"Don't joke with me." 7 said as he stared at me in disbelief.
"I'm serious," I said solidly. I was confident with my choice of him being my substitute. Through his actions, he had proven to me that he was the one. Instead of insisting further, I decided to give him some time to take it in.
It felt like we were about to have a family moment. Sort of like the day a father offers to teach his son how to shave or something. What? How would I know what shaving means? I'm a snail...
But like most moments, something is always there to interrupt it.
*Ding*
[Quest initiated: Train a new leader!]
"There's that voice again! Can't you hear it?" I asked 7 suddenly as soon as I heard it. He shook his head in confusion.
Seeing that I probably looked like I was crazy, I decided to change the subject.
"Okay, come on. Let's go see the adventuring team." as I gave 7 a pat on his shell and slowly crawled toward the adventuring team members who were resting in near the edge of the leaf.
They had already woken up and were eating breakfast as we approached.
"Hello," I said as they looked up at me. Guess what their reaction was? Yup. They had the same view of awe just like all the other snails had of me that morning.
"Don't worry, it's still me. I'm just a bit... bigger? I'm still your big brother." I said in an attempt to calm them down some. I mean I did love the attention that my size brought me that morning, but it had gotten old pretty quickly.
Slowly, Mistra - the self-appointed leader of the adventurer team - approached me.
"Hello brother. You promised us the whole story yesterday during our escape. You care to enlighten us on the situation?" She asked.
"Yes," I replied.
And then I started to explain the long convoluted chain of events that had led me to capture 60, kill two Spike-shelled snails, be captured myself and rescue 7 and 11. You don't want to hear the whole story again right? So I'll skip over it and their reactions.
...
"But how did you know we were on the leaf?" Mistra asked me after I finished the entire story including the part when I rescued them.
"I just had a feeling you know?" I explained and that was the truth.
"Just like me!" Sim pitched in suddenly.
"It's true." Hans pitched in.
"What do you mean?" I asked as 7 and I looked curiously at Sim. If you had forgotten, Sim was the snail who was super energetic and rushed off for adventure all those days before.
"Well let me start from the beginning." Mistra started. "We were travelling down the branch... we had just passed the Spike-shells leaf."
"Actually we were a few hours past the Spike-shelled leaf and we were making new grounds." John interrupted.
"As I was saying, we travelled a few hours past the Spike-shelled snail's leaf when we moved into an area with shade." Mistra continued.
"It was branch!" Sim added excitedly.
"It was indeed a branch. The that we saw hangs over ours. I followed the branch with my eyes and in the distance, that branch seemed to cross down from above and connect with our branch." said Mistra.
"Okay? So you saw a branch. What's so special about this branch and what does this have to do with Sim's gift?" I asked Mistra. But before she could answer, John answered instead.
"It was white, but it wasn't white."
"Yes. John's right... But can you all stop interrupting me?" said Mistra. She turned around and threatened to slap John and Sim if they didn't shut-up. "What was special about the branch wasn't the branch itself, it was that extremely thin strands of white hung down everywhere from the branch. We approached the strands with extreme care and..." she continued.
"And I touched one of them!" Sim shouted. "It was sticky. Stickier than anything I had touched before. It seemed to latch onto my body, but fell off because of my mucus."
"Okay, but what does that have to do with your gut feeling or gift?" I asked.
"I was getting to that," Mistra answered instead of Sim. "We cautiously crawled forward and dodged strand after strand. As we moved forward, the number of strands seemed to increase in number. Being the vigilant snails we are, we slowed down our speed and carefully slid past them. Suddenly..."
"Suddenly, I felt something!" Sim said as he jumped up and down in place. "It... It was like something was calling to me you know?"
"Yes, I know that feeling," I replied.
"Yes. He felt something and he couldn't control himself." Mistra said as she turned to hit Sim once more, but failed as he preemptively hid in his shell as if he was expecting Mistra to hit him. "Sim just shot off into the distance without looking back or waiting for us."
"It was treasure! I felt the pull of treasure! It was in front of us. It was right there!" Sim shouted from the safety of his shell.
"We chased after him to try to get him to stop," added Hans. "But as we slid closer and closer to him, we began to see glimpses of what he was screaming about."
"In the distance, through all the strands of white strands, we saw it," said John.
"It was shiny. It was so shiny!" shouted Sim. "I knew I had to go get it. I could feel it calling out to me."
"And what was this treasure?" I asked.
"IT was a bright colourful fruit of some kind. It dangled down from the branch above." Mistra continued while looking at the snails that interrupted her. "It was dazzling, bright and pink. It shone even though the sunlight was blocked out by the clouds. It looked crystalline. It was beautiful."
"So did you find out what it was?" I asked.
"No," Mistra replied. "We were stopped by a wall of white strings. We couldn't make it through."
"What about Sim?" I asked.
"Luckily, we were able to stop Sim before he barrelled through the sticky wall that was blocking us from the fruit," Hans added.
"Seeing that our path and the fruit was blocked off, we gave up and decided to report back to you," said Mistra. "But on the way..."
"But on the way back you were captured by the Spiked-shelled snails, right?" I asked.
"Yes. They were on the branch and were waiting for us. Well, 60 was waiting for us. They surrounded our team and then we were brought and imprisoned on their leaf. Well imprisoned until you found us." Mistra explained.
"So what do you think we should do about crystalline fruit?" Mistra asked while looking up at me for an answer.
I thought deeply about the situation. 'Was the fruit worth the danger?' I asked myself. I had a gut feeling that whatever it was, it was something that was highly important. Instead of answering Mistra, I turned to 7.
"What do you think about the situation?" I asked him. Of course, I wanted to hear what he had to say. I also wanted to give him a chance to figure things out on his own. Afterall, he needed a chance to learn and become a great leader.
7 seemed to look down at the leaf below him in deep thought. Both the adventuring team and I stared closely at his movements. We waited diligently for him to come up with an answer. Finally, after a few minutes, he seemed to take in a deep breath. It looked like he had thought about the whole situation and had decided on an idea.
"We... we should try to get the fruit."
Surprised, I stared at him. "Really? I thought you would decide that we should leave it alone." I commented. Normally, he'd be the snail that had the safer less risky plan. But this time, he decided on a more adventurous and more dangerous one.
'I guess a part of my nature was rubbing off of him.' I thought to myself. And just like clockwork, the voice in my head seem to agree as I heard a ding.
[Quest: Train a new leader!] (updated)
[Progress: 6%]
But before I could ask if any snail heard the noise a well, 7 spoke once more.
"We should visit once more and see if we can get past the wall of sticky threads first."
"I agree. According to Sim's observation, we can use our mucus to get through the sticky strands. Also, since our shells aren't spiky, they won't be caught on the while sliding through them. We can just cover our shells in mucus to get through the final wall." I suggested.
"But whatever the strands are, we should be careful. We don't know what or how the strands or made and why the strands are sticky." I added as I looked around at the group.
The adventuring team and 7 seemed to nod their heads in agreement. "Okay, we will leave tomorrow," I said as I heard another ding and the voice in my head begin to speak once more.
[Quest initiated: Fruit collection]
At this point, I had a feeling of what the voice was. It was recording my choices and my speech somehow. And it kept on saying that I started some kind of "Quest". "Is this the new voice of the heavens? Is it testing me?" I questioned to myself out loud.
"What do you mean?" 7 asked as he stared at me as if I had turned insane.
"Don't worry about it. Let's go train the defence teams." I said.
That day was a busy day, we spent the rest of the afternoon training the defence teams. 11 seemed to show interest and joined us that afternoon as we stretched, exercised and played battle-based games all afternoon.
We slept quietly in our shells that night like nothing happened the day before.
Summary of day 19: I interacted with my system, named 7 as the deputy leader, spoke with the adventuring team, and trained with the defence team.
+ 1 leadership
+ 1 intelligence
+ 1 humility
[Quest: Diplomacy with the Spiked-shells] (updated)
[Spike-shelled Snail Colony] (updated)
Relationship rating: -10*
Status: ???