Chapter 005: "Reality and Fiction, Pt. 2: The Monster in the River"
The fisherman's cabin was small and packed to the brim with everything a person could ever imagine. It held the expected fishing gear, but was also home to an assortment of items such as several bear skin carpets, a collection of swords both ornate and horrid, and a machine that seemed to be churning butter. Soluna wondered the purpose of the random things all stored in one house but figured that the artificial intelligence behind the fisherman wouldn't be able to answer such a question, so she let her thoughts stay as such.
Meanwhile, Violet was having a blast looking at all of his home-made machines and explained how they most likely functioned to Claude, although it was apparent that he had not heard a single word she said. While Violet and Soluna looked around the house with both intrigue and questioning, the others took their seats at the dining table as the fisherman attempted to explain his situation to them.
"You see, this all started when my brother, Paul, a farmer in Silimon Fields, was investigating the very bottom of the river to see if he could find any treasure. While he did stumble upon a treasure chest made out of pure gold, it happened to be guarded by an monster infamous around these parts known as Maelstreliven, translated roughly to Old Fabulan as 'Monster of the Rushing Waters.' I understand if my request to too much weight for blossoming adventurers like you, but I beg of you to slay the monster and bring back the golden chest!" explained the fisherman. When he began to near the end of his long, rambling explanation, he dropped down onto his knees and held out his hands in a praying-like way. If it was meant to make the guild members guilty if they decided not to help him, it sure worked.
"Alright, we'll do it." bluntly stated Brand alongside an authoritative nod. His few simple words were met by a shower of thanks by the fisherman who was still touching his knees to the ground. After a while, the group was able to convince him to stand up and explain how exactly to catch Maelstreliven.
In order to bring the serpent out of the water, the fisherman, Saul, would have to use one of his home-made inventions that he refers to as his 'Heavy-Duty Aquatic Animal Capturer.' The way it works is that the machine, powered by oil, lowers a reinforced iron bucket full of fish into the river to attract the serpent's attention. Once it does as such, the serpent will attempt to eat the fish out of the bucket which is when a net set on top of the bucket, which is covered in a sticky slime substance, is sent a large amount of electricity, thus shocking and temporarily paralyzing the serpent. Once the serpent is attached and unable to move, a remote controlled hand located on the same machine reaches into the depths and pulls it out of water. Or at least, that's what it's supposed to do. After all, Saul never actually had a chance to use it.
Meanwhile, in reality, Kira was making a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch.
"Hey, Bran! Lunch is ready!" Kira called from downstairs, addressing him by his nickname that only she was aloud to call him. At that moment, their mom walked into the room with a large clump of messy hair atop her head.
"He's probably too busy playing that game he got to do anything as simple as eating his lunch." she said with a serious and annoyed voice, although Kira couldn't help but laugh at the statement. While she did laugh at such a humorous thing, she admitted to herself that it was also just a true statement. The only time she had really seen him ever since Fabula Quest came out was when he got home that morning, but she couldn't blame him; while she hadn't played many video games in her lifetime, the ones she had played ended up engrossing her and demanding her full attention. When Brandon used to ask her why she never played any more of them, she said that she figured she'd eventually start to grow addicted to them, although, deep down, she had in itch in her mind that wanted to play more.
After spending a lot of time thinking to herself, she realized that her mother was still going on a long tangent about how useless Brandon's video games were to his life. "I can't began to imagine how he gets satisfaction out of nothing but blood and guts."
"Not every game is just blood and guts, mom." argued Kira, "There's some games where you can explore the world or start a farm or fishing and stuff like that." For some reason, her argument warranted a scoff from her mother.
"Can't he just do that stuff in the real world? I'd love for him to finally go outside for once in his life"
Kira thought about it for a while. Once she realized she had lost the argument, she decided to stomp back upstairs to her room, sandwich in hand.
Inside of the world of Fabula, the group had just lowered the machine into the river and were sitting impatiently, waiting for something to happen. Unfortunately, nothing bit at the machine except for a few small fish who just happened to be a bit curious. Due to the lack of attention needed at the moment, the players attempted to make small talk back and forth while they waited.
"Don't you think it's weird?" Violet asked strangely to Brand as she turned her head.
"Umm... What exactly is weird?" responded Brand with genuine confusion. "That the serpent thing hasn't showed up yet?"
"No," Violet shook her head and looked towards the machine dipping the bucket into the river, "that these mundane things exist even in a fictional world like this. I get if it was for added realism, but I know a lot of people who play video games to just do things they can do in the real world like fishing and farming. I just think it's really weird, that's all."
"I guess you have a point there. I never really stopped to think about it, but, yeah, it's extremely weird when you stop to think about it." Violet nodded in agreement. "It might be the simplicity of video games compared to the complicated way that life works, y'know?" At this, Violet chuckled.
"I figured you'd say that. While you do have a good point, at the same time, you don't." laughed Violet confusingly. "In most older video games, tasks like fishing were left up to a button press or two, but now, thanks to full-dive tech, it's just like fishing in real life. In real life, I despise fishing, but I have multiple fishing simulation games that I play almost daily. You know why that is?"
"...I dunno." replied Brand after thinking for a while.
"To be completely, neither do I. Still, I have a few guesses as to why I enjoy simple games like that. My main guess is that there's just a simple appeal to being in a world that's not the one you come from. In a way, it's like how a lot of little kids want to be astronauts and explore the cosmos, but instead, we're basically just dreaming a second realm into reality." Brand began to slightly understand what she was attempting to say. "It just feels nice to work on things in a place other than the one you have to spend your daily life in. One that doesn't strictly follow the laws of physics and limiting stuff like that. Sometimes I wish I could just live my entire life in a separate world." Quickly after Violet finished talking, Brand whipped his head to the right, wearing a shocked yet confused look on his face.
"So, let's say we were trapped in this world forever. Would you like that better than living on Earth?" curiously asked Brand. Violet hastily began to shake her head left to right.
"No, because I know life will get just as tedious, repetitive, and boring as it is in real life. I'd much rather be able to transport myself to an endless amount of fantasies rather than just one for the rest of my life."
At that moment, the two were interrupted by the sound of a tugged-on chain, coming from Saul's machine. "Maelstreliven... It's here!" screamed Saul as he began to tinker around with his complicated contraption. After a few seconds of pulling on the lever to the side of the machine, the Maelstreliven finally swung onto the shore with a tsunami's worth of water flying after it like the flames of a rocket ship.
The blue-tinted white serpentine body now presented before them was massive and intimidating. So much so that the players almost appeared to be paralyzed as well. By the time they had managed to snap back to reality, the serpent had already managed to get onto it's eight feet and began to rush towards the onlooking warriors who had disturbed it.
The serpent's tail suddenly swung towards the group but thankfully had missed everyone, including Saul who had ran inside directly after activating the machine fully, except for Christall, who's body was flung into the side of the log cabin. Although both the hit from the tail and the impact of the wall had taken a drastic toll on his health, thankfully, Christall still managed to stay alive. Unfortunately, most high-powered healing spells only worked on others besides the healer, but he still could use a spell on himself, even if it didn't do much.
As he began to use his hand to signal the system to start the healing process, he heard a yell from afar. "Heads up!" It was Violet, who had thrown a object quickly towards Christall's head. Instinctively, he held his hands in front of his face and managed to catch the strange red shape. After the motion had stopped the blurring effect on it, he realized that the strange shape was actually a healing potion. He gave a grin of thanks to Violet then chugged down the drink as quickly as he could.
After looking up from the bottle, he realized that Violet was now practically riding the serpent like an untamed steed. She pierced its skin with multiple slashes from her daggers each second but it didn't let out any signs of pain, only a loud noise that resembled a war cry. Out of seemingly nowhere, a quick blur appeared above Violet but in a matter of only a single second, it has passed her and crashed through the body of the serpent, decapitating it in one blow.
"That was easier than expected." laughed Brand, still holding his sword outwards and taking large, harsh breaths. While the mythical creature known as Maelstreliven seemed to be dead, it was too early to celebrate; before everyone's bewildered eyes, the head of the serpent began to quickly regenerate through means unknown. Looking at the health bar situated directly above the monster's head, it showed that there was still 90% of its health to get rid of before it was gone for good. "Well crap, we've got a while to go." he said, this time without a sense of humor in his voice or on his face to be seen.
"Christall, Claude!" she shouted as she turned to the two. The two stopped in their tracks to see what she was going to say. "If what I know is correct, if I am able to light Claude's arrows, then they'll release extra elemental damage to whatever it attacks. While Claude and I do that, I need you, Christall, to focus on healing Claude, as he the most important for this plan to properly work. But no matter what Claude's health is, if you see my HP get into the red zone, heal me with whatever spell you can manage to cast. If I end up dying, there'll be no way to get that elemental bonus back." The boys nodded in understanding and got into position for the plan.
For nearly a minute, their plan went completely uninterrupted by the serpent, as it was too focused on getting Violet off of its back. However, once it reached the 75% mark, it started flailing randomly, causing Violet to fly off of its back and into the river.
"Christall, focus on getting her back on land now!" demanded Soluna with an authoritative voice.
"Y-Yes ma'am! As you wish!" saluted Christall and he ran towards the river. It wasn't clear why Soluna had chosen the smallest and physically weakest fighter to help retrieve Violet from the lake, but it was most likely due to the fact that she knew that Christall would do exactly as she said.
"This must be the second phase of the fight..." Violet thought to herself as she floated downwards to the river's floor. "I need to get back on its back or at least find some sort of weak spot to attack!" At that moment, she saw Christall's body fly into the water just as she had previously, however, he had voluntarily dived in to save her. His boney arms managed to just barely get Violet above water so that she could breathe in air as she needed. After only a few seconds, she had recovered and was on her feet once again.
At that moment, from where Violet and Christall had just been, a few dozen small snake-like creatures slithered onto the shore. While they looked nearly identical to the large serpent they had been fighting for the past several minutes, they were only around a foot and a half long. They could be easily killed in one or two slashes from Violet's daggers, so she did as she speculated. She was correct.
Christall got back into formation with Claude and Soluna while Violet fended off the smaller opponents and Brand acted as a diversion for the larger serpent. After a few minutes of holding the snakes off, Violet's mission was finished and she returned to attack their main enemy.
"Wait, I've got it!" she thought to herself, although she ended up saying it out loud. She looked around for Brand and once she found him, she ran directly towards him, just like how Soluna had when the two of them entered the world of Fabula for the first time. However, this time he was not greeted by a warm and welcoming hug. He was instead pushed out of the way of Maelstreliven's fangs, causing it to consume Violet instead of Brand. This caused his face to be filled with udder shock for what seemed like an entire minute.
All of a sudden, half of Maelstreliven had detached from the other half; Violet had destroyed the monster from the inside out. However, since it still had around half of its health remaining, the front half simply generated into the world once more. Just like it had done during the previous spout of damage inflicted upon it, it began to flail its own body mindlessly, although it seemed to exhale electricity throughout the entirety of its external body. The lightning bolts crawling over its body lasted for seconds at a time before quickly disappearing then appearing yet again in. This left practically no time to inflict any melee damage upon it, which meant that they would have to rely mostly on only Claude and Soluna to cause any damage.
Claude, Violet, and Christall were all still making use of their trusted flaming arrow strategy while Violet and Brand thought to themselves on how they could possibly damage the monster before an idea suddenly struck inside of Brand's mind. He ran over to one of the decorative ropes being hung against the wall of the fisherman's log cabin and cut a small section of it off. He tied the loose part around the hilt of the sword and grabbed ahold of it by using the rope as the new hilt, this way the distance between his body, the sword, and the electricity would be too far to deal any damage to him.
As he ran closer to the serpent, he began to swing the rope/sword around in a helicopter-like motion akin to his attack known as Lethal Cyclone that he had used to defeat all of the enemies he had fought. He promised himself that this would be the last time he used the move, as he didn't want to have a single attack associated with him. Brand continued to mindlessly swing around his sword while Maelstreliven finally began to let out cries of pain. Although it was clearly in pain, it continued to attack Brand's allies so he saw it fair to attack it as well. However, if it ever stopped attacking, he would most likely let it be.
At this point, the serpent's HP had been slowly chipped away to 37%. "This strategy isn't quick enough!" Brand told himself. It was at that moment that he came up with an idea that most likely wouldn't work, but it was still worth a shot. He turned his head to Christall and said, "Christall, use a healing-over-time spell on me!" he demanded as Christall nodded his head in understand, moving his hands from Claude to Brand.
While it most likely was not nearly enough healing to prevent Brand from dying due to his reckless plan, he thought that it was worth the risk in order to win the battle quick enough. He ran directly towards the serpent at the fastest speed he could possibly go, with his sword facing directly behind him, causing the wind to ripple. Right before he was about to make contact with the gargantuan monster, he flipped the sword forwards, pulled it back, then jabbed it straight into the flesh of the serpent as hard as he could. Once he had impaled the body of Maelstreliven, he randomly started to flail his sword around, just as the monster had done right before. Although unlike Maelstreliven, Brand managed to make contact with every single hit, causing the monster's body to be sliced into rough, angular shapes.
As the monster let out its loudest scream yet, Brand followed suit, as the shock of the electricity had finally kicked in, slowly draining away Brand's health and ability to move. Thankfully, Maelstreliven's electric field halted as it entered its next phase. This phase was like the transition between the previous phases; it threw its own body around mindlessly, attempting to hit someone via completely blind luck, however this time, it didn't stop flailing at all. The flaming arrows barely ever managed to stick into the serpent's quickly moving skin and Brand was still partially paralyzed from the shock. This left only Violet to attack.
She moved her daggers in a pattern akin to an interpretive dance, but then something strange happened; her daggers began to glow a fluorescent purple, leaving behind trails of light that could be mistaken as the aurora borealis. This was her most complex dagger skill she currently knew: Violet Rose. She had decided to master this move not only because of the ironic name but because of the immensely high attack power. However, the power came with a massive draw in that the energy required and the preparation time was very high. Thankfully, the serpent was too busy flying around to focus on attacking her during the set-up, leading to a perfect opening.
She moved both of her daggers in intersecting directions, seeming to almost cross through each other. Each consecutive slash left behind an afterimage, not only of the small, sharp daggers but also Violet herself, which seemed to deal damage even after she had actually attacked the serpent. This process continued until Maelstreliven had finally vanished into nothingness.
"We- We did it!" shouted Violet as she ran to Claude's side to hug him. This eventually evolved into a group hug featuring everyone except Saul the fisherman, who had just began to walk through his cabin's back door.
"Well done adventurers!" he exclaimed with great joy, "I knew I could trust you folks to take down this monster!" His face quickly turned from pure bliss to a worried expression as he started to walk towards the river. "Oh my, I almost forgot about the treasure that we came here for!"
Thankfully, the monster didn't end up destroying Saul's machine, so he was able to pull the golden chest onto the surface, although he wasn't able to open it, as it seemed to be locked. "Oh my, this serves us a great amount of trouble." he said as his already worried face turned into a frown of great sadness. Luckily, once again, his face quickly changed expressions, this time instead turning into an optimistic smile.
"I know a great locksmith living in Ariddon by the name of Lucius, if you will accept my offer, please take this to him to open it up. However, I understand nothing I could possibly give to you would be a great enough task to make up for your help, so whatever may be inside of such chest, you may keep."
There was no way they could turn down such a great offer, so they accepted Saul's request and set forth towards Ariddon. In less than an in-game day, they finally reached their destination.
[The 'Monsters of Trees and Water' quest line will end in "Arrival in Ariddon" thus ending the Reality and Fiction arc and beginning the Ariddon arc.]