Fey stood alone in a remote section of forest. It was distinguished from other remote sections of forest by the presence of the mana tree she had planted. The seedling now extended a handful of faintly luminescent leaves as high as Fey’s hip.

Unaccompanied even by her pets, whom she had sent to collect loot with Mimi, Fey was about to experiment with her Tree-singing ability. When not using telepathy and relying on her vocal cords, Fey’s singing was merely passable and nothing she would inflict on other people outside the confines of a karaoke booth (the entering of which was implicit agreement to tolerate amateur singing).

Tree-singing was not a common ability for players, though universal for elven NPCs, and the information about it online was scant. All Fey knew was that she needed to sing near a tree and have mana reserves available.

Fey decided to first experiment on a normal tree. She placed her hands on the trunk of a forest giant, took a deep breath, and sang the ascending and descending notes of a simple major scale. Focusing on getting the pitches exactly right, she repeated it multiple times, not paying attention to her vision or the faint drawing sensation of mana consumption.

She checked her progress after the tenth repetition. She had consumed about 200MP, almost one-sixth of her mana stores. In response, a narrow spiral ramp had formed to wind around the tree trunk, less than half the width of her foot, reaching all the way up its length to the first fork.

Nodding to herself, Fey left the regular tree to sit next to her mana tree sapling. It was far too small to support any kind of structures, so she decided to see if she could make it grow faster with her singing.

Bored of singing scales, Fey chose a pop song in a high range and sang it, closing her eyes and visualizing the sapling growing taller and thicker. The mana drain this time was significantly greater. By the time she finished the song, she had basically depleted the rest of her mana, and the sapling was a hand’s length taller.

Fey tsked, wishing she had brought Amethyst with her. With the slime’s ability to secrete potions, she could basically transfer her much greater mana stores over to Fey.

Standing up, she patted the sapling. She would come back regularly to work on the tree-building she had started and help her mana tree grow.

She noticed a new line on her status screen:

There did not seem to be any effects associated with the new stat, but its appearance was a good sign that she was on to something with the mana tree sapling.

On her way back to find her party, she paused by the tree with the spiral ramp. It looked quite conspicuous to her, a clearly artificial structure in the middle of the forest. Her mind flashed to when she had seen Kallara reveal hidden cupboards in her shop and return them to hiding afterwards. The healer whistled a specific three-note combination to uncover the structures, then the reverse to hide them again.

Fey could not whistle, but she sang the reverse combination. The ramp sank into the wood with barely any mana cost. She smiled and patted the now plain-looking trunk on her way out of the area.

***

The rumbling thunder of heavy steps shook the ground as Blade set his tower shield and braced.

The situation appeared preposterous. A stone rhinoceros, as large and heavy as the regular version, bore down with maximum speed. It appeared that Blade was about to be trampled in a painful, gory death.

Maintaining remarkable composure given his hindbrain’s insistence he was about to die, Blade activated Iron Stance[i]. A faint red glow encased his shield and body.

Horn lowered, the rhinoceros charged without slowing, colliding with Blade’s shield with a deafening crash.

When, against all common sense (and laws of physics), Blade failed to be thrown back, his shield not even suffering a dent, the stone rhinoceros experienced the entire force of its charge halted in a second. Fine cracks riddled its body and it collapsed, stunned, onto the ground.

A splash of water appeared out of nowhere, soaking the stone monster but doing no damage. A moment later, the water froze. Expanding ice shattered the cracked rock, revealing softer earth underneath.

A crossbow bolt buried itself deep into the rhinoceros’ chest and exploded. The monster promptly died.

A swarm of small pets covered the remains, extracted everything of value, including the rhinoceros’ crystalline horn, and loaded it onto Boris’ packs. The upgraded enchantments on the packs ensured that everything fit neatly away.

Blade lowered his shield and whooped. “That worked perfectly!”

Sirena walked over to examine her handiwork, followed by her air-floating jellyfish. The rhinoceros’ stony armour was as thick as the length of a finger, and she raised her eyebrows. “I’m surprised I could crack that.”

By this point, the Feypets had finished packing up all the loot and Boris carried everyone over to Mimi. Squeaking excitedly, Amethyst was clearly eager to lure another monster into the trap.

Before Mimi could say anything, another rumble began shaking the earth. Somehow this sounded more widespread than the previous rhinoceros’ charge.

“Oh no,” Blade muttered, looking at the herd of angry stone rhinoceroses charging towards them. The monsters had no herd loyalty, merely a berserker level of attack initiative that caused them to attack anything and everything within their territory.

He had very little faith that his defensive abilities could stand up to an entire herd of rhinoceroses, but stepped in front of Sirena and set his shield. After all, it was far too late to run.

A crossbow bolt landed in the middle of the herd and exploded. It failed to kill any of the monsters but disrupted their charge. Only two continued their headlong charge towards Blade and Sirena.

As Blade once again prepared to used Iron Stance, he heard Sirena’s cheerful voice behind him.

“I do believe this calls for a miracle.” She began to sing her patron god’s name. “Thrain, Thrain, come today, make these monsters go away[ii].”

As the sky began to darken, the leading pair crashed against Blade’s shield. He held against the onslaught, although his feet slid back a short distance from the two simultaneous collisions. Sirena treated them to the same water-ice magic combination, and this time Blade finished them off by thrusting down with his gigantic shield, severing their heads.

The remaining herd had recovered and split their focus, half continuing towards Blade and Sirena, the other half aiming for Mimi and the Feypets. Each group held four of the massive creatures.

Mimi calmly shot and reloaded her crossbow, destroying or crippling two monsters before they neared. In contrast to his usual aggressive charge, Boris backed up until his haunches rested against one of the giant forest trees. Mimi kept even with the boar.

Three lengths, two, one.

With a tremendous boom, the rhinoceros on the right had its charge neutralized and its skull reduced to rock powder and dirt by Amethyst’s level 19 Whip. Boris grunted at the recoil, leaning against the tree for support.

At the same time, the crossbow in Mimi’s hands transformed instantly into a heavy pike of the same matte black as the ranged weapon. She braced it expertly against the tree. Unable to react in time, the rhinoceros on the left ran into it at full speed and impaled itself halfway up the length of the weapon.

A dark cloud appeared in the formerly sunny sky. It grew rapidly and spun, expanding vertically until a full-grown tornado touched down on the ground. Controlled by Sirena’s will, the wind construct bore down on the remaining monsters, picked them up, and spat them out in every direction. She gleefully sent the tornado after the monsters again and again so that each one was lifted and flung almost ten times before the magic dissipated.

Silence reigned. Blade cautiously relaxed his stance. “I can’t believe we’re all alive.”

The Feypets were already hard at work, excitedly picking up the bountiful harvest of loot the game gods had seen fit to bestow upon them. Mimi’s Shifty reverted back to its much smaller crossbow shape and she gave it a pat before joining the pets in their efforts.

Sirena patted Blade’s shoulder. “You worry too much.” She walked over and meekly accepted Amethyst’s squeaking scolds, presumably due to the fact that her rough treatment had shattered the rhinoceroses’ valuable horns.

Blade sighed and shook his head. He would complain that the game was unbalanced if his party of three level 50 players could take on a herd of ten level 50 stone rhinoceroses without a single injury or even using all of their abilities, but having hunted in parties made up of different members, he knew it was actually his current party-mates that were ridiculously unbalanced. He glanced at the sky (where presumably the dev gods looked on) and muttered, “I hope nobody nerfs us.”

He flinched as a giant hunk of rock went whizzing past his head, then looked around, puzzled, for its source. The size of the rock meant that he doubted either Sirena or Mimi would have been able to throw it. His eye traced its trajectory backwards and landed on the Feypets.

His puzzlement deepened. Certainly Boris would be strong enough to throw boulders if he had opposable thumbs, but he didn’t. The smaller Feypets certainly would not…

Blade’s body went cold as Amethyst casually latched onto another boulder and flung it aside to reveal a coin underneath. Using her bubble arm, which was now tipped with what looked like the Pac-Man version of a three-fingered gripping claw, she delicately gripped the small disc and put it into a pack.

Blade looked up at the sky again. “I hope somebody nerfs that slime,” he said, enunciating carefully so that any dev gods watching might hear him clearly.

With an offended squeak, Amethyst changed her claw into a scoop and hurled a splatter of mud at his face.

Footnotes:

[i] Named by Aetheo

[ii] Sung in the same tune as the nursery song “Rain Rain Go Away”