Chapter 003

Chapter 003: "The Fight With the Sarait Screamer and Formation of The Warriors of Fabula"

After exiting the town hall, the group of adventurers headed north-east of Sarait, where they were met by a large, dirt path that seemingly protected themselves from attacks by the monsters that wondered throughout the plains outside of the safe haven of town. The path swerved left and right, and over and under hills while dodging packs of animals with a lust for blood.

"Woah, look at this!" shouted out Soluna as she ran away, off of the path and into a field of glowing, blue flowers, "These flowers are so beautiful!" as she said this, she picked one of the flowers out of the ground and up into her hands as she stared happily at it. After a few seconds of staring at and admiring it, Soluna ran back to the group and displayed the flower outwards for the rest to see. Although unimpressed by the simple glowing flower, the rest of the adventurers did their best to put a fake smile upon their faces.

After a few more seconds, the flower suddenly began to fade away within her hands, causing Violet to burst out in a genuine fit of laughter. "Wait, what just happened!?" screamed out Soluna.

In between her laughs, Violet managed to get enough words out of her mouth to form a sentence. "Unlike in real life, flowers will disappear after a short amount of time if you don't put them in either your inventory or a flower pot. But at least there's a whole field of 'em for your picking!"

Soluna mourned the loss of the single flower for a while longer before picking a flower and making sure she put it into her inventory space. After putting it away, the group continued on with their journey. After walking for only a few more minutes, they finally reached the cave that was home to the Sarait Screamer. At first, the cave seemed very small in size, at least judging by the entrance, but once the group of five entered the cave, it was an entirely different story; the entrance of the cave lead to a shiny, chiseled staircase, leading around 50 feet downwards. In the center of the coliseum-like platform of stone at the bottom was a sleeping dragon, most likely the fabled Sarait Screamer that they had came for.

For the first time in a while, Christall finally spoke up. "This- This place is huge!" he said before taking a step backwards, heading out of the cave. Before he had any time to flee, Brand took his hand and pulled him back into the cave and made sure he didn't attempt to escape again. Brand and Violet took the lead as they wielded physical weapons, being swords and daggers respectively. Behind Brand and Violet followed Claude and Soluna, since they would need distance to shoot their bows and cast their spells. In the far back stood Christall, as it was vital that he did not get hurt; if he died, there would be no way for the others to heal except for chugging down time-consuming, fairly expensive healing potions.

While, at first, the Screamer appeared to be sleeping, as soon as the frontline attackers stepped foot on the hard, stone surface of the cave, the dragon's eyes grew wide open, following by it getting off of the ground and letting out a deafening roar that could most likely be heard from miles away. After nearly getting knocked off of all of their feet, the group quickly recovered an drew out their weapons.

Before the monster had a chance to scream yet again, Brand ran forward with his blade dragging behind in the wind. Once he estimated that he was close enough for an attack, he had jumped up with all his energy, like a basketball player going on for a dunk, and drew his blade back in front of him. As the dragon's gaze began to turn upwards, Brand's sword plunged directly between the Screamer's two eyes. Instead of instantly dying like the slimes had done beforehand, the dragon threw its head backwards and let out a roar of immense pain, causing Brand to fly back as well, knocking his head straight into the staircase that they had previously went down.

Unlike in real life, where he most likely would have died, Brand only suffered a loss of a decent amount of HP. After his artificial pain quickly went away, Brand got back up on his feet and began to run back towards the Sarait Screamer. As he was running, he was hit by a bright green beam from behind him. The mass of light caused him to look back, revealing that the beam of light was actually one of Christall's healing spells. "Thanks a lot!" bluntly stated Brand before turning his focus back at the enemy. When he turned back, he noticed that Violet had climbed her way on its back and started stabbing it with two of her daggers. As the Screamer used all of its focus on the jabbing sensation located on its back, Brand held out his blade to the left while still running forwards. In the blink of an eye, Brand had cut off two of the monster's feet, causing it to topple over on one side, knocking Violet off of its back.

As the dragon fell down, arrows rained down from above onto all over the body of the weakened monster, most likely an advanced archery move that Claude had learned. The arrows practically pinned down every part of the Sarait Screamer down to the ground, allowing for as many attacks as anyone could wish for. Brand decided to take advantage of this opportunity and rushed forward yet again, preparing the finishing strikes for the extremely powerful monster. At the last moment, he swung his sword upwards, cutting the monster in half, resulting in an explosion of light.

In the middle of the sphere of immense light lay a silver and gold treasure chest. Once the light had completely disappeared, the chest began to violently shake before bursting itself open, causing items and gold to fly everywhere. Eventually, the gold and items morphed themselves into a menu similar to the one that had appeared once Brand had killed the slime. Aside from the large sum of gold that the monster had dropped, five items were listed in the menu; a sword known as the Screamer's Tear, a cloak labeled as a Velvet Mage Garb, a Scoped Crossbow, a seemingly very rare item known as the Silent Sleuth's Mask, and a rare outfit labeled as the Cloak of Restoration.

"We should take these items back to the town hall and decide how to divide it all up." suggested Violet before beginning to climb up the stairs out of cave. Due to a vital member exiting the cave, the others were practically forced to leave alongside her.

Once back at the town hall, the group sat down at a table and threw all five items onto the large, circular table. "Alright, let's get the obvious stuff out of the way;" Violet began to speak, "Christall gets the Cloak of Restoration, Soluna gets the Mage Garb, and I get the mask."

"Then who gets the sword and crossbow?" questioned Christall.

"I personally think that Brand should get the sword and I should get the crossbow," butted in Claude, "After all, that's what weapons we currently use, so why not continue, y'know?" The rest of the group nodded in agreement and passed out all of their pieces of equipment. Each adventurer put on their equipment then returned back to the mayor's room, where he greeted them with a wide smile.

"Welcome back, my young adventurers!" he said as he spread his arms out wide, almost like he was about to give a massive hug, "I suppose this means you have slain the Sarait Screamer as I had previously requested?"

"Indeed we have." Violet replied in assurance with an unnaturally sophisticated tone, but that was to be expected while talking to someone of a higher stature, be it an NPC or not.

"I suppose this means I should offer you some sort of reward," the mayor said, causing the whole room's eyes to light up, before making them instantly darken again, "I now give you my approval of creating a guild."

Before the mayor had a chance to let out another word, Christall rudely butted into the, up until now, one-sided conversation; "We don't want to make a stupid guild!" he screamed out as loud as he possibly could.

"Don't be so quick to say that," Violet quickly responded before elaborating on why, "According to my research, guilds get a large, shared inventory space known as a Bank. If the guild gets enough money via donations from the guild members, they can also buy a property called the Guild Hall. Since the game just came out, I don't know everything there is to offer about guilds, so that's only the very tip of the iceberg."

"Then I guess we should make one then!" replied Soluna. After Soluna spoke, the mayor let out a massive slime filled with genuine delight.

"Ho ho, very well then!" said the mayor, "What would you like to name your guild?"

The group began to discuss what their name should be, but before they could decide on something, Brand butted in. "I choose 'The Warriors of Fabula'!" he said. The group became quickly startled due to Brand's sudden outburst.

"That sounds... very cliché, doesn't it? Reminds me of protagonists from old '80s RPGs." said Claude which caused him to chuckle at his own statement. Brand turned towards his direction with a straight face, obviously not amused by his comparison.

"It may be cliché, but like you said, it makes us sound like the main characters of the story." explained Brand. "Does that not seem cool to you?"

"I guess you're right." agreed Claude after thinking about it for a bit. After thinking over it for a while, the group decided to finalize the fictitious paperwork needed to create their guild.

"And I have yet another very important mission that I must request you all go on," The mayor randomly decided to bring up, "I must ask you all to slay King Arthur..." This sudden request brought a gasp to appear upon the guild members' faces.

"You're saying you want us to kill THE King Arthur?" Violet asked with a surprised tone. At this question, the mayor quickly began to shake his head back and forth.

"No no no, not at all!" clarified the mayor, "There is simply a man disguising himself as the true King Arthur, although our real king is nowhere to be found."

"If this king of yours... or- this king of OURS hasn't been found, how do we know the current one is a fake?" questioned Christall.

"Let's just say..." hesitated the mayor before continuing his sentence, "My intuition very much points to such a case." This evidence-lacking theory made the group of players begin to doubt the mayor, but they knew that there was no other option than blindly following the orders presented by the untrustworthy mayor. After a while of sitting in complete silence, Brand finally cut through the silently moving air.

"Alright, we'll go, um- kill that guy, I guess." said Brand, still not entirely sure on whether or not the mayor would end up being correct. If his hunch ended up being wrong, they may exactly end up killing the true King Arthur which would most likely lead in to some cataclysmic in-game event affecting all players and creatures. Most likely an uprising of some kind. Although Brand could think of a million different negative outcomes to the situation, he knew there was nothing to do, as this was most likely the main quest of the game.

"Why thank you, adventures!" said the mayor, ignoring the fact that Brand was the only one who had actually agreed in partaking in the quest. "I will be impatiently awaiting your return, ho ho ho!" he began to chuckle. The group eventually left the building as they did not foresee his laughing fit ending any time soon.

Directly after exiting the town hall, Soluna began to stretch, which was consecutively followed up by an exaggerated, audible yawn, which drew the entire groups attention. After noticing the many sets of eyes staring directly at her, Soluna's face began to grow bright red from immense embarrassment

"Oh, s-sorry, I'm just getting very tired.": apologized Soluna, bowing to each member of the guild individually before standing with an unnaturally straight posture, clearly trying to act as formal and apologetic as possible.

"We all should probably go to sleep soon, it's very late." said Violet in a motherly tone.

"If you say so, I guess we can," said Soluna before quickly whipping her head back upwards, "Oh yeah, we should exchange contact info!" Each member of the group then gave out their phone number to the others, which revealed that all members of the guild besides Christall lived very close to each other.

"Woah, we live nearby!" happily yelled Soluna, "We should meet up some time!"

The group members agreed on meeting up the next day at a fast food restaurant located in between all of the four and within walking distance.