[NR] Jason Wants A Full Decon After That - Chapter 549

Noon rolled around on the second day of the challenge and the team was ready. Rosha was on lookout, Courtney hidden in what would hopefully be a forward position, and Jason with Lily in front of the building. Now, it was always possible that the Deep Wilds would plonk down the monsters on the opposite side of the building. However, it seems to be about the upfront battle and so for the fourth time positioned them directly in front of the building’s door.

This meant the group’s preparations worked out. Well, it was more about positioning. If the monsters had arrived from even a bit to the side, Courtney would have been out of position. As it was, she managed to ambush the new round of beasts. Though this time the monster group didn’t just continue on when she hit the back. Instead, they turned around and tried to defeat her with numbers.

Courtney did not stick around for that. Once the monsters began to turn back, she sprinted to get around them. Back at the building, Lily heads straight for the monsters while Jason begins to circle away from Courtney to try and draw some of the aggro. However, just the two’s presence wasn’t able to distract the monsters.

That is, they didn’t get distracted until Lily attacked. At that point, something odd happened. To have the monsters all turn on Courtney after her attack? Not the strangest thing. For them to do basically the same thing when Lily attacked, minus the monsters Courtney had actually damaged?

Well, that just didn’t make sense and continued to make less when the same happened as Jason slammed into them. Even stranger, it isn’t like Rosha isn’t attacking. The monsters are simply ignoring the arrows raining down on them. About the only thing Jason was sure of, was that this wasn’t another puppeteer situation.

How they reacted didn’t make sense if viewed from such a stance. Instead, if that had been the case, the monsters would have likely continued to attack Rosha. With the idea behind that, being that the puppeteer was likely near where she attacked and thus the aggressive response.

Instead, they were acting like some sort of amoeba. Not a swarm, but rather a true singular entity. Stranger was the fact that the monsters were all different. A wolf would be next to a cat, with some sort of lizard coming next. This raised the hairs in the back of Jason’s neck and he got Lily to retreat.

At first, she didn’t want to, but Jason insisted. Then Jason had Rosha stop her ranged support and clean Lily up while checking for injuries. This took a while and once Rosha was done, the beasts were already half dead. And once she joined back in, the wave was soon dead.

Except Jason didn’t relax. “I don’t know what that was, but we need to clean this up. Courtney, deep health scan and maybe throw in some healing, antidote, anti-fungal, anti-parasitic, purification, and curse breaking spells down on all of us, even Rosha. Oh, and Rosha, I want these corpses burned ASAP.

“The System should protect us, but no way in hell am I trusting it. After the wave is over, I’ll want this area purified as well. In fact, if you can, just call down the System on this area. Take no chances.”

Rosha isn’t quite certain why Jason is freaked out, but accepts it. Courtney, on the other hand is almost more worried, she is just hiding it better. Even swarms don’t act like that as each individual is still that, an individual.

All of that takes a while and Rosha doesn’t even have time to get back on her platform. Though Jason has Lily remain up there as in the worst situation she can’t solve things by going for a respawn. And there the monsters were.

A varied selection, but nowhere near as mixed up as the first wave. There were three basic groupings. Some wolves, a trio of bears, and some kind of belly high dinosaurs. Because of course there are dinosaurs in the Deep Wilds. At least they were the colorful, more modern version all decked out with feathers.

Also, much to Jason and Courtney’s relief, they seemed to be individuals. The bears charged right at Jason even before the other two groups had gotten their bearings. Guess it would make sense for the bears to have the bear-ings right from the start. Not that Jason would have it any other way.

He countered charged them and met them next to the burnt out area where the previous wave had died. The first bear to arrive takes a swipe at him, only to receive an arrow to the shoulder, stopping it short as the arrow hits something important. Jason, in turn steps in low and pivots his waist, slamming his knee into the side of the bear’s knee. As that bear starts to fall to the side, Jason jumps back to avoid swipes from the other two.

At this point, the raptors stream forward and around the opposite side of the burn while the wolves make their way to the bear’s far side. Courtney turned her attention to the raptors, leaving Jason with Rosha’s ranged support to keep the wolves away until the bears were taken care of. It is also at this point that Jason gives Lily the signal that she can join the fight.

Then the two bears attacked again while the third was having a hard time getting up. What with all the limbs on one side being crippled.

Another hop was enough to avoid one of the bears. Jason then looked to be about to hop again to avoid the other, except to the bear’s surprise, that very much isn’t what he does. Instead, he jumps over the swiping claw and does a forward flip. The flip puts quite a bit of force behind a nasty ax kick to the bear’s skull. This doesn’t split the skull, but combined with an Energy burst, something broke and the bear slams to the ground, dazed and dying.