Chapter 9 – Party Time[i]

Fey’s first stop in the Moonwood was the armour shop. Senaia clapped in delight at the sight of Topaz. “Oh my, it really is adorable,” she cooed, poking its bubble playfully with a finger.

“It’s for you,” Fey replied.

20% Moonwood Armour Discount!>

“What did you name it?” asked Senaia.

“Topaz.”

“That’s a good name. I will keep it. Oh my! It’s already level four!”

“I ran into the King Slime on the way back,” Fey explained.

“Oh my! You defeated the King Slime? What a feat!”

…I guess bragging is part of getting fame? That kind of makes sense… “It was nothing,” Fey said modestly. In reality, for a level 11 character to so easily defeat a level 15 boss monster was fairly miraculous, but Fey’s Bleed skill was super effective (Pokemon reference J) against slimes.

“Well, I won’t take up any more of your time,” Fey said, preparing to leave the shop.

“Come by any time so Amethyst and Topaz can play together!”

“See you around,” said Fey (non-committally), walking out of the store before she could be drawn into any more (awkward) small-talk. Fey really did not want to get into the topic of the dietary habits of slimes.

“Now, more errands.” Fey was not exactly talking to herself, as Magic and Amethyst were usually stuck about her person somewhere, listening attentively (if non-comprehendingly). She went to the bank to change her money into larger denominations, as well as to deposit her newly-found water gem until she had a use for it. Then it was time to visit Kallara (the healer, if you’ve forgotten) to see what could be done with the King Slime bubble.

“You!”

The exclamation came simultaneously from two different mouths upon Fey’s entrance to Kallara’s abode. The human warrior (Fey hadn’t bothered to learn his name *contemptuous*) was seated on a bench while Kallara gathered the things she needed to set the warrior’s foot. In Fantasia, some injuries – like broken bones – needed to be treated in order to heal properly. Blade had had to slowly limp to town in the time that it had taken Fey to return and run her numerous errands. He had just sat down when Fey (whom he mentally referred to as ‘the scary elf lady,’ since he also hadn’t learned her name, though with less contempt) walked in.

“I see you two know each other,” commented Kallara calmly (and with some amusement).

“That’s the slime that broke my foot!” Blade pointed an accusatory finger at Amethyst (who blinked cutely).

“Hmph. He deserved it.” (Fey spoke with a 30/70 mixture of dismissal and scorn).

“I see.” Kallara wisely made no further comment on the subject. “So what brings you here today, Fey?”

Fey pulled out the King Slime bubble, which Kallara recognized with no need for explanation (because she is a wise and learned healer who also happens to have access to the full encyclopaedia of Fantasia potion ingredients in her head). “You defeated the King Slime! How amazing!”

Wow. I should just go around the village and show every NPC this King Slime bubble. Fame was useful in getting quests and discounts from NPCs. However, Fey was too lazy to go around showing everyone for a stat that did not have instant, tangible rewards, so she did not bother.

“I was wondering if you could use a King Slime bubble for brewing potions.”

“Of course!” Kallara was excited (nerding out) at the rare potion component and speaking at a higher pitch than her normal calm tone. “The King Slime bubble can be used for the creation of many powerful potions. Not just healing potions, but also mana potions and tonics that can temporarily increase your attributes!”

“Wow, that’s amazing.” Moneymoneymoneymoney… (the word repeated in Fey’s head continuously, not just four times, but no need to waste page space).

“Which one would you like to make?” Kallara enquired.

“I’d like to make a strength tonic,” Fey decided (guessing it was the most valuable).

Kallara (completely ignored the injured person) pulled a book off a shelf and turned to the correct page before handing it to Fey. “Here’s a list of the ingredients you’ll need. Fresh-killed herbs have the most potency. You should find everything in the herb garden out back.”

“Fresh-killed?” Fey muttered. “I don’t like the sound of that. Kallara, what level are these herb monsters?”

“None of the ones required for the strength tonic are above level twenty,” Kallara replied with a smile (whether it was an evil smile is up for debate).

Twenty?? I’m only level eleven! I hope I don’t die. Fey was not completely daunted at a nine-level gap, having some confidence in her unusual variety of skills and ability to analyze situations to take advantage of them.

“However,” Kallara continued, “there are herbs out there up to level forty.”

… (mental blank). Fey just stared mutely with a doomed expression on her face while Kallara continued to usher her outside. “Farewell, world,” she lamented (melodramatically) as she crossed the threshold.

***

“The rebirth point is located at the town centre,” Kallara called after Fey cheerfully (we are pretty sure that this smile was at least a bit evil), waving as Fey trudged off to her (probable) doom. “Now, where were we?” Kallara turned back to her injured patient, who now felt decidedly less safe in the healer’s hands (*urge to run away from evil lady*).

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to send her out to such a dangerous place alone?” Blade ventured.

“Oh, she should be fine. I go out there to collect herbs quite often,” replied Kallara non-worriedly.

Just what level is the village healer? Blade wondered with a little trepidation (the answer: higher than you. Burn!).

“However,” the healer continued, “if you are worried about her, you could always go after her.” (*misguided matchmaking*) While Blade was distracted with the healer’s words, she pulled to align the bones in his foot.

“Oww!” he yelled (it wasn’t ‘oww’).

“Watch your langugage, young man,” Kallara chided while wrapping the foot for support. “Hold still. Medium Heal!” A bright light began emanating from the healer’s hands, and warmth like strong sunlight seemed to soak into Blade’s bones to soothe away the pain. “There you go, all done.” Kallara patted Blade’s newly healed foot and stood up.

“Thank you, lady.” Blade stood as well, leaving a 50g piece on the bench as payment. He hesitated, looking at the two exits from the healer’s abode, one leading back to the village, one to the herb garden. As the King Slime was not about to respawn any time soon, he did not have a plan of action. With anybody else, he would not hesitate to go and offer to help with a dangerous quest, but he was certain that the scary elf lady, or ‘Fey,’ as he had heard Kallara address her, would not welcome his presence. Still, it went against his character to leave someone in such a situation without at least trying to help. Bracing himself for dangerous monsters and hostile conversation, he followed Fey into the herb garden.

Kallara’s eyes laughed with mischief.

***

Behind Kallara’s tree-house was a fairly large area where the trees were far enough apart for large patches of sunlight to reach the ground. In and around these spots, Fey could see different kinds of plants growing. She advanced cautiously to a spot with no plants, sword at the ready. Since she was not immediately beset upon by carnivorous plants, she felt safe enough to sheathe her sword and take a look at the book Kallara had handed her.

The strength tonic recipe listed the quantities of each ingredient that she would need, along with helpful drawings of each herb. What it did not list was the level of each herb monster. In fact, the drawings looked like normal plants with leaves, stems and roots, no eyes or other animal features anywhere. This is scary… Fey’s imagination was supplying her with scenarios where herb monsters could suddenly appear and kill her in cruel and unusual ways. She sighed. Might as well get it (dying or the quest?) over with.

“Magic, Amethyst, come look at this.” Fey pointed at a particular drawing of an herb. Amethyst leaned over from her perch on Fey’s head to look, while Magic hopped up to her shoulder (*defy gravity*). Fey chose the herb that she would need the largest quantity of, called ‘sweetgrass’ in the book, guessing that it would be at a lower level. The illustration showed a clump of grass, each blade of grass being especially broad.

“Go find plants that look like this and tell me when you’ve found them, but don’t touch anything.”

The pets hopped (cutely) away. Before long, excited squeaking led Fey to a patch of ground completely covered by the plant (in other words, a lawn of grass).

“Good job, you two.” Fey knelt and patted her pets affectionately, then moved them away from the area in case a scary monster appeared to eat them. Okay, I need thirty of these. Cautiously (not really), she grabbed a clump of grass and yanked it out of the ground. Huh. The “root” of the creature appeared to be a head, with two stubby feet kicking futilely for freedom[ii].

Letting it dangle from her grasp of its grass ‘hair,’ Fey poked at it. “You’re not scary at all.”

The creature then opened its mouth and uttered a cry. Suddenly, all the other clumps of grass uprooted themselves and started running away.

“Oh, no you don’t! Magic, Amethyst, after them!” The chase was on. Unfortunately for Fey, even creatures with short, stubby feet were faster than her (legless) pets, so she had to do all the chasing herself. She was forced into a graceless half-bent-over position, grabbing sweetgrass while jogging. She could not simply Stomp on them to kill them; they simply got back up and continued running. When she had grabbed about ten of them, her hands were full of wiggling creatures and she had to figure out a way to kill them. Seeing the other clumps of sweetgrass getting away, she swiftly pulled out her rope and tied her caught ones into a secure bundle. Dropping the bundle onto the ground, she called out, “Amethyst, Whip!” and chased after the fleeing creatures.

Returning with another armful of sweetgrass, Fey saw that Amethyst was still repeatedly using Whip on the bundle she had left. Are they still alive? They must be really tough.

“Ugh…” Upon closer inspection, Fey saw that Amethyst had mashed the (long-dead) grass creatures into unrecognizable paste. “Amethyst,” Fey groaned, “you’re supposed to stop when they’re dead.” Amethyst stopped moving and blinked (cutely).

“I don’t have time to deal with this right now.” Fey tied her second group of sweetgrass into a bundle and said, “Whip, but stop when they’re dead,” before running off again

Fey assumed that the first bundle of sweetgrass (paste) was unuseable, so she ended up collecting forty plants in total. Amethyst easily ended their lives with a single swing of her (cute-but-deadly) bubble, causing them to shrivel into normal-looking plants. Fey winced as she watched the slime demolish the last bundle of sweetgrass, wishing she had a reason to run off again (Magic appeared completely unconcerned at the one-sided violence). Packing everything into her pouch, Fey pulled out the book to look up the next plant she would need.

“Thornweed,” she read out loud. The plants looked rather like rose stems without the flowers. This does not bode well for my hands. Fey’s forearm guards did not include gloves for her hands. Alas, woe is me, etc. Let’s get it over with. “Amethyst, Magic, find this plant.” Fey showed them the illustration and they hopped off cutely, while she walked off in a third direction.

Instead of the thornweed, Fey found something far more irritating. “What are you doing here?” The human warrior was in the herb garden.

“I, uh, thought you might need help.” Blade had rather expected Fey to be fighting for her life against some high-level monster that he could (heroically) save her from (so the whole “she’s perfectly fine thing” was throwing him off).

Fey snorted (derisively) and was about to reply (hostilely) when she heard a squeak. She walked off. After a moment, Blade followed. “Where are you going?” He had not registered the squeak, so Fey’s actions seemed completely random to him. Fey was not in a talkative mood, so she ignored him and kept walking, coming across the thornweed a minute later. Well, that’s not going to fit into my pouch. The stems were each longer than her arm, though quite thin, and covered with long, sharp thorns.

Assuming that the plant would attack by thrashing its stems around, Fey picked Magic up and told him to cast Spore five times.

“Good job, Magic!” Magic squeaked cheerfully.

Because he and Fey were not in a party together, he did not receive any system notices from Magic’s actions, and the mushroom did not appear to have accomplished anything. “What do you mean, ‘good job’? It didn’t do anything.”

Fey rounded on him. “Would you leave already?”

“Hey, don’t be like that. You heard the healer; there are level forty monsters in here. You might need help.”

Fey paused, giving him a measuring look while she thought. Well, I suppose I could use him as a meat shield if we get attacked (*mercenary*). “Fine.”

Blade gave a relieved sigh (being measured by Fey’s look is an unnerving experience).

“Help me cut this plant,” Fey continued imperiously, gesturing at the thornweed (*unpaid labour*). The two players advanced, Blade drawing his (blade) sword while Fey chose her small dagger.

Blade took the most straightforward (and least effective) approach. Gripping his sword in both hands, he slashed at the plant. Some of the flexible stems swayed towards the ground before returning to their upright positions.

Well. I see my meat shield isn’t very clever. Does that make him a better or a worse meat shield? Idly pondering the question, Fey crouched at the base of the plant. Gripping one vine firmly to keep it from moving, she sliced across with her dagger. It made a shallow cut that came nowhere near severing the tough stem. Ugh. This is going to take forever, Fey thought with frustration, slicing again and again. Blade saw Fey’s (more effective) course of action and (sheepishly) followed suit, though the task was more awkward with a blade as long as a sword.

There has to be a faster way to do this. Fey was now about halfway through the stem (and completely bored). While her hands mechanically repeated the slicing movement, she searched through her skill menu. Most of her skills seemed fairly useless against her current ‘opponent’. Hmm. Maybe Mana Blade? Fey activated the ability. Remembering the way she had changed the shape of her mana flow when she first learned the ability (go back and read Chapter 7 if you don’t remember), she imagined it extending from the edges of her dagger, narrowing into an extremely thin, sharp edge.

Her magically-sharpened dagger slid through the rest of the stem like a hot knife through butter (yay clichéd similes) and Fey narrowly avoided giving herself and nasty cut.

“Huh,” Fey muttered to herself, pulling up the description.

Nice. This meant that with the subskill, Fey could ignore six points of her opponents’ defence when calculating damage effects and even break armour more easily.

To Blade, Fey appeared to have slipped with her dagger when it finally broke through the thornweed, and now she was staring off into space. “What are you doing?”

“I cannot believe how annoying he is,” Fey muttered. From her point of view, the reasons for her actions were very apparent, so Blade’s questions were extremely irritating. Then again… Fey put herself into the human warrior’s shoes (*rare bout of empathy*) and decided that her actions were completely indecipherable to a normal person. Gotta give him credit for not running in the face of hostility. Fey would have (delightedly) left someone so rude to her to die a lonely, agonizing death at the hands of monsters over twice their level.

Softening her attitude towards him, Fey (finally) asked, “What’s your name?”

“Blade.”

“I’m Fey.”

“Huh?” (Blade really does not react well in the face of unexpected situations.)

“If we’re in the same party, you can see my game system notices and you won’t be so confused all the time,” Fey explained (*rare bout of patience*).

“Oh.” (The author promises that Blade is not a completely useless idiot, and will eventually become an interesting and well-rounded character.)

“As to what I was doing,” Fey continued, “I modified Mana Blade to sharpen the edge of my dagger. Now I can easily cut through the thornweed.” Fey demonstrated, cutting through a fresh stem in only two slices.

“What? How did you do that?” Blade activated his own Mana Blade ability, and the normal unshaped flames appeared (Blade’s were blue).

“You have to lower the mana flow until it barely extends from the edge of the blade, then shape it into the thinnest, sharpest line you can imagine,” Fey explained (our heroine is actually fairly good at teaching when she’s not being sarcastic and unhelpful).

Frowning in concentration, Blade stared at his (blade) sword until the flames shrank to a fine edge, then sliced at a vine.

“That’s amazing!” Mana Edge was the second ability Blade had learned in his fifteen levels, the first being Mana Blade itself. Like most players, he assumed skills and abilities could only be learned from books or teachers, and had not accomplished quests that led to the acquisition of new skills.

“Meh,” said Fey dismissively. Mana Edge was her fourth ability, and she had nine combat skills, not including what her pets could do. Unusual actions led to the creation of specialized skills and abilities, and Fey was so abnormal that this was a regular occurrence. “Back to work.” She seized another stem to slice, and Blade followed suit.

Fey immediately jumped up and backed out of range of the plant, but Blade was caught unprepared.

“What – Ow!”

The plant started whipping its limbs violently, leaving a scratch across Blade’s cheek.

“Crap.” Blade reached into his pack for a (green) antidote potion and drank it. Most adventurers bought antidotes when they first encountered a poisonous monster, and tried to avoid them as much as possible. He was flabbergasted when Fey deliberately reached out and pricked her finger on a thorn. “What are you –”

Without Immunity, taking the full brunt of the thornweed’s poison would result in (a whopping) 120 damage (Fey’s maximum health was currently at 145). Because the poison happened to be the kind that inflicted low damage frequently, just level 1 Immunity halved the damage to 60.

Blade mind was boggled. “Where did you get that ability?”

Fey suddenly realized that if she continued working with Blade, he would end up learning all of her hard-earned (*cough* randomly acquired *cough*) techniques. Again, she subjected him to her measuring look. The fact that he was discomfited by her stare reassured her that Blade was an honest person (Fey was sure that only con artists and sociopaths maintained eye contact for extended periods of time).

“If I tell you about my abilities, you have to promise not to teach them to anyone else.”

Blade’s expression turned serious as he replied, “I promise.”

Huh. I don’t even feel the need to threaten him. Either I’m experiencing personal growth (hahahahaha) or he just looks very trustworthy.

“Okay.” Fey took a breath and sighed. “In order to gain immunity, you have to get poisoned a lot without taking the antidote. Or dying.”

“…That’s it?”

“Well, that’s pretty much how you develop immunity to poison in real life, isn’t it?” Not that this game doesn’t choose to suspend natural laws whenever it feels like it. Of course, only someone exposed to weak poison for hours would manage to have enough exposure to develop immunity without dying from health loss. Blade would not be able to use thornweed poison to gain Immunity without using far more health potions than he owned. Fey’s mind speedily came up with the most convenient solution.

“Amethyst!” she called. The slime obediently hopped (cutely) into view from wherever it had been wandering. Fey picked her up by the bubble and commanded, “Poison slime.” Amethyst’s body became shiny with a layer of (poisonous) slime.

“Here.” Fey dropped Amethyst into Blade’s hands, which had automatically come up when Fey held the slime out towards him. Amethyst landed with a slight splatting sound.

Blade was hit with a wave of nausea from the poison. “Slug poison from a slime?” The warrior was almost becoming used to being in a perpetual state of confusion.

“Back to work,” Fey said without explaining (go back and read Chapter 6 if you don’t remember). She had Magic cast Spore until the thornweed was again paralysed and they went back to cutting stems.

When they had all the thornweed stems they needed, Fey realized that she had not gained any experience points from defeating the creature.

“Why didn’t I get any experience?”

“We didn’t kill it,” Blade answered matter-of-factly (not confused for once).

When Fey just stared at him uncomprehendingly, Blade pointed at the centre of the bush. “See? This whole thing is just one plant. We did some damage by cutting off some of its stems, but it’s nowhere near dead.”

“Let’s kill it!” Fey said (bloodthirstily).

“Uh, it seems pretty tough. Maybe we should just -” Blade stopped talking. Fey had Magic continually casting multicoloured clouds of toxic spores while Amethyst was pounding a small part of the plant into paste, boring a path towards the centre of the stem cluster. Fey herself activated Mana Blade at full blast and was touching the white-and-purple flames to the plant.

“What are you doing?” he asked (yet again).

“I’m checking if I can set things on fire with Mana Blade. I doubt it, since they’re not real flames, but it’s worth a shot.” Fey let the flames subside when they failed to ignite the thornweed. She shrugged and went back to cutting stems off of the bush.

“Hey, I don’t think you can kill it like that.”

“I know,” Fey replied calmly. Before Blade could ask “What are you doing?” again, she elaborated, “Magic and Amethyst will take care of it.” Fey had confidence in her pets’ abilities. Magic was still casting Spore at a rate of one cast per second. Even with a failure rate of 65%, he had so many status effects stacked on the thornweed that even if it weren’t paralysed, it would have a great deal of difficulty moving.

Meanwhile, Amethyst was steadily tunnelling her way to the centre of the thornweed. Fey figured that it would only be minutes until she received her experience points.

“Why. Won’t. It. DIE??” Having a stronger poison itself than the blue mushroom’s poison effect, the thornweed was immune to that particular aspect of Magic’s Spore. All of its stats had been reduced to the minimum, Fey had cut off every single stem, and Amethyst had tunnelled her way out the other side of the bush, but the thornweed was still stubbornly clinging to life.

“Uh, maybe we should just give up and go get the rest of the stuff for the recipe?” Blade suggested tentatively.

“No! Then it wins!” Fey was not about to let some flowerless rosebush get the better of her (actually, it seems that it already has…).

Blade was rather surprised at seeing this new (immature) side to Fey’s personality, having only seen her being cold and ruthlessly logical. He did not know which Fey he preferred (the correct answer being that Fey is a difficult person to be around, either way, and you should run away, Blade. Run away.)

“You can stop casting now,” Fey told the mushroom, who was looking distinctly worn out. There was no point in making him work when the thornweed was already completely debuffed. Without any stems, the plant could not move even without being paralysed. Gratefully, Magic hopped away. Digging a hole in the ground, he ‘planted’ himself and appeared to go to sleep.

“What’s it doing?”

“Eating, obviously.” Fey was just guessing, but she happened to be right. In frustration, she Stomped down on the remains of the bush as hard as she could.

The earth began trembling. Slowly, the thornweed uprooted itself. When it was completely out of the ground, it resembled an octopus made of roots, with inch-long ‘hair’ where Fey had cut all the stems off. Amethyst, who had been (cheerfully) mashing any part of the plant she could reach into paste, ended up riding the octopus head, ten feet off the ground.

“Amethyst, get off of there!” Amethyst (cleverly) jumped off the side of the octopus, using one of its tentacles as a slide to arrive safely (and stylishly) on the ground, where she hopped off to keep Magic company.

“Come on.” Fey nudged Blade into action, switching her dagger to her left hand and drawing her sword with the right. Running forward, she slashed at the thornweed, with similar results to what happened with the twiggy in her earlier adventure (see Chapter 3 if you don’t remember). Oh yeah. Activating Mana Edge, Fey was rewarded with a much deeper cut when she attacked again.

In response, the thornweed wrapped a tentacle rather feebly around Fey’s waist. Having lost most of its strength and speed, the attack failed to harm her in any way.

“Fey!” Blade jumped into the fight at the sight of Fey ‘in danger.’ His ability to come heroically to her rescue was severely impaired when she said, “I got it,” and casually severed the tentacle.

“You take the other side,” Fey commanded.

Blade sighed and did as he was told (*unnecessary*).

The thornweed was actually the level 20 monster Kallara had mentioned, but Spore had reduced its stats to that of a level 10 monster. In addition, Fey had taken away its special ability – poison – by cutting off all of its stems. Normally, it would have emerged from the ground long before it could be completely ‘declawed’ like this, but Magic’s paralysis had kept it safely in the ground until Fey had given the mushroom a break. Before long, the thornweed fell to the warriors’ weapons.

Fey reacted to the system notice with stunned disbelief that quickly morphed into anger. “Why did you get more experience points than me?” she demanded, not quite yelling (but pretty close). “I’m the one who did most of the damage!”

When a party shares experience, it is distributed based on its members’ relative levels. As Blade was level 15 to Fey’s level 11, he had naturally gained more experience points. Fey actually knew this perfectly well, and tried to stop her pointless outburst by taking steps to resolve her conflict.

“I’m dissolving this party.” (Well, that didn’t last very long.)

“Hey, wait, you don’t have to do that. Just change the party setting to ‘individual experience.’” Fantasia had numerous settings to customize party gameplay, such as different allocations for experience, gold, and rare items. This was covered in the “Advanced Gameplay” section of the manual that Fey had skipped reading (badbad). The ‘individual’ setting for resource allocation distributed the resource as if the party members were not in the same party, basing the distribution on the relative contribution each player had in killing the monster, including relative damage inflicted and who landed the final hit.

Fey changed the party setting from its automatic ‘level-weighted’ experience allocation to ‘individual,’ feeling silly that she had not done so earlier. With the dignity of an offended cat, she collected her pets (Magic had slept through the entire fight and aftermath) and stalked off to find the next ingredient on the list.

Blade hastily stuffed the thornweed stems into his backpack and followed.

Footnotes:

[i] Chapter title credit goes to Vibe

[ii] This is clearly Pokemon #43, Oddish.