The monsters we faced ignores Mewtwo? The pokemon nods to me. Always focus you, never me. Hordes seem to go straight to you, but pokemon not cared.
That is... something. That would mean I am the only one at risk here. But why? Why would the monsters hunt me and not Mewtwo? Are pokemons considered part of the ecosystem here and therefore ignored? I am most definitely not from here, my broken and unlocking memories seem to agree on that. Then are the monsters some sort of defense mechanism? To remove entities that it considers invades the world? But Mewtwo...
"How did you arrive in this world?"
Awoke in strange capsule, broke out, capsule disappears, alone in cave.
Uh. So it could be a pokemon thing then. Monsters ignore pokemons, but go for humans? Or only me?
Some broke away. Some went over ways.
"Uh? Where did the others go?" That could help me narrow it down.
No cared, too scared you danger or gone.
Cool, that does not help. "What do we do now? Are you feeling better?"
Headache lessened, can speak easier. Quest helped? How you know I hurt?
"I saw you wince and how strained you were while helping with the tree." I chuckle, "You mean the quest reward? The lessened stamina consumption? How does that even work?"
Not real numbers. He shake his hand Same as numbers for stats. Not real, approximations of real.
"Oh that makes sense. So it's more a boost to your stamina in some ways then?"
Unsure.
I nod. A lot of what we have is still unknown. I don't want to risk looking at the tutorials in case the screens also require my own power to function and Mewtwo is still too tired to concentrate on reading right now.
"Okay, I'll be frank with you, I am almost out of power. I do not know how long fifteen percent would hold me active, And I cannot replenish it. I need food to function, and I have eaten all I had just to return to that bare percentage and the berries you had do not seem to give me power. I can upgrade myself to require less, but not by much right now. I would need more experience points." I sigh as I try to contain my mounting panic. Knowing one's situation is one thing, acknowledging and sharing it is entirely another. "I do not know what you want to do, now that we have met, but I... I..."
You want me help you. You gave better system, you took possessions even if risk.
"I kind of did that on reflex there."
No matter, you did. You shared quest reward. You keep like that, I help you. I weak. I scared. I know not why I here. You know not why you here. We find together. We find who gave system. And we get answers! As he talks, Mewtwo's eyes gain a glow of determination.
And I realize I too share these very same sentiments. I am weak, scared and do not know why I am here. There is the Quest and the quests, the system, but why me? Why him? Why us? I too gain a determined air. "Let's find out together!" I answer with newfound conviction.
We both clasp our hand with a smile.
----------------------------------------
Mewtwo had expected doubt and suspicion, but a kindred being, he had not. After their promise of cooperation and help, he settles on the floor as Astra watches over him. He hears the user shuffle. What is he? Astra knows what Mewtwo is, but what is Astra?
As he lay down once more, Mewtwo debates if he should ask or not. Sleep claims him once more before he can resolve the question. His last sight are Astra's two eyes gently shining with inner blue light.
He awakes in a strange land of fog. Astra? he calls out, to no answers, his call returns to him with an echo. The fog rolls and turns around him, a soft silence permeates the air. He cannot even see the ground he is standing on.
He looks around, trying to find any clue to his location. The more he turns, the less he sees. Fog, he is lost in an endless fog. Nervous, he chose a direction at random and starts to walk. Steps after steps reveals only more fog. Until a sound breaks the silence.
The sound of a large animal running passes by Mewtwo. He instantly stops and look around. Nothing has changes. The fog has not even been disturbed. He looks around for a few more minutes, before resuming his walk. His face now creased with caution and worry, he continues to a destination unknown.
After some times, he notices a golden glow in the distance. It feels both familiar and alien to him. He starts to accelerate, and the unseen animal passes him again. This time, it passes in front of the light. it appears as a large lean beast by the shadow it casts. Mewtwo goes faster, trying to reach the golden light.
He suddenly escapes the fog and beholds the source of the golden light. An egg-shaped construct containing a quadrupedal long necked and seemingly asleep creature. It is the source of the light, its body made of a golden shining liquid that waves and undulates under it own volition. Enthralled, Mewtwo takes a few steps toward the egg.
A horns sounds off, rattling Mewtwo to the bones and chains of barbed crimson shoot out and ensnare the egg. A large diamond shaped eye open above the egg. The eye is black as depths the sea, with a burning red round iris containing a second crimson diamond shaped iris, with lighting coursing through it. The pupil is like a black hole absorbing all the light.
The eye concentrates on the golden being and shapes escapes from it, coalescing into hundreds of different forms which then disappear. Mewtwo is about to take a step forward when the diamond eye focuses on him. He fall on his knees, a pressure beyond anything he could ever feel crushing him instantly. His own eyes dilates as the eye seems to grow closer, ready to engulf him.
He is suddenly pushed down by something massive. A paw as large as he is lands upon his back. With the trance broken, he look behind him, into a large teeth filled maw, smiling at him. White fur with hints of purple at the edge surrounds it, growing all over the creature's head. He can only see one side of the creature's head and its single visible eye, cat-like like in shape, glows with a soft orange inner light.
the horn sounds once more, and the creature answers with the roar of all the creature to ever exists. It is both challenge and defiance.
Two more beings appear before Mewtwo. One is nothing but written pages of many materials, and letters and numbers made of cold blue light swirling around each other, the other is loosely shaped like Astra, but wrapped in ribbons of ever flowing flesh, a malevolent blood colored light oozing between each cracks and gaps.
-o0o-NOT YET-o0o-
Mewtwo awakes to the sight of the cave ceiling. A dream...
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I was right, I think I was right. The night has passed with absurd slowness. I am somehow unable to sleep and thanks to my power issues, I could only stay put and count the rocks on the cave floor. There are 627 pebbles, 201 stones and 64 rocks. HOWEVER! my power consumption was almost minimal. I still lost around one or two percent of my reserves, but not too much. And I even tried to limit WAYLA use. If I could identify objects without it, it might be useful.
For the rest of the night, I passed it at first looking over Mewtwo. Which might sound weird because it was. I stopped after maybe ten minutes? Then I looked at the entrance, at the dance of the rays of light It was enthralling, but still time passed so slowly. But finally, FINALLY, the light is turning brighter outside. I am hoping there will be no more monsters and that our only worry will be disturbing pokemons.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Mewtwo's eyes shoot open and he blinks a couple of time.
"Slept well?" I ask.
Strange vision. He proceed to share broken images of insane creations to me.
"Wow, trippy. You would qualify that as a dream or a nightmare? There is a lot of fear and tension with every images."
Dream. Or vision. Unsure.
"Well whichever it is, it must have been quite the trip."
True. He chuckles as he right himself up. Ready?
"Yeah, let us see what the second day has in store for us."
Mewtwo, having clearly fully recovered from yesterday, pushes the tree out of the entrance and we exit our little shelter. Too bad I do not know how to make the system markers, I would have liked to have this place marked for the next night.
The forest greets us. The trees are as thick and numerous as yesterday, their branches growing high above our head. A leaf falls from time to time, forming a bed of rotting plant matter on the ground. I look around for maybe an early accessible food source, but see nothing.
"All right! We are looking for food. Look out for any bushes that have berries, fruits or vegetables." I exclaim with anticipation.
I will.
We go forward, going in as much of a straight line from the cave as possible. I would really like to be able to find it back. I manage to leave marking on the bark thanks to my left hand, and I hope they will be enough.
As we walk, we see no signs of monsters, but more than once, pokemons makes themselves known. A column of five wurmples ascends a tree, the red caterpillars looking for fresh leaves to munch on. A zigzagoon zips away at our approach, the frightened brown and white raccoon-like pokemon clearly wishing to have nothing to do with us. I even spot a couple of pidgeys lazing above us.
After maybe thirty minutes of walking, we stumble upon something. A berry tree. FUCK! I mean, it's cool because it can help Mewtwo, but berries are useless for me. A few of the blue strawberry-shaped berries get taken over by a blue aura and float back behind Mewtwo in a similar fashion to yesterday. He even consumes one to taste. Bitter, but agreeable.
Eh. We keep going for a couple more minutes until we finally find something. A pond. One of the lilypads on it looks up, revealing itself as a lotad. It looks at us wit beady eyes, but quickly lowers itself back into the water, appearing once more as a simple lilypad. This is not what I was looking for, but it could help verify something. I lower myself on the edges and take a handful of water. And drink it. And regain a fourth of a coolant square. Coolant is water. My eyes grow wide at the confirmation.
Mewtwo collects a hand sized sphere of water with his telekinesis and also drinks it. Of course! I should have though of that earlier. He is a living being after all, he will need water.
No harm done.
"Yeah but I should have though of that."
Many things to think of, little time and experience.
"True," I agree. We have barely started to know each other after all.
A group of plants gets my attention quickly afterward. On one side of the pond, a patch of bulrushes identifies itself as a soggy garden. "Yes!" I exclaim. As I approach, I realize it is not just one garden but three close to each other! This is perfect!!
I start foraging, and quickly tally my finds. more spice leaves, a couple cotton flowers, five cranberries, half a dozen asparagus and two Brussel sprouts. I devour everything but the cotton, it clearly is not comestible and I would rather avoid a repeat of yesterday grass attempt. This small haul netted me almost three full squares of power. I am back to almost half power reserves.
Now that I have enough power I decide now is as good of a time to check what I have unlocked in terms of tutorial. The pond being a rather calm location I decide to do it right there. I open the screen and share it with Mewtwo.
Tutorial about tutorials, check. Nothing new here. Tutorial about crafting, I would have loved it before I had to look for how it worked. Tutorial about monsters, now that could be interesting... '... will target user... react to attacks and will target greatest source... not all monsters remain during the day... Incapable of advanced cognitive functions...'. That was... interesting actually. And very informative, more than I expected.
Tutorial about inventory. Nothing new. Tutorial about the auto-gather system, self-explanatory. Party tutorial, a small interesting tidbit about the sharing of rewards. Each quest lines have rewards tailored for us, but also a reward for the other user. Every quests will have a reward in the form of xp points and candy, but his quests will reward him with unshackling boons, and I will get system upgrades. Uh.
The WAYLA tutorial reveals the signification of the acronym: What Are You Looking At. Nothing new aside from that. The last tutorial I open gives me something and the fact it is the achievement tutorial makes it quite the comedic timing: the moment I open it, I get an achievement.
Achievement got: Well read.
(Read at least 10 entries from any of the exploration and survival subsections or the tutorial subsection)
Reward: 10xp, 1 Exp. candy XS
I give the candy to Mewtwo and collect my experience points. And quickly assign them. I should have done that before eating! FUCK! I'm so dumb! Well, too late. I groan in frustration and assign most points into both power efficiency and generator efficiency, and a bit into repair efficiency. I now have 3% more power and generator efficiency and 1% repair efficiency. It feels like so little, but a percent is a percent!
I then open the monstropedia section and we both look at what we have encountered so far. Zombies, check. Remnants of those that died one too many time. Uh? Skeletons: constructs from a now gone necromancer, good archers. Creeper: explosive experiment by a chimera lord. Giant spider: giant spider.
"I did not meet the spiders."
I did.
"And were they as big as the title claims?"
As long as you lay down. Tall to above knees.
"Wow that is big." I am not looking forward to meet these things.
Not bigger than ariados.
"Did you meet one? I don't see them on the pokedex."
No meet, just know.
"Oh, just like me!"
Like... you?
"Yeah I keep getting knowledge about things I should not know." I point at the lonely lotad in the middle of the pond. "Like the fact that lotads only inhabits clear water lakes or ponds."
True. I know too.
"So we both have absurd encyclopedic knowledge on some subjects then. Wait! You said you never met an ariados, how would you know how big it is?"
Just know. You not know?
"Before you said its name I had no idea that pokemon even existed." I think for a minute. "You might have more knowledge on pokemons than me. However," I take out one of Mewtwo's crystals. "What is this?" I ask him.
Strange crystal, emits strange aura, similar to one energy paths to me.
"Hum... This is an aspect crystal, also called Vis. This one is an Aqua Vis. It radiates the aspect of water mostly." I simply report what both WAYLA and my unlocking memories provide about the crystals. I then take the others crystals out. "The dark one is a Perditio Vis, aspect of entropy and destruction, the white one is Ordo, mostly order and purity, the last three are Aer for the yellow one, air, Ignis for the red one, fire and Terra for the green one, earth. They seem to indeed radiate some sort of aura."
Terra also resonates now. New path revealed with levels.
"Really? Cool! We need to get you more candies. Or you could fight monsters and pokemons... Would you attack an innocent pokemon for levels?" I ask with a cautious edge to my voice.
Only defend, pokemons no threat unless disturbed. If attacked, I defend, if not I do nothing.
His answer reassures me. I also feel reluctant to attack creatures indiscriminately. You are safe little lotad of the pond. I chuckle and Mewtwo also laugh at my though.
Now it is time to get to work. We need to better prepare for the next night. I open yet another menue: the recipe menue. I never had the occasion to check what the recipe hint system did when I unlocked it yesterday. But the moment the menu opens, I immediately see what it changed. I now have dozens of recipes unlocked. No, partially unlocked. Those I have done are indeed unlocked with their little inventory symbol next to them, but the partially unlocked one only have a shape of the inventory symbol. However, when I click on one, I get which material I need to complete the recipe. Those I have already found are visible, those I have not are also black shapes. I also have no names for the partially unlocked recipes.
I look through the recipes and find a couple things that could be what I need. A crescent shaped object asks a strange crafting grid. The grid only has two slots. One with a simple black unknown square, and another with a stack of three stones. I am almost certain that this could be the first part of the pickaxe. It would have been too easy for it to simply be crafted in one step.
Mewtwo looks over my shoulder and then points at another recipe. This one needs two wooden sticks and two wooden planks, giving four unknown squares. I nod, and summon my inventory. I quickly arrange the components in the crafting grid and obtain the new item: blank wooden patterns. The moment it is crafted, almost two dozen new recipes unlock. They require the blank patterns to be arranged in different patterns in the crafting grid. Each would only give me a single pattern once it is done. I still have enough wood and sticks to make about sixty patterns, but I would prefer to be economic. I look through the patterns and select one that should give a crescent. Two blank patterns next to each other and one under the rightmost one. I obtain an axe head pattern. Cool... Not what I wanted. I make another batch of patterns and try another one, the mirror of the first one, and obtain a sicle head. Goddamnit! I try again with a triangular positioning and obtain an excavator head. FUCK!
Mewtwo grumbles his own annoyance. then he opens the recipe menu and tries something. Something I should have tried. He touch the dark icon. The recipe page opens. I facepalm. With my left hand. I cry in pain and almost facepalm again.
Goddamnit. The recipe was actually absurdly easy: a straight line of three patterns. And I get the pickaxe head pattern. Cool, now how do I use this pattern to make a pickaxe head, and how do I make that head into an actual pickaxe?
I am about to return to the recipe menu when Mewtwo sharply turn around. Something has startled him.
"Why hello there," A cheery voice exclaims.