“One, two, three,” I said. “And pull!”
I tightly grasped Kezo’s left hand while Nitana held his right. Megan grabbed his horns, giggling at the ridiculousness of the situation. Kezo was stuck right at the exit of the tunnel. We pulled with all our might but couldn’t free Kezo because our Might—the game attribute—was too low.
“I gu-guess thi-this where you’ll live now.” Megan laughed so hard she could barely string words together.
“Leave me here, for I am done,” Kezo dramatically said. “Continue our quest. Let my memory stay in your hearts, for I will take my place with our ancestors. How was my NPC impression?”
“Very good,” I said. “But we’re not leaving you—you’re our main damage dealer. Dragging enemies to you is an option, I suppose.”
“Argh! Your body is too thick!” Nitana was too pissed off to join in the jokes. She tried tugging Kezo’s arm a couple more times. “Your stupid spiky armor got snagged—”
“That’s right!” I snapped my fingers. I forgot that was what I did when I almost got stuck in a too-small tunnel. “Kezo, just unequip all your gear.”
A much lighter and smaller Kezo popped free of the hole. He wore his armor gain, instantly returning to his bulky and intimidating getup. That was quite an unexpected obstacle—in a way, also expected, given the string of unexpectedness in our way. The village guards we saved, a missing Vinereaver, a passage connecting to Bawu’s laboratory, what could come up next?
“This does look like Bawu’s lab,” I said, surveying the dimly lit corridor we found ourselves in. “Unless there’s another mad scientist in the tunnels.”
“There’s probably a mad scientist per square kilometer limitation or something,” Nitana muttered.
“I don’t like the decor.” Megan rubbed her arms and hugged herself as we continued to explore. “Looks like a haunted house, and I never liked those.”
Vines and slime claimed this portion of Bawu’s base. The magical runes etched deep into the rock wall and pipes had the distinct neon green hue of the Blight. The tubes themselves leaked radiant liquid. Nitana teased Megan, jokingly pushing her below the suspicious drippings.
There were no golden crystals. Neither was there in the rest of Bawu’s laboratories. Bawu must’ve used them all for her experiments. I was wary of golden crystals because of the Vinereaver. Moa Manot could rapidly regenerate by sucking nutrients from the ground provided by the golden crystals. Zoar Elab couldn’t do that because there were no crystals at the Silent Plaza.
Kezo’s right—this shouldn’t take long. That thought somewhat alleviated the time pressure. Unfortunately, there weren’t many Blighted monsters in this place. My party mates noticed the relative peace as well.
“Where are the enemies?” Kezo wondered after hacking a solitary Saurian Axeman that charged us. “Saurians are usually in a group.”
“You’d think there’d be tons of Blighted monsters around,” Nitana said. “This being the source of the outbreak and all.”
“Most of them left to wander the tunnels,” I said. “They were the ones we killed.”
Nitana shrugged. “Makes sense.”
“Isn’t it funny we ended up here,” Megan said, “while doing a different quest?”
“Must be intentional design by the devs,” said Kezo. “Didn’t Bawu mention this was the last collection task for goops because she’ll soon finish her project? After that, there’d be no need for monsters dropping goops, so the player might as well get rid of the Blight.”
“Either the player chooses to rush stopping the Blight,” I said. “Or they help Bawu with her experiment first and then clean up the outbreak. It’ll all end with killing the Vinereaver.”
“Which we still haven’t found,” Nitana pointed out.
We reached a fork in the tunnel. Nitana sent her fairies to scout each way, lighting up the darkness. The paths seemed to branch out again further ahead. We decided to split up to cover more ground since we were running out of time—we only had one hour left on the clock, and there were plenty of tunnels and rooms to explore, any of them a possible hiding spot for our quarry.
“You’ll be fine on your own, Herald?” Kezo asked.
“I have Horde Stampede for escaping,” I said, giving him a thumbs up. “Anyone who finds something, just message the rest.”
“Uh-oh,” Megan said. “This is the part of the horror movie where we’ll get picked off one by one.
Megan’s fears were unfounded, for my part, anyway. I encountered only one or two Blighted monsters loitering in each room I passed, which I distracted with Totems. Continuing my exploration, I came upon a cavern so vast that I, with my [Greater Pyro Shell], was merely a tiny island of light. I cast [Healing Touch] and [Penitent Fortune Healing] to add more illumination, but it scarcely helped. I thought this of every cavern I entered, but this time I was sure this was the biggest one I’d found so far.
I hoped this’d be the boss fight area, but it turned out empty.
Empty of monsters.
There were plenty of other things here.
“What the…? Vats?”
Rows upon rows of them, reminiscent of the Dolbara storage where players chose their characters, stacked up to the cavern’s ceiling. Or so I assumed. I couldn’t see much beyond four levels. Bawu was impressively productive over the last couple of hundred years.
“Nitana’s fairies would be very useful here,” I muttered, running along the walls to investigate with my meager light. The containers I passed were broken, the test subjects they contained likely among the Blighted we had killed.
Test subjects? I was starting to sound like Bawu.
I came upon an interesting vat.
Vinereaver—that was the label above a glass vessel spacious enough to fit Kezo’s body snugly. The letters weren’t in English but automatically translated as I read them. There were four other shattered vats with the same label. Piecing together the clues, the Vinereaver mini-boss Kezo mentioned must’ve drilled into Bawu’s base, intent on saving its buddies. During their escape, they probably broke some important container of dangerous chemicals, resulting in an outbreak.
From one Vinereaver to four. And I still hadn’t seen any of them.
[Herald Stone: Nothing here. Anyone find anything?]
[Nitana2003: Nothing here too.]
[Kezodilla: Killed groups of Blighted. But no Vinereaver.]
[Megantress: Guys, I think I found… something.]
[Nitana2003: Ellipses? Must be important.]
[Kezodilla: Megan, you’re our lucky charm. Good job!]
[Herald Stone: Let’s head there, quick. Time’s ticking.]
We regrouped in front of a circular stone door as wide as the roof of a Mardukryon house. Thorny vines wrapped the stone. The parts of the door’s cracked surface not covered by greenery displayed cogs and ancient inscriptions. It looked like the door to a magical bank vault guarded by a sizeable group of the Blighted, which we quickly dispatched, signaling that we were going the right way.
“How do we open this?” I said. All of us inspected different parts of the door. I tried slotting the blade of my [Heavy Spear] between the door’s gap. It couldn’t fit; the stone was cut with precision. Vines poked through the cracks in the stone. They were too tough to cut.
“There’s a magical circle here,” Kezo said. “It glows when I touch it, but nothing’s happening.”
“I want to touch it too!” Megan trotted over to Kezo.
Nitana nudged her head at me. “I think Herald’s supposed to touch that.”
“I still want to try.” Megan pressed her hand on the plate filled with carved runes. “Uh… nothing? Herald’s turn.”
“Perhaps having an Ocadule from Bawu is the pass,” I said, placing my hand on it. “Like an employee’s ID to this place.”
Mysterious letters on the plate glowed like backlit keyboards that were all the rage before holo-keyboards became standard. Humming gradually intensified as if something was powering up. We all looked at each other. It was working, whatever mechanism it was supposed to be.
The earth vibrated beneath our hooves as the stone door shifted and began to rotate. The vines around it stretched and tore, distinctly snapping over the rumblings. And then everything stopped. The door settled, the hum died down, and the lights on the plate faded.
[ Quest: Powering the Powerless ]
As a student of Mad Brewer Bawu, only select areas of her base are barred from your access. However, the door before you was disconnected from the central Spirit pool due to technical issues. Collect three (3) [Vilumen Crystal] to energize its magic node temporarily. Prepare yourself, for the [Vilumen Crystal] is warded against weaker minds. But that shouldn’t be a problem for a student of Mad Brewer Bawu.
I shared the quest details with Kezo, Megan, and Nitana. “Technical issues probably refer to the Vinereaver. Our target is past this door. We just have to collect the required crystals.” The locations of the [Vilumen Crystal] were on the [Tattered Map], which my party mates copied. It would’ve been such a time-sink looking for them.
Kezo scratched his tusk. “That line ‘warded against weaker minds’ sounds like a puzzle.”
“A puzzle quest?” I asked. This might be a problem. When I encountered puzzles and riddles in Nornyr Online, I used my mega-brain to search the internet for a walkthrough guide. That wasn’t possible in this situation—no records were available for Bawu’s Blight quest. “I haven’t come across one so far as a Mardukryon.”
“The latter half of getting to the other side of the tunnels has plenty of puzzle quests,” Kezo explained. “That’s why I advised you to wait for us. We know how to solve it, and some parts are easier to do with the help of others.”
“Similar to collecting these Vilumen Crystals,” I said. “How do we divide ourselves? Who’s confident at puzzle solving?”
“Oh! Oh!” Megan raised her hand while hopping. “I volunteer Nitana!”
“What?” Nitana jolted. “Why me?”
“We didn’t follow any guide when we did the quests to get past these tunnels,” said Megan. “It was all Nitana. She solved them on her own.”
“Okay, Nitana will get this crystal,” I said, marking the furthest one.
“Fine,” she groaned. “I’ll go ahead.”
“Next, who’s going alone, and who’s going with me?” I said. “I can’t be alone because there could be Blighted monsters guarding the puzzles that I can’t defeat.” And I’d likely take too long to solve a puzzle. I could deal with real-world problems, navigate social situations, and manipulate people any day. But figuring out which button to press based on a tricky sentence spouted by a random statue… that’s not my thing.
“I’ll try to solve one on my own,” Kezo said. “If it’s not too complex, I can do it.”
“That leaves Megan and me for the last one.”
“Oh, thank goodness I’m with you, Herald,” Megan said. “I suck at puzzles. If I was solo, no way I’ll solve it. But since we’re together, we can like put together our brains and solve it, yeah?”
“Yeah… we can solve it ourselves.” Fingers-crossed Nitana would finish hers quickly and help us because no aspect of Herald Stone was great at solving puzzle games.
Temple
I'll try my hand at a puzzle quest in the next chapter. I hope you will like Herald's shenanigans with it. I'm not good at puzzle quests in RPG games; I'll just look up guides online and leech the hard work of others.
Fifteen advanced chapters on Patreon. Thanks to all patrons, especially Cidule tier Teeneet (aka Whale)
Read my other story: REND - a psychological novel with an atypical protagonist
Join our Discord
“One, two, three,” I said. “And pull!”
I tightly grasped Kezo’s left hand while Nitana held his right. Megan grabbed his horns, giggling at the ridiculousness of the situation. Kezo was stuck right at the exit of the tunnel. We pulled with all our might but couldn’t free Kezo because our Might—the game attribute—was too low.
“I gu-guess thi-this where you’ll live now.” Megan laughed so hard she could barely string words together.
“Leave me here, for I am done,” Kezo dramatically said. “Continue our quest. Let my memory stay in your hearts, for I will take my place with our ancestors. How was my NPC impression?”
“Very good,” I said. “But we’re not leaving you—you’re our main damage dealer. Dragging enemies to you is an option, I suppose.”
“Argh! Your body is too thick!” Nitana was too pissed off to join in the jokes. She tried tugging Kezo’s arm a couple more times. “Your stupid spiky armor got snagged—”
“That’s right!” I snapped my fingers. I forgot that was what I did when I almost got stuck in a too-small tunnel. “Kezo, just unequip all your gear.”
A much lighter and smaller Kezo popped free of the hole. He wore his armor gain, instantly returning to his bulky and intimidating getup. That was quite an unexpected obstacle—in a way, also expected, given the string of unexpectedness in our way. The village guards we saved, a missing Vinereaver, a passage connecting to Bawu’s laboratory, what could come up next?
“This does look like Bawu’s lab,” I said, surveying the dimly lit corridor we found ourselves in. “Unless there’s another mad scientist in the tunnels.”
“There’s probably a mad scientist per square kilometer limitation or something,” Nitana muttered.
“I don’t like the decor.” Megan rubbed her arms and hugged herself as we continued to explore. “Looks like a haunted house, and I never liked those.”
Vines and slime claimed this portion of Bawu’s base. The magical runes etched deep into the rock wall and pipes had the distinct neon green hue of the Blight. The tubes themselves leaked radiant liquid. Nitana teased Megan, jokingly pushing her below the suspicious drippings.
There were no golden crystals. Neither was there in the rest of Bawu’s laboratories. Bawu must’ve used them all for her experiments. I was wary of golden crystals because of the Vinereaver. Moa Manot could rapidly regenerate by sucking nutrients from the ground provided by the golden crystals. Zoar Elab couldn’t do that because there were no crystals at the Silent Plaza.
Kezo’s right—this shouldn’t take long. That thought somewhat alleviated the time pressure. Unfortunately, there weren’t many Blighted monsters in this place. My party mates noticed the relative peace as well.
“Where are the enemies?” Kezo wondered after hacking a solitary Saurian Axeman that charged us. “Saurians are usually in a group.”
“You’d think there’d be tons of Blighted monsters around,” Nitana said. “This being the source of the outbreak and all.”
“Most of them left to wander the tunnels,” I said. “They were the ones we killed.”
Nitana shrugged. “Makes sense.”
“Isn’t it funny we ended up here,” Megan said, “while doing a different quest?”
“Must be intentional design by the devs,” said Kezo. “Didn’t Bawu mention this was the last collection task for goops because she’ll soon finish her project? After that, there’d be no need for monsters dropping goops, so the player might as well get rid of the Blight.”
“Either the player chooses to rush stopping the Blight,” I said. “Or they help Bawu with her experiment first and then clean up the outbreak. It’ll all end with killing the Vinereaver.”
“Which we still haven’t found,” Nitana pointed out.
We reached a fork in the tunnel. Nitana sent her fairies to scout each way, lighting up the darkness. The paths seemed to branch out again further ahead. We decided to split up to cover more ground since we were running out of time—we only had one hour left on the clock, and there were plenty of tunnels and rooms to explore, any of them a possible hiding spot for our quarry.
“You’ll be fine on your own, Herald?” Kezo asked.
“I have Horde Stampede for escaping,” I said, giving him a thumbs up. “Anyone who finds something, just message the rest.”
“Uh-oh,” Megan said. “This is the part of the horror movie where we’ll get picked off one by one.
Megan’s fears were unfounded, for my part, anyway. I encountered only one or two Blighted monsters loitering in each room I passed, which I distracted with Totems. Continuing my exploration, I came upon a cavern so vast that I, with my [Greater Pyro Shell], was merely a tiny island of light. I cast [Healing Touch] and [Penitent Fortune Healing] to add more illumination, but it scarcely helped. I thought this of every cavern I entered, but this time I was sure this was the biggest one I’d found so far.
I hoped this’d be the boss fight area, but it turned out empty.
Empty of monsters.
There were plenty of other things here.
“What the…? Vats?”
Rows upon rows of them, reminiscent of the Dolbara storage where players chose their characters, stacked up to the cavern’s ceiling. Or so I assumed. I couldn’t see much beyond four levels. Bawu was impressively productive over the last couple of hundred years.
“Nitana’s fairies would be very useful here,” I muttered, running along the walls to investigate with my meager light. The containers I passed were broken, the test subjects they contained likely among the Blighted we had killed.
Test subjects? I was starting to sound like Bawu.
I came upon an interesting vat.
Vinereaver—that was the label above a glass vessel spacious enough to fit Kezo’s body snugly. The letters weren’t in English but automatically translated as I read them. There were four other shattered vats with the same label. Piecing together the clues, the Vinereaver mini-boss Kezo mentioned must’ve drilled into Bawu’s base, intent on saving its buddies. During their escape, they probably broke some important container of dangerous chemicals, resulting in an outbreak.
From one Vinereaver to four. And I still hadn’t seen any of them.
[Herald Stone: Nothing here. Anyone find anything?]
[Nitana2003: Nothing here too.]
[Kezodilla: Killed groups of Blighted. But no Vinereaver.]
[Megantress: Guys, I think I found… something.]
[Nitana2003: Ellipses? Must be important.]
[Kezodilla: Megan, you’re our lucky charm. Good job!]
[Herald Stone: Let’s head there, quick. Time’s ticking.]
We regrouped in front of a circular stone door as wide as the roof of a Mardukryon house. Thorny vines wrapped the stone. The parts of the door’s cracked surface not covered by greenery displayed cogs and ancient inscriptions. It looked like the door to a magical bank vault guarded by a sizeable group of the Blighted, which we quickly dispatched, signaling that we were going the right way.
“How do we open this?” I said. All of us inspected different parts of the door. I tried slotting the blade of my [Heavy Spear] between the door’s gap. It couldn’t fit; the stone was cut with precision. Vines poked through the cracks in the stone. They were too tough to cut.
“There’s a magical circle here,” Kezo said. “It glows when I touch it, but nothing’s happening.”
“I want to touch it too!” Megan trotted over to Kezo.
Nitana nudged her head at me. “I think Herald’s supposed to touch that.”
“I still want to try.” Megan pressed her hand on the plate filled with carved runes. “Uh… nothing? Herald’s turn.”
“Perhaps having an Ocadule from Bawu is the pass,” I said, placing my hand on it. “Like an employee’s ID to this place.”
Mysterious letters on the plate glowed like backlit keyboards that were all the rage before holo-keyboards became standard. Humming gradually intensified as if something was powering up. We all looked at each other. It was working, whatever mechanism it was supposed to be.
The earth vibrated beneath our hooves as the stone door shifted and began to rotate. The vines around it stretched and tore, distinctly snapping over the rumblings. And then everything stopped. The door settled, the hum died down, and the lights on the plate faded.
[ Quest: Powering the Powerless ]
As a student of Mad Brewer Bawu, only select areas of her base are barred from your access. However, the door before you was disconnected from the central Spirit pool due to technical issues. Collect three (3) [Vilumen Crystal] to energize its magic node temporarily. Prepare yourself, for the [Vilumen Crystal] is warded against weaker minds. But that shouldn’t be a problem for a student of Mad Brewer Bawu.
I shared the quest details with Kezo, Megan, and Nitana. “Technical issues probably refer to the Vinereaver. Our target is past this door. We just have to collect the required crystals.” The locations of the [Vilumen Crystal] were on the [Tattered Map], which my party mates copied. It would’ve been such a time-sink looking for them.
Kezo scratched his tusk. “That line ‘warded against weaker minds’ sounds like a puzzle.”
“A puzzle quest?” I asked. This might be a problem. When I encountered puzzles and riddles in Nornyr Online, I used my mega-brain to search the internet for a walkthrough guide. That wasn’t possible in this situation—no records were available for Bawu’s Blight quest. “I haven’t come across one so far as a Mardukryon.”
“The latter half of getting to the other side of the tunnels has plenty of puzzle quests,” Kezo explained. “That’s why I advised you to wait for us. We know how to solve it, and some parts are easier to do with the help of others.”
“Similar to collecting these Vilumen Crystals,” I said. “How do we divide ourselves? Who’s confident at puzzle solving?”
“Oh! Oh!” Megan raised her hand while hopping. “I volunteer Nitana!”
“What?” Nitana jolted. “Why me?”
“We didn’t follow any guide when we did the quests to get past these tunnels,” said Megan. “It was all Nitana. She solved them on her own.”
“Okay, Nitana will get this crystal,” I said, marking the furthest one.
“Fine,” she groaned. “I’ll go ahead.”
“Next, who’s going alone, and who’s going with me?” I said. “I can’t be alone because there could be Blighted monsters guarding the puzzles that I can’t defeat.” And I’d likely take too long to solve a puzzle. I could deal with real-world problems, navigate social situations, and manipulate people any day. But figuring out which button to press based on a tricky sentence spouted by a random statue… that’s not my thing.
“I’ll try to solve one on my own,” Kezo said. “If it’s not too complex, I can do it.”
“That leaves Megan and me for the last one.”
“Oh, thank goodness I’m with you, Herald,” Megan said. “I suck at puzzles. If I was solo, no way I’ll solve it. But since we’re together, we can like put together our brains and solve it, yeah?”
“Yeah… we can solve it ourselves.” Fingers-crossed Nitana would finish hers quickly and help us because no aspect of Herald Stone was great at solving puzzle games.
Temple
I'll try my hand at a puzzle quest in the next chapter. I hope you will like Herald's shenanigans with it. I'm not good at puzzle quests in RPG games; I'll just look up guides online and leech the hard work of others.
Fifteen advanced chapters on Patreon. Thanks to all patrons, especially Cidule tier Teeneet (aka Whale)
Read my other story: REND - a psychological novel with an atypical protagonist
Join our Discord
