Author’s corner: HELLO HELLO! AS PROMISED, TODAY IS INSANIA DAY! HOORRAY!

ANYWAY, I’ve been thinking about something. This arc might or might not have a boss battle, as it wasn’t originally in the plan, but I could make it happen… But, even if I don’t put a boss battle, I can promise you that there will be one of the most “Seriously?” moment from the whole series. Or close to it, at the very least. As some people say, it will be a very “Insania Legit” moment.

ALSO, I might put up the character list later today, since some people have been getting confused with the sheer amount of characters that started to appear on this story. Might also release the SS 3.2, but who knows.

Have a good read!

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The world flashed in whiteness as I pressed the login button.  I lightly closed my eyes as to get used to the brightness before finally opening them again. After a quick search around I finally found the person I was looking for and walked towards her, heaving a long sigh when I approached her.

“Okay… I’m waiting your explanation.” I said to the full-sized pink crystal elemental standing in front of me.

I was looking at the avatar that Cyg aka Crys had created for when I go to the log in/out sessions from the game, based on her new in-game appearance. It was a body identical to her usual one, but made of the same pink crystals as her pet-body. Even the floating crystal shards she used as hair was the same here. Even her clothing was made with an assortment of white and black crystals instead of fabric.

“I have no idea what you are talking about.” Crys answered with an innocent tone as she looked away.

“You know exactly what I mean.” I said to her with my best deadpan face.

I sighed once again as she tilted her head innocently to the side. Well, even when I say innocently, she still had a clearly mischievous look in her eyes, so it was pretty clear that she was only fooling around. She made a fist with one of her hands and hit her other open palm, as if saying that she finally understood what was happening.

“Oh! The cellphone thingy?” She asked, and I nodded. She stuck her tongue out playfully before saying. “But I did ask you to let me access your cellphone.” She said with a happy tone.

“When was it?”

She simply smiled and snapped her fingers, bringing a window into life. Within it, I saw an image of myself as I worked on a random piece of leather armor, with a certain undine looking closely from the sides before going to work on her own piece. The only difference between what I remember is the angle from which the scene was playing, since it was from a more elevated one than my own eyesight.

This must be what Crys saw as she followed me that day. My suspicions were proved, as I heard a voice coming from the image.

“Master.” Crys voice’s echoed. “Would you mind if I downloaded a terminal into your cellphone?” She asked the still working me from the video.

“Hmm? Wha… Sure… I guess…” He… I… The me in the video answered. Except…

“HEY! WASN’T I CLEARLY DISTRACTED THERE?” I shouted at the full-sized Crys at my side.

“Were you?” She asked innocently. “Well, I did ask for your permission, so it’s not a problemOUCH!” She crouched to the ground and held her head with her hand.

“Look. If you want to do this kind of thing, there is no need to use this kind of tactic, you know?” I said angrily as I shook the hand that I used to hit her in the head. “Next time, I will hit you even harder, you hear me?”

“Sorry…” She said with a small voice while holding back her tears. I sighed wearily once again, before helping her up.

“So... Anything else I should know that you might have done?” I asked her and she shook her head. “Okay… Now let’s get going already, since we have to get there before the girls arrive here.” I said to her.

Crys nodded quickly before being engulfed in a flash of light. Once the light died down, the only thing left behind was her smaller body with the usual maid clothing.

We entered the game with a pillar of light, and I found myself in front of Rusty’s information booth. A quick look around and I found Red, sitting over with her pets against the building. With a quick nod she greeted me before going back to feeding her pets.

Aura quickly approached me as soon as she appeared and I sat down on the ground beside her while petting her gently. With a sigh I started to think on what I would do with the quest, since I didn’t have much time before having to log out. Luckily, my trusted assistant was a bit more useful than what I expected, as she said.

“Master. I think I might have a way to reach there within one day.” Crys said after some thought.

“Oh? Do tell me.”

“There is a stream we have to cross up ahead. From your map, we would have to take a detour if we wanted to reach the closest bridge.” She explained before turning to Aura.

“I see… Have aura freeze the water surface?” I asked her, and Crys nodded. I turned to Aura and saw as she also nodded to me. “Then I’ll be counting on you.” I said as I petted her and she closed her eyes in pleasure.

“What’s with the hurry?” Red asked me confused.

“I received a message from Han-chan. They are arriving here tomorrow morning.” I explained to her.

“Yuu and Hanbei are arriving tomorrow?” She asked while jumping surprised. “That’s fast! I’m going to warn the others!” She said cheerfully as she wrote something on our chat.

Ignoring it like the good ignorer that I am, I readjusted myself on the ground before laying my head on Aura’s soft and cool fur. Since we still had to wait for my father to log in, there was no need to not relax a bit. Crys soon followed my idea by laying against Aura’s tail.

Aura, already used to us doing it, simply adjusted herself so that we wouldn’t be leaning on a bad bone or something of the kind before calming down and enjoying as I gently rubbed my hand on her fur. A few minutes later Lieutenant arrived from the city and quickly took his place laying on his back atop of Aura, crossing his leg and taking a nap.

It was only a few minutes later that Wulf and Pea finally logged in, with my father seemingly scolding her for playing around when it was time to log in. I quickly explained him the situation and saw as he smiled mischievously at the notion of meeting Yuu so soon. Sighing loudly, I told them to start walking already, but he stopped me, with a more serious tone.

“Don’t we need some supplies for our travels?” He asked me worried.

“Supplies?” I asked confused.

“Yeah. Food and such.” He said, but I simply smiled at that.

“Nah. Food is best fresh.” I said mysteriously while walking ahead. Wulf looked slightly confused, but Red sighed loudly, probably knowing what I meant.

…

We walked for a few hours without much problems finding us, which kind of caught me by surprise, as I was half sure some kind of random thing would happen before we could even think about it.

That meant that soon the night fell on us and it was dinner time. Pea even begun complaining that she was hungry a couple of hours earlier, but I simply decided to ignore her and have her deal with it. But once my satiety fell beneath fifty percent, I decided that it was time to hunt.

With a short order, Aura started to sniff around, and soon pointed us towards a direction. I gave her a quick pet to the head before entering the forest to the side of our road. Wulf, Red and Pea following me closely behind while Crys lighted up a small fire by the road-side.

A couple of minutes later we found a deer roaming on the forest. Seeing that it was only level ten, I left Aura quickly kill the deer-like animal. Pea made a small scene on how I shouldn’t kill cute animals, but I completely ignored her and made her go back to Crys. Since she couldn’t stray too far from Wulf, he soon follower her while giving me a curious gaze.

“You might want to go back too.” I told Red, who looked confused at me.

“Why?” She asked, and I simply shrugged.

Then I took my skinning knife and started my work, removing the hide and starting to take out the useable meat from him. When I finished and turned back, I saw that Red was already gone.

I took the meat back with me to the fireplace and saw as the others were already sitting around it, watching in wonder as Crys started to add ingredients to nimbly add ingredients to a pot. I passed the meat to the small elemental and let her do her magic.

As I prepared to sit down and see her do her job, I heard the sound of someone running on the ground behind me. I stopped and looked back, seeing as two people approached our group coming from the city. The bigger one stopped once he was around ten meters from me and started to breath heavily, as he caught up his breath.

“Finally! I found you…” The big guy said between breaths. “So long… You bastard… So long… I’ve been searching for you.” He said while raising his eye and pointing towards me. “I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE, YOU DAMNED GOLEM!” He shouted at me.

I looked at the guy confused, then towards the other. But seeing that they were as confused as myself, it seemed that they had no idea on what was happening too. Even Aura, Lieutenant and Crys were confused, so I turned back to the new guy.

He looked at me shocked, before his face contorted into anger.

“YOU DON’T REMEMBER ME?” He shouted with an obnoxiously loud voice. “HOW DARE YOU NOT REMEMBER ME? EVEN AFTER YOU MADE MY WHOLE LIFE A LIVING HELL?” He asked furiously. “ME? THE GREAT…”

“Who is this guy?” Red asked me, and I turned to her.

“I… Have the feeling that I’ve met him before.” I told her as I looked at large the cyclops in front of me. “But I can’t quite remember.”

“STOP IGNORING ME, YOU DIRTY GOLEM!” He shouted once again, and I saw as Red’s eyebrow twitched a bit. “I came for my revenge. And I shall have it!” He said angrily while turning back to the other guy, who was smaller and wore a dark black cloak.

“Is this… The golem… you… Wanted me to… curse?” The other guy asked as he seemed even more tired than the Cyclops. When he raised his head, I saw his face. Or the lack of it.

From the way that the new guy looked, he didn’t have a face, nor a body. Even the gaps between his armors showed nothing. I looked at him shocked for a moment before remembering that there was one race that was composed of possessed armor people.

“Yeah. Curse him! Make him go mad” The cyclops said with a mad shine in his eye. “And then, I will slowly take my time with him…” The Cyclops said with a wild smile.

“What did you do to this guy, Sonny?” My father asked, but I shrugged, since I had no idea either.

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“STOP IGNORING ME!” The cyclops shouted angrily. Once all of our attention went back to him, he turned towards the armor at his side. “Don’t you know who this is? He is Frorgen Soulrender! Aka, Lock4hire! The strongest warlock within the whole Eldor!” The cyclops said proudly.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” The armor said surprisingly politely. “And I hope you don’t hold it against me, but I was hired to curse you.”

I blinked in surprise and then nodded at him.

“No worries. You are just doing your job.” I said, still a bit shocked. The armor nodded before taking out a book that was hanging from his waist and open it while pointing it towards me. A dark beam left the book and hit me square in the chest, getting me by surprise. “What the…” I said surprised as I fell to my knees, hit by a sudden wave of nausea.

The world started to spin around me and everything else started to distort. I heard as Red and Wulf shouted my name in surprise, but I quickly raised me hand towards them, warning that there was no need to get worried. I did the same with Aura and Lieutenant, holding them back as I felt the dizziness passing.

I quickly raised myself once again.

But I was in someplace else entirely. I was in some kind of dark forest made of dead trees that sprouted from pools of magma. The ground beneath my feet was crumbling with each movement I made, letting even more magma come up to the surface. With a glance to the sky, I saw as the red covered the whole world around me, and clouds blacker than night started to cover up the few remaining spots of light.

When I looked around, I saw that there were monsters all around me. From huge dragons to evil looking serpents, from flaming birds straight out of hell to a black-skinned demon. And for some reason there was also a goat... All of them snarled angrily at me, and I quickly took my free hand to the sword on my back.

“I need to keep casting this if you want me to keep him confused.” A disembodied voice came.

Wait? Confused, then this is a confusion curse? Then how come am I hearing things? I gave another quick look around, finding out that the monsters all kept their distances from me. Maybe… Is it my resistance to abnormal that allows me to hear things from the real world? Must be… Thank Cygnas for my skirmisher skill.

“Good enough for me.” Another voice said. “Now I’ll take my sweet time with my vengeance.” It said. And as soon as the second voice said that, I saw as the goat slowly approached me until it stood right in front of me. “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW, YOU DIRT GOLEM? HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU ARE ATTACKING YOUR ALLIES OR YOUR ENEMIES?” He asked, and I saw as the goat started to drag his front foot on the ground.

“Well… I actually have a few ways.” I said suddenly, and saw as the goat and the dragon flinched in surprise. “But lets start with this.” I said as I pulled out a flash-bang and exploded it upwards. But the goat closed its eyes in time.

“HAHAHA!” The goat laughed obnoxiously. “DID YOU REALLY THINK THAT I WOULD FALL TO THIS TRICK A FOURTH TI…” I grimaced annoyed and took out a second flash-bang, exploding it on where I guessed that would be his face on the real life, as soon as he opened his eye again.. “GAAAAAAAH! MY EYE! MY LOVELY, BEAUTIFUL AND EXTREMELY LIGHT-SENSIBLE EYE!”

I stood up and turned towards the dragon, who was holding his eyes with one hand.

“Now that the annoyance is gone. Hey, you are the Lock4hire, right?” I asked the dragon and saw as it flinched surprised. “Am I right to say that you were hired by this guy?” I asked him, and he nodded. “Then, if I pay you more, will you lift the curse?”

“How much are we talking about?” I heard the first disembodied voice asking cautiously.

“How about… A level twenty, Wargon-made, excellent quality cloak with high int?” As soon as my words left my mouth, the world changed back to normal, leaving me a bit disoriented for a moment before turning back to armor guy, seeing him close the book and hang it on his belt.

“Tell me more.” He said. I nodded happily and gave a quick sign for Lieutenant, seeing him sit atop the cyclops, knives drawn out.

“Well, why don’t we talk about it during dinner?” I asked while giving a quick glance to Crys. She nodded as she started to take out some plates and serve food to the others. Except for the cyclops.

Me and lock had a quick talk and then I quickly contacted Argento, telling the gnome to leave the burning tail cloak for his new client who would arrive in a short time. Meanwhile, we ate a delicious deer stew, which seemed to please the new guest.

“By the way… Are you using the realistic mode?” He asked me after I saw another spoonful disappear near the place where his mouth should be.

“Hmm? Yes, I am.” I said surprised, and then widened my eyes. “Oh, you too?” I asked surprised, and he also nodded.

As something that we learn when we change to realistic mode, is that if two players with different modes enter in conflict, be it with the same monster or against each other, the arcade mode, or non-realistic one, is set as the basis for both, since it’s the basic game mode.

“Hmm… That explains it…” He said with a nod, and I looked at him confused. “Confusion is supposed to have you randomly attacking your allies. Yet you simply stood still.” He said with a sigh.

“Hmm… What it did was to change the whole world around me into something right out of a nightmare.” I told him after some thought. “And changed everyone into monsters. But if I know where you were before and that its an illusion, I would know who I had to attack.”

“I see… Then it’s not very effective against realistic mode…” He said with a sigh, but I shook my head.

“Nah, if you use it in the middle of a large battle it could be even more devastating.” I said to him, and saw as he looked at me for a moment before nodding.

“I see.” He nodded to me, before once again staring at me for some time. “Is this usual with you?” He suddenly asked me, and I tilted my head in confusion. “I mean, sharing dinner with someone who tried to kill you a few minutes ago?”

“Pretty much.” I said with a shrug.

“Definitively War-legit.” Red said while covering her face with her hand.

“Some times I fear for your future…” My father said with a sigh.

“The food is tasty!” Pea said happily.

…

Sometime later we gave our farewell to the warlock, letting him make his way back to the city while we dragged a tied up Cyclops with us. I saw as my father and Red looked at me strangely while I dragged him, but they didn’t say anything.

Pea, on the other hand, looked at the scene confused and asked me.

“Booh, why are you dragging the fat guy?” She asked me innocently. I turned to her and smiled.

“Well, fat guy here wanted to disturb our dinner, so big brother is going to teach him a lesson.” As I said that, I saw as the small fairy-dragon eyes widened before she frowned.

“Muu! Fat guy is mean! Dinner was good!” Pea said angrily.

As she said that, she ran close to the cyclops and gave him a light hit to the stomach. Luckily, her stats were fairly low, so the guy didn’t feel anything. I sill held her by the back of her neck and pulled her away, giving a brief scold about hitting other people.

She nodded sadly before flying away towards our father. Meanwhile, I saw as Crys approached me from behind and asked in a low voice.

“Master… Why is it that you keep scolding her, when you do most of these things yourself? Don’t you think it’s too much?” She asked me a bit confused. I blinked surprised before smiling wryly, but I still wasn’t the one who answered the curious pet.

“Crys, think about it… Most of the things she does is just like War’s, right?” Red asked the floating crystals.

“Hmm… Yes…?” She said a bit confused.

“Then, if she grow up like this, without anyone teaching her, she will be just like him when she grows up, right?” Red asked in a teacher tone.

“That’s right…” Crys answered, still not understanding.

“Could you guess what would happen if there were two War’s around?” She asked finally. Crys blinked surprised for a moment before turning to me.

“Are you sure you are scolding her enough?”

“HEY! What do you mean with that?” I shouted angrily, and saw as the two started giggling.

But it’s true. Even if I want to complain about it, that is mostly the reason why I am so worried about my sister. I fear that she might end up a bit not right in the head like me. I mean, it’s not like I’m that bad, still…

How is the saying? Do as I say, don’t do as I do, I guess…

Anyway, I was left speechless on what to say to them, as anything that I could tell them was a lie. Sighing loudly once again, I decided that I would discount my bottled up frustration on the guy I was dragging through the rope.

Luckily, said time was closer than what I expected, as we soon reached the said river we would need to cross. I turned back to the large Cyclops that I was carrying all this time around and gave my best friendly smile.

“Hey… Do cyclops float?” I asked him.

I saw as the guy paled completely as my words sunk into his head, and he started to squirm around, trying to free himself. I turned to Aura and had her make a large ice support that we left floating on the river. I took out a dagger and stuck it tightly into the ice before throwing the cyclops atop of it.

I saw as he tried to squirm his way back to the ground, but I quickly kicked the ice-support away from the ground and saw as the ice slowly drifted away into the stream. I smiled at the guy and waved at him.

“You have until the ice melts to cut yourself free!” I said happily. “And next time, don’t bother me when it’s time to eat, ok?” As I said that, I let out a long sigh of relief, before turning to my sister and saying in a serious tone. “You will never do what Booh just did. Ok?” She nodded a bit surprised. I smiled and patted her slightly.

“… I’m starting to see where that rumor came from…” Red said with a shocked voice. “You looked just like someone from the mafia.”

“Rumor?” I asked confused.

“Let’s keep going, War-capone.” My father said with a short laugh. “We have to get to the village soon, right?”

I nodded at him and turned to Aura, having her freeze the water surface so that we could cross the river.

But... War-capone...?

I wonder if I should make a suit for myself...