Vald smiled at the wizard's arrogance and listened politely to Oliver and Trevor raving to each other about how much of an asshole he was. They were still using their headsets in addition to the chat room so as to not leave out the thief and wizard completely.
Bolman and Hroptr seemed to completely forget their feud earlier, focused on the fight as they were. The thief was staying relatively quiet but so was the wizard. Instead they seemed to be waiting for Vald and his friends' next move.
"Let's gang up on him," Trevor said evilly. "He can't take all four of us at once!"
"Yeah!" Oliver agreed. "I'll message Bolman!"
"He'll probably wipe us out," Vald said quickly to deter them. "Don't do it guys! We'll just lose our stuff to him. Besides, don't you need to go and finish the mission, Oliver?"
Oliver grumbled something unintelligible before saying, "Fine. Just ignore him then."
Trevor's character followed Oliver's into the cave to talk with the saved NPC but Vald stayed with Bolman and Hroptr. The thief was busy arranging his inventory, dropping items occasionally before picking them back up or torching them. The wizard seemed focused on something else.
"Thanks again for the help," Vald typed, not knowing what else to say but deciding not to ignore him as Oliver said. "We would've definitely lost without it."
"Why not level more before attempting it?" the wizard asked. "That's the wiser thing to do."
"We thought we were strong enough with the four of us. Guess not."
"Your levels were low, but your skill is the problem. Are you new players?"
"No, just restarting with different classes. Before I was the healer, Dragonborn was a knight, and Lizregbel a sorcerer."
"Vald!" Oliver called over the headsets. "What are you doing?"
He laughed. "Sorry, I'll be right there." To the wizard he typed, "Sorry, my friends are impatient."
The wizard nodded and turned to leave. He summoned his mount and a very weird looking horse with fangs and bird feet appeared.
"Woah!" Vald typed. "What's that?"
"A horse," the wizard replied.
"Are you sure?" Vald laughed.
"I bred Kiba myself," the wizard told him, his pride showing through the statement.
"VALD!" Trevor groaned loudly in his ear.
"Fine!" Vald bit back.
His character turned and ran after where his friends had gone while he was thinking about the wizard. Something about him seemed familiar. But that strange horse struck a chord in his memory more than anything. He brushed it off as probably seeing the wizard around before, and of course that would mean his horse would stand out in his memory just because of its weird appearance.
"Why were you talking to him?" Oliver asked verbally.
"He's not so bad," Vald defended the stranger.
"Come on guys," Trevor groaned, "you've got school in the morning and I want to finish some of my own missions before you get off."
Don't remember if I mentioned this, but they're using their usernames. Bolman= Marse (cause I'm lazy and unoriginal), Lizregbel= Oliver (I hate typing that name out), Dragonborn= Trevor (believe it or not characters names are full of references like this), and Vald= Alsvieth (not mentioned yet, may never be, and also because I'm lazy like with Bolman). Pretty sure I mentioned Havi= Hroptr but doesn't hurt repeating it, right?
If you're having trouble keeping track, I'm sorry. I have 2.5 pages of notes to keep it straight.
