Luca DR
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25 – High Fantasy (2/2)
🕑 Added 2023-05-16 14:55:23 +0000 UTCThere was a small pouch in the man’s other hand. Correction: in the elf’s other hand. And inside the pouch were small stones, shiny and luminous, red, green and blue. Albert did not know what they were, but he pocketed them to later Appraise them. For now he simply let the elf, who introduced himself as Eurus, lead him to the town square, where a long table had been set up near the fountain, full to the brim with all sorts of delicacies and foods of nature. Fruit, vegetables, and rare meats were all on display, and next to the table were barbeques and grills, as well as pots bubbling over many fireplaces.
The sun was setting over the far away mountains, beyond the ruins of a few stone houses in the distance, from where a small plume of smoke still rose. And the sunset plunged the whole village in a golden, and later orange light, until it finally disappeared. That’s when the fireflies came out, blue and bright, and others that were yellow or white and they all danced around the table and the square, adding their motile lights to the crackling of the fires, as if dancing together with the music that was being played all around. It felt like a true village festival, a communal time of song and food, in honor of…
“You, traveler. In hopes that you can rest and regain your strength with food and good company, so that tomorrow you may vanquish the Golem and save us all.” Eurus said.
And so Albert sat, surrounded by stunningly beautiful elves who all seemed out of a fairy tale, talking to each other and sometimes exchanging a word of pleasantry with him, graceful and ever-more confounding. For he felt like something was amiss, like something was going on under the veil of cordiality and hospitality. There was something in the way these people looked at him, talked among themselves when he was out of earshot. Tantalizing was the idea of activating [Perception] to hear what they were saying, but Eurus noticed Albert’s wariness and spoke first.
“This was a prosperous village, no longer than two months ago. Full of life, and people. Living in harmony with nature, surrounded by many of our brethren who chose to live outside the cramped buildings of this town. For this was a human settlement, once, one that was gifted to us when the humans left. The last home of the Elves, after the great war was lost. But now the humans are gone too, and we are left alone. We are the last of the Elves, traveler, the last light of the forest. When the golem appeared, we were forced inside the walls of the settlement, seeking refuge. We hoped that we could be spared. We weren’t. And as the attacks claimed the lives of our strongest, and bravest, we were forced to live no longer in harmony with nature, but in exploitation of it. This, in turn, made the earth itself turn against us. Our magic grew weak. Now, we are defenseless. We pooled all our power into one last ritual, knowing it would fail. But fail it didn’t. You are proof of that. And for this, we are ever grateful.”
“What did the ritual do?”
“It was a summoning call. To whoever was willing to take up arms to defend the weak from great evil. You were only taken here because your heart was pure, for the ritual would never have abducted people against their will. And for that, once again, we thank you.”
While Albert savored the exquisite taste of elven dishes, food that was at the same time utterly alien to him yet familiar in a sense he could not quite describe, he was deep in thought. There was reason to think that once he vanquished the golem the system was going to send him back home, ending his time-dilated escapade in a new world as abruptly as it started it. This meant that, unfortunately for the elves, he needed to find a way to stall the situation and have as much time as he could to spend here and solidify his magical foundations.
But not if that meant endangering the elves. They were the last of their race, they said, the only survivors of a great war that left no victors among the warring. All alone in the only habitable valley of this planet, the last valley where life still clung to this earth, surrounded by scorched plains and the wreckage of the war. What was strangest about this was that the war had been against humans, and yet the elves bore no ill intent against Albert. He tried to gather more information, but the elves did not know much about what the humans did or why the war happened. A whole generation of their elders had been wiped out, erasing much of what they knew about the war.
He tried to put the whole matter out of his mind for now. Tomorrow he would venture out of the sanctuary of the valley and see for himself.
The fact that there was good food, good vibes and good company was enough to mend his very soul, and elves was an added bonus he was not unaware of. For now, he had the whole night before he would need to get his bearings on what was going on around the village and start tracking the golem. It could also attack at any time, meaning that using the Hazegem was out of the question. It was necessary for the fight.
The description Eurus provided of the golem placed it in the realm of Earthen constructs from fantasy tales. It was similar to the Golem he remembered from a Terraria run he played with Colin years ago, with sharp stony features that were vaguely humanoid, and many mechanical components built around the only central part of the whole thing: its core. Everything else was not only expendable for the golem, but also very heavily armored. The good news was that the thing did not have any ranged attacks, instead only moving like an unstoppable juggernaut that would decimate everything it could get its hands on. It was fast, however, capable of pursuing, outlasting, and killing even the elven rangers.
Bullet Time should be able to equalize the speed differential, and Albert had plenty of mana gems in the pocket he carried with him all the time to keep it going for a long while.
The night passed without sight of the golem. Albert did not sleep, instead keeping to a strict regime of meditation and magic experimentation in the little private house that the elves provided him with. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, the rate of progress in the fields of magic he was most interested in – being accelerated learning and teleporting – was not quick. On the matter of accelerated learning, however, he knew that it was possible due to a quest the system had given him back when he talked about the idea with his grandpa. A quest that did nothing but increase his frustration index at the lack of progress. The quest was the following:
[New Quest: Eidetic memory.]
- Isolate the parts of the brain involved with magically storing information.
- Reward: Analysis Mode skill video.
