The Ambush - Part 3

Dashing through the forest they very quickly made their way back to Philly and the sight they were greeted by was…thankfully not disastrous.

Olivia had all these thoughts running through her head like Philly having lost an arm or a leg. Or even worse dead. But that was very much not the case.

Philly was still with the living, and still seated in the same place as Olivia left her. To one side of her was the jar of mucus along with several empty bottles. To the other was the finished product, two piles of filled bottles, each with small tags attached to the bottles saying what they were. This was likely due to needing to know which ones were just mucus and which ones had the explosive powder.

The girl in the middle however looked a little different compared to the last time she saw her. That was because she could see a good amount of mucus dripping down the left side of her face travelling all the way down her neck and continuing till it covered most of her shoulder and arm.

"I…had a mishap."

"You don't say." Olivia retorted.

"I was messing with the ratio of powder to the mucus when one of them… exploded."

Olivia heard the faint sound of laughter to her side.

"It's not funny," Philly responded with a very stoic yet somehow also grumpy face.

"Maybe to you, but where I'm standing it's hilarious." Lyrika couldn't help but belt out as she giggled away.

*huff* "Do you have any water?"

"Only what's in the water skins," Olivia stated as she took out hers and walked over to the damsel in distress.

"Thank you."

"I know it's bad, but it's sort of also a good thing, in a way," Olivia said. This didn't please Philly though. "What I mean is, we haven't actually seen the effect of this stuff, and we don't know how to deal with this stuff for when…things like this happen."

Olivia used a bit of the water in her water skin to see how the mucus would react. Not really knowing much about it, she decided not to go straight to human testing. She felt a little of the mucus to see how sticky it was and then poured a little water onto some she found on the ground. Annoyingly, it didn't do anything to help, it just ran right over the mucus as if it was waterproof.

"Do you have any potions that could work?" Olivia asked.

"Maybe."

Turning to her side she went to reach for her potion bag. It was closest to her left side, but as she went to grab it, there was hardly any movement in her arm. It looks like the mucus did its job and did it very well, almost solidifying the area it touched. Seeing that it wouldn't work, Olivia went to grab it, but Philly just reached over with her good arm.

After a little bit of scrounging around, she pulled out a bottle.

"This is a cleansing potion. You pour it on wounds to stop them from getting infected. It's the only thing I have that might do the trick."

Taking the bottle, Olivia poured a small amount onto the now-hardened mucus, but like the water, it just rolled off of it as well.

As she looked at the stuff more closely, it now looked like it had become completely solid, almost like a shell encasing her arm. Touching it, it was rock solid, but as she pushed on the mucus, with enough strength small hairline cracks started to form in the stuff.

She asked Philly to try and move her arm, see if it was possible for her to break it as it was now.

She struggled to move her arm, only being able to shift it very slightly, which meant even in this state where it could crack, it was still pretty tough.

This though presented a problem. As effective as it was in its liquid state and in the process of hardening, once it got to this state it became brittle and she was sure that the guards, who had surely undergone training for their physique, would be able to break it. In the early stages, it could probably do well in slowing and even stopping them, if it managed to get in the recesses of their armour, but it was now clear this was a delay tactic at best.

Hopefully, it would be enough of a delay.

And there was nothing to say you couldn't throw another bottle of mucus at them to continue the effect.

Turning back to Philly, now knowing it was possible to break, she began to break the hardened mucus, creating large cracks all along it, until eventually, she managed to pry it all off of her.

"Thank you."

"No problem," Olivia replied as Philly moved her arm around to get some feeling back in it.

"Well, I better get back to filling these bottles. Don't worry, I will not be making the same mistake with the powder again."

As she got back to filling, Olivia thought that maybe a break from all of that would do her good. So, she brought out the slingshot.

"Before that. Do you want to try out the weapon you will use to fire those bottles?"

Handing it over, Philly just shrugged and stood up. They then all headed a short distance away where Olivia then taught Philly the basics of using a slingshot. Lyrika jumped in now and then with her archery knowledge to provide assistance.

Picking up some more stones, Philly tried her hand at firing the slingshot.

*Rustle*

But like Olivia had, she missed the first…well several shots.

It took a lot longer to train Philly on how to use it. With Lyrika's archery skills and Olivia's innate strength, they had found it easy, but Philly had neither of those, so a lot of work would be needed to get her skills up to snuff.

…

Philly practised with the slingshot for a good long while, where eventually, she was able to hit the tree a few times when she tried it from a long distance. As she got closer, her aim improved as you would expect, and around the distance they expected to be from the guards, she could hit the target most of the time. Now, whether that would continue when in an adrenaline-fueled fight would be a different story.

When she had enough, she headed back to the camp and continued making the bottles of mucus. Lyrika got back to creating and shooting with blunted arrows, changing the design as she went, trying to find the best shape to do some damage but not… well hopefully not, kill.

By this point, Olivia wasn't really sure what else to do now. She made the slingshot for Philly, which was the main thing she needed to do. She could go ahead and cut down some of the trees, and possibly put them aside in the forest and roll them onto the road later, but that seemed like it would be more trouble than it was worth. It would probably be better to cut them down tomorrow, cutting them at the right angle so that they fell into the road.

Other than that she had the gear ready for the ambush. She had the invisibility potion, rope in case there was time to tie some people up and the monster repellent, which she really hoped would not be used in this battle.

The only other thing she could think to do was come up with a battle plan, but until they saw who they were up against, she couldn't even do that.

Thankfully, she was pulled out of her thoughts of worrying over what to do by the sound of scratching nearby. Looking over, she saw the basket holding the Zentora, shaking every now and then. Opening it up, she found the Zentora pressed up against the edge of the basket, clawing it up.

It was clear to see that it wanted out of the basket, so reaching in she pulled it out and placed it on the grass.

"Hey there. Finally awake I see."

The Zentora mewled and started to wander around. When they first found it, it had struggled quite a lot when trying to just stand on its own four legs, but now, it was trotting around with ease. It was growing in strength quite rapidly.

It hadn't changed much in terms of size, still as small as when they found it, but it did look like the spike on its tail was growing. It might not be too long before it grows to the size of the adults that attacked them.

The Zentora explored its surroundings, not moving too far away from the basket, possibly seeing that as a point of safety. Before long, it turned and then caught sight of Olivia. It tilted its head to the side as if trying to remember something, but after a while, it slowly walked towards her.

Not sure what it was going to do, the only real experience with a Zentora was her being attacked by one. Unlikely to happen here, but it could still try to stab her if it felt like it. Thankfully it did no such thing and decided to rub its head against Olivia's leg.

'It's just like a cat.'

As it moved around, stroking itself against her, she slowly reached out, making sure her hand was in plain view so it didn't frighten the animal, and ran her finger along its head. Her hand was much too large for the beast's head so just a couple of fingers was the best she could do. This had the desired effect when it started to make a sound reminiscent of a purr.

Before long, Philly and Lyrika finished up what they were doing, and head over to Olivia. Finding her playing around with the Zentora rather than working, they both ended up a little grumpy. But as she beckoned them to sit down, those frowns turned upside down very quickly as the Zentora ventured over towards them.

It didn't take long for them to join in with the head strokes. Even Philly couldn't resist the appeal, where they all finished off the long day of hard work with a relaxing Zentora petting party.