85 -Three Days Too Late
---Third POV---
Without the foreign objects, the expressions of the three girls noticeably eased. The exhaustion from their severe injuries quickly lulled them into sleep.
The two players followed Viktor out of the room.
"PTSD," Viktor said proactively.
He glanced at the silly players bustling around the mission point in the distance, feeling a slight lift in his mood.
"I'm sure you know what this is."
"Pi ti es ti?" Alyanne blinked. What was that? She had no idea!
The somewhat more perceptive ice dragonborn realized this wasn't her business anymore. Understanding the situation, she sensibly returned to her task at the mission point.
The two female players' moods sank further.
GameLord420, with reddened eyes, nodded. "Yes."
PTSD, also known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, was a condition where, after extreme trauma, individuals experience symptoms like re-living the trauma, avoiding related stimuli, emotional changes, and hyper-vigilance.
The three rescued girls didn't exhibit the usual emotional instability associated with PTSD patients. However, they fit the first symptom perfectly: re-living the trauma repeatedly.
"So... is the mission still on?"
"Of course!" The two players responded in unison.
Having witnessed a scene that would get any serious game banned, their determination to continue as caregivers only grew.
"They still want to live," Lux declared firmly. "They're just physically impacted by their condition. Mental illness is still an illness!"
Just as someone could both not want to die and still be suicidal due to depression, severe psychological issues could drown out rational voices.
GameLord420 wiped her tears away, her gaze equally resolute. "Only we can save them, so I won't give up!"
Alyanne's desire to abandon the three rescued girls was clear. Her attitude, if examined deeply, also reflected the worldview of the game and most of its NPCs.
If even the players didn't care for them, how would NPCs in a backward medieval setting allow them to survive?
GameLord420 sniffled. Unique NPCs, right? My boyfriend told me about it.
---
The two female players committed to a month of treatment and counseling tasks, vowing to log in every day to complete them before leaving.
Especially Lux.
She stormed off toward the church, looking like she wasn't logging off but going to take violent action.
The rescue of the three fallen girls was merely a small interlude in Viktor's busy faction wars.
The hostage he truly wanted was still the dwarven craftsman. To rescue him from the clutches of monsters, the only solution was to conquer the goblin nest within ten days. Fortunately, with the exact location of the goblin nest known, the subsequent combat plan became easier to execute.
A large commotion could attract ferocious monsters and beasts from the forest.
But the illusion array created by the goblin shaman successfully mitigated this threat.
After Viktor started mass-producing the anti-illusion potions, the illusion array became a tool they could use...
---
"Hey hey, my green-skinned kids! Daddy's back again!"
"ProGamer_Daddy, can you buy some explosives?"
"Can't you buy them yourself from the store?"
"The store limits explosives! The bombs from the mission aren't nearly enough. Goblins are too smart now; without overwhelming firepower, they don't die!"
"That's not my problem. The factory belongs to Viktor. I'm just a technical partner and can't make decisions."
"Oh, come on, I'll pay you back for the deducted money. Just let me blow them up once for fun!"
"Heh." ProGamer_Daddy sneered disdainfully. "Is this about money? Without Viktor, who's supplying the ore materials? Only an idiot would take a loss! If you want more, go fight for it in the store yourself. If you keep bugging me, I'll report you to Viktor!"
"Ugh, bootlicker for the NPCs!" The player who was talking looked disgusted and ran off quickly before ProGamer_Daddy could chase after him.
Other than this little episode, the attrition strategy was progressing smoothly. The outermost ruins were quickly reduced to rubble by the players' relentless harassment, with debris scattered everywhere.
The massive crater had expanded significantly, giving players more space for guerrilla warfare. But the goblins weren't pushovers either. After losing their outer patrol defenses, they finally realized the power and danger of the strange smoking fruits used by the players.
They developed their own countermeasures. The success rate of player-thrown bombs was dropping, and the casualties they caused were shrinking.
The situation seemed to have reached a stalemate.
---
Whoosh! Whoosh!
"Wah-la!"
A figure darted through the jungle, pursued by goblins wielding wooden clubs and cursing loudly.
The figure leaped nimbly between the trees, quickly widening the gap. Just as he was about to shake off his pursuers, more green-skinned figures appeared ahead.
He paused and dove into a nearby bush.
The goblins converged, trampling the bush flat, but he had vanished. All the goblins stopped, cursing loudly, "Fa ya! Wah la!"
Frustrated, they searched the area extensively.
Failing to find any trace, they split into two groups and went off in different directions.
After a while, on a tall, smooth pine, the figure slowly reappeared. Looking down at the trampled ground, he let out a small sigh of relief.
"Whoo—finally lost them." Just as he spoke, his eyes sharpened.
With a quick movement, he hugged the trunk and swung to another branch, narrowly avoiding the strike of a brown-striped snake. The snake coiled on the branch above, almost blending with the bark.
He touched his nearly bitten ear with a lingering fear.
"That was close."
Having been out of the beginner village for some time now, this wasn't the first encounter with these well-camouflaged forest creatures. He wasn't easily fooled by them.
As the snake prepared for another attack, he nimbly descended the tree and left swiftly in the direction he'd come from. The nearby goblins were chasing his fake trail, so he encountered no pursuers on the way back.
He stopped in front of a massive tree, requiring seven or eight people to encircle it. Using the protruding knots on its surface, he climbed into a hollow in the trunk. Inside, the hollowed-out trunk revealed a tunnel.
He removed the wooden plug, crouched, and jumped in. Below, the space opened up.
Three players were squatting beside a magic array, playing cards made from leaves.
"Three queens and a jack!"
"Three kings and a queen!"
"Royal flush! Ha! I win!" Hedgehog grinned mischievously and threw all his cards down.
Looking up, he saw the dusty figure return and waved excitedly.
"Hey, Garble! You're finally back—we were just waiting for you!"
"Yeah, I got spotted while scouting the goblin nest and had to lead them on a chase. Took a bit longer."
Garble nodded at them, then turned toward the goblin corpse on the teleportation array, his expression stiffening.
"Why did you bring that thing back?"
"This one? It's a bounty posted by Lux. She's paying, with real money, for us to bring her a great goblin corpse."
Garble was surprised. "She has money?"
When she first joined the game, didn't she take up work at their workshop just to earn magicoins?
"She just wanted to experience what it feels like to play the game like an ordinary person," Hedgehog summarized. "In the end, she found that throwing money at it was far more effective."
"To be honest, before she posted that bounty, I never imagined she was the type of player to be a boss."
Lux was usually active and down-to-earth, taking on tasks without being picky. Hedgehog had assumed she was another hardcore grind-type player chasing experience like a workhorse. Her background as someone who pulled all-nighters to get into the beta seemed to fit, too.
A nearby player shuffled a deck of cards and commented casually.
"Maybe something triggered her."
"Who knows? There are already so few healers. If she doesn't come along for missions, I don't even dare take hits when we run into goblins."
Hedgehog sighed in frustration. Who knows if light magic is cursed or something? The few competent healers they managed to find…
ProGamer_Daddy was obsessed with tinkering with explosives. And Lux, who knows what she was thinking, had stopped taking frontline missions.
This left their support and healing under massive strain.
He made up his mind. "When we get back, I need to convince some newbies to pick Holy Light!"
Because the goblin corpse Lux wanted had to be at least 80% intact, he had to strap the unfortunate thing to himself to keep it from getting squished while using the teleportation array.
During this time, above their heads, faint voices could be heard in conversation, sounding like a goblin patrol squad. The four of them immediately fell silent, pausing their movements.
Only when the voices faded into the distance did they resume.
Garble jumped lightly down from the ladder overhead.
"Don't worry, they've gone far," he said with a grim expression. "They were probably following me."
He thought he had been careful enough. But he had underestimated the goblins' keen senses.
Hedgehog shook his head. "Not necessarily. There were goblins searching nearby this morning. They've probably recovered from the initial chaos and are now trying to counter-ambush us."
With a carpet-style search, some goblins were bound to get lucky.
"But they're far from finding us here!" he said smugly, hands on his hips.
Who would think that a lush tree, seemingly full of life on the outside, had already been hollowed out inside? Even the roots had died long ago.
The player who discovered this spot was an absolute genius!
Beneath the tree's roots was a naturally formed underground pit. All they had to do was dig a hole at the base of the pitch-black hollow tree trunk, and they had a perfectly enclosed space of several dozen square feet.
The sound of dripping water could be heard nearby. This meant there was likely a cave or an underground river nearby.
When the goblins eventually found the wide opening and came down to attack them… They could dismantle their magic array, break through a wall, and escape!
Still, Garble couldn't shake his worry.
"Let's hope so… I need to log off later to draw a map. I'll provide the magic power needed for the teleportation array."
After helping Hedgehog secure the great goblin's corpse, hr volunteered to activate the teleportation array.
"Whoa!"
Hedgehog looked over in surprise.
"Logging off this early? That's not like you. Did you discover something big again?"
While inputting magic power, Garble nodded.
"I scouted the goblin nest and got a general idea of their layout and hiding spots. I just couldn't get into the innermost buildings, so I'm unclear about that area for now."
After the initial chaos, the goblins had started playing guerrilla warfare with them in the giant crater.
The goblins, small and agile, followed the orders of high-level goblins to a tee, moving in perfect coordination. This made it so that, even though they had found the goblin nest, they couldn't deal a significant blow to the goblins.
At this stage, detailed intelligence on their enemy was crucial.
Garble believed that once the latest goblin activity map was drawn, the stalemate between the players and goblins could finally be broken.
Even though he could only use his left hand to draw in real life, modern drawing tools made the process much faster than in the game.
Thinking back to the strange light ring he had encountered at the ruins, he frowned.
"By the way, be careful during your next operation. Don't go too deep—there's something off about that innermost building."
When he tried to investigate deeper, he had triggered the light ring and alerted the goblins.
He had almost died again.
Seeing Garble's serious expression, Hedgehog nodded solemnly.
"Don't worry, we know our limits."
The goblins were too numerous. For now, they were still fighting a war of attrition in the outer layers. They weren't yet at the point where they could take on the goblin stronghold directly.
With at least a week left until the main storyline ended, they weren't in a rush.
A flash of white light, and the four players and the goblin corpse disappeared into the magic array.
---
On the forums, threads about the progress of the game's main storyline were being updated at lightning speed.
In just a day and a half, players were already hyping it up as if a victory banquet was imminent.
Players stuck observing from the forums, like LootGoblin, were in agony.
"I should never have listened to those jerks!" he muttered through gritted teeth.
Each of them had convinced him that living was better than dying. But clearly, if he had just died, he could have spent half a day watching the forums and then logged back in.
Now his character was severely injured and comatose, and in-game, he'd already been offline for three days!
He had no idea how far behind he'd fallen in the game's progress.
"Such a loss, such a huge loss!" he paced around his room, too restless even to think about his online girlfriend.
The excitement of finding a net-relationship partner had been replaced with the despair of being ghosted. But he didn't have time to worry about that.
He had tried asking other players to find him in the goblin nest and put him out of his misery. But no one was willing to help.
Their excuse? Goblins didn't bother cleaning up battlefields. The crater was full of goblin corpses, and they couldn't tell which one was him.
"I'm a dwarf, a dwarf! How can they not tell the difference between a goblin and a dwarf?!"
Thinking about this made LootGoblin furious. Finally, he slumped into the chair by his desk.
On his umpteenth attempt to log back into the game, the scenery before him finally changed.
He was staring at a moss-covered stone ceiling.
His eyes welled up, and he nearly burst into tears.
Finally!
If he had stayed offline any longer, he'd have thought his character was doomed to be a vegetable forever!
Just as he tried to move his body…
Several grotesque goblin heads suddenly popped into his narrow field of vision.
Their blood-red eyes stared directly at him…