TT:E C18

If you read the announcement I just posted, I remembered to post it because it's time for TT:E chapters.

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They trekked deeper into the grasslands, leaving the gas station behind them, with the tiny arrow in their vision guiding their way to the closest safe zone. Seeing the sun set and rise had given them an idea of which direction was which, and they were heading mostly north as they walked. Assuming that the sun still set and rose in the same directions, though they all agreed that changing the layout of the planet was one thing, but changing its rotation was different. Hopefully.

Most of their first hour of walking didn’t involve much actual walking. They made it a little ways, but their focus was on how best to carry everything they had with them. The day before when they’d lucked their way into finding the gas station they hadn’t been attacked; and the best way to hold their bags so that they could easily carry them but also ditch them as soon as a fight started wasn’t even a glint on the horizon of their minds. It was something none of them had experience in, and the semi-ambush from the weavling got Ed thinking. After they figured a way to balance carrying the essentials and having quick access to weapons they started making better pace.

Their bodies were stronger than before and they were able to walk faster for longer. They made it several miles over the next few hour, and once again they could hear the sounds of movement around them, but nothing attacked. There were several tense moments as one creature or monster or another warily decided whether it was worth attacking the group, but huddling up and making themselves seem like too much effort worked wonders each time. Scarlet, continuing to voice her desire to fight and get stronger, wanted to charge in after each creature every time, but Maeve shut her down.

“We cant see them.” She hissed to her friend, who was staring angrily into the tall grass around them. “I’m on board with finding monsters to fight, but we are not diving into what could be easily be an ambush! We have no idea what’s making those noises. It could be something we could handle or something that will definitely kill us. We’re too weak to pick fights at random.”

Scarlet eventually calmed down, and stopped insisting they fight everything after that, but she looked annoyed every time something decided to run off instead of attacking. Thankfully, or sadly depending on what perspective you look at it, the choice of whether or not to fight was taken out of the group’s hands only a little later.

They were crossing a section of slightly shorter grass when there was another now-familiar sound. They all turned to face the taller, head covering grass patch that was a few dozen feet from where they had been walking. To call it a patch was probably misleading, it was like a chunk of woods. The grass stalks were taller than trees in some areas and from a distance it looked like a wall of green blocking off passage. The massive clumps of vegetation had become more and more frequent as the day went on. They’d purposely detoured around it to avoid the obstacle it represented.

“Another one.” Scarlet grumbled. “Is this one going to come out to-“

She didn’t get a chance to finish the question before whatever it was that had noticed them answered her. It charged out of the grass directly at them, it’s six legs pumping. The group scattered as the truck-sized green ladybug tried to run them over. The It stampeded past them as they all dove to the sides and began ponderously turning back around after missing them. Maeve tossed her bag to the side and started gathering the others’ as they all watched the woven grass creature, likely another weaveling, began slowly spinning in place.

“Does it look like its the same as the last one?” Ed asked as he unlimbered his spear.

Maeve stared at the monster, focusing on the strands that made it up. “I think so. It’s bigger than the last one but the grass looks the same size so it’s harder to tell. Assume that it isn’t the same until we figure out for sure, but it doesn’t look like it’s got much to attack us with other than it’s size.”

The beetle finished it’s spin, and they got a good look at it’s head for the first time. Maeve grimaced in disgust and saw her friends doing the same out of the corner of her eye. It had the same almost human face that the other weaveling they’d fought had had, one that almost looked like a tribal mask or a faced carved into a totem pole, but instead of having holes where eyes should have been it had two, overly large and bulging eyes that stuck out much too far. A set of serrated mandibles protruded from it’s face just above a human shaped mouth with a tongue dangling out of it. It was a disturbing sight. It’s legs tensed and it got slightly smaller as it’s body compressed.

“It’s about to charge again.” Maeve warned.

It was eerily quiet as it rushed them a second time. Something that large should have made much more noise as it sped along the ground, but grass hitting grass wasn’t very noisy. They all easily got out of the way of the charge, as it didn’t seem to be able to change directions once it had started and they had more warning than before.

In the end, the fight was nothing to write home about, as strange as that was to Maeve after they finished killing the monster. The first weaveling had been much more dangerous, both because of the limited quarters they’d had to fight it in and it’s greater range of attacks. Even if all it had tried to do was punch them, there were still more ways to punch than the ladybug weaveling’s single charging attack. The three attackers danced around it as it attacked and hit it as it turned around. The fight took longer because of how big the ladybug was and how much more damage it could regenerate from, but it was simpler. They all watched as it fell to the ground and became a large pile of grass after Alex sliced a large gash through it’s body.

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You meaningfully contributed in defeating:

1x Weaveling Ladybug

You receive: 30 XP

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After scanning for other enemies, Maeve took a second to heck her status. After getting to level one they’d all found a little bar telling them their current experience and the amount needed to get to the next level, which for level two was three hundred, twice what level one needed. With the small amount that had rolled over from helping to kill the empty knight and what she’d gotten from the two weaveling fights, she was sitting around a third of the way there. Scrolling down she also saw that her mastery of the spells she’d been using were a few percentage points higher than they had been.

Her attempt to math out how many casts she would need of each of them to break through to the next mastery level was interrupted by a screen.

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Through hard work and practice you have unlocked the generic skill Analyze.

Would you like to learn this skill now?

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Frowning slightly she focused on the new skill’s name, trying to get a description. It hadn’t worked in class selection, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t work now. Or it might, but it was worth testing. When another screen appeared her test paid off.

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Skill: Analyze - Neophyte 1 (0%)

A related skill to the somewhat more common Inspect skill, Analyze gives information to the user about an identifiable target within range and detectable by the user’s primary sense. Unless unable, humans use sight. Analyze differentiates itself from related skills by being able to provided more detailed information, however that information must be earned. The more the user can find out, or already knows, about the target themselves, the more information Analyze will reveal. Higher levels of mastery increase the details and amount of base information provided and the detailed information gained through knowledge and study of the target.

Costs flavored Quezeuq Energy to use, actual cost varies based on distance and the nature of the target.

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Immediately stoked by the description Maeve accepted the prompt to learn the skill. It felt like a shock of energy flowed through her for a brief moment, concentrated on her head, like being shocked by an electric fence without the pain. When she checked her status again after the feeling faded, there was a new line that said “General Skills”, and the original line that had just said “Skills” now said “Class Skills”.

Figuratively shaking with excitement, she used the skill on her best friend to see what happened.

Amelia Putnam - Level 1 Magical Healer

Turning, she looked at the pile of grass the weaveling had left behind.

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Weaveling Ladybug Corpse

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“Hey Maeve, what’s up?” Amelia asked, noticing the staring at her and then the follow up staring at the dead monster.

“I got a skill! Hell, not just a skill I got Analyze!”

The two people who’d played enough video games gathered in close with excited expression while the other two looked on, a little lost.

“How good is it?” Amelia asked. “Is it broad range or specific? Can you use it on us? Wait, you can you just did me! What did it say?”

“Just your name, level, and class. I need to get higher mastery for it to tell me much more, probably, but I’m already excited! It’s a general skill, which is separate from class skills, there’s a whole new tab on my status, but the description told me it’s related to the Inspect skill, which means thats a thing too!”

Alex cut across Amelia’s excited babbling with his own question. “What’s the difference? Well, if it told you.”

“Nothing too specific, but it sounds like Inspect is the basic level skill. Analyze gives me more information if I know or learn more about what I’m targeting.” Maeve glanced at her friend who was literally jiggling with excitement. “It only said it had to be a target I can see and make out, so I guess I can use it on anything? Need to test it.”

“So, you got a skill that tells you information about things.” Ed piped up, “That’s good right?”

“It’s fantastic! It makes me much happier all around. It definitely makes it much easier for us to do what Scarlet wants and get in more fights and level more, because now we have a way to tell if anything we run into it too dangerous to fight. Or it will if it gives us a level range or a danger indicator of some kind, but it makes sense that it will. We just need to find something to test it on.”

“Excellent.” Scarlet slapped a fist into her opposite palm. “Let’s keep going then, and see if we can’t get into any scraps.”

Maeve shot her friend and, probably former at this point, coworker a look. “You know, I’ve been thinking that you’re a lot more excited than I expected about all of this. I know a lot of nerds have fantasize about life turning into an RPG and getting powers, but I didn’t take you as the type.”

Scarlet shook her head. “I’m not excited, I’m motivated. Some of the more complicated video game related stuff is going over my head, but we’re in the middle of an apocalypse. There are monsters around that want to kill people, I don’t know where my family is, and we have no idea where we are. We need to get strong enough to keep ourselves safe. That’s a given in any apocalyptic situation, but with this?” She gestured at the mound of grass that used to be a twelve foot tall ladybug made out of the same grass. “We cannot dawdle around.”