RED : LEVEL 12
DAY 206 : F-DAY, SECONDWEEK, GAIA, YEAR 1
CENTRAL 18 : FINANCIAL DISTRICT 1 : STALKER
On the way back from our regular F-Day bank trip, Puke nudges me. “Yellow’s not going to say anything. But you made all those threats the other day. And then you never followed up… So I just wanted to get that out in the open and make sure you weren’t doing anything convoluted to ruin our whole next month”
I don’t say anything.
“So? Am I right or wrong about that?”
I smile toothily at her. “Both.”
“Both? What do you mean ‘both’? I can’t be both right and wrong. You’re either doing something, or you’re doing nothing. They negate each other, so-”
“I’m doing something. And that something is nothing. So, yes. Both.”
“Yeah okay. That’s actually what I’d prefer you do all the time in every situation. But what exactly is actively doing ‘nothing’ supposed to accomplish?”
“Why do you know about these ‘threats’ I allegedly made?”
“Yellow told me.”
“Why?”
Green rolls her eyes. “Probably because she didn’t know what you were doing.”
“Exactly.”
“Your end goal was your own obtuseness, then?”
“In a way… As long as she’s thinking about it, it’s working.”
“Nothing’s working. You’re being weird and it’s bothering people. I don’t see how this is a win for you.”
“That really depends on who’s being bothered.”
Sewer smirks. “Alright, let’s take a vote.” She turns to the rest of the class. “Raise your hand if you find it annoying when Red acts annoying just for the sake of being annoying.”
Everyone but Blue raises their hands.
I slump. “You too, Darreck?”
Darreck winces. “Sorry… It’s just… Yeah…”
I suppress the urge to sulk when I notice that same guy again. He’s been doing a pretty good job of staying out of sight. But not good enough. Not when I can take all the time I want to examine every stray shadow like I like to do.
He’s the most average person I’ve ever seen. Every single one of his features looks to have been combined from every human in Heaven, then divided by that total number. So not ugly. Very few truly ‘ugly’ people walking around in a world where you can freely customize your own appearance down to the tiniest detail. But he looks so normal that he’d be easy to miss in an empty room.
[ MC TARGETED: KIRITO ]
And what the fuck is with that label. Is it a CLASS thing?
That gives me an idea for a distraction. “Hey, so… what do the ‘C’s in CLASS and CRAFT stand for again?”
Darreck sighs at exactly the kind of conversational segue he seems to have resigned himself to the inevitability of. “They share the same ‘C’. Hence, ‘Core’. So every letter in both your CLASS and CRAFT gets points from the skills you put into that ‘C’.”
I blink at that.
Green looks smugly over at me. “Is that not what you were gonna say?”
“Actually, no. I mean it fits what I know about Core Skill Inheritance. But I guess I never thought of the connection with the ‘C’ in ‘CLASS’, ‘CRAFT’, and ‘Core’.”
Piss titters passive-aggressively like she likes to do. “For real? So, what, you just thought the letters R-A-F-T and L-A-S-S all stood for something, but the ‘C’ in each was literally just a ‘C’? Or don’t you even know what the rest stand for?”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
I would just as literally rather die right this second than admit to having to look it up. But fuck this bitch. Taking all the time in the world to look it up, I answer instantly like I like to do, without so much as a stutter to give myself away. I even count them off on each finger, keeping my thumbs connected as the Core. “Role, Art, Form, Trade, Lane, Archetype, Specialty, Subclass.” Holding my raised fingers up for inspection, I lower all but Role and Archetype. “I’m not a fucking idiot just because I didn’t know that ‘C’ stood for Core.”
UTI blinks at that. But then she gets mad. “Oh bite me, Crimson Bitch. You used your stupid breath thing to look it up just now, didn’t you?”
I really don’t know what to say to that. Nobody’s ever played that particular UNO Reverse card on me before. And I can’t pause time to come up with a response without proving her point. So I don’t. I just stand there.
Thankfully, Darreck breaks the silence before it can get too awkward. “Yeah the CSI of it all can be kinda complicated when you’re starting out. But don’t worry. The system, at least, never changes.” He seems to go dour for a second before perking back up. “You’ll get there, don’t worry. And in the meantime, that same System does a pretty good job of at least letting you know what Skills you can or can’t buy at the moment. That’s the thing to pay attention to, not the letters of an acronym.”
Yuki looks up at the sky like she likes to do. “But why does it all have to start with ‘C’? Core, CRAFT, CLASS, Control, cuirass… It’s hard to keep track of which is which.”
Darreck looks to momentarily attain a new level of disappointment in her, but manages to turn it into a halfway-convincing wink. “I know what you mean. But the Core is truly the center, origin, and connecting tissue of the entirety of Core Skill Inheritance. Just like Red said.” He cracks a smile at me. “If you can keep that in the center of your thoughts as well, all the rest falls into place.”
I, for my part, was distracted for most of that. “What? What’d I say?” Oh shit, here’s my chance!
“Y-”
[ MYTHIC KATANA EQUIPPED: BRIGHT WHITE BRIGHTBLADE OF WHITING BRIGHTNESS ]
I whip my right arm to the side in a blur while I hold my left up to stop Darreck’s answer. “Wait.”
[ UNCOMMON ACTION: SPACIAL ANCHOR - SWORD — INTENSITY: 15% ]
Teleporting to the sword I just threw, I reappear close enough that the Skill’s shockwave pushes Kirito into a wall. Rather than apologizing, I follow up by embedding him in it. “BAM!!!”
[ COMMON ACTION: AURA BURST — INTENSITY: 196% ]
Obligingly, he slams into it again, only harder. Except he was already halfway into a dodge-roll by the time I yelled that whole syllable. So his back impacts the building’s corner instead of its side. And at a nearly perpendicular angle too. With a little more Intensity, I bet I could’ve split him in half at the waist. Instead, his back merely cracks like a whip on impact.
Perfect.
A younger Jessie might wince and apologize. I really was going for more of a pinball kind of thing there. But instead, I get over that thought by the time I stab my sword down on the guy’s thumb.
Living up to its rarity, the white blade cuts straight through, burying itself to the hilt in the ground. “That was a warning. Now… Please do elaborate.”
He coughs up blood. “On what?”
“Do I need to repeat myself?”
He just glares at me from where he’s sprawled.
Unsheathing the sword from the ground, I want to resheathe it through his other thumb. But any more unreciprocated low-Damage attacks in a row will summon The Pyramid Guard. And that really does sound like such a pain in the ass…
“Oh my god!” Led by Bladder, the other four finally catch up. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU PSYCHO???”
I compromise on my torn priorities by flipping her off as I answer. “He was following us.”
Green gesticulates wildly like she likes to do. “HOW IS THAT ANY EXCUSE???”
“He’s been following us all week.”
Yellow grimaces. “So basically ever since you ran away from that one guy? It’s like you summon them…”
Blue tries to make herself look smaller. “He’s my ex. And he’s a big jerk. And he’s closed off with his feelings. And I like it better here. This just feels right. The way it never did with him.” She lowers her head even more. “I’m sorry… That’s not true… It used to be better… But that stopped.”
Piss nods at Kirito in a way that immediately gets my hackles up. “So you’re not physically attractive. I get that concept. But why, instead of modifying your appearance, is your answer to make all your other qualities even less likable?”
He doesn’t answer. But his face does get more red.
“In a weird way, you deserve each other. I think you might actually be the protagonist in this little possessive story of yours.”
Kirito’s eyes go wide as he snaps at her in the most aggression I’ve seen from him yet. Including when I sliced his thumb off. “And how, exactly, is it ‘weird’?”
“There is no ‘how’… It merely ‘is’.”
He ignores her. Damn, he’s good.
It took me like a week to catch onto the best way to piss her off.
Oh yeah… He’s been following us for at least as long. That’s less impressive, then.
But Darreck, having clearly had enough, marches straight up to him. “GIRLS. Save it.” Looking down on him, he glances back at us. “Why don’t you all head back home. While you do, us boys can have a nice long chat about what ‘no’ means.”
Each with our own variation on a smug grin, we do just that.