Definition: Pick up group (abbrev. PUG).

  An opportunistic raiding group formed from retive strangers who have no experience fighting together. Over time, this term has bee a derogatory bel for any moderately inexperienced group that has not fully mastered their teamwork or even for more experieeams when enters do not go as well as expected.- Excerpt from The Adventurer’s Guide, Third Edition

  Teagan

  Heart rag, Teagan sprinted along the softly lit turusting the thick yer of damp springy moss pressing against her bare feet to keep her from slipping on the a crumbling brick below.

  “Hurry!” she urged. “We must get there first!” When the Guildmaster had annouhat Aliandra had made her first boss in the sewer, she khis would be her ce. If they killed it first, they would finally pass Aiden and his team ahem to bronze rank. Ever since she had added Seth to her team, their progress had skyrocketed – with another level or two from the boss kill, they would take first p the guild. Well, except for Aliandra aeam, of course. She didn’t mind that – they were silver-ranked adventurers and not in the same league. Silver felt like the very skies above.

  Most of the sewer monsters barely earned her any experienymore, and they o hunt for the highest-level moo make real progress. Beating this boss would be their ticket to reag bronze rank and unlog the jobs board, and all the prestige and opportuhat came with being fully-fledged guild members.

  But we have to get there first!

  “Are you sure about this, Teagan?” Willow asked, barely evehing hard. She fired two arrows in quick succession at the pair of chirping Kobolds that burst from a side passage and into the path of Braden’s sword. “The Guildmaster said it was a raid boss. We o be careful.”

  “She’s just being overly cautious,” Teagan answered, summoniotem and g up a healing spell for Braden. “Besides, we have seven people, and everyone has a recall potion if things go very badly.” And there isn’t time to recruit more.

  Willow fell silent as she focused on the fight.

  Yroup has defeated Warrior – Kobold – level 6-7 x2

  Teagan deliberately ighe stomach-i sounds of flesh tearing as Seth added the two new corpses to his colle of skeletons and focused on the shadowy entrao the chamber up ahead.

  This must be it.

  Silence desded on the sewer iermath of their brief fight, punctuated by the soft plinking of dripping water and the occasional creaking of bone as Seth’s skeletons shifted bad forth. Holding her breath in anticipation, she followed Willow through the arched entrand found herself in a chamber far rger than any she had seen so far. The walls and floor were the same moss-covered, crumbling brick that made up most of the sewer system and through the ter ran a el of faintly glowing water.

  Dotted throughout the chamber were the ever-present golden glowing mushrooms, casting a dim magical glow against the walls and floor. At the far end of the chamber, standing in front of a glowing jagged hole in the floor, stood four of the rgest Kobolds she had ever seen.

  This is it! She identified them at once.

  Warrior – Kobold – level 10.Mage – Kobold – level 1ue – Kobold – level 10.Acolyte – Kobold – level 10.

  “Four Kobolds,” Willow announced. “Only level ten.”

  “Exactly.” Teagan dried her hands on her skirt and remembered to breathe.

  “What’s our pn?” Seth asked, nervously shifting from foot to foot behind his skeletons.

  “I wanna stab them,” Nichos decred.

  Teagan studied the group of Kobolds, mentally running through the strategy checklist Vivian had given in her lecture. “Braden, tank the warrior and try to get the rogue too. Bir, Nichos, Seth, and Willow, kill the acolyte first – it looks like a healer. Then the mage. I’ll heal, of course, and Basil will make bat potions if anyone hem.”

  “Alright,” Braden said, adjusting the straps on his shield for a better fit.

  There was not a lot to group strategy. Kill the healer first, then the biggest or squishiest damage dealers to eliminate most of the risk, and then wear down the durable warrior.

  They didn’t often tackle four monsters at the same time – although the few times they pulled extra adds it had gone well – and with seven ieam now, they were the strohey’d ever been. Teagan smiled. She couldn’t wait to see Aiden’s face when Vivian gratuted her.

  “Everyone ready?” she asked. Waiting just long enough to t the nods, she said, “Ok, Braden. Go.”

  “Ining,” Braden said and rushed forward into the chamber brandishing his shield and yelling some silly battle cry he had e up with. He had been polishing it all m. Teagan slipped in sideways, pg herself with her back to the wall with Basil by her side and a clear view of the whole room.

  Loud chirps reeted Braden’s challenge, and the powerful-looking Kobold warrior smmed his shield and sword together. The booming crash echoed loudly through the chamber, and he leapt forward to meet Braden’s charge in the ter by the water el.

  Teagan wi the force of their collision, tossing out her totem just in case and readying her healing spell as the bck-scaled rogue blurred across the brick, making a beeline for their tank. A gleaming dagger flickered in the dim light and Braden took it on his shield, but the warrior’s bone sword jabbed, gng off Braden’s parry and slig into his chest.

  Teagan’s heart stopped as Braden’s health plummeted by a third. She healed him, but the rogue’s sed dagger fshed, and Braden was suddenly below half health, spraying blood across the mossy ground before she even pleted her spell. Her magiced from her palm, a beam of green nature magic rest Braden’s health almost to full. But the warrior struck again, this time a brutal sm with the ft of his shield, getting through while Braden struggled to block the rogue’s daggers, and a gut-g amount of Braden’s health vanished in an instant.

  What the fuck? Cold pinpricks of sweat broke out on her bad face as she struggled to keep up – the rest of the room fading to the background in her intense focus.

  Seth

  Seth hung back, hiding behind his wall of skeletons and zombies. The Guildmaster had insisted he wait until the tank had everything secured before he engaged. He was uain about this group, and fighting in general, but even he could tell the Guildmaster was very experienced. I wish I could go back, he thought, but Gran was dead, and Lyton town was gone. And I’m a neanow… the lowest of the low.

  He tinued waiting, studying Nichos as he sprang forward immediately, and the violet bolts of are magic that nced out from Bir’s fiips. They were always hasty, but they wouldn’t listen to him. He allowed the crash of battle t through the room for a few moments longer, and thearted. First, he cast his Amplify Damage curse on the Kobold acolyte, and then he added ao the Kobold warrior to help Braden out a little.

  “Go!” he anded. Zombies shambled and lurched forward while the bones of the skeletons made creaking, g sounds as they brandished rusty daggers or bone swords. “Attack the acolyte.”

  Seth frowned. Braden was locked in bat with the rogue and the warrior and, with Nichos stabbing the Acolyte, there were nets for his Votile Wraith. Hitting his teammates and inflig Life Drain on them would be a recipe for disaster – and probably expulsion from the team or even the guild.

  Beside him, Willow began firing arrht as his first skeletons reached the Acolyte and engaged. He studied the battle carefully, cyg through his minions using Eyes of the Damned just to make sure he didn’t miss anything.

  A hissing noise caught his attention, and a thin green vapan billowing out from the ground around the acolyte.

  “Poison!” Willow shouted, ah instantly reized one of the more potent traps they had entered down here among the higher-level sewer denizens. Fortunately, his undead were immuo poison so he didn’t pay much attention to the green miasma billowing up from a rge circur region of the grimy floor.

  The water in the el just beyond shimmered and swirled and something bluish and translut slithered up onto the moss with a wet spt.

  Brine Ooze – Ooze – level 5 x2

  “Adds from the water, two oozes,” he called out.

  “ you take care of them?” Willow asked.

  “Yup,” he answered, peeling off two zombies to attack the newers. Oozes teo get wound up in the bones of the skeletons and the zombies had far more health anyway.

  “I need a heal!” Nichos yelled.

  “I… ’t! Use a potion!” Teagan shouted, edges of panid stress making her voice sound shrill.

  She’s struggling? She seemed to be furiously casting her healing spells but her gaze was locked on Braden as if she were terrified of losing him.

  “I don’t have a potion!”

  “Get out of the poison, you moron!” Willow shouted at him.

  “Basil, make me a potion!” Nichos yelled, sprinting toward them.

  “I’m busy!” Basil yelled, handing a blue potion to Teagan and pulling out some more ingredients so rapidly that some of them spilled to the ground.

  “I’m dying! Help me!” There was a clear note of pani Nichos’s voice as he stared with wide eyes at Basil.

  “Here,” Seth said, handing him his owh potion. It was his only backup, and it had cost him a substantial k of his meager funds.

  Nichos dow in a fsh and sprinted back to the acolyte.

  What the…

  “Poison, you idiot!” Willow yelled at him again.

  Seth was about to say something when a surge of heat and a crushing bst smmed into his chest, knog him flying into the wall. He bounced, smming his hip on the ground. In a daze he shook his head, trying to scramble back to his feet and tearing the crisped, burnt skin off his hands in the process.

  Fuck, Fireball. He had fotten about the mage. Beside him, Bir groaned, her hair singed, and the entire left side of her face a mess of burns. Willow sprang to her feet, shooting arrows at the mage, and then sprinted off in a big circle around the room.

  Everything hurt. His new shirt had smoking holes in it, and he found his health was well below half. And I just gave away my potion. He quickly fired a Votile Wraith at the two Brine Oozes, realizing they were out in the open and he would not be hurting anyone when they exploded, hoping his Life Drain would trigger and recover some of his damage.

  “Seth, curses,” Willow called out as she sprinted past him on her p with the Fire Mage hot on her heels, trying to cook her with a rapid stream of Firebolts.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, realizing he’d let his curses drop. He sed to the eerie vision of his Votile Wraith and sure enough, the mana of his curses had faded. He circled the room, refreshing Amplify Damage on the highest-priority targets.

  A booming sh out from the ter of the room, catg his attention. The Kobold warrior turned and smacked Braden with a vicious swipe of his shield, knog him sprawling, and the bck-scaled rogue beside him shimmered and vanished into the shadows.

  Seth’s eyes widened in horror – he happeo be using the sight of his Votile Wraith – and within that strange, distorted streaming gray world, he saw the rogue’s shadowy form sprinting for Teagan.

  “Teagan! Watch out! Rogue loose!” he yelled, anding one of his skeletons to protect her, but it wasn’t nearly as fast as the fleet-footed Kobold sprinting through the shadows. With a sed shimmer, the rogue appeared, dagger fshing, and Teagan hit the floor hard, her shield rolling free.

  “Healer down!” Willow yelled from the other side of the room. Braden, at least, downed a health potion immediately.

  Seth’s skeleton arrived, striking the rogue with its bone sword, but the bck-scaled Kobold shimmered again, vanishing from his sight, reappearing a few moments ter to backstab Bir. She dropped without even a yelp of surprise.

  “Fug run!” Willow screamed. “Get out!” Behihe room lit up in an inferno of heat and fme as another fireball detonated.

  Seth did not have to be told twice. Instantly, his recall potion was in his hands, but Teagan y unmoving on the ground and Bir was moaning softly, not eveing to her surroundings.

  Shit a frikking brick, we’re toasted!

  “Bring them!” he anded, and fled from the chamber, firing a parting Votile Wraith while two of his unfppable skeletons dragged his unscious teammates to safety and the rest mobbed the Kobolds.

  Teagan

  She came to, with a sudden gasp and a surge of remembered pain in her lung just under her left shoulder bde.

  Holy magic? She groaned, opening her eyes to find herself staring at the inquisitive ugly green face of a Goblin.

  “Teagan ok?”

  “Yes… thank you, Havok,” she wheezed – but she kept her frustrated sigh to herself. If Havok was here, that meant Aiden’s team was ready, and they had lost. “Thanks for healing me.” She levered herself into a sitting position and looked around, finding the rest of her team sprawled out on the mossy ground in one of the endless sewer tunnels. Bir seemed unscious, but Teagan’s seold her she had been healed, too. Nichos, Willow, and Braden were still badly hurt, so she spent the meager remains of her mana helping Havok finish the healing.

  An angry argument raged beside her.

  “Why did you just stand in the poison, you moron?” Willow shouted, gesturing angrily at Nichos, who stood too close to her with his chest puffed up and a furious expression on his flushed red face.

  “Don’t lecture me! You don’t even have a beast yet and you’re a Beast Tamer – what you even do?” Nichos yelled.

  Willow’s face crumbled and as she turned away, Teagan could hear her choking on her sobs as she failed to prevent herself fr.

  “Weakling,” Nichos spat and threw himself angrily to the ground.

  But Teagan had to agree with her friend, she was simply uo keep up with the insane healing and Nichos had not helped in the slightest by repeatedly getting himself poisoned.

  What kind of crazy bullshit was that? And how did we even survive? She was about to get up to fort her friend when a cool voiterrupted her.

  “How was it?”

  Teagan gnced up to find Aiden croug beside her.

  “Harder than Vivian said,” she admitted, biting her lip against the pride in her heart and angrily blinking away the bitter tears of defeat. But even if he was her rival, and even if it meant losing to him, she could not simply let him take his team in there without a proper warning.

  “We nearly died.”

  Aliandra Ali let her point of view drop from her Kobold warrior raid boss and rubbed the back of her neck.

  “How did it go?” asked.

  “Both groups failed badly, but nobody died, thankfully.” That had been her biggest worry – she hadn’t beehe slightest bit ed that she might be redug their experience by supervising the fight and intending to save them if it went wrong.

  “That hard?”

  “Yes.” It seemed she had a lot to learn about boss design and group strategy. With ’s help, she had made her first boss, and whether she sidered it luck or the opposite, she had created somethiraordinarily effective – at least for its level.

  “I see.”

  “The boss taunted Braden off the rogue, and it ran wild, almost killing their healer and mage. Aiden’s group simply couldn’t keep up with the healing and had to run.”

  “Yes, that group has a weakness in healing – their only healer is Havok, who is also their tank. I wao talk with Aiden about that.”

  “I fot to mention I put the Brine Oozes in the sewer el – both groups were surprised in the middle of the fight. None of them figured out how to hahe mage. It seems that the increased damage from the domain enha is something they aren’t equipped to handle.” Ali sighed. Her first boss was a dismal failure – at least for the purpose of helping the guild grow. It’s to.

  “Give them time,” answered. “Remember our first try at the Skeletal Wyvern?”

  “Don’t remind me,” she answered. It had been an epic rout – worse even thawo she had just witnessed from the novices. Without escape potions, she would have died there.

  Vivian Ross Vivian sat on the cou the guild hall, calmly surveying the devastation a that filled the room. Some of them were shouting, some were g, and some others stared bnkly at the walls as if sidering their own mortality for the very first time.

  “But she’s a guild member! Why would she make an impossible boss for us? Is she trying to get us killed?” Nichos yelled. He was bickering with Aiden, and although Aiden was defending Aliandra, he cked his usual energy and poise, seeming to be defted.

  It’s time to put on the pressure. Vivian had been waiting for this moment for a while now, unsatisfied with the itment to excellehat was required to be a successful adventurer from many of the guild members. When Aliandra had e in a panic to warn her about the new raid boss, she had realized that it would be the catalyst that brought things to a head. She was just gd nobody had died in the lesson, although by the ss of their ats, it had been a close call for many.

  “Perhaps you’re just not good enough,” Vivian decred, cutting through the angry voices, and leaving a wake of shocked silence across the entire guild hall. She could guess who would stay and who would give up, but there were a couple that teetered on the edge. How they chose would ge the course of the guild for the couple of months for certain. I ’t promise. I know where that path leads. After all, without sistent quality, a single weak member could take out a team of even the most experienced adventurers in the blink of an eye. She had seen it before. She had lived it. Going easy on them now would be the same as killing them herself.

  “What the fuck?” Nichos said, turning on her. “That boss is impossible!”

  “If you had followed the instrus, listeo your teammates, and paid attention, you might have won,” Vivian answered, keeping her voice calm – aloof.

  “Fuck you. You take your provisional membership and shove it up your ass, I’m doh you morons,” he yelled, and stormed out of the guild, throwing his ring at Mieriel on the way out.

  “Anyone else?” Vivian asked, her voice sounding loud in the shocked silence.

  “I’m sorry, it’s too mue. I… I don’t want to be Fireballed again. I nearly died,” Bir said, getting up and walking out. She at least handed in her ring politely before she left.

  She was followed shortly after by both provisional members of Aiden’s team.

  So much for recruitment, Vivian thought, pressing her lips together. Every single provisional member had now abahe guild and she was back to square one, if not worse, depending on what followed.

  “What about you?” Vivian asked, turning to hold Willow’s teary-eyed gaze. “You dooo?” Willow was one of the two that she was most worried about. The girl had great instincts, but something had happened dowhat caused her to be aional wreck, and Vivian was not quite sure what it was.

  “I’m not leaving my friends in the lurch. If you think I’m too weak, you will have to kick me out yourself,” Willow sniffed, but her tear-stained face was heless reddening with anger.

  So, the bickering got personal, Vivian thought. She was already familiar with Willow’s css and her inability to find a good beast panion to unlock the full power of her abilities. Willow was doing the right thing by waiting to find something strong, a good fit, but someone must have called her out on it, and it had struck a he pressure of being the weakest link. Unfortunately, she o be sure.

  “If you’re too weak, you will bring your friends down with you. What y to the team?” Vivian asked, never letting her voice deviate from her calm rational delivery, not able to give even an ounce of softo aowledge the tears and frustration.

  “I… I know I don’t have my beast yet, but… I see the poison traps. I learned I kite the Fire Mage… But what’s the point? We don’t have enough people anymore…” she sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Are you going to throw me out?”

  Huh, iing… that’s a pass, Vivian thought, a little surprised. She had expected Willow to cave and walk out, but there seemed to be some resilieo the girl, the way she bent under pressure but didn’t snap in a way that seemed remi of her name.

  “No, I won’t kick you out,” Vivian said. “And it seems we have the perfeumber of people.”

  There were a few surprised hroughout the room before she tinued.

  “Now that they’ve left, we’ll reform you all into a single group,” she said. This was where her st challenge y. If Teagan could accept it, they would tinue, but without her, the group would fail. They simply didn’t have enough healing otherwise.

  “You will form a raid group of ten, uhe leadership of Aiden,” she announced, keeping an eye on Teagan as she absorbed the news.

  “May I ask why him and not me?” she said, her voice struggling with emotional strain.

  “Yes, he is better suited to the leadership role for this fight. You were too hasty, driven by your petitiveness, and you took on the fight without proper preparation.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have taken the risk with their lives. I uand and I hope I still be a member even if you don’t wao lead.”

  “Don’t get the wrong idea, Teagan. You have good skills and the potential to be a great group leader. Today was a lesson, not a demotion, you’re still the leader of your team. For this fight – just this raid – Aiden is the better choice. If you tio learn and keep improving, it will be you who is the better choice for some fights.”

  “Ok,” Teagan said, her eyes downcast and her arms ed tightly around her chest.

  “Now tell me what you learned from that fight, and we’ll formute a proper strategy.” Vivian already knew what the boss figuration was from her meeting with Aliandra, but the process was as important as the fight itself, and they all o experie for themselves.

  “The warrior and the rogue hit a lot harder tharash Kobolds in the sewers,” Teagan muttered, still seeming somewhat defted by her decision, but perhaps enced by the feedback. “More than twice as hard. It took all my healing just to keep Braden alive.”

  “The warrior has a Taunt, I lost the rogue,” Braden said.

  “Seriously?” Aiden gasped.

  “I map the poison traps,” Willow added, still looking upset, but making an effort to tribute positively.

  “There are Ooze adds ier,” Seth said. “Two of them. I think they’re lio the boss.”

  “The rogue is very good at slipping into the shadows if you are even slightly distracted,” Kaitlyn added. “Probably need someoh high perception to mark him at all times.”

  So, some of them have actually been paying attention, Vivian thought, listening to the list of abilities and observations each of them had made while the fight had been colpsing around them. With that, the entire group shifted their focus to what they had learned, sharing observations and beginning to formute a pn. Vivian sat bad listened, only input and guidance when they seemed about to make a serious mistake.

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