“So, what do you want to do now?” Sheeno asked me, still within the privacy of the earthen room.
“What do you mean? We go out there, keep doing our [Quest], and avoid any other [Dungeon] like a plague. I thought it was pretty clear, as far as plans go”, I replied, shrugging.
“Yes, I already knew that,” she gave me an amused smirk, “but what I was asking was more in line with what are going to do after that, after we’re done with the [Quest]”.
“Keep being awesome [Adventurers], advance in [Rank], and get enough notoriety that it would suffice as a layer of protection on its own against those that would pursue us”, I replied, shrugging once more.
It wasn’t that I didn’t care about the topic, that absolutely wasn’t the case, but the way I saw it we only had one way forward that wouldn’t require us to bend over backward for others, and I doubt we’d ever be in the mood for that.
No, we were done with people stepping all over us… well, I think I could make an exception for Sheeno, if that’s what she’s into-
No! Bad Human!
Go to horny jail!
A ‘cartoony bonk’ sound played, making me almost snort out loud, surprising me once more with the notion that the [System] could use sounds, and so could [Buddy].
And so could [Buddy]…
“Say…”
Yes?
“Why don’t you use that ‘sound notification’ tool to just talk to me directly with a modulated voice? Honestly, it would have been damn handy to have, since it could avoid me getting weird looks on my face when trying to read your messages…”
[Buddy] was silent for a moment, but then a subtle feeling of anger, with a bit of concealed regret, started coming through.
You really think that I would be as dumb as you and not think about something so crucial before now!?
No, I cannot speak by simulating sounds, I just have a library of pre-recorded noises that I can choose from!
In order to actually speak, I would probably need you to [Modify] me, but that could remove my control over your instance of the [System], so we are not doing that.
“Ok, ok, jeez! No need to get all pissy about it.”
“I guess that works in the short run… actually, eventually it should work in the long run too”, Sheeno’s comment snapped me back to reality.
“Yeah. Also, we have barely done anything together, so doing [Quests] together could be seen as some kind of excuse to have more ‘bonding time’ that we could use to get to know each other better, both in combat and outside of it”, I further explained my point.
“That is fine… but really, you’re just too [Anomalous] for things to be this easy, so we’re gonna speak about it with Merglobth, who is also [Aberrant] by the way, although I don’t know in what capacity, but could give us a more experienced opinion on the matter”, she sagely nodded at the end.
“Merglobth is [Aberrant]? I would have never guessed… but being [Aberrants] does seem to be more common than what I was led to believe. I guess that’s fine, I trust the guy… gal… thing, whatever they are”, I fumbled at the end of my agreement.
“Great!” Sheeno exclaimed standing up, accentuating the gesture with a clap of two of her hands, “and now that we finally have something that further resembles a decent plan, I say that it’s time to keep going with our [Quest]”.
“Sure, as long as we agree on [Spell-Weaving] together next time, so that we decide on how to better avoid a situation like the one with that [Mini-Boss].”
“Of course, although, with your… ‘peculiarities’, we might want to invest in a house with stronger [Obfuscation] sooner rather than later”, Sheeno readily agreed, but bit her lower lip with her sharp teeth during the last phrase.
“We can do that!? Get a whole house that screens us from unwanted eyes? Well, then sign me the fuck up! Oh my [God], that would immediately ease a lot of my worries…” I sat up straighter, feeling both elated and relieved at the news.
“And if you were to accept me paying for it, we would only be able to get it sooner…” she informed me, acting all coy with her hands behind her back, twisting her hips in a cutesy manner, and with a mischievous look in her eyes.
She had reeled me in with line, hook, and sinker.
Recognizing how she had managed the discussion to work as proof of the ridiculousness of my sense of pride, mainly for the fact that I was not accepting her money, made me only now realize the fact that we were talking about buying a house together.
Those two notions were enough to make me fully blush, which made a victorious smirk appear on Sheeno’s face.
“We’re going to discuss this at a later date, after the [Quest]”, I mumbled, feeling a slight sense of defeat.
“That’s perfectly fine. Now let’s go!” And she accentuated the last exclamation by ruffling my hair.
For my part, after deciding on the spot that I really liked Sheeno, both as a woman and as a friend, I scrambled out of my chair to go after her.
I mean, she might have agreed on avoiding [Dungeons], but who knows if we’re not just going find anything that is going to prove itself just as troublesome if I’m not there to guide us and avoid danger.
Not that I’ve been that successful in avoiding danger so far… but not for a lack of trying.
* * *
“To the left, to the LEFT!” I shouted at Sheeno.
“WHOSE left!?”She shouted right back from behind me.
“Yours of cou- LOOK OUT!!!” I tried warning her, but the [Monster] was already making its move.
A black-furred dog wreathed in shadows, and with brilliant red eyes, jumped at her from a shadow in the indicated direction. Thankfully she had already been on edge even before my warning, so her reaction came swiftly enough, in the form of an [Ice Axe] to the face.
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The whining beast tried to dive back into the shadows, but a dozen or so disks and nets of light brought its life to a swift end.
2 dead, 4 to go.
Our second day of adventuring had started fine enough, with me and Sheeno growing tighter by the hour and another promise of being more careful in the future. All in all, everything should have been fine.
The key word here is ‘Should’.
Instead, we got ambushed a mile out of the outpost by half a dozen shadow dogs, who had the stupidest name I had yet seen in the [Nexus].
Name:
Shadog
Affinity:
Dark; Nature
Danger:
Medium
Behavior:
Pack; Ambush; Aggressive
“Fucking [Shadog], really!?”
Ridiculous name aside, they were an actual threat in numbers, with their seamless ability to swim in the slightest of shades, and their amazingly powerful bites; not that they used it after the first time one tried to and got stuck on my [Barriers], and subsequently got annihilated by our combined attacks.
Not that it stopped them indefinitely either, since they just opted to use quick swipes with their wicked, recurved, claws.
And did I say how they are very hard to detect while submerged in shadow? Because they are, and [Unavoidable Detection], without being actively fueled by [Mana], wasn’t able to catch them until it was almost too late.
Once again, ‘Almost’ is the key word, since I was still quick enough on the uptake to conjure a couple of [Totems] just in time.
After the first surprise attack I made Sheeno stand back to back with me, in order to avoid any of us getting blindsided, and with [Kenny] hovering above us to dispel the closest shadows, who protected ut from being attacked from right under our feet, we stood our ground.
“What are they doing now!?” Sheeno exclamation could have been simply answered with a ‘how am I supposed to know’, but that wouldn’t have helped either of us; also it was a good question, since before killing the second one they had been simply diving in and out of the surrounding darkness, almost if taunting us, but now instead they were keeping themselves submerged.
“Maybe they decided to take us a bit more seriously? But anyway, they seem to be splitting up in a group of two for either of us… lovely”, was my actual response after observing their movements for a couple of seconds with my [Detection].
This was the first time, for either of us, that we met with [Monsters] that could actually strategize, and got me thinking.
“Say, could they just be really aggressive [Beasts]? They seem too smart to be constructs of [Mana] and [Aether]”, I asked.
“No, my [Focus] tells me that they are [Monster], and that nothing is making them act differently from how they normally would”, she replied.
“What’s [Focus]?”
“My [Evolved Inspect]!”
“Fuck, now I’m jealous…”
Sheeno turned to look at me with a face that expressed both incredulousness and a little bit of anger, “jealous? You!? OF little old me? Do you have any idea of how absurd most of the things you can do are-“
“Double attack on both fronts!” I interrupted her rant.
It seemed that the dogs weren’t happy to let us verbally slug it out among ourselves, and instead took the opportunity to try and take us by surprise.
Unfortunately for them, I always make sure that I can never be taken by surprise with the same method twice, so both my [Turrets] and [Trappers] were aiming for them even before they had begun emerging.
What followed was the unusually short slaughters that were our fights, lasting maybe a minute or two, but thanks to my [constructs] we actually had little to do in a straight confrontation of this caliber, resulting in us just actively blocking any attack that managed to reach us, while peppering them with other minor moves, like immobilizing them with [Manakenisis], or freezing the ground they were running on; but these things were usually able to shrug off those distractions, freeing themselves from my [Manakenisis] after a brief struggle, or counteracting Sheeno’s [Sleek Ice] by partially submerging their legs through it.
But they did work as a distraction, and it was all that we needed to kill all of the remaining 4 [Shadogs] before they could do little more than try and send a weak swipe at us with their claws.
Once the fight was over I quickly scanned the surroundings, and saw that no other entities could be detected, even with [Unavoidable Detection] at full throttle, so I tapped the back of my hand to Sheeno’s back two times to signal her that she could relax. And yes, that was a signal that we decided upon while traveling to communicate wordlessly and throw off any intelligent attacker and exclude them from our decisions.
Actually, I tried to push for relaying direction like we were standing on a clock, but they weren’t really a thing in [Nexus], since the [System] could just tell you the time whenever you needed it, and that was always in your head, so it removed the need of bringing something else of more physical to further weight down one’s belongings.
Not that Sheeno had such a problem, the pampered girl had a massive [Spatial bag] in the form of a ring on her finger, which definitely didn’t make me jealous, and if you think otherwise you can go and get bent.
Sheeno, unaware of my internal grumbling, sagged her shoulders in relief, and I finally noticed just how much on edge those [Monsters] were making her. I mean, she didn’t even try to launch herself at them, but instead immediately agreed to find shelter behind my back.
“Ugh, I hate dogs!” That was the last thing that I expected coming from her.
My thoughts must have been apparent on my face, because after looking at me she adopted an annoyed frown.
“What!? Is something wrong with me disliking a particular type of quadruped?” She asked, with a weird tilt in her voice that I couldn’t rightfully place.
“I don’t think so? I personally love dogs, but those were definitely a hassle to fight, but I feel like there a story there with how you’re acting…” I probed innocently.
“And why would you think that?” Sheeno asked back, looking at me askance.
“Your phrase ‘disliking a particular type of quadruped’ sounds more like an excuse a [Princess] would use, instead of what you would usually say”, I answered, swaying back and forth on the ball of my feet with crossed arms.
She squinted hard at me for a moment, before finally admitting to it.“Damn it, why are you so weirdly perceptive on the littlest of things!?” She relented.
After another bit of silence I decided to get moving, but even after another while, seeing that she didn’t seem likely to talk about it on her own I tried probing her again with “so?”
“It’s just because of a stupid story my father used to tell me to scare me into obedience when I was a kid, about a massive [Demon wolf] that prowled the depths of the [Wild Area], who left its dead victims mostly intact, besides their shredded throats and missing hands”, she spilled it out all at once.
“Well, I’m sorry to say this, but that was kind of a dick move on your father’s part, but it doesn’t sound enough to put you so on edge-“, but once again I was interrupted.
“You don’t get it, Darwin! My father, the [King], didn’t die in his bed as I had led you to believe before, but died while on an excursion in the [Wild Area]!” Sheeno shouted, her breath now coming ragged.
“Shit, don’t tell me-“
“He and his entire platoon were found dead, Darwin… with ripped throats and missing hands…” she almost whispered that last part.
“Fuck. Sheeno, I’m sorry, both for pushing you to tell me and for what happened to your father…”, the moment was so emotionally heavy that I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say.
“No, don’t apologize. I guess the information that I could possibly freak out in presence of canines in the future will result useful to you to save my life… again”, she commented.
We kept walking for a while, with Sheeno seemingly having retracted into a shell of her own making.
So I decided to break it.
“It’s spiders for me.”
Sheeno made it clear that she wasn’t listening, “I’m sorry, what?”
“I hate spiders, just can’t stand them; and not because they’re gross, but because one almost killed me as a kid. Thankfully I was seen by a specialist just on time, but I still remember those few excruciating hours of my life; and the worst part is that I still remember that disgusting black thing crawling on my leg from the inside of my garden boots, jumping on my hand, stop for a second, and then it just deciding to bite me before scampering off. I was left spasming on the ground for a couple of minutes, locked in a staring contest with my ballooning hand, before my parents were alerted from my thrashing.
I may not know just how hard the experience must have hit you, with the fact that you lost a loved one in the event, but I assure you that I am no stranger to trauma… So I get it, don’t worry, and I will never hold it against you.”
Again, neither of us stopped walking, and just kept going. That is, until Sheeno wrapped one of her lower arms around my neck and brought me close.
“Don’t belittle your experience, it sounded awful. At least I didn’t experience any physical pain, nor did I see my father’s body before it was cremated”, Sheeno tried to reassure me.
“Yeah, no. Now you’re belittling your own experience, and I won’t allow that”, I plainly responded.
“Maybe… but I still think that you’re too used to putting yourself down-“ she tried to randomly reprimand me, but I interrupted her.
“Ok, let’s just agree that both experiences sucked, and let’s try and find comfort with one another”, I interjected.
“Oh, wow, was that a genuine proposition? My, how bold of you!” Sheeno asked with a shocked tone, suddenly flipping the script on me.
“Wait, no. That came out wrong! I meant-“ and I stopped, because looking at her it was obvious she was holding back her laughter.
“YOU!?” I loudly asked, red both in embarrassment and anger.
“Catch me if you can!” She stormed off to our left.
“I’ll fucking- Not wait, not that way!”
But I was too late, we were in for another fight.