One of those days... [SOLO]

[Nisha]

Nisha hung from a tree. Well, that about summed it up what was happening, she thought to herself and wondered how long her tails would endure this kind of abuse. She had lately gone out and bought a brush for them and was taking good care of them, but it did not really make up for her hanging upside down from a tree, while her tails were slowly sliding since even with four of them they were not really supporting Nisha´s weight. And that even though she had chosen a very slender character and could not weight all too much. Well, since she had started, she had had barely any progress on this, but she still hoped for something. The thing was that she wanted her tails to be more than just acoutrements that were generally in the way, though very fluffy and nice to look at, they usually had to disappear once she entered battle since enemies were not too stupid to just ignore those new hitboxes sadly. In her opinion there had to be some sort of reason that foxtails had these and the power to let them vanish at will. Hell, once she let them and her ears vanish, you could say that she became a totally different person from appearance only. Sure, she had not tried it yet, since she was indecisive what her name would be once she took on another form and since she was sure that people other than her had the hud wide open and were using it quite much. Nisha hated that, she loved the immersion she had now, she could even feel all that was going on with her body, when it got hungry, she had felt cold, she had felt too hot, she had felt bored and most of all she had often felt curious and laughed about many things.

Which made her naturally wonder if people who were not as immersed as herself could even imagine this kind of feeling she got from some things. The only thing that could annoy her from time to time, Nisha pulled herself a bit up so as to not slip in the next few seconds with her hands, stabilizing herself on the branch again, was when people did not give their names for whatever reason, but mainly she guessed because they thought Nisha could see them. Well, she could not, she had actually gone and dis-x´d the choice of showing health bars, names and all the likes, leaving the least amount of information on her screen as possible. The life bar of herself on the lower end of her screen, since that was important, a friend list button on the upper right side, followed by icons for her inventory, the settings and her skills. That was about the amount of buttons she could stand on her screen, pardon, in her sight. Since the apocalypse happened, most things had to be done manually, just like she could not just press a button on her keyboard anymore. Sure it worked with slight directed movements or thoughts just as well if not better, but to sort your thoughts or to just find out what movements to make was already a challenge. Sure, one she had mastered in the end and she was pretty sure, that eighty percent of the time she actually got the system to do what she wanted to without putting much thought into it. It really reminded her of how dothack had started out, well minus the consciousness fading if you died in the game with a certain chance to die in the end. Nothing of that here, not that Nisha was about to try it out, as long as she could stay alive the better. If it did happen, well, there was nothing she would be able to do about it and since it had no downsides aside from losing some exp, which were easily reacquired with her daily training, she would not cry or despair about it as well. Hopefully that was really what was going to happen if it happened to her.

Feeling her tails slide again, the bark of the branch she was on uncomfortably cutting into her tails, she decided it was enough for today. After all, her enjoyment had just ended as well. It was unusually early for Nisha to be awake actually, but to her wonder and bewilderment, she had been awoken by the sound of blades and magic being used and monsters squeaking and attacking as well. She had rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and looked down from her seat up there in the tree, a safe distance from the group of monsters as well as the players they were attacking. At first Nisha had wondered why they had even attacked the group, but then it had become clear. An escort mission, a lander girl was leaning on the tree Nisha had slept on and was shield from all sides by eagerly protecting adventurers. Nisha had not seen her at first, but after jumping and climbing down a little, her blindspot had been lifted and Nisha had pulled up through the leaves again, just in time to not draw the aggro of the monsters just by being there. She was most likely quite some levels above them by now, but she did not feel very nice or good, so she would let them deal with the horde of monsters. Maybe if no one was left, she would jump in and rescue the lander at least, seeing how Nisha had yet to take an escort mission. But it was soon clear that the adventurers could handle themselves, so while waiting for them to leave, she had gone and started her training ahead of time. Sleeping was out of the questions now that she was already awake and there was still the fight going on down below. Since she had also already done her tail training exercise there was not really a need for more sleep anyway. If anything she was feeling refreshed now and ready to do something interesting or challenging to have some fun.

Looking down she wondered how long it might still take until she could come down since the second she got down from the tree, she would most likely draw the aggro of everything that was around and create a chaos that would most likely screw over the battle plans of the group down below. Sighing she wondered if this made her a side character by just standing by like this? Seeing that the mobs were slowly respawning, Nisha wondered if she should train a little more while waiting. Breathing in, she concentrated and activated her skill ikusanehan. It was one of the more passive skills of a samurai and in Nisha´s eyes perfect when used with iaido and one of the stronger skills, it should most of the times be a surefire way to do massive damage or even end a battle in just one offensive skill, since it raised both defense as well as strength by quite an amount and tripling that, since it could be stacked up to three times, gave a good amount of power, even with a normal slash. Feeling the power flow through her, she looked down and saw that the first adventurer had given up already or at least was resting behind the others. Some kind of magic class by the look of it. Usually that happened once they used up their mana, sure it would regenerate, but it could take a little while until it was finished. Also, he seemed to be low on health, as everytime a monster got close to the barricade of the other players and they had to take action he was nervously shaking, the lander girl in front of him must be scared quite badly by now. Nisha could only see her from above, but she had the usual scared pose already, her hands over her head and sitting with her knees in front of her. It would most likely scar her if this went wrong, even if Nisha went to help her once the party would be wiped out.

Nisha in the meantime activated her ikusanehan again and felt the power surge once more, this time a bit more clearly, the one before, it had just been like an echo of power, but now Nisha felt like there was power vibrating off of her skin. Putting a hand on her skin to test it, she could not feel anything, even though, no, it was just her mind playing tricks with her. Looking back down, she saw a samurai like her being pushed back from the frontline by a boar that had rushed at him and only with two people, they were able to help him and drive off the boar. Slowly but surely, Nisha began to wonder if it would be any fun or interesting to jump in to help them. She did not really feel like interacting with people today and the idea of helping the lander was already as much as she thought she would be able to do without starting to get overly annoyed. Maybe there was a way out though. Standing up on the branch she had sat on, she walked away from the trunk of the tree and looked at how the rows were build. The group of adventurers had three tanks, all in the front row, a healer and two mages, both of which seemed to be out of juice, the healer could not keep up with the damage and the tanks did not do enough damage to kill the enemies coming at them anymore. Most likely they had either entered cooldown of their skills or knew that the next time they used a skill with a long casting or animation time they would be overrun. It was a helpless situation to be totally honest. There was no way out, they had most likely built up too much aggro and were pulling even passive mobs now, slimes and boars and what not and they did not have the strength to kill their way out. And apparently they were not smart enough to climb the tree until their aggro went down. Well, there was still the option of one of them sacrificing themself, but that did not even cross Nisha´s mind. If it had been her down there, they had not even gotten this far into the mud. Nisha had taken the quest objective, the lander girl and would have run like the devil to wherever they were supposed to take her. She would definitely not have let it happen that such a stand off had happened.

Nisha was still not convinced if she should help them until she heard a weird rumble she had not heard before. It was definitely not the earth that was rumbling like this. In preparation to whatever may appear, Nisha activated her strengthening skill a third time, deciding she would most likely need to use it. If it was what she thought it was, it would still be some level below her, but definitely too much for anything the party down below could handle, ranging somewhere in the twentieth level category. This would also be her first time using that one skill. Grinning she wondered how it would feel like. And there it was, breaking out of the thicket. It was one of the stronger monsters in the beastiary. Counted as an elite and most likely about five level higher than what it level would give away. A small panic was created down below as some of the monsters just ran off, some focused at the newcomer and some still attacking as if nothing was wrong, but they were only slimes and those mostly did not care for anything. What it was? A treant, one of those tree like beings, like treebeard from lotr or that one from those galaxy defender movie. Just that this one was angry and out for blood, that of the adventurer in front of him, even though they were of a much lower level. Nisha wondered how she could appear now without looking like either a total douche for not helping earlier or having to appear like a hero. Nisha decided not to worry about it and just roll with it, but not wait until the group was half wiped out, that would be just too much of a show off. Jumping in front of the treant, she gripped her new katana tightly, about to test out scar for the first time. Her katana that had been forged by another player that was about the highest leveled player she knew of so far. Sure there had to be higher players around, but Nisha had not met them yet and wondered if they would even interact with other people or try to get to that illusive level one hundred. After all the cap had been opened up to there and even if it was extremely difficult and grindy... She just knew that some people would try to get there first and would not stop until they reached there and had she not met a player in london before who had avoided contact with others after the apocalypse and to whom Nisha had been the first he had seen since then, he had not even known that the chef class had become awesome lately and it had been adorable with how he had reacted. Maybe she should call him up after the fight and go train with him.

Words: 2263
Tags: None
Weapon: Nishan(Scar)
Armor: Nishanat (Daybreak)
Accessoires: Nishani (Keepsake)

[Nisha]

But level 100, huh? It seemed a foolish thing to even attempt, Nisha was pretty fine with being in the average level class, made it much easier to walk around. No one was pestering you to help them train usually and no one wanted to train you out of false nicety. Sighing, she sheathed her sword and looked around, observing the enemy and wondering what it would do next. The situation was pretty dire for the folks behind Nisha and once again she wondered why she had even interfered, if she had just waited until they were all dead, she would not have had to think about what to say or how to act around them. She was no hero and she did not want to be, she hated heroes, they could all die in a fire if it was up to Nisha. Taking all their arrogance and weird selfconfidence with them and making sure the flames burned a little brighter so everyone got some warmth. At least that much they could do for everyone. It was not that Nisha really hated heroes, it was just the fact that heroes always had to follow rules and people who called themself heroes were quite often arrogant whiny bitches who could not stop thinking about how to get praise and or favors. Ridiculous how often people fell for that kind of thing as well. And yes, it was quite the predicament that Nisha now had to decide to either give the people behind her hope by saying something and looking like she had waited until the right moment or if she would not say anything and just do her thing, vanish and let people tell the story. But even that was no good in her mind since it still involved her having to deal with people walking up to her maybe and asking for her help. She did not mind helping and often did so, but she would rather offer help herself than be asked for it, it made the whole prospect of helping someone kind of moot and stale if they had to search for someone to help them. If everyone helped someone else at least once a day, the world would not need heroes or unwilling helpers, people roped into the little policies that other people came up with, pushing their ideals on someone else and being disturbed by it if they don´t hold them up the way they wanted.

Yep, Nisha judged both sides equally guilty, the ones enjoying being a hero or actively trying to and those in need of help and hoping for a hero to appear and make the problems go away. Sighing, Nisha decided to finish this quickly if possible to avoid any kind of talking right away and just as she heard someone gasp behind her, she jumped backwards and up, digging her shoes into the bark of the tree and flying off off it like a rubber band loosened after holding something precarious together. Her sword slicing once again at the treant and cutting a u into the air and through the vines wrapped around it´s body, chipping away at it´s health and pulling it´s aggro to her, slowly using her skills to do more damage. A slice of air flew at the tree as soon as Nisha landed, doing a spin in the air to make the wind blade move a bit faster and to twirl as she landed to take away the impact, sliding to a halt a few feet off. Barely avoiding the branches that were big enough to be troll hands, surely there were better things it could do than to wildly flail at her. Maybe some sewing or garden working? Finding herself flat on the ground after evading the branches and occasional whipping vine, Nisha rolled over a little to stand up and not be buried beneath the suddenly moving stump of the treant. It was a bit too fast to be called slow as a tree, but then again, the lore said that treants were just very very old people who came to die in the forest and became one with it. And Nisha knew from her family that the old people sometimes are the fastest and wittiest around. Breathing in after getting hit with what seemed to be an in between of foot and hand and had been catapulted away. Right in the middle of the merry, or rather not so merry group, one of them was still about to die, one of them was acting like he was dying and two girls were freaking out. Sheesh, this party was done for one way or another it seemed. Even if no one died, they had seen the worst of each other and had been in a hopeless situation, they would break up soon enough and move into new groups, because just looking at the people in this group would remind them of their failure from this day.

And that was something only somewhat strong willed people could really take and not hold against others and none of these even remotely looked like that. A motely crew of colors and overpowering emotions on their faces, most of them acted and Nisha did not want to guess what they were really hiding. Rushing at the enemy once again, she decided to not care about them anymore and just do her thing, even though she was barely getting hurt, the physics of the game were pushing her around a little. Dodging or trying to dodge most of the punches and vines trying to entangle her, she sliced through what seemed to be the equivalent of a forest before she finally reached what seemed to be the core. Now it looked less like a tree and more like a tall man with wood for skin and it had been getting faster too. But Nisha had been cutting at it´s legs to slow it down, making it more difficult for it and forcing it to make mistakes and leave itself open to protect it´s legs. If this was not a game, Nisha would feel pity, maybe, but it was and so she mercilessly slashed and cut at the enemy. But all in all, she had to say this had been one of the more interesting enemies, maybe it was time to take on elite creatures more often. Maybe even as to prepare herself for bosses, that would be even more interesting. But the prospect of having to party up with other people was not really. A predicament, maybe she really needed to get herself a group she could trust, there were definitely people she could think of, but she doubted they were not already in at least another group. Being a loner did not always pay off, even though it was definitely how Nisha liked it. Well, she just needed to get stronger and everything would work out. After all, here she was taking on an elite by herself and she had barely hit three quarters of her health without even needing to care much about her health. Jumping away from the enemy, she prepared for her new favorite attack, the golden finger still working it´s way through the enemy. Ah, she really liked how it looked and how it was good to keep any enemy at bay if they did not want continous damage from a third strike skill of a samurai, in short, it hurt. Sighing, she went through the preparation for the fourth chain skill...

Words: 1257
Tags: Noone
Weapon: Nishan(Scar)
Armor: Nishanat (Daybreak)
Accessoires: Nishani (Keepsake)