Chapter 54

“Did you miss me?” Sirena asked as she swept dramatically forward in a swirl of mage robes and engulfed Fey in a hug. (*glom*)

Fey bore her friend’s weight stoically. “Not really,” she answered (cruelly). She had spent Sunday night productively training as an assassin, reaching level 38 and improving Critical Sight to level 5, the point at which she began to see blue spots indicating heavily armoured areas. As part of her developing fighting style, Isolate had reached level 6. If Sirena and Blade had not arrived in the Moonwood for another day, Fey could have easily spent another day training without getting bored.

Sirena gasped in indignation and withdrew (which was the reaction Fey was going for). “I rushed day and night without rest to hasten our reunion, and this is how you treat me?” she lamented, clearly in a theatrical mood.

“I seem to recall an ice cream break or two,” Fey commented dryly.

Blade caught up to Sirena at a much slower pace. This was likely due to the fact that he was weighed down by a large water tank strapped to his back, which contained the now-adult Squishy. The jellyfish’s long, trailing tentacles were somewhat cramped, even within the spacious tank. Firefly perched on one of the warrior’s already-overburdened shoulders, resolutely ignoring the affront to her owner’s dignity.

Fey raised an eyebrow at the burdensome arrangement. “Packhorse?” she asked cryptically, aware that Blade could hear her.

Sirena understood the implied question (“You’re using him as a packhorse and a meatshield?”) and answered in an equally abbreviated fashion. “Multipurpose,” she said cheerfully.

Blade briefly considered attempting to figure out what his party members were talking about, but decided he was too tired to make the effort (especially when he’d just get talked into confusing circles, anyways), and instead let the water tank slide to the ground. “I’m not carrying this around while we’re hiking all over the forest,” he said firmly (as if afraid he’d be overruled).

Sirena pouted (and Blade’s fear of being overruled grew). “How am I supposed to train it if we leave it behind?”

“Have you been training Squishy at all?” Fey asked in a faintly disapproving tone. (Blade was uncertain as to what this did to his chances.)

“No,” said Sirena sulkily. “Why’d you saddle me with such a use—”

Fey jumped forward and grabbed Sirena’s arm, startling the mermaid into silence. “Don’t talk like that,” Fey hissed. “No wonder it hasn’t evolved into anything more suited to land.” She frowned disapprovingly and crossed her arms. “You’re a bad owner,” she accused.

“Am not!” Sirena disputed. “I got it a nice tank, didn’t I?”

From Fey’s shoulder, Amethyst squeaked derisively at such a low standard of pet care, earning a glare from Sirena.

“Give Squishy back,” Fey demanded. “I’ll take care of it myself.”

Faced with an opportunity to get rid of her somewhat unwanted pet, Sirena paradoxically began defending it. “No! Hmph.” She seized the tank – it was far too heavy for her mage strength to lift – and began dragging it towards the magic shop (at a pace rather too slow for a dramatic exit).

Blade stared after Sirena uncertainly. (Looks like he’s not going to have to lug the tank around.) “Should we follow her?” he asked Fey. He was not quite sure what to call the interaction he had just witnessed. Not a ‘fight’; there wasn’t enough anger for that. ‘Disagreement’ was closer, but still not on the mark. The closest he could come to describing it was a mix of ‘parent tricking you into doing something good for you’ and ‘best friend egging you into doing something stupid’, but even that was inexact.

“No,” Fey answered complacently. (She’d probably describe it as helping her friend along the path to self-actualization if she stopped to think about it, which she didn’t.) “You hungry?” She headed off towards the tavern without waiting for an answer.

“Sure,” Blade agreed (belatedly), falling into step beside the elf with a last glance at Sirena (who still hadn’t made it all the way to the magic shop, hahaha).

Todd appeared beside Fey as she made her way to the usual table on the second floor. On his shoulder was his newly-named pet, who had been dubbed Terry(1) in a mash-up of suggestions. The name did not suit the blue slime particularly well, but Terry did not seem to mind. “Good afternoon, Miss Fey,” Todd greeted in his adorably formal manner. “Party of two today?”

“Yup,” Fey answered casually. “It is okay if he sits at the VIP table?”

“You and your guests are always welcome.” Turning to Blade, Todd asked, “Would you like to see a menu, sir?”

“Yeah, thanks.” Blade, having been out of the Moonwood for a while, had forgotten about the strangely symbiotic relationship between Fey and the tavern, so after Todd had disappeared downstairs, he asked, “Why are you a VIP again?”

“I collected a lot of wood for them.” The memory triggered a moping spell about Leandriel and Fey exhaled in a long, long sigh. (*siiiiiiiiiiiiigh*)

“Er, is everything okay?” Blade asked.

Fey sighed again (*sigh*), this time because there was something so obviously wrong with her that even Blade could tell. “Emotions,” she said disgustedly, which concurrently accomplished the three tasks of expressing her present sentiments, answering Blade’s question, and confusing Blade with an insufficient amount of information. Obscurely comforted when Blade became so predictably and reliably perplexed, Fey was overcome by a wave of affection (eew, more emotions) and reached over to pat him on the hand. “You’re a good guy,” she praised (90% serious, 10% to discomfit him).

Blade shifted uncomfortably at the sincere compliment. “Wow, you must be really off today,” he joked in order to change the mood; the attempt at humour fell flat (*splat*) because his observation was so precisely on the mark.

Acting as if she had been shot (by a tranquilizer dart), Fey let her head fall onto the table with a dull thunk. From her shoulder, Amethyst slid smoothly onto the table. Hopping over her owner’s head, the slime went to hang out with the rest of the Feypets. By now, they were all used to their owner’s periodic mopey moods and showed no concern at their owner’s behaviour. (Incidentally, in the Squeak language, ‘mopey’ and ‘floppy’ are the same word, so falling onto the table was well within expectations.)

“Er.” Blade stared at the floppy Fey with the same sense of panic as if he had just broken an expensive piece of technology (after the warranty had expired). He was used to abrupt shifts in topic and tone from the elf, but the underlying calm he had always felt from her was now fractured and he did not know what to do.

A menu waving from knee level distracted Blade from the situation. He picked it up to reveal Terry the slime, who had returned sans owner (*French vocabulary*). “Thanks,” he told it.

Terry squeaked and remained in place.

“He’s waiting for your order,” Fey interpreted, voice somewhat distorted by the table surface.

“Oh.” Blade quickly skimmed the menu and said, “I’ll have a burger and a beer.”

Terry squeaked again, took the menu back, and hopped downstairs.

By this time, Fey’s face was growing unhappy at being pressed against a hard surface, so she tucked her arms under her head, looking as if she might decide to take a nap.

“…So, what do you want to do this afternoon?” Blade asked.

“Dunno. Kill things, I guess,” Fey answered morosely, staring at the wood grain of the table.

“…Right.”

Blade was all out of conversational topics, so it was a relief when Todd arrived with their food.

The boy deftly avoided Fey’s head and long hair as he placed their plates on the table. From his shoulder, Terry used his bubble-arm to lower Blade’s beer with the precision of a helicopter drop. (Is it okay for a minor to serve alcohol?)

Fey’s table manners (belatedly) made her sit up properly. “Thanks, Todd.”

Todd pointed to her plate. “Dad made that to cheer you up.”

Next to Fey’s ideal burger – thin patty, sautéed mushrooms and onions (*more French*), mayonnaise, and ketchup – was a cute custard bun decorated with a chocolate syrup smiley face and mouse ears.

Fey inhaled through her nose in a way that would qualify as a sniffle. Both Todd and Blade were alarmed to see her make an expression that indicated she might cry.

“Thanks, Todd,” she said with a catch in her voice. She drew the boy into a very uncharacteristic hug before letting him escape and picking up her mouse-bun with a sentimental expression. Putting it down, she began to eat her burger with periodic glances at the bread, still wearing a very un-Fey-like, soft expression.

Blade had progressed from surprise to alarm at Fey’s state of mind. Moping was one thing, but the fact that she was expressing sentimentality without even a hint of ironic humour was simply out of character.

Searching for an explanation, Blade’s mind unfortunately hit upon a hypothesis guaranteed to get him into trouble. It also failed to foresee the danger in speaking it out loud.

He considered. Circumstantial evidence seemed to support the hypothesis: it had been approximately three weeks since he had met Fey, and her behaviour had been predictably unpredictable until now.

“Are you…” he ventured.

(Danger! Abort, abort!)

“Am I what?” Fey said, looking up from her mouse-bun.

(Last chance! Abort!)

“Like, getting PMS(2)?”

(…)

A deafening silence grew amid the chatter in the busy tavern, which gave Blade’s mind the time to process Fey’s changing facial expressions without distraction. Blank surprise. Disbelief. Fury that went from infernally hot to blisteringly cold.

Fey opened her mouth to answer. She closed it again. Picking up her mouse-bun, she very precisely and deliberately bit it in half. Blade’s sense of impending doom grew exponentially by the second.

Fey’s moping mood had been seared out of existence, burned away like a wart treated with liquid nitrogen. The competing desires to verbally dismember Blade, physically dismember Blade, and cut all ties to Blade held her paralyzed on a knife edge of rage. The like/dislike graph (see Chapter 11 if you don’t remember) plunged so far into the negatives that it had to change to a logarithmic scale(3). If there was one thing that she hated more than having her intelligence questioned, it would be the implication that her emotions were mere artefacts of a monthly hormone cycle rather than legitimate feelings borne of a rational human mind.

As a way to snap her out of her mood, nothing could have been more effective. (As a way to continued survival, well…)

Eventually, cold logic prevailed. Obviously, the thing to do would be to make Blade’s life unremittingly miserable for a month and show that her emotions were not prone to fluctuation. Banking the fury (i.e. making sure it wouldn’t burn out for a good, long time), she finished the remains of her mouse-bun and went back to her main meal.

Fey blinked in surprise at the system notifications. She had not used Rage since the day she had formed the ability (Chapter 8) because of the penalty to accuracy. At level 6, it now boosted attack by 15% with only a 10% loss of accuracy. This unexpected gain almost restored her to a pleasant mood, though a glance at Blade kept the rage at a steady burn in the back of her mind.

Blade sat very still, as if in a room full of motion-activated explosives. Appetite gone, he waited for Fey to say something, growing only more apprehensive as seconds stretched into minutes without a response on her part.

Todd arrived with Blade’s bill and a wooden take-out container as Fey finished the last of her food. “Would you like me to box that up for you?” he asked, gesturing to Blade’s mostly-uneaten burger.

Blade cleared his throat. “I can do it, thanks.” He paid Todd for the meal and the boy wished them, “Have a good day!” and trotted cheerfully off. By now, Fey’s expression had mostly returned to its usual neutral position, so he could not be faulted for leaving Blade alone to face his fate.

Fey silently rose and strode towards the exit without acknowledging the existence of her dining companion. Blade hastily boxed up his lunch and followed. (Run away! Honestly, Blade is actually the most abnormal person in this whole story.) He caught up as Fey began descending the stairs—

“Oof.” Blade’s breath rushed out of his lungs as a six-Fey iron boar deliberately shoved his way in front of the warrior. The Feypets were fully aware of Blade’s current state of disgrace (though they had no idea what kind of heinous condition their owner was being accused of) and were now demonstrating exactly how difficult walking could be when they did not stay considerately out of the way. Blade nearly fell down the stairs when he stumbled over several patches of solid shadow. He seized the railing and desperately halted his forward momentum to avoid crashing into Fey, or more accurately, to avoid having Amethyst bash his skull in before he crashed into Fey. The slime gleamed with a fresh coat of the poison du jour (*bonus French*), guaranteeing that what blunt-force trauma started, biochemistry would finish. On his shoulder, Firefly screeched in outrage at the affront to her owner, but Boris silenced her with a single Glare.

Fey smiled a goodbye to Tallen on her way out of the tavern before walking onto a forest trail, where the expression slid easily off her face.

With a lot of non-verbal negotiation with Boris, Blade managed to maneuver himself next to Fey. The fear engendered by silence was now greater than the fear of speaking, so he said, “Hey, I’m sorry.”

Fey glanced sideways at him. “For what?” Her tone implied not that he had done nothing wrong, but that she wanted to know if he understood his transgression.

Blade chose his next words very carefully. “For… assuming… you were – no, I mean, your behaviour was… due to PMS.”

Fey smiled a smile that said, ‘Perhaps you’re not too stupid to live, after all.’ The sincere and self-aware apology went a long way towards lessening her wrath. She patted him on the shoulder. “I’m still going to make your life miserable for a month.”

“What? ‘Still’? I’m really sorry, for real!”

“It’s the only way to prove that I don’t have PMS,” Fey said in her most reasonable tone, back to her usual mix of seriousness and joking.

“No, it’s not! Plus, I believe you!”

“Belief without evidence is just superstition,” Fey said scornfully, though her (evil) grin somewhat ruined the delivery. “Consider it an object lesson.”

Blade groaned in defeat and accepted his fate. Now that Fey was joking and had real facial expressions again, he was fairly certain that he would survive whatever diabolical revenge she came up with.

Fey was feeling much improved and not at all mopey. In fact, if Blade had claimed to have made his PMS comment in order to provoke this specific response, she would have forgiven him and foregone her object lesson. (Unfortunately for him, that had not been his purpose and he was too honest for the thought of lying about it to cross his mind.) She walked lightly on the trail that would lead to the level 30-40 monster territories, well familiar with the area after several days of training. On a whim, she broke into a jog.

“Why are we running?” Blade asked, his footsteps considerably heavier than Fey’s. In contrast to her stealthy, speed-dependent assassin class, he (with only a little manipulation on Sirena’s part) had advanced to the tank class. This was a generalized heavy-armour subclass that could further develop into subspecialties such as mounted knight, paladin, and the truly fortress-like shield knight. His equipment weighed at least double of hers, and running was not exactly a casual undertaking.

“To raise our stamina?” Fey suggested. Her feet felt as light as her restored mood, and she bounded for a couple of deer-like leaps before settling into a balanced jog, weight mainly on the balls of her feet.

Blade grunted. Not used to running around, his stamina was not as high as Fey’s, but his strength was double hers and while he made an unconscionable amount of noise by assassin standards, he was able to keep up.

Fey’s stamina was now 125 (see Chapter 12 if you don’t remember how stamina works) and she was easily able to talk and jog at the same time. She described the monsters she wanted to train on, the level 37 grey wolves that were in between her level 38 and Blade’s level 34; he and Sirena had fallen behind after a week of mostly travelling.

The grey wolves were a monster Fey had skipped in her solo training. They hunted in large packs, and their strong pack bonds made them resistant to the effects of Isolate. However, with a tank like Blade to attract their attention, their lack of defensive abilities made them an attractive target.

Blade nodded his understanding, saving his breath for running. “Sirena?” he asked.

“She’ll join us when she’s ready,” Fey answered, then began dropping back.

Amethyst hopped from Fey’s shoulder to Boris’ back, while the glooms dropped to the ground to run beside their owner. Boris began to trot more noisily and sped up in preparation to use his Charge.

“Take care of Boris!” Fey called. (Boris grunted derisively.)

Blade unslung the large shield from his back and focused on not falling too far behind the boar.

Fey and the glooms encountered the grey wolves about two minutes after Blade and Boris’ noisy attack. One wolf lay on the ground with a large, hoof-shaped indent in its ribs and Fey finished it off.

The rest of the wolves were now clustered around Blade and Boris, who had formed a defensive stance against a tree.

Blade’s level 30 skill had been Shield Bash, and he used it now to great effect, smashing the wolves to the ground when they leapt in attack. The move was powerful and had a stunning effect, but lacked the decisive damage required to make a kill.

Fey slipped into the fight, hidden in her Shadow Cloak. Blade could see her because they were in the same party, and was taken aback at the intent, merciless expression she wore as she looked at the wolves.

Until reaching the assassin class, Fey had done her best to avoid fighting monsters that looked like real animals. She was well aware that she was in a game, but it was too realistic for her taste. After all, the monsters had not done anything to deserve being killed, and here she was, exterminating them for experience and loot.

Gaining the Critical Sight ability had increased Fey’s offensive capabilities far more than it was designed to. Anyone with a basic knowledge of mammalian anatomy could identify the weak points on most of the monsters in Fantasia. Critical Sight was mainly intended to help with the more unusual monsters in the game.

What Critical Sight did for Fey was to simplify monsters down to coloured blobs she could easily interpret. One of the things she excelled at was absorbing and processing simplified visual schema with almost computer-like speed and precision. She could read at high speed with full recall and understanding, solve simple logic puzzles such as sudoku and nonograms faster than the mean time, and process tables and charts to find desired information without having to read them in their entirety.

Now at level 5, her Critical Sight showed her subtle variations in red: dark red for soft spots, brighter red for critical weaknesses, translucent red for critical spots protected by armour or bone, and pink for stun points. She now also saw blue in hardened areas that were poor targets to strike. With her mind now busy interpreting and acting upon the patterns she saw, killing monsters became a game not unlike the Dance Dance Revolution she so enjoyed.

Fey was aware of how much faster she killed monsters, but not how scary she looked while doing it. One could see from her expression that she no longer saw the coloured targets in front of her as living creatures. She kicked and stabbed her way through eyes, underbellies, and spines with brutal efficiency, eerily silent within the muffling effects of her Shadow Cloak. The wolves became aware of her after being attacked, but rarely had the chance to act upon it before dropping dead from massive blood loss and paralytic injuries. Blade was distracted enough by the disturbing sight that he occasionally had some close calls, but the Feypets covered for him.

Boris and Amethyst had formed an extremely effective fighting partnership. The slime had found a convenient strap in Boris’ saddle to tuck herself into, and now used the boar to counterbalance the huge forces she generated with Whip. She now frequently broke skin with her strikes, so she added bomblebee venom (learned from eating a bomblebee in Chapter 46) for an additional 50 damage to each attack. Boris barely noticed the shifts in momentum, and effectively gained a shield 2m in radius that left him free to Charge around, trample monsters, and cause Quakes without worrying about personal safety.

Unable to keep up with the sheer offensive output of Fey, Amethyst, and Boris, the glooms had abandoned the slow-working Suffocate and were diligently training Crush. The skill was currently not strong enough to do more than bruise and break the thinnest bones, so they targeted the feet of the wolves to cripple their movement speed.

At the rate they were now destroying monsters, Fey and her pets were used to jogging between three to four spawn sites with only small breaks to collect loot. Blade pushed himself to keep up and was rewarded for his exhaustion with small stamina increases. When he occasionally had enough energy for stray thoughts, he was glad that Fey had allowed the party’s experience point allocation to be set to ‘weighted’ rather than ‘individual’.

Footnotes:

(1) Several people suggested a variation of Berry, and someone said that it should follow the pattern set by Tallen and Todd, so Terry was decided upon.

(2) Pre-menstrual syndrome is a collection of unpleasant physical and psychological symptoms that women are supposed to get before the onset of menstrual bleeding that includes bloating, food cravings, fatigue, headache, breast tenderness, constipation/diarrhea, acne flare-ups, irritability, anxiety, depression, poor concentration, and social withdrawal. Estimates of the prevalence of this condition vary extremely widely due to the non-specific criteria. The author personally doesn’t notice any of these and thinks the actual cramping and bleeding part of the whole thing is the time everybody should be irritated and depressed about.

(3) Logarithmic scales are used to describe measures that have huge ranges in variation, where each unit increase corresponds to a multiplication of quantity. Examples of this include the pH scale for acidity, the Richter scale for earthquake magnitudes, and the decibel scale for sound.