Quest 12: The Void?

The five members of Shin’ya that are to enter the void arrive at the edge of the void area within the forest, each member checking their gear before they all step forward through the barrier into the void proper. Much to their surprise nothing changes apart from the fact that it’s become harder to see but everything else feels normal and the same as it did on the outside, so the party begin to slowly explore the wooded void. Everyone but Lexa keeps on tripping on roots or other parts of the undergrowth due to the lack of light within the void, the difficulty traversing the terrain significantly hampers how quickly the party can explore the void it also creates a lot of noise which when you cannot see all too well means that any danger might go unnoticed until it’s too late. Which is why they decided to have Lexa float above them scanning the area like a human AWACS as they traverse deeper into the void, but as they travel at their snails pace while creating noise like a jackhammer on a silent night an uneasy feeling grips the party because it’s all been too calm up until now like there are no more void beasts living in this area. The party pushes onward unable to shake the uneasy feeling because of how simple the journey has been up until this point, eventually they come across a tree much larger than any other they’ve seen within the forest so far. As they approach the tree Ilev notices that something is strange about it, and not because of its size but the colouring of the tree and the rest of the void for that matter. Both he and Arano circle the tree looking at different parts of it and then up to the sky, both with puzzled looks on their faces.

“What’re you both doing?”
“Well the sun is still out but it’s not illuminating anything in this area, but there is still colour to the trees and the leaves.”
“So what does that mean, Ilev?”
“It means that the void being this big evil place is a total myth, we might have put up a barrier here to signify some form of hazard so the void energy might still be true. But as for the void itself it’s just a patch of the forest we forgot to set the lighting up correctly for, which is why we can’t see all that well because this area isn’t lit with any lights at the moment.”
“So what you’re saying is we didn’t light this area, so it’s probably unfinished meaning the monsters are bugs that we have yet to fix and void energy may or may not be a thing.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up Lexa.”
“Cool, thanks Arano. So, what exactly does that mean for us Ilev?”
“It means that we should be extra careful in here as we really don’t want to do anything that might trigger a red error in the game engine.”
“It’s a shame we don’t have access to the debug windows.”
“Actually Ami, when I was in the orb room at the adventurers guild back in Ehccihster a load of debug windows were opening and closing when I touched the orb. So maybe because this area was still being tested you and Arano left some debug tools here.”
“Seems logical, I say we try to find them.”

At Ami’s suggestion the group agree that the best course of action right now would be to find a debug tool and see if there is anyway to light the area so that they can move around aa little easier than they are right now. As they begin to move again Lexa calls out that something is trying to circle around behind them. The group shuffles into their planned formation ready to fight the threat with Ami and Arano taking the front drawing one of the three elemental swords they bought from the merchants guild with Aromi preparing his low-tier elemental light spell and Ilev providing a defensive buff behind them with Lexa hovering in the back to report movements, but still ready to cast a high-tier spell if the situation calls for it. As the monster closes in, and Lexa calls out its location to Arano who takes a slash at the air, and catches the monster cleanly causing it to recoil away. Soon it starts writhing around on the ground as it experiences an elemental overload as a new element has been introduced into its system, just as Isla said it would, as some spells or blades have the ability to instead of inflicting a traditional effect that would be expected from contact with that magical element like a burn from fire magic instead it inflicts the element itself upon the creature causing an internal conflict that ends up killing anything not strong enough to withstand having two different elements within its body. Those spells are called pure element spells, and the swords are referred to as a blade of the pure element that has been cast within it. With one monster on the ground, Lexa notices a significant amount approaching them at a rapid pace because of the noise the fight made. The pack that was approaching the Shin’ya members was too much for the five of them to deal with, so Lexa prepared a plant element spell, which would restrain the void beast and inflict the plant magical element upon them making sure they die from an elemental overload. As each beast fell silent Lexa started directing the group to the void edge that was closest by to avoid any further fighting in a disadvantageous environment. As they burst out back into the lit part of the forest a debug object lay dormant a few meters away, and as Ami walked up, it suddenly activated, and a window appeared floating in the air with something resembling a keyboard appearing at waist height.

“There was no keyboard when I saw them in the adventurer’s guild, wonder if this is a different type of debug object?”
“Probably is, the ones in the adventurer’s guild were most likely just there to confirm that each process was completing correctly, while this one looks like I might be able to edit certain variables from within the game itself.”
“Perfect, we’ll protect you while you dig through what’s inside that window.”

Once Lexa finished the remaining four party members formed a lose semi-circle around Ami who was now entirely focused on cracking into the debug window and what variables she could change or information she could gather while at this temporary workstation.