MMORPG: Asterra Online

The tidal shallows outside Azure Shore were bathed in golden afternoon light, the meadow grass giving way to wet sand and shallow standing pools where the sea bled slowly into the land. Translucent, gelatinous shapes rolled along the waterline in slow, unhurried loops, catching the sun in shifting blue-green ripples.

Ember knelt in the damp grass fifty yards off the main trail, watching one work its slow, unhurried loop along the tideline. No bait needed for something this sluggish. Just the same patience Garrick had drilled into him since his first rabbit cull: stay downwind, stay low, let the target settle into its own rhythm before committing to anything.

This wasn’t taming. Taming meant the thing walked away afterward. This was just a cleaner kill than an arrow through the chest, and it still had to be earned, not rushed.

The River Slime rolled closer, barely a threat even to a fresh Level 1 player, its body flattening and reshaping with each slow pulse, utterly unaware of the six paces separating it from the low crouch in the grass. Ember tracked its rhythm — the brief pause at the top of each roll, the half-second where it was most exposed — and waited.

He waited for the pause at the top of its next roll, then loosed a single blunted arrow into its peripheral membrane, not enough force to burst it outright, just enough to rupture the outer layer and let the fluid inside begin to weep free. The slime sagged, its structure collapsing into a shallow puddle of iridescent, faintly glowing residue pooling across the wet sand. Ember knelt fast, decanting a careful measure into one of Kael’s glass vials before the mana inside could start to fade, and sealed it with the wax stopper.

[Item Obtained]

Obtained:

• River Slime Fluid ×1

[Skill Proficiency Increased]

Basic Gathering

Precise extraction has deepened your understanding.

+1.8%

His first two attempts after that overshot: the membrane ruptured too hard under the arrow’s impact, more fluid soaked into the sand than made it into the vial, the slime gone before he could react. By the third try he’d learned to soften the draw, easing off at the exact edge of penetration instead of following through. The fourth and fifth came clean, each vial sealed and glowing faintly on the flat stone beside him.

Five vials, sealed and cooling in his pack. The River strain, done. It was a strange kind of hunting, nothing like the draw-to-kill instinct he’d spent months building with Garrick. No adrenaline spike, no moment where a target noticed him and everything sped up. Just patience, repeated until it stopped feeling like a skill. Three more elements waited somewhere beyond the shallows, but for now Ember let himself breathe, the tide sliding cool over his boots.

That was when the wind carried something else toward him — shouting, splashing, the ragged edge of a spell chant breaking apart mid-cast. Somewhere past the reeds to the east, someone was losing a fight badly enough that a stranger could hear it from fifty yards out.

Akana’s third arrow buried itself in the mud a full pace short of the nearest Mist Toad, and she didn’t even pretend to be embarrassed about it. She leaned back against a mossy boulder, bow slung loosely over one shoulder as if the fight were entirely optional.

"Did you hit the toad, or just insult the grass?" she called out lazily.

Ahead of her, Aries recovered his stance after a wide, theatrical swing, his broadsword dragging a deep furrow through the marshland mud. "I was gauging the terrain."

"You’ve been gauging the terrain for three swings, Aries."

"It’s a delicate process," he snapped back, adjusting his grip. "Not all of us rely on firing from thirty yards away while resting our spine against a rock."

"You want me to shoot it, or are you going to keep lecturing the mud?"

"I don’t need—" Aries cut himself off, pivoting hard to catch a toad lunging for Akana’s flank. His blade caught the creature mid-air, the impact jarring up through his forearms and driving his boots an inch into the sludge. He held the strain, flicking a glance toward her. "Your flank was open. You’re welcome."

Akana didn’t blink. "I was baiting it."

"Right. Tactical baiting." Aries shoved the toad back with a grunt, boots sinking another inch into the sludge. "Any day now, Akana."

"You’ve asked twice. That’s not urgency, that’s mild concern." She didn’t move from the boulder. "Tell me when you’re actually about to die, and I’ll consider it."

"I am actually about to—" The toad lunged. Aries caught it on the flat of his blade with a grunt that cut the sentence clean in half.

"There it is." But the instant the toad gathered itself to leap again, Akana snapped into focus. Her lazy slouch vanished, her posture locking into place as she nocked and drew in a single fluid blur. The arrow took the toad clean through its distended throat sac, pinning it to the marsh floor.

She relaxed instantly back into her slouch. "See? Skill."

Aries wiped a smear of mud off his brow, deadpan. "It was four feet away and stationary."

"Still skill."

A few yards off, the second front of the fight was running on sheer bravado. Zoru stood braced behind his round shield, short sword hanging loose in his other hand, both boots skidding through the mud as a second Mist Toad slammed its wet snout against the iron. He barely budged.

"Hey, Akana!" Zoru called over his shoulder, a breezy grin plastered across his face. "Notice how my feet stay in one zip code when I block? Take notes, Aries!"

"I am currently fighting for my life, Zoru!"

"You’re fighting your own balance!" Zoru laughed, casually repelling another lunge from the toad. He glanced back toward Rora, who was weaving a soft, golden pulse of healing magic around his arm, her baby-faced features bright and sweet, dimples showing as she smiled up at him.

Zoru couldn’t resist pushing it. "Honestly, you can save the mana for Aries. A tank this handsome barely feels these little scratches." He leaned back against his shield, grinning. "Unless you just wanted an excuse to hold my hand?"

Rora’s spell-casting motion paused.

Her expression didn’t darken. Her smile didn’t fade at all — if anything it grew slightly warmer. But her eyes settled on his with a stillness that hadn’t been there a second ago.

"Zoru," she said, soft as always, "if you ever tell me to withhold my healing again, I will let your HP drop to single digits, hold you right at the edge of it, and let the toads have your ankles until you ask nicely."

The breezy confidence drained out of Zoru’s face so fast it looked like a status effect. "Yes. Please heal me. I love your heals."

"I thought so." Rora beamed, finishing the cast with a flick of her staff, warm light washing over his arm.

A third toad broke from the reeds, angling fast for Zoru’s exposed side while the second still had him pinned. Rora’s eyes tracked it — her staff mid-cooldown, her positioning too far to intercept, neither Akana nor Aries turned in time.

Then the mud in front of the third toad’s feet exploded.

THWACK — THWACK.

Two quick-drawn shafts split the fog half a breath apart. The first arrow buried itself an inch from the toad’s webbed foot, throwing a wall of mud straight into its eyes; the second followed a heartbeat behind, driving it sideways mid-leap.

Blinded, its jump collapsed into a stumbling hop, straight into a tension wire staked into the mud a few paces back. Ember had set it on reflex while he was still finding his footing at the edge of the reeds, more habit than plan. The wire snapped taut around its rear legs and yanked it flat.

Silence, for exactly one second. Then Aries used the opening to land a clean cut across the first toad’s back, and it dissolved into motes of light.

Zoru exhaled and lowered his shield, still keeping half a wary eye on Rora, who was already back to checking his HP with nothing but soft, genuine concern, as if the last ten seconds hadn’t happened at all.

"Where did that come from?" Akana said, her lazy posture gone entirely, bow half-raised toward the grass.

Ember stepped out of the reeds, starter bow slung casually across his back. A faint residual warmth still threaded through his fingers where the mana had passed — ten MP for the pair, gone before he’d finished the thought, Quick Shot’s half-second cooldown the only thing standing between one clean shot and two. First time he’d used it outside a dungeon corridor. It had worked.

As he passed their position, he dropped a stray toad hide near Zoru’s boot without breaking stride, already angling to keep walking.

"Okay, wait, hold on—" Zoru pushed himself half upright despite Rora’s hand immediately pressing him back down. "You can’t just snipe our near-death experience and walk off. That’s, like, negative manners."

"It was mildly a near-death experience," Aries said, straightening up and resting his broadsword against one shoulder in a way that looked more casual than he probably felt. "We had it handled."

"We did not have it handled," Akana said.

"We had it mostly handled."

"You had it ’measuring the wind’ handled."

Akana stepped past both of them entirely, sharp curiosity replacing the last of her guarded stance as she looked Ember over. "Seriously, though. That shot was insane. Fifty yards, through fog, both toads’ feet exactly. What’s your name?"

"Ember."

"Akana." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder without really looking. "That’s Zoru, he doesn’t stop talking, you’ll notice. Aries is—"

"I can introduce myself," Aries cut in.

"You were taking too long."

"You’d said one sentence."

"Felt long." Akana shrugged, already losing interest in the argument. "And that’s Rora. She’s the reason any of us are alive on a weekly basis, honestly."

Rora glanced up from Zoru’s status window just long enough for a small, genuinely warm smile. "Thank you, by the way. That second toad would have caught him."

"It would’ve been fine," Zoru said.

"It would not have been fine."

"...It would have been fine eventually."

"Would you want to add us?" Rora asked, already turning back to finish checking Zoru’s arm. "Friend request, I mean. In case we ever cross paths again — it would be nice to actually know who saved us, instead of just a very good shot from the grass."

Ember thought about it for maybe two seconds. He didn’t have a real reason to say no.

[Friend Added]

Friend Requests Accepted.

Akana, Aries, Zoru, and Rora have been added to your Friends List.

"There," Zoru said, grinning despite Rora’s unimpressed look at how quickly he’d recovered his voice. "Now it’s weird if you don’t come back and hang out."

"I have slimes to find," Ember said.

"That is exactly what a friend would say right before coming back to hang out."

Ember didn’t dignify that with an answer. He adjusted his pack straps and turned back toward the shallows, Akana’s dry "he’s coming back" fading behind him as he walked.

Three elements left, and the meadows inland were as good a place as any to start hunting whatever a Gale Slime actually looked like.

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