by Sergei Katz
— You really are something else! — I shook the Phasm hard. — You set me up, didn’t you?
Realizing that he wasn’t going to be killed, the creature easily slipped out of my hand and flowed over my shoulder.
— All right, you can stay, — I surrendered.
My Copper Wing sighed futilely.
— Don’t worry! — I decided to cheer up the bird. — It won’t get any more chewing berries unless you say so. We'll find it something else to eat.
My Totem’s spirits lifted.
I looked at the creature sitting on my shoulder:
— I'll call you Little Morph.
The Phasm nodded happily. It seemed to really like the name.
Having given him a name, you have officially recognized Little Morph, the Forest Phasm, as your pet.
You have acquired the ability to “Summon and recall a pet”. This ability can be used every 4 hours. In the event of you receiving lethal damage, the pet automatically returns to where it came from. You have received the agility of “Animal Trainer”.
CHAPTER 20:
THE UNUSUAL CAN
BECOME COMMON
As things turned out, Little Morph wasn’t so useless after all. My pet could be described as a perfect bait for monsters. Naturally, Little Morph himself wasn’t exactly pleased to play such a role in our team, but I straight forward with him, saying that until I found another use for his abilities, he would act as bait. Or, if he wasn’t happy, then he was free to go his own way. Of course, Morphy didn’t want to leave: he was fed and protected with us, and even got stroked for a job well done. After the third or fourth time, Little Morph actually started enjoying his work. And why wouldn’t he! Everything that tried to eat him ended up dying, while he was able to survive, alive and well.
Gradually, my pet worked out tactics and techniques for dealing with different types of monsters: he was teasing some of them, whilst for others he pretended to be a terrified potential victim. You could say that Little Morph had found his true calling in life. In addition to the monsters we had met before on the plateau, we encountered a few new ones. One lived on the hills, and was called a Zemus. It was a huge, two-and-a-half-meter tall creature with one eye and two protruding fangs. It was dressed in a leather cape and it used a huge spiky stick as its main weapon. It also liked kicking its enemies with its feet. Little Morph learned a new technique while battling this monster: I sent the Phasm to crawl along the giant’s back. He ended up distracting the monster, and the stupid creature periodically beat itself on the back with its prickly stick or twisted around in an attempt to understand who was touching it.
As soon as we developed a strategy against it, a visit to the hills became mandatory for us. This was the only monster that I could get money out of, which would fall out of it. It wasn’t much, of course: 10-15 silver coins a time, but it was better than nothing. A couple of times I took away some fangs as a trophy, and once a piece of skin from its cloak. So far, I hadn’t been hugely successful in this game when it came to plunder. There wasn’t too much to collect from defeating these monsters – usually nothing at all. Perhaps I didn’t possess the right talent, or somehow, I killed them in the wrong way, or maybe that was just the way that the game’s designers had planned it from the start.
I failed to find an answer to my question from the fairy book.
— It's all right, my darling, I'll keep you on a diet of no talking for a month, and then you'll sing for me, — I promised the book, thinking that I had to bring it in line, otherwise it would be nothing more than waste paper as far as I was concerned.
Also, another kind of enemies appeared, known as the Vampi: these were small bats, moving in a pack of 20-30. These creatures were found in the groves of trees that weren’t occupied by the Luthers. By the way, Alex was right: the monster that we had recently crossed swords with turned out to be a Wood Wolf. There were two types of Vampi: the majority was of a mouse-grey color, and the others were dark blue. Both of them, basically, would try to bite you and drink your blood. There were rarely more than one or two bluebloods per pack, and they were the only ones that were posing a threat to us. The grey ones were so weak that even my Phasm was able to defeat them one by one. That was in fact the reason why we actually hunted them. We killed them all but one, which we would leave for Morph to deal with, to assist in his training.
Coming across another grove, we went inside for the next step in my pet’s training. Little Morphy was no longer trying to escape every time we headed towards the Vampi, and gradually his skills as a fighter started improving. He had already defeated dozens of bats himself and realized we would save him if something would go wrong. Little Morph became not only more confident in himself with every victory, but also stronger. Even though his attempt to defeat two grey Vampi at the same time failed, he was confident in a one-on-one situation.
We went fearlessly into the grove. As always, the attack occurred from all sides at once. The Vampi used the same tactics every time: surround the opponents, then the main pack selected the most dangerous target (evidently because I was the largest, usually it's me). The others were distracted by one or two grey bats each. This particular pack was large, closer to thirty, and there were three blue Vampi bats. It was unpleasant, as the blue Vampi were much faster than the grey ones, and they had a more diverse attacking technique.
My life points began to slowly falter. My Copper Wing and Alex had already dealt with their attackers and began to systematically destroy the rest of the grey ones. Suddenly, there was a squeaking noise over the grove, and the behavior of the Vampi changed in the blink of an eye. Three blue monsters left the battlefield in a rush. I decided to take advantage of the situation and, without wasting time, I finished off the remaining grey attackers in a dozen blows.
In the process of finishing off the last one, I noticed a strange glow emanating from the same direction that the blue Vampi had flown off to. Scared, Little Morphy climbed up onto my shoulder. Alex, ready for anything and with an already strained bow, changed his position, going behind my back. My Copper Wing was watching everything from the air, as he always did.
About twenty meters away, something strange was taking place: four blue Vampi were flying around in circles, which reminded me of shamans with tambourines dancing around a fire. At certain moments, the bats touched their wings and muzzles together and flew off again in an instant. Each one of the bats was glowing, but they all produced a different shade of blue. The bats’ movement in the air was erratic: sometimes they flew faster, and other times they slowed down to almost a complete stop, and the bats seemed to be frozen in mid air. All the action took place in less than a minute.
Suddenly, all the bats flew to the centre of the circle. There was a sharp flash of light. When my eyes again started sending pictures to my brain, a huge sapphire-blue monster with webbed wings appeared before me, stretching its wings. It had the muzzle of a Vampi, only twice as big. The display showed the name above the monster: it was called “Bampi”.
— Oh, for BLEEP sake! — I said out loud.
The new monster assessed the combat situation, and then attacked my Copper Wing first. This was quite a clever conclusion to come to, as my Totem was the only one who could interfere with our new enemy in the air, and I couldn’t have any impact from my position on the ground. My Totem decided to show how tough he was, so instead of flying down to us and taking the fight to the ground, he tried to prove his superiority in the air. Both fighters started showing off their aerobatic skills but, unfortunately for my Copper Wing, the monster had a greater wingspan, and he wasn’t inferior to him in terms of maneuverability. With a peck from a beak here, a scratch there, and even with Alex's fire support, my Totem was obviously losing the fight. Judging by the constantly dripping blood from my bird’s wounds, some of the monster's attacks were poisonous.
— Come down to me, Copper Wing! — I shouted as loud as I could, but my Totem couldn’t hear me through the heat of the battle.
— Morphy! — I turned to the little animal sitting on my shoulder.
Evidently guessing what he was about to be asked to do, the animal tried to merge with his surroundings like chameleons would do. Unfortunately for him, unlike a chameleon, my pet’s name was always visible above him, so I knew exactly where he was.
— Don’t even think about it, — I snapped out in the direction of where his nose was likely to be. I hit the bullseye. The animal’s concentration failed, and he became visible once again. — I know that you don’t really want to do this, but unfortunately, we’re out of options. Turn into something that can fly. You don’t need to fight, just piss off that monster a little and draw it to us. After that you can hide until the end of the fight if you want to.
The more I encouraged him, the more my pet was keen to complete his task: well, I was asking him to mock his enemy and then hide behind me. Everything he liked to do. The little animal thought for a moment, then jumped off my shoulder and ran a couple of steps away. I already thought that he had tricked me and now the immature creature was just going to hide. But Little Morph merely needed more space to change his shape. After a rapid metamorphosis, he turned into a black Bampi right in front of us. It was a total copy of the original one that was fighting my Totem. Only his eyes gave him away - they were amber as always. After a little stretching, my pet took off into the air.
My Totem and the real Bampi, who were fully engaged in combat at the time, noticed that they were not alone. Little Morph had created his own huge beak, and he foolishly pecked at my Totem’s opponent’s ass. The scream that came out of the boldly attacked monster sounded more like a chick squealing. The frenzied monster, forgetting about the previous enemy, instantly turned around, and froze, stunned by what he was seeing, making no effort to press its attack. What it was looking at was an evil carbon copy of itself. Deciding that it had done enough, my pet rushed back to me and safety.
The Bampi’s perplexity was replaced by even more rage, and the monster went after Little Morph. Alex and I had already prepared a friendly welcome for it: the “Falling Leaf” spell and a hailstorm of arrows. Obviously, this immediately brought the monster’s furious attention down to us. Our sudden attacks came as a complete surprise for it. One minute it was pursuing its abuser, who then instantly disappeared from its view, and the next thing it knew a heavy barrage of attacks poured in on it.
Little Morphy deserved a round of applause: he only changed his appearance when he touched the ground, and the pursuing monster hit the ground hard. I had already prepared the Shining Grass spell for it. While the bat was coming to its senses, I hit it with three or four standard blows. Once the monster’s attention was totally focused upon me, I began to hit it with everything I could. My Totem joined the attack and, if I wasn’t mistaken, Morph appeared here and there several times, attacking the monster from behind.
We were able to defeat the monster, but the entire team was ready to fight until their last breath. I shared all the berries equally among us to restore our health, and then I summoned the Fairy book and undertook a serious interrogation. Initially, the stubborn “blotting paper” tried to turn its nose up at me, but I wasn’t in the mood for that, so I just lit a fire without saying a word. Summoning the impudent book once again, I grabbed it firmly and sat down next to the flames. It taught this arrogant collection of knowledge a lesson. Whenever I didn’t receive a satisfactory answer, I held the book in my hands closer to the fire, pretending that I wanted to burn it. After that, the book started pouring out facts clearly and with all sorts of nuances.
The bottom line was that every Vampi needed to try the blood of fifty creatures in order to become blue. If within a single pack four Vampi reached a blue color, they could form a symbiosis and mutate into a Bampi. And Bampi, as it turned out, wasn’t the final evolution for this creature, but the book didn’t know what the conditions for the next step of evolution were, because this had never come to happen so far.
I told all of this to my crew, also telling them that from now on the first thing we needed to do when fighting these bats was to destroy the blue ones as a matter of urgency, unless we wanted them to turn into Bampi. There were no objections from anyone. Nobody wanted to fight such a creature again any time soon. Some pieces of flesh were left from the defeated monster, and I gathered them together for a rainy day.
Nightfall was coming, and having finished restoring our health, we climbed to the nearest hill - it was easier to find a place to stay overnight this way. We ended up choosing a place where the monsters were not so tough, so that Alex, my Copper Wing and I could deal with them one at a time. We took turns on guard duty. In the evenings, we started a fire, and I tried out my skills as a chef. There were no complaints so far, everyone loved meat dishes. Little Morph, who I firstly thought was a vegan, turned out to be an avid meat-eater. I noticed that if I used new ingredients for cooking, my cooking skills were improving at a faster pace. Throughout this adventure, my culinary skills reached 47%. Sometimes the food turned out to be very tasty, and I wrote down what herbs and berries I used and with which meat. I rarely ever made a dish that nobody wanted to eat.
One morning, I climbed to the highest point of the hill to look around. Far away in the distance, I could see the forest belt, but it wasn’t infinite, and I could see sands lying past it. I really hoped that it wasn’t going to be a desert! The world turned out to be so realistic that I was certain that the desert awaiting us would be exactly the way it would be in the real world, if not worse.
“Okay, let's solve the problems one at a time ...” — I said to myself.
I focused my attention on the next part of our journey. Right on the outskirts of the forest, protected by three large hills, there was a peculiarly large log building. From a distance it looked like a homestead. Returning to our fire, I asked the boy if he knew what kind of house it was. Unfortunately, Alex was as clueless as me.
— All right, we'll check it out our usual way, — I said.
We only reached the house in the evening of the second day. The building turned out to be a Tavern. Directly above the front door was a sign, depicting a full mug of ale and a bed. It was a bit clichéd, but it made everything clear from the outside. I began to look the whole building over. There was a stable and a warehouse on either side of the large two-story log building, a vegetable garden in front of the house, and some fruit-bearing trees were growing behind it. I made a note to myself: not to forget to study any plants that I hadn’t come across before.
Alex and I tried to persuade my Copper Wing to fly outside the building for the time being, because I didn’t know how the clients would react to a bird inside the Tavern. However, my Totem was cardinally against this idea. He was terribly curious to know what was inside. We almost persuaded him to wait until we had checked it out, but then the wonderful smells of food began to waft from the Tavern. Looking at the burning eyes of my Totem, Alex and I realized that the battle was lost. My Copper Wing could curtail his curiosity a little, but it was a completely different issue when it came to food. In this case, if there was no real threat to his life, then all attempts at persuasion were doomed to failure.
Seated on my shoulder, Morph did everything to pretend that he didn’t exist, so that we wouldn’t leave him at the door.
I turned to my pet:
— Don’t be afraid of anything; you're coming with us. Let’s get on with this, — I placed my sword on the grass. — Take the shape of this, and no one will even suspect that you are a pet.
The delighted Phasm immediately left my shoulder and landed next to the sword. After carefully examining the weapon and touching the handle with his fingertips, Little Morph turned into the sword. Both swords lay one next to the other almost identically. If I didn’t know exactly which one was real and which one was my pet, I would never have worked out which was which. My real weapon seemed to have deemed this action an attempt on its zone of influence. The original mischievous blade attempted to cut
through the Phasm.
However, Little Morph had been through a tough school of survival already. He may had even prepared for such a turn of events. A moment before the swords touched, my pet’s shape shifted. Where the sword had lain a moment ago, there was a huge caterpillar with very dangerous shark-like teeth. The caterpillar started slowly and purposefully crawling towards the hilt of the sword. It seemed as if my sword had become aware of the situation: the aggressive vibration of the blade smoothly passed into something more peaceful.
Little Morphy himself was stunned by his success. Once he was convinced that he was no longer in any danger, he returned to the place on the grass and turned into the shape of a sword again. I hung the swords crosswise across my back. Strangely enough, my Phasm and the Moon Flower got along from the minute they had met. At this moment, the Moon Flower was carefully helping the Phasm get used to a new place, having wrapped its roots around him.
— Well, it looks like everyone is ready to go. — I looked at my Copper Wing, flying eagerly in circles above us. — Just behave yourself. If they say that no birds are allowed inside, then you stay outside. Alex and I will bring you food. Do we have an agreement?
My Totem seemed to agree. I pulled on the handle of a heavy wooden door. Once inside, there was another doorway, which presumably led to the kitchen, and a spiral staircase to the second floor of the building. Various wooden weapons, such as bows, shields, spears, batons and even a pair of slingshots were hanging on the walls. Tables of different shapes and sizes filled the main hall. The number of chairs by each of the tables was completely random. Next to a small table there could be five chairs, and by a table twice as big there only were three chairs. To complete this fantasy design, there was a log beam at the end of the hall, and this was the bar.
A red-haired giantess stood behind the counter. She was a massive lady. She wasn’t actually that big, probably about one meter and seventy in height, but her shoulders were wider than mine, and her red hair was covered with a patterned headscarf. Around her neck was a ring made from a material that I couldn’t recognize, and a huge hunting knife hung from it. The tavern owner was dressed in loose trousers made of a cotton-like fabric, a shirt of the same fabric and a leather jacket with an incredible amount of pockets all over its surface, including the sleeves. A stern face looked like it belonged to somebody who had been through a lot of adventures.
