Notail Simulator Beta (4/4)

You take out your spare ration and step out of the bushes to greet the creature. The others are confused at your bold move and tell you to get back into the bushes before you scare off the thing.

You refuse.

The legendary burned prophet lifts its head up after admiring the burned remains of the meal you left for it.

Fortuna rolls a 20 sided die. A 10 is rolled.

It's two eyes suddenly glow as you draw near. It utterly creeps you out as it doesn't move like some sort of statue even when you get even closer. You wave the ration around. You have to admit, it isn't the most delicious looking thing in the world, with it being a nutrition block, but you want to attempt to tame this legendary without getting into a battle.

Suddenly it lifts its head into the air, and you can tell by the light escaping from its mouth that it's getting ready to fire again.

You drop the ration in a hurry and leap backward. It sets the block on fire before crushing it with its hooves.

There goes your nutrition block. That single, large, unsettlingly colored block could have kept you fed for a solid week.

You'll need to come up with something else.

Fortuna rolls a 20 sided die. A 18 is rolled.

You grab one of your anomaly faces and show it off to the prophet. The faces have become so much apart of your existence sometimes you forget you weren't born with them.

The eyes of the prophet stop glowing for a second as the face interrupts its stomping session. It closes its two eyes, and the next time it opens them, it's joined by at least five more eyes on each side. All were glowing now.

You shuffle to the side while pointing the face at it, and it turns to view it, ears in the air with interest. You move back, and it moves forward with you. To make sure its interest is with the face being pointed at it, you hold it behind your back. The prophet instantly closes its other eyes but still looks at you with its two glowing main eyes.

It seems docile enough.

You were going to attempt to get on it.

Fortuna rolls a 20 sided die. A 12 is rolled.

The spikes on the legs of the burned prophet were likely for stabbing attackers, but right now they were the perfect steps for you to get onto it.

The others in the bush make hand signals telling you to stop what you're doing, but you refuse to listen. It could have easily jumped forward and crushed you or twisted its head around to set you ablaze, but it didn't. You sat triumphantly on its back. You point at the prophet with glee to your companions, but they give you stressed looks in return.

Maybe they knew that you didn't know how to ride a horse.

You saw rangers ride unicorns, but they had fancy saddles and equipment to control its movements better. You on the other hand just had your boldness to do whatever you wanted.

The prophet suddenly broke into a trot. Immediately you had issues. You had no idea how to keep your balance on the thing even at these slow speeds. You had to learn quickly.

Fortuna rolls a 20 sided die. A 16 is rolled.

You latched onto its mane and accidentally find that pulling it slightly back caused it to stop. Could it be that this creature was already trained?

You mimic some of the movements you saw the R-classes on their unicorns do to make their steeds move. It was a somewhat rough start, but you were quickly feeling like a natural at steed riding. The others nervously watched but you scoffed at them. They had nothing to worry about.

You had to admit though, the prophet turning it's head time to time to look at you with its creepy glowing eye wasn't exactly comforting.

Fortuna rolls a 20 sided die. A 9 is rolled.

Suddenly it broke into a gallop without you giving it any prompts. You weren't ready for this and struggled to stay on. You keep pulling back to get it to stop, but it refuses. Instead it runs in circles over and over, as if it were testing you.

Finally, after a harsh pull, it stops. You curse the gods for letting that happen and thank yourself for figuring out what to do.

The prophet started to walk backwards as you caught your breath.

You didn't notice it had started a fire and was now lining itself up with baffling looking flames. You pulled back again, but this time it wouldn't stop it. It ran full speed towards the growing blaze.

You found that your only option was to toss yourself off it.

It ran through its flame. For a moment you almost thought its flames might have worked as a portal, but it rounded back and looked down at you, nickering at you.

You can't confirm it was laughing at your failure, but as it pranced around you a few times to show off while chortling this horsey sound, you sure felt like it was.

With one final victory lap around you, it gracefully trotted away from you.

You remember when the others told you they didn't need knives because they had long ranged weapons, and at this moment you would kill for an arrow. You pulled out a knife.

Could one use a knife as a long ranged weapon? Were knives truly powerful enough to break out of the confines of what life had defined they'd be?

You thought about the prophet being so full of itself as it pranced around you. It made up some test to determine if you could tame it and you failed it, but as you pulled your hand back, you remembered a quote about nature and notails.

Nature has no rules, so there's no such thing cheating when you and your kin go against it.

You fling the knife with all your might.

Fortuna rolls a 20 sided die. A 20 is rolled.

It's a direct hit. The knife embeds itself into the back leg of the steed, and it goes down in pain. You take out another knife and run towards it. You had to make sure it stayed down.

The term "break a leg" to notails meant hoping a cocky person hurts themselves to make them humble.

You plunge a second knife into its leg.

The phrase comes from the most common method of taming an especially stubborn creature. Injuring a leg.

You and the others stood around watching it burn itself out, sometimes quite literally. Once it had given up on attempting to get away, you all swooped in. Tying up its mouth to disable its most deadly of attacks and getting to work on treating the wounds. You're forced to use your heal gel for this, but it's worth, cause you just obtained a new legendary capture creature.

Again.

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Everyone is impressed by your story of how you captured the majestic beast that wallowed before them as you retell it.

Sure, you embellish a few details here and there, but it's nothing significant. The E-classes help you take care of the prophet. Pampering a creature captured by aggressive means was essential. You had to make sure it didn't remember you as the person that "stabbed it in the legs twice," and remembered you as "the kind soul that nursed it back to health."

Someone is even so impressed with you that they freely give you their beast bait to feed it to the prophet to provide yourself with a higher chance of making it entirely docile.

You do worry that you might not be able to tame it. After all, you only tamed Slithers with a team of Z-classes with you. You would have to keep your eye on this one.

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Everyone is packing up to move again. E-4 declared they were done here. They take you on a long walk in the basement of the factory. This was the first time you've ever been here and the first time you saw so much machinery in one place. E-4 carefully keeps track of where both of you are by using their carefully constructed map.

They make sure to avoid all the dark parts of the basement noting that it's because there are creatures that live down here who are highly aggressive but avoid the light. Apparently, that's the theme of this "dungeon."

"There's power grid puzzles all over this place. It took us months to reroute and distribute the power in such a way to lead you to the final room. <:)"

The final room was expansive. To your left, there was no wall, just a tunnel leading to an abyss. Tracks went across the middle of the room and into the tunnel. This was a train station, though lacking the aforementioned trains.

"Look, check this out. <:)"

E-4 pointed to the other end, where a sizeable imposing metal door taking up the whole wall laid. The screen on it displayed what you felt was a symbol meaning halt. You think this because it's not the usual stop symbol you see.

"See, this power grid puzzle here? It has this giant sign over it by the adults to not touch it, or else it burns out the whole system trying to open the door. I didn't believe it, so I tried it anyway. The sign wasn't lying, all the lights in the factory went down, and the door slowly started to open. I automatically undid my actions because of the animals that live in the shadows. In those, maybe 10 seconds of darkness at least four of us got injured. <:)"

"Guess this is the end then, huh? =3"

"For now. If we somehow find a location where we can obtain many electricity or light emitting creatures that might solve our problems. The adults want us to stop here and collect whatever prize they left for us, but I know the artifacts they leave for us here are fake. Just prizes for a job well done that we can trade away. <:)"

E-4 points to the door.

"But there's something much bigger behind that door, I know it. <:)"
"And how do you know? =3"
"Why else would the adults sabotage the electrical system to kill anyone who tries to get it? That means some fantastic artifacts are being hidden away, and I aim to get them. <:)"

You glance back to the tracks and how they lead up to the iron doors.

"I think it's a train. =3"
"A...train? I guess it could be with those tracks here. <:)"

You then turn to view the dark tunnel, and tunnel that is unlikely to have seen light in centuries.

"Where do think the train goes? =3"
"That's what I want to know as well. <:)"

The swarm has moved back to the original ruins. The prophet is still following you but is still rather dubious of the situation. You have a feeling it's smart enough to be suspicious of you and isn't willing to let go of being stabbed months ago so easily.

You leave it with a few E-classes while you and a small group head into the ruins. You, Slithers, and Tiger kid push open the door at the end of part of the ruins sectioned off by the adults. E-4 makes it clear only to push it slightly ajar.

"Good, that's just enough to let us in and out, but make sure to keep whatever attacked us last time trapped behind the door. It'll make moving supplies tedious but better safe than sorry. <:)"
"Anyway, you can get out of here F-1647. We don't need anything else from you now. <:)"
"Wait, what? >=3"

"Well, I'm 15 now, so you must be 15. E-classes get to stay till they're 18, but most classes, including F-classes, leave when they're 15 so they can finish up their training outside. <:)"
"Oh....Is the exit behind the northeast tower right? That's only a two-month walk. I can do that I guess. >=3"
"I can come with you. =3"
"Oh, no you can't E-2732. We might need you for this. We'll be starting in two months, but if you take him to the exit, it'll take you at least four months to get back. <:)"

"Hmmmmm. If I take the prophet, I think it would only take two months, or even less. =3"
"But then you risk losing the prophet. You just got him, and I don't think its wise to ride him until you spent more time taming him. <:)"
"It's ok E-2732. I can make it there all by myself. I don't want to cause everyone to miss out on having your help for two whole months. >=3"