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Chapter
2
Raquen and Astreryl were at
Amherst, having just arrived there after a long trek to the other side of the
island and back. They looked at the huge bulletin board in the middle of the
town square. They planned to do the tasks together and do four, instead of do
them seperate and do two each. They looked through the tasks and decided on one
that was titled: "Gathering Snail Shells for a Shell Necklace".
"I like this one, it would be nice to make a necklace out
of shells for someone, right?" Astreryl pointed it out to Raquen.
Raquen looked at it and read it through, "Yeah, it should
be easy too. Let's do it!" Raquen smiled.
"Okay then!" Astreryl said as she began hopping
toward the Snail Hunting Grounds to gather the shells.
Once in the Snail Hunting Grounds, Raquen was easily beating
the snails for their shells, but Astreryl was having difficulty beating too many
of them. Raquen had decided to become a Page, or White Knight, but Astreryl had
decided to be a Cleric. It was normal for her not to be able to fight that well.
She wouldn't have any spells until she recieved training from Grendel in Ellinia
though, so Raquen had to do the fighting for her until then.
Astreryl never dreamed she would become a Hunter, but Raquen
had always wanted to be one. Raquen and Astreryl were boyfriend and girlfriend
though, so they knew that if Raquen was a Hunter, they would never be able to
spend much time together. Astreryl chose to be a Hunter so she could fight
alongside Raquen and they wouldn't have to be apart. Another reason was that she
really didn't know what profession she would take up other than Hunter, so she
decided if there was anything, she would at least help Raquen with her spells.
Now she just had to learn them.
Astreryl tried to fight a few of them, and managed a few, but
really wasn't strong enough to fight in hand-to-hand combat all the time. Raquen
collected the rest of the shells for her and let her make the necklace. They
brought it back to the person in Amherst who had requested it and got one token
showing they had completed it.
They went to the bulletin board again to find their second
task to do. They looked at it and quickly saw what their task was, it was a huge
paper covering all the others with giant lettering that read: "Emergency!
All Hunters come quick to Southperry for special task! Trainee Hunters will
automatically be given training to be a Hunter upon completion."
"What do you think it could be?" Raquen wondered out
loud.
"Well, let's go and see, quick!" Astreryl said as
she grabbed his arm and dragged him out of Amherst and toward Southperry.
Schimmel and J Man were just reaching Amherst when a guy and a
girl ran by in a hurry on their way out of Amherst.
"What do you think that could have been about?"
Schimmel asked J Man as J Man walked toward the bulletin board.
"This is what it was about man, come take a look at
this." J Man said, waving a hand to call Schimmel over. Schimmel came over
to see what J Man was talking about and saw the notice on the bulletin board.
"Let's go already!" J Man yelled from half way out
of Amherst already.
"Hey! Wait up!" Schimmel called after J Man, running
as fast as he could. He couldn't catch up to J Man though, since he was much
faster than Schimmel due to having a dagger instead of a two handed sword. He
soon lost sight of J Man, who had run on ahead.
Schimmel didn't know his way to Southperry from Amherst. He
didn't look back when going across the island from Southperry, so he didn't know
what anything looked like. He tried to look for a signpost that gave him
directions, but couldn't find any. He sat down and tried to think of the path he
took from Southperry to the beach, to Amherst, and maybe figure out where to go
from here. He imagined a map in his head and tried to get a general direction to
go from that. He gave up when he couldn't think of the direction he travelled
either, he had just followed J Man the entire time.
Astreryl and Raquen had just arrived at Southperry, J Man had
caught up to them and stood beside them as all three looked to see what was
ahead of them.
"What... the... hell...?" J Man whispered to
himself, looking ahead to see a infestation of giant orange mushrooms in the
village. "How'd they get in here? Isn't there supposed to be guards or
somethin' stoppin' them?"
Obviously no one was listening to him, Raquen and Astreryl had
already gone to fight some of them off. J Man was left standing there before he
realized it. He shook his head and ran into the fight with them and a few other
Hunters.
Schimmel had a new idea for finding his way to Southperry. If
it was a port town, it would have to be next to the ocean. He headed in the
direction that he saw blue in the distance, hoping it was water. Only a few
minutes later, he moved some bushes out of the way and stepped out onto a beach.
Across the water, a small dot of an island was all he could see of Victoria from
where he was standing, though he knew it was actually really big. He kept along
the side of the beach and figured he would eventually come across Southperry.
"Astreryl!" Raquen yelled to warn her, "Watch
your back!"
"Huh?" she turned around to see the giant orange
mushroom about to jump at her and ducked so it fell right past her. "Woah...
thank you!"
"Okay, let's watch each other's backs. We can fight back
to back so none of them can sneak up on us." Raquen suggested.
"Great idea! Okay, let's do it." Astreryl agreed,
and they put their backs to each other as the orange mushrooms came at them
quickly.
J Man was keeping near the one expert Hunter that was at
Southperry. She was an Ice and Lightning magician, casting Thunder Bolt and Cold
Beam spells on the mushrooms, destroying alot of them with each spell. J Man
kept close so she could beat any mushrooms that decided to gang up on him.
Schimmel travelled along the path for another long while. He
guessed somewhere around half an hour. He had come across a few monsters, some
snails and small mushrooms. Just as he was about to sit down for a rest, he saw
something in the distance. He saw some shades of grey... and a blur of orange.
He sat down for a minute to rest before heading off to the spot that he could
see. He knew he should be well rested if it's an emergency.
A few minutes later he headed off. It wasn't too far away from
where he was now. Probably another 5 minutes. He could see Southperry clearer
now and could see the orange blur was moving, and that it was getting smaller,
though very gradually. When he was almost there, he could finally see that the
orange blur was a bunch of giant mushrooms! He began running toward the town,
hoping everything was alright... it definately didn't look like it. He was only
another minute away from the village when his heavy wooden sword slowed him down
again. He became tired and had to stop to rest again.
He sat down to rest, he looked over and could now hear some
fighting. He saw some lightning magic spanning above the houses that crowded the
city, probably from a mage. Hopefully from a mage, he wouldn't want
monsters invading the town with lightning. He got ready to get up and start
another run towards the town, when he was hit and knocked over by something from
behind.
He got up and looked behind him to see what hit him... it
wasn't exactly pretty.
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