21: STRESS TO CAMPAIGN
//
4:54 A.M. // 10 - 25 - 2023 // Arc - Housing District
Starring Dean Harvest
Featuring ???, Leslie, Fanny, Avil Daniase, Aythe Siena and Ben Roswell
//
I sat in silence. The voice of Dean in my head was gone now.
The torment was finally over.
…
I tiredly kicked my legs out to push the chair back. Standing up shakily I hobbled back to my bed, and then collapsed into it, the light from the lamp still on and vibrantly illuminating the ceiling above. Reaching almost desperately for the watch on the nightstand, I quickly pulled it to my chest and let out a large breath.
With one finger, I double tapped the watch’s screen, and it came to life in a dim night-mode hologram in front of my face. I opened my contact numbers. Nanna was still the latest one from eight days ago. The watch began to buzz as I pressed the call button and closed my eyes.
—bzzz…
—bzzz…
The sounds of birds chirping outside perked my ears.
—bzzz…
She picked up.
“Hello?”
A warm feeling spread in my chest. Recognition.
“Morn’n, Nanna.”
My—Dean’s grandma’s voice responded almost instantly. “Auugh, Dean, why haven’tcha called me and Pappy sooner? I swear, he’s been missing you every day you don’t call. How a’you, son?”
“I’m fine, Nanna, but it’s because I’ve been drowning in a bid'ah work here. How are you?” The subtle but diluted Aussie accent came to me easily. But compared to my grandma’s stretched and old vocal chords, I was a full American.
“Sonny, I know you already,” she disregarded my question, “If you start that lying baloney again, I’m gonna send your boots to the moon, you hear me, you?”
I chuckled.
“Who am I kidding, your Ma would go baloney on me herself if I ever did that to you. I’m getting along fine, don’t you go worrying about me. And your Ma, I’m sitting next to her right now—”
“Nanna, can I please talk to her?” A sudden urge in my gut that wasn’t mine, but my voice could barely vocalize what I was feeling. I was exhausted. “Nanna—”
“You know what your Ma is like roight now. That s*** in Australia was real bad for her, and your Daddy isn’t doing much better himself. They been talking to themselves a little lately, and their comas are a little longer, but that’s okay. The doctor says that they are recovering, soo I expect them to be up and about again when you come back home. Alrighty, son? Don’t you worry about us.”
“Nanna…”
I didn’t believe her. I was worried.
“Okay. Okay, Nanna.” My words were coming out in whispers.
“And Dean, stay healthy. I know you and your plants, but you gotta spare a moment for yourself too. If ya’do, I’ll make you a pie when you come home, alroight? And be safe! That, yes, be very safe.”
I thought for a second. “Nanna, I’m doing good here as well. Nothing is going on, and my grades are also pretty good—”
“Good on ya! But I don’t care about your grades, son? Only that you haven’t lost a kilo, and maybe put on half, and your job pays well, and you become strong. Grades, they’re good, but they mean s*** to me. Haha, mine never were so good like yours. Ain’t that right, Ma?”
“Ma? Oh, is she awake?”
“Nah, haha! I’m messing with you! She’s sleeping like a stone, your Ma hasn’t said a word in a full day. Your Pa’s snortin’ like a hog in his nappy, though. I’m still buggered after he woke up yesterday and demanded a pasta, and I made him the best damn pasta your Nanna knows how to make. Ohh, I interrupted you. Keep going son, keep talking to me.”
“… yeah. I’ll keep going.”
The call didn’t end until the sunlight crept onto the edge of the windowsill flower pot; there was a little smile on the corner of my lips the whole time.
…
Leslie exclaimed, “Only 5 hours? Seriously, no way! Those hours you missed are really gonna bite you soon.”
Fanny’s muffled voice grew as they approached me from around the corner, “I… yeah, I can’t believe that Serene actually shot at... no, I should stop thinking about it—”
“Then sleep.” Leslie grunted as she set down a large pot beside me as I tended to the budding mangetout flowers. “You should also rest more, Dean. Like, take a break man. You’ve been here for 4-ish hours the past two days, and now you’re running on 3.” The beige denim gardening overalls looked really cute on her. “What do you even do here? It’s 5 P.M., for God’s sake. There’s only so many plants you can breed together, and only so many variations. Right, Fanny?”
I firmly gripped my hand around the base of the stem, my palms inside the glove were sweaty. Fanny cleared her throat with a curt nod. “Yeah, yeah, but why are you wearing a hat inside, Leslie?”
The blond girl pulled at her stringy and curly hair piling beneath the broad brown hat, stopping to fuss over its shape for a second. “I mean, I think the hat looks nice on me, no?”
She brushed past me and brazenly posed in a cutesy kind of way. “How do I look?”
Fanny’s lips parted slightly at the edges, her eyes crimping into smile lines. “Cute! Your boots look so nice, where did you get them? And—”
“Umm,” I thoughtfully interjected, “in my opinion, you look… cool. Yeah, cool.” I turned away, a warm feeling on my cheek. I meant to say pretty.
“Ahaha! Ahahaha…!”
The sound of Leslie’s sudden waterfall laughter behind me sent a torrent of emotional damage tunneling through my chest and heart. “Ahhh…!!” She snorted again as she tried to calm herself, and Fanny was laughing a bit too. “Ahh… No, I’m so sorry for laughing, but thanks for speaking your mind, Dean! I’ve never heard anyone really compliment me like that—”
“And it’s cute, no?” Fanny added, her high voice was strained to resist another round of laughter. “Dean, what do you think about Leslie?”
My face heated up again, and I knew my circumstance. I had seen the color of my friend’s friend’s face the day he asked out a girl. How hard was I blushing, and how fast was my heart beating? I blocked my face off with my gloved hands in an X in front of me as Fanny giggled deliriously again. She sounded so much less burdened than before.
But I really didn’t want her to see my—
—thump thump thump thump
Out of the corner of my eye she peered around the edges of my gloves, tucking a stray strand of her pretty marigold hair behind her ear. Leslie’s dazzling but slightly bashful smile was going to be the end of my heart.
“So cute.”
I opened my mouth to say something, anything to stop me from looking like an incompetent fool, but no sound came out. My head was in emergency mode, alarms were blaring, each and every slideshow had an image of Leslie, one perfect picture for each and every day she visited me in the greenhouse.
“Hey, Dean. Don’t worry about Fanny, she’s just messing with you,” Leslie said reassuringly, and I nodded dumbly in response.
“U-um, mmm. Uh huh.”
The girls erupted into fits of laughter again, and my humiliation meter was boiling over. Leslie leaned into Fanny for her ear, but her eyes were locked straight on my own through my peeking fingers. Her glinted expression was mixed with a smile that sent another wave of emotions through me.
—thump thump thump thump
“So cute.”
I spoke up with a murmuring voice, “U-uh—”
Leslie pulled back from Fanny’s ear, Fanny herself was grinning widely and gave eyes of sparkly encouragement when we made contact. “I have a really great idea. Let’s all hang out together today!”
“Oh, have I taken you to this one place on Fourth Street?”
My emotions paused for a second, and I hesitated.
“I think so? Are you talking aboooout… the place that specializes in those hot fish shaped things with stuff in the middle?”
“You remembered! Yeah, it’s taiyaki, and also with ice cream.”
========================
Guides(1)//Options:
Answer
Memory
Overtake
Will you use a Guide?
Yes//No
========================
Answer.
========================
Option 1) “Sorry, but I’m really trying to Awaken, so[…]”
Option 2) “Yes, I’ll go, but[…]”
Option 3) “Thanks[…]”
========================
I frowned slightly. The past few Guides I had been using, though few in numbers as I hadn’t been getting any Rewards as of late, had had the ellipses in brackets. And each time I chose them, my Answer would go past what was on the Screen. It was really uncomfortable not knowing what was going to happen next.
But to hell with it.
“Sorry,” I started, lowering my hands from my face. My tone changed to, more serious and just different. “I’m trying to Awaken, so—”
“Wow, you’re so dedicated, Dean!” Leslie interrupted me, and a crushing blow hit my chest again, and the Guide’s control over me was lost.
I was cheated of my Guide.
“But, like, after we get the taiyaki,” she continued, “you’re gonna need a haircut as well. When was the last time you cut your hair? The first time I met you, it was this short, and now, well,” she shook her head rapidly, blowing like a puffer fish, “you get me, right? It’s a whole garden up there, white ‘flowers’ falling from your hair, too!”
I was definitely blushing, not so dense as to confuse what she was saying.
“R-really?” I pulled a glove off and scratched my head. Indeed, my hand dived into a mess of tufts and upturned curls and untempered fluffy pooflets of hair.
Well, of course she was trying to say that I looked better with short hair.
A shiver went through my whole body as she put her hand on my shoulder. Being a little shorter than me, she looked up at me with her cute little grin. “Well, then, let’s go! Don’t worry about points, it’s on me today!”
Like a fool I could only gape.
“Come on!”
…
The noonsky and its winds brought a gentle warmth on my neck as I stepped out of my dorm building down the homey carpeted steps, and I looked into the sun. The little cloud overhead hardly blocked out any of the light, the rays piercing through.
I tore my eyes away, blinking away tears from staring for too long. I then followed the path leading left for a little as a couple students on bikes on the street passed by me at a distance. A couple of them glanced at me, and then towards the gate out into the rest of the campus. I had seen a cyclist path once, a day when I had strayed from the greenhouse for a little while so I could take a breath.
It felt a little inappropriate for me to stop in front of the girls dorm; not even the cheapest one, but the third building after it. If I remembered correctly, the pricing was, for those houses, a whopping 45 point monthly fee on top of an initial cost of 100 to 199 points depending on the dorm chosen. And at that price it wasn’t even a dorm, it was a full on apartment.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I was a little jealous, but I couldn’t do much with the amount I had now. 15 points a month on a 35 point initial fee.
Check the app for a second, yep. 152 points. If I wanted to buy an Ethereal weapon from the arsenal and live comfortably, I was going to need a lot more. My weapon right now, I didn’t feel like it was the right weapon for me, but the shifting properties of an Ethereal weapon could potentially save me. After all, according to everything I read and all of the Memories I had seen of the shows and recordings of monster fighting, weapons made up half of the whole battle. Abilities alone didn’t have nearly as much impact.
My eyes swept over the home page again, and I closed the app after a quick glance at my ranking.
——
1 9 5 1 0 2 2 8 6 7
Dean Harvest | Year 1 | UAH1
Rank 1449 | Rank 7605
Broadsword | Bioscience | Gardening Club
——
A frown involuntarily went across my face. I was so low out of the 8000-ish students that attended Arc in all of the 8 countries combined, and probably even further behind from all of the drop-outs and expulsions. And Arc America wasn’t even the most prestigious ones, as it had the highest population and acceptance rate by a sizable amount compared to somewhere like Arc Korea, or even Arc Russia.
“What were you looking at?” Leslie tapped my chest, and I yelped in surprise. I didn’t even notice her, but now that I did there was no way I could take my eyes off of her. She wore a tufted and flowery white shirt and plain jeans. She had kept on the brim hat, and tipped it up so she could look inquisitively into my eyes. Her blond hair fell around her shoulder elegantly, and to me Leslie looked like someone who had jumped straight from a beautiful painting.
“O-oh!” I awkwardly replied, “Uh… my grades.”
“Which can’t possibly be as bad as mine,” Leslie joked and waved her hand. “Fanny’s probably already at the mall by now. You didn’t have to wait for me, you know?” She teased me.
“No way! Your place looks so nice, though!”
She froze for a second, and then unfroze just as quickly. I didn’t pay much attention though as she began walking ahead of me, turning back with her broad and cute smile on her face.
“Come on, let’s go!”
I had a strange feeling in my gut as the wind whistled past my ear.
…
“That haircut was totally worth my points,” Leslie squealed as we walked out of the barber shop that smelled like shampoo. “What was it again… right, a fringe! But cuz your hair is so wavy, it’s like, so cute!”
Fanny patted me on the back as steam blew off the top of my head. “While you were in there, we got the taiyaki. It’s called Somi Somi if you’re interested, that place is reaaally good. Anyway, we didn’t know what kind of taiyaki or ice cream you wanted cuz, like you weren’t really talking and more just blushing or something, so we got you the custard and cookies-n-cream. You can’t go wrong with those, right?”
Mortally embarrassed, I nodded my head and kept on moving forward. “Thanks a lot, Leslie. And Fanny.”
Compared to Leslie, Fanny was really short, so it didn’t look that weird for her to hop a little in a sort of frenzied excitement. “Look at that, Leslie, he said your name first! That’s so so cute!”
Leslie looked like she was trying her best not to react, but I quivered as we entered the Mall Centre. “Why do you guys keep calling me c-cute? Aren’t I taller than you two…”
The both of them burst out into giggles and giggles, tears of laughter filling their eyes. “Ooooooh Dean, you have no idea how cute you are… Dean?”
Not too far away, there was a small crowd clustering towards the public bulletin board, more people than normal with more noise as if they were watching a spectacle.
In the middle of them was a kid even shorter than Fanny. Their purple-ish hair that stopped below their ears made it hard for me to distinguish whether they were a guy or a girl.
But then the source of what troubled me towards the commotion began jeering again.
“C’mon, someone get this guy a ladder to stand on! Midget s***, if you weren’t so ******* ugly I’d actually believe that you were Cedrance’s accident,” the bully’s hair was an unmistakable peppery gold, he was tall and fit and handsome and the jealousy of all guys and wannabe cool-kids. His gold eyes sparkled with arrogance and hate as everyone began laughing.
To his left, leaning on the creaking bulletin and towering over everyone else almost over the bulletin itself, there was a giant of a man, who to my disgust spit onto the poor kid’s head.
The kid in the center of it all glared at the audience around him as they laughed and crowded in even closer to suffocate him. Words flew like bullets, and I had no clue why. Absolutely no clue why I pushed through the crowd that had no reason to be there, the unreasonable verbal lashes, was the kid in the center really deserving of these words?
“I can’t believe he’s so short.”
“How did someone like this little s*** take my friend’s spot?”
“Aythe is mad at him, so there’s probably a reason why. Yeah, Erica, let’s get on his good side.”
“Pathetic. And for what, a piece of paper? What does it even say?”
I really couldn’t tell what was going on. It all felt so weird, and like there wasn’t any reason for it. A roaring noise as I pushed through came from the giant, “What did you think was going to happen if you messed with us? Peasant.”
“Then I’ll go somewhere else,” the kid, his voice barely distinguishable as a guy, finally said something. “But like, what the actual **** is this cartoony-ahh gang bully bull****? You guys came out of nowhere like ****ing NPCs, you, Ben, and all you extras, go get a life.”
“What did you say, scrub?!” Ben growled dangerously.
—BUUUHK
The whole crowd gasped a noise like a punch and bones cracking boomed through everyone’s ears, and the kid flew and scraped across the ground in a horrible moment. Immediately a bunch of students gathered around him, and two girls lifted his head from the ground. I finally saw him in full view, unblocked by the rest of the crowd as I got close, people dispersing one by one to avoid the violent scene.
“That’s what you ****ing get if you mess with me or Aythe!” Ben yelled barbarically, and then left along with Aythe, who turned back with an unforgivable sneer on his face. He mouthed something that I couldn’t hear, and then turned away.
========================
“I’ll be paying your girlfriend a visit tomorrow. She ****ed up, almost as much as you did.”
========================
“Oh my God, his health is so low…”
“That was only one punch. Why is he even at this school if he can’t take a punch?”
“Erica… alright. I feel sorry, too…”
Before I had a moment to comprehend the screen in front of me, a sudden aura of green healing enveloped the earth below the kid’s head. One of the girls who was tending to him closed her eyes, and a small light radiated from her hand.
A gust of wind blew again, and promptly as I squinted a paper hit me in the face. Annoyed, I pulled it off, and noticed that the paper in the injured boy’s hand was gone now. The crinkles around the edges of the paper indicated that it was grabbed tightly, and there was a bit of a sticky adhesive on the back. It was definitely the boy’s paper, and it was meant to go onto the bulletin.
I turned away from him and to the bulletin, and without needing to reach very far I slapped the paper onto the only open spot at the very top. Being tall was useful.
But then I read the words on the paper, and my head felt like it was stabbed with glass.
[Traveling Club taking more people! Vote Maine on Saturday!]
A screen blurred into reality and positioned itself right in front of my face as I keeled down.
“Dean! Dean, are you okay?” Leslie and Fanny flocked behind me, frantically tapping my back. “Dean?”
But I didn’t hear them. I didn’t see them.
I saw…
========================
‘Dean Harvest’ has been presented with a task:
[Visit your home in Maine]
Penalty for failure:
[Death of family members]
Current task(s): [Protect the family]
========================
The voice in my head screamed.
[‘YOU NEED TO GO.’]
//
2:59 P.M. // 10 - 26 - 2023 // Arc - Training Center
Starring Serene Goldwin
Featuring ???, Rubia and Regan Yglesias
//
“Hello?”
“Hey, Father.” The sounds of training filled the air, sweat and dust and metal. I walked through the field, each metal dummy a person in front hacking and slashing away. The grunts and groans and talking was all but background noise to me. “Did you get what I asked for?”
My airpods made no noise, Father was silent.
“Father, I asked you two days ago.” I said angrily, strutting faster towards the larger reserved section of the vast Training Center. “You can’t seriously tell me you forgot or something?!”
Ahead there was a long white line painted onto the ground. Past that line, there was a lot more dust and destruction, the signs of mana distinct and sound, the cries of effort and toil.
“No, I—Dad didn’t forget, honey.”
“Then give me the goddamn place! I told you I needed it by Saturday!” I pulled the gun out of the belt holster, my finger tight around the trigger as I brought it to my shoulder, careful not to shoot it.
“Serene—”
“No,” I growled, “I’m not visiting the house.”
“Honey, I—”
“Like **** you miss me—”
“SERENE!” Father yelled over the call, and I stopped walking. I was now in the danger zone, a few people not too far away from me sparring with earthen spikes and tendrils.
Earthweaving
Cost: 265 MANA
Cooldown: 7.5 seconds
A- // ??? raises materials from the ground and sends them in any direction, dealing damage to targets caught in the path and on impact and leaving behind a wall for a period of time. ??? is able to control the material in the air for 2 seconds, and once they lose control the wall moves faster to its destination.
WALL IMPACT:
475
WALL DURATION:
360 seconds
Blue static appeared from the smoke, and then in a flurry of lightning a small spark flew and, upon landing, bursted into a giant discharge of electricity.
Multi-Zapshot
Cost: 140 MANA
Cooldown: 12 seconds
B // ??? creates a disk and throws it extremely fast, dealing medium damage to the first target it hits. Upon hitting a target the disk breaks into lightning that bounces up to 30 times to other nearby targets, dealing high damage. Bounces on the same target deal reduced damage. If the target is not nearby other targets, the lightning repeatedly strikes them.
DISK DAMAGE:
300
LIGHTNING STRIKE DAMAGE:
350
REPEATED STRIKE REDUCTION:
45% per repeated strike
Unfazedly, I said quietly, “So are you going to tell me, or not?”
“Serene, why do you want information on an old lady and her son? What use do you have of where she lives?”
No, I wasn’t going to tell him. “That’s not for you to know, Father. But it’s important that I get this information.”
Another booming noise as more and more tendrils sprouted from the ground, bombarding somewhere behind the twisting walls of earth. The zapping noise came up again, and then the faint noise of two girls yelling out from beneath the other layers of battle.
The dummies were behind those walls.
I was starting to get pissed.
“... yes, I have your information. But promise Dad this, that you don’t hurt anyone. The reputation of the company matters less than your own, and the safety of the new generation is almost equally important. But I value you most. So don’t hurt yourself. Can you promise me this?” Father’s voice was hushed.
My teeth grinded together, and then pointed my gun into the sky at a slight tilt as I relaxed my shoulders and wrist. The sound of blades clashing together. No, I couldn’t promise him anything.
“Of course, Father.” I straighten my left arm into the sky, the gun in hand, and I let my right arm fall. One shallow breath. “Now, please tell me.”
Then my left arm stooped down until the barrel pointed into the smoke, clearing into the sky. The little grasses of the field blew in a soft wind, crying in the desecration all around them of what once was. The Terrainer team was going to have to come by soon.
The audio crackled for a split-second. It was a sigh of sadness. “Whitney Harvest lives in Bar Harbor, Maine, with the kid’s two parents. Two years ago they lived in Australia but had to move after fires caused by a dungeon break.”
I pulled the trigger.
—PPPKKH!
“The kid’s parents are under the woman’s care, but they’ve been reported to show the symptoms of fallen angels—an almost double identity. The demons in them are expected to hatch sometime next month and are scheduled to be terminated soon. But their child wasn’t to be told for his sake.”
—PPKH!
—PPKH!
—PPKH!
“Is that all?”
Trigger Overload
Cost: 400 MANA
Cooldown: 180 seconds
B- // Serene enters into Overload for a second. In this state, time is slowed and Serene can move freely.
OVERLOAD DURATION:
1 second
OVERLOAD TIME SLOW:
300%
3.
—PPKH!
—PPKH!
—PPKH!
—PPKH!
My finger moved at insane speeds. 2.
—PPKH!
—PPKH!
—PPKH!
—PPKH!
—PPKH!
—PPKH!
I heard a cry of pain in slow motion.
1.
Reload.
Out of the clouds of dust and debris, the ground and lightning came flying at me. The sound of two girls yelling.
Slowly.
“Never mind, Father. You’ve told me all I need to know.”
I smirked. Just maybe, I felt a little happier.
“Bye.”
—PPKH!
—PPKH!
—PPKH!