The First Day ~ The First Battle
|| Location âĻ Daertalmos Online - Bale Forest ||
|| Location âĻ Daertalmos Online - Bale Forest ||
"Take this!"
A rather loud squelching sound rang out immediately following this triumphant yell, and the speaker, one knight in blue, found herself staring confusedly down the now quite sticky haft of her glaive at the equally confused slime in which it had embedded itself rather harmlessly.
"Err... methinks you're supposed to be dead," She said nervously, giving a slight tug on the spear. The slime didn't budge, giving her a glare that suggested it was rather unamused by the sudden attack. "Look, the very least you can do is give me back my spear so we can do this properl- Wah?!" She got no further, for in another instant, several long tendrils of green goop began to sprout from the top of the amorphous creature. Not wanting to be close to it now that it seemed to be attacking, Aoife gave a violent tug on her weapon, trying to wrench it free and hastily backpedal beyond the clumsy creature's reach. Fortunately, the decreased mass holding down her glaive meant that this was surprisingly easy. Unfortunately, since she'd overestimated how much force to apply to recover her polearm, the end result was her staggering rather comically backward and falling flat on her rear, bonking herself over the head with the flat side of her own weapon's blade. She winced, rubbing her forehead and blinking several times, wondering what exactly had just happened, only to be jarred from her confusion by a sudden, surprisingly forceful impact square to her chest, knocking her fully onto her back and sending her rolling head over heels.
Stumbling to her feet, she glanced up at her health bar, breathing a sigh of relief as she saw that it hadn't depleted from the hit. Turning her gaze downward to her armor, she found her relief turning to unimaginable frustration when she realized that her once-pristine breastplate, which had taken the E Rank attack without difficulty, was now covered in sickly green ooze.
"Why you cheeky-!" She cried angrily, only to be once again interrupted by her formless opponent. Three more tendrils of slime swept downward like whips, one right after the other. But, this time, she assured herself, she was ready. Taking a step back with her right foot, she planted herself firmly, lowering her spear with her dominant left hand forward. Gauging the distance between her and her enemy, she waited until the moment the tendrils were within reach before twisting her right hand and lunging forward with her left, flicking the razor-sharp edge of the glaive upward to intercept the oncoming attack. It was a simple movement, but effective, carving clean through the first tendril and chipping away another quarter or so of the slime's hitpoints. Then, she reversed the gesture, bringing her blade back down like a guillotine, splattering the second tendril in the same precise motion. So long as she stuck to the basics, it seemed, she could fight easily.
It was around this time she realized that she probably should have just dodged, given that in the time it had taken her to deflect the first two tentacles, the third had managed to reach her, snaking its way around the haft of her weapon, and then around her hands as she raised them instinctively to block. With strength that was astonishing for the functional equivalent of a pile of animate jello, the slime drew back its arm, lifting her clear off the ground and into the air above it. Aoife held on tight to her glaive, not wanting to be disarmed, yet swiftly regretted this blind determination when she found herself being swung violently downward on the opposite side of the slime like some sort of human flail, slamming her head first into the ground. She groaned, the impact sending shocks through her whole body as she rolled over onto her back, shakily standing yet again, looking incredulously at the comparatively tiny blob that had just picked her up and thrown her with all the ease of swinging a stick. The slime drew back its remaining tentacle and reformed, beginning to lurch slowly towards her. Aoife gaped.
"Did... Did that tiny slime just suplex me?" She wondered aloud. It was hard to tell, given her adversary's lack of arms, yet she couldn't help but feel incredibly foolish for allowing herself to be so easily downed a second time. The humiliating manner of her injury was merely the final straw. Lowering herself into a crouch like an animal ready to pounce, she glared daggers at the hateful blob as it began slowly forming its matter into several long tendrils to continue its attack. However, regardless of its intent, it had less than a quarter of its hitpoints left now. She could finish it in one hit. Bounding forward, she closed the distance in an instant, ducking beneath an upraised tendril and snapped her left arm forward, driving the head of her spear clean through her enemy, splattering it as though it'd been struck by a cannonball. As the little bits of ooze that remained of her enemy began to dissolve into nothingness, Aoife found herself breathing a sigh of relief. She'd have hated to have to wash the sticky residue off her hands and armor manually.
...So of course, out of all the bits of slime that had been left over, those were the only ones that didn't vanish. Aoife stared down at her hands, giving an unusually transparent expression of disgust at the irritating glue-like substance that covered them, as though trying to melt this residue with the sheer force of her frustration.
Throughout the entirety of his life, Licht had never been one to enjoy pointless battles that did not fit a story or plot. He could appreciate unwinnable battles, though. Yet, this one served little purpose in his opinion. A level 15 player against a level 1 slime was not a battle at all, nor did he feel as though it ever was one even when he was a lower level (though to be fair, he had practice even before the beta). It was... well, quite boring to be honest. On Licht's end of the fight he was 'enjoying' himself with a pair of slimes, whom he had honestly paid very little attention to from the beginning. His superior stats meant that their attacks almost seemed to slow to a stop, and a person who was moving as fast as he was comparitively a god. Yes, how great he was. Such godspeed should make someone like Aoife envious, for sur---
*SLAP*
"Ow, rude!"
It was then that Licht realized he catered towards a heavy defense, not agility. In fact, he was about as agile as an elephant compared to people in similar level. So of course when he tried to dodge the slime-whips, it did not really go as planned. He felt a sharp pain on his cheek, where it had hit him, and if anything he was a bit irritated that this little monsters had the audacity to strike at him when it was simply a blob of nothing. So, with about as much effort as he put into anything that didn't involve video games, he stabbed a slime and it more or less detonated like a stick of TNT.
Well that was still rather anticlimactic. I guess we can go see what Aoife is doi----
*SLAP*
"Okay man, what is with these slimes? Don't they into fear?" Despite him being nigh impossible to murder unless he simply sat there for a bit, these slimes didn't necessarily feel the need to hold back with their slaps, and it was not nice at all, Licht thought.
*SLAP*
This time, it was Licht who slapped the slime with his sword. Well, it was actually a swing, but it had about as much effort put into it as a slap would. The slime, just like its brethren, mimicked a hand grenade upon being struck, minus completely obliterating Licht himself. Perhaps frustrated at how much pain his cheek had endured in a battle with the weakest monster in the game, Licht decided it would probably fun to see how Aoife was doing, and if she could even hold her own in a battle.
............
.......
...
.
The answer to the last question was a pretty solid 'not really'. Even though he was getting slapped, if he were actually serious about fighting these slimes, they wouldn't amount to much of a fight at all. They didn't really provide the greatest challenge even in the beta, although to her credit they were apparently buffed in the final game. He didn't remember them being so skilled with their tentacle things. And, although he had seen more than enough hentai to know where this battle could have gone, he at least smiled at the fact that, despite seeing her fall on her ass twice in a battle with just one of these things, she somehow managed to slay it. Truly, this battle had inspired him to tease her to lengths he never thought possible, as she made it seem like it had been some impossibly hard boss fight, or her first time playing a Dark Souls game.
"You got one!" he couldn't help but put emphasis on the 'one' to let her know just how entertaining that was. That she beat but a single slime, and it was impossible for her to not know how silly it was. "That's like, your first kill, right? Congrats! I mean it'll certainly get tougher from here on out, but with that kind of skill you can probably maybe beat a goblin or kobold or whatever they had in this game!"
Aoife turned, noticing that although she'd only taken out one enemy, her quest had progressed by three. That must have meant that the hat-loving man had taken on two more slimes elsewhere. Truly, an impressive feat to face them and come out of it clean, aside for a small fleck of ooze on his cheek. She envied him that, compared to her own predicament.
Still, he seemed rather content with how things had turned out, hailing her victory with some very enthusiastic words. Aoife seemed to contemplate what he had said for a moment, shouldering her spear as she nodded to hersefl, evidently coming to a conclusion on how to respond.
...Yet again, she gave a formal bow, lowering her head respectfully. "Your words are wise. Although the road ahead may be difficult, the fact that one such as myself could defeat one enemy means that I may well be able to defeat another. I will keep this in mind," She said with the utmost seriousness, like a disciple learning from the words of an experienced master. "Thank you, both for your kind words, and for the assistance you have so generously provided in accompanying me."
There was not a proper word for the expression Licht made, hearing Aoife's sincere gratitude towards his blatant sarcasm. But if one had to try to describe it, it could be said to be the mixture of disgust and realization that she was probably not screwing with him. "...Well, no problem....? Keep it.... up?" he was not too sure how to reply since she was immune to his, well, character. It was as if she denied his very existence, and since nobody had ever done that before, he had no real way to cope.
Licht sighed. Somehow he would have to carry on, despite her obliviousness. "That should be three down out of ten, correct?" he QUESTioned. He did not think it the quest tracker was lying to him, and he doubted that Aoife had managed to secretly beat another slime while he was 'fighting' his own.
"Well? Venture forth, young one. It would be best if you learned how to fight for yourself. I am simply backup." Except, of course, for those other slimes that had aggro'd on him. Screw them.
"Indeed," Aoife said, nodding. "It was wrong of me to allow myself to be overcome by frustration," Declared the young Paladin heroically, turning her eyes to the horizon - although whether she was trying to look dramatic or was just searching for more slimes to fight, who could have said for sure? "This is a battle I must fight by myself," She said, nodding to herself, before turning back to her doubtless rather befuddled companion. "After all, if I cannot best foes such as these, there's no telling how poorly I'd fare in a truly... sticky... situation."
Learning from his past interactions with the girl, Licht opted out of asking whether or not the pun was intentional. It was safer this way. "Improving yourself in both mind and spirit through engaging and defeating foes is the fastest way to strengthen yourself, and to take your own power to the next level." he stated. He hadn't expected her to pick up the fact he made a reference to leveling up in there, but he couldn't not do it, that would be completely against his own personal character.
"Indeed!" She declared with the utmost seriousness, giving an emphatic nod before abruptly rouding on the woods, leveling her glaive and pointing dramatically down the path that lay ahead. "And I shall have many such foes to confront, for an enemy of justice is an enemy of myself. Let us go, Sancho Licht! At least seven more of our slippery adversaries must fall before our work here is done."
"Yes... let us resume our quest with haste, you eager paladin, you." Licht seemed to have earned himself a new nickname, and one he probably did not care very much for. However, since he was occasionally calling her Pally in his head, he figured she deserved that much. Pally the Paladin could be allowed to give him a single nickname. "Also you'd better not take forever. Girls fighting slimes with tentacles is not a healthy thing for a young man to watch for extended periods of time."
At least he was nice enough to warn her.
Aoife slumped back against the trunk of a sturdy tree, stopping to catch her breath as the last slime vanished into light. Her HP bar hadn't dropped by much, as she'd managed to angle most of the attacks she couldn't dodge into the armored areas of her person, but the impacts alone were enough to leave her joints sore, without even bringing into question the irritation of the sticky rainbow-colored ooze dribbling slowly down her torso. At this point, she looked like she'd been assaulted by the entire paint department of a hardware store.
Having taken Licht's advice to heart, she had managed to dispatch most of her foes with haste. That didn't mean she'd done it in a terribly efficient manner. In her hurry, she'd left several openings, and had, consequently, taken more than a bit of a beating. Her arms were still aching from a particular slime that had caught hold of both her glaive and her hands and tried to crush them inside its body. She sighed. I suppose it could have been worse, she thought. At least none of the slime got inside my clothing. That would have been more than just embarrassing.
Opening her inventory, Aoife glanced at what gear she had equipped. As she thought, the slime wasn't listed as a permanent status effect on her armor. In that case, it was probably just applied as a terrain effect to her gear that would be removed when she either left the area or unequipped her items. In that case, now that she was done fighting, it seemed like a reasonable enough idea to get rid of the noisome slime. There was just one problem.
Aoife glanced back up to the man in the Elf costume as he came strolling into the clearing. She raised a single hand, gesturing for him to stop. "Turn around and don't look this way," She ordered out of the blue.
Licht had offered minimal help during the rest of the quest, having decided it best if the woman learned how to fight herself. Of course, if she seemed incapable of surviving an encounter, he was ready to step in, but that had proved to be unnecessary. So most of his time was spent watching. Watching and waiting for her to finish up the encounters. He had to admit she did dispatch the slimes in a quicker manner than before, although her victories were always sloppy. That much was to expected from a noob, however.
He was relieved when they were finished. Now they (he) did not have to sit around, watching a hentai in the making. Although he was probably the one most eager to escape the area, he took a brief moment to look back upon the place and admire just how beautiful it really was. People put a great deal of time and effort into this place, and he was feeling sentimental. For about three seconds, then he decided to hurry up and follow his little companion. Strangely, however, he found himself being spontaneously ordered to face the opposite way as he approached the slime-covered girl. Weird. Why would he do that? Had she decided that it would be fun to play hide-and-seek? Perhaps there was a foe behind him? Or maybe....
No, it couldn't be.
He had a very strange thought pass through his mind. He thought that for some weird reason maybe the girl wanted to do something odd like take off her equipment. But he knew that was silly. He was probably just having an overactive imagination or something, because there is absolutely no viable reason for a person to just take off their stuff like that --- it was crazy.
And then he remembered where they were, what kind of situation they had found themselves in.
"O-okay... ?" he did not try to argue with the girl. Instead, he did as she instructed and once again faced the area they had just been. What was it about these trees that inspired such awe from the elf-clad human? Was it the way they gently swayed in the breeze? Was it their brilliant green? Perhaps, maybe, he was a tree in a prior life? If one believed such a theory, that is. Licht wasn't sure, but then again, he never was. He just kinda did things whenever without being sure of them and that was his core nature. These trees that lived, day in and day out, could also be said to be unsure. They were a computer program. Numbers. They existed not yet they did anyway.
What am I even pondering?
Aoife, for her part, watched the Swordsman carefully, waiting for him to either turn around or refuse to do so, for whatever reason. Fortunately, he didn't seem to question her orders, and did as he was told, facing away from her and staring off into space, completely motionless. Clad head to toe in all green, barely moving save for the wind rustling his clothing, he almost looked like some sort of tree.
But, that was a stupid thing to compare a person to, and Aoife didn't really care what he was doing so long as he wasn't looking her way, so, satisfied that he wasn't staring at her, swiftly dragged and dropped all her equipment from her gear slots back into her inventory, then hit apply. Her armor vanished in a flash of light, dissipating into pixels with an audible whine. She stretched, glad to be relieved of the weight of the platemail on her already sore body and arms. Still, relaxing though it might have been, she wasn't particularly keen on the idea of standing around in the middle of the forest in her simulated underwear. After all, even if this wasn't her actual body, it felt real enough to her. So, going back to her inventory, she set about re-equipping each piece of her gear in turn.
As one might deduce from his inner monologue, Licht had begun questioning his own being and what it meant to be himself. Was he a tree? No. Was he ever a tree? No. He was a person. A person with a very active mind and he also happened to have a very short attention span. Patience wasn't something he was great with, so like glass, his concentration shattered.
"Is there a reason I---"
Licht couldn't complete his sentence when his eyes were graced with the sight of digital skin. He couldn't help but notice that, aside from her boots, the girl was as bare as an avatar could get. Truly, the thing he feared most was revealed to have been true: the girl was crazy.
Not that he minded much.
"....nice boots?"
Aoife raised an eyebrow, glancing up at the sound of the hat-loving man's voice. She stared blankly at him. He gazed distractedly back. Aoife sighed and equipped her dress, relieved that, at least, it wasn't soaked in dead bits of slime anymore. Her cuirass followed shortly after as, with a single deft motion, she shut the player menu and turned back to the dumbstruck Swordsman. "It is very impolite to stare," She said pointedly, sounding less embarrassed and more... disappointed. Her expression hardly changed either, presenting an oddly understated reaction to what most women would have considered a grave offense. It might have even seemed like she didn't even mind, were it not for the faintest tinge of red entering her cheeks despite her best attempts to maintain her perpetual poker face. But, mastering herself, she did not make any comment other than this. Turning away without another word, she followed her quest marker towards the edge of the clearing, heading for the guard camp in the woods to turn in her quest. Unlike before, this time, she didn't wait to make sure Licht was following her.
As much as any other man would like to pretend he was 'used' to seeing the female form, Licht did not do so. That is not to say he was like your stereotypical shounen manga protagonist who bumbled around and became the incarnation of a beet just by seeing a girl's hand, but he could admit that although she was an avatar, he did think she was a fairly good-looking one at that. However, he showed as much reaction from Aoife's form as she did. He probably had a small tint of red to his cheeks, but what really showed was that he was more confused by her actions, being unaware of her reasons for doing what she had done. So he voiced such.
"Yeah, well, it's rude to strip randomly too." he replied to her as he followed behind, though she apparently didn't feel like saying much more on the matter. Oh well, so be it. If she wanted to strip at random intervals during this adventure of theirs, then he would not stop her.
He just wished she had been wearing the costume that won the competition.