The Girls - Max's Lament

Dusk looked out to the road before her and leaned to one foot. She held a light frown on her face. Her hair was down, laid about her head and shoulders loosely. It was still similar to her iconic color of light blue, with a few streaks of dark indigo through them. Her eyes still a light magenta color, her clothing, not quite of her choice seemed more like a swim suit. At least, a less revealing one, as the light brown coloring top covered all of her breasts and wrapped around her sides just under her arms. The lower half appeared more like a loin cloth for the second half, though it covered all of her, and still had excess to drop down to a point between her legs. At her waist were several bags tied to a belt.

“Is there something wrong master?” Came the light voice of a small hovering fairy. It was small, child looking with a simple white dress, long black hair, blue eyes, and glittering white wings.

Dusk looked up and tilted her head, “No, just thinking. Tell me, what is the quest again?”

“The magus needs you to travel to the southern continent and seek out the power behind the growing corruption of the land. Would you like to know the progress of your quest?” The fairy inquired.

Dusk nodded, though she realized the fairy would not recognize the gesture, “Yes, I would.”

“Primary objective thirteen percent completed. You have arrived on the Southern continent. This road is said to lead to the heart of the corruption. Would you like to view your map, or check your status?”

“Uh, status, please.”

“Your mana reserves are at optimum levels. You have a few additional ingredients for your spells. Is there anything else?”

“Uh, how do I fight?”

“I’m sorry, but I cannot understand the request. You have yet to complete your tutorial. Would you like to continue?”

Dusk let out a sigh. She did not know too much about games, very few threw you into a game without a tutorial. This one seemed to stretch on. She had to make a note of that, so she raised her arm and tapped the small brass band there.

“Inventory accessed, what would you like to do?” Came the voice of her personal fairy.

She looked at the immediate spaces of the bags where each one held a different item. Her largest main bag held her main spell ingredients, bits and pieces of things her magic could bring to life and fight for her. There were stones, crystals, and some glowing curved looking bark she had bought those from a store, and now her gold count was down to three. She had yet to learn combat so she did not know how these items were supposed to work. She lifted her hand and moved it over an arrow icon. Her bags vanished as it changed to a small book. She tapped it and permitted it to open. Max had said this was the newest thing they were working on, a verbal journal for players to keep track of bits of info. Currently she was using it to notate the problems she was having with the game.

She hoped Max was still at the computer looking over the game connection and feed, while noting her comments as well. He said he would be able to since that part of her head had not been covered by the oversized head gear.

“Accessing Journal. Note Entry. Game has tutorial a bit too long. As the game progresses the tutorial and fairy annoyingly pop up to show how the game is to be played. I am already a fair way into game, and yet to learn how to battle. I have learned movement, speaking and interactions with other characters, or NPC’s, as well as I have learned how to use the barter system. Current money reserves, pathetically low. Fairy also seems to be limited since it is a part of the tutorial, she cannot answer verbal questions outside of the tutorial. End journal entry. Save.”

Dusk commanded as she watched the words appear in an archaic form slowly being scrawled in as she spoke.

With a sigh, Dusk closed out the inventory, journal and all and began moving her avatar down the road. After a few minutes the fairy girl reappeared before her and pointed to a tree. The sound of music started up, depicting a battle.

Before her, from the side of the road she was on, she saw a red line appear and the sounds of a falling tree could be heard over the battle music. As the tree creature moved onto the road and faced her, Dusk could see the name at the bottom of the creature where she assumed the red line represented its health bar. The name was ‘Treant’.

A small scroll appeared, and the fairy appeared near her, the game seeming to pause while the battle portion of the tutorial came through. The scroll, as it turned out, appeared for access for players when battle commenced. It held all of their known spells, or scrolls for temporary spell scrolls.

With a shrug, Dusk tapped one of the stones, and a name above the scroll appeared, “Stone Golem.”

The scroll vanished while her avatar went through the ministrations of casting the spell. Her arms went out in front, a small wand in her right hand glowed a light red, a feminine voice, sounded speaking out a few words that sounded strange.

Before her, there was a rumbling sound as a small stone was removed from her inventory and thrown to the ground. There it seemed to grow as her mana began to feed the spell. A blue bar appeared before her, between her outstretched arms and began to slowly lower as she put her mana into the spell. Once done, there between her and the treant, was a large stone like man with no face. There were a few strange symbols on his body as she studied it.

The Treant seemed to target the golem she summoned as it appeared as a new opponent.

Everything in front of Dusk seemed to jerk slightly as the fairy approached her once again, the cinematics coming to an end and the game pausing once more.

“Since you have chosen an Anthromorph as your race, you are able to use, ‘enchanted claw’ to attack the creature you are currently in combat with. However, this places you in danger. Mages are spellcasters, they use their magic for full effects of protection, combat, and many other uses. Because of this, your health is low, but you have a lot of mana. So, if you were to join combat now, you could potentially lose health. Once your health reaches zero, it’s game over.”

“Thank you annoying sprite who is mostly useless.” Dusk commented.

With a sigh, Dusk commanded the Golem forward, where it clashed with the Treant. She was not sure which would win, since it seemed the Treant had some powerful hits. Though when she looked, she realized the red line for her Golem was far larger than the Treant.

With a satisfied feeling, Dusk remained back and watched the two creatures bludgeoning one another to death. Once done, the Golem had a couple of large cracks in its body, while the Treant looked like a large pile of kindling.

“Took long enough.”

“Here, we can look through the remains of the enemy and gather energy to give your magic a small boost, replenish needed energy lost in combat and also you can scavenge for additional magical items and materials for spells.”

“Ugh, they need to add in a way to skip this if someone doesn’t wanna listen to this thing. So annoying.” Despite this, she waited until the fairy completed the tutorial and allowed Dusk to move forward and search the remains. She was able to pick up some more of the glowing bark like what she had just bought, but of slightly different color. She added the two new pieces to her inventory and tapped the remains when she saw it had some magic left over it.

“Congratulations on your victory. Absorbing this magic allows you to access a new spell. Mage armor. This first level spell will allow you to cover your body in magical tree like armor giving you a small boost to your defense. Careful though, you can still lose health, though the armor takes most of the damage. Yous till lose if your health reaches zero.” The voice of the fairy explained. Then she flitted up to the front of Dusk arms raised into the air. “This is the end of the tutorial. I am now your personal fairy and can assist you with minor information until you reach high enough to cast ‘familiar’. Once done, you will be able to access this information and find a new creature to help boost your spells, give you abilities, or any number of things that are available in the game.”

“Hey, if I got a frog, or something, do you think it could eat you in one bite?” Dusk asked.

“I’m sorry, I do not understand your command. Please speak clearly for the systems to recognize and understand your speech.”

“Ugh, Max!” She called out. After a few seconds the game froze before the connection was turned off. With a sigh of relief, she lifted her hands and removed the head gear and looked at the smiling face of Max.

“Is there like any way to shoot that damn sprite, or at least make her more useful?”

“Well, love, I don’t think so. The best thing to do would be to compile the information we have for the game. I would think it best to suggest they set up a training grounds right there at the school before they send you off on the quest. I would have thought something like that would have already been set into the game. Oh, and thank you for setting up info into your journal, Sonata.” Max said. “They can look that info over as well when they view the game as it was played.”

“How much longer do we have to do this?” Sonata whined a little, tilting her head, pushing out her bottom lip and giving her best sad puppy dog look.

Max grinned and turned away to sit back at the computer and start typing away on a document he apparently had already been working on.

Sonata glared daggers at his back as he ignored her. She set the head gear to the side before removing her gloves that connected to it on top of it. She stood and went into the kitchen.

She moved about collecting a glass and filling it with cool water to drink. She heard Max say something and knew he was connecting to the game he had saved. She rolled her eyes, wondering how he could stand to have gone through that long tutorial process. It annoyed her, and then to find out he had already made a good distance into the game and had saved just before taking on a boss, just to get her on to play.

She wanted to do something, but for the life of her she could not think of anything at all. That is until she was finishing her water and set the glass down. She began to walk into the living room to see the gear on Max, and the smug look he had on as he faced down his unseen foe.

Max had explained he had made a mage and named him Arclight as he was a storm mage. A slightly over powered build he had discovered while going through and comparing notes on the powers of the races and characters.

Seeing how Max was so immersed into the game, there was no doubt, if she did something distracting, it would mess him up in the game. With a malicious grin, Sonata quietly made her way over to his form on the couch.