Is this... London? (open, Ceres)

[Ceres]

"Work is not for the weak of heart."

Click! The sound of the art kit she purchased snapped open. From the art kit’s ‘inventory storage’ unit she’d produce a tripod intended for holding canvas. Experienced hands went about quickly setting up the tripod and canvas so that there’d be no time wasted. Her hands were ready to work and it took a long time to get them to the point. Any wasted time meant more time to be drawing up energy for her desire to function.

With this in mind, she moved without any hesitation.

The canvas was prepared, her tripod was moved into a decent place. Her sights scanned over her surroundings for a subject. Shed choose the remainder of the bridge, the waters that surrounded it, and the distant other side populated by buildings and plants. Her preliminary sketch began. She took in every detail with light sketches, all while fighting off the system’s efforts to ruin her piece before it could even be properly realized.

The stick of lead she drew from the art kit was horrible. It didn’t transfer on to the paper well. When she made mistakes they were permanent. There was no eraser to correct them with, and she could tell by the paper’s consistency that she’d tear it if she even tried to erase them. This being because if she applied too much pressure with the lead stick, even if it was required to get a detail in, she’d find the canvas giving way. It wasn’t merely just material problems that got in the way either.

Her hand wasn’t steady. She knew because in real life her hands were to the point where every little slight shake and shift were intentional if they were to happen at all. Here the system ensured she knew what level she was as an Artisan. Her hand shook. Her fluid acts of understanding shape were somehow being translated wrong on the paper despite her efforts. Even further when she actually did manage to do something the way she intended…she could feel her hand getting oddly tired somehow, as if she were doing work. Then again the very act of getting any amount of lead off this pathetic excuse for a stick of lead was strenuous as it was. What an amazing effort to ruin what wasn’t even complete!

While she wrestled with the system she thought about the things that were said and answered the boys accordingly…

“ It wasn’t my idea to leave the market place originally. I just thought I’d reduce Tehm’s paranoia by doing as he asked previously”, she began,” It just so happened I wanted to do a little art as well…”

After her reply she thought for a while. She wondered if these two were basically her ‘team mates’ now. What plans did these two have now that they’d found people they could possibly trust? What efforts were they going to make now that they had help? While she thought these things she acknowledged Tehm’s question and thought on it carefully.

“I haven’t tried fighting yet…but I know how it works.”

That simple answer would be more than enough, she imagined. While continuing her work she’d listen to his reaction, as well as Kumori’s. She imagined that Kumori might be a little more to the other monk’s taste in terms of talking combat. They seemed to click together almost automatically---or maybe it was just that her passive nature was making her out to be unfriendly on a subconscious level. She’d correct that later when she could. For now she’d sit back and listen. She imagined she’d learn more this way than being an annoying chatter box. (Not that she ever truly was.)

When her preliminary drawing was complete she started comparing the light sketch with the actual scene. She’d note the discrepancies, and thought of how she could correct them with the paint she’d yet to place on the canvas. Her hands moved on to set up her painting pallet. Her mind carefully took inventory of the colors that surrounded them, and her hands went about mixing paint out of habit.

When she attempted that…she noticed how difficult it was to even get paints to become the color she needed. Some colors just weren’t accessible---so she had to attempt colors that were simple or use what was already present. She’d settle for a greenish blue as opposed to an honest ‘sea blue’. The greys weren’t so hard to produce since she could make most of them ‘by accident’. The system seemed to only truly be concerned with vivid colors rather than darks…so she took advantage of that. After her mixing was complete she finally started painting.

Since there was no hope for advanced techniques she started dry painting with the paintbrush she had. The poor thing lost bristles from the slightest actions. Even further she noted her accuracy was pretty pathetic with the paintbrush. If her expression wasn’t so impassive it might have shown how frustrated she was…but she kept calming herself down and focusing on the work.

She knew no matter how much she wanted it…it wasn’t going to be perfect. Not yet.

Tags :
tehm
Kumori

MADE BY ★MEULK OF GS

[Kumori]

Kumori HP: 100% MP: 100%

"In order to live, I will continue to fight. In order to retain my humanity, I will continue to destroy those who mean to harm my friends."

“Ahh, then you wish for me to use my Silent Move skill? I’ll use it for the duration of our stay here, and continue to move around. I’d like to see how well I can be heard just as well. Every time I speak will be an indication of where I am. You can report to me your results,” he said as he activated his skill and he began to walk around them and looking at the river, noting his reflection. It was a pristine version of himself, something he would never be able to dream of looking like.

Click! a sound resounded behind him. He turned around with as much speed and agility as he could, only to notice that Ceres was taking out her art kit. The tension that Kumori had built on his own had lessened, but his caution was still there. The man in the cowl still sat at the edge of the building watching them. It frightened him, slightly, but with experience would come the ability to be less frightened in this world. Kumori would look at the canvas that she was preparing to draw on and stayed silent about it. It was quite obvious that her skills as an Artisan were still quite low. Her hand shook and the lead’s color did not transfer as much as she was hoping for. The marks of error and ineptitude were littered all around the drawing, but Kumori remained silent. The canvas was thin. Any extra force added to it would pierce through it and ruin the entirety of the canvas. Art was a delicate thing, and Kumori was not a person who had the creative mind to follow such dreams. While his hands had to be steady, as an Assassin, it did not mean he was good at recreating things. Even in real life, he was not an artist.

“I applaud your skills… I’m sure, like everything else, with more practice and I guess in this case, training and time, you’ll be able to draw as well as you did in reality,” he complimented her. It was evident that the way she held her pencil and the way she attempted to draw were all marks of a pro. He could only counsel her on the inadequacies of the system rather than her own inadequacies.

Kumori nodded at Ceres’ comment about leaving the marketplace. All was entitled to do what the willed, and so long as they weren’t doing anything to harm anybody, Kumori wouldn’t mind what they did at all either. He was a man who believed in allowing anyone and everyone the freedom to do what they seemed fit, however if it infringed on another’s freedom, Kumori would have serious problems with such people.

Tehm then asked the question of whether they had tried fighting. Kumori nodded and continued to walk around the group. “Fighting… it’s different from what we’re used to. As an Assassin, it’s important to be able to chain your normal attacks and your skilled attacks. When I was in the forest a few days ago, it was apparent that the controls for using skills as we would normally took much longer and was more difficult to navigate to whilst actually fighting like we normally do. If you remember, hot keys were important in Elder Tales, however with this becoming our reality, something had to change, and I believe that is our ability to use skills as well as our physicality and gestures. The way we use skills, is by initiating each skill with our body and our feeling. By pushing our bodies to the initial part of the skill, we can perform the skill. It’s rather tricky the first time around, getting used to jumping or spinning, but with practice and effort, you should be able to skill with no problem.” he replied. He was ready to remove his dagger from his sheathe but decided against it. They were still in town and he did not know what would happen if he performed a skill, not on any particular person, in town.

While he was speaking, Ceres was beginning to paint her canvas. After he had finished speaking, Kumori patiently watched her as she worked on the canvas. Kumori walked towards her side to get a view of her facial expression, and he was only met with impassivity. When any person who was usually good at something and unable to do it like they used to, frustration was the most common emotion, however Ceres showed none. It was difficult for Kumori to adapt to his new body. While he was used to jumping around and running, his ‘body’ was still not up to par to his athletic build. He had wished to jump higher, run faster, and react quicker, but with his body at level 1, he could not. It frustrated him for hours, which led to wanting to train more and get stronger so that he could use this new body as his own.

“Fighting, however, has its risks, and as you both are monks, it’d be beneficial to find a healer and a caster to help us… Two tanks and a striker may not be favorable in the long term,” he said. He knew that in parties and guilds, someone who could strategize, predict, and shout commands to everyone was a necessary being in higher level fights, but maybe Kumori was asking for a bit too much at the moment. He was still level 1, so he couldn’t expect much more than the few low level people. It was also evident that most people wished to play striker classes, because they were the most engaged in the game, taking on every foe that walked in their paths. Having followed that route, Kumori wasn’t embarrassed, however he did wish to break out of the stereotype of the assassins that remained. “If you guys are interested, we can head to the area with the lowest level monsters. They tend to be easy to fight, even when they are in groups of five,” he said, relaying his experience.

OOC NOTES: 1016 words

Made by Sifr of GS, Synesthesia and Adoxography.

[tehm]

tehm HP: 100% MP: 100%

+Battle Perception -[BLIND] -[SOBER]

Tehm cursed silently to himself.

Unfortunately, based on their answers, it seemed that they had discovered little more of the combat system than he had.

What tehm was most interested in were what is known, in software engineering, as "edge cases". In a typical program that accepted numerical input it wasn't necessary to test every possible input, rather just the "edge cases": 0, a large negative number, a large positive number, a non-numerical entry, and so on.

Although in many ways this new world seemed a living, breathing world, in other ways it was very clearly still an mmorpg: controlled by a physics engine, stored in a database, with every parameter checked via simple calculations to determine the results.

The number of edge cases which tehm was interested in were seemingly endless:

• What happens when one dies?
• What do "stats" mean?
• What happens when one blocks?
• What happens when the physics engine conflicts with the combat engine?
• Spells require both a verbal and a physical component, if you air choke a handcuffed mage have you already defeated him?
• Is "choke" even a meaningful word? Can we talk without air? Remain conscious without blood? See without eyes? If so, how? If not, then wouldn't blood chokes, air chokes, and eye gouges be essentialy powerful skills available to all adventurers?

All valid questions to tehm's mind, all questions for which he had no answers. Trying his best to articulate the torrent of questions, tehm spoke to the assassin quietly.

"Yeah, I'd worked at least that part out. I don't have any active skills at all so the only way I can fight is just to punch things--same as I would in the old world. But then, this is a game... my character has a definite attack speed. What happens if I punch faster than that? Elder Tales was never exactly a twitch game, ya know?"

"What I was really wondering about were some of the other implications of this being a game. I think I'm the same guy here as I was on earth, but then, my character's mental scores are quite low--have I become dumber?. Are mage classes all geniuses that will gradually level up their intelligence and take over the world?"

Word Count: 371

Made by Sifr of GS, Synesthesia and Adoxography.