Chapter 9: Chapter 8 The Blooming

Heroes are quite rare in most races, or rather, they are more common in long lived races like elves. It is the same with high and mid-tier commoners. Biracial creatures, such as Zip, have a much better chance of being heroes. More on this later. Short lived and non-intelligent animals have a better chance to evolve instead of leveling. Evolution is the equivalent of zero to three levels, depending on the evolution. Zip becoming a Face instead of staying a low tier commoner, for example, was a Tier 0, as was Raythiel becoming a magical girl. There are many forms of evolution. Typically, only pets can have multiple tiered evolutions at a time. There are some exceptions, such as becoming undead or gaining a massive amount of experience. 

Chapter 8

The Blooming

Everyone stared at the unicorn, except for Grey, who was still trying to free herself from the knocked out evil minions' grasp, and Devoe, as he was the unicorn.

The common elf and Sylphianne were the closest and most affected, having only been in his arms a few seconds before, and were looking p at him.

"I know this one!" said Star. "That is a unicorn," she said proudly.

"Dh," was the response from her cousin, Blue.

"What gave me away?" said Defoe, swinging his golden horn about.

"I have learned the skill to identify arcane creatures!" Star boasted.

"Are you sure we are cousins with her?" asked Grey, getting up from the ground.

"Sort of," said Blue.

"Oh, what about Rixende? Where is she, and who is this creepy guy?" asked Star.

The creepy guy answered, "I am your new servant, Olier, mistress, so please give me an order." He gave Star his best puppy dog eyes. This was his chance!

"Well, go find Rixende and bring her back," said Star.

"Yes, of course, mistress," said Olier, running off after the elfess.

"Isn’t that going to look suspicious to Rixende?" Said Grey.

"Can we talk about the unicorn instead?" said Slyphianne.

"What do you want to talk about, Slyphianne," said Devoe.

"What is a unicorn?" said Slyphianne.

"Before that, what should we do with these two that attacked us?" said Star.

"Well, you are in charge, Star, what should we do?" said Devoe.

"Wouldn’t you be in charge?" replied Star.

"In charge of an adult offspring of my families, Lord? How about no?" said Devoe.

"Why did you stop the goblin from dying?" said Star, recognizing the healing spell from the same skill. Skills were great!

"Well, one was wanted by a certain hero, if you recall," said Devoe.

Star successfully remembered due to her intelligence roll. "Right, I guess we should tie her up, any suggestions about the other one?" asked Star.

"Well, all I can tell you is that he is evil. My abilities are not limited by level, so I can tell, just like a paladin," said Devoe. "He isn't turning only because he isn't high enough level to."

"What is a paladin?" said all the elves.

"It is the human special class, a full magic and martial hybrid like our sword maidens, only they are faith warriors with healing abilities and healing spells," replied Devoe.

"Sounds like overkill on the healing," said Blue.

"Right, evil, so what do you think we should do?" questioned Star.

"Turn him over to the city watch?" said Blue.

"That sounds like a plan. Hide the goblin for now, and we will go find the watch," said Star.

Right after they moved the goblin, Olier, Rixende, and the town watch showed up.

"Oh, thank goodness you are all alright," said Rixande.

"We caught one of the kidnappers," said Star as she pointed to the still paralyzed minion #1.

"Yes, noble lady, madam," said the leader of the patrol, wondering where this noble had come from.

Star looked over and saw that Defoe had resumed a human form. She should have thought of that! After explaining everything to the guards, Star, her party, left to head back to the caravan.

Devoe carried the now-undisguised goblin under his cloak. Moonmist and Slyphianne walked close to Davoe, both to shield the person he was carrying from onlookers and to talk to him in whispers about unicorns. Olier trailed along behind Star so he could stare at her back. At about that time, it started to rain. After they got back to the caravan, they explained what had happened to Tira.

"Well, this is miserable," said Blue, "but at least we got a 100 experience!"

"Wait. we don’t have to kill to get experience?" said Star.

"No," said Devoe. "You can defeat leveled creatures in your range in real combat as well. The system detects attempts to cheat it; I would not advise you not to try; I know this from my own experience. The system can punish you in a variety of ways, and does so until you are suitably remorseful. Always be remorseful, you can’t bargain with or bribe the system either, don’t try. Good, evil, whatever, it is always impartial."

"So, I guess Lord Lark trusts me even less than I thought," said Tira, looking at the Lark unicorn that she recognized in human form. "Oh well, lets get under cover before we melt." Tira had the unicorn hand her the goblin woman, and Tira and Star headed to their wagon. Olier followed them. "You can’t come into a girls wagon," said Tira to the man following them.

Olier looked at the sword maiden, a real relic among the hero classes. a kindred spirit who would obey the orders of their master. "Where am I supposed to stay then?" said the bedraggled man.

"What makes you think you will be allowed to stay with the caravan?" questioned the sword maiden.

"Star gave me an order, so I guess she wants me to stay as her servant," sniffed Olier.

Tira used her appraisal. "He is pure chaos, with an aura, even though he is a commoner, that makes him as powerful as most of us heroes. I believe he would cause far more trouble than he is worth. You can go ahead and keep him if you want to learn the hard way that some elves are just not worth saving."

Star looked at Olier, who, thanks to a successful sense motive roll, appeared liked he would be crushed if she rejected him.

"If you give me any trouble, you are being left by the side of the road." said Star.

Secret roll for a betrayal.

"I am grateful, my lady; I will not cause you any trouble, rather, I can be quite useful as a scout, in both cities and the forest." said Olier.

"Do you have the skill to use magical devices?" asked Tira.

"Well, yes, but I am not an expert," said Olier.

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Tira sighed, and said, "Fine, but this is not really a paid expedition, I suppose you can find things in the woods to sell like Raire does if you are such a good scout and all. You can sleep in one of the guard wagons. They have wards and a lightning line wand, make sure you can use them in case of an attack."

"Can I ask what Raire’s class is?" said Olier

"She is an arcane archer with arcane abilities but no spells," Tira explained.

"Well, neither of us cast, so, as you most likely have guessed, I am just a hedge rogue," said Olier.

"There is no reason for a more formal class. There are lots of reasons hedge rogues are the most popular class in Babylon," said Tira.

Tira sneezed, the rain is now soaking her. "In any case, we will be watching you, so don’t try anything funny." Tira headed into the wagon to dry off. She guessed Phenaquar, Raire, and Defoe would keep an eye on him. Prolly.

Star turned on the emergency light, and using her new healing skill she learned from Raythiel, she carefully removed the dagger, and thought she was stitching the wound correctly, but something looked slightly off. Tira looked over her stitching. "Are you going to tighten the line and tie it off, or just let her bleed?" said Tira.

"Oh, right! I'll have to pull it a little tighter and tie it off, thanks Tira."

"Who were you two practicing on to make you forget that step?" said Tira.

Star dug around in her pack and showed her a fairly large doll. "Elfina!" said Star smugly.

"Isn’t that too different from stitching up a real creature?" asked Tira.

"Elfina is real!" said Star, aghast at the thought that her pretty doll friend wasn’t real.

Star reasoned that we should have let her play with Grey and Blue more.

"Yes, of course, my apologies, Elfina," said Tira, making a court curtsy.

Star turned a rather long pointed ear towards Elfina. "Elfina accepts your apology," said Star, smiling, enjoying having Tira finally play dolls with her. "Our little green child has been wounded; how do we wake her up?" questioned Star.

"Probably stitch up the wound my wife made in her back next," Tira replied. She guessed from the context that she was supposed to be Star’s husband at the moment.

Star took off the goblin’s shirt and turned her on her stomach. "She really is green everywhere," said Star.

"It is probably not easy being green," nodded Tira in agreement.

Star splashed some cleaning alcohol on the wound, then carefully stitched up the sword wound, while talking to Tira about their problem child and wondering where everyone else was. The wagon door, which was slightly ajar, suddenly opened due to too many elf ears pressing against it and the elfesses jostling for the best vantage point to hear about the children and wives. A plethora of wet young elfeses spilled in through the door.

"Gobbo!" screamed Allisaz in horror.

The elfesses had different ideas at this point, from running away in panic like Allie and Twixia to Zip and Raythiel wanting to go in and investigate the goblin. Zip, being the smallest, was the general loser in the stampede. Girly cries of "goblins!" were soon heard in the caravan, while Raythiel instantly parkoured to the last bench to study the goblin from about a foot away. Zip had been forced under the first bench of the wagon. She rolled out from under it to the safety offered between the first and second benches, and laid there, checking to see if anything was broken, and making sure she wouldn’t be stepped on anymore!

"Our daughters are so animated!" Tira exclaimed to Star.

"I’ll go scare the other kinds into not running off, as there are goblins afoot. Don’t heal her until you get her tied and gagged. Remember, she is a spellcaster. Nice sword, by the way. I guess we can get started teaching you the hell of sword dancing soon, just let me know when you want your toes to start bleeding."

"You're doing it wrong, Etherstaria, let me do it," said Raythiel. ‘You can watch from over there."

Zip, after having determined that she had escaped with only some bruises and dirty footprints, went over to look at the woman who was even smaller than her.

"These sex skills are actually more versatile than you would think," said Star, tying up the goblin girl's hands behind her back and turning her over when Raythiel had finished the stitching.

They heard through the door Tira yelling over the storm about a goblin that had tried to kidnap some of them with a disguise spell—basically the beginnings of a stranger danger speech—so they stopped listening.

While Raythiel was using her magic to help heal the goblin, Zip saw Star turn over the goblin woman to gag her, as once again her skill was useful.

Zip held up her hand for Star to acknowledge her. After Star finished gagging the goblin, she looked at Zip, who was picking up her habit, she supposed. "Did you have a question, Zip?" said Star.

"Star, why did you tie her up with her shirt off?" questioned Zip.

"Uh, I am going to wait for Tira to clean and fix it," said Star, proud that she had thought of something on the spot. Better statistics and skills were paying off!"

Zip responded, "Warriors were put on Babylon to be tricked, but that was the worst lie I have ever heard. Other than the classic don’t worry, nobody will try to force you to be anything you don’t want to be talk. You haven’t put a point in deception yet, have you?"

"No, there are way more important skills!" said Star, not noticing she was copying Raythiel.

Zip responded with, "Like the versatile skill of tying up naked people? I can see how that would be a priority."

"Yes, well, you can practice your skills on me later," said Raythiel. "For now, let's wake her up and see if we can keep her calm until Tira can question her or do whatever she is going to do to her."

Raythiel shot a glare at Zip from behind Star. "Don’t make her too self-conscious, please," said Raythiel. "It's ok, EtherStaria, just ignore Zip’s jealousy of not having skills to burn."

"You can make Zip mad if you want, but she is my maid, so I want to stay friends with her," said Star. "I know you suffer from something, that you haven’t wanted to talk about yet, and that is fine, but please take it out on me instead of Zip. She has a dangerous job and a lot of responsibility, you know."

"I’m sorry, you two, I have a monster inside me that's always trying to get out. Rather, I am the monster, and I am trying to be me again. Five days have passed, and I am already at this point. I hope I am next at the chicken wagon, or I am not going to last," said Star.

"Will gaining a level fix you?" said Star.

"It will let me try to fight it off better until I get to fourth level, when I can add an advancement to my intelligence," said Raythiel.

"How does that help?" asked Zip.

"Fine, let me try to explain," said Raythiel. "Adding intelligence physically changes your brain, which is basically what I need. Advancements in intelligence make monsters less bestial. Consider this goblin, a mage magical creature with a bonus to intelligence instead of a physical bonus, dexterity, for a goblin. At second level, they gain a plus, so she might have gone up two advancements, which is why she could pretend to be an Woodling. She is actually more of a person than I am.

"My subrace, unlike yours, Etherstaria, doesn’t advance in intelligence when we get our racial bonuses, plus I am an Imagist, so I lost strength for charisma. Charisma is a mental trait, but that makes it worse, because bestial charisma is a valid advancement, so that is what the system does. It basically reinforces my magical creature status instead of countering it. Wisdom advancement adds 5% to your mental strength, plus I will gain 5% to wisdom saves for second level. So it will help some. But of course, animalistic cunning is a valid specialty to advance wisdom, so it might not even help much. Luckily, I won’t advance my charisma again when I level up, as it is not a plus at the moment. At fourth level, I can choose to advance my intelligence."

"Wow, that is worse than low tier commoners," said Zip. Any commoner can advance in any statistic when they reach second.

Raythiel sighed, "I know right? I am a great and mighty high tier commoner! Fear me! The system picked the absolute worst thing for me, at least until level four. Plus wood elves naturally have poor impulse control, being more of a elemental force of nature than other elves, plus we go into the blooming right after we become adults."

"What is the blooming?" asked Star, still unaware of her whisper echoed word.

Raythiel noticed the goblin was looking at them, having awakened at some point during her confession. Maybe we should stop talking like this in front of the goblin, thought Raythiel, she opened her mouth to tell them.

"That is the nice Wood elf way of saying when Wood elfesses, and female Woodlings, by the way, start bleeding and then cramping, and basically turn into monsters," said Zip. "You’re not the only one dealing with that problem," said Zip, informing the lucky High elf, Star, and the villainess, if she was interested. also not noticing her changed speech pattern.

None of them noticed their speech patterns had changed, or that they were in a sparking red aura.

“Raythiel! Get away from that mage before there is a magic surge!” shouted Manuel through the door.

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