---------LEGEND---------
PLAYER/USERNAME
Grace/Lasair
Xia/Genevieve
-------------------------------
Xia had a circle on her head from how long she had studied and the level of concentration she had put into it, a hard but necessary sacrifice to be able to maintain possession of that instrument that had become so fundamental for her, the only thing that could make her forget for some time of the condition of the lower half of her body and the loss of her best friend. Xia went into her room, locked the door and after turning on the computer and starting Legacy of the Ancestors, she put the NexNet on her head and lay down on the bed.
Xia closed her eyes and when she reopened them the familiar hardwood door set in a rough stone frame loomed before her, vines and flowers covering the gray of the rock with their brown, green, red and purple. Xia mentally exerted pressure on the door and it swung open, dragging her inside, into the magical world it contained.
She appeared under some trees outside of a town called Trallis, the place was in an area where the monsters were a few pairs of levels higher than hers and Lasair's, not so much because they wanted to level up faster as fighting monsters it was a waste of time considering how little EXP they gave but simply because they were starting to lag behind in level growth as the game progressed, a sign that they were getting to the point where the LotA staff felt pretty confident that they had made their players spend enough time in the game to push them to take a step further and spend real money. The fact that rare objects had a higher drop probability the higher the level of the monsters and the bosses was, pushed many to try to quickly reach that position where they could return their invested capital by selling the rare drops they found in their quests and dungeon crawlings.
Obviously, those who got their investments back and also gained something were a fraction of those who tried.
Xia looked around for Lasair, but she couldn't see her tall, angelic figure anywhere. Xia figured that Lasair ran into some snag in the real world, so she didn't get upset and instead sat down against the trunk of the tree, waiting…
The sky was so serene and beautiful, it had such a perfect shade of blue that it appeared clearly artificial and absolutely stunning, the shadows of the trees, even if they were programmed perfectly, occasionally had some rendering problems, but Xia was only paying attention to them because she wasn't doing anything. The technology had really advanced since those archaeogaming videos where the characters were two-dimensional and could only go forward, backward, jump and eat mushrooms. At least in the retrogames there was also depth, even if it was made up of horrible cubes with a poor texture.
“Where the heck is she?…” Xia started asking to herself after more than half an hour of waiting.
She was surprised to see Lasair come running instead of appearing where they had left the previous time, “here I am! Here I am..." Lasair shouted, continuing to close the distance with Xia.
Xia stood up and since her avatar couldn't smile, she slowly waved a hand to her, “what were you doing walking around without me?? Are you trying to leave me behind??” She teased her playfully.
For a moment Lasair stiffened and her eyes widened, but by that moment they have played together enough times that she'd gotten to know Xia, so instead of acting like she'd inadvertently insulted her entire existence, she smiled vaguely, “t-that's not funny! For nothing!"
“I know… I know…” Xia giggled, Lasair couldn't see her giggling, but she could hear it, “so, where did you go? The monsters here are powerful enough that even you with your sword skills have difficulty, we should never move alone.”
“Mmhh…” Lasair wetted her lips, “today I read that there is a mini-boss in the area we are in and I went to see if we have any luck and no one has killed it yet since it respawns once every three hours and many players go there because of all the mini-bosses in the area, this is the weakest to have a chance of dropping rare items that we will need for our equipment.”
Xia nodded, unfortunately the reality with gacha games was that at a certain point the gap between equipment quality and player skill becomes such that skill alone could no longer guarantee victory. “and it was there?”
Lasair didn't answer her, she just smiled widely.
“Let's go get what's ours,” Xia said, raising a fist challengingly.
- - -
Their expedition began by moving towards a complex of high mountains which, with their disconnected and irregular shapes, forced them to make several detours and to follow paths where possible; the path was dotted with slimas and kuolochan - a sort of humanoid creature the size of an orangutan, as well as looking very similar to one except that it walked on two legs, wore crude armor and fought using clubs and axes straight from the Stone Age - until arriving at a sort of arena that had been dug into the stone a like the ancient Greeks did with their theaters.
The mini-boss was inside a partially transparent silvery hemisphere that covered the entire combat area, it had a shape similar to that of a wolf, but at least two horses long and one and a half high. Its long gray fur had blue and light blue streaks and its large eyes shone with gold. The claws on its paws seemed so hard and sharp that they could make a stone crumble.
[Rock Manifestation]
[Level 12 – HP: 100%]
“Lasair, that mini-boss is six levels higher than us, I don't think it's within our reach,” Xia said softly to her playmate, not that she expected the monster's AI to be able to hear them and react accordingly, “I understand that it is the weakest, but it is still far beyond our possibilities.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“It's not like we risk dying if we try…” Lasair replied. She seemed different than usual to Xia, she was usually more attentive than that and until that point she always played by paying attention to plan her moves and not try to risk beyond her possibilities even while knowing there was no real risk in not doing so, "I believe that together we can do it."
To say Xia didn't share her optimism was an understatement, "I... I think we're at the limit of our abilities, we need at least another player of our same level or higher to continue without dying at every corner."
Lasair hesitated, “but… a single attempt? What does it cost us to try?”
Lasair wasn't completely wrong about that, LotA's deaths weren't punishing in any sort or form. There weren't pools of EXP that would have been lost forever if they died twice without retrieving them, no items lost, no physical debuffs... nothing, "why this sudden rush? You have always been cautious and careful in choosing our enemies", Xia asked, from the position they were in they had a perfect view of the entire mini-boss arena.
“I…” Lasair hesitated, “I would like to become a LotA champion.”
"Wait, what?" Her statement completely shocked Xia: did the shy and insecure Lasair suddenly wanted to become a worldwide known figure? Not that there was anything wrong with having this kind of desires, it was just… strange when you heard it from someone you didn't expect it from.
“S-so…” Lasair lowered his eyes and began to nervously fiddle with her fingers, “I would really like to compete in the next LotA world championships…” she raised her face again and searched for Xia's eyes with hers, “it's… it's a problem? Do you think its' stupid?”
“N-no no! I don't think it's stupid!” Xia hated that she had to exagerate her voice so much to convey her emotions, sadly, the money for a more modern NexNetVR simply wasn't there,” that's just strange coming from you. Lasair, the LotA Champion, I didn't expect you to have such ambitions,” Xia concluded, chuckling.
Xia's playmate's embarrassment was manifest in her body language and facial expression, "sometimes I surprise myself, too."
“But still I can't understand why this sudden rush, I mean... with the rate of progression we have, we certainly won't have the levels necessary to participate in any competition in the short term. It will take at least a year to get to something workable.”
Lasair lowered her head again and nodded vigorously a few times.
“And plus we are missing at least two players to make a team.”
Lasair nodded again, with the same vigor.
Xia didn't really know Lasair, every time they played she told to herself to imagine her as an ugly, old man in his fifties with a bad relationship with showers and soaps. It was something that helped her maintaining healthy distances and most of the time it worked, but in cases like these even that image Xia had built of the player who moved Lasair was lost, it was too spontaneous, too genuine to be entirely a elaborate staging.
Lasair was carving a little place in Xia's heart, and she had no idea if that was a good thing or not.
Xia sighed, “okay, okay! Let's try it!” she grumbled, annoyed with herself for having given in, "at most this will be proof that running around aimlessly won't help us" she muttered in a lower voice.
They came down from the elevated position where they were studying the arena and the mini-boss and discussed a brief plan of attack: they were both at the fourth level, Rock Manifestation surpassed them both in level by three times, how much hope did they have? To Xia that was an exercise in futility, a waste of time that could have been spent doing another optional quest and getting the EXP needed to go up at least a couple more levels before challenging themselves with something as big as a mini-boss.
They jumped inside the arena, the silver hemisphere served not so much to prevent players from entering but rather the opposite: once inside you could no longer exit unless you defeated the mini-boss or were defeated by it. Rock Manifestation instantly turned towards them and let out a blood-curdling howl, Xia moved to the left while Lasair did the same but moving to the right, the idea being that if they split up it couldn't target them both at the same time.
The mini-boss made a quick assessment – or chose purely at random – and targeted Lasair; it lunged at her with its jaws wide open, a sight frightening enough to make them both yelp even though they knew nothing would have happened to their actual bodies. The jaws closed with a snap in the air just a few inches to the right of where Lasair's head was, Rock Manifestation was flanking Xia, so she lunged at it, driving her sword between its virtual ribs.
[Rock Manifestation]
[Level 12 – HP: 98%]
Crap.
The gigantic wolf turned its head towards Xia, making her blood run cold with its ferocious eyes and exposed teeth.
"Oh! Damn, I'm such a rude person, I hope you can accept my deepest apologies for… IIKKK!!!”
[Genevieve]
[Level 4 – HP: 78%]
Xia ducked just in time to avoid a paw that instead of hitting her directly hit her only grazingly and THOSE were the life points it had taken from her? How many would it have taken from her in a single shot if it had taken Xia full on??
“Lasair, be careful not to get even grazed! This dog is definitely NOT a good boy!”
"Copy!" Lasair said as she began to move a finger in the air to shape what was still her only known spell, only Xia unlocked a new one after reaching the fourth level. “[Iron Aura]!” She shouted as she finished preparing the spell.
A dim silver light surrounded her body: Lasair had now received a temporary increase in her Damage Resistance, how much that helped in this situation was somewhat debatable, but the spell at least gave her more hope of resisting a direct attack if had been hit.
The miniboss decided that Xia was still the most suitable prey for its destructive fury, which forced her to be defensive and concentrated like never before, so much so that she began to suffer from tunnel vision that prevented her from seeing anything that wasn't the jaws and claws of that enormous beast. Its attacks were powerful, but if they didn't connect with her they really couldn't do anything to her.
As soon as Rock Manifestation returned to focus on Lasair, Xia took the opportunity to retreat at least thirteen or sixteen feet to the stone and moss edge of the arena, there, Xia used her magic to try to put herself back in a situation of greater certainty of survival, except that the miniboss must have had a pretty smart algorithm to figure out what she was doing because at the same time Xia started moving her left hand to shape the healing spell she wanted to use, the big wolf opened its mouth and a green and yellow light began to shine from its throat.
Great! Now it also had a beam attack!
Xia immediately stopped the spell and tried to move away by diving to the side but it was too late to completely avoid being damaged. It was when Xia was on the ground that she realized that Rock Manifestation's beam attack not only hurt very, very badly but was also a sustained attack that could be slowly shifted to chase the fleeing target for a few seconds, which in this case was her.
[Genevieve]
[Level 4 – HP: 7%]
[Genevieve]
[Level 4 – HP: 0%]
[YOU DIED]
“Avenge me, sister! Sister, avenge me!” Xia had time to exclaim before exploding into thousands of colored bubbles and reappearing in the middle of Trallis square one loading bar later.