Chapter 24

“Let’s go visit Kallara before we leave,” Fey suggested.

Blade shrugged. “Sure.” The players walked into the healer’s tree-shop.

Fey and Blade entered just as another group of players was leaving, presumably after purchasing potions (which is about the only thing that Fey never does while there). Kallara looked up from closing a cupboard. “Hello,” she said smilingly. “How are you?”

“I’m great,” said Fey. She updated Kallara on her game progress the same way she would for her friend Leah. “I switched out my weapons and armour.” Fey was very happy with the deadly shininess of her new equipment.

“Very nice,” Kallara agreed. Not leaving Blade out of the conversation, she asked, “And you, young man?”

“Oh. I upgraded my equipment, too. Nothing fancy.” After reaching level 20, Blade had purchased another set of plate armour and another short sword in a higher grade of steel. The only real change in his appearance was the addition of a palm-sized shield attached to his left forearm, allowing him to block more effectively with his off hand.

“Wonderful. You two look ready for adventure.”

“Actually,” said Fey, “We’re going on a trip to the coast, to visit my friend who’s a mermaid.”

Kallara looked suitably sorrowful to see her favourite players leave the Moonwood. “Well, I will miss you,” she said in a sad-but-brave voice. “Be sure to come back to visit.”

Aww. Fey was moved by the healer’s display of emotion. “I will,” she promised. “I’ll buy a teleport key and visit from every major city on the way.” The keys were quite expensive in real-world currency, but Fey was willing to buy one in order to visit her NPC friend.

“That’s so kind of you.” Kallara’s eyes glinted (deviously).

In a much more businesslike voice, the healer asked, “I assume you will be travelling along the human roads?”

“Uh yeah.” Fey was confused by Kallara’s abrupt change in demeanour, and watched curiously as the healer pulled out a sheet of paper and began to draw.

Aww, she’s drawing me a map. The sketch revealed itself to be a fairly accurate rendering of Fey’s planned route. Fey was again confused when Kallara began to label the map with various letters.

On a second sheet of paper, Kallara drew a legend explaining the labels. Task complete, she handed both sheets of paper to Fey, while Blade looked on curiously.

“You sneaky… Sneaky!” Fey exclaimed. The map and legend marked the locations and descriptions of various potion ingredients Kallara wanted. Fey’s name-calling abilities failed her.

Kallara smiled mischievously. “You’ll gain quest experience,” she bribed the players, creating a quest offer.

“…Fine,” Fey half-grumbled, not really mad at Kallara’s sneakiness.

Blade accepted the quest as well. Remembering the mishaps of their earlier herb-collecting adventure (see Chapters 9 and 10 if you don’t remember), he asked, “Could we get the levels and fighting abilities of the monsters?”

“Now, that would not be any fun,” said Kallara, “Where is your sense of adventure?”

“Is that your way of saying you don’t know?” asked Fey.

Kallara’s eyes twinkled. “I’ll never tell.”

Fey decided it would be a good time to make a (melodramatic) exit. “Let’s go,” she said to Blade.

“Wait!” Kallara pulled out a box of lesser healing potions, capable of healing 200 health each, and gave five to each player (yay, free stuff). “Just in case,” she said (not that this is foreshadowing or anything).

“Thanks.” Both players thanked the healer before leaving the shop.

Choosing the correct trail heading east, Fey set off at an extremely fast walk, a pace that rivalled slow jogging in speed. There was a particular trick to walking quickly, which involved keeping the leg muscles relaxed, extending the foot extra far on each step, and pushing off on the toes on the back leg, all minor adjustments that lengthened the stride without greatly increasing the energy expended.

Blade broke into a jog to keep up. “Why are we running?”

Fey glanced over at the human. “I’m walking. My feet are never both in the air at the same time.” (That’s the definition of walking, by the way.)

Blade dropped into a walk and tried to match Fey’s speed. He was not met with much success.

“You’re doing it all wrong,” said Fey, falling into lecture-mode.

“I’m walking wrong?” Blade had assumed that he had mastered walking by the age of three.

“Yep. Stop leaning forward, don’t tense your muscles, and push off with your toes.” Fey exaggerated the movement, rising completely onto her toes with every step in a childish walk she mentally referred to as ‘tripping along’. It was actually faster than a normal walk, but resulted in calf cramps after too many steps.

Blade failed to immediately figure out the mechanics of fast walking, and Fey dropped into a (slightly) slower walk to accommodate his pace. “You’ll figure it out eventually.” In real life, Arwyn had successfully trained her friends to walk quickly by cruelly leaving them trailing behind until their bodies naturally picked up the trick.

“I can’t believe I’m getting walking lessons,” Blade muttered.

“If you could walk properly, we wouldn’t be going this slowly,” Fey countered.

Since she no longer had to concentrate on walking at top speed, Fey decided to train Immunity.

“Amethyst, poison mushroom slime.” Amethyst secreted the correct toxin, and Fey suffered the side effect of blurry vision.

“Still poisoning yourself?” asked Blade.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because it’s [censored word]ing uncomfortable!”

“Oh, well, this one has really mild side effects,” Fey assured him. Holding Amethyst by the bubble, she held the slime towards Blade, who poked the still-poisonous pet dubiously.

“Gah!” Blade exclaimed, coming to a halt. “I can’t see!” Having perfect vision in real life, Blade had no experience navigating a world of blurry blobs and splotches of colour.

“Sure you can see,” said Fey, also coming to a stop. “Look, I’m waving at you.”

Indeed, Blade could see a skin-coloured blob moving back and forth, but the sight did not reassure him that he could safely walk around in his present condition.

Fey moved behind Blade and pushed him into walking again. His arms rose uncertainly, as if he would lose his balance at any moment.

“If this is what you consider a mild side effect, I don’t know what you consider severe,” Blade grumbled.

“Furyweed,” Fey answered immediately, with the kind of horror associated with watching a stuffed animal being stabbed repeatedly.

“What’s that?”

“You don’t want to know.” Furyweed was something Fey would only inflict on her worst enemies, and Blade did not fall into that category (he kind of falls into the ‘miscellaneous persons’ category).

After walking for over an hour, the glooms began lagging behind, their undersized ears drooping with tiredness.

“Aww, poor babies,” Fey cooed, gathering up her shadow-pets. The six glooms were not particularly heavy, but carrying them all at once was rather a hassle, even with the help of her (awesome) cape.

It occurred to Fey that she could ask her pets to change into shapes more convenient for carrying. “Hey, turn into rings,” she told the glooms.

All six interpreted the word “ring” in a different way, morphing into shapes ranging from an extremely thick manacle that would fit around Fey’s wrist to a thin ring the size of a hula hoop.

“Oh, you guys crack me up,” Fey said in a highly amused voice.

Blade watched the interaction with interest, seeing a new side of Fey. When she spoke to her pets, her voice was bright with amusement and laughter.

“Want some help?” he offered as Fey disposed of the glooms about her person.

“Mm… I’ve got it, thanks.” Fey had already found places for all the shadow-pets, three acting as inky necklaces of different lengths, two as thick bracelets, and one hung on her weapons belt. “You can carry Boris and Magic if you want.” The miniature boar was still trotting along gamely with the blue mushroom on his back, but Fey thought it would be unfair for him to be the only pet to walk.

Blade picked the boar up, who settled down after a brief struggle for freedom (“Lemme go! Aww, fine.”). Magic hopped his way up and down Blade’s smooth plate armour in exploration.

“How is it doing that?” Blade asked as Magic paused in the small of his back.

“I have no idea. I don’t think he sticks according to any of the principles known to biologists.” (99% realism. Yeah, right.)

Inspection over, the mushroom jumped from human to elf, coming to a rest on Fey’s head.

“You can’t stay there, you know,” said Fey, without looking up and disturbing her pet’s position. “My neck will get sore.”

Magic squeaked cutely (“But the view is nice from up here”).

“Fine. Twenty minutes.”

“…Uh, do you know what it’s saying?” Blade asked.

“Nope. I just make up fake dialogue.” Fey grinned. “I’m not insane, you know.” (That’s what all the insane people say.)

Another few hours later, and the group broke free of the forest. The thin hiking trail they were following widened into a road that could accommodate two carriages going in opposite directions.

A tall post marked the spot where the travel coach would stop, topped by a clock that displayed the time and was synchronized with the other time-pieces of the travel company.

“How often does the coach arrive?” Fey asked Blade.

“Every two hours, I think.”

“On the hour?” The clock showed that it was a few minutes to noon.

“I have no idea,” Blade admitted.

Fey was unexpectedly met with the fantasy-game version of ‘waiting for a bus.’ Fortunately, she had fantasy-game options to occupy her time.

“Magic, cast attraction Spore.”

A sweet-smelling cloud of particles diffused outwards. After reaching level 10, Spore had improved its range to a 50m radius (164 feet).

“Get ready,” Fey told Blade. She dropped her pets to the ground, clipped the weights onto her boots, and drew her punching blades.

Blade drew his short sword. “Do you have any idea what’s coming?”

“Nope.” Fey’s tone was rather blasé. She knew that nothing dangerous would live close to something as urban as a major road, so the actual types of monsters that would arrive did not worry her.

“Great,” Blade muttered. Somehow, adventuring with Fey had made him start to dislike surprises. He sent Fey a party invitation, which she accepted. The players stood back to back, with the pets between them.

The monsters that arrived first were the ones that lived closest to the trail, and therefore the weakest. Diminutive creatures hopped and toddled out of the forest. (They shall not be further described because the author is lazy.)

Fey did not bother with the weak monsters. “Go,” she told her pets, and her tamed monsters attacked. Despite being of similar size, the Feypets were considerably stronger than their wild counterparts. A (cute?) slaughter ensued.

While Blade walked around and stabbed tiny monsters, Fey occupied herself with ferrying Magic around while he used Drain, transferring the mushroom from dried husk to fresh victim.

While Blade had declined to continue training Immunity after his first experience with blurry vision, Fey had continued to poison herself at regular intervals, improving Immunity to level 5.

“Amethyst, poison mushroom slime.” Fey walked over to where Amethyst was cheerfully mashing some plant monsters into paste, and touched the purple slime.

“You’re still doing that at a time like this?” Blade asked incredulously.

“A time like what?” Indeed, even Blade had to admit that there was no danger or urgency in their fighting. The human warrior was starting to feel guilty at how many cute monsters he was killing.

“Plus, I can still kill things,” Fey added. To demonstrate, she Stomped on a brown monster; with her vision impaired, its colour was the only characteristic she could make out. Fey actually found it easier to fight when she could not see how cute the monsters were.

The higher-levelled monsters arrived a few minutes later; none of them exceeded level 12, which made for meagre experience gains. Fey treated the experience as a chance to level up her and her pets’ skills. Amethyst improved her Whip, Magic improved Drain, the glooms improved Gloom, and Boris improved Charge and Rage. Fey herself improved several kicking skills. With the additional weights on her feet, she felt like she had upgraded from a hammer to a sledgehammer in terms of attack power (which was kind of overkill, considering her opponents).

When Fey had sufficient mana, she cast her new warrior skill, Arc Slash. She was pleased to find that she could achieve a 45° arc with her right leg, and a 40° arc with her left.

Blade, whose Arc Slash was level 3 after he spent the previous day training it (this is the author’s lame way of explaining where he had gone the previous day while Fey was off adventuring with Leandriel) was able to create a 100° arc with his short sword.

Thusly[i] the party passed the time until the travel coach arrived, 47 minutes later.

***

(Bye bye. The author has banned the snarky narrator from Leandriel PoV scenes, to preserve his dignity.)

Leandriel was dithering. He was rather unfamiliar with the activity, being a fairly decisive person, but the word was accurate to describe his current state of uncertainty.

Leandriel’s ambivalence could be directly attributable to a certain female elf on his friend list.

He was deep in the Oré[ii] Mountains, which bounded the Elvenwood in the west, several hundred kilometers away from the Moonwood, with no teleportation gate nearby. He was hunting his first dragon, the weakest level 100 bronze dragon.

Regardless of level, dragons were formidable boss-type monsters with high strength, devastating breath attacks, nearly impenetrable scales, and unparalleled magic resistance. They were monsters that entire armies banded together to attack, only to be barbequed and eaten.

However, Leandriel was not worried about his chances. Kevin had calculated that with his current abilities and items, he could win, and Leandriel trusted his friend’s analytic capabilities.

No, the dilemma that occupied Leandriel’s thoughts was whether to PM his new friend.

He was very aware that since he was busy and had no plans involving Fey today, his normal behaviour would be to leave her alone.

But… He wanted to say hi.

Leandriel’s dithering had started quite a while ago, when the elf had logged on for the first time that night. She had logged out again, and Leandriel had been able to focus on fighting his way towards the entrance to the mountain where the dragon laired. Four game hours later, he was navigating the labyrinthine tunnel system that led to the bronze dragon’s hoard, dithering because she had logged back in.

Annoyed with himself, Leandriel finally decided to PM her. Fighting a dragon while in this distracted mental state would probably lead to another death.

Fey’s cheerful reply instantly removed any apprehension Leandriel had over his course of action, while simultaneously making him feel silly for being apprehensive in the first place.

Travel coach? It seemed Fey was leaving the Elvenwood.

Leandriel assumed that Fey knew her friend from outside the game, as there was no way for elves to meet mermaids while they were at low levels. He was curious as to the kind of person Fey would befriend.

Leandriel smiled at Fey’s concern.

Leandriel grinned at Fey’s colorful language.

Well. Now that Fey knew about his undertaking, and was so confident of his abilities, he certainly could not disappoint the lady. Leandriel went to find a scaled behind to kick.

Footnotes:

[i] From dictionary.com: “Some speakers and writers view thusly as a pointless synonym for thus, and they avoid it or use it only for humorous effect.” This instance of “thusly” was for humorous effect. Please be responsible with your adverb use in writing.

[ii] This is a double pun. The Oré mountains are rich in minerals suitable for mining, and this also sounds like “oreille”, which means “ear” in French. This is the mountain chain that outlines the curve of the continent-elephant’s ear.