“Think we can get in?”
Iris set her ukulele down. “I’m sure we’ll find a way.”
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
We left Iris’ efficiency apartment and turned left at the bodega about a block away. There was a chill in the air, but it wasn’t too bad, and I didn’t need more than my light jacket.
“Hold up,” Iris said as we passed the bodega. “They have good tamales here. You hungry?”
“I haven’t really thought about food, but yes, I could definitely eat something.”
As she went into the store, Aya stepped over to me and looked me up and down. “Yes, you do need to eat more. You are too thin. Thulean women like strong men.”
“That’s good for them.”
“More muscles would be good for you too,” she said. “I believe Lady C. has bigger biceps than you do. And don’t knock Thulean women with the tone of your voice. They are strong, fierce, and will raise your children to be killers.”
I shrugged. “I’m not really a muscular guy, and I don’t know how to react to that last statement.”
Lady C. squeezed my bicep with her fingers and giggled. “Lady Aya is right, mine are larger, but it takes muscle to wield two swords. I like a weaker man. It makes me feel even stronger.”
I tore my arm away from her. “You two sure like to poke at me, don’t you?”
The flash of my reflection in the bodega’s window caught my eye.
I had on the same thing I’d had on earlier: an olive green military jacket I’d picked up from a thrift store, a dark shirt, a pair of black jeans, glasses, and old Vans. The jacket was oversized, and while it wasn’t warm, it did block the wind pretty well.
“And I’m sure you’d like to poke us,” Aya said to Lady C.’s laughter.
“Ha! Your charm won’t work on me, Aya.”
“Keep on singing,” the Thulean said as she looked me over. “And you may have your shot.”
“I see that going poorly.”
Aya shrugged. “It has happened before. A Thulean princess named Zaena married a commoner such as yourself named FeeTwix Fajer. It was an incredible wedding.”
“Did you go?”
“No, no, I just heard.”
Iris exited the bodega with a plastic bag full of piping hot tamales.
“Ooo, that looks yummy,” Lady C. said as she watched me take the husk off the first tamale. “I wish we had tamales at the Dojo. Maybe I can get a recipe.”
“They’re great,” I told Iris, still eating the first one. “Damn. I was hungry. Didn’t even know.”
“Same here,” she said.
We ate two more tamales as we walked to the construction site. I mostly ignored Aya, who commented on some of the people she saw across the street. She seemed to be a shit-talker, which was fine, especially since no one could hear her. Lady C. was definitely nicer, but I’d seen her wield those swords and I knew she meant business.
“Is that it?” We turned the corner, and I saw the barrier they always put up along the sidewalk to protect people from falling objects.
“That’s the one,” said Iris.
“And you think something is in there?” I asked as I read the sign. Bjurstrom Construction LLC.
“It’s a dark place and no one is there. If there’s a place for mythcrea, especially the type that come out at night, this will be the place.”
We searched around for a moment until I found a hole in the fence. The hole was covered by a blue tarp, and there was just enough room for Iris and me to squeeze through. Aya and Lady C. passed right through the wall, reminding me once again that they weren’t real.
It was an odd thing to think about.
While they could pass through walls and objects, they couldn’t, for example, go and spy on a real person in the other room because I couldn’t see that person. They could go ‘off screen’ to chase a mythcrea, but that was different.
“There is definitely something in here,” Aya said, her elven ears perking. It was dark, but a motion sensor light in the corner flicked on, giving us a small cone of visibility.
“Two somethings,” Lady C. said as she drew her blades.
They looked so fierce with their blades drawn and their battle gear. Here I was looking like a chump in my thrift store clothing, my hair unkempt, with glasses on my face. The difference was startling.
Aya had just taken another step towards the darkness when a purple fireball blew her off her feet.
“Lady Aya!” Lady C. pinpointed her location, and was just about to use her Time Skip spell to find the attacker when a man emerged from the darkness.
The bottom part of his face was covered by a veil, and he wore black armor and a black cape. His eyes were purple, his hair was long and black, and the skin of his face was bleach white.
He drew a long sword as his stats appeared before me.
“What is it?” Iris asked, now able to see the shock on my face.
“It’s something called a Fext. It’s Level Eleven, and it just took Aya out with a fireball.”
Iris moved towards a wall and started going through whatever data she could discover on GoogleFace.
This left me with the battle.
I wanted to get involved, and for the first time, I decided to take charge of how the battle would be fought. I rushed over to Aya and helped her up, which must have looked strange to Iris, but we were way beyond that point.
“Aya, I need you to fall back and get ready to do your pounce attack, the one you did earlier in the park.”
She glanced up. “There isn’t a lot of room here.”
“Can you do a smaller version? I want to lure him over here through Lady C. then have you attack.”
Her orange eyes flashed with annoyance. “There are two of them, dammit, did you not hear me say that?”
“Two Fexts?”
“Nope.” Aya loosed a throwing knife into the dark and I heard a scream.
“Shit!” I watched as the Fext went from fighting clean to fighting dirty.
He flourished his blade, pivoted on his right foot, and as Lady C. went in to strike him with both of her swords, he moved forward and connected the back of his elbow to her head.
She hit the ground, rolled, and just barely missed his follow up attack.
Rage spreading across his face, the Fext kicked the living shit out of Lady C. and turned to Aya.
“He dares challenge me,” she said as she lifted her blade.
“He already challenged you, Aya. Focus on whoever is casting spells from the dark.” I placed my hand on her shoulder.
Aya glanced at me, her eyes narrowing. “You think you know what it takes to lead the battle?”
“That’s what I’m supposed to do, right? I am Alpha, after all.”
“Yes, but it is too late for that now,” she said solemnly. “He challenged me, and it is a challenge I will accept.”
“Dammit, Aya, no!”
But my cries fell on deaf ears.
Her sword at the ready, Aya turned to the Fext, poised to strike.
They sized each other up for a moment and he swung into action. He was faster than her, but her sword was larger and its reach was greater. She was just about to get the upper hand when a purple fireball, this one twice as large as the first, fired from the darkness.
It cracked her in the chest and tossed her into a concrete pillar. Using her ghost limbs, Aya caught herself just in time.
“Aya, the darkness!” I called at her. Even as fire burnt along her chest plate, singing her hair and skin, Aya launched back into battle.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I said as I bolted over to Lady C., who was on her feet, her eyes fixed on the darkness.
Iris appeared at my side. “It’s a Lich!” she said, out of breath with excitement. “They form partnerships with Fexts and fight together.”
“And a Fext is?” I asked quickly.
“A mythological undead creature, Slavic mythology.”
“Got it,” I said as Ay
a and the Fext’s swords met. “So two catches?”
“You need to take the weaker one first,” she said hurriedly. “What’s his level?”
“Eleven.”
“The Lich should be weaker. Can you see it yet?”
“Not yet; it’s somewhere over there.” I pointed to the darkness as Aya and the Fext continued to engage each other.
“It must be the weak to be hiding.”
“Did you hear that?” I asked, turning to Lady C.
“I’m on it!”
Her blades at her sides, Lady C. bolted towards the darkness and disappeared as soon as a purple fireball came blazing her way.
“Watch out!” I shouted to Iris.
Caught up in the moment and forgetting that she couldn’t experience this battle the same way I could, I dove for Iris and took the brunt of the fireball.
“Ahhh!” I screamed as the purple flames covered my body, burning my flesh. “Shit!” Tears streamed down my face as I tried to pat myself out, as my skin burned.
“Chase!” Iris ran towards me and tried to comfort me. “It’s not real, Chase, look at me. Look at me!” She grabbed my face and we locked eyes, hers behind lenses and mine filled with flames. “It’s not real.”
“It’s burning my flesh,” I cried out as I watched what was left of my clothes burn off.
“Turn off the app,” she said. “Turn it off now.”
“No!” I got to my feet and took a staggering step towards the battle. “We’re finishing this.”
Seeing me in distress, Aya kicked into high gear. While engaging the Fext with her buster sword, she quickly used her ghost limbs to go up and over his body and sweep his legs out from beneath him.
He hit the ground with his chin, his eyes filling with fury as Aya grabbed him with both ghost limbs and beat him against the ceiling and ground.
Of course, I couldn’t see her limbs because of the fact that they were invisible.
Still, it was pretty easy to figure out what was going on after he slipped, cracked his chin on the cement, and started flopping from the ground to the ceiling.
But it was Lady Cassandra who really turned the tide of the fight. She emerged from the shadows, both swords aimed at the back of an emaciated woman.
“You were right,” I said to Iris. “It is a Lich, and she’s Level Six.”
“Magnus!” the Lich cried. She wore a gray dress tattered at the ends. A veil covered her face, but I could tell that she was undead, her eyes yellow and her skin the color of aged ivory.
“Ophelia!” The Fext looked up at Aya with pleading eyes. “Please don’t,” he said as I approached them, my hand charging.
“You two can reunite in the underworld,” Aya growled, her blade now aimed at his throat.
“Aya, stand down, now!”
The man looked at me defiantly with purple, bloodshot eyes. The bottom of his face was covered in scarves, but from the skin that was visible, I could see that portions of his lower jaw were in various states of decay. “End my life if you must, Hunter, but spare Ophelia!”
“Magnus!” Ophelia screamed again. I glanced over at Aya to see that she was smiling. While she held a sword to the Lich’s back, I got the sense that she thought the love between these two was romantic.
“You will both fight for me?” I asked, not sure of how this negotiation was supposed to go. I hadn’t negotiated with mythcrea yet.
“Of course,” Magnus said, his expression changing. “We would gladly fight! You have a formidable party,” he said, glancing from Aya to Lady C. “Rough at the edges, but formidable.”
“Please, stand then. And Lady C., bring Ophelia over here.”
Ophelia joined Magnus; as soon as they were next to each other, their hands connected. I waited until my net was fully charged before raising my fingers to them, willing the invisible net made of light forward.
The net hit their bodies and they disappeared in a flash.
“We got them both,” I told Iris.
“Nice.”
“I don’t know about you,” Lady Cassandra said to the Thulean, “but that was just about the cutest thing I’ve seen all day. Did you see the way he looked at her when they held hands?”
“It was a Lich and an undead man,” Aya said, a look of disgust on her face.
“I know, but ‘true love knows no bounds,’ right?”
“You okay?” Iris asked, turning to me.
“Yeah, fine, but I definitely want to chill for a minute.” My arms and clothing had started to heal, but I definitely felt like I’d been put through the wringer.
“Let’s go back to my place, then,” she said, turning to the exit.
“Good call. Aya, Lady C., let’s get out of here.”
Chapter Eight: Training Grounds
“I’m going to close the app for a moment,” I told the two Huntresses after we arrived back at Iris’ apartment. “I just need a break, a quick one.”
“Not fair,” Aya started to say. She was gone in the blink of an eye and I noticed that the battle marks I’d seen on my skin earlier, the ones from the Lich’s purple fireball, were gone.
“That is really strange,” I said as I looked at my arm.
“The scars fade away, huh?” Iris took off her scarf and tossed it on the coatrack. She slipped out of her shoes, and reminded me to take mine off.
“Got it.” Once they were off, we went to her futon and righted it so that we could sit down. “And I’m sorry again for freaking out back there.”
“It’s fine, Chase, you thought you were on fire. I’d be freaking out too.”
“If I get seriously attacked, what happens?”
She bit her lip. “That’s another reason the Monster Hunt app is illegal. While you aren’t actually taking damage, you think you’re taking damage, and some people have gone on to have some pretty serious PTSD from this stuff.”
“I’ll bet.”
“You won’t be fully healed until the next day, or after a five-hour sleep cycle. This is important to remember: while it isn’t playing out very much now because of your level, once you are at a higher level, and Aya and Lady C. are also at a higher level, actions taken against you can affect them. For example: seeing you bleeding out can bring down morale or cause panic. That sort of thing.”
“Got it. I’ll be careful.” I stretched my arms over my head and yawned.
“You already tired?”
“No, well, yes, sure, I’m sleepy, but there’s more I have to do. For one, I want to discuss with you a better way to lead the battles.”
A look of realization flashed across her face. “Ah, so you are starting to understand your role as an Alpha. You’ve been passive so far.”
“So I can fight, then?”
I watched as Iris took one of her bracelets off her wrist and placed it on the nightstand next to her futon. I always liked her wrists. They were so feminine, and the way she moved them, whether it was playing a piano or speaking excitedly, contrasted heavily with how delicate they looked.
“You can’t fight, but as you were trying to do back there, you can instruct.”
“Won’t the enemy hear what I’m telling them?”
“Actually…” Iris’ eyes flashed as she did a quick search on iNet. “No, they won’t hear. The enemy can only hear you after a certain condition is met, and that condition is you capturing them. So you’re good. Yell out commands as much as you’d like.”
“What about at tournaments?”
“Same, and I’ll be there at the tournaments too, to guide you,” she said. “You’re allowed an additional partner on the coaching sideline, whether they are an Alpha or not. There’s another thing you should know, and I’ll remind you of this later: The Hunters or Huntresses will be very visible in the opposing team’s Fighting Party.”
“How so?”
“They’ll be outlined in red. You want to take those ones out first. If the main party members go, the mythcrea take cuts to their attack and defense power.”
<
br /> “Damn.”
“Uh-huh. It makes for a pretty quick defeat. So, what now? You have more questions?” She smirked. “Or are you ready to go to the Dojo.”
“Now let’s go to the Dojo. I want to be a more active Alpha, and to do so, I need to see just what Aya and Lady C. are truly capable of.”
“Yes! Let’s do it.”
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Iris and I spawned in the center of the field that sat in front of my Dojo. I looked at the four-story building to see that there were now three lights lit. A quick check of my tokens and I saw that I was one point away from leveling up, and once I levelled up, everyone leveled up.
“So glad you could join us.” Aya was doing some sit-ups, Lady C. responsible for keeping her feet planted. To do so and still read, the Metican warrior sat on Aya’s feet with her back to the Thulean.
“Chase!” Lady Cassandra slammed her book shut and rushed over to me. She gave me a hug and bent over to Iris to do the same.
“We were only separated a few minutes,” I reminded her.
“It seems like forever in here because of the darkness.”
The Dojo space was more of a twilight color, midnight blue with streaks of deep purple in the sky. I could see, however, that having no sun would be kind of strange, kind of like living in Alaska.
“The sun will come in the future,” Aya said. “Once we spruce this place up, or connect to EverLife.” She rolled up to her feet and placed her hands on her hips. “So, are you here to grope on Lady Cassandra, or are you here to check on your newest mythcrea?”
“He didn’t grope me!”
I stepped away from Lady C. and turned to find the four mythcrea I’d captured so far. Seeing them stand there made me feel strange about using the word “capture,” but really, there wasn’t another way to describe it.
“Hey everyone,” I said to the four. Fujin sat cross-legged on a swirling cloud. Altsoba, the Skin-Walker, had her arms crossed over her chest and a sly look on her face. Magnus the Fext and his counterpart, Ophelia the Lich, stood hand in hand.
Monster Hunt NYC: A Fantasy Harem Adventure Page 7