Nightmare Fantasy Online

The air tastes disgusting, the ground's squishy, and the smell's worse than airplane gasoline. 

Yup. This is the truest definition of a "poisoned swamp". 

"Well, this is the alpha region of the Alberido Swamp. Have a blast." - Bloom

Bloom, dressed to survive and having dropped her disguise, gave me a quick rundown of the purple swamp area before trying to leave.

"Stay." - Garami

"Gyaah!? I...I hate this stupid collar!" - Bloom

Sometimes, I just gotta love that slavery collar. It's still bad taste though.

"Please, can't I go home? This place is giving me bad memories..." - Bloom

"You have some memories, which equals experience, with this place. I don't." - Garami

"Damn my life..." - Bloom

Having given up, Bloom stood up and started to lead me through the swamp. Hey, you've even been given the Anti-Venom Necklace in addition to the Venomydra Leaf Scarfs. Even if the latter is necessary from the start if you wanna walk around in this place.

"You won't lose your life as long as you don't do anything stupid. I'll take care of you." - Garami

"Just don't be too cocky because you guys return to life..." - Bloom

Hey, dying hurts even with reduced pain settings. And I won't let someone without "continues" be on the front line.

"What are the locals in this place?" I asked Bloom, urgently wishing to start turning this place on its head.

"Poison spiders, poison centipedes, poison worms, and even more poison." - Bloom

"... isn't there anything else? Something that's not poisonous?" - Garami

"There are the big frogs who can survive this land with their high vitality, or we have the will-o-wisps." - Bloom

I doubt any of them is good for a trial run for my new daggers..., and now that I think about it, I never got to know what they can do. Whoops.

HOLY SHIT! Or should I say "unholy"? Think it fits better considering the items in question.

"Why're you making such a funny face?" - Bloom

"Nothing..., isn't the right word here. It'd be disrespectful." - Garami

"Hmm? Then, did you find out what you will challenge first?" - Bloom

"I say: let them all come!!" - Garami

"Wow, she's going to get herself killed. Better sneak away when I have the chance..." - Bloom

Be quiet, disbeliever! Not that I wanna waste precious time scolding her. I need to test these gifts from heaven (or hell?) right away, then start looking for event-related clues!

"...there! [Mystical Threads]!" - Garami 

With more gusto than needed, I released my attack at the huge reading from [Detect Monster] that's trying to hide in the swamp water. And with a big splash, the target for today arrived in his...flabby dignity?

"...that's a biiiiig frog." - Garami

"Iiiik! Deadly Frog!" - Bloom

The "Deadly Frog" isn't as fearsome as its name. It's just big. Big as a truck, but still, only big...ah.

"Whoops." - Garami

The frog's tongue came shooting out of its mouth like a bullet and almost grazed me. I'm in no haste for getting tongue-tied. Especially with this guy. Urgh. 

The frog kept on swinging that tongue-whip of its at me. Sorry, pal. I've got experience with the Darkland amphibians. You're too late for the party. 

But this damn slippery lick-ery is annoying. There...oh?

"*COOOOOAAAARCK!!!!*" - Deadly Frog

I tried to swat the tongue away with the hand holding Helheim, but whaddya know. It cut the lickety-lick right off. As expected of an Ex-rarity item that's focused on attack power. I wanna see its real stats now. 

The Deadly Frog looked at me with a deadly angry look in its eyes. I don't like it when people (or frogs) do that, so I threw Helheim at its head. As a distraction.

The frog jumped out of the way after seeing the dagger come flying at him, but the second before it landed, I threw Pandemonium at the spot where it would land and scored a direct hit on its flabby belly. 

The effect was instantaneous. The frog screamed from the pain of the wound, and probably the dagger's curse. But it doesn't seem to have killed it, so I started ...... [Mystical Threads] at it and ...... to keep it in place. Then, with a small mental command to the daggers, I walked over to the flobby giant with both daggers returned to my hand. 

It's time for a live dismantling~. Wonder how long it will take.

---

"Damn. What a durable guy. It took me 10 minutes on it alone..." - Garami

I'd finally finished dismantling the big frog to death, but it was damn tough. I bet it had auto-recovery skills for its HP as well. What a frog...

"...Master? You know what that creature was, right?" - Bloom

"Hmm? It's a Deadly Frog, whatever that is." - Garami

"So you didn't know. Master, a Deadly Frog is a D-rank monster. You normally need a party with at least 3 D-rank adventurers or more to defeat it." - Bloom

For real?

"Its toughness is incredible enough to make it the strongest monster regarding defense when you ignore the Haunt's local lords. And even then, it has a ridiculously high instantaneous speed thanks to its jumping powers, and its tongue can be used both close-range and mid-range. And that's not counting the fact that it can swallow you whole if it gets the chance." - Bloom

Seriously, for real??

"From what I have overheard, the normal strategy for adventurers hunting the Deadly Frog is to blast it with magic from a distance, but it is difficult spotting those things when they are hiding in the swamp, so even the match of getting the first attack can decide which side wins or dies. Not to mention that the frogs can easily cross the distance between them and the spell casters with a single jump or two." - Bloom

For fiction!?!? ...that came out wrong. And I have a new System Message.

...yeah. It's D-rank. Even so...

"Are there any easier prey to beat?" - Garami

"Easier than the frog just now?" - Bloom

"That was mostly luck, no? And I want you to get a few levels as well." - Garami

"I am not a combatant! I am your normal witch apprentice!" - Bloom

"But with more levels, you could unlock more skills to help with your witch work, no? And we're practicing "safety first" here, which is why I want a weaker target than the frog." - Garami

It's also because I've gotten more than a little scared after hearing about the frog's real abilities. It just had a bad match-up with me this time around. 

"Something even I can give a hand with..., maybe the Veoron Caterpillar?" - Bloom

"Caterpillar?" - Garami

"Caterpillar. E-rank monsters that live in great numbers here in the swamps and they can tolerate practically any poison, but they don't have any themselves. Their biggest threat is that they call on allies when in a pinch." - Bloom

In a pinch, you say...

"Then worms it is." - Garami

"Is that fine? They will continue to swarm onto us." - Bloom

"Which saves us the need of looking for them." - Garami

Of course, I do wanna prepare the battlefield first...

---

"*Skreeeeach*!" - Veoron Caterpillar

A big, ugly caterpillar-like creature with sickly-purple skin shouted as it was suspended upside down from a tree with my threads. The scream must be its ally-calling skill. Though...

It's a caterpillar massacre! Leave no potential butterflies alive! 

I chose an area that's sorta like a cape in the swamp water. There's only one path to reach the place we've made camp, and we've also made sure that no surprises are in the swamp water for us. And we've also made sure that the caterpillars can't swim. 

The result is that the Veoron Caterpillar's screams are attracting its friends to the cape, the cavalry caterpillars are forced on a single road which we have a good view of, and it is also pestered by my traps.

The traps are mostly the hindering- or slowing-down types, as I already know that I cannot make traps that deal decent damage. Besides, slowing one caterpillar down will create a roadblock for the other bugs. That the caterpillars I kill remain for a little while thanks to [Dismantling] is also helpful with that idea in mind.

Nyx is fighting on the front line, running past the caterpillars and slashing at them with her claws. Sometimes, she's throwing out screams or aura that seems to unnerve the caterpillars. Those actions are the new Monster Skills that Nyx obtained while I couldn't log into the game. Such growth in such a short time. That's my girl!

Nala's acting as a wall in case some of the caterpillars survive and manage to reach this far. She's now armed with several trident-like weapons, and she is using them well enough for a newbie. The surging water that surrounds the tridents is helping her compensate for her lack of ability. Plus she's still using her tentacles in the same fashion as when I fought her. 

Bloom is obviously out of harm's way in the back. But her [Quick] and [Slow] skills are pretty much the game-changers here. Nyx and Nala have turned so fast that they can keep their game up even when faced with so many caterpillars, and Bloom's sure to slow down the bugs that are getting too close to both of them.

As for me,  I'm fighting on the front line along with Nyx. Like her, my speed's enhanced thanks to Bloom, and I can honestly not see myself losing. The caterpillars are gross, but my experience with those freakish ghouls from the emergency quest has made me numb to their horror.

I kept on mowing down the crawlers with Helheim and witnessed the dagger's incredible attack power. Most caterpillars went down after two solid hits or so, even when Bloom mentioned that these creatures are quite durable, even if not on the same level as the frog earlier. 

But the real unfortunate bugs must be those that I slash at with Pandemonium. Poison may not work on these guys, but they are getting slabbered with lots of status ailments from the cursed dagger.

Some stop in their tracks and collapses to the ground after being cut, some have their wounds increase in size over time, and some have more blood (I've put the special effects option on "realistic") spewing out of their wounds than one would think their blood was high-pressured. The "lucky" ones are those that only fall asleep, but they're quickly trampled over by their allies. 

And while fending off caterpillar after caterpillar, I noticed that my movements were getting better and better. I moved with less hesitation, took fewer unnecessary actions, and I managed to strike the weak points of the caterpillars more often. Not to mention it was getting easier to combo skills and [Parry] battle arts even in the middle of the brawl.

My greatest feat was using [Mystical Threads] and "weaving" several caterpillars together with smart usage of [Create Trap]. I'm honestly proud of that one. 

It took a while, but we managed to win in the end. And the result's a big field with caterpillar corpses...if they hadn't dissolved into black dust. We also killed the captured caterpillar. 

"M...master...no more..." - Bloom

"Yeah, let's return for today," I said as I dismissed Nyx and Nala back to the Fort's Followers' Hotel. 

We returned home while I kept a lookout for swamp monsters with my skills, and after finally returning to the town, I could look at the result of today's pest extermination.

• Garami: from Lv.20 to Lv.40
• Bloom: from Lv.9 to Lv.19
• Nyx: from Lv.10 to Lv.29
• Nala: from Lv.15 to Lv.31

Niiiice~. Only Bloom's falling behind as EXP is distributed according to how much you contribute to a group's fight, and she was only on support duty. Well, for a non-combatant, as the girl described herself, this much is pretty good. 

And excluding Bloom, all of us obtained the [Insect Slayer] title and the [Army of One] title. The former's a template copy of [Spirit Slayer], giving more damage against insects. 

As for [Army of One], it is a title that you need to score more than 100 opponents on your own in a single battle, and the opponents have to be of an equal or higher racial rank. And its effect is to improve SPD based on the number of enemies of equal or higher rank than yourself outnumbers you. The increase stops at a certain point though.

Honestly, it's been a good hunt, even if we didn't get any clues regarding the event. But I'm not sure I'll try it again. Way more monsters arrived than we expected. Bloom was downright starstruck by the sheer number of crawlers, which exceeded anything recorded by the Adventurers' Union...

Maybe the increase of monsters is part of the mysteries surrounding the event? I'll better start the exploration for real from tomorrow on. 

But for tonight, log out~.