Immune To Magic
Smultronstället
As they made their way towards the tunnel Shishi had spotted, Joko called out to the rest of the group, “Make sure you heal yourselves with your items. I would do it myself but I want to conserve my magic as much as possible for the mark.”
Tats sighed heavily as they all fell back into the formation they decided on before, opening his inventory and healing himself and Shishi before beginning to speak again, “As I was trying to say before I was interrupted, you know very well what I want to talk about - why ask?” He tilted his head at Shishi, a frown plastered on his lips. “You are taking advantage of them and you damn well know it!” He whispered angrily, glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one else was paying any attention.
Behind them, the rest of their group was busy healing and chatting amongst themselves, leaving him and Shishi to discuss what had been on Tats’ mind since they warped to this destination. However, as fate would have it, they didn’t get to chat very long as they ran into yet another Slime, partnered with a Speartongue. With a loud groan from everyone, they fought the slimy creatures, louder and more disgust filled groans from Joko and Tats when they finally defeated the monsters not a few minutes later.
They continued on, once again healing, only this time Shishi took over healing for him and Tats as the latter was busy complaining about the slime. “Ugh, why even make monsters with slime?” Tats grunted, shaking some of the gooey substance off of his arm. “I need arm protectors too - I hate the feeling of that crap on me - it’s too warm and sticky when it dries...” He rattled on and on about how much he hated the slime and how he needed to start a petition to the game’s admins to take out any and all slimes; completely ignoring Toto and Joko’s reasonings of, “You can’t even feel the warmth or slime - why are you complaining?” and, “This isn’t even real life.”
Their entire conversation is cut short when they hit a dead end. They instantly stopped (with Keke and Joko almost running right into Toto and Dada because they were busy talking about how annoying Tats was when he complained to pay attention to the fact that there was indeed a dead end) and began looking around, completely and utterly confused. “Um...” Keke, turned to Shishi who looked pretty pissed (probably because he knew they were about to crowd around him and at getting the location wrong), “Are you sure we went to the right place?”
With an exasperated sigh, Shishi opened his mouth to say something only for the ground to begin shaking and a huge cobra-like snake to slither out of the sand beneath them, it’s vibrant purple eyes looking around as it’s mouth opened to reveal not two fangs, but six. “What the fu—” Tats began but then the snake went for him and he ducked away and rolled to the side.
“That’s the Marilith!” Keke shouted over the loud hissing as the snake took lunges at each of them, narrowly missing Toto as Joko grabbed the boy by the collar and yanked him to the sidelines to help with healing while the other four fought.
“Take over healing their status effects and any minor healing they need and I’ll work on the major healing and magic attacks, okay?!” Joko shouted over to the young robot, “Okay?!” He repeated when Toto gave him a pouty look. The robot reluctantly nodded then and focused on tossing the items to their teammates whenever they needed them while Joko readied an ice spell.
Once the spell was ready, the mage waved his staff in the direction of the snake-like creature and a flurry of ice shot towards it. To Joko’s surprise, and everyone else’s, the Marilith looked completely unperturbed by the attack and simply lunged at Keke. “...” The mage cursed, readying another spell, this time of wind. The previous result was repeated and the snake monster showed no signs of slowing his attacks down.
“I think he’s immune to magic or something you guys!!” He called out, knowing he’d only cast two spells but he couldn’t afford to cast another and waste more of his energy in case they needed it for healing.
“You think?!” Shishi shouted back sarcastically, flipping backwards away from the snake’s pointy teeth. He quickly grabbed the collar of Dada’s shirt then and slung him over towards Keke as the Marilith spat venom at the spot the archer had been standing not a second later.
“Thanks Shishi!” Dada called out, readying another bolt into his crossbow to shoot at the snake.
The battle continued on, each of the four fighters taking shots and lunges at the Marilith when they could while also narrowly escaping certain harm themselves. After what seemed like forever, but had only been a couple of minutes in reality, the snake started growing sluggish with its movements -a sure sign that they were finally wearing him down.
However, just as Shishi swung Tats towards the Marilith for the killing blow, the snake spat its venom towards Toto. The robot was quickly elbowed out of the way by a frantic Joko who instead took the venom, a sharp cry of pain sounding out as it landed in his eyes.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit...” The mage hissed, rubbing his eyes free of the venom but it was no use because the damage had already been done and he could see nothing. “Dammit...” He cursed again, feeling more than hearing the sickening thud of a body collapsing to the ground - the others had won the battle. He wasn’t terribly concerned about that though... “Toto? Are you alright?” Joko questioned, hands waving wildly in front of him in search of the other boy.
Toto shook his head, stunned from the sudden push as it had unintentionally shoved him against a rock, taking some of his health out. As soon as he’d gotten out of his stun, he called out that he was okay to Joko - but it didn’t register that something bad had happened to the mage until Tats had run over and took him to the side to administer an anti-blind medicine. Toto shook his head again and stood, wiping himself off and using a healing potion on himself before joining the others beside Joko now.
“Is he okay?” Toto asked, feeling guilty that he hadn’t been able to defend himself. Tats look up and nodded, helping Joko up.
“He’s fine - his health is recovered, but unfortunately, the medicine works slowly, so one of us will have to stay close enough to guide him so he doesn’t run into any walls,” At this the group gave a teasing laugh which Joko mocked in annoyance before smiling. Shishi left the group for a moment to collect the musk needed to complete their mission - along with the other items the Marilith dropped, which they would keep.
Before anyone could bat an eyelash however, Shishi was suddenly attacked with a powerful blast of air, sending him to the ground with a low groan. Everyone looked over in shock as an odd shaped monster appeared, it looked like a robot of some sort, carrying it’s middle around on it’s two large legs. Keke performed a scan and found that it’s name was Molen. While he was reading the specs on it, however, several Bombs appeared and began going for Shishi as well. Toto was the first to jump into action.
The robotic avatar clanked his gauntlets together as he ran towards Molen head on, not listening to the others as they called for him to stop. Shishi was hurt and nearing critical condition - they couldn’t afford for their leader to be sent back to the main city if he K.O.ed. He slammed his fists into the monster, knocking it back easily - surprising himself briefly before he concentrated and began slamming into the monster repeatedly, barely giving it a chance to attack. As he fought Molen, the others quickly went to Shishi’s aid, fighting off the bombs and healing him quickly - leaving Dada and Joko behind since the latter wouldn’t be able to help at all and he couldn’t be left unprotected.
While they battled with the Bombs, Toto ran around the entire field, luring the Molen into following him. As it rambled up on him, he turned and sent an electrical charge into it’s middle, sliding underneath it and kicking the back of it as soon as he cleared the underside.
Shishi was quick to discover that his attacks wouldn’t help as his sword was fire-based and it only served to heal the Bombs, so he unequipped it and began fist fighting, unable to do a ton of damage, but it worked. The three avatars disposed of the Bombs, watching in horror as Toto dealt a medley of physical attacks, even hopping on top of it and pounding into it’s “head”. Finally, without a big show, the Molen fell over, making the dirt fly up around Toto when he landed on the ground right next to the monster.
All was silent as the robot boy walked over, huffing and shaking his arms. He checked his screen and frowned before chucking his now broken and useless gauntlets to the side. He’d overused them and would now have to get new ones, but... he felt better.
Dada led Joko over, the blind medicine finally working enough he could see at about 60% normal. No one could say anything as there was a sudden tinkling of bells and then another as Toto leveled up twice in a row, putting him closer to Dada’s level. The blue haired avatar grinned brightly, still huffing with exhaustion.
“You, uh... feel better?” Keke asked, crossing his arms and tilting his head. He figured the boy had had a bad day at school to have so much pent up anger.
Toto blinked at him before nodding some, “Actually yeah... I didn’t realize how pissed I really was. I guess anger really does work sometimes!” He laughed and began walking towards the entrance, completely unphased that he had just taken down a rare monster that was at least triple the level he was.
The other members of the group were quick to follow after their youngest, chuckling to themselves at the sight of Toto being so utterly content and unbothered by the stress he’d been feeling earlier in the mission. They were glad to see him back to his more care-free and maknae ways - like begging one of them to buy him a new pair of gauntlets.
“We didn’t ask you to go all-out badass and take down the big bad by yourself back there, you know...” Joko had responded after the third time he’d made mention of needing to buy a new pair gauntlets a little too casually. Due to his vision not being entirely clear just yet, he kept a firm hold on Tats’ sleeve, but regardless he could still feel the pout emanating from the younger.
“I can’t buy it for you, Toto, but I’ll chip in so you won’t have to pay for the whole thing.” Dada offered helpfully.
“Let’s get out of here and take this to the petitioner before we get into another battle that we’re not prepared for, hm? You can talk about getting new gauntlets when we’re back at the city.” Shishi spoke, his voice gruff. It wasn’t hard to see that his pride was more than a little hurt from getting ambushed earlier in the cave and nearly being K.O.ed.
None of the others made mention of it, not even Toto who was sure to be feeling a little hurt because his idol hadn’t complimented him on a job well done or anything, and continued making their way to the exit of the cave. Once there, Keke took the liberty of opening a portal to take them back to the home city where they immediately journeyed over to the bar.
Shishi went in by himself and returned a few moments later, arms full of two large bags of gold. “He said he’d send us some of the wine when he got it made.” The swordsman explained, taking out a handful of gold and giving it to Tats. “You take Joko over to the healer and make sure he gets healed fully.” He turned to Keke and Dada once Joko and Tats had left, handing them one of the bags and half of the other. “Take this back to the guild and put it in the safe.” He instructed simply, finally turning to Toto.
“You’re with me. We need to restock our items.” Shishi nodded, turning to head towards the direction of the shopping district.
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