"I'm sure I will. Well, we have Ruby's ticket, how are we going to get Ipa, Ken, and Soul in here? How do we win more tickets?" I asked Jane and Janice.
"Well, we could do more of the games and certain things around the city to find more ways to get tickets or to get the tickets themselves. Let's try over there next." Janice said, pointing to a dart-throwing stand. So, they even had my kind of carnival games here as well...
"Step right up and win the grand prize for hitting ten darts in a row!" The man said. As soon as he said 'grand prize', a beam of light shot down toward a ticket. There was nothing else that could happen that could convince me this wasn't a side quest now. This was way too familiar.
"Let me try Granny," Janice said, reaching for the darts. The man demanded an insane amount of money, but I was lucky enough to have twice the amount. If push comes to shove, we could try this again.
"Damn!" Janice said as she missed the final dart.
"Aw, so sad! Would you like a stuffed animal?" The man asked. I could tell he was wicked and shouldn't have any business running a stand that sells stuffed animals like that. I dumped our money bag into his hands and stepped in front.
"Just pop the ten balloons, right?" I asked him. He nodded while baffled and I grabbed all ten darts in one hand.
Something I wanted to try was using [Bullet 3] to predict the trajectory the darts would take by connecting the skill to the tip of the dart. [Bullet 3] gave me a laser-pointer at the tip of the bullet to tell me where it was going, so I was hoping that I could somehow place the skill at the tip of the dart and exactly predict it..
"Anima! That's all of our money!" Janice yelled out at me. I focused on the balloons instead of her, watching slight lasers stick out from the tip of the darts. Afterward, I threw the darts with maximum force and popped enough balloons to get me the ticket with ease. However, my luck didn't stop there.
The rippling force from the popped balloon caused a dart to ricochet off of one of the metal pipes used to support the walls of the stand and popped another balloon, meaning that I had popped eleven balloons with ten darts, earning the ticket and prize money.
"I'll take my ticket now," I told the man. He sat in total bewilderment as I grabbed the ticket from the podium and walked off.
I turned my head to look back at the frozen man and decided to walk back to the stand, grabbing the stuffed animal he offered us and leaving again.
"Anima? Why didn't you tell us you were a freak of nature?" Janice asked me.
"I cheated. He was too cocky for me to play fairly. Anyway, we have two of the tickets now, where do we get the last two?" I asked her. Right as I held the ticket up to show it off, it was grabbed by a thin string up on the rooftops.
"Hey! Give my ticket back!" I yelled out.
I went into a full-chase mode as I climbed over boxes on the street and barely climbed up to the rooftops thanks to scaffolding that helped me get some height. I was by no means athletic or experienced in parkour, so I knew I was at a disadvantage.
The younger-looking kid jumped gracefully against the clay-tiled roof. I followed in his footsteps, but I have an inventory load which made me slower. I turned back to look at Janice following me and threw [Yggdrasil's Bone] at her.
"Hold that for me!" I yelled back to her, picking up the pace and getting closer to the kid.
He turned back and threw something at me, but I dodged it before I could catch sight of what it was. Using [Titan's Wand +4], which Soul gave to me, I launched attacks at the kid in front of me. I didn't want to hurt him or vandalize this city as I had just become broke, so I had to keep this as accurate as possible.
The kid turned around to throw something at me again and I was able to use the laser trace from [Bullet] to watch his attack come closer to my face.
"[Imaple]" I said. I realized I completely said it wrong and dodge the attack out of fear.
The kid made me scramble my words up! Was that what he threw at me? A skill?!
I continued to jump from one rooftop to another and caught the attention of the citizens this time. The kid ran between construction workers that had been doing a job on a large statue of somebody. The kid ran between the legs of the statue, tilted his facemask down, and said the name of an attack:
"[Slash 7]!" He said. Seven?!
I ducked under the wide slash that completely took out the ankles of the statue. Before sliding underneath the statue as well, I tossed out a ton of health potions to the workers if they happened to be injured. I felt the fatigue start to swarm up my body and used [Blessing], which was the replacement for [Heal] and [Raise], and the fatigue vanished.
As I kept running, I realized that I was dealing with a mage that had a high-level skill and was fast, if he turned around at any given moment I would lose the battle and die over a ticket. I stopped running after him after he jumped a large gap, watching him run off into the distance.
Janice, who finally caught up to me, asked me why I stopped.
"That kid had a level seven skill. If he turned around I would've died. I, unfortunately, don't care about the ticket that much. I told her.
"What a bummer. Can't believe that little shit got away with something we paid money for. Damn thief." Janice expressed her anger with vulgarity I never thought she had in her.
"He can run for now. He had a skill I haven't heard of before which scrambled my speech, I don't think I could do much if I caught up to him in the first place." I told her. I turned back toward the construction workers and they all seemed pretty pissed.
"Hey guys, sorry he ruined your statue. He stole my ticket and I was trying to get it back, I had no idea he would do that." I told them.
"It's fine, I've seen that kid around so I was dreading if he came near the statue in the first place. Say, did you mean to drop these health potions?" The grizzly man asked me. He was wearing a bright blue vest and brown pants, like a construction worker... sort of.
"Yeah, just in case anybody was hurt. Did you need them at all?" I asked them.
"No, but I gotta say... to just drop these high-grade potions out for random people like us, you really don't care about money, do you?" He asked me.
"Not really. I can make them without fail every time I try. Do you guys need anymore?" I asked them. I seemed to have amazed the construction workers as they all began to praise me.
"Look, you gotta come with us! Our boss is gonna love you!" They said.
"Huh? What? No- I can't. I have to get back to the city to look for her grandma." I said as they pulled me over to a room.
"It's fine! I'll go get Granny and bring her here," Janice said, leaving the rooftop.
This counts as kidnapping right? I'm being kidnapped right now, right?!