LetMeKeelYou: Turns out my depression and blurry sight were possible side effects of my medicine (which explains why i was feeling like the world was devoid of any meaning). I’m still feeling like that, but it’s great to know i didn’t turn emo and that i can blame my lack of interest in something else rather than me becoming a boring person. Best regards!

P.S: I’m gonna give more focus to the game on the next few chapters, then add a real-life scene here and there (i mean, our girl is still level 2 after all). Plus i don't want tragedy and romance to develop faster than her game character.

BTW: For those that didn't see last chapter's edit, i was planning to make a school scene, but changed my mind. But worry not, it's nothing worth reading again.

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A keen beep sound poked twice at the room’s walls. Not one second later Sarah’s eyelids rose, revealing her frozen stiff eyeballs. She slept as soundly as a cat and just as aware of her surroundings.

She was so quiet and delicate in that immobile state, that weakened state that made her look like a porcelain doll whose grace would never fade, preserved by the sands of time. Beautiful and harmless, like a flower.

In the same spectrum, ugly and rotten inside, like a cadaver out of the morgue.

It was early in the morning, she washed her face and went to the kitchen for breakfast.

She took the previous night’s croquette out of the fridge and heated it in the microwave for a short while, dropping a cup near the coffee maker as steam generated from the dark liquid filling it.

Sarah enjoyed her brief meal while thinking about how to open that boring Sunday with something interesting to do. She had very limited options: playing, studying, drawing or painting.

Truly, she was falling to the rut, but that wasn’t so bad considering she would never change her ways.

The paintings and drawings she showed everyone else were of sheer happiness, brimming with warmth and nurturing feelings. What did Sarah paint when she was alone? Why did she choose to hide her finished works inside that room, closed shut with all of her favorite things? Was it something so sick and disturbing that would expose her to foreign eyes?

Surprisingly not. No matter how much she tried to martyrize her surrealistic world, it would survive the onslaught of her hurricane with its own wrath.

They were hidden away because they displayed the struggle to recreate the unsightly realm reflected on her eyes.

Sarah dressed a white shirt and an apron, selected a few cans of ink and paint-brushes, and started raining the blank frame of the canvas with dark colors. She had no idea as to what would become of it, and couldn’t care less – as long as it was filled with hatred.

Her long brush clashed down like a blacksmith’s hammer, lacerating the bestial black and azure blue. With the other hand, she cut down straight lines and quivering threads like sea waves. She then punctured small squares and dots throughout the eerie background – but this unrelenting ferocity became more refined.

Without notice, she swayed from a barbaric sword style to a more composed, balanced one.

Drowning the fibers with red and yellow, she circled and danced her way through the abyssal darkness, giving birth to the fire of a ferocious dragon. Engrossing another bulk of purple, she chopped off a clear vertical path from head to feet. With a clever movement, she conceived forms and shapes that made no sense until a single drop of ink bound them together.

She kept attacking the canvas without a stop, sweat crawling down her forehead. She painted and painted as if possessed by some kind of demon. It was more of an obsession than a passion.

Her arms gave up with a sluggish, sharp movement. She stared at the finished work without drawing herself back to reality – her body understood it was over, but her mind wouldn’t give out. How much time did it take? She lost the count of it.

Finally, she unfolded her hands and let the weapons fall to the ground, mixing together their unknown shades and bending the wooden floor’s hues.

All of it was brilliantly done. Perfectly arranged and full of life. The fire by the chasm’s edge.

In short, it was a failure.

“… How the hell did it turn out like this” she muttered in disapproval.

She took out the apron and threw it on the floor, then looked at the painting and stuck a pen inside it, ripping its skin like it meant absolutely nothing to her.

And maybe she was right about it, for she didn’t feel anything but the relish of a self-destructive act.

If possible, she’d dump its remains inside a card box, light a match and watch as the thing burned to ashes. But she chose the easier way, cleaning up the mess and starting the day anew.

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Sarah left the apron near the washer and confined herself in the room, connecting the metallic gear to her head as she feathered against the dull bed.

Welcome back to Talisman.

Sarah’s particles magically arrayed into the fairy of broken wings and blazing red hair known as Mnemosyne.

She was amidst the forest’s bowels, the exact same place she had left after the wolf’s death. Now it was less of a secluded hunting spot, with players to the four directions and all kinds of companions killing anything they encountered on their path.

She clenched her fist, releasing it a moment after as if holding a stress ball, and there was the wolf again – strong but bound by sadness. It grew a little bit and its fur was strangely beautiful, with an uniqueness to its texture. It was like a sparkling gem or a polished metal, yet maintaining the characteristic smoothness.

“Hmm… I think the training paid off. We will continue with it for the meanwhile”

The wolf accompanied Mnemosyne to a shadowy meadow where she spread the mat for her alchemy tools. She then proceeded to work out the ingredients into that same detestable potion that made the wolf cringe just by seeing it, unconsciously stepping back.

“Tsc, tsc, tsc. That won’t do… You have to be a strong boy and take your medicine. Not for me, but for you. Trust me, you’ll thank me later”.

As the girl almost stuck the bottle down its throat, whistling a tender and melodic lullaby, she warned the wolf about a new development.

“You see, it takes a lot of time for you to recover from death, so we’re doing it different this time.”

Taking out the rough glass object, she explained what was on her mind.

“One: never disappear from sight. Two: avoid fighting multiple enemies at once. Three: if you are too weak to fight, come back so i can heal you”

Since she had a reasonable number of Mambala fruit, Mnemosyne could give the wolf some extra minutes to hunt for ingredients. To make the best out of the supplies, it’d need to be careful when fighting.

“The poison is starting to kick in. Run for your life!” she yelled excitedly as the wolf shot off to the distance in a rampage.

Although it was in a nervewracking state, it was clever and insightful – wolfs are proud, but they are no fools. It selectively chose its opponents as to take the least amount of time and effort, never to pick a fight it wouldn’t emerge as the winner.

The girl and her soulmate kept steamrolling through the fields in a death frenzy that was impossible to halt. The wolf roamed with the half chewed heart of its victims minced in its sharp teeth, the glowing dust of the forest spirits splashing over its fur and cuts and bruises from wood splinters that chipped away some of its flesh.

It was a true beast unleashed. The flourishing power of survival instincts.

However, its members moved as if chained to an iron ball, slow and heavy, while its attacks came as ineffective, weak and useless. It was starting to get affected by the ever increasing pain – and swallowing fruits to recover wasn’t helping at all.

Mnemosyne kept mixing ingredients over ingredients, trying to come up with an answer. She did not hurry to find a cure, but was working herself to the bone to try and accompany the wolf’s rhythm.

Spiders, dead branches, wolfs, forest spirits - none of their drops seemed to have the desirable effect as the poison’s counterpart. And that was because the item to neutralize Oxys herb didn’t exist in that region.

There was never an antidote and Mnemosyne didn’t care for that – even if there was one, she would make blind eye and tell her soulmate to press forward, to keep fighting like a Mad God.

She would hang on and wait till its body was acquainted with the poison so she could introduce stronger and deadlier doses of it.

“Come back here, let me fix you up”

The staggering wolf was so brutalized its body was chalked black, its blood vessels rising up to show the feebly pumping vital fluids. Mnemosyne struck another fruit at its jaw and smacked it in, telling him not to stop.

Deep inside, it was starting to hate its master.

They continued to fight till the wolf was but a walking corpse, dropping dead on the cold foliage.

Your soulmate has died. As penalty, it can’t be summoned for at least four hours.