Chapter 23

At the moment, Fey was feeling good. With her upgraded (badass) equipment and new skill, she felt ready to take on opponents in real combat (as opposed to the random assortment of things she had been doing for the last 20-odd chapters to somehow make it this far without dying). What should I do now? she wondered. Maybe I should go find Leah.

In the world of Fantasia, the monsters were stronger in wilderness and weaker near developed areas. Players could travel safely between major cities starting around level 12, and where they chose to adventure depended more on inclination for particular environments than anything else. Fey had a tendency to remain in familiar surroundings; without the pressure of uniting with her friend, she would likely have stayed in the Elvenwood for quite a while (which likely would have driven readers looking for plot slowly insane...).

Fey messaged Leah's avatar, Sirena:

(Yeah, Fey gained a level sometime after getting her punching blades. Just go with it.)

Without actually knowing the details of Fey's character build and fighting style, Sirena had accurately guessed that Fey would tend more towards “run away!” than “stand and deliver!” when it came to dealing with enemy attacks (plus, she had neither the weight nor the muscle required to tank properly).

(Fey was being honest with herself.)

Mages who chose to worship a particular deity (you could only choose one; they are watching) had part of their spell-casting costs borne by the deity. In return for lower mana costs and faster casting times, religious mages had an additional Prayer bar that they had to fill with rituals like prayers and sacrifices; each spell consumed prayer points and spells would no longer work once the Prayer bar ran empty[i].

Fey was all fired up (Fairy Tail reference) to start her journey towards the ocean, except… She had no idea which direction to travel in. The ocean is… east? Fey vaguely remembered seeing a world map in her game manual, but had skipped over the illustration with barely a glance.

Fey opened her navigation window, seeing the mini-map of the local area that she had been using to travel within the Elvenwood. As she zoomed out to view a larger area, the map gradually became less detailed as it displayed land farther and farther from where she had already travelled, until it became gray blank space with no information. Useless.

Fey logged off in order to do some research on the Internet.

◊◊◊

Arwyn sat up and went to sit at her computer desk. After turning on her laptop and logging in (with her nifty fingerprint scanner), she opened her favourite search engine (you have three guesses) and typed in “Fantasia world map”.

Despite having been online for less than a week, there was already a considerable amount of information about Fantasia available, published by players. People had started websites, posted monster information, and even written guides (which Arwyn assumed were useless, as nobody had even reached the level 30 required to start specializing).

Arwyn quickly found what she was looking for: a detailed world map made by merging many players’ local mini-maps. There were large patches of wilderness (filled with murderous high-level monsters) that were still unexplored, but all major roads and the coastline were present.

The first thing Arwyn noticed about Fantasia’s main continent was, ...It’s shaped like an elephant[ii]. Indeed, despite slightly jagged coastlines, the continent of Pantheel[iii] was clearly recognizable as an elephant in profile; there was even a mountain chain that marked the curve of one huge ear.

Earth’s largest land mammal was Fantasia’s largest mammal land; whimsical details like this were hallmarks of VirtualRealities’ many successful game enterprises.

In the elephantine scheme of things, the Elvenwood was located on Pantheel’s eye and ear, with great forests growing up until they reached the mountain chain delineating the ear. To the west, on the torso and back, there were vast deserts, unexplored except for a few major settlements. On the belly, in the south, was the Dark Side, a volcanic area with constant ash clouds dulling the effect of the sun, perfect for demonic and undead races. The northern lands were not lands at all, but permanently frozen oceans that allowed travel and even settlement to a hardy few.

Human lands, grasslands and plains suitable for farming, bordered the Elvenwood to the east. They stretched to cover the continent up to the trunk-and-tusk-shaped coastline. The merfolk colonies were located in the tropical waters southeast of the continent, quite a distance from Fey’s current location.

Hmm… Assuming I walk 4 kilometres an hour (2.5mph), I could cover… 96km (60 miles) in a 24-hour period. This whole ‘lack of need to sleep’ thing is rather convenient.

Based on Arwyn’s calculations, she could reach the coast in less than a week even if she did not find a faster mode of transportation on the way. Looking at the roads, the fastest route appeared to be going straight east into human lands, then following the main highway south and east until reaching the ocean.

In the course of her research, Arwyn was sidetracked several times, clicking on various interesting-looking articles and learning miscellaneous information about the world of Fantasia.

The horns of a monster are the most highly armoured part of its body, but if you can shatter one, the monster will fall unconscious.

Players who worship a god can refill their Prayer bar by burying or burning monster remains.

Merfolk race specialties: bonus to Charisma attribute, 50% water affinity, racial ability telepathy, penalty to speed and stamina on land

Between the necessary and unnecessary research, Arwyn spent about an hour on her computer, logging back into Fantasia after 11:00p.m.

◊◊◊

As soon as Fey logged in, Blade initiated audio chat and asked, “Where are you?”

(After jumping in unpleasant surprise,) Fey answered, “Near town.”

“Want to meet at the tavern?”

Not really, Fey thought acerbically (being spooked by sudden noises never put her in a good mood). However, since the tavern was a good place to stop for (free) supplies for her impending journey, she said, “Sure,” and headed to the designated tree-building.

Fey was surprised to see that the interior of the tavern had undergone some remodelling. In order to accommodate the growing number of players, Tallen had (literally) whistled up a second floor, complete with tables and benches grown out of the wood. On the main floor, the space of one former table was now taken up by a staircase.

In addition to the new floor, there appeared to be new help; while Tallen remained in the kitchen to deal with the food, a young boy approximately 12 years in age was now in charge of seating and taking orders.

“Hello, my name is Todd and I will be your server today. May I direct you to a seat?”

Fey was highly amused by the boy’s formal and clearly-rehearsed lines that contrasted sharply with his youth and enthusiasm. Not wanting to hurt his feelings, she adopted an equally serious and formal tone. “Actually, I am meeting someone, but I am not sure whether he is already here.”

“Oh!” Todd’s eyes widened dramatically. “Are you Fey?” he asked excitedly.

“Why, yes I am.” Fey was rather surprised that Todd knew her name.

All of Todd’s professional composure flew out the (figurative) window at the news, and he reverted to the excited, curious 12-year-old that he was. “My dad told me all about you! Mr. Blade asked me to look out for you; he’s upstairs.” (We assume that Todd’s dad is Tallen; otherwise, this situation appears to break some child labour laws)

As Todd led the way upstairs, he chattered excitedly. “How did you get so many logs? My dad says we won’t run out of wood for a year!”

“I had help,” Fey answered.

“Was it Mr. Blade?”

“Nope. It was a very nice angel who felt bad for crashing into me while he was flying.”

“An angel! I’ve never seen an angel. Did he look cool?”

“Very cool,” Fey answered sincerely. By this time, they had gained the second floor, and Fey could see Blade sitting at the end of a table; curiously, the table was on a raised dais about a foot higher than the rest of the seating on the floor.

“Why is that table higher than the rest?” she asked.

“That’s the reserved table. When the tavern is full, you can pay extra to be seated there instead of waiting in line. My dad said you and your guests can sit there for free because you’re a VIP.”

Fey sat down across from Blade at one end of the table, feeling strange that she was considered a Very Important Person somewhere. “Ah, thank you, Todd.”

“My dad says you don’t like to order, so he’ll be up with your food soon.” Turning to Blade, Todd reverted to his amusingly incongruous server voice. “Would you like to see a menu, sir?”

“I’ll just have whatever she’s having,” answered Blade.

“Very good, sir.”

Hearing that particularly snooty waiter response come out in Todd’s boyish voice nearly made Fey burst out laughing, but she managed to restrain herself to a single cough. He’s so adorable.

Todd turned to return downstairs, then exclaimed in a loud voice, “There are monsters in the tavern!”

All heads in the busy eating-place turned to look.

“They’re with me,” said Fey hastily, jumping out of her seat to grab her pets before someone tried to kill them. She dumped Magic and the six glooms into a pouch made by her cape, then tucked Boris under one arm and retreated back to her seat (Amethyst is still riding along on her shoulder).

The damage was done; all the players in the tavern were focused on Fey and her pets. Customers discussed what they had seen, and people from the ground floor came up to see what the commotion was about.

Todd trailed after Fey back to her seat. “Why do you have monsters, Miss Fey?” he said in a voice loud enough to be heard throughout the room. At the mention of her name, Fey’s fame immediately increased considerably:

“They’re my pets,” Fey muttered to Todd in a quieter voice, designed not to carry farther than Todd’s ears.

“Cool!” Todd cheerfully accepted the explanation and returned downstairs.

Blade was just as curious as the rest of the players. “What are those?” he asked, referring to Fey’s shadow-pets, which she pushed under the table so they could rest in the darkness.

“They’re glooms,” Fey answered as she finished positioning her pets into suitable seating arrangements. She lifted Boris onto the bench beside her and set Magic down on the tabletop. Amethyst hopped down from her perch on Fey’s shoulder and relaxed against the table, becoming flatter than usual (*deflated slime*).

“Did you say ‘gloom’?” asked an unfamiliar voice. It belonged to a (unfamiliar) player seated at a nearby table. The elf appeared to be some kind of archer, with an unstrung longbow leaning against his seat. In a particularly forward move, the archer migrated from his seat to the VIP table, almost sitting on Boris (and his sharp tusks) before settling two seats away from Fey.

He continued to ask questions. “Aren’t glooms from the Dark Side? Have you travelled there?”

“No…” Fey answered slowly.

“Where did you find them, then?”

“A dungeon…” Fey answered slowly and reluctantly. She was very aware of the attention of the players around her, making her want to be withdrawn and secretive.

“A dungeon around here?”

“Yeah…”

Thankfully for Fey, Tallen arrived upstairs carrying a tray with two large, steaming bowls. “You can’t sit there,” the tavern-keeper told the newcomer as he placed the bowls in front of Fey and Blade. “Not without paying the ‘reserved table’ fee.”

Fey inhaled deeply in appreciation of her food: seafood udon noodles. Out of all the different kinds of noodles in the world, udon was her favourite, and out of all the different kinds of udon noodles, seafood was her favourite. She heard but barely registered the stranger asking, “How much is the fee?” and Tallen answering, “10g.”

Ten gold was an insignificant amount of money for any player over level 10, so the archer willingly dug out the appropriate coinage for the continued right to ask Fey questions.

More than one player decided it was a good deal, and by the time Fey had picked up her first noodle, placed it into her soup spoon, and eaten the squishy goodness, the VIP table was full and Tallen was returning cheerfully to the kitchen with a fistful of 10g coins. …Is it just me, or are we starting a trend of Tallen using me to earn money? (See Chapter 20 if you don’t remember. Yup, all the characters turn out to be evil.)

Blade looked briefly nonplussed at the sudden influx of table-mates, then shrugged and dug into his noodles. Unlike Fey, he held his chopsticks correctly (Arwyn’s parents never corrected her weird chopstick grip when she was young, so now she’s stuck with it).

The elven archer opened his mouth to ask another question, but a female warrior pre-empted him by asking, “How did you order udon noodles? I didn’t see them on the menu.”

Fey shrugged. “I didn’t order.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t order?”

“I never order; the food just comes.”

“If you don’t order, how do they know what you want?” the warrior asked, puzzled.

“I think he reads my mind.” Fey was half-convinced of this, and said the words in her ‘conspiracy theorist’ tone of voice. (The author had an explanation for this, then decided it would be more fun not to explain.)

Fey unrolled a piece of imitation crab meat (she prefers it to the real kind) for fun before eating it.

The first player to arrive would not be denied his paid-fee-given right to ask questions. “Where’s the dungeon that you found?”

Fey could almost see pointed elven ears perking up around the table; Blade and one other human were the only non-elves in the establishment. “Oh, around,” she said vaguely, accenting her response with a (vague) circular gesture that managed to encompass three-quarters of the directions it was possible to travel in. Deciding that the response would not satisfy the stranger, she added, “There are some really high level monsters down there; I almost died. I would level up some more before looking for it, if I were you.” (Well, she’s not exactly lying…)

The questions continued. “Why do you have monsters with you?” asked on player, pointing his fork at Magic and Amethyst.

Fey ate a shrimp with more noodles. (It was quite awkward, what with everybody staring at her, waiting for her response.) “They’re my pets.”

The answer elicited a flurry of comments.

“Pets!?”

“Is there a pet store around here?”

“How many pets do you have?”

Fey did not feel like revealing the secrets of her special skill, but also disliked lying outright. Carefully, she said, “You can get pets by being nice to monsters.” She neglected to mention that most of her taming experiences involved nearly killing the creature in question beforehand (See Chapters 2, 14, and 18 if you don’t remember).

“What? No way!” One player rushed off to try to tame a monster. This seemed to trigger a herd instinct, as all the players followed suit, leaving Fey and Blade alone again at the table.

“…It’s not that easy, is it?” ventured Blade, referring to the process of monster taming.

“Not exactly.” Fey did not think she could accurately summarize the kinds of peculiar circumstances that resulted in monster taming, so she did not try (and ate noodles instead).

Having rested adequately, the glooms were hopping around restlessly by her feet. Fey reached down and plopped the six onto the table, where they began to hop around curiously.

Fey was highly amused when Inkblot proudly presented her with a shoelace, presumably pilfered from an unsuspecting player’s boot.

“That’s not really loot, you know,” she told the shadow-rabbit. Inkblot cocked his head questioningly. “Loot comes from dead opponents,” Fey explained.

When Amethyst suddenly perked up at the words, Fey hastily added, “And killing players is bad.” Amethyst relaxed again, looking more like a (purple) pancake than a teardrop.

Blade carefully petted Shadow on the head. The gloom tolerated the contact for a few seconds, but then hopped away, out of reach (*rejected*).

Blade went back to eating his noodles. “So what’s up?” he asked.

“I’m heading to the coast,” Fey announced. “You’re from the east, right? How long did it take you to get here?”

“About a day?” Blade guessed.

“A day as in eight hours, sixteen hours, or twenty-four hours?”

“Probably sixteen. It was around sundown when I arrived.”

“Hmm.” Fey pondered the information while continuing to eat her noodles. Newtown (the human starter city mentioned in Chapter 8) was over 100km from the Moonwood, so Blade should have taken longer to arrive. “Did you ride while you were travelling?” she asked.

“Yeah. In the human lands, there are coaches you can take on all the major highways.”

Convenient. Fey mentally altered her travel plan to include less time walking and more time earning experience.

“So why are you going to the coast?” Blade asked.

“I’m going to visit my friend Le – Sirena. She’s a mermaid.”

“Cool.” Blade pictured the underwater merfolk kingdom, tropical waters, coral castles, and of course half-fish, bikini-clad girls. Not surprisingly, the idea of visiting appealed to him.

When Fey had finished her bowl of noodles, she stood. “Let’s go,” she said to her pets. The Feypets hopped to the floor (Amethyst used her bubble like a grappling hook, tucking it under one of Fey’s shoulder straps and hoisting herself on her usual perch).

Blade thought that Fey’s command included him as well. “What, you’re just assuming that I’m coming along?”

“…Actually, I assumed you weren’t coming along.” In Fey’s mind, since Blade had come from the east, it made no logical sense for him to return there so quickly.

“So I’m not invited, then.”

Fey could not understand why so many of her conversations with Blade took on the overtones of a lover’s quarrel. “…Do you want to come?” she finally asked, having calculated that it would be the fastest way out of the conversation.

“Well, since you asked so nicely,” Blade said with a joking grin.

Fey shook her head with 30% amusement and 70% exasperation, then led the way to the ground floor of the tavern. (The Feypets hopped after her, and Blade took up the rear.)

Tallen met the group at the exit with several days’ worth of travel food. “I heard you were leaving,” said the tavern-keeper (apparently, he can hear all within his domain).

“Yeah.” Fey was awkward at goodbyes. “Thanks for all the great food, Tallen. I’ll come back to visit when I’ve reached my destination.”

“Looking forward to it. Bring me any delicacies you find on your trip, young elfess.”

“I will. Bye. Bye, Todd!” Fey waved at the boy from across the room, where he was writing orders down on a small notepad. He waved back.

Fey’s group left the tavern.

Footnotes:

[i] A lot of the magic system in Fantasia is the result of an interesting discussion that I had with my reader Aetheo

[ii] This is a tribute to the author’s favourite bad pun, “Everything that is not an elephant is irrelephant.”

[iii] This is an anagram of the word “elephant”, because the author is bad at naming things