Cindel74

3

Quest day. Cindy was lucky enough to avoid her insufferable roommates the entire day and reserved a VR booth without incident. Pondwallow was modeled after a medieval town, surrounded by rolling hills and full of large stone buildings with sweeping arches.

The rest of the raid party was already in the town center garden when she arrived. They made small talk and got to know each other while they waited for the quest details to come out.

The name of the new quest was Razoto's Revenge. The starting point was in the Titan Region, not far from their location. The party arrived in no time. They had no problems taking down wave after wave of enemies. The quest led them to an underground tunnel. Tobey had a map perk, so they were able to navigate the tunnel and find the boss room. When they arrived, the door opened on its own and a horde of goblins filed out. They were the brown type, with red beady eyes, large noses, and yellow crooked teeth. The party made into the room and saw the boss. It was an enormous brown elf with an ax. Another horde of smaller goblins rushed in from behind the boss. The party split up into two groups, one to work on whittling down the boss, the other to take care of the additional enemies. Cindy fought against the boss. When the boss's health reached 50%, another horde of small goblins came out. The other group had their hands full. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dain was struggling against the horde. He was alone, surrounded, and his health was dropping. A goblin ran up behind him with a spear. Cindy leapt into action and cut it down. She helped Dain clear the rest and went back to focus on the boss. Cindy figured out his weak spot was between his eyes and dealt the finishing blow with the Torrent Tornado. YOU WIN appeared above them and six treasure chests popped up. Raid party members opened one of them and they returned to Pondwallow to celebrate.

"The first party to beat the quest again!" Jackal announced when they entered a tavern.

The other players inside stood up and cheered. The party went to the reserved room in the back. Cindy had never been in there, because the best clans kept it booked.

Dain sat down next to Cindy. "Thanks for coming to my aid back there."

"No problem," she said. "You would have done the same for me."

"I don't know if I could have done it as well as you did. It was amazing. You did not miss a beat. Right back to the boss fight as if nothing had interrupted you."

She turned away. If her avatar could have blushed, it would have. "Thanks. But really, it was nothing."

"Did you have fun?" he asked.

She looked at him again and nodded. "Yes, I did. I really like the team dynamic."

"Good. I would like you to join us again. We usually do the quests a couple times a week, to get the best loot. Each time we try to beat our previous time. Probably two days from now."

"That would be awesome," she said. "I have dorm cleaning duty in two days, so I might be late. I can't have Anna writing me up."

"Dain and Cindel sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G," Lance sang out.

"Grow up," Dain said. He pretended to be angry, but he was smiling. Underneath the table, he took her hand. She could not help but smile as well.