SING CRIER CH.23 - Caviar 「 We have visitors. Seven days. 」 『『 ... 』』 So we'll be dead in a week then... Eeh... that's longer than expected... Agehatate strolls to the water's edge. There, she lowers her head and seems to peer into the raging river. Staring in silence, the morning sun's rays coat her fur in an orange glow. After a while, she closes her eyes for just a few more moments... before returning to us, taking her time. ...Don't look at us, we don't understand her either. Once at our side again, she lies down, casting a shadow upon us. With the full length of her body and tails, she surrounds us in fluffy white fur. 「 Will you two spend today as well beholding the water? 」 We continue lying on the ground. 「 ...Or perhaps, would you two like more rest first? 」 She cranes her head closer. We can feel her eyes on us. 「 Know, however, that I cannot allow either of you 「 to be falling asleep on the ground again... 「 So if you two would like to rest... 「 I will have no choice but to stay here. 」 ... We sit up. 「 ...Then I will fetch you two a morning meal instead. 「 Let me know if the river becomes anymore interesting. 」 Unfurling, she returns to her feet. Making her way to the river's edge, she crosses in one effortless bound, and melds into the shadows of the forest. Leaving just us, on a barren rock island in the middle of a whitewater river, surrounded on all sides by rock-laden forests, alone with the rumble of a distant waterfall, and the early chirping of miscellaneous birds. Also, no mana. That's the state of things. We lie back down on our backs and hold hands, then stare up at the sky mindlessly. ... We stare up at the sky mindlessly for so long its hues change from orange to almost cyan. In that time, our new effect, Eldritch Serendipity, has risen from level one to level forty-one. So we should be qualified enough to tell you exactly what it is. ... It's sweating, shivers, shortness of breath, dizziness, tunnel vision, and pain. It's spinal screeching against the signature agony of an icy phantom grip's twisting and churning. It's harrowing anxiety. It's overwhelming dread. It's Eldritch Fear. And it's as much serendipity as a cemetery is a leaderboard. A radar for fortunate coincidences, where the only fortunate coincidence is death. That's what Eldritch Serendipity is: just a rebranded Eldritch Fear. Utterly pathetic. ... How are we thinking so clearly...? Despite all the pain affecting our bodies, you want to know how we're so calm? You think it's a bit jarring? Well, how do we say this... Die, idiot. Don't ask questions like that. Don't even try figuring it out yourself because the answer will mark you for death. Understood? It's nothing. Forget it. ... As for what was causing Eldritch Serendipity to rise... Well, we can tell you it's not internal. Our fear was, and still is, pointed in a direction. Eldritch Serendipity even levelled up just now. Our "killer," is in our vicinity, and with each passing second, our deaths become more likely. Isn't that scary? Horrifying. Hm? What do you mean do something about it? Why would we do that? We all knew this was coming, it's just earlier than expected. ... Just let it happen. Nine-Tails, Polimion, that necromancer, this river... You think we have any attachment to these things? They're just the next Jing'ra, the next Sal'venakai. If we die, the same thing will happen. New people, new places, and no importance. The slate is wiped clean every time, leaving nonsense in its wake. You think our last deaths were the last time? This time for sure? This time for sure? They can't die every single time? They can't? You think so? You really really think so? Haha. ... ...Silly. There's no purpose for us heŕ̨͕̞̥̯̖̗̮̎ͭ̐̑ͣͥe͚̥ͫ͊͆̓͟-̉̉̆̇͟ ҉ ͘ ́ ̸ ̵ ͟ ͏ ̨ 『『 Ah?! 』』 「 ...! 」 We see a colourful blur of mostly orange dive from the coast of the island, into the river. At the same time, the pains in our spines die down. 『 ... 』 『 Hah... hah... 』 Sing clutches her heart, while Crier hugs herself... We gasp to fill our lungs... Sweat drips from our bodies, and our hands tremble uncontrollably... Eldritch Serendipity spiked to level ninety for a second, and we sat up without thinking. ... We fall back onto our backs and resume staring up at the sky. After some time, Agehatate makes a silent return. ...We can tell without looking because of our rising mana points. To put it simply, Agehatate emits something like an aura of mana around herself that causes our mana to go up when she's near, and deplete to zero when she's not. This passive effect didn't exist in Myriad Worlds, and we don't know why it was so much stronger at the temple... but we do know it means we can't use magic unless she's around. It's gone up and down enough for us to tell that much. Agehatate approaches and stands over us, then seems to scan us with her eyes. 「 Did something interesting happen after all? 」 We smush our mouths shut and look away. 「 ...How quaint. 」 With one of her tails, she gently lowers what appears to be some kind of... bleeding... wooden bulb. We stare at it blankly. 「 It is meat. 」 It is wood. 「 I have wrapped it differently, but I am sure this is not a problem for you two.」 Wrapped? In wood? What kind of wrapping is this? There are no cracks or signs of bending, it's more like a tree complete with bark grew around and swallowed the contents. Did she start wrapping this meat ten years ago? 「 I have matters to attend to, so I shall leave you two with this. 」 Unamusement. 「 If you must feed the fish again, I would advise a bit of restraint... 「 One handful at a time and you might enjoy their company for longer. 」 And with that, she disappears into the forest yet again. ...The only thing that we will concede, is that throwing the meat into the river yesterday, was a very slightly questionable decision worthy of exceptionally minor regret. In any case, what matters now, is that we have more delicious raw meat to pick apart and devour. Perfectly juicy and chewy meat that tears at just the right pressures... Pluck. Hmm? Crack. Eh? Crackle. Crunch. Crack. Extreme unamusement. 『 « Identify » 』 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

LV.30 ▬ Waemour Favöna

Armour Fungus

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Effects ▐ ◈ Regeneration[LV.30]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ This wooden "wrapping..." is regenerating faster than we can pull it off... We can't... get to the meat inside... Unless we use magic! ...Which we can't! Because Agehatate left! Die! Sing tries to pick up the bulb, but it's a bit too heavy for just her. Crier tries to help, but her contribution is unnoticeable. ... We sit. ...Our Eldritch Serendipity has risen a bit, and our spines are beginning to churn again. That might mean that orange entity is still around... Maybe we can... get them to remove this fungus...? That might work... What attracts them? Noise? Smell? If it's just noise that's no problem, but if it's smell... Ah, we can roll the bulb near the water, it's bleeding after all. But before we do that we need to figure out: 1. If they're even capable of breaking the fungus. 2. If yes, how we're going to get them to break it. We could resolve the first with « Identify »... but will we be able to say "Identify" before they dive back into the water? Their reaction speed is kind of inhuman... They don't seem to enjoy being looked at either... Ah... this might be a little tricky... 『 Testing... 』 Eldritch Serendipity rises. 『 Testing! 』 Eldritch Serendipity stagnates. Oh, nevermind... this might be easier than we thought. This confirms that although they're timid, their interest in the noise is greater. So there should be some way to... Get them to... Hmm... We might... have a plan... 『 Let's start by... 』 『 ...making some noise? 』 Eldritch Serendipity rises. Noise will suffice. 『 Don't break eye contact with me... 』 『 Do you think it might be a monster? 』 『 Either way, they probably won't understand us. 』 Our rising spinal pain makes it harder to sit still. 『 What do you think... of what Agehatate said? 』 『 About only worrying... about the present? 』 『 Yes... and leaving the future... hah... to her... 』 『 ...I don't know. 』『 She's strange... 』 Our breaths become heavier... We focus on each other's eyes... With our hands balled into fists... We quickly glance and cast the skill. 『 『 « Identify »! 』』 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

LV.7 ▬ Setsyun's Progeny

Juvenile Kraken

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HP ▐ 694/700

MP ▐ 680/700

SP ▐ 681/700

P.ATK ▐ 130

P.DEF ▐ 130

M.ATK ▐ 130

M.DEF ▐ 130

Effects ▐ ◈ Adaptive Armour

▐ Fear[LV.1]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 「 ?! 」 We still can't make out a figure; being at the edge of the island, the creature escapes in a blur, but not before we catch a glimpse of its status window. It's a Kraken. A river Kraken. What even is a river Kraken? Kraken can live in rivers? That's news to us... Are Kraken actually like salmon maybe? They swim their ginormous bodies up rivers and waterfalls, lay eggs, and their babies swim back out to the sea? ... No no no, adult Kraken are way too big... Even if this river had no island in the middle it still wouldn't be big enough for even a single adult Kraken... How did a juvenile Kraken get here then? Actually, Kraken can have children?! It sounds like common sense that Kraken would have children now, but we've never heard of them existing in Myriad Worlds... They just kind of... you know, appeared adult-sized... We shake our heads. What's important now is the meat! Juvenile or elder, it doesn't matter, can it remove the fungus? The answer is... A resounding no. 1. Not enough damage. Regeneration [LV.30] heals more than double this monster's attack stat, both physical, and magical. 2. Very not enough damage. One hundred and thirty is this monster's maximum attack damage, which means if it threw one hundred percent of its power into an attack. Realistically it's regular attack damage range is like, seventy maybe. In which case, it's one-fourth of the damage needed just to break even. 3. Hyper not enough damage. The fungus is an armour fungus, which means it has durability that is fitting for its level: level thirty. This Kraken is level seven. If we assume this fungus has a P.DEF equal to a base level thirty human (it almost certainly doesn't but lets pretend), then its P.DEF... is approximately three hundred. So in reality, this Kraken probably deals zero damage to this fungus. Yes, zero damage. Alright then. Good. ... Stomach growl... Okay, let's get creative. Kraken have stats that are dramatically above normal monsters of the same level, this is naturally because they're boss monsters, elites, big baddies, what have you. While this juvenile Kraken is totally and utterly useless attack wise... its inflated stat values can still be utilized. Seven hundred mana points. For reference, Jing'ra, at level forty-one, had four hundred eighty-nine. What could I do if I personally had seven hundred mana? I could cast a really strong fire spell with a magic circle. All I'd have to do is draw the circle, set the catalyst, and then cast it. The only problem is that I can't cast it. But you know who could cast it? A certain orange Kraken. ...Done. Magic circle carved into the ground, stupid wood bulb thing placed in the centre, and we cut some of our hair to use as a catalyst. There was a slight technical difficulty; it turns out our hair bleeds when cut for some reason, so there's a bit of a mess... but it's probably fine. Now then... Eldritch Serendipity [LV.2] Let's get this number back up. 『 Crier? 』 『 What is it, Sing? 』 『 Do you think this Kraken will be able to do it? 』 Eldritch Serendipity rises. 『 They have to... how else are we going to get the meat... 』 『 If all else fails we could just wait for Agehatate to come back... 』 『 No... that's too long... 』『 Way too long... 』 Eldritch Serendipity seems to rise even faster than before. Could it be getting used to us? What was it planning to do anyway? Well, eat us, that's the most straightforward idea... But surely a creature of its power, if hungry, would just eat us? There must be more to it... Kraken aren't stupid. ... We bite our lips. At this level, the creature should at least be looking at us now. Is it time? Shall we start then? We're going to start okay? We take deep breaths, and try our best to calm our bodies. Eldritch Serendipity [LV.39] It's time... Here we go... Sing grabs the bulb, and tears off a few pieces. Her hands become damp with the blood leaking from it. Naturally, the bulb regenerates its armour almost instantly. Crier, meanwhile, puts her hands on the magic circle and closes her eyes. ...She swallows her breath. 『 E... « Exalwick ». 』 Of course, nothing happens, but Crier takes a few more drawn out breaths. 『 « Exalwick »! 』 She darts her gaze around the magic circle, the bottom, the top, the interior and exterior lines, as if looking for a fault. But when it's clear there's none, she looks at Sing. Sing raises her blood covered hands, shaking and with slightly curled fingers. Crier sighs, brushes the sweat off of her forehead, then grabs Sing's arm and pulls her up onto her feet. Together... we walk to the edge of the island... mostly opposite to the direction of our fear. Eldritch Serendipity [LV.48] The island, although flat, takes us a minute to get to the edge, but once we're there, we have Sing dip her hands into the water to wash them. All the while, Eldritch Serendipity continues to rise... until it suddenly stops -- and rapidly declines. We keep looking down at the water, and continue with what we're doing. ... Thump. ...Crack. Crackle. Crunch. ...The air becomes silent, save for the distant waterfall. ...We finish washing Sing's hands, but, it's clear this isn't going anywhere. Part one of the plan is complete and the monster is targeting the meat, that much is clear from our dropped Eldritch Serendipity... ...but either, they're not connecting the dots, or they don't feel safe enough to mimic us yet. ... We look down at our bodies. A mix of bandages... with some kind of interwoven silk repairing the areas where bandages were lost. ...Huh. We never really looked since we woke up here... In any case, there are some bloodstains, so it makes sense to wash those too... right? We sit down on the edge, and slowly, carefully, dip our feet into the rushing water. ...It's pleasantly cold. Ah, but like this, it'd take us a bit longer to pull ourselves back onto our feet! What would we do if that monster were to... oh, we don't know, show up again and do something that would require making noise?! We would never be able to get up and stop them in time! ...Will this be enough space, Kraken? 「 ...« 𝄞◑◑◕◕◑◑◑◑ »! 」 A monstrous melody rings out into the air, ebbing, wavering, like a voice through a turbine. Despite not a single word of any language being formed, glassy sounds of magic fill the air. [END]