Act: 7
[ Lin: Ranker Class (B) Star: 5 Age: 23 Height: 5'8 Eyes: Red; Hair: All over the place, Red ]
[ Bruce: Ranker Class (C) Star: 3 Age: 28 Height: 6'5 / Eyes: Black; Hair: Short Prickly, blonde]
[ Tila: Ranker Class (C) Star: 4 Age: 19 Height: 4'8 / Eyes: Hazel; Hair: Short, Black ]
[ Fujiki Taku: Class (B) Star: 4 Age: 17 Height 5'6 / Eyes: Blue; Hair: Spiky Brown ]
- - - -
Stepping foot inside the other realm, located in the Entangled Woods, they all stop for a minute to look around scouting out the surroundings. As they had stopped the blue portal behind them slowly deteriorated.
Taku jumps forward a bit startled by the closing portal.
"Ah! Wait where did it go!"
Lin turned his head over to Taku, chuckling a bit.
"You really are a newbie. Basically, how portals work is that once you enter, it will close on-off ensuring no monsters can escape and how to re-open it is by defeating the boss which is whatever the portal's energy is being strung from, and after just head back to where you came from. If you get scared or realize you can't complete the quest, you have to have an exit pass to re-open the portal or wait for it to re-open and you must hurry your way back before it closes."
Confused a bit, Taku tries to absorb the information he's receiving.
"Also, I almost forgot to mention that portal colors resemble how difficult they are."
"So, what happens if you make it out and the portal is still open, can't monsters then make their way out?"
"Yes, they can, but what you can do with your party members is close off the portal right when you leave so nothing can make its way out. Make sense?"
"Yea.. I understand? By the way, Lin, what is your Star ability? If you don't mind me asking."
"Oh yeah, my ability is photon blade. When I received my Star, I was able to summon a red-bladed sword on command. I can use the energy and enclose the blade with and or fire projectile lasers from when I swing the sword."
Taku thinks a bit before turning his head and looking over in Tila's direction.
"So, Tila how about you, what's your ability?"
"Healing whip-"
His eyes widened with fear after hearing the whip part.
"Ah! Healing what! You mean to tell me that you whip us in order to heal... that's not even fair! It's like pleasurable punishment, wait no.. I mean.."
The rest of the party members smirked and began to laugh at Taku.
"No silly. I have healing absorb and enhanced healing powers that can heal fetal wounds fairly quick. And if I want to, I can cast my healing onto my whip and launch the spell at you without the whip actually touching you, to help with long-ranged healing."
"Pft you still whip someone in the end.."
Glaring in her direction he slowly turns over to Bruce.
"So, Bruce, what's your Star ability?"
"Rocken Rusher, what I'm able to do is strengthen the defense in my shield, and the more energy I put into it the bigger it gets. But the main part of my ability is to boost my body in defense and rush dealing heavy damage."
"What! What do you mean by first ability!"
"You don't know about passive abilities hm? So, they are abilities that you can cast on yourself or others depending on what your main ability is, for example, my passive is that I can boost all of your guy's defense, and the more energy I put into it the greater the percentage of defense it becomes."
"That's so cool! I didn't even know you could do that! How do you get it!"
"By basically mastering or understanding your Star?"
'I wonder if Shizu has one..? Nah he's way too useless for that.'
With a serious look on Lin's face, he walks towards the entrance of the woods before stopping and summoning his sword.
"Now that's out of the way, let's get ready to hunt this spider down!"
*Yeah!*
"Yeaa... spiders, how fun."
Leaving a disgusted expression on Taku as they all walk further into the woods trailing behind Lin.
- - - -
The further they went into the forest the darker it had become, and more trees seemed to surround them with a bunch of spider webs tangled between the tree branches and bushes. As they kept walking straight, they kept an eye out looking left and right making sure nothing was preparing for an attack.
With a laid-back attitude, Taku rests his wand behind his neck, relaxing his arms.
"Mmmm this is kind of boring, we haven't even seen a single spider yet. I wanna fight already!"
Lin looks back at Taku while keeping straight.
"I have somewhat of an idea on why we haven't seen one yet.. It is because we're not making a scene!"
Smirking, Lin lifts his sword in the air as red energy starts to cover the entire blade.
"Rapid Slash!"
Aiming towards the trees to his left and right, he swings his sword in an x like motion releasing red waves that sliced the trees in half causing a bunch of noise. They continue to walk forward while Lin keeps slashing waves of energy at the trees.
"Lin? Doesn't that use quite a bit of energy? And shouldn't you save it for the boss?"
"Not at all, Hiyah, it actually depends on how much energy I put into my blade. Right now, I'm using only a fraction of it."
*Hiyah*
'Hm.. He may be a lot stronger than I anticipated, only using a fraction of his energy but he's able to do this much damage to the woods.'
*Sssisss*
"Hehe, and now it seems like I made some of em mad. Get ready guys, it's showtime."
Multiple little red eyes peered from within the darkness behind all the trees. A flood of 9-foot spiders jumped from out of the darkness rushing towards Lin.
A jolt goes down Taku's spine as he looks at what seems to be hundreds of spiders.
"Ew!"
The red light from Lin's sword became much brighter as he had put more energy into it. Rushing towards the crowd of spiders in front of him, leaping into the air he jabs his sword into its head, ripping it out and slashing at the next spider cutting it in half.
*Slash*
*Squish!*
"Get into formation! Bruce backs up Tila and Taku. I'll deal with the ones up ahead and try to clear out the area before making your way towards me!"
Lin continues to fight the spiders in the front drawing most of their attention to him, but two spiders slowly creep their way behind Tila and Bruce.
"Tila get ready for your assisted power and Taku you stay behind me. I will deal with the creepy crawlies who surround us."
*Slash, Slash*
*Gross, I got spider guts on me!*
Taku turns around and looks at Bruce and Tila, quickly lifting his wand up in their direction.
"Ice Fragment."
*Woosh*
The Star pentagram symbol appears in front of the crystal of the staff creating an Icy wind around it.
A troubled look forms on Bruce's face as he looks at what Taku is about to do.
"Taku what are you doing!"
"Tila stay behind me, Iron Fort! 30%"
Bruce's shield glows as it gets a bit bigger and creates a small bubble around him and Tila.
Bruce prepared himself for the impact of the ice seeing that it only flew past him, hitting two spiders in a row killing them. Taku turns to his left and launches another Ice Fragment into the darkness killing some more spiders.
'Hm, so this staff really amplified the power of my ice and merged my Star into the form of a pentagram, cool I gotta say.'
*Gawh*
"Anyways Bruce are you ok? I don't see any spiders near us so why'd you put the shield up? I don't know about you, but I don't want to stand and watch. I wanna fight with Lin."
Bruce is left with an embarrassed look on his face as he watches Taku take off heading to Lin. Tila then jumps over him and out of the bubble and runs backward towards their direction.
"If they get to fight I wanna join in on the fun too!"
*Sigh*
Bruce lets down his shield and jogs his way to the others to "join in on the fun." Lin jabs his sword into the spider's head struggling to remove it. A spider suddenly jumps out of the tree to his right ready to attack him, until a wall of Ice blocks the spider and it smashes its head.
"You can thank me later, let's just clear out the rest of 'em."
Removing the sword from its head he continues to lash at the incoming spiders, while Ice is being shot at some other spiders, the strikes of the whip splitting them into two and the bashing of the shield killing them from impact. All of them fighting together they end up clearing out the entire area of spiders and proceed to loot them.
"Now that was fun, we all had each other's back. I was like pew, and you came in with the sword slash, slash, Bruce had a whole pile of them in front of his shield sending them flying. And Tila, it's almost scary how good you are with that whip."
Tila chuckles a bit.
"Hm, are you curious about how it feels?"
"See I'm glad you asked but I have to humbly decline.. this time.."
Lin and Bruce start to laugh at Tila and Taku's mini conversation before Lin clears his throat to get the attention of the two.
*Ahem*
"We're not done yet. This means that the boss must be up ahead. Let's show it what we're made of."
They all finish looting and head deeper into the woods to encounter a circular dead end with a huge spider web resting within it. Right as they arrive eight glowing red eyes appear within the webs. Crawling out of the webs a 20-foot Spider emerges staring all four of them down.
Taku was the only one who seemed to be startled by it, he looks at Lin, Tila, and Bruce and sees that they are unfazed by the monster.
"So, you mean to tell me that this is normal for y'all?"
Lin looks over at Taku.
"Kinda, we have seen worse so it's not too bad, like this one tim-"
*HISSAAH*
Taku swings his staff up and fires a huge fragment of Ice at the spider hitting it in its eye.
"Shut up! I'm trying to hear him!"
*Thud*
The spider jumps down from its web shaking the ground quite a bit and lets off a loud hiss as it gets ready to charge at Taku.
"I wanna say you pissed it off more than it already was.."
Taku shrugs his shoulders with a scowling look on his face.
"It got what it deserved! Buuut I think we should get ready because he, she, whatever it is, it's kinda getting close."
All four of them get into a fighting stance ready for the spider to make its first move.