The dull headache of a well-earned hangover greeted the new day as I woke up once again. Taking a look around the strange room, I took a moment to realign my memories of what the hell was going on. Right, I'm legally dead, have a weapon and caused arson.
Stretching my body as I got out of bed, I realized that I had no change of clothes and had slept with just a shirt and boxer shorts on, leaving the rest neatly piled on the floor. Putting these on, I turned on the kettle to figure out a plan of action for the day.
Okay, so I'm "Level 5", I have a spellblade and a vague idea of how to cast things. What do I do with this information and how do I get a more stable income before I get a game over?
The kettle's silent bubbling was interrupted by the soft groaning of someone in the bed opposite of where I slept. That's odd, I didn't have anyone here last night, right? Sure, IF was here, but she left soon after and had "other arrangements", so who is this?
My question was answered by the unknown figure making themselves known. At a quick glance I thought I finally found a non-generic male, but alas, upon a slight inspection, they seemed to be yet another female. I quietly pondered the implications of being the only non-generic male in a female dominated world for a moment, before turning to prepare a second cup of tea. She seemed like a tea person, but I eventually heard the girl bring herself out of bed and step towards me. Now this was going to be awkward.
"Wow, you put the milk in first? Nice taste, weirdo. I'll make my own." She said bluntly. Very bluntly. It's like she had a disdain for me already. Stepping aside, I turned my head to properly analyse her features.
Upon her had was a short, dirty blondish smattering of hair pointing downwards. It was kind of like IF's, but this girl seemed to like taking care of her hair, however boyish it looked. Her half-lidded, sapphire eyes were also nice, though I couldn't tell if those were her default state or not. Taking a look away from her face, she wore a simple white dress with brown straps on.
And of course, she was flat. No wonder I mistook her for a dude at first. It was pretty clear that she wanted to buck the girly stereotype as much as possible, even if it meant looking like a boy who dressed like a girl.
Looking back to her face, her attention was now focused on me, tea in hand. "What, you never seen a girl before?" She spat. Jeez, this girl was rude. Maybe she's not a morning person?
"Nah, it's just been awhile since I saw someone with such… interesting features?" I said diplomatically, not referring directly to any part of her. Or lack thereof.
Her stare hardened for a moment, before taking a sip of her tea. "Whatever. Can you tell me where I am? I passed out last night after… working. Then I woke up here with you."
Leaning on the desk casually, I picked up the cup of tea in my non-optimal left hand in order to look cool. I don't think it worked. "Sure, sure. This is the Lowee Hostel in Toadstool Town. I'm surprised that someone else was sleeping here, I thought I was up pretty late… Wait, you said you passed out?"
"It's… None of your business." She hesitantly replied, not meeting my look of concern. "It just happens from time to time. Just wanted to know before I headed out."
Freeing up my right arm so I could drink tea properly, I took a long sip. Ow, fuck, I didn't let it cool. Still, I needed to persevere. "Maybe you shouldn't let passing out be a part of your daily routine? Especially here in Lowee when it's all snowy and cold. You can get frostbite out here, you know."
She rolled her eyes. "I know what I'm doing. Sometimes I have to make sacrifices for my nation. It's a part of my job." She seemed a bit defensive in her tone. Must be a fanatic for Lowee.
Finishing off my tea, I placed the dirty utensils separately from the clean ones before cleaning after myself a little bit. Don't want to be a total slob, after all. An awkward silence between us sprang up, as if neither of us were very sociable.
I mean I know I wasn't, but she's either really pissed off at me, doesn't like socializing, for both. Either way, I cleaned up, put my totally not patriotic jacket on, before grabbing my backpack and Serenity and turned to leave with my key.
"Be seeing ya, then." I said politely.
"Hopefully not." She replied. Fair.
I left the room, returned the keys to the reception and turned to leave, but not before spotting someone familiar on one of the waiting chairs.
"Good morning, Guildmaster." I walked up and politely greeted my fellow spellblade, who was busy on one of the many phones attached to her jacket.
At the very least she responded to me. "Oh hey, you again. Thought you would have left by now."
"Nah, I'm not an early riser. What time is it anyway, like 6am?" I asked, having a revelation that I needed a goddamn watch.
"It's 10am," She replied bluntly. "Anyway, I'm not here to meet you."
"Oh, I didn't want to assume after you came all this way to meet me late at night in a hostel…" I replied, putting the charm factor to 11.
IF was not amused, giving me a glare. "Not into dudes. Especially not arsonists."
"Too soon." I joked, but still I was curious. "Who's this contact then?"
"None of your business." Was all I got in return. Seems being a Guildmaster was confidential work. Maybe she was worried about that girl in the white who passed out like I was.
Nah, just a coincidence. I gave a quick goodbye wave to IF before heading to the Guild.
Turning up to the Guild, the place was fairly barren. I must have arrived on a busy day yesterday or something. Regardless, I gathered some quests in an area that wasn't Weurld 1-1. Not only do I think I should explore more of this Gamindustri place, I really don't want to fight a Turtle again. Nor do I want to cause another inferno.
Conveniently, there was an area nearby that was a frozen lake called "Aqualentis Lake". The denizens seemed to be mostly aquatic, with names like "Octogoo","Rocktopus" and of course, "WhaleKing". Felt like I was missing a pun there, but I decided to take Quests that involved all 3. This combined with their Credit drops should allow me to start saving Credits.
There was one thing I needed to do before I left the Guild, though. And that was storing my stuff. I don't want to lose it in battle. So, I put the bag (and everything in it) into the Inventory, double checked that I had my "armor", jacket and Serenity and headed off on my way without a word.
Unsurprisingly, the jacket protected against the cold more than a t-shirt does, making the trip down to Aqualentis Lake less painful, but more tedious. I had nothing to take my mind off of the snowy trudge this time around, and the trip did feel longer than the one to Weurld 1-1. Suppose that's the downside of not having something to distract you on a walk.
Eventually (It felt like an hour, but it easily could have been wildly different, I need a watch,) I arrived at Aqualentis Lake. Very surprisingly, the residents were aquatic, opting to appear out of holes within the frozen over lake. The evolution of creatures here is fascinating, as much akin to seals, they both live on land and water simultaneously.
Well, time to kill them. I headed towards an Octogoo. Now, I expected some sort of slime octopus like one of those hentai things, but really it was a slime lazily stuck onto some tentacles like some sort of hentai. What was interesting though, is that the slime was very…. Dog like. Like, it had a tail, ears, snout and a mouth.
Aside from the fact it was slithering on tentacles, it seemed content with itself. It was strangely adorable. Again for a creature dreamed up out of tentacle hentai. Whatever.
I equipped Serenity and charged right at the Octogoo, it seeming unaware of its imminent demise.
"I'll make this quick." I mutter to myself before swinging Serenity right at the creature's appendages, scraping the icy floor in the process. Fortunately, several tentacles came off in one hit, unfortunately the creature was still alive and pretty angry at me at this point and used the remaining appendages to try and ensnare me within its grip.
Dodging towards the place where I sliced off its tentacles, I then noticed the ice physics in this area as I fell on my face like a complete idiot.
As it turns out, generic trainers do not have a good grip on ice. I wonder if I could bait it off of the ice for a terrain advantage. Getting up, I took a few steps back onto relatively dry land, as the crunch of snow signified I was off the ice physics.
Understandably the Octogoo was still trying to murder me, however was struggling to move in the right direction due to its now asymmetrical appendages. Now I'm just feeling bad for this thing. Sighing in resignation, I just walked up to the struggling cephalopod and stabbed it with Serenity, eliciting a pained noise followed by it dissipating.
Who knew that slaughtering the local wildlife could be this depressing? Hopefully the other creatures would put up more of a fight. Or at least not force me to mercy kill them.
Placing Serenity on my shoulder, I scanned the nearby area. There was another Octogoo, this time tending to smaller Octogoos. I was entranced by this display for a moment before realizing that I probably just killed a parent. Seriously, the fuck is wrong with me?
Tearing my eyes away, I found a much more menacing looking creature. Now with a name like "Rocktopus" I expected some sort of literal rock octopus. Nope. It stood on two tentacles and carried a guitar in another two, leaving four appendages free to attack.
It also wore pointed sunglasses, because of course it would. Whatever, I already fought sentient pipes, my sanity is clearly deteriorating at a rapid enough rate, so let's kill a goddamn Rocktopus.
I approached the creature, this one spotting me, possibly due to the sunglasses reducing the glare of the nearby pristine white snow. I suppose that's one advantage of looking like a tool.
Preparing Serenity for a head on strike, I was surprised when the creature played a few notes on its guitar before a bolt of lightning shot out of it, hitting Serenity dead on and giving me a nasty shock, causing me to drop it for a moment.
So there's a sunglasses wearing octopus who fires lighting out of its guitar in the middle of a frozen lake. That makes sense.
Picking up Serenity again, I decided to keep it simple. Pointing the spellblade at my adversary I simply yelled "BOLT!"
Nothing happened. I think the creature laughed at me before strumming some more. Luckily I dodged out of the way before another bolt could hit me.
Back to basics, then. Preparing Serenity once again I yelled "FROSTBALL!" Unsurprisingly, that worked and a ball of frost shot directly at the Rocktopus' guitar, covering the instrument in a layer of ice. The cephalopod attempted to strum again, however it couldn't make the notes vibrate due to the ice covering the guitar.
Once again I had managed to accidentally counter a tough enemy. Seems the fight wasn't over yet, as the creature started rushing towards me, seemingly to use the guitar as a makeshift blade.
I prepared a strike as it swung upwards, I countered likewise and Serenity dented the guitar pretty hard. It tries an overhead swing and I simply used the momentum from my previous swing to spin around on the ice and slash at it again, causing it to smash in half. Finally, a third and final spin and a slash through the soft belly of the creature resulted in a one-hit kill.
Unfortunately ice physics prevented me from simply stopping, so I had a few more spins to go before I could stop fully. I lost count at about 5 but felt like I was going to hurl up that tea I had earlier.
Sitting down on the frozen lake, I took a look at the floor. Unsurprisingly there was more creatures below the surface, using their aquatic features to glide through the water gracefully. The nature of this world really was fascinating.
A few minutes of relaxing ocean life and regaining my composure later, I stood back up on the lake and collected the spoils from the Rocktopus. Funnily enough it dropped a mixtape. If I ever found a tape player I'd go listen to it.
I also took this time to remember that I had healing potions. So I drank one. It tasted like cheap energy drink, but I did feel slightly less like falling over. With that, I had to go find a WhaleKing.
Now, common sense would tell you that whales are large, aquatic creatures, right? Maybe you've seen some in an OceanPlace or something, but never one outside the ocean.
Turns out the whales here not only inhabit land, but defy physics and float above it like it was water. After the Rocktapus I thought nothing could shock me, but here we are and now I have to fight a roughly house-sized floating purple whale. Why did I agree to this? I'd say this is some drug trip, but I've never touched anything close to that. Plus everything seems too coherent, even with the madness that is the giant floating whale.
Whatever. Like the Turtle before, it looked to be the hardest fight in the area. But I had time to analyse its movements. It was strangely peaceful, seemingly just wanting to float around and do its own thing. Even when it turned and looked directly in my direction, it seemingly didn't care about my presence.
Guess I still have to kill it. Hopefully the XP will be worth the guilt inside. Strolling towards the rather majestic beast, I started to devise a strategy for once. It seemed that its fins were acting as wings, or at least that explained why it swam in air. So if I could somehow disable though, I might be able to immobilise it.
Staring the beast down as I gripped Serenity, I silently uttered an apology in advance before yelling "FROSTBLAST!" Surprisingly, not only did it work, but a significantly larger chunk of ice erupted from Serenity. Unfortunately, the actual force of launching the bolt caused me to fall backwards from the recoil. Not only that, but instead of hitting the intended target, it nailed it square in the eye.
The whale very understandably was not happy about this turn of events and decided to fly away from me, significantly faster than the casual floating it was doing before. For a brief moment I thought it was going to flee.
If only I was that lucky, I simply pissed it off instead. As it turned 180 degrees and started to rush toward me, I needed a plan and fast. Dodging it was out of the question due to the sheer speed and size, the creature's underbelly looked too thick to simply slice through and even if I nailed a Frostblast with Serenity, the resulting recoil would leave me open to being smashed by it anyway, let alone killing it outright.
Thinking of no way to resolve this situation without a painful death, I just stood there and accepted my destiny. Day two and I'm already going down like a bitch.
"Fucking move!" came a very prominent and slightly familiar voice before I was shoved out of the way pretty violently, causing me to speed across the frozen lake before landing safely in a snowbank.
Realigning myself with the ground, I sat up and chugged another health potion. Whoever that was, they hit me nearly as hard as that truck that sent me to this frozen hellhole in the first place. I was going to have words with them.
After thanking them for preventing me from being smashed by a goddamn whale of all things.
Strolling over to the general area, I noticed that the whale was now flying away from the person who helped me out, but not out of its own will because it was sideways and had a pretty nasty cut on the underbelly. Maybe I should have tried that.
Approaching the truck-force like being, they appeared to be… Very flat. This time, the flatness was prominent with their skin tight outfit (In the middle of a frozen lake? Seriously?) with an emphasis on light blue and white colouring. It seemed to suit them well, along with the pretty metal claws for fingers they had. Of course this is excluding the fact that their hair was very much light blue itself, with two large sideburns going all the way down their waist. And for some reason, they had weird, semi-mechanical, holographic wings, along with a matching axe. All in all, this had to be the thing that hit me like a truck, and I don't take these things lightly.
It looked at me with its glowing, red eyes with little power symbols inside and simply stated. "Well, are ya gonna help or just stand there like a dipshit?" They were blunt and to the point.
With a nod, I reach for Serenity and- It's not in my hand. I was so distracted by being smashed into a snowbank and staring at this magical girl rip off with the cuss mouth that I forgot where the hell my sword was.
Quickly walking back to the snowbank, Serenity was fine, thankfully. It hit the snow just like did. With a quick grab and flourish, I noticed the whale, probably very pissed off at this point, coming back for round two.
I started to form a strategy with the stranger. "I can try and clip its wings with a spell while you go for the underbe-"
"Or I could fly up there and nail it while your useless ass stays down here and serves as a distraction!" They interrupted before flying off out of the whale's sight. Notably they went around the eye that I had hit earlier with, which was a surprisingly clever play.
The whale, being that it was very angry at both me and the axe wielding cuss fairy, charged right at me again, though at a slower pace due to the damage. With ample time to anticipate a dodge, I waited for that moment.
It would never come,as the being came down with a mighty strike to the skull shouting "DIE! TODLICHSCHLAG!", emphasising both words with a massive swing of their axe. It was honestly impressive how they swung it with their pretty small frame.
Still, the whale, unable to take the pain anymore, dissipated into data before it could even hit the ground.
"Shit!"
This left the would-be whale rider to slam right into the lake's surface with a pretty brutal CRACK, along with several literal cracks on the lake's surface. Yikes, that looked like it hurt.
Ignoring the loot for a moment and the woosh of another level up, I rushed to their side, my third and final healing potion in hand. They looked more tired than injured, but they needed it more than me after that fall. Unfortunately, it seems that fall knocked them clean out. As I picked up their body, a brilliant light overcame it, blinding me momentarily.
When my vision finally came to, I was pretty shocked. My saviour, the one who slammed into a frozen lake bed after riding a giant floating whale, was none other than the girl from the hostel earlier.
This explained a bit, at least. She woke up in the hostel after passing out at some unknown point, and now here she was, passed out again after transforming from her weird winged axe form.
This was odd. My memory on IF's brief-ish summary on Gamindustri is slightly fuzzy, but wasn't this one of the "CPUs?" Judging from her snow white clothing (Which now had a fluffy hat and matching jacket along with the dress) I guess this could be nobody but Lady White Heart herself.
Still, one the bright side, this explained her attitude. Her CPU form seemed waay more aggressive though. Whatever, I'm sure she can wait here for a moment.
Walking off to where the whale dissipated, I gathered the loot. As expected from a pretty tough foe such as this, it dropped even more Credits than the Turtle from yesterday. I think I counted at least 500. This isn't even counting the Lord Lard that I found which is the drop I needed for one of the quests back at the guild! Jackpot!
Oh right, White Heart. I rushed back to her unconscious body, which was thankfully still there. Picking up the surprisingly light body. Maybe it's because she was flat. Or maybe I gained a few points in Strength now. Whatever, back to Toadstool Town. See if I can't get some answers out of her back at the Hostel.
A/N: Me: Yeah I'm not gonna keep up this pace.
Also me: bangs out another 3k words in less than a day.
Granted, I used the same concept as Chapter 2, so this might come off as a bit repetitive, but once I came up with the idea of the frozen lake and the Rocktapus the rest of it kinda just came together naturally. I did initially want White Heart to appear a chapter earlier, but imagine this useless self-insert not being able to figure out that fire burns trees, ha. What a loser.
Ah well, look forward to actual plot things next chapter. Will Koei be able to tell White Heart to knock this passing out shit off? Will they fall in love and fuck? Or will White Heart just punch him in the stomach and call him a twat?
The answers to this are probably not in the next chapter of KOEI BALL Z!