[Elise Aelevia] Lv. 23 Elf Vanguard

Status:

HP: 390 MP: 45

STR: 47 DEX: 10

MAG: 14 WIS: 56

VIT: 273 AGI: 11

LUC: 22

Skills:

Active – Stalwart, Lurk, Shield Crush, Leyline Protection, Rally, Harden Resolve

Passive – Vanguard Mastery II, Fire Endurance I, Blast Endurance II, Survivalism

Two days had passed since Primonilise had fumbled their way through the second dungeon and founded their new guild, all of them having ridden the adrenaline high for a bit too long. The newly announced event drew ever closer each passing day, and none of them were really prepared for whatever it could be when it began, besides maybe Monica.

That’s why today, Elise had taken it upon herself to finally try and bridge the gap between herself and her other guildmates, currently feeling drastically less useful than either of them with only a single attack and a pool of immobilizing defensive tools and hiding abilities.

She’d consulted the skill shop earlier, picking out a handful of useful-sounding new abilities with her unspent mountains of skill points, eyeing them over once more as she walked.

[Rally]

- Unlock: Supporter Skill Scroll.

- Gives all nearby allies a small boost to STR and MAG.

- Scales with user’s WIS.

[Harden Resolve]

- Unlock: Supporter Skill Scroll.

- Gives all nearby allies a small boost to VIT and ailment resistance.

- Scales with user’s WIS.

A few simple new skills, nothing too impressive, but enough to fill gaps in her haphazardly filled skill sheet, and actually start covering the support side of her class. After all, Vanguard had been advertised as a ‘defensive support’ class as much as it was as a tank, and it gave her some means of being more useful as a tank that couldn’t hold aggro.

“Thank you again, brave knight! without you, I fear I’d have no way to come this far out of town, and my family would starve…”

“Hm? O-Oh, yes, you’re welcome.”

She’d almost forgotten she wasn’t alone on her current outing, looking back over her shoulder at her ‘guest’. A plainly dressed villager NPC, unarmed and cowering behind the massive woman as the pair wandered father down the route together.

Elise’s forum info-digging earlier had informed her of a few skills that were locked behind unassuming sidequests rather than simply being simple purchases or unlocks she could gather.

And so while Prim tended to their store and Monica remained strangely absent, Elise had decided to adventure out for her own and find some way to impress them both before the event began.

Currently on her first skill-acquisition quest after mistakenly finishing several others beforehand, she was tasked with the seemingly simple task of escorting a villager out to a patch of abandoned farmland to salvage the remains of a harvest lost to a recent monster attack, her charge nervously quivering behind her.

“Hey, it’s okay, t-there’s not even anything out here so far…”

There was no reply from her charge, the AI only given preset lines to recite every now and then to break up the silence.

The Vanguard sighed, checking her map once more. The farm in question wasn’t too far away by now, and seemed like it would only be another few minutes before they arrived.

For how nervous the NPC with her was, she’d worried there was going to be more of a fight, but… the roads had been entirely empty this whole way, not so much a giant rat or angry slime to inconvenience her.

“B-Better to be bored than busy, I guess…”

Hefting her shields higher, she continued on, her escort close behind as they kept a set distance away from the slow tank at all times.

She wasn’t really used to being on her own… ever since she had started the game, she’d only had Keystone’s tightly packed main plaza or the constant chatting and laughter from the other members of Primonilise.

Alone with her thoughts like this, she couldn’t do much more than be alone with her thoughts and enjoy the scenery.

It was a pristine afternoon, the sun ducking behind the clouds overhead as the trees pressing in from either side of the road shed plenty of shade over them both. Birds and insects filled the air with sound, dead leaves crunched underfoot, and the sound of metal and howling echoed from-

…

She wasn’t an expert, but that didn’t quite seem like the nature sounds she knew.

“Stay c-close to me…!”

Rushing forward with her charge in tow, she sprinted towards the sounds of a fight further down the trail as fast as her minuscule AGI would let her.

As she rounded overtop of the hill, she found the source of the noise she’d head, an orcish caster in clearly high level equipment and an identical NPC to hers following behind them, both of them being accosted by a group of oversized wolves streaming out of the treeline.

“Sneaky little… Flash Freeze!”

A sheet of ice fired off from their wand, striking one of the monsters in the flank as the others scattered, the man clearly focusing on just trying to keep the beasts away from their own charge.

“Oh, gosh… h-hang on…!”

The heavily armored girl charged towards the swarming enemies, the mage glancing back at her in confusion as they held their ground against the circles wolves.

She rushed full tilt down the hill, putting all her muscles into powering forward… perhaps a bit too excitedly, the tank catching her foot on a loose rock and tripping forward, the sheer momentum behind her turning her into a steel boulder as she feel gracelessly down the hill.

Neither the monsters nor the other player was prepared for the sudden armored avalanche, the caster diving to the side with their villager in tow at the last moment, most of the prowling beasts not as fast to react as they were bowled over and flattened.

Taking advantage of the timely distraction, the mage cast several more bolts of ice out at the few remaining enemies, several of them being killed outright as the last of them fled back into the woods, quickly fading from view.

“Nnn… did I… g-get them…?”

Elise stumbled back to her feet slowly, eyes spinning as she struggled to make the rest of the world stop swirling around her, taking a bit to regain her senses.

“Heh, more or less, yeah. Not the most elegant way I’ve seen to deal with an ambush, but it worked out. My thanks for the help, stranger.”

As her vision returned, she found the man she’d assisted standing before her, wearing an expression of 80% thankfulness and 20% genuine bewilderment. He had a fairly frail looking build for an orc player, shorter than her by a good bit with tired-looking blue eyes looking her over. He wore a rather impressive silver-white robe, shortened at the legs and on the sleeves to allow freer movement, with a matching hat covering his head.

“O-Oh, sorry about that, I got a bit ahead of myself is all, ehe…”

“No need to apologize, seems like there were so many of ‘em because your own group spawned as well.”

He gestured behind her, to the completely unperturbed NPC who’d followed her tumbling advance, then back to his own traveling companion, a perfectly identical villager to hers.

“Seems like you’re on the same unlock quest as me, eh?”

“…oh! Looks like it, y-yeah.”

“Well, if we’re both doing the same quest, may as well walk the road together, don’t ya think? No use doing every fight twice for no reason, and you look a good bit better at this whole protecting thing than me.”

She paused a bit, not expecting to have someone else with her for this. But he didn’t seem like a bad person just from looking at him, and she of all people wasn’t new to spur-of-the-moment recruitment offers.

“T-That makes sense… sure, let’s help one another o-over to that farm together, at the very least?”

“Sounds like a deal to me kid, ha!”

He took and shook her head with a boisterous laugh and a surprisingly firm grip before turning around and leading the new makeshift alliance on towards their mutual destination, two identical villagers trailing behind and making no mention of encountering their own doppelgangers.

“So, you got a name, kid? You look like a tank as far as I can tell, but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else packing just shields like that.”

“Oh, um, E-Elise Aelevia, and I’m a Vanguard, yes. And yourself? I only know one other mage, and you seem more… d-down to earth.”

“Pleasure’s mine, Elise. Name’s Markus Veld, Cleric for Night Castle. Maybe ya heard about us in town, we’ve been trying to recruit for that event coming up soon.”

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up at the mention of the guild she knew only from Monica being attacked ages ago, but the man seemed to either not mind or not notice her reaction.

“Oh, no, I-I already have a guild, so I haven’t really looked into any others.”

“Oho, already got a guild, have ya? I was expecting you to be a right greenhorn, but I guess I should’ve expected with armor that nice. Alright, I’m not gonna try and poach talent, even as much as everyone else in the guild might want me to, haha.”

She smiled politely, relieved he hadn’t pried too deep down.

Chatting idly about nothing in particular, they both made their way to the quest location proper, sun setting lower and lower in the sky as they walked.

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By the time they finally arrived, dusk had just barely fallen, the uncannily bright full moon overhead lighting the fields before them almost as well as the sun had.

““There it is… gods, it’s all gone…””

Both of their escort targets spoke perfectly in time together, giving a strange echo to their lamentations as they recited their preset dialogue on arrival, falling to their knees behind the players.

Sure enough, the farm they’d both called their old home was little more than razed grasslands now, various structures collapsed and destroyed around scarred old fields.

“I-I’m so sorry, I’m sure we c-”

““Brave knight!, Please, I beseech ye, slay the beasts plaguing my homestead!””

“That’s what we were already here for, aye… not exactly the most attentive saps, are they?”

They both cowered behind the significantly taller pair, looking expectantly up at them as a blue screen forced its way onto both of their UIs.

[Quest Complete: Knight’s Honor]

[New Quest: Knight’s Honor II]

“Guess t-that’s what we both came for. S-Shall we…?”

“No sense coming out for nothing, eh?”

Nodding, they both accepted the continued quest, a quiet ding echoing twice.

““Thank you, hero…! The beasts are everywhere here, but… their leader, the one who led them here, he hides within my old home. Find him, and drive these demons back, I beg of you!””

Their double-speaking escorts smiled weakly at them before retreating a short ways, slipping into an abandoned shack to presumably wait for them to finish the quest. And the moment they were out of sight, a deafening howl rung from the only remaining building on the leveled farmstead, drawing both Elise and Markus’s immediate attention to it as they readied their weapons.

“Now normally I’d love to be all chivalrous and whatnot for a lady, but… I think you’re a bit better off taking point than me, ha.”

“Right… l-let’s check it out.”

The Vanguard went ahead, the Cleric falling in behind her towering silhouette as they cautiously made their way to the main house.

And before they’d gotten within even a hundred feet of the front door, it exploded open on its own, the monster they’d both come to deal with clambering out from within, a massive, snarling wolf-like creature standing on its hind legs, fur black as pitch covering its body as it stood below the moonlight.

“Okay, just s-stand behind me while I hold it back, and we should be-”

Before she could finish, she was cut off by a deafening howl crying out from the boss before them, calling out more of the wolves they’d fought off earlier from the woods nearby. And more immediately concerning…

In a move they’d both conveniently not considered, a second, identical werewolf crawled out of the homestead behind the first, a pair of them staring down at Elise’s towering shield wall as they both charged her together.

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“S-Stalwart, Harden Resolve…!”

Multiple auras glowed over top of the elf as she raised her defenses, one of the towering werewolves impacting either of her shields, snapping and snarling at them as she tried to hold them both back.

“Oh, bloody… Aegis Shield!”

A barrier of light spewed from his wand and wrapped itself around the tank, her health bar gaining a golden extension as she was shielded by the healer, slowing the rate her HP plummeted by just a bit.

It didn’t protect her for long however, as even with her stacked defenses, these were already boss-tier monsters, and she was holding back two of them at once. Heavy, muscled arms punched and clawed away at her cerulean steel barricades, landing the occasional hits on the woman herself behind them as she struggled to push them back.

Markus fired more rays of ice around the cover she provided, trying to assist as best as they could as their thick fur began to frost over on every shot, slowing their attacks and damaging them both greatly, but not stopping the concentrated assault.

“High Restore! Guh, I don’t have the mana to keep you standing and kill them myself, damn things are damage sponges!”

“I’m… doing my b-best here… Shield Crush!”

She batted them back as fast as he froze them over, the pair struggling to handle their paired attackers as they kept the pressure on the pair.

And right as they established any kind of equilibrium in the fight, the backup arrived, the doubled wolf packs returning as they rushed in from either side, slipping past the tank’s defensive line as they snapped at both of them, both of them now under attack.

“Little shits…! You holding up okay, kid?”

“T-This is nothing, don’t worry… I’m f-fine! Rally”

They were both wrapped in a dull orange glow as she buffed both their damage outputs, clearly trying to get the fight to end any sooner as she was drained lower and lower.

Attacks kept coming, uncaring of their defenses, the slowing ice bombarding them all, or any number of buff skills they could both put out, the two quickly being put on their back foot as the fight shifted inexorably in the canines’ favor.

This was nothing compared to the fight she’d survived in the second dungeon, and yet she was still being pushed back this hard without her companions here. Both of them could have handled something as this without breaking a sweat, so why was she getting overwhelmed as soon as the fight began…?

She pushed back harder, gasping between Shield Crushes as she did her best to stay standing, doing her best to just survive the attacks piling over them both.

And in that moment of need, she came to a realization only someone incredibly desperate or incredibly stupid could.

She was still trying to fight fairly. When every fight she’d been a part of before had been anything but this kind of straightforward brawl.

What she needed was to get reckless.

“Nnn… M-Markus, can you… make us some space, even for just a second is fine!”

“You got a plan?”

“I’ve got… s-something!”

“Better than what we’re doing now I hope… Avalanche!”

He aimed his wand directly upwards, calling forth a torrent of snow and ice that poured out in every direction, the bosses and their minions caught off guard as they were swept away a few feet from the paired players, frantically trying to claw out of their icy restraints.

“That’ll hold ‘em for a few seconds, and I don’t have the MP to do it again, so I hope you know what you’re doing kid…!”

“Just t-trust me! Now c’mon, make some space between us all!”

Elise turned on her heel running full tilt away from the building they’d come to clear, the orc following along behind her, both of them leaving the iced-over monsters behind them as they retreated.

She only needed a small bit of breathing room, and after about 50 feet or so she stopped, motioning the cleric to get behind her once more, facing the wolves as the first of them managed to get free of their snow piles, already charging back towards the pair.

“Okay n-now… I need you to stay directly behind me, and not move at all, okay?”

“Fine, fine, not like I wanna start tanking instead.”

“Right, then… Lurk!”

With a slight burst that flattened the grass underfoot, the girl faded out, once more becoming transparent as she popped her anti-tank skill, her temporary partner’s eyes quickly widening as his defense suddenly vanished before him.

And the moment she disappeared along with all her aggro, the charging wolf pack’s eyes all turned to him, hungry for blood as they drew closer once more.

“…oy, don’t you just leave me here, kid! I can’t just-”

“J-Just stay there, I promise, please!”

“Guh, kids these days…”

Not a single monster remained frozen in place, the twin werewolf leaders closing the gap fastest as they bounded on all fours, leaping to close the last stretch between them and the defenseless Cleric in front of them, all of them aimed right around Elise herself.

“P-please work please work please work please work…! Leyline Protection!”

Lifting both shields overhead, she slammed them down hard into the earth below, activating her untested new skill as her weapons clanged like church bells.

The moment she’d begun casting, the spell had instantly started working its magic, glowing lines and runes burning into view on the ground below, weaving up around her legs as she was bound in place, the shining magicked circle spreading around her in the blink of an eye.

And in turn, every projectile around her was caught and bound in place midair.

Namely, each and every one of the airborne canines that had conveniently launched directly over top of her, each of them now stuck in place as they flailed.

“…the hell…?”

Grunting with effort, the added lockdown of her making it hard to move at all, she raised her shields over her head once more, aiming directly skywards.

“A-And now, then… Return Volley!”

Helplessly stuck floating above the ground, the wolves merely swung and barked at the caster they were unable to ever reach… before one by one they were catapulted upwards, every last one of the enemies blinked into the distance above as they were launched away.

Groaning as the twin bosses were the last to be shot away, the Vanguard collapsed into the soft grass, panting as she was finally allowed a moment to sit and breathe.

From behind her, the dead silence was broken by the boisterous laughter of her new friend, Markus clapping her on the back proudly, chortling with his entire belly.

“Y’know kid? Never seen anyone try anything quite that foolhardy, and I’ve definitely never seen it work out that well! You some kinda miracle worker?”

“Oh, no no no, I… d-didn’t really know if it would even work, hehe…”

“But you did it anyways, and I know plenty of stiff old coots with sticks too far up their asses to ever try anything like that. Ya got balls, kid, I’m impressed!”

He helped her back to her feet, dusting her dented armor off as she blushed from embarrassment, both of them happy to be alive after the fight as they wandered back to the shed.

The villager(s) came out happily, having already registered the quest as complete, handing the adventurers each a pouch of golf, some food and monster materials, and a scroll for the skill they’d both come for.

[Bodyguard]

- Unlock: Quest Reward.

- User quickly moves to a friendly target’s location within range.

- Target gains a short duration defensive buff while user is moving.

Both of them popped it together, the scrolls fading into light as they registered the new ability they’d been hunting for.

“Aye, well, guess we’re all done here. Thanks again for the help, certainly made the whole ordeal that much more exciting.”

“S-Same to you! Hopefully you all do well in the event soon!”

“Here’s hoping they don’t put us up against you, ha!… Wait, you hear something?”

“…y-yeah actually, what is that noise- ow!”

The tank flinched as something heavy struck her hard, turning to find the source…

…and quickly finding it, a swarm of defeated and discombobulated wolves of all sizes falling like rain overhead.

“...oh, r-right…”

The pair ran for dear life, the vengeful dead crashing back down over them as they separated once more, running back to town as they tried their hardest to not be crushing under descending canine meteors.