Approximately 25 minutes later me and Sky stood outside Andrew's house out of breath from running it all the way from the floor portal on the other side of town. I knock on the door heavily once again creating a resonating sound. The door is promptly opened by Aurora who was wearing a yellow T-shirt and a short brown skirt, I also noticed that the necklace Andrew had given her was still hanging from her neck.
"Hi Steven, hi Sky." She says calmly. As she mentions Sky's name I throw a somewhat accusatory glare at her which is returned by a innocent smile. As the three of us walked into the house I heard voices coming from the dining room, obviously in the middle of some sort of meeting. as we walk through the door I see that Andrew, Oliver and Andrew B were sitting at the mahogany table with heads down talking over a map.
"Am I always the last one to turn up or something?" I ask in place of a normal greeting as I realise that I seem to always arrive last to things such as this.
"Well your always up at the front lines or not paying attention to your messages or the time if your in your forge." Andrew says as he looks over his shoulder at me. "but for a change we've only just started so sit down quickly." He says as he waves his hands to the three empty chairs sat around the table. As I go and sit down to the Left of Andrew I see that the map on the table is one of the 30th floor, yet another floor covered by dark and foreboding forests.
"What's going on then and how does it involve the 30th floor?" I ask, getting straight to the point of this meet up. Andrew looks over to Sky as if waiting for her to say something.
"Well I found out that there's going to be an event running through tonight to around mid day tomorrow, new years day. From what I know its going to be an invasion type event where we have to stop the monsters from getting into town and killing the NPCs." She reveals to everyone as she points to the town which we, according to her, needed to defend from monsters yet to be known.
"And where would this information be coming from and can we even trust you? I mean Iv'e only just met you today." Oliver says with an accusatory and unbelieving tone to his voice.
"I got the information from an event specific NPC which by now has disappeared off until the event happens again and the reason we've only just met is because before hand I've been too busy training or helping Aurora with things to come meet up with all of you and as I'm a soloer, like Steven is, I haven't needed to do anything guild related with you two." She says with annoyance and an irritated glare directed at Oliver who sat there unfazed by Sky's fiery reaction.
"Oliver does it really matter where the information came from? And if this is going on then I can bet you anything that the Dragons and Blood nights will be there grinding and item profiting off of it massively. If we can stop them from taking everything from this event its worth the risk and worth the information no matter how it was obtained." I say irritated at how Oliver instantly doubted Sky's intentions even though I myself had only recently met her.
Oliver sent an annoyed but resigned glare at me before saying "Okay then, as long as we get in the way of the Dragons and Blood Knights I'm in on this. Those stuck up brats don't need any more spoiling or experience compared to the lower guilds which they seem not to care about." He then leaned back in his chair avoiding Sky's annoyed eyes.
"Andrew, you in on this?" I say quickly to Andrew B, knowing that with Oliver in on it that he would surely join the fight making it a full guild raid.
He quickly looks at Oliver, at the map, at Sky and then back to me before slowly saying. "I'm in." As he too leans back in his seat staring out the window into the afternoon's sky which had already begun to move into a shade of orange. "But if we're going to plan this we've got to be quick about it, as its nearly sunset."
"Well then lets get on with planning this thing then." Aurora says swiftly spreading out a variety of maps and gathered information across the table for us all to see and to plan our tactics from.
The planning period lasted for a straight hour of going through a number of different approaches at this one time event, but in the end after a few arguments and adjustments decided on one plan. We were going to station our selves in pairs around the forest entrance in a line so that when the monsters exited from their spawn they would meet our wall defence stopping them from getting to the large town filled with lower level players and innocent NPCs. The plan was simple yet we hoped it would be effective and made stronger by the pair choices. Andrew and Aurora, two fast rapier users who sped through their enemies with the grace of two soaring swans at twilight. Andrew B and Oliver, a formidable pair when they combine Andrew B's shield defence with Oliver's brutally strong heavy weapon attacks which could sweep through a large group of enemies with merciless ease. The last pair was me and Sky, we were both heavy blade users with strong sweeps and fast sword movements, we were both trained in hand to hand combat and had the strength and agility to fight unarmed for long enough to retrieve a weapon. We were the two unknowns in the group, two solo players who could change the course of the battle with such a swiftness unseen in most Solo players.
"This should be interesting" I thought to myself as we walked through the large town filled with stone buildings and a number of players who seemed oblivious to what was about to occur. As we walked outside the town walls we saw two large groups of people moving towards a different section of a forest to us, they wore either white and red or grey iron armour and were lead by their respective guild leaders. I looked to my side at Oliver and said. "I did say they would be here."
By the time we reached the forest outskirts we could see the sun beginning to set below the horizon of the dark green fields which lay behind and to the side of us. The forest was still lit and we could clearly see into it but we all had the feeling of something watching us from the silent and unmoving forest which we were determinedly advancing towards without stop. As we walked for a few minutes into the forest we stopped and spread out over a 100 meter distance giving each pair enough room to work without interfering with another pair. The monster's spawn point was thought to be approximately 300 meters in front of us from a large cave entrance in the side of the rising hill which the forest had conquered a long time ago.
Me and Sky took up positions beside each other and drew our swords, my black sword seemed to resonate darkness around it whereas Sky's white and gold blade glimmered in the ever dying light. We were both in full battle armour and were wielding our swords with both hands, preferring to get a more powerful than accurate swing due to our as of yet unknown enemies. I quickly glanced at Sky to try find any sign of fear or trepidation, but all I found was a look of calmness and determination.
All of a sudden the eerie echoing sound of a war horn could be heard from across the forest signalling the start of the event and the battle.