The first attack didn’t draw out the Viper. No one expected it to, but it was still somehow a disappointment.

Daryl waited three days before the next attack, just long enough for the guards to relax and stop moving around in double-strength patrols. They were still searching the wrong direction; what little searching they did in the direction towards the actual camp didn’t get close.

The second attack went nearly identically to the first, with almost everyone dead but a pair of guards deliberately allowed to escape.

It took four days for the patrols to relax and even then they were more on edge than they had been before. Serenity took the time to carefully watch the interior of the base, but the lights were still on. The guards were no longer stationed everywhere; in fact, they’d been thinned out significantly. Even if they hadn’t yet succeeded in forcing the Viper out of his hole, they’d at least reduced the base’s defenses.

Daryl decided to go ahead with a third attack. This one didn’t go as smoothly; both Daryl and Ita completely missed the presence of a second squad of soldiers about a hundred yards behind Daryl, well within range to hear their compatriots’ shouting and see Daryl before he managed to get away.

The attack went as expected right up to the point where Daryl’s shoulder was hit by a firebolt. It scorched his clothing, but more importantly it got his attention. Daryl turned to look and found another squad running towards him; one of the soldiers was clearly a mage-type, because he’d stopped as soon as he could see Daryl and was throwing more firebolts at the archer. They weren’t dangerous so much as they were annoying so far, but without a shield they could still hurt if they hit him in the wrong spot, like an eye or his bow.

Daryl shot one of the charging soldiers, then another. There were still two up from the original squad; he’d lost track of them. They’d been running earlier; he’d have to assume they were still running.

The new soldiers were closer than Daryl liked. They’d have to get up the tree to actually attack him, but he was certain they had a plan for that. He’d been using trees far too obviously for them not to plan to deal with someone in a tree. Only one ranged attacker meant the others had a different plan.

As he lined up his shot on a third soldier from the second squad, Daryl considered the situation. He didn’t like these odds. Oh, he’d win - but he didn’t think he could win without showing more of his actual capabilities than he was supposed to. As it was, he was attacking with a bow and not using any Skills; that way, he’d look like someone of a lower Tier using Skills to help his archery. If he used an actual Skill, it would either do too much damage or there would just be too many of them; he could hurt them all with a single Multiplying Arrow, but no Tier Four or Five could do that.

No, it was time to run. That would help sell the notion that he couldn’t manage to win; after all, why would he run if he didn’t have to, especially since he would be chased?

If only they weren’t exactly in the direction he’d plan to run. Daryl grumbled to himself and ran in another direction, then deliberately missed a shot at the mage as he ran; he wanted to keep their attention.

One Tree Stride, then another took him away from the squad. He couldn’t take them too quickly; he still wasn’t nearly as fast with Tree Stride as he wanted to be, but he really never got to practice. It was excusable. The fact that trying to Stride too quickly made him dizzy and nauseous clearly had nothing to do with not practicing; that was entirely because there were far fewer trees in Takinat than near his original home.

Daryl focused on his running. He paused after each jump just long enough to be certain they were still on his trail; it was longer than he had to pause, but that just meant he had time to plan exactly what he was going to do. He took a shot when he could, but made certain that at least half of them missed. He wanted to leave enough of a trail that someone would find it and it would look like a real fight even if he killed all of them.

Because that was what he was going to do.

Only one more was dead when Daryl unexpectedly ran into a spot where he couldn’t jump to a tree in the direction he’d been headed. There simply wasn’t a tree there; instead, there was a small clearing and a stream. He hadn’t realized until it was too late to change his direction, so Daryl swung out of the tree and onto the ground on the other side of the stream instead; it was a long jump, but possible.

He even almost stuck the landing. Unfortunately for him, “almost” in this case meant ankle-deep mud, a boot full of muddy water, and a knee and hand covered as well . It was “only” an inch deep where his hand hit, but that didn’t make it any less annoying. He did manage to keep his bow clean, dry, and undamaged, at least.

To make it even better, a firebolt tore through the air above Daryl’s head as he landed. The mage seemed to have assumed he’d land better than he did.

Daryl swore as he rose to his feet. He hated wet socks and wet boots were even worse!

He didn’t bother to return the attack; it was scorching his armor and he’d feel it later, but that was what healing was for. Right now, he needed to gain some distance. Daryl raced up the bank of the stream and up the trunk of a tree; the mud wouldn’t make him slip when he could use Treewalk. The Skill burned through stamina quickly, but running up the trunk of a tree was worth it.

One Tree Stride later, Daryl looked back and saw that his pursuers were slowed even more by the stream than he had been. That gave him time to shoot two of them, including the annoying mage. He moved on a couple more trees, then looked back.

They were gone.

Daryl sighed to himself and pulled himself higher into the tree. He went slower this time; running out of stamina sucked. He then Strode around the way he’d come from, deliberately ending up in a different tree than the one he’d originally climbed after the stream.

There were footprints and a drag mark on the far side of the stream but the only prints he saw on this side were his own. Daryl took his time looking, but didn’t head down to the ground; he thought he’d scared them off, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a trap.

After a solid half-hour with no further sign of pursuit (and one emptied-out boot and wrung out sock; he pulled a replacement sock out of his spatial bag, but the new sock would be damp all too soon), Daryl made his way deeper into the forest. He needed to lose anyone who was still following him. There probably wasn’t anyone, but he still needed to make sure. On top of that, they knew his trick now, which meant he also needed to completely hide his trail.

It was another three hours before Daryl returned to the camp.

“Do you think it’s going to work?” Rissa handed Serenity a mug of hot cocoa.

Well, something like hot cocoa, at least; they’d finally run out and she was trying to replace it using ingredients she’d picked up while they traveled. Serenity took a sip; not bad, overall. “Tastes kind of like a mocha. Maybe a bit too much roasting?”

Rissa nodded. “Kyaka is really sensitive, apparently. It does seem to be really similar to cacao, at least, so maybe it’s just because I don’t really know what I’m doing. Sometimes I wish we could get youtube here without paying through the nose in Etherium.”

Serenity nodded. He knew what she meant; while he knew a lot from his life as Vengeance and the Final Reaper, he’d also forgotten a lot and he’d never known everything. Sometimes a reminder would be good. “At least letters aren’t that expensive.”

Rissa chuckled with a grin. “Only because we don’t have to pay for them with delving. I’d never realized just how poor the rewards for most dungeons are.”

“If you’re in appropriate dungeons, it pays decently,” Serenity stated. “It can even be luxurious if you’re able to make it to the deepest layers of the hardest dungeons in an area. The thing is, once you can do that it’s time to move on. Which means you’ll be poor again.” He shook his head. “Fortunately that doesn’t matter for us; we’re never going to try to make it on delving income.”

“Are you sure?” Rissa sounded doubtful as she settled deeper into her chair and took a sip of her own faux cocoa. “It really wasn’t that much; I don’t see how it can possibly cover costs on Earth once the gear craze dies down.”

“That’s one of the things the Mercenaries’ Guild is for,” Serenity stated. He wasn’t surprised Rissa hadn’t realized yet; it wasn’t that obvious. Vengeance hadn’t figured it out on his own, either. “They pay for delves and exploration; if the dungeon doesn’t produce enough, they have to pay more. Sometimes it’s really the city paying for protection from dungeon breaks, but most of the time there’s something valuable that can be brought out of the dungeon so a fair percentage of delves are actually protection details. It’s complicated and depends a lot on where you are.”

Serenity watched Rissa for a moment and decided she needed some examples. Her frown said she didn’t really get what he was saying. “On Tzintkra, the Guild didn’t pay for the delves; in fact, there were active efforts to search for and claim new dungeons because they needed what they could pull out of them that much. In Takinat, they pay. It’s - well, it’s a market. I suspect Takinat pays the Guild to handle dungeons and prevent dungeon breaks.”

Comparing it to a market seemed to make sense to Rissa. “Oh, I see. Delvers are really cheap on Tzintkra because dungeons are more rewarding. That’s backwards of what I was thinking, but makes sense when I think of it that way.”

Serenity nodded. “There are a lot of places where you actually pay to enter a dungeon. Tzintkra has some dungeons that are like that. Either way, it’s handled by the Mercenaries’ Guild most places. I think that’s just how it worked out. Not that all Guildhouses get along with each other.”

Rissa chuckled at that.

They sat in companionable silence for a minute or two before Rissa stirred and returned to her original question, but with more detail. “So, do you think that last fight is going to draw the Viper out? Daryl did a great job of making it look like it was hard for him to get away safely.”

Serenity shook his head. “It’s already been three days. If he wanted to come up himself, he’d have pursued while Daryl was still running. We either need another fight or we need to try something different.”

Lillene

I think they're on Plan B right now. Draw out the Viper wasn't part of Plan A. Maybe they can go back to Plan A? Or should they do something really different?