Through the Woods
Several Hours Later
Everfree Trail
3rd Person POV
An arrow struck the wolf’s chest, dropping its weakened HP down to red as it dodged a wide swing from Blitz’s warclub. As Blitz flew skyward, away from the creature, it turned its fury on Fleur and started to chase towards the archer.
However, before it could get anywhere close, Blitz was diving back down at the creature, using the momentum to smash his club into its spine. The wolf began snapping in two before it broke into a pile of blue programming.
Elsewhere, Gray was jumping and dodging around another wolf’s sea of frantic claws and lunges as she looked for an opening. Every so on, she’d bring a hoof forward and cut into the wolf’s paws with her dagger. All while multiple bolts of magic sailed past them and towards another wolf even further away as it sprinted directly for Chill.
Then, as though sharing the same mind, Gray’s wolf leaned down and acted as a platform, letting Chill’s wolf jump on and leap off its back like a spring in an effort to close the distance quicker. Blitz and Fleur readied themselves to help the others but were stopped as two more Timberwolves emerged from the trees and growled. It was a pack of five minus what Blitz already destroyed.
“Ice Age,” Chill shouted. Frost coated the ground around him and left a trail as he began to back up. Simultaniously, he started to release a wild barrage of ice blasts from his wand, all in the direction of the wolf intent on shredding him. The wolf tucked its head in, ducking and weaving past the slow moving attacks without losing speed.
But with what the magic ice lacked in speed it covered in quantity. The wolf was in the center of this bullet hell scenario and was forced to decide; stop running towards Chill and focus on dodging, or take a few hits and sink teeth into prey.
In the end, the wolf’s programmed instincts won out. After seeing no way to keep running without its losing speed, the wolf doubled down and ran faster to power through.
Two shots smashed against the Timberwolf’s bark skin, one skirting the edge of its jaw while the second shattered against its shoulder. Its HP bar, unharmed until now, was knocked down until its bar was slightly above the halfway mark. However, as the wolf attempted to duck under a third attack, it was suddenly too slow.
Its shoulder, now caked with frost, didn’t cooperate. It only managed to keep the ice from striking it in the center of its face as instead it carved against the scalp. It didn’t take much damage but now another patch of frost threatened to block its eyes.
The wolf used whatever energy it still had to bank left, avoiding the last of the ice magic to avoid getting destroyed. As it examined its body, there were patches of frost where each blast hit. The frost around its jaw made it difficult to even open its mouth.
“Dark Blend.”
Gray vanished right as her wolf dove to bite into her. Somehow, she was already somewhere else as the wolf clamped its teeth together, sliding to a halt. In a frenzy, it swung claws and chomped around it, hoping it only missed its prey by mere inches.
Instead, like before with the now frost-bit Timberwolf, Gray's wolf was suddenly hindered. It shifted back and forth to throw the phantom off but to no avail. Rather, it let out an intense yelp as two daggers sunk behind both shoulder blades. The knives quickly faded into reality along with the entire Earth pony wielding them in each forehoof.
The wolf’s hit points tanked into zero and became a wash of blue code as Gray dropped back onto the ground, sheathing one dagger and turning to observe the rest of the fight.
Chill stood away from the others, heaving and gasping from exhaustion as the counter for Ice Age went down. Even if he didn’t have to move to fire his magic, it took energy. So firing dozens of shots in a flurry wore him out.
“Chill. You good?” Gray called out, readying her dagger against the wolf that was trying to shake away the frost clinging to its body.
“Ye...Yep!” He called back, trying to force himself to stop breathing so heavily as he pulled back the wand in his magic. His ability had twelve more seconds. In an effort to finish the job, Joey threw his wand in every direction and made the wolf dance for him again.
Even when the wolf was focused on dodging every blast that came at him, the frost building up on it held back its speed. Another bolt struck his hind leg and halved what HP the wolf had left. Now with more frost covering its body, it took all its strength to jump away from the next blast. Only to be hit with another strikes that reduced it to a sliver of health.
The wolf couldn’t even stand up before the next three bursts hit him in unison, cementing the rest of the creature into a pitiful ice sculpture. And as Ice Age’s timer came to an end, the wolf melted into a puddle.
Legs shaking, Chill turned around and watched Blitz let out a warcry as he swung his warclub, catching the Timberwolf’s claw and reducing it to mulch before the rest of the wolf shattered along with it into code.
Simultaneously, Fleur drew an Ice Arrow and fired at the last wolf who sat there, staring back at Fleur with a dark pink aura dancing around it. As the arrow sunk into its chest, frost erupted across the body, permanently turning the wolf into a sculpture before bursting into code. Neither wolf nor puddle was left behind.
Enemies Defeated
4 TimberwolvesTeam Rewards
14 Bits
100 XP
That was something they had gotten used to seeing each time they fought these wolves. Although it didn’t matter as much as the next message Blitz got.
Level Up!
Lv. 3 → Lv. 4
“Woo~!” Alex cheered, throwing a hoof to the air as his health went from 67/89 to 86/108. “Triple digits! Finally!”
“Took ya long enough,” Gwen teased as she helped walk Joey over to them.
“Way’ta go,” Joey complimented, leaning away from Gwen as he tried not to fall over. His breathing was heavy.
“Joey, you need to think of something other than a barrage like that,” his brother told him. “What if there’s more than one wolf? You’ll be too tired to fight.”
“Then...Then I’ll just fire more magic,” he lazily offered.
Alex watched his brother try, and fail, to act tough and shook his head. “Guys, let’s take a break.” Alex sat down where he was. “We’ve been walking a while now. We can’t be too far.”
“No. We’re not.” Gwen and the others joined him. “It’s maybe another ten minutes before we come up on the graveyard.”
“Oh yeah. The zombies,” Chill told himself between breaths. “Is that going to be hard?”
“Not if we’re smart.” Gwen started to open her inventory. “There’s a lot of zombies but they’re very slow. As long as you pay attention, they can’t catch you.”
“You sure I shouldn’t just, ya know, fly in?” Alex offered, showing off his wings. “I can’t imagine zombies can fly.”
“Zombies volants?!” Rachelle froze, misunderstanding him.
“Non, non,” Alex quickly tried to calm Rachelle down in her language.
“It’s a dumb idea anyway,” Gwen shot down. “If we all go, there’s a better chance the place drops rare armor and weapons. Stuff we’ll need for that dungeon.”
Joey nodded along, pretending to listen until he thought over what Gwen said as something seemed to dawn on him.
“Ohhh,” Joey called out in wonder. “That’s why they’re called drops.”
“Really?” Gwen stared back with a bored look. “Your brother never explained that?”
As the four players continued sitting back, from deeper in the forest they began to hear this guttural growl bellowed from within. All at once they stopped talking and turned around. They didn’t see anything yet.
“Must be further in.” Blitz stood up and backed away from the treeline, readying his tonfa.
“Already?” Joey half-whined as he and the rest of the group followed suit. “But we just fought wolves.”
“We’re deeper in the forest now,” Gwen said, setting a dagger between her teeth. “Ish gonna geh’ ‘ougher.”
Each of them eyed their health for a moment, noticing it stopped regenerating when the threat was too close.
E1ectric_B1itz: 107/108
Light_Chill: 90/90
F1eur_de_7is: 114/114 *
GrayMatt3rsxxx: 109/130 *
Another growl came, this time closer and with the sound of heavy footfalls pairing with it, but still no sign of wolves. And as Fleur listened, the noise seemed different than usual.
She looked to Blitz. “Est-ce un loup?”
“Loup...Lou— wolf,” Blitz translated, “I mean, yes? Wolves are the only thing in Everfree. Right Gray?”
“Around here, yeah,” she confirmed. “There shouldn’t be anything else.”
However, Gray started to notice trees poking out of the canopy suddenly shift and shake as something slammed into them. Each time, the group heard the sound of whatever caused it.
Grrrrrrraaaaaagh!
Another growl, louder this time, had become a complete roar.
Fleur drew back her arrow, shaking her head as her eyes grew wide. “Pas un loup. Not. Wolf.”
“Is. Is it a zombie?” Chill guessed, his wand pulling back slowly. Somehow, even within the aura, the wand trembled.
Then it began to dawn on Gray. It wasn’t a wolf. It was worse. “Run.”
“What?” Blitz looked over his shoulder and Chill just turned around entirely. “What? What’s com—”
“I sh’aid run,” she repeated, taking the dagger out of her mouth. As soon as her dagger was back in its place, she moved. “It’s gonna charge. We need to go.”
Alex didn’t question it further. He locked eyes with Fleur and pointed towards Gray, sending her in the same direction. Then he put his weapons back and turned to his brother.
“Joey, come on.”
But Chill hesitated. Instead, he looked between them and the forest as the ground shaking sounds closed in. “I don’t get it. Why aren’t we fighting? Aren’t we getting better?”
“We’re going,” Gwen answered before Alex could. “Remember when Discord said he was letting monsters roam?”
That caught Alex’s attention. “Joey. Now.” He started to pull his brother along, not giving Chill the chance to process why. In his mind, they haven’t run away before. Why now?
But as Chill finally put his wand back, another roar, loud enough to shake each of them, made everyone freeze in fear. More trees were shoved aside, some threatening to break from the unknown force.
Finally, as the group spotted something moving in the brush, it stood still. From within, triple the height of the ponies, was this large misshapen figure who slowly brought out one of its tree-sized legs and scraped it across the ground with a horrible ripping sound.
The leg then slammed against the forest floor and a cloud of blue code kicked up like dust, illuminating this greenish, rocky skin that coated the monster. It’s snout protruded with massive teeth jutting out of the sides; most of them the size of a leg. Even as the darkness returned, the dull glow of its yellow eyes pierced the shadows, observing the four snacks ahead of it.
And then it charged.
At an alien speed, it came at them in an instant, crawling over bushes and rocks as its massive tail swung like a wrecking ball into the trees beside it. Gray and Fleur were far enough where they were safe although the monster paid them no mind. Instead, it erupted from the forest and like a spear, its massive jaw opening and snapping shut against the only pony foolish enough to stand in its way; Light Chill.
Jagged stone teeth skewered Chill’s torso and ripped him from Blitz’s grip without issue. The young brother’s screams were blocked out by the sound of this reptile’s stone body scraping against the ground as its left over momentum pushed it into the road past Blitz, almost knocking him over in the process.
Chill’s HP went into freefall.
90.
78.
62.
46.
40.
37.
32/90.
Everyone’s attention wasn’t on the numbers but Chill himself. They watched in terror, praying he wouldn’t explode into numbers at any moment. Even as the monster's boulder of a tail threatened to take Blitz’s head off, he didn’t react.
Chill’s screaming persisted as the monster stood back up and shook him as if he was a dog’s chew toy. And when the creature was done, it flicked its head to the side and threw the snack away. Chill went ragdolling through the air until he slammed against the trunk of a tree, his screaming gone silent.
11/90.
Chill plopped to the ground lifelessly while blue holes had code spilling out. The child slowly tried to put his front hooves under him and debated whether to scream again or find out where he landed. In the end, screaming won out but all that came was this strained groan. It proved he was still conscious at least.
The monster turned to observe the other three. Gray was trying not to hyperventilate, Blitz was slack-jawed by what he just witnessed and Fleur was trying to remember how her magic worked through her fear.
Looming above them was the proud HP bar and name of the creature before them.
Cragadile
HP: 261/261
When neither of the girls seemed like a threat, the beast lowered its head to stare down at Blitz with a singular yellow eye. Blitz stared back, barely remembering to breathe so that he stayed conscious. Next, Blitz’s mind went into overdrive, replaying everything his brother just went through. He managed to tear his gaze away from the beast and at the crumpled unicorn dangerously close to getting smashed by a heavy tail. When he saw this, Blitz finally had a reaction.
Screaming.
It could have been called a warcry but that would imply Blitz did it on purpose. Instead, he flew into the monster’s face with his warclub in his hooves. Before the monster could open its jaw to grant the pegasus a quicker death, Blitz swung with everything and smashed it in the nose.
The cagadile reeled back from the sudden pain, shaking its head as the HP bar dropped maybe five percent. As Blitz readied himself to swing for its rocky face again, the cragadile turned its body an alarming speed, driving its tail forward like a bat.
Blitz was too frenzied to think of blocking but it hardly mattered. The tail crashed into him with the strength of a small car, throwing Blitz far off into the woods and out of the monster’s face. As he was entirely out of sight, Gray and Fleur were now staring up at the irate beast, free to eat whoever it wanted.
While Blitz’s warclub clanked against the ground lifelessly, Gray glanced at the health bars.
GrayMatt3rsxxx: 109/130 *
E1ectric_B1itz: 81/108
Light_Chill: 11/90
F1eur_de_7is: 114/114 *
With Blitz too far away to matter, the creature turned back to finish off the unicorn who was peeling himself up off the ground. The entire time Fleur, who finally found her wits, started firing off arrows but to little effect. Only by the fourth arrow did the HP bar even go down a notch.
Gray grabbed the next arrow before Fleur could nock it. “No! Not. Working,” She exclaimed. “We need bludgeoning weapons! Blud-geon,” she spoke loudly, smacking one hoof into the other like a child playing with action figures.
Without nothing important distracting it, the cragadile leered over Chill, letting the programmed stench of its breath waft over its meal. However, rather than cower or run like the monster had hoped, Chill stared back. Then, when the two were done sharing this odd moment of silence, Chill suddenly let out this nervous, uncontrolled giggling.
The laughter was the only noise there was and it made Gray and Fleur turn around in time to see the clear terror in Chill’s eyes. They also noticed magic flowing from his horn as, in a flourish, Chill’s wand was drawn and flung in one move.
The magic bolt rammed into the monster’s snout, making it flinch and twist away in a daze. Unfortunately, Chill was too broken to consider running at this point as his shaky laughter continued. So like a mad maestro, Chill had enough sense to fling the wand back and forth in his magic, shooting pulses like a gatling gun and pelting the beast’s rock-covered body.
After a dozen shots, most of them hitting the large target, the beast’s health didn’t drop nearly as far as it should have. Chill’s laughter was exchanged for heavy breathing as he wore himself out and almost collapsed in front of the now furious beast.
Fsssssssssssssss...
As it readied itself to smash Chill into paste with a single foot, Gray’s attention wandered to Fleur as she drew her new arrow back. One with a fuse burning on the side that forced the archer to swallow her fear and aim as carefully as she could.
Gray realized that at some point in Chill’s laughing fit, Fleur backed up enough that she wouldn’t be caught in her own blast radius.
Not bothering to ask if she was too close herself, Gray broke out into a run to the side, listening as the sound of the fuse became a sharp whistle that swept down the trail and directly into the—
A bright light and thunderous boom forced Gray to dive for cover in a shriek. Even as the flash of the explosion hung in the air, Gray felt the beast struggle to keep its footing as it stomped around in place.
She cracked open an eye, ears ringing loudly and her heart in her throat from how close that blast was. As she tried to find her wits, she noticed Blitz’s warclub roll up against her hoof. Without thinking, she took it in her forelegs and had an idea.
“Dark Blend,” she muttered, turning invisible as all life around her went deathly silent. Including the ringing in her ears, thankfully.
By now the monster’s rage was obvious. From its perspective, it was battered by bright lights and then a loud boom nearly took it off of its feet. So, instead of eating the mage that was too tired to fight back, it turned its back on Chill to kill whatever tried to blow it up.
Meanwhile Blitz, now fully back in his own mind, rocketed out from the trees, clocking the cragadile in the face with one tonfa before spinning in mid air and using the speed to strike withe the second one. The monster tried to snap its jaw around the pest but Blitz was ready, ducking away and landing on the center of its back. He then proceeded to bash into it as well as he could.
By the third hit, the reptile was done. Its health, now down to only a fifth, made it decide to take down something permanently. Rather than throw off Blitz, it charged with the same crazed speed it had in the beginning and, as she was readied a Bludgeon Arrow, bit into Fleur with its stony teeth and crunched. She screamed in pain and panic as Blitz watched in shock from atop the monster as he held on for dear life.
But it wasn’t done. It spiked Fleur on the ground like a football before slamming its rocky body on top of her. Not a second later it went into a death roll, throwing Blitz underneath it at the same time as it grinded the two ponies with every jagged rock that made up its back. When it was done, instead of getting up, the beast laid on top of them, deciding to let them suffocate in the darkness.
The only thing either of them could see was the health bars.
E1ectric_B1itz: 40/108
Light_Chill: 11/90
F1eur_de_7is: 4/114 *
GrayMatt3rsxxx: 109/130 4 sec(s)
The beast felt three more shots of magic strike him from behind but that was all Chill could force before he leaned on the tree for support. And when the beast didn’t feel anything else, it decided to finish the job.
The monster pulled its legs back under itself and stood up again, revealing two disheveled ponies lying pressed into the ground. Blitz tried picking himself back up while Fleur only managed to left her head to spot the looming shadow above them. Neither were in any condition to escape.
So they didn’t.
Instead, they as the reptile’s legs fell out from under it again, letting itself crush and envelope them in darkness for a second time. All they could manage was to close their eyes out of instinct.
But even through their eyelids, they watched a sea of blue wash over them as they suddenly felt nothing.
Before the monster could impact the ground, its body melted into a tsunami of blue 1s and 0s that poured across the road. Blitz and Fleur suddenly felt no resistance as they laid there in shock and confusion as code danced around all of them.
Appearing beside them was Gray, swinging the warclub over her shoulder like a baseball bat as she had a relieved, if not hollowed, look on her face.
“This,” She declared with a huge breath. “Is the most terrifying day of my life. And I’m the only one that didn’t get hit.”
As she said this, a familiar message flashed in front of her face.
Enemies Defeated
1 CragadileTeam Rewards
70 Bits
1000 XP
Crag Dagger
Crag Plate ArmorYour Share
Bits Obtained: 32
374 XP
Crag Dagger
Crag Plate Armor
“Huh,” Gwen hummed. “I got the—” Another message came up, this time only for Gwen and Joey.
Level Up!
Lv. 5 → Lv. 6
E1ectric_B1itz: 41/108
Light_Chill: 23/101
F1eur_de_7is: 5/114 *
GrayMatt3rsxxx: 120/140
Gwen took a moment to admire her luck before she noticed Joey fall to his knees, or whatever pony knees are called, Gwen imagined before hurrying over to help move him back to the others.
“Pou. Pouvons-nous reposer? S'il vous plaît,” Rachelle asked pathetically. The pain of being eaten and crushed had already faded thanks to the game but the stress of it all was exhausting.
“Joey,” Alex said tiredly, forcing himself to stand back up. “Are you alright? How do you feel?”
“I. I. I..." Joey let Gwen walk him over to the others while he had this far off look on his face.
“Joey, it’s okay. It’s gone now,” Alex told him, meeting him halfway as he took Joey in his arms. “Look. Do you want to go back to town? That’s perfectly fine. We still have the hotel and we can just be done. Okay? We can stop now.”
But Joey didn’t listen. Instead, the same nervous laughter from before caught in his throat as his distant expression focused. “I...I got eaten by an alligator. Ahehehe. Heh...”
“...What?” Alex furrowed his brow.
“An alligator ate me and then I bopped it in the nose. Hehe,” Joey explained, slowly letting himself sit back down. “It was...so cool...You think Dad’s gonna believe us?”
“Alex,” Gwen slowly interjected. “I think your brother should rest for a while. It’s been a day.” She watched as Joey sat there, supposedly not scared or worried like the rest of the group expected.
Again, because the game made pain much less intense than it was, being chewed by the cragadile hurt in the moment, but not at all as painful as it should have been. Even being trapped in the game didn’t make that worse. So once the pain was gone, the only thing left behind was the memory.
But Joey had reached his limit. From Discord scaring everyone and then trapping Joey inside a library as it blew up. Joey watching his brother be teleported away and a minute later splatter on the ground neck-first followed by convulsing in pain every hour for days. To sneak away at night with strangers to fire magic from a stick rather than sleep in the rubble of the same library he blamed himself for having been destroyed. To talk with random piles of code rather than living people and then be given chocolate bars and caramel apples as if nothing was wrong.
And now, after being chewed up and spat out by a monster the size of a cement truck, he, his brother, and two strangers he barely knew were willingly walking to a graveyard full of zombies.
All while Joey was stuck in the body of a pony half his height. The eight year old had been through a lot in one week. And because he didn’t want to make his brother, or this Gray woman, or the Rachelle girl worry about him because he was the youngest, he had one option.
Grit his teeth and smile.
“Aw come on, we’re gonna be fine,” Joey mock-whined, standing up and putting on the best smile he could muster. “Alex just said it’s okay now, right? And you said you tell ponies about the graveyard all the time. Those guys can’t be too much stronger than we are. I mean, we’re pretty awesome!”
Joey felt a hoof on his shoulder.
“Joey. It’s oka—”
Joey’s hoof bopped Alex in the nose just strong enough to push him on his flank.
“Not my name Blitz,” Joey(?) called out with a smile.
“...What?”
“My name’s Light Chill. Remember?” Joey Light Chill reminded him. “That’s what you called me when we talked in the plaza yesterday. Then at the jewelry store. When we started the game, we said we would talk like ponies.”
Alex glanced up at Gwen for some hope of advice but all he got was her ears flattening against her skull. She had no idea how to respond.
So Alex stood back up, put his hooves on Light Chill’s shoulders and looked him dead in the eyes. “Joey. Joey. Vaughn. Don’t do this, okay? We’re here for you. Please. Don’t need to pretend like you’re not afraid of anything. Everything is terrible. I’m not going to lie and say it isn’t. But you can’t do this, alright? You’re not a pony. You’re my brother.”
“...I know.”
The younger brother looked up at the older, trying to keep up his smile while his eyes misted over. “I know I’m your brother. But...Joey’s not good at this.” His voice cracked.
“Joey’s a third grader. Joey watches Mom on TV. He listens to Dad talk about blog stuff he doesn't know anything about. Joey chases our dog in the backyard and never throws the toy far enough for her to care. And. And Joey doesn’t fight wolves. Or alligators. Or zombies or Discord. Joey’s a human.
“But Light Chill,” Chill went on, sniffling. “Light Chill’s a pony. Light Chill’s a wizard with a staff that fights monsters with his big brother. He can get eaten by a monster and then stand right back up and blast it in the face. Fake robot ponies ask him for help because they’re not smart enough to do anything other than sell him things. Joey can’t do any of that.”
Alex watched as his little brother wiped his eyes for a second and tried to smile again. “We can’t go home. And if we stay in town, we won’t get better. Everyone else will get stronger and we’ll be stuck back on that library floor again. I mean, we have to fight eventually. Right?”
“We...No. No, w-we don’t,” Alex tried to deny it but both of them knew that was a lie.
So Chill kept smiling. “Joey can’t do stuff. Light Chill can. So I’m gonna be Light Chill for a while. Okay?”
Alex didn’t say anything. Instead, he just pulled his brother in for a hug and held him there as long as his brother would let him, keeping himself from tearing up. All the while, Gwen sat there, completely unsure how to take this.
“Okay,” Alex eventually said. “Fine. If it helps; be Light Chill. But if something’s bothering you.” Alex pulled Chill back so he could look him in the eye again. “If you’re upset or something’s really scaring you, say it. Okay?”
Light Chill gave his brother a big smile. “I will. Promise.”
“Good.”
Light Chill took one more breath, wiped the tears from his eyes, and stood back up. “So...Let’s go fight zombies!”
“No,” Gwen demanded, holding a hoof out just in time to keep Chill from walking off. “We are tired. And we’re low on health. So we’re taking a lunch break. And I think I need to have a talk with your brother.”
Chill’s expression flashed into one of relief for a moment before he pretended to be upset about it, even giving out a mock groan. “Fine. I guess that’s good too.”
Chill summoned two chocolate bars from his inventory, levitating one over to Rachelle who took it as a sign that they were stopping for now. Something she was greatly happy for.
So as they sat down, Gwen brought Alex a few feet away so that Chill couldn’t over hear them. Although he didn’t have to. Light Chill already assumed he knew what Gwen was worried about.
But that didn’t matter right now. Instead, all Light Chill was interested in was eating his chocolate bar in peace.
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Great chapter I loved the drama and the fact that this time they really had to face the music that they couldn't afford to hide in Ponyville the whole time. I wonder how things will really start to develop. keep it up.
Its really sad to see this in very young mmo players. They act tough and act like nothing scares them. Though in reality, they just don't want to let their party down, or be a burden. This experience will haunt Joey, aka Light Chill, for a good while. I just hope they see this before it corrupts the poor kid.
Other than that, wow intense action. Even a flag boss when they least expect it. Even showing how experienced u are can mean the difference between a clean hunt, to near disaster. Can't wait to see what other challenges they will face.
10603102
Thank you so much! I know I've hinted that the group had to pick themselves up and fight through the game but even in the old version of this story this was the conversation that made me rewrite everything. They didn't have this kind of fight either.
10603593
This was what took me a while to write. I wanted to try making this feel like it could be a real reaction. Realistic character's are something I always strive for, even if the setting is definitely fictional.
Oh, and that Cragadile? It may feel like a boss to the party but technically, it's not a boss. Just a regular mob. Discord did say he was letting his monsters roam around outside their designated areas and this was the result. Cragadile's just a tougher monster that roamed into the Everfree for easier prey. The real (flag/mid/mini/etc) bosses I'm saving for now.