The first tree took us almost half an hour to find, and we all stood there staring at it's massive size in awe. It was nearly 150 feet tall and at least 20 feet wide at it's base, none of us could believe that they needed 200 of these things. Just carrying one back to the village would take all day for most people.
Sighing, Connor shook his head and said, "I bet this mission was designed for a larger group."
I nodded in agreement as I examined the tree and said, "Yeah, and this is just the first part. I bet we'll have other gathering or building missions that follow it."
Frowning, Connor thought for a while before saying, "Maybe we should take advantage of your recent popularity to get some help."
My face paled as I instantly realized what he meant. "Oh no, there's no way in hell that I'm managing a giant group of idiot fanboys who have no idea how to cultivate. I bet most of them couldn't even help lift these trees."
While I was shaking my head no, Matt walked up and started to examine the surroundings carefully. He started to walk in a circle, his head nearly on the ground as he mumbled to himself. Looking at him in confusion, I asked. "Where's he been? I haven't seen him since we logged in."
Beth joined me in watching him with a curious expression on her face as she watched him continue to sniff the ground like a hunting dog, "He got stuck at the College Arcane for a while, he sent me a message asking for a location to teleport too a couple minutes ago."
"Got it!" Matt exclaimed as he jumped up from the ground and started pushing people out of the way. "Cut the tree down, I'll get it back to the village pronto."
Confused, but happy to get out of having to deal with my popularity I pulled an axe I'd borrowed out of my bag of holding and joined in. Despite all of us working together it took nearly 10 minutes to finish cutting it down, the whole time Matt had been walking around in circles and muttering to himself while holding onto a short staff. When it finally fell, Matt pointed his staff at the tree and yelled, "Activate!" A wind blew from the circle that he walked around the tree, runes coming into focus and catching the massive tree before sending it floating towards the village slowly.
Wiping some sweat from his brow, Matt said, "That should do it."
Happy it'd worked out, we all high fived and where about to go looking for another tree when Alexandra suddenly screamed and started running towards us. She was the only one out of all of us who had a basic understanding of alchemy and how to handle ingredients so she was in charge of gathering them while we got the wood.
Running to her, we found another pack of wolves that was slightly tainted with the stink of corruption chasing after her. Gunthar turned into a cheetah, rushing forwards faster than any of us could before jumping and landing as a lion in front of Alexandra with a roar as he tore into the wolves, protecting her.
"Damn, that was cool." Beth said, stars in her eyes as she charged behind him. Matt and I stood near Alexandra and let the others fight, understanding that we needed to save our energy for when we really needed it.
Not long later, Connor looked up at the sun as we all went about gathering what loot we could carry from the small pack of wolves. "We need to hurry, Evelyn only gave us 24 hours but I don't want to be in the woods at night with corrupted around."
We broke out into a run, only stopping when we found a tree that our implants marked down as viable. The entire time we were under constant attack from low level beasts and monsters. The worst were the Goblins since they could attack us from range with bows and arrows, but the rest were just annoying, constant drains on our strength.
It got so bad at one point that even Alexandra joined in the fight, unable or willing to fight hand to hand she pulled some kind of potion from her pack and threw it into the middle of at least 100 Goblin Archers. Within moments, they all dropped there weapons and fell to the ground coughing and vomiting blood. Perhaps she hadn't realized just how strong the potion would be because her face went pale in shock and it took her several minutes to fully recover. After that, she seemed more at ease with the idea of fighting and no longer spent the entire time hiding behind me.
Nearly 6 hours later, night was finally beginning to fall and we'd managed to find and cut 190 tree's down. We didn't talk, silently having decided to finish gathering the materials before heading back. It didn't really matter, if we left now we'd still have to spend at least a couple of hours jogging through the forest at night. I was really tempted to summon blades of wind and cut the tree's down in an instant, but I knew that if I where to do that I'd be completely worthless on the trek back home.
Slamming my axe into a tree for what seemed like the thousandth time, I yelled, "TIMBER" and everyone got out of the way while Matt readied himself to catch it. As the tree fell, I noticed that something seemed to move in the shadows around Matt.
"Watch out!" I yelled, but it was too late. A praying mantis shimmered into view as it swung it's sharpened foreleg surrounded in Dark Elemental Energy, cutting through Matt's neck as if it didn't exist. To my amazement, Matt just raised his staff and yelled "Activate" like he'd always done and caught the tree before sending it on it's merry way.
"9 more guys, lets hurry up!" He said, turning to slam his staff into praying mantis who was just standing there unable to understand what'd just happened.
"Umm, Matt. What was that?" Sarah asked, looking at him in confusion.
"You didn't think the College Arcane would let their apprentices leave without a way to defend themselves did you? That's why I was late." He said, a haughty and superior look on his face.
Before he could keep going, another praying mantis appeared behind Alexandra and she screamed in terror as she dodged, just barely managing to avoid it's blow. The next thing I knew, we were surrounded by invisible mantis'. My friends where too busy fighting to worry about cutting the tree's down and I sighed as I realized it was up to me.
"Stay safe, I'll take care of the trees." Thanks to my barrier, they couldn't really do anything to me as I covered my axe in Wind Elemental Energy, sharpening it into blades like I'd done when cultivating the third layer of body refinement. Swinging the axe, I was surprised when it cut nearly halfway through the tree in one go.
Twenty minutes later, we sent off the last of the tree's. Rick took the lead, glowing like a massive flashlight as he lead us back towards the village. Thankfully, everyone except for Alexandra had techniques that allowed them to survive the constant onslaught of invisible foes. Even she had taken out another potion, holding it in shaky hands as she waited for something to attack her.
"RUN!" Rick's voice came from the front as he sped up, moving slightly off course as he lead us in a different direction.
"What is it?" Connor yelled back as we all started to hear skittering sounds above our heads.
"Spiders! There's a massive web, I have no idea how we missed it." Rick replied, glowing brighter as he readied himself for a fight.
Shuddering, I pulled out my staff and started readying myself for battle. I've always hated spiders, and any I see will die immediately!
In front of me Sarah laughed a little, "Where's the web?"
Rick pointed up and to the left a bit, gathering her energy she transformed into living fire from the waist up and flung a massive fireball directly into the center of the web. It caught fire, the skittering sounds multiplying as hundreds of spiders tried to escape the fire's path.
"DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!" I started yelling over and over again as I took advantage of the flame and used some Air Elemental Energy to turn it into a massive blaze. I started laughing evilly as one after another of the creatures burned to death. I didn't realize it when the Spider Queen dropped from the tree tops right on top of me, I was so busy killing them off. My friends all scattered and dove out of the way just in time.
'Now, I know what it feels like to be squashed like a bug.' I thought to myself as I rolled over and looked up into the face of horror.
"GET OFF ME!" I screeched in a high-pitched voice that I'd never heard come out of my mouth before. The giant spider was leaning down, massive mandibles covered in a corrupted poison that hissed as it dripped on my Storm Barrier. I was nearly out of Elemental Energy, my barrier eating it up at an incredible rate in order to keep the weight of the monster off of me.
Beth saved me, taking a massive hammer and slamming it into one of the mandibles causing the spider to miss and bite into the dirt. Before it could recover, she'd jumped onto it's back and started slamming it into it's carapace over and over again while someone grabbed me and managed to pull me out from underneath the giant monster.
Breathing heavily, I turned and looked at Gunthar. "Thanks, that was rough."
He wasn't looking at me, too busy staring into the darkness with a look of pure hatred on his face.
"We have to run, I can feel them coming."
With a final slam of her hammer, Beth had managed to kill the Spider Queen while Connor and the rest killed off what I hadn't gotten with the fires.
"Lets go!" Rick said, looking in the same direction as Gunthar. "We don't have much time!"
Lifting me to my feet, Gunthar then picked up Alexandra who couldn't keep up with us when we sprinted at full speed and we ran.