Chapter 226 - Tussle in the grass

A notification popped up informing them that Barnabus was attacked and would bleed out in 10 minutes if not properly healed. It shocked all the player as they were continuously guarding him with players on all four sides of the NPC.

So, they found it hard that some beast managed to get through them, and it also attacked Barnabus instead of them who were beside him in four directions. It made no sense. The quickly turned to attack the beasts and found that the beast was strong enough to pull the NPC away with the Barnabus's hand caught by its maw.

They quickly began to run after it instead of attacking as they were worried that the attacks might hit the NPCs who was already losing his health slowly. Still, Shadow took out his crossbow and started firing to the surprise of the rest of the team. No one thought that he would risk the NPC and failure of the quest after they finished collecting everything required for the quest.

"Are you crazy?" shouted Agua trying to stop him.

"No. It will kill him surely if it is allowed to pull him away. We can heal him. Priest get ready," yelled Shadow as he shot a few more bolts. As the beast was dragging the NPC, it wasn't hard to notice it and aim even though it was green and was camouflaged by the surrounding grass.

Hearing him, the elementalists also started firing at the beast after which the beast let go of him. They quickly ran towards him and surrounded him so that the beast couldn't attack him again and the priest began to heal them.

"What was that?" yelled Agua as he wasn't even able to find a glimpse of the beast, but no cared to properly examine it in the hurry. Even Shadow was worried and didn't bother to inspect it and only noticed that it was green and yellow in colour. After they formed a perimeter around the NPC, they tried to look for it but couldn't find it.

"That was grassland tiger. The one I warned you about," said Barnabus.

"How is that a tiger?" said Agua. "There are not black stripes."

"It is a grassland tiger. It is coloured yellow and green like the grass and very hard to spot," yelled Barnabus. "Be on the lookout."

"What attracted it to you? It eats deer meat, right?" asked Shadow. The entire team had been collecting star deer meat, bones and antlers.

"It does, but it is attracted to the smell of the star blade grass. The star deer smell the same and it confused me with the deer as I have the grass with me," answered Barnabus.

"Oh crap, do we need to let go of the grass we collected?" asked Agua.

"No need," said Shadow as he took some pieces of the star deer meat and started to swing them across as they assembled around the NPC. "Look for the pieces of meat. It will be attracted to them and we can spot it."

A few seconds later, Agua found the beast as it jumped toward one of the pieces of meat. As he pointed, the rest of them immediately looked at it and Shadow swung another piece of meat towards it.

[Grassland Tiger] (Elite monster)

Level 19.

HP: 9650/10000.

"Finally, we have a look on it. How are you doing Barnabus?" asked Balthazar. "I will throw a few meats to it. Look if there are more of them in the vicinity."

"I am fine. Can't use my leg but healing up. Don't worry about other tigers. They are territorial and will tend to fight others if they disturb their hunt," said Barnabus. Balthazar turned towards him and noticed that there was a temporarily crippled note on the NPC's description. He immediately understood that the NPC was most probably going to be fixed to the spot for the duration of the fight.

"That is good. We don't have to worry about the others. Keep back. I will engage it," said Shadow.

"Alone? That is suicide," said Barnabus looking shocked by his words.

"I doubt anyone else among us is fast enough," said Shadow as he went into stealth and went near the tiger which was munching happily on the meat. He took his daggers out and decided to put them in its eyes to blind it, but tiger recognized it as he came close. Still he dashed but managed to make a cut about one of its eyes.

It roared in anger and lunged at Shadow, but he was fast enough to get away from its claws which were black and 4 inch long each. Though he couldn't puncture its eye with his daggers, he did enough the bleed above its eye from the cut he made was blinding that eye anyways.

There were no notification or signs to the other players, and they couldn't realize that something like this would actually affect the beast as they didn't have much experience with the game and never thought it would that realistic. Balthazar who had enough experience knew that this was the best chance to attack the tiger as its vision would be impaired.

With the vision of one of its eyes being blocked by the blood, it was trying to paw its face on that side and trying to put some mud on it. Balthazar knew that it would stop bleeding in a few seconds and had to act quickly. He enabled the shadow doppelganger immediately to distract in the same side while going into stealth to attack from the other side.

"Attack on its injured side," yelled Shadow as he went into stealth to attack on the other side. Noticing that the beast was injured and blind on one side, the two elementalists began to attack on that side as soon he told them. The guardian and priest were with Barnabus guarding him.

With the spells of the two elementalists the beast was focused on them. Balthazar left the shadow doppelganger on that side as he quickly moved towards the other side of the beast. This time he managed to successfully put a dagger into one eye of the beast, but still the beast retaliated almost instinctively. Even with his high speed, the swipe of the tiger was fast that he realized that he couldn't jump back in time.

Luckily, he already had the shadow doppelganger skill enabled and he quickly used the shadow swap to replace his clone. The clone took the swipe on its chest and was thrown away due to the force of the swipe shocking the others and they instinctively took a couple of steps away from the beast. Shadow was also shocked as the hit took about 30% of the clone's health, which would be 15% of his actual health.

The same hit would knock off close to 50% of the health of any other elementalist. "Stay away from the beast, it would take 3 hits to kill you," shouted Shadow but he was glad that the clone was hit as it would be present only for 30 seconds and it helped him realize the damage that could be caused by the beast.

"You all right?" asked Agua looking at his partner who was thrown a few metres away by the hit.

"Not an issue. It was just my clone. I swapped before I was hit," said Shadow surprising them. "Run that way and keep attacking it from its blind side. It won't be able to attack properly if keep to that direction."

"It will heal we need to have some strong way to attack it. We should have brought the others," said Agua. "Even if they didn't have the quest it would have been a good precaution."

"In hindsight, a lot of things seem to be a good suggestion. Anyway, keep attacking from the blind side. I already have poison on my weapon and if you check it is poisoned and stabbed in the head. It will die or run away after that," said Shadow as he had his doppelganger attack along with him.

It was then that the others noticed that a poisoned attribute came up on the beast and it was losing small amount of health every second.

"I will try to blind it from the other side," he continued as he began to attack it along with his clone. With both his clone and himself, he was confident to keep at busy for at least another 15 seconds till the clone disappeared.

During these 15 seconds the two elementalists managed to get on its blind side and with a fae elementalist it was not hard to keep away from it. He only had to fly for short durations and the tiger was mainly focused on Shadow as he had already managed to blind one of its two eyes.

Though it focused mostly on Shadow, he was able to avoid it quite frequently due to it being blind and wasn't able to attack him properly. He used that to its advantage and though the beast managed to get close to hit him a few times, he managed to block it with his weapons reducing the impact.

Agua and other were stunned to see that Shadow didn't lose much health while blocking the beast's attacks as it implied that he had both high speed and strong defence. They were sure that he had some great equipment to be able to do that repeatedly in a battle.

This continued for a 5 minutes and Shadow managed to stab the other eye during this time permanently blinding it on one side. When the health went down to 30% of its total HP, it suddenly stopped and started to look around. This was the time that Balthazar was most worried about as the beast could go berserk and it could even go at Barnabus again.

"I think it is going to go berserk," said Shadow. "Is Barnabus healed yet?"

"The f.u.c.k am I supposed to answer, the crippled effect continues to persist. I think he needs higher level healing," said the priest in the team chat.

As they were getting ready to fight bitterly, the beast turned around and started to run away.

"What was that?" asked Agua looking at it. "Did something frighten it?"

"Don't calm down yet, the grassland tigers are known to be ferocious and they fight to the death," said Barnabus. His words immediately put the rest on alert, but Balthazar knew better. Any beast however ferocious will run away if it believes its enemy can overpower it. This was the downside to blinding beasts, they could still run away before the go completely blind. The tiger which lost one eye and had its blood leaking into another was clearly one of those.

"I doubt it would come back, but we need to make some changes. Barnabus, can you ride a horse?" asked Balthazar. They had already collected the required materials to complete the quest and they only needed to return safely. None of the players had a pet mounting learned so they couldn't use pets to ride without a carriage or cart, but he had been hoping that Barnabus might know as he was an NPC who was the son of a town head.

"Of course, I know," said Barnabus. "Do you even know who I am?"

"Good. That simplifies things, Barnabus goes on the horse," said Shadow as he pulled out the Clydesdale horse from his pet bag.

"What about the others?" asked Barnabus. "There is a high chance that it will come back and attack. We are still in danger."

"Is that concern for us?" asked Shadow.

"No, I just don't want my missions to have casualties. It will affect my rating at the guards," replied Barnabus.

"So, you are willing to think of us at the very least due to the mission. Similarly, you are the mission for us. We need to get you back to the town safely," said Shadow. "So, get on the horse," he said pulling the horse near him. The guardian player who was near Barnabus pulled him up and helped him up the horse while the others kept a lookout.

"Ok. Now we quickly retreat back," said Shadow. The guardian and the priest stayed by the horse along with Barnabus. Shadow led them back towards the town while the other two kept a lookout for the grassland tiger. Balthazar didn't care for the tiger as he doubted it will come back to attack them.