So I'm back!
Sorry for the delay(again!?), somehow I just never got to writing.
I did finally make an illustration of Nori though.
I also decided to finalize the name of the VR. Either as 「 」or one of the others listed in the poll.
Enjoy.
Chapter 4 – The game and logout
While I was dazed from the experience of being smoke and blinded by the screens in front of me the humans recovered. Fortunately the on to react first was Seirye. She rushed beside me and then pointed her hand at the approaching group.
“Seirye what are you doingraaahhh!” The rest of his words were unrecognizable, save for some random words that after some study I have determined to be something called swearing.
His inability to speak was of course due to Seirye's magic. It turns out that she is a lightning mage, but unlike the lightning I saw before, the magic aimed at the annoying group is much more than a few glorified sparks.
All five were being fried alive by dark red bolts that chased them around and seemed almost soft in some spots. My fur stood on its end, the air was filled with crackling and screams and I could feel the heat from where I stood.
[Wow! That was cool!] I said when the lightning stopped.
The black burnt bodies fell to the ground and soon thereafter turned to specs of light and disappeared.
Seirye seemed to be rather unsteady after her spell, but quickly regained her balance and headed towards the scorched ground where I could see some things left behind by the recently electrocuted five. She quickly picked up a wooden staff that one of the girls had and grabbed the coins, but left the other things.
“Sorry about that. I have to go.”
[Sorry about what? And why do you have to go? The annoying guys are gone now aren't they? Anyway as I was about to say, I wanted to ask you about this EXP thing that I apparently got.]
“You don't care that I just killed them? And I'm sure that normal NPCs don't know about EXP. You really are a player aren't you.” She said with surprise and then muttered more quietly, “What did you get some special capsule that lets you play with the body of a cat and now you just go around trolling people?”
[Tom brought the capsule so I don't know if it is special or not, but I have always had a body like this. Although I did use to be more gray and without the blue streaks. Hmm I don't know what trolling is though.]
“…”
[What?]
“You are telling me that you are a real cat. And you can use the capsule and play 「 」.”
[Of course I'm a real cat! Do I look like a picture or something to you? And I got here with the capsule so I guess I can use it. I don't really understand why everybody is talking about playing though. Other than hunting I haven't seen anybody doing anything like that yet and from the way people are talking it seems that they don't consider hunting fun. Or do humans play differently?]
“Unbelievable.” mumbled Seirye in an apparent daze. Then, as some people started to come closer, she snapped out of it, looked around and then turned back to me.
“Look, you are either an excellent actor, or an actual cat. I would like to talk to you in any case, but for now I have to go.”
[Eh?]
“I'm chaotic now.” She said and pointed at a red symbol that had started to appear above her right eye. “So if they catch me I'm done for. If you want you can follow me to the forest, but we have to go now.”
[Oh! Sure, I don't mind. But what's chaotic?]
“I'll explain later. Come on. Lets run!”
•••
In the end I didn't really have to run all that much. I could have outrun Seirye before the whole magical beast and glowing fur thing and now I could keep up with her with just a light trot.
We reached the forest pretty quickly and after that Seirye seemed to calm down and slowed to a brisk walk. The weird thing was that after a while she started to stare at her feet and mumble to herself with an occasional glance at me. Kind of like she did in the library before. I was busy with the fight and screens and I'm still not very good at understanding humans so I didn't notice it before, but it's almost like she has two different personalities.
[So what's that chaotic thing you were talking about? Something to do with that symbol on your brow? It suits you by the way.]
“Eh? Oh yeah. The symbol marks you as chaotic, as someone who broke the rules.”
[Whats “rules”?]
“…”
[What?]
“… never mind. It just means that I did something that is considered bad, like killing. People are rewarded if they kill chaotic people and lock them up, which is why I ran away.”
[So … you are punished for killing annoying people who attack you, but you can kill rabbits as much as you want and now people are rewarded for killing you instead? Humans are weird.]
“Hehe. You really are a cat aren't you.”
[Of course. What else would I be?]
After that we found a nice sunny place in a small clearing and talked for quite a while. Soon enough Seirye discovered that I had just arrived and didn't understand all that much so she started to explain some things. For example, I found out that you could find out more stuff about all the traits and abilities just by asking for it. There wasn't all that much new info though. The only things that I didn't know were that
Stolen story; please report.
I also got to know about EXP and level ups that not only made you stronger, but also gave skill-points that you could use to get new abilities or strengthen the existing ones.
The most unbelievable thing however was about this thing called virtual reality. Seirye spent almost two hours trying to explain it to me. It was just so … weird. The different body, the not dying, the fact that one hour back home was two over here. She had to spend an hour just explaining about the switching between different bodies and another half teaching me the concept of hours and minutes. I still don't understand how it is that the capsule can take me somewhere without moving and put me in a different body just like that, but I suppose that since I know the function then doesn't really matter anyway.
“I have to log out now. It was nice to meet you.”
[Log out?]
“Oh! Come to think of it, I didn't tell you about that did I? Err … well let's just say that log out is what you do to go back.”
[Ah. Now that you mention it I saw some people disappearing after saying that earlier.]
“Right. You just think of getting out and say 'log out' and when the screen appears choose yes.”
[Okay]
“… hey do you mind if we register as friends?”
Player Seirye has sent you a friend request
Do you want to accept?YesNo
[Sure, but I'm not sure I get the meaning of 'friend' compleately. Something like acquaintance?]
“… yeah … something like that. Anyway, now we can contact each other in 「 」even if we are far away. You just have to want to talk to me and say 'contact Seirye'.”
[ I see]
“Well then. By.”
Seirye said, “Log out” and disappeared in a flash of light.
I wonder if I should log out too … well may be later. For now I want to try fighting a monster.
Normally I would never do something as pointlessly dangerous as that, but after the disappointing rabbit hunt and the discovery that I can't die here, I was feeling adventurous. Besides I wanted to try out this smoke form thing.
So I set out to find me a monster.
Of course I was still as silent as possible and looked around carefully. I may want some action, but I'm not stupid. I mean I get that dying isn't much of a problem here, but I still don't want to get hurt.
After a few minutes of stalking in the woods, I came upon an animal. It was a reddish brown creature that looked a bit like a dog, with a long snout and fluffy tail. It was bigger than me, but not by much and it didn't seem overly ferocious. A perfect prey.
The creature hadn't seen me yet, so I backed off and started to circle it the same way I had with the rabbit approaching once I was downwind. This time things went faster, because the trees and fading light made it much easier to get close. I readied myself and jumped.
My attack was of course rather ineffective. I mean sure I surprised it, but unlike the rabbit this creature has a decent amount of fur around the neck and is big enough that I wouldn't be able to break it either way. Instead I was slammed to the ground and jumped upon as soon as I landed on it.
What ensued was a flurry of scratches and bites on both sides, accompanied by loud yowls, barks and growling. My opponent was bigger and stronger while I was faster with sharper claws. Normally I would have just been pinned down and bitten to death, but in this case that didn't happen. That's because whenever the beast got a hold on me I used smoke form and escaped. It was something of a stalemate. My agility and smoke form assured that I would't be captured while it's thick fur and bigger body prevented me from inflicting any major damage. This continued until I got one of it's eyes. After that I had the upper hand and, after a long struggle, managed to kill it.
In the end I walked away with tattered fur, an injured leg and a big hole in my ear, but a fox pelt in my storage stone and 30 EXP closer to a level up.
I limped to one of the bigger trees and started to clean myself. To my surprise the pain was rather dull and by the time I was done not only did it seem that my leg was fine, even my ear seemed to have regrown. This place really is strange, I mean the quick recovery is nice and all, but still, weird.
Now then. I suppose it's time to get back.
[Log out!]
•••
After a brief moment of dark I found myself inside the capsule.
I stood up, stretched and jumped down.
Hungry. I wonder if Tom has something to eat. Actually if time is different in in 「 」 then he might not even be back yet.
“Nori? What €%& you #&(#€ &% &$ capsule?”
Ah. There he is. Wait how come I understand him so much better now? Seirye said that I would probably only understand humans over there.
“Well what€&/% #%&/ something to eat?”
Ah who cares! Food!
____________________
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Btw, I'm pretty much out of ideas right now, so any and all suggestions are very welcome. Nori would probably go right back into the game and go either solo or with Seirye, but other than that I have no idea.