Chapter 002

Chapter 002: "The Adventure Progresses; More Adventurers Tag Along"

The town that the duo had stumbled upon strongly resembled the typical starting town that featured quite frequently throughout other MMOs. All of the houses resembled the basic drawing of a square with a triangle roof that young children tend to draw. Well, all but one of the buildings resembled the childish drawings; there was a large, brick-based building at the northern most part of the town. It looked as though it was a very small castle, which is what Brand would have assumed it to be if there wasn't a fairly large sign reading 'Town Hall' above the large, solid wood doors.

"Hey that large building on the other side of town, the town hall I think the sign says," Brand began to say with a questioning tone in his voice, "do you think if we go there, it'll continue our quest?"

"Well usually if there's a large, unique structure, it's either a very important location or a dungeon filled with monsters." Soluna explained.

"I say we go there and hope for the former option." replied Brand, wearing a smile that more resembled a sign of fear rather than an expression of happiness. As he requested, Brand and Soluna began to walk towards the supposed town hall until they heard the cry of a young boy coming from a fairly wide alleyway. After they peaked their head around one of the buildings, they realized that a gang of people clad in metallic armor had surrounded a young boy in the alleyway, forcing him up against one of the walls. The boy quickly turned his head to the left and spotted the very little visible space of Brand Soluna's faces and cried out for help.

"Hey you two, please help me!" cried out the young boy towards the anonymous faces he had spotted. After hearing the boy's cry, Brand and Soluna quickly ran into the alleyway to help him.

"You five," Soluna began to yell, "get away from that boy right now!"

"Oh yeah," smirked one of the bandits, who instead of having any protective helmet, simply wore a bandana around the top of his head, "what are you gonna do about it?" The sly expression on the bandits face made Soluna's face go bright red in immense rage, causing her to lash out on him.

"Or else... or else..." Soluna attempted to yell, "Or else this!" As she finished her sentence, she rushed up to the sly-looking bandit, and she began to pull out her blade out of its sheath. Unfortunately, in the few seconds between Soluna's attack began and their current circumstance, the bandit was able to hold out his shield, which intercepted the flow, causing Soluna's blade to fly backwards out of her hands.

The attacker attempted a counter-attack on Soluna, they were sliced directly through the middle of their torso by the blade of an unknown player. Soluna first retrieved her sword and then looked at the one who had most likely saved her life. The one who saved her life was a fairly tall woman with long, dark purple hair. With the way that she was dressed, she could have easily been mistaken for one of the bandits if she had not directly interfered. Standing next to the tall woman was an equally as tall, if not taller, brunette man who also wore bandit-like clothes. The man began to draw out his cutlass-like weapon, but once he took it out of his sheath, the bandits had already fled from the alleyway.

Once he made sure that the bandits had completely fled the scene, the man put his blade away and walked over to the boy who had previously been robbed, who was now leaning against a wall, taking exasperated gasps. "Hey kid," began the man, "are you okay?"

"Well, not really, but I suppose I'll be fine from here on out." replied the young boy. "Thank you for, uh, helping me, but I really must be going; I have, uh, plans, yeah..." The boy quickly stumbled over word after word before attempting to run off to an unknown place. Unfortunately for him, the purple-haired woman stood directly in his path.

"Not so fast, kid." exclaimed the woman, who happened to have a very deep voice for a young lady. The woman, along with the man who was most likely the woman's acquaintance of some kid, blocked the alleyway's exit from the young boy, as well as both Brand and Soluna. Brand thought that perhaps, they were simply yet another group of bandits who were in some kind of conflict with a rival bandit group and simply wanted the boy's goods for their own selfish purposes. Brand's worries were put to rest after the woman spoke once more.

"We should meet up at the nearest café, I want to exchange information with you three there." calmly stated the woman.

"Like I said," began to angrily yell the young boy, "I already have things I need to get done!" The quick change in his emotions made Brand jump backwards for seemingly no reason other than the fact that the young boy's emotions changed in a blink of the eye. Brand looked around to the others and saw that everyone visibly expressed the same thoughts as him, that is, except for the woman who he was yelling directly at.

"Well," smiled the woman, almost like the way a mother would smile at her own son, "I'm sure you'll have enough time for a small task. Plus, I'm paying for everyone's meals, so yeah, free food for you." While it would be foolish for Brandon to follow someone who acted as suspicious as this dark leather-clad woman in the real world, she had an aura surrounding her that made her seem like a very persuasive, yet trustworthy figure.

The group of five walked to a café that was less than a block away from them. While the prices seemed fairly cheap, the atmosphere inside was very fancy, and every decoration to be seen was gilded by realistic-looking gold. While Brand was not an expert on the difference between real and fake gold, he could tell that it was definitely real gold, or, at least as real as it could get, since it existed purely within the virtual world. There was no way that anyone could afford an establishment as expensive as this one in the real world, especially with the prices that they were charging, but Brand decided to not think too far into it since the whole point of him joining FQ was to distract himself from his thoughts.

As the tall woman sat down, her height significantly shrank, which made her image change from a caring mother to a fairly innocent-looking college student. This made Brand and Soluna confused as to how old the woman, or rather, young lady could have possibly have. Unlike the duo, the young boy who was now sitting quietly, eating a stale piece of bread, could not have cared less. After all, he had only agreed in the dinner because of the promised free food.

"We should probably introduce ourselves to each other," smiled the girl, "my name is Violet and this is Claude." as she mentioned the person named Claude, she pointed to her left, towards the tall, deep-voiced man who had previously intimated the cowardly bandits with his cutlass. Claude finished his bite of a sandwich, consisting of only two pieces of bread and a stick's worth of butter, then began to speak.

"It is a pleasure to meet you all!" he said with a very artificial smiled. Brand would have assumed that Claude was also only there for the food if he didn't have a very strong bond to the girl now known as Violet. There was something strange about the two of them, but Brand couldn't put his finger on it so he distracted himself by starting his own introduction.

"My name is Brand," he began to say, "and this is-" Brand pointed over at Soluna to introduce her but she slapped his hand out of the middle of them. The pain caused Brand to quickly flinch and put his hands politely on his lap, while still having a bright red handprint on his own hand left by the extremely hard slap that Soluna had gave to him.

"I can introduce myself, thank you very much!" Soluna said in a bossy tone towards Brand, "my name is Soluna, it is a pleasure to meet you all! Brand and I are friends in the real world and we just started playing together around half an hour ago."

"Seems like you got a late start," giggled Violet, even though they still managed to play on the day of its release, "I didn't have work today so I jumped into this game right as the clock turned to midnight." Claude attempted to hide his laughter behind one of his palms, but he was completely failing at doing as such.

"Unlike this sleepless lady, I managed to sleep and got on around 10 A.M." chuckled Claude. As he stated this, Violet seemed to quickly go from a joking expression to a highly angry expression. If they were in a cartoon, there would be explosions of steam coming out of her ears and nose, but even without it, the group was quickly able to detect her anger.

"Claude, I am NOT sleepless!" Violet angrily yelled at Claude. After a few seconds of complete silence throughout the entire restaurant, Violet sat back down comfortably in her seat and her rage began to slowly fade away. Once she calmed down, she began to talk again. "It was just a one time occasion, okay? I was just very, very excited for FQ."

Claude began giggling to himself once again before he eventually managed to get his words out. "I could definitely tell that you were excited, that's for sure." he replied as he began laughing once more. After his remark, Violet rolled her eyes, which would have made her appear once again if it weren't for the massive smile on her face. Brand was certain there was some bond between them.

"So, do you know each other in the real world too?" Brand asked, unable to contain his curiosity anymore. After his question, Claude and Violet put each of their arms around each other's shoulder, simultaneously grinning.

Violet and Claude both spoke at the exact same time, "We're actually married!" This bombshell that the two randomly dropped on the group caused Brand, Soluna, and the quiet boy to all audibly gasp, nearly falling out of all of their chairs before they were forced back into the solid surface of the cushion.

"So you two are..." hesitated Soluna in a confused voice, "...adults?"

Claude nodded his head at Soluna's question. "Yeah, but don't worry! We're not some old grandparents; I'm 28 and Violet over here is only 25!" he stated. Once again, Violet angrily turned to Claude, this time with her hands on her hips.

"Don't you think it's weird to tell strangers online our ages?" asked Violet, even though she clearly knew the answer.

"Well yeah," nervously chuckled Claude, "but these are clearly kids in their teens. What would they be able to do?"

"I guess you're right..." sighed Violet, "Oh yeah, speaking of young people, the little boy hasn't introduced himself yet." She stated as she looked directly at the young boy who she had saved, who had ate all of his bread except for a few crumbs here and there.

"Hey, I'm not that young, I'm 14!" the young boy exclaimed before calming down instantly, like the inverse of what had happened to him previously. "But that's besides the point." he continued, "My name is Christall, and I'm a soon-to-be cleric." Soluna squinted her face once the boy, Christall, had revealed his profession.

"Wait, I thought that Fabula didn't have a class system." said Soluna with a puzzling expression upon her face. A class system was a gameplay element used throughout almost every MMO, along with role-playing games in general. A class functioned almost like the fantasy equivalent of job or expertise. For example, many MMOs feature classes such as the warrior, the ranger, and the mage/wizard. In Christall's case, he had seemingly chosen the cleric class, which was like a mage that primarily focused on healing and stat boosting spells.

Claude very quickly put Soluna's questioning thoughts to rest. "While there isn't a traditional class system used in the game, players have taken it upon themselves to make up their own classes based off of their equipment and stats. That way, a player's class can change multiple times throughout the game simply by changing their equipment." he stated.

"Ah, I see," replied Soluna with a satisfied-looking expression upon her face, "I guess that is a nice way to add creativity for a player's character." Around the same time as Soluna finished talking, Brand gasped, most likely expressing his reaction to one of his own internal thoughts. The sudden leap backwards that he took backward, made the others jump back as well as stare at him with confused looks.

"Wh-what's wrong, dude?" asked Claude.

"I almost forgot," Brand said with a yelling-like tone even though he wasn't talking that loud, "we were about to go to the town hall before we got distracted! There's gotta be some important thing inside of that building!"

"Oh yeah, that's true!" replied Soluna, after gasping just as Brand had done directly before her. This repeated event made Brand smirk a bit before he got focused on their main goal and began to lead their way to the large building.

As the group approached the town hall, it appeared even larger than it looked at first. If it wasn't located within the first town in the game, it could easily be confused for the final dungeon. Once they finally were near the large double-doorway, the doors slowly began to open up by themselves, revealing a crowded place that strongly resembled a mall during the holiday seasons. Although instead of people walking around carrying plastic bags, there were people holding various medieval-styled weapons and swords, chatting amongst themselves.

As Brand looked around the crowded area, he noticed that this was in fact very much like a mall; instead of being greeted by fancy-looking people in sophisticated suits, he was surrounded by different, while similar-looking, stores, such as a blacksmith and a wizardry shop. While he wasn't entirely sure, he Brand speculated that these were all real players instead of the usual NPC merchants seen in other MMOs, along with almost every other location within Fabula itself.

The group finally snapped out of their paralyzing state of amazement and decided to walk through the center-most aisle, which eventually lead to yet another set of double doors, this time being the size of doors you would see around a modern day house. Violet began to open one of the doors before Claude grabbed her hand and pulled it away from the handle.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" asked Claude while his hand shook out of fear of what could be behind the doors, "This seems like it leads to a room off-limits or something like that!"

Violet smiled to Claude, which put his hand to rest and he began to ease his grip on her hand. "Don't worry, nothing will happen to us in a town like this one." re-assured Violet.

Violet put her hand back on the handles of the doors and opened them up as wide as possible, revealing a more traditional-looking town hall area, including security guards and secretaries sitting quietly behind their large, wooden desks. In the center of it all was a circle with blue, glowing symbols on a large stone tablet-like plate on the floor. As beams of lights began to both appear and disappear over time, it became clear that it was a teleportation device of some kind. It seemed that their previous theory that this was an important building was correct after all.

Brand approached the teleportation runes, but before he could do anything with it, a weirdly shaped text box appeared directly in front of his line of sight, marked with a exclamation mark inside of a triangle, signifying some sort of warning. It wasn't until Brand read the text within the text box that he knew what the warning was for. In bright yellow text, the box read "ERROR: Only one teleportation rune has been unlocked, SARAIT. Please unlock more runes before attempting to teleport again."

Brand turned back around to the group and told them exactly what the text box said, as it only had appeared on his screen. "SARAIT, what does that mean?" Soluna asked before seemingly opening her map menu, "Oh, it's the town we're in!" She seemed to crack a grin because of her realization.

"Correct," began to speak Violet in a completely monotone voice, almost as if she knew exactly what to say ahead of time, "In order to use the teleportation runes, obviously, you'll have to unlock more teleportation runes in other towns. That way, there will be places to actually end up at once you start the teleportation process."

"Hey Violet," Soluna said as she turned to Violet, causing her to visibly tilt her head, "How do you know so much about this game already? Didn't it just come out today? Besides, you're obviously a pretty new player if you're still in the first town of the game."

Violet ignored Soluna's accidentally rude remark towards the end but answered the rest of her questions, "Yes, in fact, I'm a pretty new player, but I made sure to do plenty of research ahead of time." At Violet's remark, Claude put his palm against his own face.

"She DEFINETLY has done her research, that's for sure," he claimed with a tired tone, "She stayed up for hours on the internet just learning about this game while I was trying to sleep." Even the thought of attempting to sleep while countless information videos played in the background made Brand stressed out. From the way that Soluna was cringing, it appeared that she was thinking the exact same way.

After talking for a little while longer, the group went up to the secretary and asked her if there was anything important for them to do. "Why yes, there actually is! Please enter the central doorway to meet with the mayor. Please hurry though, his matters are of the most dire of importance!"

"Umm... If you say so." said Brand, confused on what could have been so urgent, and if it was so urgent, why had no one else been able to help the mayor with it? After getting lost in his thoughts for a while, he came to realize that it was nothing but a pre-determined quest inside of a video game so he shouldn't think for too into it. Once he was finished pondering these questions to himself, he, along with the rest of the group, rushed to the central doorway as requested by the secretary and quickly swung open the two doors, revealing a large, square room made entirely out of a very dark wooden material, with walls completely comprised of shelves full of various types of books, ranging all the way from large dictionaries to fictional tales of knights in shining armor.

The surprisingly tall, muscular mayor chuckled with a strange sense of delight. He continued to laugh for about a dozen more seconds before finally managing to get words out of his mouth. "So you must be those adventurers my secretary was talking to me about!" The group wondered to themselves how the secretary could have talked to the mayor about them, but just like Brand's previous thought, the group decided to ignore it and continued on with the conversation.

"We heard that you had some sort of urgent issue, would we be able to assist you with it?" politely asked Violet.

"You most definitely can..." began the mayor, at first sounding very confident but shifted to a more concerned and wary tone, "...If you're strong enough for the task, that is."

"Oh yeah," smirked Brand with a completely confident and sly grin worn upon his face, "And what task do you have in store for us?" Brand's confidence confused Soluna, as he knew practically nothing about the world or mechanics of Fabula. Soluna's confusion began to fade away as she remembered how confident he was in the real world; if you dared him to do something, or he just wanted to do something very dangerous, he would most definitely do it without a second thought.

"There is a monster known as the Sarait Screamer, I want you to kill it." bluntly stated the mayor, with a completely straight face that juxtaposed his usual cheerful self.

"What exactly is a... a Screamer?" asked Soluna as she tilted her head sideways in a visible sign of immense confusion. This question returned the mayor to his joyous state as he began to laugh hysterically as though he had been told the funniest joke ever conceived. The blank stares of the adventurers caused the mayor to finally calm himself down enough to actually answer Soluna's serious question.

"The Sarait Screamer is actually a dragon," started the mayor, "It's named the Sarait Screamer because it's roars scream throughout all of Sarait during the nighttime, which is when the dragon is awake. Thankfully, it never goes out of its cave, but its screams have annoying my good citizens since what feels like the dawn of time itself."

After talking to the mayor, who, according to the name tag that appeared directly above his head, was named Skerin Skarner, the group set off to kill the dragon known as the Sarait Screamer.