"Count your kills, Ivy. Whoever wins get all the loot from our next dungeon hunt"
Words too big for me to say as a mark of challenge towards my sister to ease the boredom and the tension between us after we discovered of an ambush during our quest.
Her response to me was brief, leaping into action and bashing an enemy head on with her shield. She then raises her weapon into the air as she withdraw her shield from her staggered opponent in order to thrust its blade to the wolf's body, though it barely scraped its torso and instead made a shallow cut against its thick fur.
I gripped my weapon tightly and joined her into battle. "Warstrike!" I yelped, positioning my weapon behind me as I scrambled to my feet and approached one of the Guardians opposite to Ivy's direction. Once I got close to my target, I moved my arm and forcefully shoved my sword to the wolf's direction, halting its advance and making it feel woozy and weakened by my sudden attack.
Its health decreased to 83%.
From then on, I used everything I unlocked from my ability sphere to put it to rest, hacking away at its health little by little with my rage-filled strikes. As opposed to my movement were Ivy's which were extremely meticulous and simply elegant. The manner in which she combines the blocking power of her shield as the special ability granted by her character class, and the points she probably invested in her offensive has made a balance of power too strong to shake down even by a horde of enemies like this.
She displayed an amazing roster of skills I didn't expect to see from my sister only after days of playing this game. She is amazing, more amazing than I am, and I wasn't able to stop myself from feeling proud of this achievement though little in volume.
For a while, the two of us simply proceeded to watch each other's backs while ensuring that enemies will stay within our range. Ivy has a plethora of lightweight magic spells she used in such manner as healing our wounds slightly, especially me, since I have been absorbing as much damage I can and using it to fill out my rage meter.
Whenever she is being put into a bind, I use a howl spell which scare enemies from behind her, allowing her to find them and hack them to pieces like we have been doing with the others.
Left and right, our experience is growing and we soon grew in level, conveniently ending the simultaneous spawning of enemies our way too. I instantly went from level 10 to 12, and Ivy seemed to have gained at least a level too.
"Phew! Is it finally over?" I asked as I looked around me and noticed a transparent screen that appeared before the final Guardian I've killed. It lists down the number of experience points I earned from the encounter as well as the loot I've taken from it too. So far, I gained at least 7 wolf pelts some claws from it all. "Well? How much did ya get?"
"Seems like it." Ivy immediately retaliated as she puts her weapons to her back, including her shield which attached itself to the scabbard of her sword like magic. "I've collected 12 wolf pelts."
My eyes widened in surprise. "Twelve?! How? I clearly killed more of them than you!" I declared, my eyebrows furrowing as I tried my best to show that I've won against my sister, because I was the one who urged her into this competition earlier and to lose to her will be very embarrassing for me.
Ivy didn't show any signs of hostility even after what I've done. She dismissively raised her hand into the air as she begins to walk away from me. "Yes, I've clearly won against you. Let's move out before the sun goes down and more of them shows up."
I groaned. This isn't how it's supposed to end. I was supposed to gain more kills than her and then show her that her brother is a really cool gamer too. " Fine. I'm very excited to have a taste of that drink anyway."
In spite of my protests, Ivy and I made our way back to the city. So far so good, we've managed to reach the place just on time before it gone completely dark. We headed straight to the Market District afterwards, even though we were tired from walking all the way back from the forest right after encountering a horde of Guardians there.
When we approached Farco, his face lights up in joy as if he expected us to completely ditch him after his strange request earlier. "Oh, there you both are! I thought you ditched me!" I called it. He really thought we left him behind.
"No, no, how could we?" I replied, giggling as I transfered his goods from my inventory to the table in his stall. "We got caught by a buncha wolves there that we cleared out before returning, but here ya go."
Farco quickly examines the item we delivered, picking up one of the flowers we pluck by the bases of their stem to make sure they will be preserved somehow. He begins to bite into one of the plants afterwards, humming in delight. "Mhhm! Delightful! Truly amazing. Allow me a few moments to put this into the mixture... Ta-da!"
The NPC puts down two glasses of a dark liquid on his stall as he begins to drink another. I quickly picked up one of the glasses and without hesitation puts its lid next to my avatar's mouth, anxious about how the game will handle this much of a stimuli. Ivy on the other hand quickly drinks down one her own glass of the drink we were offered, and she immediately puts down her empty glass on the table before her.
"It's sweet, but lacking something." She mumbled afterwards, prompting me to drink it down and have a taste of Farco's mixture too. Now, while I didn't really drink anything outside the game, I miraculously been able to taste it exactly in my mouth.
"I think it's the temperature, yeah? I feel it's too lukewarm for a drink this sweet." I added to the conversation, also putting down my glass next to Ivy's.
"That's right. I suppose we are lacking the technology to completely alter the temperature of items like this, hence we are incapable of following your suggestions." Farco said, slumping his shoulder once more in defeat. "... but I have an idea. While it's impossible to use magic to alter the temperature of the drink to elevate its taste, we can use something called an "ice" to do so!"
I raised an eyebrow as I asked the question I have in mind. "Where can you get ice here?"
Farco raised his finger into the air and answered shortly. "Good question. To the north past an old Elm Tree that grew there is a town called Moorwilde. You should ask around that place for ideas where to find a cave that naturally freezes over to create everlasting ice shards! Taking these shards out will increase the value of our drink and will finally complete our recipe! If you go now, I think you can get there tomorrow afternoon, but the places outside the city becomes more dangerous at night."
I nodded my head as a sign of understanding before I faced my sister and pointed towards the direction where we came from earlier. "Hey Ivy, say we should rent a couple of rooms back in Lucky Forest Inn? I don't wanna accidentally get killed while traveling tonight!"
Ivy shrugged her shoulders as an answer. "Alright. Let's set out to Moorwilde tomorrow."
We left the Market District and Farco to himself to turn in for the night, and allow ourselves a brief period of rest equivalent to one or at the very least, half an hour in reality. It's hard to keep track of the correct time from within the game though, which in my opinion has been made to ensure an immersive play.
We retraced our steps and made for the Lucky Forest Inn somewhere near the plaza, noting the increase of the number of players in the Starting City ever since we left the area about two hours ago.
Because of my defeat to my sister earlier, I decided to treat us both a better room for the night, scraping off two hundred gold pieces from my pocket. This much money is enough for us to get served a decent dinner, have access to a hot shower in our own rooms, and a nicer bed. I heard that sleeping in rooms costing 100 gold pieces and more yields a buff that increases the experience points earned by a player for twelve hours after rest.
If I were to gain more levels than Ivy, I will most definitely need this buff.
After a delicious dinner tonight, the two of us retired to our rented rooms to rest and resume our adventure later. I sat on my bed and swiped my finger left to right to open my inventory and sort through my items before we leave for Moorwilde. I noticed that my weapon is starting to really wear down and will need repairs soon, so I made a mental note to drag Ivy back to the Market District to get it fixed tomorrow.
I slowly started to feel sleepy, so I decided to close the menu and noticed something off. Something is missing. I can't yet put my finger on it but there was definitely something that should be there, but it isn't there anymore.
What can that be?
"Ah well, I can't remember it. Heh. Probably nothin' important." I mumbled as I dragged my avatar to sleep.
•◦⚜◦•
"Ready to go?" I asked my sister after I finished repairing my sword at the blacksmithing station available for players in the Market District. She hummed softly as a response, then starts to walk away from the station as her silent agreement to me. I followed suit, and we made our way to the north gate directly leading to a spacious field of grass just before the forest where we found more level 7 monsters that we only care to engage as soon as they got near our positions.
"Phew! Repairing my gear was worth it! Look at that! I'm making a helluva lot of damage now! Heck yeah!" I pronounced happily after killing my fifth mob that spawned near the dirt pathway across this woodland.
"You say that, but you may as well try to take better care of your items, Tristneve." My sister shoots me down as she brushes a few stray strands of her cerise hair that possibly fell out when she was fighting against the monsters a second ago.
I scratched my cheek in embarrassment. "Yeah, yeah, gee. I can't help it, aight? I'm a Berserker, I should be going mad when fighting, yeah?"
We proceeded to walk the rest of the pathway and made it across the forest just before the sun completely rises. We basked in its glory which puts a smile to our face, and allowed our conversation to pass. Using our updated map, thanks to the quest that Farco has given us, we immediately found the proper pathway directly to Moorwilde.
With Ivy and I on the correct trail, we managed to reach our destination with little pitstops before the sun completely sets down. We also made it to level up, and by the time we reached Moorwilde, I am already level 16, and my sister is in level 21, thanks to the level 13 and level 15 monsters that live there.
We stepped into the town where we found very small amount of players roaming the grounds, unlike the Starting City brimming full of young minds like ours. We decided to retire for the day and went to locate the nearest Inn to the gates serving as an entrance and exit to town. Ivy paid for our rooms this time around, and we both retreated to our rooms for our avatars to rest.
Somehow, I still feel like something is lost and continued to wonder what it is that we are forgetting.
The day passes by, and somehow, this feeling of dread continued to eat away at me and I'm starting to lose it from thinking about this. I wanted to ask Ivy about it, heck, even Steven at this point, but for some reason, I wanted to find out about it on my own. I have to.