It's been forever, didn't mean to be gone that long. Sorry.
Fair warning, I'm not too good at writing Fight scenes but I love to write them anyways.
May 2nd, 2022
Daitayas; Hotel; Toil 'n Trouble
"Come on, it won't be that bad." Menma scrubbed his face with both hands before leaning back on the bed.
Kushina frowned and crossed her arms, "Did you even see the way they were looking at you?" She stalked forward and stabbed her pointer finger into his chest. "They looked like they were trying to eat you!"
Menma laughed and fell back on the bed. "How is that a problem, sis?"
Kushina snarled and threw up her hands, "It's a problem because you are my brother!"
He laughed harder, "Oh, come on. That isn't a good reason at all."
Kushina launched herself on top of him and placed both hands around his neck, "You idiot, no girl is ever going to be able to look at you like that!"
He rolled them over still laughing and unlatched her hands. "Kushina, if I'm not allowed to put you in a tower to keep all the boys away, then you are not allowed to keep me completely innocent either."
She continued to scowl up at him, "I just don't want you to get hurt."
He rolled his eyes and got up off of her to strip off his coat. "Don't worry about me. I'm a lot tougher than you are giving me credit for."
Kushina sat up with a sigh. "I know you are, but remember your first girlfriend?"
"Naruko was great, we got along well, and it hurt a lot when she was suddenly not there anymore, but it wasn't her fault. She was murdered if your memory is really that bad." Menma stripped off his black armored vest leaving him in a dark gray muscle shirt.
She sputtered and got up off of the bed, "That wasn't what I was talking about, I meant that you got attached really quickly."
"I know that." He rolled his eyes.
Kushina came up to his shoulder and grabbed his bicep in a loose hold. "Just if you are going to mess around with them, make sure they can't break your heart."
He looked at her with narrowed eyes, "You realize that they weren't offering to be sex toys right?"
She went bright red and skittered away from him towards the window. "I know that!"
"They were offering to help us clear Azazel's peak." He sat back down on the bed and pushed his hair back. "Quite honestly, I don't think they are high enough to provide any sort of help. You saw their cursors right?" He looked up and over at her.
She frowned and turned back to the window. She placed her forehead against the cold glass, "Yeah, they weren't even level fifteen yet."
His eyes slid over her tight shoulders, "Thelera, the one with healing abilities would be an asset but the little one-"
"Vayn."
"Vayn. I'm pretty sure she is a Vampire and they don't really make really good front line fighters, not saying they can't. For a Vampire, they usually support frontline fighters with poisons, if they get skilled enough they can use blood. Blood is a move that steals Health Points from the 'enemy' to add to their own."
"Like an actual Vampire."
Menma sighed but nodded, "Yeah, basically. It takes a lot of skill to be able to use it. I doubt that Vayn is at the level needed for that move."
"She would more than likely be a hindrance, then help." Kushina stepped away from the window and stripped off her baby blue corset. "I also don't think they were giving us much of a choice about bringing them."
"I don't think they were either." He got under the covers and folded his hands behind his head on the pillow. "You don't think they'd be stupid enough to chase after us if we just avoid them right?"
Kushina pulled off her gloves before climbing under the covers next to him. "We better not risk it."
Menma sighed again and rolled over to face her, "We did want to start including the other Guilds just in case we did come across Azazel. Maybe we should ask them to bring the rest of their guild with them."
"Let's take them on one trip and see what happens after that." Kushina pushed Menma's head away from her, "Goodnight Menma."
He chuckled, "Goodnight Kushina."
May 3rd, 2022
Daitayas; Warp Zone
"I don't think they are going to agree to take us," Vayn said from her perch on the small cobbled wall that surrounded the raised beds of Belladonna.
Thelera frowned at her. "Well, way to stay positive."
Vayn held up her hands, "It's just logical. They would have joined a Guild had they been willing to work with more people."
Thelera sighed and took a seat next to her. "I know."
Vayn narrowed her eyes at her and placed her hands in her lap, "There is a but."
Thelera rolled her eyes, "There isn't. All I am doing is hoping that those two actually let us come on their trips with them. I don't like the idea of two people needlessly putting their lives on the line when there are plenty of others that are willing to help."
"If you were in their position, you'd do the same thing." Vayn pointed out.
"Your point?" Thelera glared at her.
"That's pretty hypocritical." Vayn shrugged and leaned back. "Hey, they're here."
Thelera turned towards the blond and redhead that was walking into the warp zone. "Right." She stood up and dusted her backside off before striding towards them.
Vayn quickly followed, she had to pull her tunic down a bit before running to catch up to the taller girl.
Menma looked up at their approach. "Do you both have teleport crystals?"
"Yes." Thelera came to a stop in front of him.
"Don't go anywhere without them," Vayn said stepping into place next to Thelera.
"Good, you're going to need them." Menma nodded.
"Since you both are on lower levels, we need your full cooperation. One misstep could mean the end of your life, got it?" Kushina crossed her arms under her bust and cocked her hip.
"Lower levels?" Vayn looked confused and took a closer look at their cursors.
"How'd you get to level twenty-eight so quickly?" Thelera asked wide eyed.
"From Balam, there are two paths, one is the path that all players know about and is used frequently. That path has only low-level monsters that lurk on it. The other path is only really known to the Beta testers, it's called Reapers trail. The monsters that lurk on that trail are about five levels higher than the others. They have a tendency to push players XP levels up faster." Menma explained with a wave of his hand.
Thelera frowned, "That means that the Beta testers all have huge advantages on the rest of us."
"Not really." Menma crossed his arms, "Yes the Beta testers would have prior knowledge but are you forgetting that the world is adapting to us? There are new skills to learn, you have to bathe regularly otherwise you smell, and for the girls, they still end up with that time of the month. All the trails that I had taken, it was nothing like this. It also didn't take very long for us to find and defeat the Level One boss, but we have been here for months and still, haven't found it." Menma sighed and hunched his shoulders, "To be quite honest I'm not one hundred percent certain that my knowledge of the trails will help us in the long run. We never made it past level forty-six in both the Alpha testing and the Beta testing."
Both girls' faces paled. "Never made it past Forty-six?" Thelera breathed, she looked faint.
"We also didn't have these many players." Menma shrugged. "Out everyone here there is only about one hundred of us Beta testers and maybe ten of those were Alpha testers." Menma scrubbed the side of his face with his hand, "Trust me when I say that all the Beta testers and Alpha testers are trying to help clear the level as fast as they can. If we can make it to one hundred in a year, that'd be great, but at the rate that we are going, it's probably going to be five or six years before we make it anywhere near there."
Kushina grabbed his arm, "Although, if we get the guilds to work together, maybe we can get through the levels faster. This is also not the point. We were going to take the two of you with us on our expedition."
"Right." Menma held out a hand to the two girls. "Do you think you can handle this?"
Thelera and Vayn shared a look. "We can," Thelera answered Menma.
"But we should probably get the rest of our guild involved, you know when we get back." Vayn smiled.
Menma laughed, "That might be for the best. At least now you'll be able to let them know what to expect." He dropped his hand and turned with Kushina still attached to his arm and began to walk away.
May 3rd, 2022
Azazel's Peak
"Where do they keep coming from?" Thelera asked wide eyed as she ducked under a swipe that was aimed at her head.
"And why do they have two HP bars?" Vayn rolled out of the way of a downwards swipe of white clawed hands. She jumped back up out of the roll and wiped her twin daggers against the torso of a nearby Upir, they drew blood instantly and she jumped away from the swinging arms.
Menma laughed as he powered up another Rasengan. "This is why we warned you. They aren't like normal NPC monsters. They attack like Bosses, you get in range and they come after you." He swung his arm wide, his Rasengan catching the sides of three Upir that ends up being flung into Kushina's tidal wave.
Kushina jumped back and kicked a Upir in the chest that was sneaking up behind Vayn.
"You girls aren't doing that bad." Kushina leaned back for a second to admire the many HP bars that were green with poison from Vayn's blades. "It's just too bad that you aren't on the same level as Menma and me, we all would have trumped these monsters by now."
"That's nice," Thelera muttered as she dodged another swipe for her head and retaliated with a few poisoned senbon she had taken from Vayn a while ago. She kept the senbon in her hand and opened pale decaying skin with the swipe.
"How much more?" Vayn panted hard after dropping down from a Upir's shoulders where she had stabbed through the creatures neck.
Menma tore through another's abdominal with an overpowered Rasengan, he swiveled to the right and punched his still rotating Rasengan through another.
Kushina called forth a massive tidal wave to rid them of a group that was low on HP from Vayn's poison. This gave them all breathing room for a few seconds. "From what I can see, we have about ten more of this hoard, but we've been driven a lot farther from our starting point and could have tripped another one without knowing."
"This is why we needed to know if you had teleport crystals." Menma dived into a roll to come out next to the girls, "If we did trip another hoard, it doesn't matter how many there are, we use the crystals and get back to Daitayas. We already took out three of them, if we finish this one it'd be four. That's more than enough for today, there is no point of continuing on, besides in about an hour our daylight will be gone."
"I'd rather not have to fight when we have no light," Kushina growled and called forth another Tsunami as the rest of the vampires raced forward.
Menma charged up another Rasengan, "Kushina, I'm gonna try something, get back." He waved his other hand over the ball of Chakra as Kushina jumped backward and tucked into a roll to come up next to Thelera. His Rasengan started to change, what looked like a shuriken formed around the ball.
The other Vampires were closing in as Menma swung his hand out and released the Rasenshuriken at them. It cut through three of them before imploding on the fourth. Kushina quickly called up another Tsunami that rushed the last six Upir and protected them from the explosion.
Menma raced forward right behind the wave of water with another Rasengan powered and ready to catch any of them that survived that last attack. Luckily, the wave killed off the last six of them and Menma deactivated his Rasengan. "Well, that was cool." He chuckled and stretched his arms above his head.
"I for one, am glad that Kushina was fast enough with that last Tsunami." Thelera bent over with her hands on her knees, she was winded and looked like she needed to sit down.
Vayn fell to the floor in a pile of exhaustion. "I think we need to go back to Daitayas before we trip another one."
"Yeah, I don't think I can survive another." Thelera panted.
Kushina laughed and put her hand on Thelera's shoulder, "Look at it this way, you both made it to level seventeen."
May 3rd, 2022
Daitayas; Warp Zone
"Thank you for taking us." Thelera and Vayn bowed to Menma and Kushina.
"It was no problem, you both handled yourselves very well." Kushina waved away their bows with a grin. "We will be leaving at the same time tomorrow. You are welcome to tag along."
"Thank you, but I think we need to decline the invitation until we can get more people from our guild on board. If you aren't against it, we will join you both again some other time." Thelera smiled.
"Sounds reasonable." Menma smiled and gave the two of them a wave before walking away with Kushina trailing him.
"We are going to report to Auset now aren't we?" Vayn asked with a sigh slumping forward slightly.
"Don't worry, I'll make sure to let her know that it was my idea and you only came with me to make sure that I didn't kill myself." Thelera grabbed Vayn's shoulder.
"Right."
May 3rd, 2022
Daitayas; Tavern; Sitri
"What do you mean you took on a bit of Azazel's peak with two other players?" Auset looked flabbergasted, her hand nearly slipped on the glass of beer that she had been raising to her lips when Thelera waltzed up to her.
Ishtar laughed and set down her beer. "Good one."
Freya raised her eyebrow, "Oh, you aren't kidding."
The table froze, each pair of eyes slid over Thelera and Vayn taking in their battered forms. "Are you insane?" Auset demanded slamming down her glass with a bang, barely noticing that the other occupants of the Tavern turned to stare at their group. "You could have died!" She stood up and leaned over into Thelera's face.
"I know, but we didn't." Thelera shrugged and pushed Auset back into her seat.
Vayn glanced at the other patrons with a glare, "What are you looking at?" The attention immediately shifted off of them.
"What were you thinking?" Auset demanded, she grabbed a hold of Thelera's toga and brought her in closer to her face. "That was dangerous and could have ended up with you both dead. We wouldn't have even known you were dead until a while later." Auset hissed a fierce glare was etched on her face.
"Well, we were thinking that those two could use a couple extra pairs of hands and that we could handle ourselves, thank you very much." Thelera peeled Auset's hand off her toga, "We were also thinking about using that experience to prepare the rest of us to storm that peak, or have you forgotten our plans already?" She pushed Auset's hand away from her, "The two that went with us were level twenty-eight to start with, by the time we were done the girl was level thirty and the boy was pushing it to level thirty. They fight better than Ishtar and Freya together. We will need their help if we are to clear that peak for the rest of the players."
Auset seemed to be chewing on her words.
"Wait, they were level Twenty-eight to start with?" A woman with shoulder length black hair leaned forward, her dark eyes calculating as they locked on the two women.
"Yes, the male had Alpha and Beta tested the game." Vayn looked at one of her younger sisters. She held up a hand at some of the looks the others were giving her, "He specifically told us that the game is changing, when he had first tested this game it had only taken them a week to find the floor boss."
"He also told us that they have only ever made it to the forty-sixth floor in both his testing." Thelera took a seat next to Auset.
"Only the forty-sixth?" The blonde girl sitting next to Vayn's sister asked she looked as faint as the others around her.
"That was what he told us." Vayn nodded her head as she took her seat next to Thelera.
"What else did he say?" Freya asked pushing her beer away from her.
Thelera shrugged, "Not much else, just that out of all the people here there are maybe one hundred beta testers and about ten of those also Alpha tested the game."
Auset raised her eyebrows, "I think he might just be the only open Alpha, Beta tester we will come across then." She picked up her beer and held it to her lips, "Since you both risked your lives for information, care to share all that you've learned?"
Thelera rolled her eyes, "For starters, do you remember the hoards in Nybbas valley? How they wouldn't wait for you to attack if you were in range?" She paused and got several agreements. "The monsters behave the same way on the peak, except these monsters have two HP bars and are very close to level twenty. The smallest hoard that we had come across was about thirty of them. Vayn and I were lucky that we didn't go up the peak by ourselves."
"Damn straight you are." Auset glared.
Thelera opened her mouth to retort when everyone's mail alert went off.
Auset sat up and set her glass down, she brought up her menu and opened her mailbox.
'Greetings!
As of two hours ago, Alastor Lake has been cleared. Some of the other players are planning on making it a fishing lake now that they don't have to worry about monsters.
We from Konoha, have sent these letters to all guild members in hopes that this news would help build moral and to ask if any that are willing if they would help us take Azazel's Peak. We understand the hesitance and will not fault you and yours if you decide not to join us. However, if each of us takes different sides of the mountain, I'm sure that we would be able to clear it in a timely manner.
We will await your reply,
Konoha's First in Command Rosmerta.'
"I think we should tell, Menma and Kushina." Vayn turned to Thelera.
"Who?" Auset asked looking up from the letter.
"Those are the gamer-tags of the two that took us with them up the Peak." Thelera glanced at Auset before turning her attention back on Vayn. "I don't think the two of them are going to like this. They weren't too happy about taking us up it when we were only level fourteen at the time. Who knows what level this 'Konoha' guild is at right now. This is extremely dangerous for anyone, let alone a group not ready to face monsters that are about six levels higher than they are."
"Do you know what level they were on when they first started to take the peak?" Vayn's other sister asked.
"No, we really didn't think to ask. Sorry, Scylla." Vayn shrugged.
"Assuming, you'll tell those two anyways, how should we answer this?" Auset asked the table as a whole, her eyes lingering on Thelera and Vayn for a moment.
"Personally, I'm not a big fan of having them take risks without back up." Thelera shrugged and stole the last of Auset's beer.
Auset glared at Thelera, "Do the rest of you agree?" She turned back to the table.
"Right now, we've got the advantage. Our side has been mostly cleared by 'Menma and Kushina.' Plus, they were kind enough to take two of our own up the Peak a bit to get a feel for how the peak will be if we tried storming it ourselves." Vayn's sister with the shoulder length hair leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms over her chest, her red wrap around crop top crinkled and separated a bit more, showing off a lot more cleavage.
"I'm going to take that as a yes." The blonde folded her arms and nudged her.
"Valkyrie, I don't like it when you dumb it down for others." She glared at her best friend.
Valkyrie stuck her tongue out in retaliation. "Not everyone is as smart as you, Ceres."
May 4th, 2022
Daitayas; Warp Zone
"Menma, Kushina!" Thelera waved the two of them down. She raced towards them as soon as she had their attention.
"I thought you weren't coming along with us," Menma asked with a smile as Thelera came to a stop in front of the two of them.
"I'm not, I just have some news that I thought you'd like to know." Thelera brought up her mailbox and read the letter out loud to the two of them.
Menma frowned and Kushina scowled. "Those idiots are going to get themselves killed." Kushina crossed her arms underneath her chest.
"I'm assuming White Fang has already agreed to this." Menma frowned at Kushina for a moment before turning back to Thelera.
She nodded and closed her mailbox, "We aren't the only ones. The ANBU have agreed, and a group in Volac that is calling themselves Taka have also agreed. There is another guild that will be traveling with Konoha, they call themselves Sanin. Ironclaw has declined the invitation, I believe that they are still attempting to find the floor boss in Succuba Tower."
Menma and Kushina shared a look. "How much time do we have?" Menma asked turning back to Thelera.
"A week. That's how much time we had asked for to prepare."
"That doesn't give us very much time," Kushina muttered at Menma.
Menma crossed his arms, "We still have those glow crystals right?" He glanced at Kushina.
"If you haven't gotten rid of them, then yes, we still have them. Why?" Kushina pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at him.
"The glow crystals should give us enough light to be able to fight at night." Menma shrugged.
"That's incredibly dangerous." Thelera frowned and looked between the two of them.
"If we get in a tight spot, we still have our teleport crystals. We will be fine, don't worry."
Kushina stares intently at the side of his face. "If you're sure."
"We've got this." He turns to her with a grin.
Kushina rolls her eyes. "Right."
"If you need me, message me." Thelera took a step back. "Good luck."
"Thanks, but we won't need it." Menma stepped forward and placed his hand on her shoulder. "We'll be back to head out with you in a week. It's a promise, believe it."
Thelera smiled, "Of course. Be safe."
TBC...
4000 words. Oh Fuck Me, that was a monster. That last scene kept deleting itself and I about had it with my computer, but it's written finally. That's all I'm thankful for right now.
Anyways I have a guessing game I'd like people to participate in, it's to help me keep motivation for this story and it's fun, so why not?
1. Who is Rosmerta? If you get this correct, as a prize you get to create a Floor Level Boss, I will need the floor level it's found on, the place it's found in, what it looks like, what it can do, and finally how to defeat it.
2. Who is Ceres? If you get this correct as a prize you get to create a Secondary Boss, I'll need to know the floor number, the place it's found in, the monsters that lurk around it, what it looks like, what it can do, and finally, how to defeat it.
3. Who is Scylla? If you get this correct as a prize you get to create a place. Could be anything like a city or a tower, a place in a city, you get to choose. I will need to know what level you want it on, and maybe a brief description of what it looks like.
4. Who is Valkyrie? If you get this correct as a prize you get to create a common monster. I'll need to know what level, or levels, this monster is found on, what it looks like, level of difficulty, how abundant this monster is, and if it has any 'drop items' that follow after defeating it.
The answers will be posted on the top of the next chapter. I will also give credit where credit is due. If you are a quest participating, I can not message you back so you will have to include the details of your prize with it.
Thank you!
Did a quick edit because my computer deleted the part of Scylla. Sorry.