Second Life: Welcome to Gaia

The party followed a human-made path in the forest while observing the surroundings attentively. There are many slender white trees with thin, peeling bark and catkins, all around, and the ground is covered by dry leaves, sounds of birds and of the wind blowing the trees could be heard. You can see the trees leaning slightly to one side because of the wind. On the ground, there are many ants walking in line to different places and some tracks left by snakes.

Ye Yan felt that if they weren't in a dungeon, the scenery would be very relaxing except for the snakes. He even imagines tying up a hammock between two trees for him to take a nap on it.

I Love Skooma went first to see if there are any traps on the way because of his [Perception] skill. Luckily, there were only three traps but he managed to identify their location and disarm them. They were very simple traps that didn't require any specific skills to disable or evade. One was a simple rope, almost touching the grounding, connecting two trees, and if you stumble upon it, a mechanism, consisting of a thick trunk attached by a rope, would activate and go in the person's direction. The other was a rope arranged in a circle that would activate when someone steps on it, trapping him or her in the air. The third was a hole with sharp stakes inside and covered with leaves as camouflage. There was a fourth but a wolf was caught on it and its body became covered by so many thorns that even the Pinhead [1] would be impressed.

They walked for around 10 minutes until they started to heard voices speaking in a strange language, probably, the goblins' tongue. They hid behind the trees and slowly approached the place where the voices came from to see the situation there.

Ye Yan made a 'keep silence' gesture and observed the goblins. There were, at least, 10 goblins working inside an encampment. Some were walking hold firewood, others talking in the corner and the last two were cooking. He doesn't know what was inside that cauldron but if the rotten smell coming from there is any indication, must be something that died a very long time ago and even the worms didn't want it. Not only Ye Yan but his teammates as well, covered their noses when the stench got to them. Ye Yan's face was becoming green at an alarming speed that the others started to worry about him.

The technique of taking a deep breath to calm down didn't work in this situation, so the only option for him was kind of trying to hypnotize himself. If they have to kill only these goblins, they would do it easily and fast but if other monsters appear like the honeybees from before, it would be very difficult to deal with.

They retreat a little to discuss the situation and decide the strategy they will use.

"What do you guys think?" Ye Yan questioned them.

"Difficult to decide. If more monsters appear because of the battle sounds..." Dovakin normally is very reckless but he is not dumb enough to go on a suicide mission.

"Can you tank them? How many you can take at the same time?" Conan asked Ye Yan.

"They are the same type and level of the goblins before, so if everyone works together, we can fight all of them at the same time without a problem." Ye Yan said to the others.

"I can take two to three of them." Conan was a fighter like Ye Yan and he knows martial arts in real life, which can help him in the battles in Second Life when he uses martial arts techniques in the fights. Tang Yunfan has been training in martial arts since high school because Ye Yan took him to the school of martial arts of his father to train. At that time, he had a strong body build already but it only serves to help him take a beating without going to the hospital often, which was very important to him because he didn't have money to pay for medical bills. He had been bullied a lot when he was younger because the rich kids that studied in the same school as him like to pray at the ones with financial situation lower than them. And that was how he meet Ye Yan for the first time, he was been beaten by two rich kids and their followers when he appeared out of nowhere and helped him. Afterwards, he was scolded by him because he didn't react and just took a beating. And he didn't understand until now how, after that, the two became best friends.

"I can take one." Mad Dog is a swordsman but he can fight the monster if it is a one versus one. Outside of the dungeon, he had no problems fighting monster but the ones inside are much stronger than others. As they are fighting in the Normal mode, he can solo one but on harder difficulties, it will be impossible, even with better gear.

"I can take one too." I Love Skooma have more agility than the rest of the team, so evading are easier for him. All of the team members are elite players that have good combat abilities in the game, that's why they got to level 5 so fast compared to other players that started the game at the same time as them.

"I can solo one too." Dovakin is a mage but he has good combat abilities and knows martial arts. He chose to be a Dragonborn because of his physical advantages. He is building his character to be a battlemage, not a pure intelligence one. He is a battle maniac, but he had always played as a mage in games, so he decided to try this kind of build that he though suit him better.

"Good. Now, we will be inside the encampment with a bonfire to keep the other monsters away, so I think it is relatively safe for us to battle them, but we need to be alert and ready to react if something unexpected happens." Ya Yan though that, probably, in this kind of situation, no other monster should come to add to the fight. "Conan, you will take the two goblins that are cooking. Mad Dog, I Love Skooma and Dovakin, you guys will take those with firewood and I will fight those that are talking at the side. I will go first to attract them and you guys will aggro one at a time and take it away to fight, but remember to stay near me, so I can use provoke if something goes wrong. Mages, you focus fire on the goblins attacking me. Are you ready?"

Everyone nod and follow Ye Yan to the encampment of the goblins but they stayed hidden until he signals them to go.

Jun Xie went crouching to a place next to the goblins and used a sneak attack to inflict more damage. The others soon reacted and started to attach him. The five goblins were attacking him but ye yan deflect their attacks easily and when it was too difficult to evade or deflect, he used his fan the defend, and his left hand to support the fan, like that it does the role of a shield in the battle. Now that his strength is higher than before and his attack reaches 15 without a weapon, he is inflicting much more damage with his combo attacks, which he used his entire body to attack them. He takes a little more them 2 seconds on every attack but as he is using both hands and his legs to hit them, it looked like he was faster than it. He can use his two hands at the same time, the right hand that is holding the fan can damage them in 13HP on every hit, and his left hand and legs, when he uses it, inflict 1HP damage because it is the minimum damage that an accurate attack can do even if his defence is higher than the attack, except for Lord or higher ranked monster.

Soon, the other goblins find out that the encampment was under attack and went to fight him. He redirected the fight to the middle of the encampment and signalled the other to start attaking.

Conan was the first to go and he aggroed two that were cooking previously. Mad Dog and I Love Skooma attract one each, and Dovakin was the last to pull one goblin from the mob surrounding Ye Yan.

Demon Fox, Spell Bound and mage of the Cold Nights started to throw spells and arrows one after the other on the goblins attacking Ye Yan. Soon, all of them were killed by the combined attack of the four players. After that, as the other monster were almost dead too, each one started to attack a different monster. Ye Yan went to help Conan, Spell Bound attacked the one fight against Mad Dog, Mage of the Cod nights threw her (or his) spells over the goblin I Love Skooma was fighting, and Demon Fox helped Dovakin, that may become his brother-in-law in the future.

With the teamwork together, soon all the goblins were dead and luckily, nothing unexpected happened during the battle.

.......

[1] Pinhead - an antagonist of the Hellraiser Franchise.