The "Best" RPG Ever-45

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Everyone had gotten quiet by the time they reached the pasturelands. Rayna didn't particularly like it this quiet, and there was an important topic to address. "So uh, what exactly are we gonna do to kill the giant worm, once I find it?"
"I'm considering sticking my sword into it," Zack deadpanned from the front. This drew a couple of chuckles from his usual teammates.

"Well no, I mean—it's a tunneling monster. Do we follow it down into its tunnels where it definitely has an advantage, or try to lure it topside somehow?"

"We fought a giant bird before, and had a lot of trouble until Clera found a way to make it crash," said Lynn. "Giving the monster the homefield advantage sounds like a disaster waiting to happen."

"Well, it likes eating livestock, right? Can you just..give it some fake pigs and cows to try and eat?" said the catgirl.
"Um..I mostly do people-illusions when it comes to actual illusions. The first thing I figured out was copies of myself. Not sure if I can..." Rayna gestured nearby, trying to make an illusion of a cow, and just made a version of herself with cow-patterned hair and clothes. "Not too helpful."

"The other way to lure it up is for someone to go down where it is, pop it in the nose and run it to the surface when it's mad," said Mira. "Or...hmm." She looked at Rose for a second, which caused a couple of the others to look in the same direction.

"Huh?" The dragon-girl looked around in confusion. She'd been following the conversation but didn't know what she'd done to get everyone looking at her.
"Why don't we just blow up the tunnels?" the witch said, getting a bit of a smirk.

Katherine thought for a moment. "Ohh, I get it."

"Get..what?" Rose was clearly still confused.

"You can breathe minty breath down into where the worm is, then someone can light it on fire. That doesn't rely on the worm being able to get mad—just on it having basic 'run away from fire' survival instincts—and it won't risk anyone getting eaten down there with it."
"Oh. Umm, I dunno exactly how much breath I can breathe though? If the worm's really big, the tunnels are really big too, and there might be too many of them..."
"It's worth a try, at least," said Rayna. "With me tracking the worm's actual location we'll be hitting the tunnels closest to it. And if it doesn't work, plan B can be the 'lure it up' one."

"I s-should be able to help this work, too," added Nora.

Their first stop was where the worm's most recent victims had been. The wreckage of a chicken coop lay in several piles around a bunch of upturned ground, with another partially-covered hole nearby where the worm had gone back in. The first hole was hard to gauge the exact size of, but the second one was farther across than any of them were tall. "..Pretty big worm, then," said Zack, standing next to the hole. "So you can track it from here?"
Rayna came up next to him, looking first down to the hole, then up and around. "Yeah. Just follow my lead for a bit."

The path led to one of the back gates of town, and then a while beyond that. Some more conversation started, first with Lynn talking about what their group had been doing since coming out to the Frontier, and Rayna occasionally interjecting. The others, mainly Katherine and Mira, answered in kind with stories of their exploits so far.

..."So there was some kind of fear-ghost-thing and an angry animated armor in that castle we went by? All that happend for us was Rayna heard some kind of armor clinking far-off, which, I guess probably could've been either one...or a third weird thing in there. But we were mostly interested in getting out of there as fast as possible, and on to a real town."

..."Yep, that was my demon-summoning circle. I hope I didn't scare you too much with that."

"Aria was a lot scarier than anything else we ran into there, trust me. And I'm mostly sure her appearing was technically not even your fault."

..."You say you can read minds, huh?" said Rayna from the front. "Well, what color am I—"
"You're thinking red, but also that if I say red you'll deny it and say you were thinking blue."
"..Oh. Well..how about, what—"
"Three. Seven. Forty-two. Underwear."

"Hahah, made you say 'underwear'!"
"You're the one who was thinking about it. Anyway, when we're actually fighting just direct any thoughts at anyone else and I'll transmit them, so you can save your breath. Umm, I can't really do that for Rose though, so you'll still have to talk aloud to her."

"Aww," the dragon-girl whined slightly.

..."So you blew up their campfire?!" Nora shyly nodded. "That's hilarious. I wish I could've seen the looks on those idiots' faces..."

..."And the whole thing just fell apart after we took it out. The Captain let me keep it, even." Mira displayed her scythe briefly. "This'll be my first time really cutting up a monster with it, but it already feels pretty natural to hold. Just don't try to pick it up if I drop it, it's got kind of a dark magic thing going on..."

---

The others left, trusting Clera to settle their bill for lunch. Aria watched her hand over several coins extra and quietly tell the waiter to keep the change. Once he was off getting a receipt together, she said, "You tip pretty big, huh."

"Medical school is expensive," said the winged girl. "Unless one is from an already-wealthy family, one doesn't survive it without working in the service industry for a large period of time."

The shifter pointed at her, expressing 'oh, I get it' with the gesture. "You know what it's like, so you try to give back now that you've 'made it'. Pretty noble, I guess."

"What do you intend to do now?" She changed the subject rather than responding directly to the comment, but was blushing slightly again.

"Well, with your approval I'd like to go looking for magic item shops. Someone who might be able to identify my weird crystal thing and figure out how it works for me."
She raised an eyebrow. "My approval?"

Aria sighed. "My temporary disability means I have to have you with me. So I want to do that, but I don't want to drag you around all over the place against your will. If there's somewhere you'd rather go first then I'll come along."

"I don't particularly object, but...wandering around everywhere seems unwise. If you did become disoriented and fall, there would be only so much I could do. My suggestion would be more to keep standing and walking to a minimum, at least at first. And I am not certain you won't become excited and attempt to run in spite of your condition."

"Oh come on, I have more self-control than that." There was a second's pause and a knowing look from the doctor. "Well—when the sword's, not out at least," she amended, looking away.

"I just really don't want to sit around doing nothing for the next two days. It's against my nature. I'm liable to go crazy even without the blood hunger's help."

Clera nodded, seeming to understand this point. "Perhaps we can acquire a wheelchair. Or at least a cane or something else which you can lean on other than me."
"Now there's an idea!" Aria grinned. "I could buy me a stylish cane to lean on first and then we can go looking for magic pawn shops or whatever." She stood up, then immediately fell back into the chair. "Uck." Then she did it again, much more slowly, ending with leaning her hands on the back of the chair. Clera was giving her the kind of slightly disapproving glare a parent does when they just told a child the stove was hot and not to touch it, and the child just went ahead and burned their finger anyway. "Okay. Slowly. Promise."

---

"Hahhhhhhhhhhhh..." Even Rose was a little surprised by her capacity to just keep breathing green stuff into the tunnel in front of her. For some reason her "Rob" memories were under the impression that there might be some kind of limited tank to pull this magic breath from, but it seemed like she could just make any breath she wanted into that special minty nature-dragon breath, as many times in a row as she wanted. Well of course, fire dragons usually don't somehow "run out of fire to breathe", but there was just something about the ability to do this that had seemed like it would be limited. At least this knowledge was something good to keep in mind if one of her new friends got injured.

Katherine said, "How far are we now?"

Nora's eyes were closed. She could feel the wind down beneath the earth, flowing through a complicated network of tunnels, many partially collapsed. She had been pushing the air around, trying to distribute the dragon breath evenly so it would all ignite, and ease off the resulting air pressure by pulling non-dragon-breath air out through the available holes. She breathed in and out, reaching as far as her power would go. "I think, a-about my limit."

"Well, the stupid thing's got to be somewhere in all that," said Rayna. "I mean, it's not that far down even."

"Well then..Is everyone ready?" Katherine produced her trusty fire-knife again and floated it over to just above the opening. A few weapons were unsheathed or otherwise prepared. Nora opened her eyes again, focusing them on the elemental blade. There wasn't a verbal response, but it was clear from their minds (and Rose's posture) that everyone was as ready as they were going to be. "Okay, let's light it up."

BOOM. Everything shook slightly; the weaker parts of the surrounding ground emitted brief gouts of flame before collapsing from the explosion. There was silence for a few seconds, and then a tremor began. The shaking grew suddenly more intense and chaotic, knocking the less agile of the seven girls slightly off balance. Rayna actually fell onto her butt, and had to quickly hop back to her feet. Then the worm finally came up from the ground.

It was as terrifyingly huge as advertised. They got to see its full length as it leapt out of the smoking ground into the air, sailed through the air a bit, and then came crashing back down toward the earth mouth-first. It had rows and rows of teeth arranged in a full circle in its mouth; its gross segmented skin looked sort of sunburned from the explosion.

You're gonna put your sword in that? Rayna thought toward Zack.

I can try. One of the better balanced, he ran up to the worm as it started its descent into the ground and slashed sideways at it, spilling some green blood out. That was promising enough to try a few more similar cuts while the rest of it went under.

More ground rumbling. The fox-girl watched her indication of the underground monster's location carefully, and gave the knight a warning as soon and as quickly as she could. It's coming up under you!

Zack made a quick backflip, just barely avoiding the thing's mouth coming up out of the ground and snapping shut. Mira ran up and gave it a slash with her scythe, making a clear gash through the raw skin and spilling more green blood. You know, I'm not so sure cutting this thing is an efficient way to kill it, she understated. The worm backtracked the way it had come, shaking the ground some more. She mounted her broom and moved into the air rather than dealing with the ensuing earthquake.

It's—Rayna changed her mind; Rose needed to hear this. "It's circling around, I think it's gonna start going along the ground!" Indeed, as predicted, the giant beast rose suddenly halfway out of the ground this time, is back body writhing back and forth and sending its wide-open mouth rushing forward. It aimed itself toward the witch first, who threw a pumpkin bomb toward the head before jumping aside. The internal explosion did little to slow its momentum as it turned right, toward Zack. He jumped up and landed sword-first on top of its head, but it started to rotate itself violently back and forth to shake him off. He barely managed to get the sword back out of it before being thrown away, and the dragon-girl ran after his flying body, barely managing to catch him in her arms and skid across the ground on her knees with their combined momentum.

The worm was busy trying to turn itself back around for another pass; its wildly flailing back end required everyone to clear away. Rayna made some illusory noises like people shouting for it to hopefully come after, and Lynn, having already run and jumped some distance away to get out of the earthquake for steadier aim, began firing several electrically-enchanted arrows at its side. Nora noticed the electricity and amplified it when the next couple of shots landed. After a brief mental communication, Katherine's lightning-enchanted knife was stabbed in about a third of the way into the worm (any farther back was moving back and forth too quickly to aim at), giving the elf a more consistent source to shock it with. It was raining pumpkin bombs and demon fire, but very little of that was hitting its mark.

"Thanks..." Rose was still holding onto Zack, even after standing herself up and running several more steps to get clear of the flailing worm tail.

"Hh..you're welcome!"

"But you can, uh, put me down now."

"Oh, right!" She finally set him down, blushing slightly at the moment of airheadedness, and then turned around to see what was going on.

The worm had taken the bait and ran over some non-existent people, but when it continued to feel shock after shock from the knife stuck in it, it turned its motion downward again, knocking the dagger against a rock on the way down and sending it flying off into the air. Katherine caught it. What's it doing now?

"Probably coming up for another bite!" Rayna yelled; everyone was getting a little far apart at this point and an eaten dragon-girl was not a desirable outcome.

"Can you make poison or anything?" said the wolf-girl, still next to Rose.

"Um..I can make a plant that's already poisonous bigger. Oh wait—duh—plants!" She looked around briefly, and then waved her hands upward, converting a bunch of the upended grass and weeds in the worm-tilled ground into long, thick cords of vine. It was drawn toward her hands, and she held as much of it that way as she could, wrapping the rest of it loosely around her wrists and ankles. Soon she had a big pile of magically-grown vine in front of her, all the individual strands held by or attached to her one way or another.

I think Rose is trying something. Zack sent a mental image of what he was seeing while he drew his sword again. Where's it coming up now?

Uh, um— It was starting to move too fast for her to keep up with. How could something that huge go so fast? Lynn! Lookout!

Almost too late, but not quite, the archer leapt into the air and did a quick somersault away, landing in an awkward tumble. The worm went half its length up into the air, involuntarily swallowing a few more of Mira's explosives along the way, and then directed its fall vaguely in Zack's direction.

"Rose." Zack pointed toward Lynn just before she jumped out of the way of the rising worm.

"Mhm!" The dragon-girl nodded, and made a hard throwing motion. Vines went flying unnaturally up and over toward where the worm was, and began to wrap themselves around it as it fell. She tugged left as hard as she could, and it was sent toward the middle area, the big rut in the ground it had made by running itself back and forth—most importantly, away from herself and Zack. "Th—think, Nor, ra can, help?" she asked with some strain, pulling up and rightward against the strength of the worm's entire body, keeping it above the ground and as in place as much as possible. Her vines continued to wrap around its body, but already many of them were snapping...she had to focus her mind and power on regrowing those before too much was lost.

Zack nodded, then ran toward the imprisoned worm, thinking Rose's request toward the elf. Lynn was already taking advantage of its trapped state, firing a bunch of electrical, rock, and fire arrows at its middle-back. Mira and Katherine followed this up with a bombing run, the witch diving close and tossing several bombs for the psion to direct on into the thing's mouth cavity and then let explode. Nora solidified a bunch of the earth and turned it into more cords to bind the thrashing monster, closing her eyes to try and concentrate against all the noise and confusion. Finally, Zack began to come close enough to think about how he was going to attack it. A plan started to form, and at the same time it was communicated to the others he would need help from to get it to work.

Zack stopped a few yards away from the worm. Mira flew up next to him and hovered long enough for him to jump onto the back of the broom before flying as high up as they dared. Then Zack jumped off, switching to Light form and getting a death grip on his longsword with both hands, pointing the sword so its blade was facing the worm below. Katherine helped him keep it steady, at the same time telekinetically pushing the sword down with enough force to put it well past terminal velocity.

With all the momentum behind it and forces on it, Zack's sword cleaved straight through the worm's thick, tough skin, and kept going, cutting a deep hole all the way into its insides, down across its side, and toward the ground. Much of the momentum from the fall went into that cut, but he was still falling dangerously fast, and Nora let go of the dirt-cords to immediately make as strong an upward gust of wind under him as she could. He landed extremely roughly, dropping the sword clattering off to one side and rolling across the ground for what felt like a full minute, ending up lying on his back.

The worm's body flailed and thrashed, snapping the rest of the vines. Rose doubled over, panting in exhaustion, while the vines she'd been maintaining with her magic instantly withered and died, making recapturing it impossible. But this movement was short-lived, merely the death throes of the beast; in a moment more there was silence.

Mira flew over toward Rose and touched down, putting her broom away. Lynn was running up to meet them, too. "Phew...you, gonna be okay there?" She was feeling a little spent herself from all those bombs.

"Yhh..yeah...heh...heeheehee!" The dragon-girl stood herself up again, grinning at Mira. "Haven't had a workout like that in uuuhm, forever I think? It did die though, right?"

An image of Rayna appeared next to them. "Yes. Confirmed deceased. That was amazing, Rose!"

"You need a hand?" Katherine's head came into view over Zack; his landing process had formed a small, slightly deeper rut in all the loose ground in the bigger rut the worm had already torn open.
"Just...lemme rest here for a minute. I'll...get myself up." This didn't hurt, actually, but he was physically stunned and had the distinct impression it was going to hurt pretty soon.

"We p-probably should've put more th..thought into how to a-a-actually kill a giant worm," Nora pointed out from above the bigger rut.

Zack rolled his head over slightly in her direction. "You think?" He sat up slowly. "How hurt am I from that?"

"I think he needs a car wash more than a doctor," Katherine snarked. There was slimy green worm blood all over him, mostly the armor but some was definitely in the hair and fur.
"Um..." She hopped down next to him and bent over, examining the elements of his body carefully. "Um, l-lots of bruising...you'll be v-very sore even if I do my best to heal you. I d-didn't know you were going to s-sk-skydive on top of everything else!"

"You would've told me not to," he stated.

"W-well, Yes!"

Rayna came up next to the pit. "Are you guys doing alright?"

"Yep. Is that thing gonna regenerate or anything annoying like that?" asked Katherine.
The fox-girl looked. "I don't think so. Everything I can see says it's dead from front to back, top to bottom. One of you must've hit a vital organ at some point, or...something. Maybe where the important nerves were got hit...anyway, I think the Captain would've warned us if regenerating was gonna be a problem."

"How's Rose?" said Zack.

She looked up at the other group. "Oh, she's exhausted but giggling about it. I think she'll be just fine. But hey that was crazy, I have no idea how you got yourself to just jump off her broom in midair like that!"

"I just didn't think about it too hard."
"Th-that is a problem!" interjected Nora.

---

Took me a while to come up with how the actual fight against the worm should go. There are surprisingly few references to be found on how exactly, like biologically speaking, a giant monster worm is supposed to be killed.

(Also, I just realized I've been neglecting the navigation links lately and fixed it. As of right now, the next and latest links should all exist and point to the right place again.)