Duty Session 623: Crystal Lake

    June is June, but Eas is home and there are monsters to murder, so monster murder is on the menu. She gathers up one walking nuke, and the Boss because the Boss is the Boss and Eas is her home too. She remains on the hunt for people to drag into the party as she heads for the monster lair.

The Exploder Wizard has been requested for exploding monsters, and as Schneider hasn't exploded any monsters for a while, he graciously assents to come monster exploding with June. He's looking decidedly fierce as he follows along, eying the surroundings warily for any signs of Palace Lander spies, rogue goblins, and the kind of vermin you sometimes get. Not that it helps, he has the scouting capability of a rhinocerous. Luckily with about the same response to danger.

    -- Earlier --

    zzZZzz

    zzZZzz

    zzZZzz

    Yuuki is taking a nap. Hanging halfway off her bed in her quarters within the Sleeping Knights HQ. So still. So peaceful...

    Yuuki suddenly bolts up, wide awake. Her eyes squint a little, "My adventure sense is tingling... Someone's going monster hunting!"

    -- Now --

    And that's how Yuuki ends up tagging along behind June, a spring in her step. Though part of that is also the new item she is carefully buffing with a piece of cloth. It appears unique! Yuuki looks at the item with a grin, "Can't wait to give this baby a try!"

Add to that mix one elegant foxwoman that has made a second home of Eas in many ways, until her own could be safely returned to. Because Wake was one of the first people to try and get through to her, even when there was still one of those blasted Crowns adorning her stoic professional features. "Monster hunting. Or Secret Hunting. There is still much in the dark about this area near the lake, even after all the surveys done."

    June heads down to the water and to the path that leads to the Lair of the Sahuagin. "Time to kill some devil fish." She blinks a little as a Golem blocks the way. "No... please tell me that whoever coded this is not THAT blatant..." she shakes her head. The golem made of scales, bone, limestone, and malice. A crude '13' is etched into the largest torso rock serving as its core. It stands as a sentinel before the yawning cave behind it. "Ooh, sometimes I forget that every production team has at least one horror trope bitch that can't help themselves." she stretches and the iron scales crawl over her body until the little fireplug of a godfist is full on cowgirl once more.

Schneider huhs as the golem shows up, all scales and bone and limestone. "What in the world is that?" he wonders, taking a step away, and considering. "Golem, I suppose, if a strange one. I know a bit about golems, but controlling someone else's golem is never easy." He frowns, and exerts his will over the golem, intoning some spiritual words, possibly about Ronnie James Dio, though it's not clear why. But the golem moves much slower and less adriotly, with Schneider's interference.

"You're lucky if there is only one," Daiyu replies as she eyes the golem up and down. "Propgrammers love to reference other's work as much as authors do." When the thing decides to swing at her Daiyu dives and rolls out of the way, thanks to Schneider's interference slowing down it's move. But it's fist still slams into the ground with enough force that the shockwave catches the hulijing werefang and tosses her roughly across the ground before she can get back onto her feet. "HFFF"

    
As they soon reach the cave and already face their first obstacle, Yuuki proceeds to stuff her new item in between the front of her headband and her forehead, "Gonna have to figure out something more permanent for this later... But this'll do for now."

    A few moments later, Yuuki's eyes go wide, "Woah..." She turns her head left and right. Then spins around, "Woah!" She waves her hand behind her head for some reason and then laughs, "This is trippy!"

    Yuuki grins and starts calmly walking towards the golem as the others begin the assault. The golem starts to lash back at them with attacks. But Yuuki simply walks past it... Her back now to the artificial creature. It finally aggros onto her with a swing to her back-

    -And Yuuki simply steps to the side at the last moment without looking. Before laughing again, "This is nuts!" Another swings to Yuuki's back... And she ducks! More laughter! Yuuki's having so much fun avoiding the thing she forgets to attack back.

    Thankfully the others have it covered.

    June follows after Yuuki and blinks a bit, confused at Yuuki's reactions. "What... Boss what DOES your new toy do?" she asks as the golem punts her down the cave, since she doesn't have eyes in the back of HER head. She tumbles head over heels after the rest of the team, luckily she's an iron plated godfist and it isn't as bad as it could be.

    Once she gets to the puzzle gate she sighs. "This is better... I mean still with the reference but at least it's a puzzle door... now just gotta solve it." she grins... who gets excited about hard ass puzzle gates?

A hard ass nerd, that's who.

Unfortunately as much as she enjoys puzzles Daiyu doesn't have the right skills to apply to this one. She tries, but her abilities are as an enchanter rather than a smith, and in the end doesn't have much success in trying to put the key back into proper form. Just trying to hold it together with magic isn't enough.

Schneider nods about the puzzle door as he approaches it. He's completely qualified to discern the properties of the puzzle's pieces, and he will explain to everyone what this all is, and how the final thing ought to work. Just the simple matter of putting it together. Alas, Schneider has no talent for that. Making things is not his speed, he's a doer, not a maker. His kindergarden fingerpaints should have made clear Schneider could do a lot of things with his hands, but making anything useful was not on that list.

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    This person certainly doesn't get excited about hard ass puzzle gates.

    Which is why as the others are trying to figure stuff out, Yuuki continues playing with her new item. She says in explanation to June, "A few things, I think. But the big one is it lets me see all around me! Like, full three sixty degrees! Though it's not SEEING really... But like I can KNOW when stuff is coming at me without actually seeing it."

    Sounds very helpful!

    Except in this case. For when Daiyu fails to assemble the item and the task falls to Yuuki...

    She stares blankly at the three pieces. Before turning to stare at the others with a 'Really? You're asking ME to do this!?' look.

    June looks at the gate and lifts her necklace, the glyphs glowing as the rings spin inside each other as she works. "Hmmm well ahh with Schnider's information we can open the gate, I just need the key." she says and then looks up "OOor... we could murder andother reference..." she says as she spots Jayson the mask wearing Sahuagin abomination. "I bet there's cool loot behind the gate, gota come back with a crafter." she says and rolls her neck. "Time to kick butt I guess." she grins, showing those crushing teeth that do not belong in a cow muzzle.

Schneider hrms as June points out Jayson, and he considers which spell to use on him. Well, he looks pretty nasty, so a nasty spell it is. "Zarzardo Zarzardo Bakemono!" Dark energy builds and swirls around Jayson.

"Rono sook! Burning in the depths of darkness, fires of hell! Become my sword and strike down my enemy!" Schneider gestures, shouting, "VENOM!"

The magic that engulfs Jayson is possibly more horrible than he is, a sense of palpable dread is present as what seems like a whirlwind of dark energy surrounds him, tearing flesh from his body. It seems horrifying, and excruciatingly painful; this spell is almost certainly forbidden to use against players. If not, it should be.

Daiyu turns her head when June mentions another reference, and you can almost hear the sigh of exasperation she holds back. "Someone on this programmer team enjoys their homages too much." They will have to come back for the door another time, as they don't have any now. But rather than just retreat the wily fox pulls a couple of alchemical vials out and lobs them in the direction of the masked monster where they detonate similar to flashbangs. Which he doesn't seem to care, being the unstoppable juggernaught he is. "Maybe need a more direct projection," Daiyu muses even as she's making haste in the opposite direction.

    June shakes her head "Alright, let's get back and get a proper crafter..." she says "Stupid monster fight promising lair, but nooo all I get is one golem, a puzzle that requires more than just figuring it out, and a monster that will take a raid to actually take down... and given all the references probably won't even stay dead." she says equipping her engraved cestus. "Ultima Ratio! Ultima Scripta!" she says slamming a serries of blinding strikes, big waves of light magic punching out to slam into the Hunter until the party can pull out.

    Then it's down to the campsite and one scared lander. "I'll... poke around for clues. I'm probably bad for anyone with trauma responses." she says with an odd clarity of self for the crazy book obsessed cowgirl she is.

Once they reach the campsite Daiyu takes a moment to catch her breath. "There is some bit of irony to being on this side of the stalking..." she muses. Then gets to searching over the site for clues, by using the magic trick she was taught to send mirror images of herself investigating in different directions to cover more ground at one time. So don't be too weirded out if you see her out of the corner of your eye but there is no one there when you actually look.

Schneider goes over to the scared Lander and tells him, "We're here, now, it's all good." In the face of all evidence. "You can calm down now, and tell us what happened. Don't sweat it, we're here." How exactly this calms the Lander is unclear, but apparently the Lander is convinced that this party has indeed come to the rescue and gets his wits about him, much to Schneider's relief, as -he- isn't even sure what's going on.

    It proves a little more difficult than the golem, but Yuuki's newfound power proves to save her from the hunter as she just barely manages to avoid its strike and run onwards.

    Now, they come to the lakeside camp. It's eery, with only one person around. What HAPPENED here? Did a giant squid rise from the lake to drag everyone off into its depths? Or was this a dark case of PVP...

    Yuuki decides to help June with the search. And so she looks.

    And looks.

    And looks.

    And finds nothing.

    Looking dejected, Yuuki kicks a stone into the lake. As she does so, her headband shimmers ever so lightly for just a moment.

    The stone goes flying, skipping across the water's surface a whole eight times! Before striking a big fish out in the water. The fast projectile (combined with Yuuki's attack stat) kills the weak critter, causing it to drop some loot. Which floats back to shore.

    One of the items is a diary! Apparently left behind by a previous traveller. Picking it up, Yuuki starts to look through it for clues!

    June just wanders around poking into peoples stuff and picking up things that seem cool... then she gets distracted and is found reading a book from her inventory and drinking beer she found in the cabin. Eventually coming out siping. "Ooh I didn't really find anything interesting, just something something ... found a beer?" she shrugs "Anyone want a beer?" she says as she takes another swallow of 'borrowed' beer. The others have information, sweater weakness... axes... well at least she can hunt down the monster, hunting is one of the things she's good at.

Schneider will take a beer, he's a college student, but as to the upcoming conflict, he can only shrug. "For combat, it's probably just Damned, unless we wind up needing a huge defensive barrier. I've got that left, if we need it. But we might have this if it's a stand up fight. We've faced him earlier, we know what he's like. Let's get him."

He casts, "Fiery Power Blast of the Damned!" and rocks Jayson with a basic, but still potent, magical blast. Sadly, it's not quite potent enough. In his effort to ration his spell use, he didn't use quite enough on this attack, and he's not able to hurt the monster very much despite his efforts.

Daiyu frowns slightly. What weird weaknesses, do they even relate to the homage. Her tails flick a few times in annoyance at it all, then she shrugs it off. "Abomination or not," she pauses to adjust her gloves, and the crippling hex magic stored in them, "there are still ways to get by those defenses." Even if it's only temporarily, she can hopefully make the efforts of the combat oriented more effective.

    Hmmmm. Reading through the diary gives some useful information about this hunter. Like apparently it's weak to axes?

    Yuuki would never use an axe.

    But maybe it's not actually about using an axe, but having one available as a quest item! Right then. Yuuki technically has the Weapon Forging skill, though she's practically never put it to use. But she does recall hearing about a recipe that might help!

    June offers a beer. Yuuki calls out, "I'll take one!" Wait, Yuuki drinks now!?

    Yuuki pours the beer out onto a broken axe.

    Of course it does nothing.

    Yuuki scratches her head in confusion, "I could have sworn that was the recipe... Or wait... Was it drink the beer and THEN fix the axe?"

    ...

    "Screw it. There's no problem the Absolute Sword can't solve!" She draws the famous weapon from its sheathe and raises it high triumphantly!

    June sips her beer "I'm not sure if they decided on a Freddy vs Jayson reference... or a Momma Vorhees reference." she shakes her head "I mean... if you're going to work THIS hard on references could you please make them more clear?" she asks the sky, as if the production staff is still monitoring the game. "Lets find us a Hunter." she says when Daiyu figures she can weaken him without sweaters.

    June shrugs a little looking as the bird drops a fish carrying a rare fragment... did Yuuki's headband flash again? She picks up the item. "Come on... lets take this back, maybe it'll make the puzzle easier or help out with the hunter..." she sighs and takes another long swallow of beer.

And then right in middle of the plotting and planning a strange fish with an even stranger surprise is dropped admist their gathering. And just as abruptly the plan is changed. "Agreed. We should not look the gift fish in the mouth... Until we are somewhere safer." June takes the fish. Daiyu takes off, using her swiftness and stealth to go scout out a route away from the lake and to make sure they don't get any surprise ambushes from the monstrousity in the hockey mask.

Schneider is not a coniosseur of 80's horror, and he's got no idea what's actually going on, or what's being referenced. But there's something interesting out in the lake, so he will haul out his identification spell, which is pretty overpowered, and while this is farther than he normally uses it, he gives it a go.

The identification spell will, it seems, help to make things understandable. Maybe. A little.

    The group decide to not take on the serial killer. And Yuuki clearly looks dejected, lowering her favourite sword once again. Though she trusts June. She's the smart one, after all! And why Yuuki keeps her around.

    Deciding to try and squeeze out a little fun in their tactical retreat, Yuuki calls out, "Last one back is a serial killer's victim!" Declaring a race, Yuuki blasts off into a fast dash, proving quite speedy as she nyoooms away from the creepy lake.

    June smiles watching Yuuki zoom off... she'll give her one of the icons once they get back to Eas. She heads for the castle. "Well... beer and stuff when we get back if you want." she says "It was like... a terrble quest, a worse programmer, and I for one as an industry insider am offended." she sticks her tongue out, broad bovine tongue makes for great expressions on her iron cow face. "We'll try again another day to get into that gate before his dumb butt shows up." she sulks.

Schneider smirks as Yuuki zooms away. "Now /that's/ a fast break," he observes, and considers his plan to set up a basketball hoop in Karluin so he can get some quality time in and maybe get back into shape. He hasn't had the chance to shoot hoops since starting this game.