the perennial desert. You and your party inhabit the only piece of green land for miles. Defend your territory from the waves. Waves will invade 15 minutes after the defeat of the previous wave.
Waves defeated: 0/5
Monsters remaining in wave: 10/10
“Guys, there’s 10 monsters in this wave. You can see how many are left in the quest screen.” She called out.
“Good catch.” Jake responded, looking at the quest screen himself.
Soon, the buzzing was right outside, and the door automatically opened to let the monsters in. I guess the monsters don’t have to be physically capable of opening doors.
The first monster crawled in through on its six legs, and Teresa was immediately filled with revulsion.
It was a fucking mosquito with a body the size of a border collie.
An arrow flew through the air and grazed its side, drawing colorless blood.
“Shit, this thing is hard to aim.” She heard Sarah mutter to herself a little loudly and she drew another arrow from her quiver. Teresa couldn’t blame her, the bow wasn’t a modern compound bow you might find in a sporting goods store. Instead, it was basically just a curved stick with a taut string you might see in medieval times.
The mosquito pressed forward, a small trickle of blood leaking out its side. Jake charged forward, smashing his shield against the feeding tube sticking out its mouth and slamming the mosquito against his shield. His charge pushed it against the wall like Teresa had recommended earlier, and it splattered on the concrete.
A quick glance at the quest screen confirmed that the monster was still alive. Preston ran forward to the side of Jake, plunging his sword into the mosquito that was pinned to the wall. Another glance at the screen, and the quest showed only 9 monsters remaining.
All of this had occurred over the span of about 10 seconds, and another mosquito had begun crawling through the door, with a third right behind it.
“Firing!” Madeline called out, alerting everyone to watch out for the sparks that were now shooting out from her hand. They singed the lead mosquito, and she successfully managed to burn one of its eyes. The mosquito’s wings started to buzz rapidly, blowing air around it and causing the sparks to slightly change trajectory. However, the damage was already done, and soon both of its eyes were blinded.
The third mosquito pushed in behind it, and Jake charged at this one while Preston went to finish off the now blind mosquito. A fourth was already crawling through the doorway, and Teresa had a feeling that while they had a great start this was going to be tough.
Not wanting to be useless, Teresa charged towards the fourth mosquito in the doorway. The mosquito saw her coming, and jabbed its feeding tube towards her. Teresa managed to step back in time for it to whiff, and she responded with a right hook into the side of the tube. Her fist connected, and she felt it snap under her fist as she swung.
The mosquito buzzed its wings angrily, and the wind generated was comparable to a fan you might keep on in your bedroom. Teresa shuddered, feeling nasty after her hand had made contact with the giant mosquito. That texture was not something she wanted to touch, but this thing needed to die.
She launched a front kick, stomping her foot into the mosquito’s face. Its front legs shot out in protest, though Teresa was able to block one in her boxing stance and avoid the other. The legs seemed pretty fragile, so she felt she didn’t need to worry too much about the mosquitos swinging their limbs. However, they could probably pierce right through her with a good stab, and that was not something she wanted to test.
She stepped back from the thrashing mosquito, and soon an arrow planted itself firmly in the top of its head, finishing it off. A panel appeared next to her.
You Have Slain {Large Mosquito (F) (lv 2)}
Experience Granted
“Nice shot!” Teresa called out as she stepped away from the dead mosquito. It seems simply contributing to a kill was enough to grant experience, and she did not need to deliver the finishing blow.
She looked behind her and saw that Preston had finished off the blind mosquito, and was slashing the mosquito pinned by Jake’s shield over and over again.
“Fucker just won’t die.” Preston grunted, continuing to cut into the mosquito squirming underneath the shield. That one must be a bit higher level.
Back at the entrance, a mosquito was trying to crawl its way in, but was blocked by the corpse of the mosquito Teresa and Sarah had killed. The body of the mosquitos were only the size of a medium dog, but their legs and wings still stuck out, making the doorway a tight fit.
The door would only be blocked for maybe a few seconds, but that gave Teresa time to try something. Her arm itched like a son of a bitch where she had blocked the mosquito’s blow earlier, which didn’t really make much sense to her. Weren’t mosquito bites supposed to be what itched?
Regardless of how these mosquitos were somehow even more annoying than regular mosquitos, Teresa figured she could test her
Teresa felt what she assumed was Mana flow to her hand, where something happened to it before it formed an invisible layer over the front of her hand. The thin layer of altered Mana occupied the same space as her skin as she pressed her hand against her arm, and she felt the itching progressively cease.
Just as the next mosquito made its way past the corpse, she heard the body of a mosquito slump to the ground as Jake and Preston moved to receive the newest mosquito in the coming wave.
Four down, six to go.
As the fifth mosquito was once again pinned by Jake, a sixth and seventh managed to rapidly make their way through. They were getting in faster now. Madeline blinded the sixth and Sarah began peppering it with arrows, while Preston cut into the one pinned by Jake’s shield once again.
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They weren’t killing fast enough, as the seventh mosquito crawled towards Teresa and an eighth and ninth were squirming their way in through the entrance. The mosquito in front of Teresa attacked, seemingly trying to tackle her rather than just stab her like the previous mosquito she fought had attempted. Unfortunately, this was much harder to deal with as Teresa was not very experienced at grappling, just striking.
She managed to slip past the feeding tube and grab it, but the mosquito kept moving forward and charged into her. While the mosquito might only be as tall as most people’s stomach, Teresa was short. Its height reached up just above her chest, making the impromptu mosquito wrestling match significantly harder.
Teresa thought briefly about going under the mosquito, but she quickly changed her mind as she felt a sharp pain pierce through her thigh. Teresa bit back a scream as one of the mosquito’s legs pierced straight through hers, and it was attempting to move its leg as it was still impaling Teresa’s thigh.
“FUCKING DIE!” Teresa screamed as she punched the mosquito in the eye over and over again as hard as she could. Her fist broke through the lens covering the eye, and soon she was punching right into its head cavity. The mosquito stopped moving after a little more struggle, and Teresa’s arm was covered in the colorless goop that was mosquito blood. On the other hand, her leg was pouring blood from the mosquito leg impaling her.
You Have Slain {Large Mosquito (F) (lv 4)}
Experience Granted
“Fuck! Cover Teresa! I’ll hold this one here!” She heard Preston call out to Jake as she looked down at her injury. This was not the time to panic, no matter how much agony she was in. She knew once she pulled the mosquito’s leg out of her own, it would begin to hemorrhage horrifically, and she would probably die of blood loss.
So she did the next best thing.
Teresa screamed as she grabbed the mosquito leg and tore with all her might. Her fingers pressed into the hard exoskeleton of the mosquito, and soon managed to sever it at the joint. She fell backwards as she now had managed to separate the limb from the mosquito, and now had a detached mosquito leg sticking through her thigh.
Tears stung her eyes as she activated
Thankfully the limb had just grazed her femur, but she was also pretty sure it nicked an artery. Now, Teresa didn’t know much about anatomy, but she was pretty confident from movies and TV that any injury to that artery in the thigh was really, really bad.
The blood around her exit wound finished coagulating, and it had formed a scab that held tight up against the protruding limb. She moved her hands to the entry wound, and tried to imagine healing the artery inside her thigh. She wasn’t sure that was how it worked, but she tried to will the Mana from her
Doing this didn’t completely reroute the Mana from her spell, but she felt a tiny trickle of the Mana feed deeper into her leg instead of coagulating the blood on the surface wound like the rest of her Mana did.
It took about a minute for the bleeding to completely stop, and she was pretty sure she had managed to repair the artery. Thankfully, it was a small structure that had only been grazed rather than completely severed apart, so she successfully managed to heal it completely. It still left the limb impaling her leg there, but she would survive.
No, that’s not good enough. Teresa was hurt, sure. But pain wasn’t what was clouding her mind so much as rage.
She was pissed.
This stupid fucking mosquito had come in and stabbed her in the leg, making her the first person in the party to get injured. This absolute piece of shit reject of nature had tried to turn her into a liability. Now, her whole party would have to operate around her injury, putting themselves at risk.
Hell no.
Teresa was not going to be the first person in the party to go down in a fight. Her pride wouldn’t allow it. With a scream of rage, she grabbed another leg of the mosquito and punched it repeatedly, tearing at it until she had severed the limb from the mosquito corpse.
If this mosquito thought it could put her out of commission by stabbing her with one of its legs, then she was going to rip another leg off and use it to butcher its fucking family. With the mosquito limb in her hand, she struggled to her feet and quickly hobbled towards the fight once again.
The fight wasn’t going that well.
When Teresa had gotten into her altercation with mosquito number seven, Jake and Preston had been fighting number five while Sarah and Madeline had been shooting number six from a distance. Now, mosquito numbers eight and nine had made their way inside as well, and the party was being overwhelmed by numbers.
There were four mosquitos in the building, two of them badly injured and the other two as healthy as can be. One of the injured mosquitos was blinded and had a few arrows sticking out of its side, but it still thrashed about, making it hard to finish it off and creating a moving obstacle of stabbing mosquito limbs.
Jake had one of the healthy mosquitos pinned to a wall as he bashed it again and again with his shield, but the large surface area and his clear lack of experience made it difficult to hurt the mosquito enough to kill it.
Preston was facing off against another injured mosquito, presumably the one that had initially been pinned by Jake when Teresa had gotten injured. It was missing a few limbs, and it was clear Preston was close to finishing it off.
The healthy mosquito was being peppered by Sarah and Madeline, though it had learned from watching its allies to protect its eyes. Its wings were buzzing as it tried to take off, but an arrow to one of its wings along with sparks constantly aiming for the eyes made flight incredibly difficult. Teresa was about to head that way to help out, when something else caught her eye.
The tenth and final mosquito had entered the building.
This one was larger than the rest, and had a set of pincers beneath its feeding tube. Teresa, in her semi-delirious state, briefly wondered what the name for the feeding tube actually was, because there was no way in hell it was actually called a feeding tube.
Who cares? Teresa strengthened her resolve in her hatred against all mosquito-kind, and moved in its direction. The party was distracted with their own battles going on, and no one noticed Teresa charging the miniboss mosquito until she was already engaging in combat.
“Shit, Teresa get back!” She heard Jake call out, but she didn’t listen. She was going to fuck this mosquito up one way or another. Her grip on the severed mosquito limb felt loose, so she channelled
The last two mosquitoes had both attacked first, but Teresa was going to flip the script. Before the mosquito lunged at her, she anticipated its strike and stabbed the limb down towards its feeding tube. It was a thin target, one that would be quite hard to stab, but she was going to take that risk.
The mosquito lunged forward mid stab, and before the feeding tube could impale Teresa through the stomach she thrust the limb down into it, stabbing right through. The limb penetrated the feeding tube, and Teresa maintained her forward momentum as the mosquito angled the front of its body downwards due to the force of the stab.
She rolled on top of the mosquito, limb still in hand as she pulled back and stabbed down once again on top of the mosquito’s body. It broke through, and she continued her roll off the back of the mosquito and slumped to the ground as the mosquito attempted to stab her on its back.
The mosquito had reached both of its hands up and stabbed down where Teresa had been just a moment ago, and inadvertently stabbed itself in the back at full force. The mosquito struggled and thrashed for a few moments as it tried to tear its arms free from its body, only causing more damage to itself. In the process, it managed to snap one of its limbs in half as it tried to remove it, though it managed to get the other limb out of itself.
The miniboss mosquito now had two severed limbs sticking out of it, one of which was its own. Teresa was now on the ground next to the corpse of a mosquito she had killed earlier next to the door with Sarah’s help. It still had the arrow sticking out of its head.
Teresa grabbed the arrow and yanked it out of the head of the mosquito, and hobbled towards the miniboss with it in her hand. The mosquito still had its back turned to her, and Teresa was about to teach it firsthand why that was a mistake.
Teresa approached the backside of the mosquito, and stabbed the arrow right in its ass. The mosquito buzzed its wings rapidly, generating a gust strong enough to blow Teresa on her back. The mosquito thrashed in a panic, whatever minuscule sense of rhyme or reason it had once possessed gone. It slammed into the wall, fumbling about as if blind. Many of its limbs stretched back towards the arrow that had stabbed it, but none were able to reach it.
It continued thrashing for a bit as the battles her party were participating in came to an end. Soon, the only sound in the room was the mosquito miniboss prone on the floor desperately flailing its limbs before it curled up into a ball.
You Have Slain {Large Mosquito Queen (F) (lv 7)}
Experience Granted
Level Up!