Raya’s PoV
I was sure that my face showed as much confusion and surprise on it as my Callie’s did. I stepped up to stand next to my Callie as we both stared at this bizarre girl in front of us. Even now, she didn’t appear to be able to stay still. She constantly moved around, as if she were a child that had had too many sweets. It was then that I decided to inspect her, it was usually considered rude, but we had no idea who this girl was.
Azalea (Epic)
Power Level: 309
Class: ???
Warning: Fairy
I gasped out loud as I read the information that popped up on my HUD. Why does it just give a warning about her species?
My gasp had made Azalea focus on me, just as she had started asking us a question.
“So, what’re you two do-, oh my gosh! Are you a cat girl? You. Are. So. Adorable!” The floaty girl rushed over, hovering in front of me and squealed in delight. I could almost swear there were stars in her lavender eyes. I flinched back from the suddenness of her movements, but she seemed to not notice as she zoomed around me excitedly. My Callie had just started moving to intercept her, when I spoke up.
“Hold on, you’re a fairy?” I asked incredulously. Up until now, I had just thought they were a myth.
“Uh, yeah? Duh! Didn’t my wings and size give me away?” Azalea responded, rolling her eyes as if it was obvious. Maybe it was to her, an actual fairy.
“Wait… you’re an actual fairy?” My Callie asked this time. “Not an illusion?”
“I’m a fairy, not an actual fairy, or an illusion, silly,” the fairy said, giggling as she flew around our heads.
My Callie sighed and muttered something under her breath. Knowing her, she was most likely swearing at Azalea. I couldn’t help myself, I giggled too. My half-elf companion glowered at me grumpily before looking back at the fairy that was still buzzing around our heads. In the near darkness that we were standing in, Azalea was almost too bright to look at directly without giving my eyes time to adjust. Her constant moving wasn’t helping either.
After a moment of studying her, I could finally make out her wings. They were hard to see at first through the light she was giving off and how quickly they buzzed to keep her up in the air. The fairy had four delicate, partially see through, violet coloured wings between her shoulder blades. She had light blue hair that streamed behind her in the wind. On occasion, I could see small, pointed ears, similar to my Callie’s, although Azalea's weren't as long and pointed. Her purple armour looked like it was made out of leaves and wood, but just looked beautiful and exotic for it.
I frowned as I looked at the little fairy. She acted like one of the ‘civilised’ species, and yet, the information that [Inspect] gave me back almost indicated that she was a monster. Some monsters were known to gain classes from time to time, although that was rare. If she was a monster, the fact that her rating is Epic would indicate that she’s a boss. I had a flashback to when I saw her fight the earth golems and shuddered at the thought of trying to fight her. Yeah, I think I can see why the system warned us.
“How come you’re here?” I asked Azalea curiously.
“I’m here to clear the dungeon and become stronger of course! Just like you, I would think.”
My Callie snorted at that. “Well, yeah. We are adventurers, after all. It’s our job, plus we have a quest inside this dungeon.” A frown formed on her face for a moment as she glanced at the little glowing girl. “A quest, I might add, that was supposed to reserve this dungeon for us.”
The fairy abruptly stopped moving and looked at my Callie with a surprised expression on her face. “Oh? Oops? Sorry?” She responded with a small shrug, then she sat down in midair. It looked strange, but no stranger than seeing a flying, glowing fairy in real life either.
Azalea got herself comfortable, before continuing. “I didn’t know, I’ve never been anywhere outside of Fairy before. This was the first dungeon that I have come across. There wasn’t anything about it being reserved when I entered.”
“The reservation notice shows up at the Adventurer’s Association hall, anyone wanting to use a dungeon usually needs to check there first before entering a dungeon, especially one with only a limited number of instances and a week reset time, just like this one.”
“It’s okay,” I said to the little fairy. She looked a little upset after my Callie’s explanation. “You didn’t get too far in, we can still complete our quest!”
The girl perked up a bit from that, as she smiled at me gratefully.
Azalea looked at both of us before asking, “Do, um, do you think I could party up with you for the dungeon?” As soon as she asked, a notification screen popped up in both mine and Callie’s HUD.
Azalea has asked to join your party, do you accept?
Yes No
0/2
Note: All current party members must agree.
I glanced over at my Callie to see what she was doing, only to see that she was looking at me, an eyebrow raised in question. After a moment to think about it, I clicked Yes. Azalea seemed to be powerful, I didn’t want to upset her, plus she was funny to be with so far.
Azalea has asked to join your party, do you accept?
Yes No
1/2
Note: All current party members must agree.
My Callie looked thoughtfully at me, then glanced at Azalea. She sighed and clicked Yes as well.
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Azalea has joined your party!
All party members gain 50% bonus to experience through combat due to a special skill
It worked. I thought that might not have, given how the system seemed to regard Azalea as a monster.
“Whoa! What special skill gives you a passive 50% bonus to experience? I’ve never heard of that before. Sure, there are some items and potions that can give a small boost, but nothing like this. Can I ask what the skill is?” My Callie said excitedly.
Azalea nodded solemnly, “You may.”
There was a pause between us all for several heartbeats. I looked between the two of them several times.
“Well? What is it?”
“I can’t tell you,” She smirked, “it’s a secret.”
My Callie growled, “But, you just said…”
“I said you could ask, I never said I’d answer.” Azalea interrupted, giggling again.
My half-elf friend just turned to me with a pleading look on her face. I giggled at her expression. “She’s got you there, Callie, she never promised,” I pointed out.
My Callie just shook her head and mumbled something under her breath, that sounded like, ‘Brats that are too cute for their own good’, which made me blush furiously and look away from her and saw Azalea, floating there and making funny faces randomly. It seemed that she hadn’t heard, or decided to not bother responding.
“Wait… how can you understand me?” She suddenly asked with a perplexed look on her face.
“What do you mean?” I replied, confused now myself. “You’re speaking in Basic, after all.”
“Huh, I thought up until now, I was speaking Fairy.”
“Fairy is the name of your language?” I asked.
“Yep! Same name as the forest we live in, too!”
“Well, that’s not confusing at all,” my Callie said sarcastically, rolling her eyes as she did. “At any rate, your language is automatically switched to Basic when entering a dungeon.”
Azalea’s eyes went wide and her expression showed she was saying ‘Oh’, without actually saying it, then shrugged, unconcerned.
“Oh, well, that’s good to know, I guess. Anyway, want to go kill stuff?” Azalea asked, and flew over to hover close in front of me. I could see from how close she was, that she hadn’t gotten out of her last battle unscathed. Her whole body seemed a little bruised and battered, with smudges of dirt in random places and detritus in her long hair. It seemed like the golems got a few good hits in, before they all died. Even her beautiful armour was looking a little worse for wear, a few scratches and scuff marks here and there, there even seemed to be several small burn marks. It had definitely been put to the test. I’d suggest she needed a bath, but I hated baths, so she might too.
I looked over at my Callie, who briefly looked at me before nodding. “Right, yes, let’s go clear this dungeon and complete the quest.”
“Oo! Can you share the quest? Oh, also, I’m Azalea! Nice to meet you both!”
Either Azalea understood the social convention to pretend that everyone doesn’t use [Inspect] and politely ask for people's names, or she spaced out on the fact that we’d used it on her. My bet was the second choice.
I clicked on my quests tab and selected the ‘share quest’ option.
“Thank yee!” Azalea said with a silly accent, while bowing in midair to me.
“Nice to meet you, Azalea. I’m Zaraya, or Raya for short and this is m-, this is Callie.” I almost said ‘my Callie’ just then. I know other cultures had strange reactions towards the possessive ways that nekokin labels friends and families. Calling Callie mine just came so naturally to me, just like saying, ‘my brother’ or ‘my friend’. Other cultures were weird.
“Hi Raya! I can call you Raya, right? You don’t mind, right?” The little fairy said, flying right up in front of my face, ruining my dark vision with how brightly she glowed in the darkness.
I was a bit taken aback by her… exuberance, but she seemed relatively harmless, despite how thoughtless she appeared sometimes. And as long as we didn’t attack her at least.
“Umm, sure?” I answered, hesitantly.
“Great!” Azalea exclaimed, before flying the rest of the distance between us, and patted the top of my head with a tiny hand. It was weird, but adorable at the same time. Normally I don’t like strangers touching me, or even getting close, but Azalea seemed to have an aura of innocent naivety that helped me relax around her.
“Umm, thank you?”
“You’re welcome!” Azalea said, in a singsong kind of way, before zooming off to stop in front of my Callie.
“Hi Callie! I hope we become good friends too.” She said before patting her head like Azalea did mine, then quickly flew away. I think she intimidated her a little bit.
My Callie sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose, and exhaled a little bit, before answering, “Yeah, great, fast friends. Listen, Azalea, it says that you have a class, but doesn’t tell us what it is, could you tell us?”
Azalea looked taken back for a moment, before a cheeky smirk spread across her face.
“You should really buy a girl a drink first before asking something so private, you know?”
My Callie blushed after she glanced at me for some strange reason, before scoffing. “A tiny thing like you, couldn’t handle having a drink with me.” She replied with her own smirk.
“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?” Azalea asked with a pout.
“If you don’t know, then I guess you’re too young,” My Callie said.
“Am not!”
“Are to”
“Are not! I’ll have you know that I am 50, thank you very much!”
I let out a gasp of surprise when Azalea said that. I had been giggling at their arguing up until this point. “Wait, really?” I asked, surprised.
“Uh huh! And so, I am now, officially an adult fairy!” She cheered.
“Huh, so, 50 days old is when fairies reach maturity?” My Callie questioned with a smirk.
“Nooo! 50 years old, silly.” Azalea responded with another pout. No doubt, if she had been on the ground, Azalea most likely would have been stamping her foot.
“Right. Can you tell us what your class is please?”
Azalea floated in the air, frowning at my Callie for a moment before she finally answered. “Fiiiine, my class is [Mentalist]”
Both my Callie and I gasped this time. That was a powerful class, that started at epic rank. It was incredibly rare. Very, very few people have ever been known to have gotten it. No wonder she was so powerful.
My Callie turned to us, “Right, okay. So, I will take point and tank what I can, you kill everything and Raya will heal us. Sound good?”
“Sure” I say, with a nod. Usually I have to do some damage as well, but with Azalea with us, I should be able to just focus on healing.
“You got it boss!” Azalea said, while giving us two thumbs up.
My Callie stared at Azalea for a moment, before she slowly nodded at her.
“Excellent, let’s head out. From the guide that we purchased before we left Eidencrag, there will be a mini boss event that starts when we get close to the entrance to this tree. It is basically a larger, tougher version of the earth golems that you fought earlier. It’s not supposed to be a hard fight, especially not with our group composition.”
Azalea unsheathed a sword from her back and handed it over to my Callie. “Here you can have this, it’ll fit you a lot better than it does me. That is, if you can use it at this size?.” She giggled a little at the end.
It was a beautiful sword that looked like it was made out of a light blue crystal, with darker blue, red and purple animated swirls. It was indeed sized for Azalea, but as soon as she handed it off to my Callie, it resized itself to perfectly fit her. Azalea gasped in amazement and clapped her hands excitedly.
“That was amazing! I wanna do it again.” She said, happily. I smiled and shook my head at the fairies' antics, then decided to [Inspect] the sword that my Callie was gazing at with a soft smile on her face.
Life Shard Splinter
Grade: Rare
Level: 25
Type: Sword
Damage: 12-18
Equip Bonus:
8 Agility
10 Vitality
8 Constitution
10% increase to healing received
“Wow, that’s a great sword for tanking or to help increase your survivability.” I said, as I watched my Callie.
“Yeah it’s a great sword, it’s just a shame that I can’t use it yet, I just need one more level, are you sure that you want me to have it Azalea? Just like that?”
“It’s a sword, not a great sword,” Azalea said cheekily while she poked her tongue out at my Callie. “And yes, I’m sure.” She ended with a happy little smile.
My Callie nodded her thanks, placed the sword inside of her knapsack then pulled her twin swords out of their back sheaths. “Alrighty, let’s do this.” She ordered, before starting to casually stroll towards the tree.
“Woohoo! Yay!” Azalea cheered as she rushed off after my Callie. Swiftly passing her towards the centre of the clearing.
“I guess we’re doing this,” I said to myself, as I began to power walk, preparing a totem and several spells to buff my party members as I followed after them.