"If Ven dies we fail this quest!" Quinn yelled as I was trying to figure out whether or not we should just leave Ven.
He was absolutely right. If Ven died there was a high chance that since he was nothing more than an NPC he would not respawn and we would never be able to pick up this quest again. Ven seemed really important to finding out what happened to the island. We absolutely could not let him die.
"Florence, Quinn, you grab Ven while I distract it," Liam whispered.
"We're level 1. What the hell can you do against that thing?" I whispered back.
"Buy enough time to get Ven out of here," Liam said, giving us a thumbs up.
"This isn't going to make him forget about the fact you pelted him in the face with rotten fruit," Quinn said.
"Ah, come on! I'm trying to be cool here!"
The wolf had its gaze fixed on Ven. Liam held his dagger up and tossed it straight at the giant wolf. Liam pushed Quinn and I off to the side. The wolf howled angrily and jumped at Liam.
I didn't need to be told twice what to do. With Liam and the Wolf engaged in combat we scurried over to Ven who was frozen in fear. I grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet and gave him a good ol' slap to get him back to his senses. He had tears in his eyes as he gave me a look that seemed to ask "what did you do that for?".
I held onto his hand tightly as we ran into the forest. Quinn was right behind the two of us. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Liam running into the forest. Mangetsu raked its claws across the trees in front of it, attempting to kill him in one fell sweep.
Looking at my party list, Liam still had full HP.
"...How did he survive that?" Quinn asked, probably not expecting an answer.
"Don't care as long as he keeps it busy," I replied.
"That's so cold," Ven said.
We crossed over the small stream. We could still hear Mangetsu's angry roaring in the distance.
Just when Fiole Town was in sight, there was a loud explosion. We looked back and saw smoke rising from the trees. Liam's HP had dropped to a measly 2.
"Crap! Go! Go! Go!" I cried, pulling Ven along.
Suddenly a ball of purple lightning whizzed by my face.
I let out a high pitched yelp, and skidded to a halt. Ven collided into me which caused me to smash face first into a tree. Ven's face pushed into my back. Quinn tripped over Ven's feet which sent him tumbling down a nearby hill. I could hear a faint scream coming from him as he rolled.
"Ven, get off of me!" I cried, trying to push him off.
He was unresponsive. I checked his status to find that he was currently knocked out.
"At least he's not dead," I thought, putting my hands against the tree and pushing back. Ven's unconscious body hit the ground with a loud thud.
I felt something wet streaming down my face. I brought my fingers up and touched my lips. I held them out in front of me to see. The tips of my fingers were scarlet.
"Oh crap," I muttered, wiping my sleeve against my nose.
It was only after I did, that I became aware of the rumbling of the ground. I scrambled to grab Ven's unconscious body. While he was skinny as a twig, my much smaller body could barely even pick him up. "Dammit! If this was real life I could do this no problem!"
I began to roll him on the dirt and then pushed him down the hill. Quinn, who had been making his way back up the hill, saw me push our charge over and immediately tried to catch him before he rolled straight into the river.
The earth shook even more violently. The trees were lifted out of their roots as Mangetsu erupted from them. I screamed as a few uprooted trees flew past me. Looking over my shoulder I could see Quinn, with Ven draped over his shoulder, close to the town.
"Almost there…"
I got to my feet.
"Time to stop running," I said.
Looking at my skills, I only had one, and that was something called [FLASK THROW]. It didn't use any MP, which worked out for me.
I tossed a flask at Mangetsu as it began to charge me and dove to my right. It stopped right before the hill so it didn't go tumbling down. I quickly scrambled to my feet before tossing another flask from my bag at it.
Mangetsu let out another blood curdling roar causing the flask to just shatter in the air.
"Oh fuck!" I screamed.
It lunged at me again.
I swung my bag at it, and surprisingly it actually took a percent off of its HP. Unfortunately, my bag got caught in its claw and I was still holding on to it. It tossed me up in the air and I screamed flailing around.
Just as it started to bring its claw up toward me, a dagger lunged into its neck catching it off guard and causing it to stumble down the hill.
I hit the floor and it felt like wind was knocked out of me. My bag hit my head. I grunted as I pushed it off of me.
Liam emerged from the forest. He was all bloodied up. Even his clothes were in tatters.
"How are you still alive?" I yelled.
"I have no idea!" He laughed.
I looked over to see how Mangetsu was doing. It seemed to notice Quinn and Ven off in the distance and turned its attention to them.
"Oh dammit! Look what you did!" I cried.
"You could just say thank you for saving you!" Liam snapped back.
"At least Quinn would've made it to the town if I died!" I screamed, running down the hill after Mangetsu.
"You don't know that!"
I could see Quinn trying to pick up his speed a little.
He wasn't going to make it to the town in time.
Just as Mangetsu caught up with him, Quinn turned around abruptly, and held up what looked like an old piece of paper.
I saw his lips move but I didn't know what he was saying.
Suddenly chains sprouted up from the ground and shackled Mangetsu's legs.
Quinn said something else and a bright purple light started to emit from the paper he was holding up. I shielded my eyes due to the brightness.
When the purple light finally died down, Mangetsu was nowhere to be seen.
[SERVER ANNOUNCEMENT: PLAYER Ephemera HAS MADE A TAMER CONTRACT WITH MANGETSU THE LUNAR WOLF]
"What?!" Liam and I yelled in disbelief at the same time.
Quinn dropped Ven on the ground before he collapsed beside him.
—
When we caught up with the worn out Quinn and still unconscious Ven, we began to bombard him with questions.
"How did you do that?" I asked.
"Ven started mumbling in his sleep about tamer contracts… so I decided if we were gonna die anyway, to at least try to use one," Quinn replied, lifting himself from the ground. Liam was already lifting Ven up to carry him back to the town.
"But… you're level 1. That thing was like level 50. How were you even able to do that?"
"...there was a .00003% of success," he said in a low voice.
"WHAT?" Liam and I screamed in unison.
"That's how I feel," Quinn said.
Before we headed back into the town, I went over to the river and cleaned the blood from my face and neck. I had no change of clothes so it seemed like I was stuck with my bloodstained dress for the foreseeable future.
—
Once we had Ven back in the town, we broke into a random house and put him on the bed. We decided that this abandoned house would be our base of operations until we found the villagers or figured out what happened to them.
We began cleaning up the rotten food, sweeping the floor, unboarding the windows and the like.
"Not gonna lie, that was the most fun I've had in a while," Liam said while we were in the middle of trying to pry wooden boards off of the windows.
He was right. Despite us having almost died numerous times, it had been adrenaline inducing. It was fun! I couldn't help but wonder if Scott and I had played this together, if we would still be together or if he would've still found his way to his new girlfriend anyway. We probably wouldn't have experienced this. I still didn't forgive him for cheating on me, but I could see why he liked to play this game so much now.
"So what happened after that explosion when you were distracting Mangetsu?" I asked Liam.
"I really have no idea…" he replied, scratching his head. "I took a direct hit from its lightning attack and was expecting to just die, but I got a random buff called Demon King's Protection. It said something about preventing damage that would otherwise kill me one time. I don't have any skills like that though."
"Huh… Maybe the game devs just felt bad for you?" I said, turning my attention back to cleaning.
"Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised."