D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

This 𝓬ontent is taken from 𝐟𝐫𝗲𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗯𝗻𝐨𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝐨𝗺

?--- Romilda --- (Just after passing by Lily in the tree)

*Out of the frying pan and into the damned fire I guess. Sure hallucinogenic coral is an issue but at least there isn't GIANT CRABS!* Romilda had finished her run and finally taken a proper look at the kelp forest around her. The crabs she'd seen early didn't seem that large… but it was clear that it had only seemed that way due to how far they actually were. In truth they looked ready to win a boxing tournament with March.

Right… so where do I go? I've barely got any treasure on me, and while not getting removed from the game for half an hour is great, I've almost certainly fallen behind on treasures due to needing to book it out of the coral. Now I'm in a place that seems just as deadly… though the crabs aren't actively out to get me… so far.

What should I do? Look around for treasures? I really want to leave. Can't we go back to the spearfish? Sure they were hidden, but at least I could fight them. These crabs? I'm honestly not sure about. Even if I threw some spears at them from range I'm not sure I could kill them. It really depends on how tough their shells are and if I can work out where their brains are.

A couple of little wounds in their carapace isn't going to do them in. Their huge! So a little pinhole to bleed out of isn't going to stop them. Wait… do crabs even bleed? I mean… I assume they do right? Is there any reason to think otherwise? Dammit now I'm questioning things because I don't remember crabs I've eaten having much other than muscle. Dammit. Do they even have proper organs? They have to right?

Romilda shook off that line of thought. She was panicking at the size of the things and yet they hadn't made a single aggressive move. Additionally, the crabs clearly had a small posse that was following them around. Romilda looked over the small fish for a bit and did notice them getting whacked after a few minutes of observation, but tellingly, none of them seemed actually injured.

*Ok… so they aren't aggressive towards the fish. That's good… but are they similarly ok with larger things like myself? Sure I might be the smallest contestant… well except Lily if you count her transformation… but I'm still much bigger than the biggest fish I can see surrounding them. What does that mean for me? None of the crabs seem to be going near each other.

Is that because they simply keep to their own territory? Or is it because if they got too close to each other a fight is sure to break out between them? Dammit, so much to worry about, and not enough data. Am I just being paranoid after the escaping the coral? It felt like everything there was actively working together to kill me.

The little fish showed that the place was safe. The spear stingray things were to show me that there was at least some danger that wasn't obvious, but I stopped looking for other things once I found them. As if I'd found the hidden danger and only needed to worry about the obvious stuff. Then the coral. Of course the damned coral. It looks nice and the water was always a bit dusty looking but I had no reason to assume that it was toxic. I just assumed something had stirred up the sand.

Now I don't know if the crabs are a problem or not. My instincts are telling me that I need to be careful of everything. That the trees here are deadly. The crabs will come and attack me if I provoke them and… what the heck is that?!*

Romilda had continued deeper into the biome while she worried. It might not have been the best idea, but there wasn't any crabs in her path and there might be treasure along the way if she got lucky. It was a good compromise between safety and security until she thought of something better. At least… it was until she noticed the spatial barrier in place ahead of her.

*What the heck happened there! Thyme wouldn't do something like this without a good reason. It'd count as interference otherwise… so what caused the whole central area to be closed off? Did one of the crabs go berserk? No it can't be that. I doubt Thyme would consider that alone dangerous enough. Even we're hurt… with Thyme's power it'd be easy to put us back together from just about anything. Heck, Thyme was even able to help Gareth recover after his bout of idiocy.

So… what could cause this? Is it possible that Thyme isn't responsible? No… that seems unlikely. Spatial affinity is really rare, and spatial affinity on the level needed to block off such a large area means that it's either enchantments developed by Thyme or spatial manipulation that's far above the kind you can find in the wild. The best most monsters can hope for is short ranged personal teleportation until they get up to Rank 4 and 5.

So whatever made it, either Thyme or something else… yeah that's really not a place I want to go. Though… if Thyme made it to keep something trapped inside then doesn't that mean I'm safe outside of it? Perhaps I should head around it. Anyone else who saw this go up were probably rightly scared out of their minds… but it seems stable from here and I've helped make a few storage rings before. So my sense for this sort of thing is probably more finely tuned then anyone else competing.

Blue might be able to compete, just because of all the water around, but there's no way anyone else has a chance. Lily's a paper and… shadow mage? Definitely paper, and that's not going to be helping her out underwater. March and Marigold… hmm… well March has no chance. It's just not her field. Though I can see her somehow figuring out a way to punch through it if the situation called for it.

Marigold though… I don't really know enough about the royal family of the elves to know. I feel like training to feel spatial disturbances would be useful… but there are plenty of useful skills that royalty might need to know MORE. So… what am I saying? I guess I'm saying that this seems like the best chance for me to do something risky that isn't actually too risky for me and come out on top with some more treasures.*

Romilda let the metal wander around her form to bleed off some of her nervousness as she approached the structure. It wasn't long before she could reach out and touch it if she desired. A stupid idea, but one that was possible. Instead, Romilda poked at the broken space a few times with her metal and found the space in question to be completely solid. The metal didn't get cut up, ground down, split into pieces, or disintegrate on contact. As far as Romilda could see, the altered space might as well be a wall. Just to confirm this, Romilda carefully walked up to the space in question and extended her pinky finger. An old enchanters trick. Pick the finger you can most afford to lose if you really HAVE to test something with your hands.

Luckily for Romilda's smallest digit the distorted space wasn't hostile to life specifically. A few seconds later Romilda put a firm hand on the hard space and tried to feel out the specifics. It wasn't something she'd trained to do… but with a bit of mana and it wasn't impossible to do.

Sadly for her, the king crab that made this barrier, while not a master of space was very much a master of plants, and the little bonsai tree that Thyme had provided was the closest thing an unthinking plant could get to a master of space. For someone at Romilda's level the space in question might as well be a twelve-foot-thick rock well. She had no hope at all in regards to figuring out anything the crab didn't want her to know.

Romilda clicked her tongue in annoyance as the space refused to give up any secrets. It didn't even have any clear holes in it. Which Romilda supposed made sense. If Thyme had trapped something inside, there was no sense in leaving an exit for it. Romilda had just hoped to find a secret entrance or something that might give her a shot at finding some treasure. It sounded like something Thyme might do in her head. With a sigh Romilda started to swim around the outside, thinking that perhaps she'd missed something with her limited sense of space.

Of course, Thyme would totally leave a gap in a protection so that someone could use smarts to get inside. Romilda's problem was the assumption that Thyme was responsible for the barrier. As Lily knew, it was the king crab that set it up to ensure that it wasn't disturbed for the rest of the event.