Fantasia

Author's Note:

I was on a writing podcast! You can listen to the interview I had on LitRPG here: https://www.longwinded.one/episode-224-interview-with-unice5656/ or on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99XZKzEmLpw

And they had a guest narrator narrate a snippet from chapter 81: https://www.longwinded.one/episode-225-fantasia-by-unice5656/ , YouTube version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ashv6RzghwA

 

<Fantasia Battle Pet League, Finals Round>

<Amethyst/Fey E’lan vs Articuno/Mystique X>

 

“Let’s do our best, Amethyst,” Fey encouraged her pet as she put the slime down to hop into the arena.

Their opponent for the fourth match of the finals was a mythic-grade ice bird called a frostsong, which appeared to be a cross between a bird of prey, with sharp claws and beak, and a bird of paradise, with long, decorative feathers on the top of its head and coming out of its tail. Its plumage was the pure white of undisturbed snow and it was huge, its wingspan exceeding ten metres (thirty-three feet for you weirdo Americans). The only creature of its kind, its owner was the leader of a fairly famous guild that had spent months on a secret questline to find and befriend it. With high base stats, incredibly fast flying attacks, and a terrifying array of ice elemental magic, none of its abilities directly counteracted anything that Amethyst could do, but Mimi had estimated their chances of winning at only 30 percent.

Amethyst had been dunked in every version of a cold resistance potion that existed as well as every potion that created any kind of heat or fire aura that they had been able to make, trade for, or steal, but Fey was still not confident that the slime would survive one of the frostsong’s ultimate attacks. Additionally, the ice bird had shown in previous matches that it had many ranged attacks that it could use, keeping it out of the melee distance where Amethyst could do the most damage.

 

Amethyst did not have any real concept of either loss or death and hopped forward with her usual confidence. She had asked if she could eviscerate anyone today and had been confused by the answer, “Sure, if you can, but probably not.” Nonetheless, she was aware of the plan to do everything she could to survive the ice magic and then attack however she thought best.

 

<5>

<4>

<3>

<2>

<1>

<Match start>

 

Amethyst immediately got to work synthesizing and secreting her cold resistance potions, the effects stacking until she would have been very comfortable in the middle of a blizzard at the north pole of Fantasia. She threw on a flame aura as well, as well as two kinds of contact poisons in case the ice bird hit her with a physical attack.

The frostsong likewise wasted no time, soaring into the air and manifesting a fearsome magical aura as it prepared to unleash one of its ultimate attacks. A ball of white light appeared, radiating such intense cold that the spectators could feel it despite the magical barrier protecting them from the action.

Fey dumped a mana potion on Amethyst so she could continue to buff herself. “Okay, okay, we just gotta survive the ulti, Amethyst, and then we’ll be fine. You got this, you got this,” she said, more to reassure herself than her pet. “Actually, let’s make some enchanted water, too; it should give us a lot of latent heat.[i]”

Amethyst obediently pulled her trick to create and multiply a large amount of enchanted water, a large pool of it covering the ground around her. The water touching her flame aura spat and boiled on contact, but Fey was not concerned with the effects cancelling each other as long as they added as much heat as possible to the arena.

 

Across the ring, Fey’s opponent smiled.

Oh, no. Fey had no idea what mistake she had made, but she recognized that smile.

 

From high in the air, the frostsong unleashed its attack and a wave of killing cold swept across the arena.

Amethyst shivered and recreated her flame aura twice as the cold extinguished its effect. The pool of enchanted water froze in a creeping wave as even its huge latent heat was pulled away, leaving pristine, clear ice in its wake.

When everything settled, Amethyst had lost seventy percent of her health despite the stacked cold resistances she had. The damage was nonetheless recoverable. Fey only realized the mechanism of her defeat a second before it happened.

 

The ultimate attack that the frostsong had released was called Essence of Ice, an ability that could only be used by a creature with 100% ice elemental affinity to the exclusion of all other elemental affinities as well as a high enough concentration stat to cast ninth tier magic. (There are tiers of magic? The author has clearly designed the magic system with care and attention.) It bore a passing resemblance to the Enchant spell in the sense that it created a very concentrated form of the qualitative aspects of ice rather than its exact scientific properties.

The most obvious effect of the attack was cold, the temperature plunging down towards absolute zero. This would have been more than enough to kill almost any opponent outright, even strong fire elementals if they did not have a similar fire-type ultimate ability to counter. Amethyst had barely scraped by with ample preparation and her own cheat-level ability, and she still would have died if the pool of enchanted water had not moderated the effect enough that the final temperature settled out to closer to that of liquid nitrogen than absolute zero.

Unfortunately for Fey and Amethyst, their opponent had planned for their ability to produce enchanted water.

Smooth ice was slippery. Ice made from the combination of pure enchanted water and the Essence of Ice ability had a coefficient of friction of zero regardless of what material it touched. Even the strong adhesive enchantment Caleb had cast on Amethyst’s armour had nothing to stick to.

With a gentle buffet of wind from its wings, the frostsong sent Amethyst gliding smoothly out of the arena.

 

<Amethyst has gone out of bounds>

<Amethyst is disqualified>

<Winner: Articuno>

 

As cheers and laughter rang out from the spectator stands, Fey could not help but feel that the anticlimactic and somewhat unfair-feeling end to their pet tournament adventures was quite appropriate, given how many ignoble defeats other pets had suffered at their hands. Skirting the still-cold-enough-to-instantly-kill-most-things centre of the arena, she went to shake her opponent’s hand in congratulations.

It was even somewhat of a relief to Fey that they were not going to advance further in the tournament; just making it to the finals had garnered a great deal of fame and attention, making her a “ranker” whose playstyle and build choices were discussed in detail by strangers on the Internet. In order to avoid being recognized by players, she had leaned heavily into the disguise and concealment abilities associated with her class whenever she was anywhere that could be considered public in the game. An amusing quirk of her assassin abilities was that they were truly designed with only killing in mind; whenever she was in a large city, she had to designate every player around her as a kill target so the effects would work on them, her vision filled with red spots as Critical Sight highlighted vulnerable strike points that would be perfect to attack should she want to go on a mass murder spree. (Is this really an appropriate thing to call “an amusing quirk”?)

 

The prize for advancing to the finals was originally planned to be a unique skill custom-designed for each pet; after the developers realized how horrifyingly overpowered these pets were already, this was hastily changed for the sake of not breaking the game balance any further. Instead, players were given the ability Beast Bond, which doubled the success rate of all pet taming and training skills, as well as unlimited range telepathic communication with their pets.

Fey was unsurprised to find her mind filled with telepathic squeaks instead of words; most pets gained the ability to use human language between levels 10 and 20, and the telepathy did not provide a translation function. She was nonetheless pleased with the ability, which would allow her to call her pets to her if they got separated (or left on entirely planned, unsupervised adventures as pets are definitely not supposed to do).

 

In addition to Beast Bond, for every match won within the finals round, players gained a figurine that could summon a slightly weaker clone of their defeated opponent, one that could be used once a month and lasted for an hour. Fey was not sure when exactly she would need a juvenile venom dragon, mammoth with troll regeneration, or a battle unicorn, but she was sure they would be quite useful someday. She left them with Beth for sketching practice.

(This means that up to once a month, there could be two Amethysts in the world. Scary thought.)

 

◊◊◊

 

Arwyn chopped potatoes and carrots into chunks and dropped them into the pot. Rice was steaming away in the rice cooker and Leander was scheduled to arrive in less than an hour.

She had sped through work so she could leave an hour early to start preparations for dinner. She was by no means a skilled cook, but she could follow a recipe and Leander’s favourite dish was actually one she knew how to make. He was always finding nice things to do for her and she felt it was her turn to surprise him.

Once the vegetables were mostly cooked, she added protein with chunks of chicken and then she just had to occasionally stir. She fried two eggs to round off the meal.[ii]

 

Leander arrived ten minutes earlier than the scheduled time, but she was prepared for that, familiar with his habits and always delighted to see him.

He was wearing his usual breathtaking smile when she opened the door. “Hello.”

“Hi.”

Stepping into the house, he paused at the scent of curry in the air. “Is that…?”

“You said it was your favourite, right?”

“Did I tell you what my favourite food was?” he murmured, expression somewhat dazed.

“Yup.” The particular fact stuck out in her memory, the first thing he had disclosed about himself that had struck her as odd coming from an NPC.

The extent of Leander’s reaction was starting to embarrass her. “The curry came out of a box, so don’t expect anything amazing,” she muttered. She had no idea what ingredients went into making Japanese curry from scratch, but she was sure that if she had tried to make it without the help of her trusty store-bought roux cubes, it would taste worse than the very respectable dish she had produced today.

“Regardless, thank you,” he said, eyes so bright that Arwyn resolved to cook him something at least once a week.

 

***

 

Leander polished off his second serving of curry rice. He felt warm, a feeling that went deeper than just his body.

He was not at all used to homemade meals; from a childhood with busy working parents to boarding school and university and now living on the VirtualRealities campus, he ate professionally catered food on an almost exclusive basis. He was not deprived by any means – the food was both nutritious and appetizing – but there was something extremely special about having someone cook just for him.

He had not been expecting such a wonderful surprise when Arwyn had told him she would take care of dinner, though in retrospect, his assumption that she was going to order takeout seemed silly.

He loved her taking care of him as much as he loved taking care of her. She was not stereotypically feminine nor tomboyish, not shying away from being delicate and vulnerable with him and similarly not afraid to show off the analytical brilliance of her mind or the way she enjoyed the physicality of melee combat in Fantasia. It made him feel that he, too, could simply be himself, separate from the cultural expectations of masculinity, and she seemed to delight in every new aspect that she learned about him.

 

After they cleaned up the dishes and settled into their usual spot on the couch, he found himself telling her about his childhood. There was no particular incident that had traumatized him, no big secret to reveal, but he realized that his words painted a picture of pervasive loneliness that he had never shared with anyone, of going to bed alone with both parents out of the country, boarding schools where his physical talents could not make up for mediocre academic skills or lack of wealth when it came to the other students’ judgement of whether he was worth befriending.

Arwyn just listened. She did not try to comfort him, nor was there any pity or judgement in her eyes. Her silence was by no means indifference; he had the sense that she would remember everything he told her with crystal clarity. The space she left open seemed to pull more and more words out of him, thoughts and feelings he had never put into concrete terms.

When he naturally lapsed into silence, he held her close and hid his face against her neck, feeling wrung out but lighter for it. She returned his embrace, her fingers stroking soothingly through his hair. He knew that once his emotions settled down, he would be glad he had shared as much as he had, but until then, he was feeling raw.

 

His wrist device buzzed, a gentle reminder that it was time for him to head back to campus and prepare for work while Arwyn logged in for her nightly adventures in Fantasia.

His arms tightened around her, instinctively rejecting the idea of letting her go. He tried to summon a sense of normalcy so he could bid her his usual goodbye. “I do not wish to leave,” he confessed instead.

 

“Don’t go.”

Startled, he leaned back to look at her face. “Pardon?”

“Don’t go,” she repeated.

There was no nervousness in her expression, no coiled tension in her body. His heart softened as he realized what had happened. Arwyn tended to paradoxically lose her self-consciousness when he was feeling stressed or nervous, her strong protective instinct overriding other considerations as she focused on being a support he could depend on.

He leaned in and kissed her on the lips, his heart full of affection and tenderness. He was expecting her shyness to manifest; when it never did, a golden haze seemed to settle over his vision, the rest of the world fading away as his senses focused on her with ultrasharp clarity.

 

Neither of them logged into Fantasia that night.

---

[i] Latent heat refers to the energy released or absorbed during a constant-temperature process. For instance, (assuming standard pressure) water will remain at 0° C in the process of transitioning to and from solid ice (fusion) and 100° C while transitioning between liquid and gas (vaporization). The amount of heat energy required for a specific material to undergo such a phase transition is referred to as the specific latent heat. Water both a high specific heat capacity (energy required to change its temperature) and specific latent heat and these properties are the reason that areas near large bodies of water tend to have more moderate temperatures, with the water buffering both extremes of cold and heat.

[ii] The author has no idea why but in Taiwan, it is extremely common for both curry and pasta to be served with a fried egg. It tastes pretty good, so she suggests you try it.