Joyful Partnership

A meal and a little quiet made the time go by faster. It was hard to get a full read on Eri’Sol with how wide her swings were. When she wasn’t forcing herself into my party, she seemed like a normal girl. There was definitely more going on, but it wasn’t my place to pry that out of her. We were effectively strangers. A stranger that placed their life in my hands.

I sighed internally. Normally, I was used to handling this sort of thing. Being the raid group's healer, I carried a lot of responsibility in everyone’s survival. But that was a game. If we died. Everyone could get mad at me and we tried again. If we died here, there was no one to get mad. Their goddess would tear into me for being a terrible healer or whatever their afterlife was like. I really wished I had a single heal.

We made it outside the tavern going further north. While we walked I saw yet another of a similar looking sign that I passed by. “Question, what does this say?” I needed to start learning the language in some manner.

The Linca looked back, having taken the lead like they were in charge. She saw the wood sign hanging above me. “Oh that’s Ge’Rotan’s Repair Shop.”

It was a repair shop. I looked around seeing at least three more with similar text in view. It felt like there were even more in the capital. ‘Why are there so many repair shops?’ It’d be something to ask about later. If there were so many, it’d be easy enough to get my gear fixed when I could afford it. Though this was probably cheap anyway.

Out beyond the town, I stopped her before she decided to just charge off after a monster. I gave her a quick rundown of what I could do and how it worked. If she was going to be tanking, I applied the Exchange to her.

“I have two abilities I can use as well as something to strengthen my attacks.”

“Not your defense?”

“Maybe later?” It still wasn’t very clear to me how classes worked for them. They clearly had spells and abilities, but as the attendant explained, we developed differently. She could tell me more about that later. “In exchange for sacrificing some of my essence I can strengthen my blows. Though it only lasts for a short time. And it’s dangerous to do.”

I nodded. “Yeah without a healer you’d get yourself killed as a tank. What sort of ability is it to give a tank a way to die easier? Don’t use that ability. We’ll get by, okay?” She softly nodded in an unconvincing way. “I mean it! Your life is important as the tank, don’t go sacrificing yourself. Have some value in yourself.”

My outburst knocked her back a step. Once I caught everything that I said I realized I probably said too much. “Sorry, I’m hardly one to be lecturing about that. Just take care of yourself, hm?”

“I promise, sir!”

“Minoru, no need to be formal with me. We’re just regular people.”

“M-Minoru! My friends call me Eri!”

‘We’re not really friends. We just met.’ I understood the sentiment. “Eri then. What can your two abilities do then?”

“I can throw a projectile that’ll knock the enemy off balance and I can weaken an enemy's defenses with my sword.” The giant sword I almost expected a defensive debuff just to be a passive on it. But apart from the sacrificing HP part of her class, these two were useful in combat. Those were things I could work with.

The area around Ala Pena looked about as safe as the capital at a glance. “Have you fought any monsters or just training?”

“Just training. I wasn’t allowed to leave the town.”

“Are you allowed to now?”

“I don’t care! I’m doing this!” She definitely had something more going on. My mind tossed around the pros and cons of what I got myself into now. It felt like there was going to be a drama that I’d been dragged into suddenly accepting her. Though if she dropped quickly like I guessed then maybe it wouldn’t follow me back. This felt like family drama. It gave me a cold chill.

I cleared my throat just trying to move things along. “We’re both mostly new then. The worst I’ve fought is a Ungaust.” She leaned in towards me with her eyes more aglow than the sparkles allowed.

“What was that like? I’ve only heard about them and seen pictures! Are they truly poisonous with the ability to cast earth spikes that ripped your guts out?”

There was some child-like wonder in her eyes. And one that seemed ready to drain every bit of knowledge she didn’t possess. I thought I was starving for info. “I got thrown around like a hoop. So I can’t really say if it has that ability. It just stabbed me.” I pushed a finger through the hole in my leathers.

“You survived that?”

“I’m certainly not a ghost, despite how pale I am.” Activating my weapon into an orbiting pattern over my hand I readied the barrier for Eri’Sol. The two balls locked in place as the magic channeled through them. Rather than a sun and moon motif of the Lunar Ray, soft blues and silver danced around the central orb with bright reds pulsing out from the tidally locked one. From the orb a silver sphere of shifting blue shapes surrounded Eri’Sol. Then a second layer of red surrounded it, locking in tightly. The display faded away into particles leaving the slight silver hum around her.

It would last a while before it faded from my testing. “What do you know that’s out here to hunt?”

Eri'Sol pondered the question for a solid minute before turning back. “I know that Furst and Dalon are local to our area, though they don’t appear this close to town. We’d have to go pretty far out. There are Vertil that are common to most areas, but they aren’t very strong I’m told.”

That was a lot of names that sounded proper without any sort of context. “What are Vertil like? Maybe I’ve seen them.” I never got the name of the eight legged creature I ran across. But there were definitely some others I saw on the road here.

“It stands upright and has four arms, two legs half scale the other fur. Black and red with piercing yellow eyes, six of them and a mouth the size of your head.”

I quickly motioned her to stop as she looked ready to keep going down the list. “That doesn’t sound weak at all. You’re describing a real life threatening monster!”

“But I was told by hunters and adventurers at the Markets that’s what they hunt. They said it was a good newbie monster.” Killer more like. She might actually be the death of me. I wasn’t even going to bother with the other two. They were probably even worse.

I stepped up towards her to look out over the plains. “They probably were teasing you. Let’s just try to find something safe.” She vigorously nodded and jumped out ahead once more. It was honestly impressive that the huge chunk of metal on her back didn’t slow her down. That training she said she did helped a lot apparently.

For as much as I wanted to think there might be something special about us, she was proving any of that wrong. I knew the attendant said they didn’t have much difference from us, but I still had some doubts. Back on Earth I wondered if anyone could just lightly run around as she was with what had to be at least fifty kilos attached to her back.

Once more I left the comfort of civilization. Someone else along with me certainly didn’t make it as anxiety inducing. Though having her along replaced that with a different type of nervousness. It’d be nice if I could reach a point where I wasn’t a constant raw nerve jumping at a falling feather.

“Minoru, sir!” Eri'Sol waved to me in her same eagerness that she maintained the whole day.

“Just Minoru. What did you find?” As I came up to the slight hill she stood on, more of the field came into view. A vast stretch of land with just a few trees dotting the area and the ever present mountains far to the north. Though there was something more troubling that reminded me of my run in with the chimeric boar. “Please tell me that’s not a V whatsit.”

“A Vertil! I think so!”

“We aren’t fighting that! It’s bigger than both of us and then some!” I tried to keep my voice down to not draw attention. It seemed to have noticed us anyway. We weren’t exactly hiding as I noticed. “Dammit…”