orain | closed/aion

[Empyrean]

And so he found himself alone. For all intents and purposes, there was nothing around him—nothing especially worthy of classification—but perhaps that was what made it a comely view in the first place? A clear stretch of land, grass, and in the distance, a rise of mountains; these were the things that caught his eye. Immediately, he compared the sight to his memory, committed to finding some explanation as to why in the hell he was suddenly standing in a place, wearing what would be mock clothing of samurai, and carrying—well—what seemed to be a dingy samurai sword itself.   「…Why?」   Yes, indeed, “why.” This resonated clearly in his head—there was utterly no reason for him to be where he was; after all, he was just in his dormroom moments ago, and without a Planck second of difference, he was here. It was really quite clear what was going on. Vividly clear, in fact; he was teleported to some fantasy land bullshit with little to no knowhow on what caused such a thing.   And, that in itself was frustrating. Especially to him, who sought out nothing more than pure, unadulterated “explanation” itself, he was nigh infuriated that he was here without knowledgeable cause. I say nigh due to the fact that, well, he is an adult, who knows how to maintain himself.   Becoming hot-headed at the first instance of inability to understand would make him less of a man than he considered himself, and he would not have that. Thus, it was easy for him to take a quick look around, and immediately he noted the heads-up display almost mounted in the air, akin to an augmented reality concept he was half-heartedly interested in. With a few seconds of browsing through it, he came to a conclusion.   「…Damn Elder Tale. This? This is seriously what’s happening right now? This is some crappy, two-bit light novel bullshit. This has literally been done—dozens of times. Out of all the goddamn scenarios to be borne into a supernatural world with—this? Really?」   Complaints. Very—very irritated complaints. He got it fairly quickly. He was in that Elder Tale game he had bought on a whim. The menus were similar to the few screenshots that he had seen from Japanese locales. Navigation was similar to what he had read on the manual—yes, he was one of those people that read the manual for every game, don’t judge. He was just always intent on understanding, and perhaps there was hidden gems in said manual. One wouldn’t know such until they played.   In any case, it seemed that his voice had brought attention to his person from a few mobs that just so happened to be in the area. Inquisitive little buggers, these were the most common enemy one could think of in an RPG—slimes. And, just as they were common, it was easy to defeat them. So easy, in fact, that slaying them would bear no consequences—consciously, in a sense.   With a few steps back, he had moved the sword’s placement on his back to allow the grip to be pulled out from his waist. This was the best way to unsheathe such a long weapon—moving a scabbard to the back was only for formal usage, and for long distance journeys without much violence at hand. He knew this, as he was always skeptical on the form—and skeptical not just on the form, but on everything as a whole.   As such, he questioned his ability to fight. He was a good visual learner, and he spent a few moments backing away from the oncoming slimes—of which were seven large ones or so, likely habitually splitting whenever taking damage—to navigate his menu, noting the fact that there was an auto-attack feature available. Immediately selecting it to gauge its efficacy, he allowed the system to take control of his body.   A step forward, and a forward down slash. The nodachi split the slime in two; quite literally, as its form became faster, smaller, and double in number.   「Pain in the ass, fighting these.」   Speaking to himself, he took note of the two-second delay before the auto-attack functioned once more. He thought it would be simple to just do this a few times and let his body get a feel for fighting, so he didn’t much care for how efficient it was going to be. After all, he had absolutely no practice in swordplay before this; most of his muscle mass came from doing odd jobs like moving or hours in the mechanics’ shop.   In any case, he began to fight, sweat beading on his forehead, and with that, entered his first battle within Elder Tale. Empyrean versus the seven slimes, a tale to be told for centuries upon centuries.

最高天

HAMAIKA in spite of or in defiance of the whole of existence he wills to be himself with it, to take it along, almost defying his torment.

⌔

[Aion]

Another player had found themselves in the game. It was clear, yet another hapless soul spawned in and just began feeling out a sense of the drudgery they are sure to meet with when they first place their now digital eyes on a living bacon or a jelly byproduct. Of course, it was meant the boars and slimes of the field, with naught to say for the rabbits that loved to give a player the runaround if that was all they found. It was still faint in the afternoon, just about 1PM server time or thereabouts, simulated temperature in the mid-eighties, weather was clear and would stay that way for the next six hours. Aion was to the south of the spawn, having once again wandered far out of town and with no true plan for being where he was.

A walk, that was the initial thought, but it was nine when that was considered. Since then, he spent an hour kiting boars, subsequently getting out of range, helping adventurers with their quests he was in the vicinity of, and laughing at the deaths of the new spawns. All of that was getting trite and rather boring now and he would have loved to go right back if he only knew where that was. He wasn't great with a map, never was, back in Greece he used GPS to navigate wherever there was a need to. If it wasn't to return home, he would have different odds of getting lost, all of them high, all variable. There was (Return), but stubborn as he was, he would wait until dusk before giving up. From where he was, it would be one-hundred and five paces to where this adventurer and his band of merry slimes were engaged in marmalade wars, with dollops of jello pudding flying to and fro, gracing the blades of grass with afternoon dew. Sticky, oozy, disgusting, maudlin dew which will scorch the grass in five seconds flat and leave a patch of dirt as black as night, but dew nonetheless. Awkward as the youth, or  at least what seemed to be a young man (on which he wasn't entirely sure on this matter, he always guessed male first if they were flat-chested) was fighting, the youth at least seemed keen and fleet of foot.

[Doesn't look like there'd be a casualty anytime soon. Had my fill of laughs for the day a'ways. All right, time to help the youngster...] 

With a spring, he came out of the brush, and with large strides closed the distance, within fifteen seconds he was within twenty feet of the youth, and a few more of the slimes. Enmity was all on the enigma in front of the band, the argent-haired samurai with an amusingly still perplexed countenance, his sword having the same contempt of thought as its wielder, at a swipe appearing to swear at the slimes with words only cut wind sing. With all intention to startle, Aion spoke with some difficulty, again fumbling around his English around an accent even the engine couldn't account for, ragged and hoarse,  "You've quite the kite there. How about we divide the workload, lest you fall upon even more."

He didn't deem it fit to introduce himself, nor make much of a platitude, just stated his business. Besides, the youngster was already engaged in battle and more speaking would keep alerting mobs to their presence. That was how the other players all got knocked out anyway, by making such a fuss that the mobs took the liberty of putting the weak out of their misery. A hoard overwhelming in the desire just to the have offending player shut their mouth. If they had emotions, relief once the last point of HP would have been theirs. All that was needed now was for the youngster to accept the help. Aion already had a will to start stabbing the slimes with all of his pent up frustrations from being lost, and more so that of just truly hating all things slime.      

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❖ nox ❖

[Empyrean]

I feel hot and heavy. Not used to the weight of armor, nor used to the feeling of gripping a handle, it’s all I can do to rely on the “system” of this game-like reality in order to push me further. I’m fighting slimes. The weakest possible thing. In any sort of game. Shouldn’t I be better than this? Questioning myself, I strike once more, with skill preceding myself, due to the auto-attack function that I had selected. I was a bit miffed at how there was a two second delay before it queued up an attack again, the animation time taking severely longer than it would if I had tried hitting the damn things myself, but nevertheless, it was functional. I doubt I’d be able to maintain myself for long periods of time. I can already feel myself getting sore from this, after all. With the auto-attack, at least it guides my hand. Hopefully, muscle memory will kick in and I’ll get the hang of this “fighting” thing before the day ends. I can already tell. I’m gonna be doing a lot of that here. Having glanced at the “menu,” or whatever you’d call it (hovering data screen of magic?), I could gauge that my class was the same as the one I had chosen for my character before downloading the updated patch thing. And the world was the same as the one I had read in the guidebook—this area had to be the “Greatwood” area, or what have you. Thus, I assumed that… I was stuck into a cliché setting not unlike some bullshit like Sword Art Online or .hack. Some old, over-done setting that’s been played out tens, hundreds of times. I felt almost abhorrent at being pulled into something so mediocre. Though, if given proper thought, I guess this wasn’t too bad. If we’re gonna be talking metaphors, this is “every otaku’s dream”—right? Not that I’m anything of the sort. Japan’s admirable, but nothing such as fanaticism for my country really gets to me. So why would I have that much respect for a country I don’t even know? Or, rather, that I don’t even know much about. Either way, the point is that I don’t feel much patriotism for anywhere, especially not a country halfway around the world. Not that it matters. Despite the Half-Gaia project in Elder Tale recreating the world at half its size, this isn’t the “earth” that I once knew. Whenever I’m within the downtime of readying for another attack, I take glances at the menu, looking for more and more affirmations that this is a game world. Game world. What a silly idea. This is just reality with a few special rules. Anyway, after getting a slime chucked off of my leg, I notice that there’s a new arrival nearby—and a lot less green, apparent by the entire lack of slime on him. With my lower body drenched in thick, wet goop, I must look pretty silly, but I don’t care. His words weigh on my mind, heavily. Though I’ve been doing well up until now, I’ve slowly had my HP lowered. My breathing’s gotten heavier than before. It feels unseemly unnatural. It really feel forced upon me like some sort of disease. I shouldn’t be this tired, but I am. So I guess it’s because of having my HP dropped down to nearly half. Having thought that, I— 「Yeah, sure. Take care of these last ones, I’m gonna go in deeper after that. Gotta see how far I can go, y’know. But I’m already lower health. Have any pots? That’d help. Name’s, uh. Empyrean, I guess.」 How strange it feels, taking the alias of the protagonist of my caretaker’s novels. It feels awkward introducing myself as such, but it can’t be helped. I was surprised when the name was free, and I happily took it, only to be teleported in here. I guess I’m taking this well, for an all-out transformation of my reality. 「Take care, then.」 And with a few words, I jumped up with a strength I didn’t know I had, and landed on a tree branch not too high up. I simply wanted to test the passive first level skill of the Acrobat, but this is a lot…I’m almost infatuated with the exhilaration of being able to move this well. Anyway, I sit down, cross-legged, and do my best to wait for my HP regen to start kicking in. Hopefully he handles that situation down there with ease.

最高天

HAMAIKA in spite of or in defiance of the whole of existence he wills to be himself with it, to take it along, almost defying his torment.

⌔

[Aion]

Scorched earth, thus was the field ahead of him or rather what it already seemed like to Aion and for that matter what will be. Yet, the other definition of this can apply itself to where the porous slimes were gliding on. The grass became infused with their diseased ooze which lent itself to frequently burning patches in the grass much like urine would from more vertebrate creatures. Aion wanted to respond to Empyrean but the acrobat found himself up from a tree and to take his attention off his newfound quarry he asked for, would be repaid with a gratuitous loss of hit points for no good reason. He knew only of this subclass by observing the reach of Empyrean's jump to his new perch, the length crossed was inference enough. The slimes, now disoriented due to having lost their former target were primed for Aion just as he liked them, unassuming and unawares.

A short step across the field soon after readjusting his focus toward the marmalade band of goo, and he attracted a particularly hideous blob of slime toward him. Aion decided to take only a few at a time, bemoaning the auto-attack speed he wished he had much more control over, desiring ever increasing swipes at the contemptible slime. The matter he saw most evident with Empyrean was in the awkward manner of which he was handling the slimes, taking what may have been just over the amount a player should pull no matter how weak the mob. This led Aion to take a more varied approach, taking individual groups of no more than two whilst kiting the others behind. Whenever one decided to take the forefront and replace one of the wounded, he would simply begin attacking it as it appeared. Thus, with time, four or so minutes into the ordeal, all of the slimes were taking moderate but consistent damage with only a few scratches on Aion for what it was worth.

What bothered Aion more about the scene was how much disgust he felt for the slimes themselves. As slowly as he took this, he couldn't help but just pop his ace move if only just to speed up the process and get back to the fork in the road he found an hour ago. It was that road which placed him here in the first place, even though it was on him that he followed it. Being lost was conducive for lessening one's interpretation of what was true error and what was circumstantial and Aion's met with much of the latter throughout the day. For most it would be hard to believe how one could miss such a large town but if we're to be honest regarding how this came to be, in fairness, he was facing where naught but arbor and hedge could be seen for the forest. Even still, above the slimes and over the horizon it was still hard to see Londinum for where the forest was. It came to Aion that after such a trifle as the murder of slimes concluded, it was time for him to follow Empyrean back whence he came to at least get some sense of direction back for the time being. Whenever such a time as he was caught following, he would simply express an apology, head off, and be all the better for being any closer to town than he was now.

For now, as it were, he was still slashing away at slime as if time was only an essence of spice and not actually something that changes seasons and ages beyond. If Empyrean was paying attention, it could have been in a lull, about to find himself in the deep embrace of sleep as slow as Aion decided to whittle down the slimes. The temperature, the weight of his armor, and the effort it takes to continually swing the sword all entered into account for his pace being as it was. Having noted the former combatant being close to half health when the switch was made, it was only fair for this to be so. Their levels were identical and Aion took great care not to say anything about how Empyrean was faring after what occurred with Narihama and himself then, when he felt much more flippant before learning how limited one was in combat.

The urge, the surging desire for the ace move became more evident every passing moment. It was a shame to him that his ace move was a single target move and having brought the slimes down to the forties, he started to think of ways to pull it off. If he could line them up in a row, perhaps in a swipe, they would all go down right as it ended. No more, just one clean and effective dash through them all and he can get moving. Yet, a glance into the description disheartened him and he quickly gave up this pursuit. Only his expressions helped guide any onlookers, if they were still paying attention into his current state of mind. He made no utterance, no cries, not even a sigh as he kept dwindling down the hit points of the slimes steadily.

Aion came close to entering the forest with how far back he kited the slimes at this point, now fewer in number. To curve them around was a pain due to the fact he would have to wrap them around the trees and back toward him in a semi-circle back into the field. The slimes however were not as submissive to these advances and started lunging at Aion finding a gap in his attacking patterns. They were dimwitted creatures for certain but even they had strategies they used against adventurers, lunging in such a suicidal way was but one of them. This aided Aion immensely as he brought three of them back to the open field. A fourth was subsequently lost due to its disengaging from Aion during this due to its distance from him and was lost to the fray from hereon.

Getting increasingly tired even with such a plan, he decided to finally pop his ace move, dart across and bludgeon a slime to its death leaving but two. His cool-down was a bother in which he finally took some more damage, leaving him at ninety-two percent all accounted for. Still, it was at this time, that Aion figured he'd taken much too long with this battle and decided to stand firm, as there was no longer that many mobs that needed kiting. Taking a more direct approach, these slimes, haggard as they were soon fell. With this, Aion began to sit down, in a lotus position and placed his no-dachi back into its scabbard, content with taking a break, not even focusing on whether or not Empyrean was still there.

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❖ nox ❖

[Empyrean]

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Wahrheit gibt kurzen Bescheid, Luege macht viel Redens. Aion

Beyond the proverbial masses' standard capacity of thinking, I push my mind to take detailed notes of circumstances. Just as the first few weeks of a hunting dog's life are key moments in training it for its future life, these first few hours of acclimating to a reality with a new set of rules are going to be crucial.

How I treat this, how I understand this, how I live this - all of it will depend on my actions in the present. Of course, that isn't to say my entire life - or anyone's lives - isn't dependent on their past, but regardless the intensity of the situation is far greater in this sort of displacement than with any other.

...Despite that thought, "intense" isn't exactly the way to describe what my current position might seem like. Sitting atop a branch, enjoying the scenery, gazing off into horizon - this could be considered an even favorable circumstance.

But everything isn't as it seems - the difference between me and someone who might be relaxing is that I haven't stoppped thinking. This entire time, I've been gauging the rate of my healing, the skills that I have at my disposal, and maintaining the most reliable stance on my defensible position.

Rather than playing the sheep, I am consciously aware of just how dissonant I might become with the world if I treat this as some sort of game. I break down on my sense of reality and latch onto it like an ice-climber desperate to get a hold.

There's no time to waste dawdling over the elements of fantasy in this place. It's all little more than a shift in tone, as it were. Like a storybook - no, I can't use metaphors like that. It'll mess with my head and get in the way of any proper understanding.

Be as literal as possible.

At least, that way, I'll be sure to not create any misunderstandings with what I mean. Hopefully, at least. Talking to this person now that he's finished his business is the first step in that. While I leap down, taking care not to jump too high, I think about what I could say to him. Possibly something about how experienced he is with the mechanics?

What I find interesting is that, for all the passion you'd expect from someone fighting like that - fighting faceless enemies, even - this guy seems to have none of that, and even borders the boundaries of disgust. Hell, to describe his face while he was hacking away would be to describe that of someone being forced to dissect a frog for the first time.

Regardless, having been tired out somehow by staring at his attacks, I take a deep breath before opening my left eye, the other being covered by my hair at this point. He seemed to be in good shape, for all intents and purposes. He didn't look like he had come out of any sort of epic battle, but his health had been taken down a bit. Still, being able to walk all the way over here meant he was in proper spirits to remember their short conversation.

Watching him as he sat down, I jog over with a bit of curiosity, and kneel next to him. He'll be back to full health in a while. But in the meantime, I can question his technique, and practice the speech pattern I'd been running through my head while I decided how to act in this world.

❝I was watching your battle. You fought better than I had, beforehand. I believe we can get along in the future, due to our similar classes. If you consider that to be true, would you like to partake in further fighting?❞

OWL