“Hey everyone! Sorry I’m late!” a short statured red armoured knight said, he had a long bill and beady little eyes. The group cracked themselves up laughing at the awkward looking creature.
“Hahahaha! You seriously made a platypus character?! Do you duck face your enemies to death?” the floppy eared Demi-Rabbit sneered.
“Hah, hah, very funny… Rista, you do realise there’s about fifty other Rista’s in this world, right?” the Demi-platypus retorted.
“Heh, yeah and only one fool would choose to call themselves ZoohMyGod,” he? She? It was hard to tell, the Demi-Rabbit shot back.
“Okay, okay, we get it, you’re pro-anti Rista. Thanks for coming ZoohMyGod,” Genki said
“Woah, it’s weird when you use my gamer name Austin!”
“Hey!” Austin/Genki’s brows were aggravated, “I’d appreciate it if you roleplayed, at leassst a little, so, if you don’t mind, refer to me as Genki, please, with the associated pronouns,” Genki said sternly.
ZoohMyGod’s face slumped, and he sardonically looked around with a hint of suspicion, “Yeah, sure, whatever.”
Genki perked up after that, seemingly forgetting the almost-fight that happened, “Woo alright, is everyone ready? We should head to the starter area out the West Gate: The West Fleugal Plains. It’s supposed to be great for level one players.”
The big bear-man roared over the top of her. “Hahaha, so weak. We shall go instead to the East Fleugal Plains!”
ZoohMyGod raised an eyebrow at him. “Yes… Thanks for that, Holder, the East is too high a level for you all. If you get hurt too quickly, I won’t be able to save you. You might as well pack your things and head back to that other game that shall not be mentioned!” He retorted, squinting his eyes at him.
“Hah! Holder cannot be hurt so easily! Come on everyone, let’s go to our first warmup quest!” He plodded down the cobblestone street.
ZoohMyGod sighed and followed him with the rest of the group, “Wait!” He cried out, “Let me trade you all some GP.” A trade menu screen popped up for Genki, and several thousand GP transferred. “There’s a general equipment store along the way, we should get you all geared up.”
The group strutted along with their new leather armour or robes, shields and weapons. Sunlight bathed the long rolling plains of grass, and the large sporadic trees stretched their twisted limbs skywards. Compared to the West Fleugal Plains’ level one to three hares, crabs, and fleugaloras; the East had monsters ranging from level six to seventeen, not a great starting area for beginners.
Not too far out of the gate, they came across a small cluster of leaf bug monsters, which typically varied from level three to eight, which would be impossible for Austin’s party, but not if they had a power-leveller with them.
The creatures were about half the size of the average human and shaped like flattened teardrops, with the tips pointed towards the sky. Their colours ranged from aqua to dark green. Though, there was one in the centre of the cluster, that was black, and a little bigger than the rest, maybe it was a rare creature spawn.
“Hey, monsters - let’s get ‘em!” Bunny ears said.
“Shh, Rista, you’re going to draw their attention,” Genki whispered, then examined the black leaf bug and checked its stats. Its status bar was clear, which meant its difficulty was either hidden or impossible to defeat at her level. The creatures stopped in their tracks, raised their heads and looked toward the group.
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Rista gestured to the monstrous creatures storming across the fields. “Oh great. Thanks Genki, here they come now!”
Genki’s nostrils flared. “Huh, that was YOUR fault!”
“Yeah-yeah, whatever.” Rista shrugged with a sardonic deadpan smile on her face. ZoohMyGod cut the squabble off, “Whoa, guys, back up, there’s too many of them for you!”
Holder stood in front of tiny platypus. “All of you huddle in fear behind me, I will hold all the aggro!”
He scowled at the giant bear, and started casting a spell, generating a pretty green circle of light at his feet with foreign glyphs.
Holder rushed in with his sword and shield, and everyone else followed. “Wait!” He hastily released the spell before the party entered melee. The spell activated over the space, and a circle of fire blazed, burning only half of the leaf bugs, killing them instantly, leaving five green ones. Amazingly, the black one, even though it was caught in the spell, had survived. Genki noticed ZoohMyGod looked shocked.
“Here we go! –Oh crikey!” A leaf bug bashed into Holder’s shield, sending the lug spinning through the air and crashing to the ground.
Genki started casting Healing Light I, but ZoohMyGod beat her to it with a super-fast cast of the same spell. Green sparkly light saturated Holder bringing him back to full health. Another leaf bug gurgled and charged straight for ZoohMyGod. Its attack hit, but he didn’t even flinch.
“What happened to holding all its aggro?” The creature continued to bite him to no effect.
“What happened to being a level one-hundred power-leveller!” Holder besmirched. Gosuberry, demi-red-panda went flying through the air, past him, disintegrating into a thousand pixels, as he got up.
“Not my fault, you shouldn’t have rushed in!” ZoohMyGod snapped back. Another bug must have been only focused on the black-robed corgi, otherwise it would have noticed Rista, the bunny eared thief at its flank, bringing her dagger down upon it. The dagger connected and green pixelated bits came flying off the creature, clearly causing damage, but not enough to kill it.
The bug then forgot completely about the corgi and swung round in an instant, jumped, and caught Rista by the neck with its face pincers. “Gaagrh!” she cried out.
“Oh no! Rista!” Genki cried out. But it was too late. Rista’s head and body had been separated and were evaporating, just like the red panda before.
Then before Genki realised, she too was attacked and killed, and she was left looking up from her corpse. She looked around and noticed the entire party was dead, and it was just ZoohMyGod and the bugs. All the bugs closed in on him before he vocalised a spell, “Fire-skin!” Flames erupted all around him like a whirlwind, incinerating all the bugs - not even the black leaf bug could survive the intense flames. Everyone’s bodies were still there, watching ZoohMyGod loot the bug corpses before using a scroll of town portal. “Meet you all back in town,” he said to Genki and her party’s lifeless bodies before blinking out of the zone.
Back in town, Holder was complaining. “Well, that was disgraceful guys,” he said as he materialised in the town centre. Genki just shook her head. “Yep, the fighting system isn’t intuitive.”
ZoohMyGod came strolling over to the respawn point, “Maybe don’t aggro a bunch of monster with higher levels than you next time?”
Holder quickly responded, “No, you just need to heal more, and let me hold all the aggro!”
“But huh? Are you kidding me? I can’t heal you if you die in one hit!!!” He tapped his head in frustration, clearly wondering why Holder couldn’t grasp the big picture here.
“No b-b-buts. I am the holder of aggro!” He raised both his arms and flexed his massive bear arms.
ZoohMyGod was tensing up. Rista chimed in. “Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I think we should go back to World of Warcraft. It’s still a better game than this one.”
“What? We’ve only just started and you already want to quit?” Genki harrumphed. Rista quickly replied with, “I know a shit game, when I play one,” her eyes wore a cheeky grin.
“Weak! Pick yourselves up and come with me to the other forest area we should have started in!” Holder said as he puffed out his chest. ZoohMyGod waved down Genki. “Wait… here take this.” A trade menu appeared in Genki’s vision. “I got these level one arm guards from Korkorot, that black leaf bug.”
“Wait, are you leaving?” Genki greasied him.
“Sorry, something's come up. Well, in any case, I also got some other business to take care of, if you know what I mean.” And with that, he left the guys and logged out.
The ceiling hung overhead, the television on the wall was collecting dust and a small table that separated where I had my gaming console setup, the room was littered with empty drink cans and pizza boxes. Yeah, it was a real nerdy bachelor's den, smelt like one too. You know that smell between bio and greasy pizzas? [Select Character: ZoohMyGod] hovered in front of me until it flicked off and I saw the room unemcumbered.
A low rumbling noise came from my lower abdomen. Oh right, I actually really need to go! I didn’t even bother taking my headset off, and quickly rushed off to the toilet. As I relieved myself, I switched the news on. I never really liked watching the news as a child, but my father always did, so I guess the habit was rearing its head. The presenter talked about how today was the day the quantum core interstellar transporter was being activated. It was to be the first real step towards interstellar travel.
[“This is a very auspicious time for science!” The male presenter said. “As mankind’s…” his female co-presenter shot him daggers from her eyes. “…light dims in the wake of the ‘Seven Deadly Disasters of the World’, I, for one, can’t wait to explore never before seen lands! What about you Miranda?”
Miranda’s getup made her look like a hot secretary, her hair tied up and the v-neck came awfully low.
“Well, Jeoff… I think -huuumanity- should exercise a little caution, whenever new technology is developed…” her eyes blazed at the camera, “... and we can only hope humanity doesn’t make the same mistakes we’ve made on this planet.”
“Thanks Miranda!” he cut in. “They’re about to start the countdown before activation! Get ready… Here we go!"]
“Ten!”
“Nine!”
“Eight!”
“Seven!”
“Six!”
“Five!”
“Four!”
“Three!”
“Two!”
“Onnnnneeee!”