The wreath above the statue exploded into light, with motes of berry red shooting off toward us all, statue and unicorn included. With a regen effect on all of us, I didn’t have to worry so much about our health, though now I really needed whatever I could to keep that statue … alive. Well, intact.
Once more I prepared a spell. Casting was so much different in virtual reality than any other games; it was almost more like table-top roleplay, but with us instead of figurines. “⸢Wyld Regrowth⸥!”
No little chant this time, but I could sense the ability go on a short cooldown -- so chain casting the spell on the entire party was, unfortunately, out of the question. This spell effect, however, was perhaps the most dramatic of any of them so far. Ghostly vines wrapped around the limbs and torso of the statue, slowly pulsing with a green glow for each tick of the regeneration effect. I imagine it would be a little unnerving for any of the girls the first time it was cast on them, but the statue didn’t seem to mind. But with the ghostly vines enwrapped around the rock, I could see how the spell would penalize fire resistance.
“Stand strong, Guardian of the White Flame: ⸢Blazing Siphon⸥.” Whereas before, Mikachu had been shouting out her spell chants the same as the rest of us, here she was back to a more stoic demeanor. Less exuberance and more grit, anyway. “My life is your life. My will is your will. My shield is your shield. My strength is your strength. Guardian of the White Flame, from stone you came and as stone remain, solid, unyielding, resolute, defiant. Let none pass by while the Guardian yet stands ….”
Mikachu’s crystal ball glowed brighter and brighter as she chanted a longer spell. A white flame flickered and danced within the crystal’s depths, and chains of light shot from the crystal toward the statue and wrapped around Mikachu’s wrists and ankles.
“⸢Ultimate Empowerment: Unyielding Guardian.⸥” The last came in a gasp and she slumped in midair. “That should hold its attention for a while. You gals might want to bash away. The faster that rat is defeated, the better. I’m not strong enough to hold it back for long, not yet anyway.”
My Wyld Regrowth had been fighting a losing battle with the rat’s damage. It kept chipping off and cracking the statue as if it were cheese and not stone -- even with the extra regeneration effect from the expiration of Wyld Berry Aura. Mika’s two spells, however, had turned the tide. The first seemed to be doing minimal damage to the rat and transferring the damage into health for the statue. That was enough to stop the loss of health, but not enough to reverse direction. However, the second spell seemed to make the statue that much tougher. It’s health pool doubled and it started taking less damage from each attack, so that it was starting to slowly regain health rather than lose it.
The fight dragged on and on. As the rat focused on the statue, Ette and Daybreak Gleaming attacked it from either side, punches from stone fists on one side and punctures from a wooden horn on the other. Pacing herself, Jazmyn fired Silver Shot after Silver Shot into the rat, taking enough time in between spellcasts to allow Noa’s threat redirection and Mikachu’s taunting to keep her not at the top of the hate list. My sister may not have been a gamer, but she was a quick learner.
Meanwhile, I kept both regeneration spells active on the statue. Or, rather, I renewed Wyld Regrowth whenever it expired and recast Wyld Berry Aura whenever it came off cooldown; the bonus health it provided didn’t last long against the rat’s attacks.
I was burning through faith faster than it regenerated, but I still had a goodly amount, so I also started trying to maintain Bramble Shield on the statue. Unless you counted Daybreak Gleaming, that was the only way I could do damage to the rat myself. And even then, it wasn’t strictly me doing the damage.
Finally, the rat -- which was a much harder fight than we should have encountered -- ticked under fifty percent health, with almost all the damage having come from Jazmyn’s spells.
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It reared back and roared again, and the sound seemed unending. I know I wasn’t the only one who covered my ears. Jazmyn dropped her staff to cover hers, and Noa nearly clobbered herself with her own fans trying to shield her ears. Even Daybreak Gleaming appeared to wince in pain. And as the sonic attack continued, our health dropped and dropped and dropped.
I struggled to focus, to try and cast, but it wasn’t until the roar was over and the rat started swiping at the statue much faster than before that I was able to do anything. All our health bars were hovering nearly fifteen percent, and they were likely only that high because of the regen effect from a Wyld Berry Aura.
I had one more card up my sleeve. Well, metaphorically. My starting outfit was a sleeveless sundress and a card wouldn’t’ve fit underneath the shoulder strap.
“Sirae, in this hour of need, I beseech you. Please grant us your favor and aid us: ⸢Prayer of Wyld Recovery⸥!”
In case of emergency, pop cooldown. And I did. The Prayer of Wyld Recovery could only be used once per day, but if this wasn’t the time to use it, nothing was. Everyone’s health -- including the statue’s -- started ticking up rapidly, but that didn’t mean we were out of the woods, yet. Once more I applied Wyld Regrowth and Wyld Berry Aura to Mikachu’s statue, but as my resources were lower than I liked to have, I refrained from renewing Bramble Shield. It hadn’t been contributing that much damage to the rat, anyway.
“Jazzy! Burn through your mana as quick as you can. Don’t worry about pacing yourself. If we don’t finish this rat off soon, we never will. We need damage now, ⸢Nocked and Noted⸥!” Noa gestured with her fans, and again the red sparkles of light traced a circle around the group.
Unfortunately, the rat frenzying wasn’t the only change when it dropped below half life. Like a radioactive isotope spitting out charged particles, it started summoning helpers. These adds were probably the larger-than-normal rats we were supposed to have been fighting -- they were only dog-sized rather than looking like they could give a bear a run for its honey. Still larger than life, but little monsters rather than full-blown ones. But if they were what we should have been fighting, what the heck was the rat we had encountered right out the gate?
“Ette, Rie, focus on the adds with me. Keep them off Jazzy. We still have a chance,” Noa charged a rat, trampling it and getting a bite on her off-side hock in the process. I directed Daybreak Gleaming to break off from the big rat and join Noa. On the other side, Ette curled back up into her traveling mode and started rolling around, bumping over rats like a giant pinball in a demolition derby. “Mikachu! Do you have any group taunts?”
She shook her head. “No. We’re not going to survive this. You all need to run. We’re not that far from the guards’ boundary.”
“I’m out of mana!” Jazmyn announced, and the big rat was still close on to thirty-percent alive. It had more than a quarter of its health, anyway.
“Jenna! Get back to the guards!” I hollered at her, breaking character and using my sister’s real name. But she shook her head and yelped when a rat that had got by Ette bit her leg. She smacked it hard with her staff, but then another two rats jumped at her, and she went down. “No …!”
And then, demoralized, we fell like dominoes. Noa next, with six big rats swarming her. One might have thought that Mikachu and I would be safe, up in the air, but three of the smaller rats screeched at me, and the quick succession of sonic attacks stunned me and I fell like a maple seed. Mikachu dove after me, perhaps to protect, perhaps to catch, but like a reverse Icarus, she flew too close to the ground, and was tackled by half a dozen rats.
And with the Mikachu down, her statue was also down, leaving nothing to keep the big rat’s attention off Ette. Daybreak Gleaming had despawned when I was defeated, so she didn’t even have my wooden unicorn to help her.
Our ghostly, intangible forms appeared back in the city, just inside the tunnel through the wall. As we waited for the respawn timer to tick down, we were greeted by a host of unpleasant messages.
[Server Broadcast: Rockette and party were defeated by a Tutorial Rat Matriarch.]
[Server Broadcast: Server First! Rockette and party were the first to attain a complete party wipe!]
[Region Broadcast: Server and Region First! Rockette and party, on the Chinookan Pacifica server, were the first to attain a complete party wipe in the group tutorial instance!]
“At least it wasn’t a world first,” Ette’s ghostly form grumbled.