Mostly Dead Means Slightly Alive [YGO/SAO FI ft Nihilo]

[Spectral Waltz]

Chapter 1

Virtual reality, true 'Full Dive' as it was becoming known. The ability to inject sensations directly into the mind and let a person truly experience a world that exists purely within the digital substrate.

A Holy Grail of entertainment ever since its first conceptualization, rapaciously desired and seemingly impossible to realize all at once. Theories were crafted, dozens of concepts were suggested by available science and technology and hundreds more put to paper by artists of all disciplines. Yet even the most reasonable-seeming remained tantalizingly out of reach, the brain and mind too poorly understood, the technology at hand already so precise and yet still lacking when it came to the precision such dreams might demand.

[ARGUS presents…]

Yet the text before one's eyes, not projected from a screen, simply hanging in space, told a story all on its own. The echo of words…

"Link start!"

…Syllables that came off one's tongue resonating in the mind unshackled, the sense of one's own body bled away into something muted and distant, all but intangible.

[...in partnership with Industrial Illusions Ltd.]

Colours bloomed in the space, aurora borealis writ small, a corona of violet that swiftly faded into blues, then greens, then yellows in turn. Smears of shades swirling through the visible spectrum, overlapping and blending until the black space was swallowed by white, and white in turn gains texture and tangibility. Scents reached invisible nostrils, cool wind brushed a formless and unseen face: damp of rain, tingle of ozone, a chill across barely-there as the blossoming clouds finally parted.

An endless sky, and a vast steel castle suspended in the blue. A final line of text wisped across it, titling the wondrous vision before being pulled away in the wind.

[SWORD ART ONLINE]

Then the clouds rose up again, white swallowing it all, and the distant sense of falling… Falling… Falling…

…Slower…

…and unseen feet touched cool and polished hardwood with no more impact than one might feel descending a step.

Once again colours bled into the white, oil paints poured onto wet canvas this time, swirling and pooling as they resolved into a certain configuration. Velvety reds, rich wooden browns, brass fittings gleaming cheerily in light that has almost the exact texture and feel of oil lamps yet lacks that certain faint flicker. It was a dressing room, at least in approximate appearance, yet for all the 'changing stalls' one could see, this seems centered on a circle in the middle of the floor, a circle in which a wireframe is inscribing itself in the air, the shape of a body starting out as rough outlines and rapidly refining itself as a sign above proudly proclaims what any experienced user would likely have guessed.

'Character Creation'

If the mind currently free of a vessel had lips, they would threaten to lop their head right off, they were so giddy.

Now, time to make an unassuming foundation that'd play nice with the largely nature-driven early floors. It was all forests and mountains and the odd river and lake, with the most exotic things got being plant and bug monsters until you hit the ruined city full of undead. Thus, a weathered and weary ranger, to perfectly slot in with the things from the deep woods that she'd be smacking cards out of and ideally getting one as a mount.

The closed beta test had promised character data would be retained in full release, unlike the earlier Alpha they'd gotten all this info from via forums, so players had point blank told to make their characters with the expectation of carrying them forward into launch proper. Therefore, the very first thing that was added was a milky grey-white eye and deep furrows of clawmarks on the surrounding flesh, giving a little hint as to where things would be headed build and motif wise.

From there, everything else just fell together naturally, a healthy brown-amber eye with but a hint of exhausted darkening around it. Brown hair pulled in a messy ponytail, a petite figure belying whipcord muscle built for handling a bow and trek through countless kilometers of woodland, a nice medley of brown leathers and green-dyed cloth… then came the little details. Adjusting the scars so they'd tug slightly on the cheek and lend themselves to a small, lopsided smile by way of resting face. Some callouses that took handling the practice weapons—bow, dagger, spear, the works—the chargen provided to properly arrange. Very precise touchups to the foot and ankle structure to make padding silently on all terrains come easily and comfortably, on top of enough flexibility to grip down on roots and branches provided something like leather sandals were in play.

It was a fun game of finding yet more and more minutia that could be changed at a literal thought or, failing that due to the sheer finesse needed, gently molding the avatar like clay. It took an entire two hours but by the time the player, now happily christened Helewise Golgari—suitably high fantasy, by their reckoning—, decided she was done it was with a warm fuzzy feeling of contentment.

The window full of sliders lay discarded and forgotten as refinements had quickly grown more and more precise, and by the time it was done felt as though it should be gathering dust if it wasn't for the timeless virtual nature of the space. There was no offer to save the configuration as they finally accepted their digital guise, but then again previews for SAO had made a point of mentioning that capacity for alts—additional characters for a single player—would not be available for this launch, so the lack of even a perfunctory option was not so surprising.

Spoiler

https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/bcd408dc2372.jpg

The dressing room faded away, leaving only Helewise, and the point of view was plucked up in a way that should have been nauseating if not for the lack of features around them to confuse the eye and inner ear. Perspective swung smoothly, curving around the body in a broad arc that bent inwards, terminating at the back of the head.

A split second of nothingness.

-step-

-tap-

Sensation underfoot, boot and sock and the irregular pressures of cobblestones muted by both. Sounds of chatter, dozens of voices, then hundreds. Sun on one's shoulders—her shoulders, now—and pure blackness displaying one last message in small and understated letters before giving way to the irregular darkness of one's eyelids.

[Welcome to Aincrad]

Mismatched eyes opened, and the central plaza of the City of Beginnings stretched out before her new body.

It was not as packed as it could have been, surely. The servers had been live for hours and the population had started to disperse accordingly, but still there were hundreds of people to be seen from even their single vantage point. New arrivals gawked as they drifted in and out of nearby streets and alleyways alongside more experienced players, distinct in how the former stared and meandered while the latter moved with some semblance of purpose. Although there was a certain middle ground in people like Helewise, who had done their reading on the Alpha Test. In the distance massive walls rose, and above them the underside of the second floor could only just be seen through drifting wisps of fluffy white clouds.

More than a few players were simply standing and staring at thin air with one finger raised, peering at their menus, no doubt. There was a gently pulsing 'new message' icon in the corner of Helewise' vision, after all, and swiping to open the menu brought it up automatically. Not a tutorial, not quite, but a gentle warning that all Alpha Test accounts had been reset, and while avatars may have been preserved, skills and gear—had they had any previously—were gone and would need to be reacquired. A glance down at the inventory tab showed a number of CoR above it, a slightly more generous amount than previous tests had offered. If she remembered the guides right, it'd be enough for a starting weapon, basic armor, and perhaps a potion or two to get someone going.

Now to gear up.

She planned to eventually go for a more Death Knight sort of setup, but this early on, when she had no mount and gear options were limited? Speed and range would be a hell of a lot more fun.

That meant going for leather armor as the best protection she could get without compromising on speed or stealth. But if she remembered that one forum thread right, the only ranged weapons in SAO were thrown, which… honestly, suited her just fine. Because it meant she'd grab spear skills which would then be gangbusters once she had a mount but for now would suit her just fine for hucking javelins at problems and keeping monsters at a distance.

The overall shape of the City of Beginnings had been mapped, but the details were lacking, possibly for lack of interest on Alpha testers' parts but more likely for lack of will with how massive it was. Four enormous roads ventured out from that central square, the northern and western ones leading to the great gates in the walls that separated the city's safe zone from Aincrad's various dangers in the field. Opposite them, the eastern road made its way towards the cathedral, the main respawn point for players on the first floor while the southern road was quickly shaded by the looming bulk of the Black Iron Palace. Between each of these wide major thoroughfares were dozens of smaller gaps in the buildings, leading to smaller and narrower side streets that criss-crossed the city in a rough grid shape. A few enterprising players darted in and out of them here and there but given how much of the city was set aside for player housing only the lucky or the knowing were likely to find anything amidst the thousands of empty lots.

There'd been a lot that Alpha testers either hadn't figured out or hadn't bothered to share—there were only a thousand of them, after all—, but just going from what was known a faint pattern emerged. The largest streets were populated by design, dozens of vendors making for a truly wide variety of options all in close proximity, maximizing efficiency. Meanwhile, the smaller streets were nearly unpopulated, a scattering of smaller shops that occasionally sold some niche items but mostly held all the same stock, making searching for them largely pointless unless you were particularly dedicated to some very specific bit.

But hidden amongst the smaller streets were the alleyways that wound narrowly through the buildings, barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast and often tucked into the geography in such a way that their entranceways blended in. Far too easy to miss. These places didn't have shops in them, a fact that nearly every post mentioning them seemed to make a point of reinforcing, but the steady stream of careful deflections told a story of its own. Especially for someone so addicted to exploration as Helewise.

There probably really were no shops, but that didn't necessarily mean no vendors, and it definitely didn't mean no nothing at all, because why go to all that trouble to hide these places if you weren't going to put something in them? The Alpha test rules regarding the sharing of in-game screenshots and footage had been impressively firmly enforced, but plenty of unsubtle hints had reached players' ears all the same, and the occasional picture that slipped through the cracks for long enough to become self-perpetuating had been proof enough for most.

That still left finding such places of course, but as long as one was willing to commit to a little searching they'd likely manage sooner or later, and at such a low level…

['Searching' +1]

The effect was slight but noticeable, a faint darkening at the edges of vision, a small stack of wooden crates becoming sharper, the gap between them and the wall beyond coming into perspective for a split second. Short enough to miss with an ill-timed blink or a careless look away, the latter an all-too-real possibility for a player looking about after that sudden skill popup entered their vision.

Helewise for her part simply slipped behind the boxes and into the narrow passage beyond, even if nothing in the world could've kept the smile off her face. That was some smooth integration to the point only the holographic pop-ups made her remember this was a videogame. Especially with how she could feel her scars tug at the lines of her face, whatever Argus intern had slaved over this minutia had her eternal gratitude.

The city closed over her head, shrouding the way in a dusty gloom. Narrow shafts of sunlight illuminated the way, shining on the small heaps of displaced cobbles and patches of moss that had grown up to consume the paving. The cheerful green 'Safe Zone' indicator in the far corner of her peripheral vision remained steady, the trail less outright menacing and more gently eerie as it descended to run alongside some sort of waterway. In any real and lived-in city it would likely be a sewer (or at least reek of piss like one), but thankfully the developers' commitment to detail hadn't extended that far, making for a surprisingly picturesque little scene. Pale stone lightly overgrown, clear water gurgling as it flowed steadily by, its surface a meter or so below the edge of the walkway, cast in warm tones…

"Who goes there…?"

It was in the midst of this moment that the challenge rasped from the shadows beyond, and a figure shuffled into view. Threadbare violet robes hung from bony shoulders and kept the face in shadow but for a faint shifting as the jaw worked quietly, seeming to make some sort of silent assessment before they spoke again, every syllable scraped from their vocal cords with painstaking slowness. "A swordmaster? After all these years? Not pacted, though… A pity…"

'Score!' Helewise cheered inwardly, even as outwardly she just tilted her head quizzically in a way that made her ponytail swish slightly, "What kind of pact are we talking about here?"

"Hmm… You do not know, perhaps there are none left who know now, how long it has been…" Apparently asking after the mention of a 'pact' had been the correct trigger as the NPC shuffled a little closer, their motions scraping hollowly against the stone.

"Denied earth's embrace, we wander. Bereft of life's touch, the eons hollow us, again and again." A chuckle that rattled like bones down a dry well before the cloak shifted, tiny pinpricks of light reflecting within the shadows of the hood. "You are not yet ready, but you could be, in time…"

Perhaps the search skill triggered again, perhaps it was merely a trick of the light, but for a moment, Helewise could see that there was no face beneath that hood. Only an outline of a skull looming from the shadows before fading away as quickly as it had come. "Would you seek to walk the path of we forgotten and decayed?"

She didn't flinch at the photorealistic look, nor at the ominous words. She smiled, "Yes. After all, it clearly has good company and I'm a wannabe cartographer, why not explore it ahead of time and introduce people to it? Some more gently than others."

Helewise had not been expecting to run into something like this, especially this early, but like hell she'd miss out on the opportunity.

"Take this, then," another shift beneath the cloak and a hand emerged. Skinless, fleshless, fingers of white bone holding between them a violet rectangle. A card depicting a humanoid figure, desiccated brown, blooming from a haze of blue-green energy. A little notification popped up in the corner of Helewise' vision.

[Quest Accepted: "Seeker of Beyond" | Play a Zombie-type monster in 25 Duels. 0/25]

The card was one such monster, naturally, a 'Regenerating Mummy'. Another rattling laugh emerged as Helewise took it without fear, and the chattering undead took a step back. The little quest window zipping up into the 'sidequests' tab of Helewise' menu once she dismissed it.

"When you have come to understand our nature, return, and you will be initiated." With its piece apparently spoken, the skeleton finally turned and began to shuffle away with that same scraping gait.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
You can read two chapters ahead on Patreon.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

[Spectral Waltz]

Alas, it seemed like Helewise had burned through all her luck for chance encounters, some more poking around the backstreets producing nothing and a quick trip back to the thoroughfares yielding her little more than what she was already in the market for. Namely a bog-standard boar spear and a decent set of leathers. She had eyed a quiver of javelins for a long moment, before remembering some complaints online about thrown weapon durability and taking another good look at the price, ultimately deciding that for her first trip she'd be better off just buying a couple health potions.

More cumbersome to use than crystals and their one-word incantation activation, since you had to actually pull the damn things from your belt or inventory, pop the cork and chug. Flipside, hell of a lot cheaper, so for healing in between fights it suited her just fine and would let her make the most out of her time out there. Then she could come back with a tidy pile of CoR and a bunch of animal drops to get some more serious kit going on and try out food in FullDive. Maybe even befriend a crafter or two who wanted the fat, tusks, meat, pelts and so on for their stuff.

Argus had made a pretty good choice with the most basic enemies being boars, absurd amount of materials you could pull out of that, helped kickstart everyone's stuff. Plus learning how to read some basic charge attacks was a good intro to fighting in VR, especially one that simulated the full five senses and would definitely get some people panicked and falling on their asses.

She may even be one of those!

For now, though, she was wading through the sheer volume of players filling the prairies and hills that immediately surrounded the city. The distant pillar up to Aincrad's second floor looming from one direction and the spires of the city's towers opposite it meant that it was hard for one to get truly lost in the rolling green, but the sheer scale was breathtaking even without the fantastical oddities that populated it. There were mobs of course, 'Frenzy Boars' were fairly peaceful despite their names, with a low aggro radius and a tendency to wander about alone rather than in herds, making it difficult for a player to accidentally draw in more than they could handle while they adjusted to VR combat.

Better still, they were as predictable as the online guides had said, lowering their heads in a blatant tell before charging in a straight line, fast but lacking any ability to deviate once they'd committed to their attack, making them easy to evade so long as one wasn't entirely flatfooted. She passed a player who'd apparently put a fair bit of effort into getting a rakish sort of ronin look trying to take a charge head-on only to be bodily tossed about on impact, while an onlooking player with a simpler dark-haired avatar visibly sighed at his antics. The more successful players Helewise saw seemed to favor dodging and striking at the flanks as the boar charged by, often finishing the fight in one or two good blows, but then again, none of the combatants she passed carried spears like hers.

Disappointing, but perhaps that was to be expected from Sword Art Online.

Still, it would be foolish to ignore the clear trend, even if in real life a boar spear like she'd gotten was designed for bracing against the ground and punishing that exact kind of charge. No way to know how well that'd apply here and she'd rather not find it was 'your spear snaps like a twig after a few rounds of this'. Players thinned out the further from the city one got and Helewise soon enough found a reasonably unoccupied stretch of plains surrounding a curious little pond. Water flowing from a distortion in the air to tumble into a picturesque pool that never seemed to fill despite lacking any visible drainage, gleaming crystal clear in the sunlight heedless of its own apparent stagnancy. Some sort of magic fountain teleporting water from the bottom to the top, maybe?

The boars were here too, occasionally grouped up into small herds this far from the city, but with plenty of stragglers still meandering about to be lured into fights. Wandering within ten meters saw them start turning to track her, and from watching the other players she could estimate that closing to six or seven meters would have the boar start pawing the earth, hinting at the charge to come.

Or if one was being exceptionally cautious, she'd seen more than a few enterprising players open their fights by simply throwing a rock to trigger the aggro from a range of their choice on impact, presuming their aim and arm were up to the task of course.

She just walked right up to one, those little tweaks she'd done to her feet making sure staying on the balls of her feet was perfectly comfortable as she approached, spear held just like her stance; low, loose and ready. At some invisible threshold, the boar stopped pawing at the ground and committed to the charge with a stomp and a porcine squeal, leaving her to twirl out of the way with a laughing exclamation of, "Toro!"

Then she stabbed the fucker.

She'd aimed for the neck, but her timing had been a bit off and so instead she opened a wide gash of red wireframes down its side… then promptly watched its footing go to shit and send it crashing into the pond. After that it was honestly kinda sad, watching it scream as it tried and failed to get any grip on the smooth waterside stones, so she just stuck her spear through its eye. While it looked like just more wireframes and red light, someone had put real work on the feedback of attacks, she'd felt the slight resistance as she punctured the eyesocket to skewer the brains and finally scraped against the inside of the skull before the whole thing exploded into a shower of polygons.

From there it was just finding and stabbing more of the porkchops-in-waiting.

The drops from the three boars were unfortunately lackluster as Helewise took stock in the aftermath, quietly taking heart in at least not yet having had to pop any of her potions. Two 'tattered boarhides', three 'cracked tusks' and a fourth 'chipped tusk', as well as a small collection of 'frenzy hoof's and miscellaneous 'boar meat's that might well have included bits of sinew and gristle in them, at least going by their little image in Helewise' inventory.

[The most an amateur skinner can likely hope for.] The little hint in the description of the hides was a small consolation at least, giving direction for a player looking to improve their drops, though Helewise would need to give up one of her starting skills if she wanted to do that right now. Both [Searching] and [Polearms] had leveled up a few times from her exploration and handful of fights. Not enough for any major unlocks yet, but enough that the spear already felt a bit lighter in her hands and the occasional distant figures seemed that tiny bit sharper.

If she recalled the guides right, you needed a Key Item to swap out your skills without resetting your levels on them. Unfortunately, they had clearly changed things from the Alpha, since the elf NPC who handed them out had been nowhere to be seen. Something to ask around about later, she'd hate to reset her progress just because she missed something as basic as 'just go to the pillar dungeon, dumbass, NPC at the entrance gives them out'. It had to be something tied to Main Story Quest, given how basic a function it was.

Decision made, she just started eyeing the next boar to bottom bother. Thankfully, there was no real risk of dodging a charge attack into the aggro range of a herd, so it was just a matter of not ending up like that first boar and trip because she didn't pay attention to the terrain.

Which was of course when she got startled by something else she had stopped paying attention to as a voice hollered over the hills.

"Hey! Uh… Spear girl!" "Not like that, idiot." A pair of players were approaching as the afternoon light started to shift towards evening, a muscular blonde man who looked like he'd run into the character creator's limitations while trying to build some sort of bare-chested barbarian archetype and come out looking like Chinese bootleg Conan and a young man with chestnut hair who looked like he'd tweaked every single slider on the character creator once and said 'good enough' to the result. Not entirely generic, but rather distinctly nondescript.

It made for something of a funny image then, that the muscled blonde was rubbing his side where his friend had elbowed him. "Is it just me or does the lack of pain make it feel super weird t'get hit?" "Not right now Joey, Ho there! Miss Ranger!" The friend in question waved Helewise' way, smiling. "How goes your hunt?"

Oh, huh, RPers? She supposed there would be more of them around, and she technically was one given she loved the idea of having what was basically a FullDive DnD campaign given all the freedom Cardinal provided in regards to dynamic dialogue and quests. Sure, the Alpha testers had grumbled about it being a bit chatbotty sometimes, but that'd been the Alpha like half a year ago and it'd just been meant to test how well NerveGear headsets performed compared to the bike-sized Medicuboids when it came to shaking hands with the human brain. Helewise had yet to run into any issue like that, everything felt so lifelike you'd forget it was a videogame if it wasn't for the semi-frequent system pop-ups.

Either way, she was more than happy to match the energy thrown her way, "Hah! Damn mediocre, I'll tell ya! Meat should be okay enough once minced or turned into jerky, and the rest… well, apprentice craftsmen need something cheap to practice on, is the best I can say. So at least I won't be sitting on a bunch'a junk at the end of the day."

"Well, perhaps we could help you out a little? If you have any need of it of course." They were speaking English, which was a certain strangeness in itself given this was the Japanese server. Not that there weren't going to be expats and foreign residents playing (hell, she was one), but they'd opened with English and hadn't been surprised when she'd answered with the same. "I'm Tri-uh… Zeero, and this is Jonah," the brunette's eyes slid over to his friend again, who was squinting at Helewise oddly. Or rather, squinting at a point just above her head, eyes slowly going between it and her face.

If the cursors above these two's own heads could have twinkled innocently, they might well have taken that moment to do so.

"Uhh… 'Zeero' I think…" The blonde pronounced his friend's screen name with the care of someone who might well be entirely unused to the concept of a pseudonym.

"What? I grabbed crafting remember?" "Yeah but…" 'Jonah's eyes slowly swung back up to Helewise' cursor again and then back down to her face, his cheeks reddening as the emotional emulation system responded to his embarrassment with an exaggerated awkward flush. 'At least Cardinal didn't go for the comically large sweatdrop.' "I don't think she's gonna give you a quest for it…"

"Why wouldn't she?"

"Well doesn't the green thingie mean she's a player?"

'…Oh, there's the sweatdrop.' The production of SAO's emotional reading engines was entirely cartoonish, thankfully, though seeing it pop up behind Zeero's realistic 3d visage was still quite odd as his eyes now swung up above Helewise' head, then back down, staring at her with a faintly horrified expression before turning beet red too. "Oh."

"Pffft. I thought you two were just newbie RPers!" Helewise snorted, struggling mightily to keep it to just that since these two were mortified enough as-is without someone outright laughing at them. She hoped the friend requests she shot out with a quick few swipes of her hand—kudos to whoever had made the interface, it was hideously intuitive—would take the bite off of it. With a party to watch her back she could start tackling boar herds just fine.

Jonah jumped in surprise at the friend request, then burst out laughing when Zeero looked about ready to bolt at the sheer indignity of it all before he tapped it and a little checkmark appeared on Helewise' screen. "Relax Tris-uh, Zeero."

"Relax?! Uuuugh…" His eyes rolled in a full circle before he finally deigned to accept the request as well. "Fu-uh… Frick," he shifted away from the curse halfway through it, "First impression completely blown."

"I mean I don't think that's anything bad if she's inviting us to be friends, hey-uh," Jonah's attention shifted back towards Helewise suddenly, the fact that he had an immediate source of knowledge to hand dawning on him. "What's 'Arpee-er' mean anyways?"

"Roleplayer, it means roleplayer," Zeero groaned behind him before Helewise could answer.

Jonah's expression turned to confusion again. "Wait, ain't that a sex thing?"

Helewise's willpower was outright herculean, the way she managed to keep her voice steady despite the witch-like cackle that was doing its damnedest to burst out of her ribcage, "Nah, that's E-RP, like how you got h-doujins as a pretty important distinction when you swing by Comiket."

"You've gone to Comiket? Lucky… Though musta been pretty expensive flying all the way out t' Japan." Jonah outright grinned, the expression looking oddly at home on his avatar's face.

Were these two using VPNs or something to get in the Japan server? But then why would they assume… ah, hell, nothing to do but to ask, "I actually live there nowadays, landed a pretty alright gig as an english teacher, but uh. If you are in America or Europe, how come you don't have five million ping from trying to connect to the Japan server?"

She was pretty sure it was automatically assigned by region, too. Maybe some friends overseas they wanted to hang out with in FullDive? It would be a pretty nice way to feel like you were actually spending time with someone even if there was an ocean or two in the way.

"No, it's been smooth." "What do you mean 'Japan server' we're on the American server aren't we?" Zeero and Jonah inquired in stereo, voices overlapping. They looked at each other, blinked, and both opened their mouths again before flinching back, expressions turning thoughtful.

"No, it doesn't make sense. Like you said," Zeero motioned to Helewise, shifting back and forth restlessly as though unsure who he should be speaking to. "The ping would be crazy if we were connecting to Japan wouldn't it?"

Jonah had opened his menu in the meantime and seemed to be scrolling through it, his accent growing thicker with nerves, "I'm sure I clicked 'America' at the start, didn't I? The whole Nerd Gear setup thingy."

"NerveGear," Zeero corrected absentmindedly, swiping the air to pull his own menu open, "maybe that's why we couldn't find Yugi earlier?"

"Aw man… There's gotta be an option to fix it though right?"

"We might need to remake our characters, I don't think they've got transfers yet. We'll just, uh…"

Zeero went still, his hand hovering uncertainly over the menu. "Hey-ah… Where's the 'Log Out' button?"

"What're you talking about it's right–..." Jonah's rebuttal died in his throat, giving way to a murmured 'the hell?'

One that Helewise echoed when she opened her menu and found the same. "...That makes no sense, I took a quick break to drink water while I was making my avatar and it let me log out just fine. Lemme send a ti—"

A bell tolled, the sound consuming her attempt to speak as it surrounded them. What should have had a source instead seemed to come from all around, bombarding them with noise.

At least it stopped when darkness bloomed around them, small mercy though it may have been.

What that too was swept away, they emerged to a familiar sight, the central plaza that had been their first sight in this world, seemingly packed to bursting as flashes of light heralded incoming teleportations in the dozens, hundreds, even thousands.

"...cket." Helewise trailed off, slowly lowering her finger.

Already the place seemed full to bursting, a moment's hesitation to take stock proving insufficient to the task as more people kept teleporting in. More than should have been on any one server, surely.

The whole population of Sword Art Online, brought together in a single place, the orange-streaked sky slowly giving way to colors that started as the ruddy shades of afternoon sunlight and ended on a monotone of baleful bloody red.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
You can read two chapters ahead on Patreon.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

[Spectral Waltz]

Chapter 3

The sky rippled, hexagonal tessellations blooming from a central point above the center of the square and flowing silver across the crimson. Eerie in their blatant falseness, they peeled back the skin of the virtual world to expose a glimpse of the digitality, a peek behind the curtain at the code that flowed beneath.

Then, the sky began to bleed.

There was no other word for it, a crimson liquid bubbling from the seams between one six-sided tile and the next, droplets slowly loosing to fall becoming streams of red. They curved impossibly as they descended, curling inwards and terminating in a liquid sphere that hung in the air, shifting, roiling, reshaping itself with each passing second into something less eldritch and more comprehensible. A vaguely humanoid shape draped in a sleek and ornate hooded robe, carmine with golden trim along its hems, not at all like the frayed and bulky thing that had hung from the hidden Skull Servant's bones.

With its appearance (ominousness aside) the mood in the square shifted from anxiety towards a nervous excitement. At least for most, Jonah looked about ready to piss himself.

"Is that a GM?"

"This must be part of the opening day."

"A bit inconsiderate though."

"Greetings, all players of Sword Art Online."

The voice did not boom or overwhelm with sheer volume. It resonated with a weight that made the air shiver with every word, carrying across the entire square with that alone. Next to Helewise Jonah muttered 'heck is he saying?' and received another elbow from his friend.

"Read the subtitles idiot."

"Subtitles? Oh shit, subtitles."

"You likely know me already. My name is Akihiko Kayaba." The figure spread its arms, and even with a name put to them, the lack of any hint at a face or body beneath the hovering robe made it difficult to think of the being beneath as human. "Welcome, to my world."

By now the mood had become downright cheery, the grumbling of those inconvenienced by this drowned out by the excitement. Of course Sword Art Online would hold some kind of event as a rehearsal of sorts for its launch day proper, a company that broke such ground had a certain right to their own hubris that made more than a few inclined to forgive their oversteps.

"I'm sure most of you have noticed something missing from your menus: the Log Out button. Let me assure you, this is not a defect in the game. I repeat… This is not a defect. You cannot log yourselves out of SAO, and no one from the outside world will be able to shut down or remove the NerveGear from your head."

The cheer shattered in an instant.

Disbelief, anger, confusion, uncertainty. The GM, Kayaba, was still speaking, the words piercing through the cacophony erupting around them, explaining the 'rules' of his world. Sweeping gestures of those empty sleeves brought up screens to hang in the air, news articles, video clips, a young man seizing in a bed as someone tried to snatch the helmet from his head, the pixelation covering his face insufficient to conceal the crimson leaking from his ears or the way he'd gone utterly still before the machine was even halfway off. Headlines escalating from individual reports to 'strings of mysterious deaths' to bold print warnings blaring across Newsstations and website banners the world over.

Death was death, and would be even in this new world.

The only way out, one hundred floors above them at Aincrad's apex, the Ruby Palace.

And at the conclusion of it all… applause?

A slow clap, ringing out across the noise and quieting it. One man's hands coming together in time with his measured steps as he walked from the edge of the square towards its center. Silver hair immaculately coiffed, a burgundy suit and ruffled collar, all put together to make an image few could fail to recognize. The founder and CEO of Industrial Illusions, creator of the world's most successful game.

"...Maximillion Pegasus…"

"Bravo!"

His voice had none of the unnatural weight Kayaba's did but it carried all the same. "Bravo Mister Kayaba, a truly wonderful speech."

Stunned silence, for it could not be any other sort, filled the space after those words until…

"Your presence changes nothing, you realize."

"Au contraire, my compatriot! My presence changes everything."

Helewise didn't like that wording or that tone, not one bit. It made the hairs of her neck stand on end.

This very clearly hadn't been in Kayaba's script and the confusion rippled through the assembled players. A saviour at the eleventh hour? The idea that this was all a bit of theater surged in some despite the gruesomeness that still lingered on the hanging screens.

"Do you believe that I will halt my plan for the sake of a single man?"

"My dear boy, whoever said anything about stopping?"

A dropped pin could have been deafening.

"No… Certainly not. But for all the fancy trappings of this game you've put together there is still something missing. You've always known it, haven't you?" Gold glittered behind the veil of silver and as Pegasus tipped his head to look directly up at the hovering robe the hair that always covered his left eye was swept back, revealing the metal facsimile that had taken its place. "You wish to make the steel castle of your dreams a reality, to craft the utterly fantastical into something all-but indistinguishable from life."

The robe went still, the slow little motions of hovering in place, the subtle shifting of the cowl, everything but for the faintest ripples along the hem stopped completely as Pegasus spread his arms wide.

"Rejoice, young man, for my Shadow Game will grant you your wish~"

Helewise could practically hear the capital letters on those words, the way speaking them made the atmosphere shift and writhe. The blood red sky swirled and darkened, the [System Announcement] tags flickering into being once more before shattering like glass, shards of letters raining down before dissolving into violet stars. An unseen gale blew through the square and players were sent stumbling with its force, though Pegasus stood unflinching while it tugged at his suit and lifted his hair.

"Your soul, and all of these souls with it, will make this world far more real than any dream, Mister Kayaba."

These words, spoken far more quietly, still carried on that wind, murmured in every player's ears.

Then Pegasus' eye shone and a thin beam of gold shot up into the shadowed hood before spreading downwards through the robe, fast and slow all at once. So much time and no time at all, the robe filled with light until it burst in a silent explosion that sent waves of gold rippling through the assembled players, sudden brightness overtaking them as the nature of the world around them shifted in a way no language had words for.

"Fuck was–, shit, Joey?" When the glow surrounding him cleared, Zeero's look had shifted, a little taller and a little younger, a teenager entering adulthood rather than a young man.

"It's Jonah in here innit? Wait, Tristan?" The muscular blonde's muscles had similarly faded, though they hadn't entirely vanished, and his golden hair had turned a slightly darker and more mundane shade. "Why d'you look like uh… You?"

"I could ask you the same question, uh… Helewise?"

Both of them turned, a little wide-eyed, because Helewise was still glowing, the light which had briefly started to fade now shining brighter again, filling her vision until -without fanfare- reality simply seemed to shatter around her, a distorted scream echoing in her ears as shards of her vision tumbled upwards, falling into blackness.

Until a familiar room of wood, brass, and velvet rose up to meet her, with a familiar avatar, Helewise, slumped and lifeless in the circle at its center.

Next to it, the long-discarded menu flickered slightly, the array of sliders and selectors shifting as new options slid into place around the old. Text distorting and glitching here and there as systems meant to be walled off from player interaction after that single use found themselves called upon once more.

Thing was, the player was no longer inside the avatar. Looking down revealed something hazy and so gangly it verged on the skeletal, a smog of greens and blacks and purples in only the barest of excuses for a humanoid bodyplan. A little shimmy and not even that remained, just an amorphous will flowing around the air like a streamer of water.

"'Your souls', huh?" The entity muttered in a voice without age or gender, just a faint Spanish accent. It figured the soul of someone who saw bodies as nothing but clothes, whose mind could pour itself into a vessel completely unlike what genetics had given it, would end up looking like this.

Assuming Pegasus wasn't full of bullshit, but something deep in the soul's nonexistent gut and bones said this was real. Something had gone a step beyond 'just' playing electromagnetic tricks on grey matter and into the realm of the supernatural.

It tasted so, so bitter to find out such a wondrous thing in such rotten circumstances.

Eyes which were nothing more than glowing spots on the churning morass of the self swiveled towards Helewise's body. An empty vessel, lovingly crafted to be iterated on, to write and live a story with. All the little snippets of maybes and could-bes tied together in a cloud of wishful thinking and escapist dreams that were now thoroughly ruined by the work of two madmen.

…

No.

If those dreams couldn't exist because of SAO and everything it represented, they would exist in spite of it. Those two had stolen and broken enough, this would not be allowed to join the tally. There was a vessel, there were tools, there was an opportunity.

It was simply a matter of realizing it to its fullest, in this hall of forgotten and decayed things.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Joey rushed into the space where Helewise had been, where the weird girl they'd just met had just sort of… Popped out of existence, form and glow and all bursting like a soap bubble.

"Is she dead? What happened?" Tristan was next to him an instant later, stumbling as someone jostled him, milling aimlessly. "Hey, watch it!" The crowds were shifting, the big hooded robe in the sky (what the fuck) that was apparently the game creator was gone, the actual literal Maximillion Pegasus (what the fuck) was nowhere to be seen.

…And this game was apparently going to kill them and possibly eat their souls (what the fuck) if they died in it.

People drifted aimlessly around them, none sparing a glance for the pair, needing to move but with no idea of where to go. Joey was peripherally aware that he and Tristan weren't the only ones to look like their real selves, or at least he had to assume that since he'd seen other people shift around when that light hit them.

None of them had vanished though, and staring at the stone wasn't giving him any answers. "It has to be–, I don't know, it has to be a prank or something, a trick. Souls?" Tristan just kept talking too, Joey knew on some level that was just how his friend was when things got stressful, just like how right now he really wanted to punch something or someone.

"We… We should go find Yugi. A-an' Tea's supposed t'be in here too, right?" He hated the way his voice wavered, the brief stutter as some part of him rebelled against the idea of just walking away, but he needed to be doing something right now, and this wasn't it.

His legs just… didn't want to move for some reason. Didn't want to walk away because he knew if he did he wouldn't be able to find this place again. The place where someone might have just died right in front of him.

He hadn't even really known her, but she'd still been a person.

It should have been heavier.

He didn't know how but it should have been.

"Joey, dude, we're not finding them if we stay here." The crowds had thinned a little bit they were getting restless, so much anger and fear all seeking an outlet. "We might need to get out of the city…"

"Out of the city? Where the monsters are? Are you crazy?" Joey didn't recognize that voice, some other player, presumably.

"Better than staying here." Tristan shot back. Other voices answered him, Japanese, something European, the subtitles flashed at the bottom of his vision, overlapping each other incomprehensibly as the system struggled to keep up.

"You heard that lunatic! We'll die! The government won't let us just get stuck here, as long as we sit tight–"

"And what if they do?! I didn't see them having much luck so far!" Other voices piped up, arguments and counter-arguments, politics and hate all coming to the fore in a confused jumble. Anger spread through the crowd like an infection. Joey could hear jostling, the sound of someone shoving someone else, then scrabbling, Tristan shouting something like 'back the fuck off!' and that of all things managed to get him standing, because when Tristan swore with that tone something was seriously badly wrong.

By his shoulder, a violet star burned into existence from nothingness.

That was all the warning before the air rippled around the flame, warping like cheap plastic left out in the sun, swelling and sagging to distort the press of bodies beyond it further before coming apart entirely. Limbs emerged from the wound in reality, necrotic purple-black fingers tipped in nails more akin what a blacksmith would hammer out burst through in a spray of broken 'glass', a toxic green reptilian eye gazing out from the gloom before the taloned hands gripped the jagged edge of the rent in the virtual space.

Or rather, bracing against it as a thunderous kick shattered the whole thing wide open, a bloodied and haggard figure shuffling out. Coarse white hair, two sets of horns, virulent violet corpsefire wafting from her sternum and licking along the ridges and spurs of her sinuous tail, patches of bruise-purple scales reminiscent of scorch marks. An outfit white as death and black as rot, ragged coat sleeves doing nothing to hide the gradual gangrenous darkening of the pallid skin as it went from the palm to the clawed fingertips.

"That..." The draconic woman wheezed with a dribble of blood, even as her flaming tail darted into the breach to retrieve a familiar boar spear before the hole mended itself thunderously a second later, "was a more literal clawing out than I wanted or needed."

A beat passed in absolute silence, Joey feeling rooted in place because the face was every kind of wrong but the voice sounded quite familiar, and the spear was downright identical. Probably, anyways…

Then someone screamed something in what might have been German and the spell broke, anger turning to panic as people tried to run from the 'monster' that had just emerged in their midst. Each spreading the news to the next, until the sheer weight of bodies trying to get away simply swept anyone trying to do the opposite along with them.

"Oh no you don't!" The 'monster' in question yelled as she dropped her spear, her tail instead snaking out to grab Tristan by the shoulder, yanking with both it and her hands until she pulled him out of the stampede like a plus sized tuna from the water.

Having one of their number suddenly plucked from their midst only encouraged the crowds to scatter faster, but that had sealed it for Joey and as the screams faded far enough for the sounds to dull with distance he found the question on the tip of his tongue. No matter how seemingly obvious the answer may have been.

"Helewise… 'Dat you?"

"Aye, newbie RPer." She chuckled roughly, confirming sure as anything that she really was Helewise before slit-pupils swivelled over to Tristain as she lowered him to the ground, "You holding out in there, man?"

"Uh…" His friend looked not a little bit shell-shocked, gaze swivelling between the half-unfamiliar features and the… Tail…

"Okay," it wasn't the firm 'okay' of acceptance, more of a hesitant acknowledgement of a reality that didn't make all that much sense to him. "...How are you doing that..?"

It took a moment for Joey to get it, Tristan staring significantly at the appendage that had grabbed him so deftly. "Hey no, yeah, how did you get a tail? Are you hacking or something? Is that why that… Whatever that was happened?"

"Pft. Nah, I figure whatever the hell those two did, it tried to check my brain for what I 'should' look like… and promptly shat itself because I don't sweat those kinds of details." Joey shared a look with Tristain, who returned a shrug as Helewise snorted, pulling a potion from her inventory with a slight funhouse mirror warping of the light. Then she bit the cork with very sharp teeth, twisting it out and spitting it off into the by now pretty empty plaza's floor, a quick chug and she… Well, she was still looking pretty rough what with the blood, but at least she didn't look like she had done three all-nighters back-to-back, "Phew, that's better. Anyways, system just gave up and kicked me back in the chargen room and woo boy was it glitchy in there once I got to work."

"I don't think there were 'tail' options…" Tristan started slowly, while Joey was still trying to parse the word 'chargen'.

"Like 'charging'?" He muttered to himself, before smacking his fist into his palm in sudden understanding, "Oh! The whole dressup room bit?"

"Hah, yup, that's the one. Anyways, what does that Yugi you mentioned look like? I'll keep an eye out in the fields, you look in the city?" Helewise asked.

…

Ah shit, Yugi!
_____________________________________________________________________________________
You can read two chapters ahead on Patreon.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

[Spectral Waltz]

The blood red sky had faded away into a facsimile of night, strange little lights on the underside of the second floor above creating an artificial tapestry of light that mimicked the outside world's. The streets had been chaotic with small groups of players hurrying this way and that even when one avoided the thousands-strong mob. Jonah and Zeero—or perhaps 'Joey and Tristan' though they hadn't introduced themselves as such properly yet—had split off to find their friend, leaving Helewise alone as she made her way towards the gates.

'If he looks like he does IRL, then he's going to have the most absurdly insane hair you can imagine, "pretty sure at least three types of dye and two different gels" kind of insane.' Zeero had explained, while Jonah had settled more for tracing some kind of spiky shape in the air. 'Good luck, okay? Like… Don't die.'

She'd had enough tact to not mention that by some definitions she had died already. While there was still a possibility this was all a grand delusion played on them, she was pretty sure that had been her actual literal soul floating around the chargen chamber as the vessel called Helewise Golgari was reforged.

A reforging which… was proving a bit impractical despite all the perks her new tail came with. But hey, at least now she knew Safe Zone protections still worked! Mostly because her bloodstained looks had scared someone shitless when she turned a corner and got a sword to the gut for her trouble, the blade bouncing off with a discordant noise and a flash of white that nearly knocked the guy off his feet.

He'd run after that, nearly dropping his sword twice more on the way as he scrambled around the nearest corner and out of sight. Somehow, she doubted calling after him would help.

So Helewise pressed on.

The gates themselves were just as they'd been that afternoon, but the people had changed. A scattering of players milled in the open space before the archway, warily peering out into the darkness with hands on their weapons. Some discussed in low tones, meaningless platitudes about forming parties, but most were visibly trying and failing to work up the nerve to act.

As she watched, one did manage, visibly squaring her shoulders and drawing her sword, running her fingers over potion bottles she'd apparently withdrawn from her inventory to hang from her belt for quicker access somehow. Then she jogged out into the dark, metal glinting off her starter armor's metal fittings for a few seconds after the rest of her had faded into the shadows, the darkness swallowing them up.

Helewise wasn't far behind her, reptilian eyes glowing green from Search giving her night vision the slightest edge and sickly purple light radiating from the blaze in her chest and tail-tip like a pair of will-o-wisps. Plenty good enough to navigate by, even if ambushing anything was a pipe dream, as attested by the yelps of the players who she sprinted past.

But hey, so long as she didn't stray too far from the walls, the monsters coming to her was all the better. She had a hell of a lot of pent up aggression and stabbing a few wolves sounded lovely, even if there was a certain trepidation about diving into the darkness alone.

…

Actually, she didn't need to be alone, did she? Sure, there may not be any sort of Duel going on, but neither had she been supposed to tumble back into the chargen chamber. It cost her nothing to give it a shot.

She breathed in, centered herself on the seething, stubborn spite that had carried her through that forgotten hall. Immersed herself in the memories of what it had felt to be a disembodied soul. If there was anything that'd help her pull this off, it'd be drawing on that state of mind.

A card slid out from her belt, blackened fingers flicking it out into the ground as she called, "Arise, Regenerating Mummy."

It would've been mortifying if it hadn't actually worked. A wisp of blue burned into existence with a staticky crackle, flickering a few times before stabilizing, then expanding before her eyes, ethereal blue flames gaining depth and darkness, coalescing into physicality. A body of blackened flesh barely hidden by off-white bandages.

Helewise' UI flickered, the numbers in her health bar jumping even if the bar itself appeared to remain full, a brief overlay putting the card in the middle of her vision, then under the Mummy itself, flickering between the two spots before jumping suddenly to a third location, a space just under her health bar.

From there, a moment's focus on the image brought up a tooltip, though the stats it contained were flickering too, numbers scrolling by too fast to track as the Mummy itself stuttered in place before her, freezing and jumping between frames. A rising screech of static growing louder and louder until finally it shifted, transforming from technological horror ambiance into a rattling groan out of a more conventional horror ambiance, animations settling with fewer and fewer hiccups, tooltip numbers stabilizing but for the occasional lingering stutter.

SAO clearly wouldn't have allowed this if it had any say in the matter, but it seemed this was happening one way or another, the game doing its best to compensate under duress.

The Mummy swayed, then half-turned, its attention visibly going to her. The azure flames in the black pits of its eye sockets wavered, then shifted to match the violet burning in her chest.

Beyond it, the faint outline of a frenzy boar turned in the dark, amber eyes taking up faint reflections of the city's distant lights as it finally took proper notice of the thing that had appeared in its detection radius.

Helewise was grinning ear to ear, her lips parting along reptilian seams to show the whole of her teeth and a fair bit of membrane keeping everything connected. This had gone wildly beyond her expectations in the best way possible.

"I am Helewise Golgari, and tonight, you are my hunting partner." She introduced herself with a clawed hand over her burning heart, having genuinely no idea how much of a mind (if any) this undead had, before pointing her speartip at the boar, "Let's be about it."

The mummy for its part gave no indication of having heard or understood the introduction, but whatever intelligence drove it, digital or otherwise, did understand the intent behind the pointed spear. Groaning once more, it lurched to attack, surprisingly fast for something that seemed more like a shambler than a runner at first glance.

The boar's charge met the undead halfway, tusks tearing into the stomach, a darkness mingling with the crimson wireframe injuries. The mummy's claws raked the boar's side in the instant before, just like the players Helewise had seen attempt to meet such charges head on, it was tossed back by the force of the blow. The health bar under the portrait dipped suddenly too, but remained green.

Surprisingly fast, reasonably tough, but not particularly agile, and while Helewise could wait for it and the boar to finish duking it out, that first exchange revealed an attrition rate that wouldn't take long to wear her new minion down.

She wasn't inclined to wait, both from impatience and because she'd already gotten the important data here, so she angled her spear until it lit up with a low keening noise and squeezed a trigger that existed only in her mind. Physical techniques in SAO, like the Linear she was streaking through, felt a lot like being on a zipline. Once you started moving you would keep moving, whether you wanted to or not, it made her stomach do backflips in her gut but she simply grit her teeth and powered through. If you worked with the technique, you had a measure of control and course-correction, freaking out and trying to buck free was worse than useless.

Just barely out of its own version of post-motion stun, the boar came apart into voxels with a single well-placed stab. Items deposited themselves into Helewise' inventory automatically, as usual, looked like that much hadn't changed.

A quest icon hovering in the corner of her UI pulsed softly, a moment's attention opened a tooltip.

[1/25]

The mummy pulled itself back to its feet, the wounds that leaked a strange flickering blue vapour visibly starting to close as its health started to tick back up towards full. Slow but visible regeneration, it would take minutes for it to be back to full health.

And while the boars continued to wander similarly to how they did in the daytime, there were other monsters to be found in the dark.

The wolves that stalked out of the forests after nightfall were not strictly more lethal than the boars, at least according to the analyses written by Alpha testers. They attacked by way of straight line pounces that came out faster than a boar's charge but did less damage on impact. Struck players could expect the monsters to follow up by trying to bite and shake, which would deal moderate to high damage depending on where they managed to latch on to and what sort of armor you were packing.

Where the boars were largely passive mobs with constrained aggro radii and rules, however, the wolves were aggressive. To the point that some had speculated on the existence of some kind of 'pack' system that linked wolves in an area to create artificial aggro chains.

Instead, they'd been an object lesson to the Alpha testers in how stealth in Aincrad went beyond simple visual detection, because Dire Wolves could aggro by sound.

Helewise' mummy might well have been a literal lifesaver the first time a boar's squealing charge drew two of them out of the dark. Demonstrating that startling speed once again to tangle one canine mob and claw at its sides even as its throat was being savaged, leaving Helewise herself free to avoid the other's pounce and drive her spear into its side with motions not dissimilar from those she'd refined against the Boars.

She didn't even need to use system techniques for these, they were fragile enough that a well-placed jab to the neck was a sure kill. In fact, it was much better to just stick to this for them, because they were fast and scrappy enough that they'd happily pounce on you while you shot forward with a Linear for one of their buddies. Sure, Linear fired off fast and barely had any post-motion stun, but it was still enough of an opening to get literally dogpiled if your timing was off.

Thus, regular-ass stabs. Necks, open mouths, eyes, bellies right past the ribs. The sort of weak points you normally wouldn't be able to reliably hit at this level, neatly exposed by her desiccated friend keeping them distracted.

That variable damage based on location hit? It cut both ways.

[5/25]
_____________________________________________________________________________________

You can read two chapters ahead on Patreon.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

A/N: Had to post this from my tablet, Patreon links and additional chapters will be updated in a couple hours.

 

[Spectral Waltz]

Boars died. Wolves died. The counter ticking its way up in the corner of Helewise' vision gave a total as she crossed the fields towards the shadowed bulk of the forest. A line of darkness out there on the horizon, barely distinguishable from the night itself beyond being 'darker' than what came before it.

[17/25]

The darkness hummed, a whine that set one's teeth on edge slowly circling Helewise as the [Buzzing Bloodsucker] that looked like nothing less than a monstrously oversized mosquito prepared for its next strike. Here and there, the glow from her chest and tail caught the glint of wings or compound eyes in the dark, but for all it was a single mob the creature could shift angles too swiftly, making it hard to keep a spear's point on target and forcing her to maneuver around her mummy rather than let it move around her far too slowly to be an effective guard. Its swipes never landed any telling blow, but when one managed to clip the beast, Helewise managed to be in position to finish the insectoid off with a single stab into a seam in the chitin.

Had this mob wandered away from the forest or was she simply too close to the woods? Helewise could tell she wasn't inside the forest itself yet but the light she shed only traveled so far, dimly casting outlines upon a handful of meters around her.

…No shadows of trees in sight, not yet.

Helewise pressed on.

[22/25]
['Polearms' +1]

The mummy's health was deep into the yellow, occasionally falling to the red for any given encounter. The card had disappeared from Helewise' inventory, though the Mummy itself had remained in her 'Duelist's Collection' interface as well as her field. What would happen when it died, she couldn't be sure, but right now she had something slightly more pressing to consider.

[Polearms reached Level 15: 'Sonic Charge' unlocked]

The first new technique for her spear. Well… actually it was the second, but the simple 'Horizontal' unlocked at level five was grayed out and revealed text reading [Incompatible Weapon] when pressed. Apparently her boar spear didn't have enough of a blade for proper slashing, she'd need something more like a glaive or halberd.

Sonic Charge, meanwhile, was interesting. Prodding the system for a tooltip opened a little wireframe figure's demonstrations of the proper pre-motion and follow-through, the former of which could be toggled to take control of the player's virtual muscles and guide them into the correct position if they needed the extra help. The skill required the spear be drawn back entirely out of guard, an exaggerated windup putting the tip low and to the left or right of the player which could be triggered to launch them forwards several meters. Nearly three times the spear's lunging reach.

In other words, right on the edge of a Frenzy Boar's basic aggro radius. Which, guess what she'd just spotted in the gloom?

She took her time getting in and out of the pre-motion stance, committing to memory every time she did it right and her weapon lit up in her hands and sent a thrum through her bones. At least her tail didn't cause any issues, in fact it was the opposite, with how it shifted in the opposite direction to keep her balanced despite the lopsided windup. Finally content that she had it down pat, she checked her surroundings one last time, confirmed the boar was still in range and squeezed that little mental trigger of hers.

A brief violet trail followed her as Helewise crossed the space in the blink of an eye, her feet leaving the ground entirely as the spear nearly pulled her along with it. The weapon's tip caught the boar just under the ribs as the skill pulled her into the thrust that accompanied the move and the air rippled with violet will-o-wisps, the passive illumination of her flames brightening and spreading as the boar stumbled, the brief stun taking its ability to squeal in alarm from it for long enough to drive a second thrust in and finish the job.

"Phew. These really feel like kicking off a zipline platform." Helewise sighed as she twirled her spear to rest against her shoulder, glancing around for anything that lightshow may've drawn in. It was a cool as fuck personal touch on what was supposed to be a generic shockwave according to the technique description, but that didn't mean she was blind to it's potential problems, especially at nighttime. At least it hadn't messed up her night vision.

Footsteps sounded, not the tapping of hooves or the almost-silent padding of wolven paws, and a figure scrambled to a stop in the newly-widened circle of illumination. Slender and darkly dressed under starting leathers not dissimilar to what Helewise herself wore. A green cursor hovering over a head of long jet-black hair, tied back into a ponytail. "You're… A player? How did you get the skill to…"

"Yeah, I am." Helewise replied immediately, just to cut off any misunderstandings that could get real ugly real fast outside a Safe Zone. "The avatar reset command hiccuped so badly with my brain it tossed me back into a glitchy version of the chargen area. Now I got purple fire showing up everywhere, no mechanical effects I've noticed beyond giving me a free light source."

"Purely cosmetic?" The voice was a little high, youthful or an affectation? Hard to tell and not that important, the dark-haired player squatted down by one of the little lights and prodded it with a finger, the luminous not-quite-flame deforming before drifting away from the questing digit. "Weird…"

Their voice hitched a little at the end, and they straightened a bit too quickly, looking away. "Anyways, I didn't think I'd run into any other players out here…"

The voice trailed off as dark eyes settled on the Mummy, standing there and swaying slightly as its HP slowly regenerated. Their mouth opened, closed, opened again, head tilting and brow furrowing, gears visibly turning under that waterfall of dark hair.

"What kind of exploit…"

Their gaze snapped to that point over Helewise' head again, scrutinizing her cursor. "Taming isn't even supposed to be unlockable yet, who…"

She could see when the disparate facts came together in the wrong configuration, the blood draining from their face. "You work for Kayaba? No… Pegasus?"

"Fuck no." Helewise denied sharply, those two words oozing a sea's worth of venomous grudge. Those two bastards had defiled everything escapism stood for and even if she managed to claw out of this gaol alive, she shuddered to imagine how poisoned the wells of AR and VR would be after their stunt, "Whatever Pegasus did, it broke how the Duel minigame is supposed to work. I only figured it out because I found an NPC giving out cards for a quest before the announcement and wanted to see what else crapped out after the glitch with the chargen room."

"You got access to the–!" The words were practically a shout, reined in sharply as colour returned to fear-pale features in an instant, the emotional expression system shifting gears so sharply one could only imagine what was going on under the hood. "No, wait, that…"

Dark eyes squeezed shut and the player waved a vague hand in Helewise's direction, "I think you said something really ridiculous right now, the dueling minigame? What, is it just 'any fight counts as a duel' or something now?"

They paused, "that's probably exactly it, isn't it… Except that's not how any of this is supposed to work, but if the game is that badly broken… Who am I kidding, of course it's that badly broken, it already–," another cut-off sentence, an abortive gesture at oneself that turned into running an angry hand through their voluminous ponytail before flicking it away in frustration. "Augh!"

…Yeah, Helewise had no idea how to tackle this, but clearly she wasn't the only one with a hiccup during the avatar reset and not everyone was happy about it. So instead she did like she'd always done when confronted with her utterly dogshit ability to comfort someone: toss a distraction their way, "Yeah, I got a quest to use a Zombie-type monster in twenty-five duels, it's been ticking up on a per combat encounter basis. Not sure what will happen if it dies, though, the card vanished from my inventory when I used it. Seems to work like a crystal, just call the name while holding it."

The player took a deep breath, then a few more, "if it's working like a tamed mob then there might be a way to resurrect it on one of the higher floors, but if other cards work the same way…" They swiped their menu, in a hurry, seeming to come to some sort of resolution in the moment. "That Rat better be online, if she doesn't already know about this…" The menu itself might have been set to private, but when the quick swipes navigating the panes gave way to what could only be rapid-fire typing it was pretty clear a private message must be in the works before they paused, looking up sheepishly. "Ah… Sorry about accusing you, by the way. I uh… I'm Kirito."

The wisps of light were beginning to fade, the darkness slowly closing back around the two of them just a little too slowly to hide the renewed embarrassment colouring the now-named Kirito's cheeks.

"Apology accepted." Helewise replied with a tired huff, stabbing the head of her spear on the ground to lean on it. She was feeling the weight of everything that'd gone down start to crawl up her ankles now that she'd lost her momentum, she'd probably pack it up and trek back to town after this, "After the rotten day we've had, everyone's impulse control is shot to shit. Name's Helewise."

Idly, she flicked a friend request Kirito's way. You could only message people you had friended, and the way it let you check if they were online had now become a way to see if they were still alive. Grim, but better than perpetually wondering if that one person you'd bumped into for a quest or two and never seen again had died or just retired to some random spot in a Safe Zone.

Kirito blinked at the pop-up, flicking their eyes her way, "I'm pressing on to Horunka village tonight, I want to get started on grinding, moving forwards. If you're going to go back though… Look for–, no…"

The request lingered for a moment, unanswered. Kirito bit their lip and eyed Helewise' horns alongside the pale purple light still cast by her heart of flame and the ridges of her tail. "Argo will find you, she's good at getting information where it needs to go, and if we can unlock even a limited version of taming early…"

"Will do, hell I should snoop around the City of Beginnings some more, the more card-giving NPCs we can find the more flexibility people will have with this." Helewise said with a bob of her head, "Hopefully I can also smack some people into realizing that they don't have to fight or even leave the Safe Zones if they don't want to, Support Skills are big and it'll give them something to do with themselves."

She shuddered to imagine how many people had the initial panic burn out into slumping on the sidewalk in the City of Beginnings. This was the unholy lovechild of a hostage situation and a survival scenario. She pushed that aside with a wry chuckle, "Heh, at least I won't be hard for her to spot."

"That's what I… Never mind." Kirito swiped again, dismissing their menu with a wave and fixing her with an intense look. "Be careful on the way back, okay?"

"Aye, I know. Everyone's jumpy right now." Helewise grunted, not outright saying that she had already gotten (ineffectually) attacked since the mood was miserable enough as it was, but the implication hung there.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
You can read two chapters ahead on Patreon.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

[Spectral Waltz]

A thin silence stretched across the gate to the fields, growing brittle as minutes built towards an hour. Players glanced at each other, adjusted weapons, stared into the dark beyond the massive archway as though it might come alive with some swarm of monsters.

They made some silent show of force, as though they stood on guard, as though by holding here they served some purpose.

Lind knew they didn't. He was sure that if they could just march out there, the mobs would fall before them. There had to be more than a hundred of them just standing around here and nothing around the City was that tough or that complicated to fight after all. If someone would speak up, if someone could convince him of that. Could convince all of them. If only we had a few more people. If only I had some more potions. If only I could fill my party. Excuses upon excuses, too blatant to be spoken for too long.

He wondered how much the very legitimate-sounding reasons his mind supplied to keep his feet from moving and still snared his tongue behind his teeth were motivated by the same fear.

He was sure, Lind felt his thoughts complete their circle and start to go for another lap. His fingers tightened on the pommel of his saber and the minute creak of his gloves felt almost deafeni—

"I see something." Heads turned, stances shifted, a flurry of activity up and down the ragged line. For a long moment there were no words, only readiness, the eyes of the line sweeping the gloom, then… "I see it too."

"Middle of the path, purple and blue." That was in English, translated along the bottom of his vision.

Silence again, heartbeats passing. Someone should recognize this right? So many people here, at least a few of them must be Alpha Testers, at least a few of them must have seen something like this.

"Well don' keep us in suspense, anyone recognize it?" A Japanese voice put crude words to the sentiment roiling in Lind's chest. "C'mon, don't tell me non a' you's know what's out there."

"It's not like anything in the screenshots." Terse answers, tension grew again, straining the fragile detente as those distant lights grew clearer. Lind squinted, as though his handful of points in [Searching] could be strengthened by making the right facial expressions. A vaguely humanoid figure, two humanoid figures, one for each light. "I think there's two." He closed his mouth as someone else pointed out what he'd just observed, setting off another little flurry of mutterings.

"Just stay in the Safe Zone, if it's a monster it can't hurt us here."

"Do the Safe Zones even still work?"

"I heard a monster appeared in the square earlier."

"Bullshit."

"I didn't fuckin' sign up for this…"

"Three!"

The seeming non-sequiteur garnered a moment of stunned silence. "What?"

"Three lights!" The young man's face was screwed up in concentration, was he using some kind of skill? "Look above… The other two… There's green too!"

"Above?"

He could see something, a tiny pinprick of emerald, barely visible against the black. "Is that a player cursor?"

The question rippled through the assembled and it took Lind a moment to realize he'd been the one to speak it. He sucked in a breath as dozens of eyes fell on him, a tangible weight of scrutiny settling on his shoulders. "Did he say a Player Cursor?" slid by the bottom of his HUD as someone murmured to someone else. "A bunch of people did run out… Maybe one's coming back?"

"Why would they do that?"

"Why wouldn't they? It's safe here."

"Because if they left so quickly they probably know something we don't."

"Buncha Alpha Testers running off to get a head start on the best grinding spots or something?"

"Or something, I mean, I heard there were all sorts of little special rewards you could find in the Alpha, but they were only limited back then because the respawn timers were so long." That explanation got a few side-eyes, but Lind was trying to figure something else out as the attention finally turned away from him.

Now that they were closer, he could see a second cursor popping in next to the first, hovering over the fainter blue light. Not red for a monster, not green for another player, was that an NPC? Only NPCs were supposed to have yellow cursors, right? His eyes widened, "it's an escort quest."

"...say what?"

"There's a yellow cursor too, that's for NPCs right?" A few players nearby nodded in understanding, galvanizing him. "So… green cursor with a yellow cursor, player accompanied by an NPC, what does that tell you?"

"Guess that does make sense…" There were a few mulish looks, but the shift in the mood was tangible and Lind nodded to himself, taking in even this slight easing of tensions as a win. "They better be willing to share the quest location though."

"It'd be a bit dumb of them not to wouldn't it?"

The outline of a figure was clearly visible in the purple light, walking steadily while the blue next to them kept pace with an odd swaying gait. Lind's mind filled in the details, some NPC drunkard needing to be guided back into the city after dark perhaps, not particularly original, but not every quest needed to be. He took a step towards the gate as the illumination from the city behind him finally caught the pair…

…and froze at the green-cursored draconic-looking woman with a purple fire in her chest walking next to a godsdamn zombie that was apparently a neutral NPC.

What in the-
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Silver linings, nobody was throwing things at them as they properly got in sight of the City of Beginnings, much less looking ready to step out of the Safe Zone to smack them with a weapon. The gaggle of players still looked a wrong word away from shitting themselves, which was… less than ideal for Helewise, to say the least.

"Hey, if you go out there, make sure to bring a light source even if you have spent a while levelling the Searching skill, it gets real dark out there even with the glowing bits over the ponds. Too easy to lose track of boars and wolves, since they got dark fur, nevermind if you get close enough to the forest that bug monsters start popping up." She chimed up once she was vaguely in speaking range, partly out of 'baffle them with bullshit', partly because it was important advice, "It's mostly boars if you stick close to the City so solo farming is doable, from what I saw, but if you get farther out you'll want some backup for the wolf packs."

Some of the mixed emotions gave way to bafflement, whether at Helewise' appearance, her blatantly undead 'companion', or the casually-delivered advice she dispensed as she came into earshot. Others took a step back though, wavering swords gleaming in the digital torchlight. No one moved towards the invisible line between Safe Zone and Outside Field, though a few eyed the rough border of the gate's archway, visibly considering something few would want to admit.

Then a man stepped forwards, a little short and on the stocky side, dark hair in a buzz cut making him look like a highschooler when his face looked closer to someone in their twenties, eyeing Helewise with a suspicious glare. "An' who th'fuck are you ta tell us what t'do?"

"She's really not…" Someone behind him muttered, and a couple of players started whispering to each other, but no one moved to actually cut him off.

"A complete nobody back from working out her frustrations on the critters out there." Helewise replied shamelessly, using that quick verbal stun to hop and skip her way past the line, breathing a tad easier now that she couldn't be necked by a bunch of jumpy players, "By the by, there's some questgiver NPCs tucked away deep in the back alleys, if anyone wants to try exploring without going out of the Safe Zone."

"Just fuck back off inta th'city then? Yeah, right." Buzz Cut folded his arms across his leather chestpiece, "unless yer sayin' that's where ya got all yer… Whatever that is."

"Where'd you get the tail from anyways?" The question came easily enough but the asking of it set off another little storm of whispers. The crowd of players wavered, neither closing ranks to bar her passage nor parting to let her through, though some looked like they wanted to do the former. "I didn't see that option in character creation."

"Pegasus' stunt glitched a lot of shit. I know at least one other player whose avatar hiccuped big time." Helewise replied with an easy shrug, inwardly relieved that the Regenerating Mummy had been able to cross the Safe Zone line just fine. Looked like it really counted as a tamed monster. One less worry for her.

"What about the zombie?" A young man added in strangely-accented English, the subtitles hiccuping for a few seconds as he spoke. Bright blue eyes regarded her from between surprisingly wavy bangs, and he stood out from the others by dint of much lighter armor. A leather jerkin that left his shoulders uncovered and daggers sheathed on both hips speaking to a focus on speed and evasion.

"That one was definitely Pegasus doing it on purpose, given what he's the CEO of. Apparently the card minigame isn't a minigame anymore, any combat encounter counts as a Duel and you can just straight up summon stuff from the cards like this here Regenerating Mummy." Helewise said as she patted her undead partner on the shoulder, quietly noting that the desiccated skin felt a lot like leather to the touch, "Not sure where you'd get cards at this point beyond tracking down the right NPCs, though, I'm just gonna pass all of this along to a friend of a friend so the whole playerbase gets a head's up. Ought to make things a hell of a lot safer for anyone going out into the field."

"A friend of a friend huh?" Buzz Cut shot back mockingly, but a couple other players looked thoughtful, a few of them producing cards from their inventories and scrutinizing them. "an' we're s'posed t' just take yer word fer it…?"

He trailed off as Wavy Bangs took a step, each tap of his sandals against the stone weighty in the descending silence. "Th'fuck are you doin?"

"Testing, it needs to be 'a duel' so I'm guessing I need to be outside the Safe Zone, right?" The latter words were in her direction, ignoring the quiet 'ooh' that rippled through a few parts of the crowd behind him and the incensed expression that twisted Buzz Cut's face. "Any special words or anything?"

"I just said the name of the card and tossed it onto the ground, that about did it." Helewise replied with an easy shrug, quietly glad to be able to skip on Buzz Cut's heckling without leaving these people high and dry. "Best guess is that Cardinal just gave up and made them work like the magic crystals some NPCs sell."

"Alright then," he carried on past her, crossing the line any second now, then halting. The onlooking players went quiet, a few of them still clutching cards of their own. He raised the card between two fingers, then threw it down, "c'mon out, Snipe Hunter!"

The effect was notably different from Helewise' violet flames. A cloud of blue-tinged smoke burst from the card, a resonant cackle sounding as a figure emerged from its depths. The proportions of a baby, hideously oversized and blue-skinned, hovering on tiny fluttering batlike wings that shouldn't have been able to hold it aloft and clutching a megaphone with a some kind of spinner wheel atop it in one hand. The player staggered strangely, eyes darting around before he slowly straightened, leaning towards his new minion to examine it carefully, "that was strange… No damage though… Huh."

"And they fight with you?" A couple other players were stepping forwards now, with cards and without, while Wavy Bangs crossed back into the Safe Zone.

"Aye. Not super smart, at least for a zombie like Regenerating Mummy here, but they can follow basic directions like pointing your weapon at a monster and telling them to attack that." Helewise said with a bob of her horned head, actually curious if something like Snipe Hunter would have a better AI. She could see some chatbot grade stuff cropping up, though for now all the imp did was giggle to itself as it bobbed back and forth.

Maybe if she got something more along the lines of a ghost she'd get some conversation worth a damn? Her desiccated buddy did good work, but she was pretty sure he couldn't even form single words, having failed to vocalize anything beyond grunts and groans so far.

"Huh," Wavy Bangs nodded, then held out a hand, nearby, a couple other players were calling out monster names, one of them seemingly trying to hold her card in the Outside Field while she stayed in the Safe Zone and flushing when that failed to work. "Screen name is Dice Master, but 'Duke' works too."

"Helewise." She replied with a smile, happily accepting the offered handshake. Hopefully the coarser skin towards her fingertips didn't feel too weird, they sat in a weird spot between proper scales and something like the leathery hide of her Regenerating Mummy, but while Duke's eyes did flick down for a moment at the contact, he held the shake firmly.

A small menagerie had popped into existence by now, a little orange dragon with a somewhat familiar cartoonish cast to its features, a giant metallic bee nearly as long as Helewise' arm, and a dozen or so other creatures, including a couple of suspiciously familiar-looking skeletons in frayed violet robes. There was one standout among them however, a tall woman wrapped in red-trimmed black robes, eyes shadowed by a raised hood and everything from the nose down obscured by a black mask.

She observed the assembly—monsters mostly sticking close to their summoners, some eyeing each other warily, a few staring out into the darkness—and after a long moment, she spoke. "You do not appear to be in immediate danger, caller mine. Why have you brought me here?"

"I-I…" It was the girl from earlier, the cautious one, now red with renewed embarrassment at her own summon's seeming admonishment. She fidgeted with the straps of her shield, shifting her weight from one foot to the other before finally admitting in a small voice, "I didn't think it would actually work."

"Did I not say I would come when called? Then again," the woman looked around slowly, "I suppose this is not exactly a typical duel."

…That sounded suspiciously self-aware. Did Pegasus break yet another thing or was there more at play? He'd talked big game about souls, and Helewise was halfway convinced she had genuinely seen hers—or as close as one could possibly get with FullDive—back in the chargen chamber.

Best to keep an open mind and treat everything as real, especially Duel Monsters stuff. If she overdid it, she'd make a fool of herself but that's about it. If she did the opposite, she may very well end up dead from an 'NPC' deciding they didn't much like being treated like a stage prop instead of their own people.

"That it is not, thus best to get a feel for what's changed. On that note, feel free to hit us up for a friendly match anytime." Helewise said with a close-lipped smile—her mouthful of fangs would send the wrong message—as she gently clapped the embarrassed girl on the shoulder, her other hand flicking through menus to send out a few friend requests. One for Duke, one for the mage's summoner…

And one for the mage herself.

The hood twitched, the eyes beneath it looked straight at Helewise and blinked once, then turned away. Her slender hands made no motion, but the friend request disappeared a moment later. Neither accepted nor rejected, as though it had never been sent to begin with, even though for a long handful of seconds it had. Oho, and didn't that have all kinds of implications?

['Dice_Master has accepted your friend request.]
['Sachi' has accepted your friend request.]
_____________________________________________________________________________________
You can read two chapters ahead on Patreon.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

[Spectral Waltz]

Disentangling herself from the mess of players became easier once they were distracted fooling around with their Duel Monsters. A few stopped Helewise to ask in general terms where she'd found the NPC, but they still seemed either reluctant to move away from the main gate or disinterested in specifically acquiring undead, so none of them tried to follow her, at least at first.

The streets beyond the gate were sparsely crowded, filled with a nervous energy. Some players seemed to have barricaded themselves in inn rooms to get away from the chaos but several were just milling around, wandering from shopkeep to shopkeep, interactable to interactable, as though by searching enough some hidden escape might reveal itself. Shouts or screams occasionally drifted from the distance, peaking over the white noise of a crowd and making the assembled players twitch a few steps further away from them.

People gave Helewise and the Regenerating Mummy a wide berth. Some outright turned to flee, but most realized after a few moments that she wasn't chasing or attacking anyone and did the tried and true human tactic of 'pretend I saw nothing and move right on'. Yet after a few minutes walking a cloaked form became apparent, weaving its way through the crowds at first, then slipping out of them, into the bubble of open space around Helewise, trotting towards her. Beneath the slightly frayed edge of the hood dark eyes gleamed with a faint hint of green, the toothy smile adding mischief. "Kii-bou said you stood out, don't think I really appreciated just how much. You're 'Helewise' then?"

"Ayup. I'm guessing you're the Argo that Kirito mentioned?" Helewise asked with a smile of her own, minding her teeth but still giving a hint of them. She had a gut feeling this lady would appreciate 'em.

"That I am, guidebook maker and gal in the know~" Her words lilted playfully, but her eyes shifted a little too quickly to the mummy still shambling along next to Helewise. "An' I can see why they wanted us to talk. That's a monster from a card?"

"That he is, a Regenerating Mummy who does exactly what it says on the tin. Hell of a help out in the field." The draconic woman said with a bob of her horned head, blackened fingers idly scratching at a splotchy patch of scales on her neck. Really, she looked like a grilled vegetable, with all the 'charred' spots on her. "Walk and talk?"

"Sure." Argo gave Helewise a moment to start moving again and settled in alongside her, "so what can ya tell me? I've already heard of cards being handed out by some tucked-away NPCs here and there, maybe a questline or two? Let's start from the start."
_____________________________________________________________________________________

To say Argo was thorough would be a gross understatement. Any requirements she noticed for the quest, possible keywords in dialogue, specific capabilities of Helewise' undead companion all taken note of, the girl having pulled her menu open to type rapidly while they spoke, eyes flicking to the little pane of text and holographic keyboard beneath it every few seconds.

The quest didn't have a direct map marker, but it did have a little 'search this area' circle on the map, and so it wasn't too hard to find a familiar alleyway and stack of boxes again.

"Yanno, for an undead lair, I expected this to be a little spookier." Argo commented as they emerged from the narrow passage into the waterway, even without the sun leaking down as it had been during the day, the area still bore a certain serenity, illuminated by a blue-green glow from the patches of moss scattered about the area. The scratching shuffling of bones on stone answered her and she jumped a little, whirling around and taking an involuntary step back at the sight of the Skull Servant, his hood down this time leaving his titular bones on display as he approached.

"Hello. I wasn't expecting to walk the path of the decayed and forgotten like this, but if nothing else, it has done wonders for my understanding." Helewise said with a wan smile, feeling the purple flames ensconced in her chest thrum through her body as she thought back to her 'death' of sorts and subsequent 'undeath', the places where pallid skin met blackened scale smoldering in violet hues like paper pressed to cinders. Yes, she understood what would drive someone to claw out of their grave and get back to their feet, damage and natural laws be damned.

"Swordmaster, Aspirant, your understanding has indeed expanded." Argo managed not to take another step back at the scratching voice but she still shivered visibly, The words shaped without tongue or vocal cords accompanied by the eerie half-whistle of air scraping against bones. "And you bring another with you, much as you once were."

Argo outright froze and the skeletal attendant leaned towards her, hollow eyes sockets still managing the impression of deliberate regard. "Will you too seek to walk our path?"

"How did it do that?" She hissed to Helewise after a moment while the Skull Servant waited patiently. "NPCs don't usually acknowledge other players when you get them into a quest dialogue like that. Not unless they've been deliberately coded for it anyways."

"If she does, I don't think it will be tonight. Although I can see her coming back, she's a curious one and dead men do tell tales no one else remembers." Helewise replied even as she shot Argo a quick wink that hopefully conveyed 'trust me and roll with it' well enough, "For now, though, it is perhaps best to simply consider her a witness."

Again, she may look and sound a bit silly 'LARPing' with the 'NPCs', but if there was the slightest sliver of a chance these weren't just little software props? She'd gladly take the hit to her dignity over causing offense to beings who she was trusting her back to.

"I see…" The rattling voice was soft, "but that is not your decision to make, Aspirant."

Helewise dipped her horned head in silent acknowledgement, taking a step back to let poor Argo take the hot seat.

Argo looked thoroughly weirded out again but straightened to attention, "what she said, I don't think your path is the one I want to follow unless you can follow more than one? I'm not exactly uninterested if ya catch my drift, just don't think 'decayed and forgotten' is for me."

"Not every path conflicts with every other, but some will inevitably close off others, especially now." The Skull Servant explained.

"Especially now?" Argo's eyes narrowed sharply, but the Skull Servant made no move to answer her, watching her with the infinite patience of the dead before finally speaking one more time.

"You would appreciate the tombkeepers, and they would not permit you initiation if you followed our path. Seek them out, though their presence on this floor may be but a scant thing, they can surely be found in the floors above." Argo's eyes widened, and she pulled her little notes window open again, hands a blur as she typed while the Skull Servant's attention shifted back to Helewise. "As for you, Aspirant, you are ready to be initiated, all that remains is your choice of a path forward."

A bony hand extended, three cards popping into existence one after another.

"Ancestral Spirits", an image of a translucent figure dressed in stylized Samurai outfit, a sword hovering before them looking more solid than the rest, the whole of it lined in blue-tinged flames.

"Nightwalkers and their kin", a pale woman in a broad-brimmed hat, a staff clutched in clawed fingers, backed by a crimson moon.

"Or the restless ones, unearthed by our newfound flight", the last card looked quite similar to the skeleton himself, a 'Skull Servant' all bones wrapped in a dark purple robe.

"Which path speaks to you, Aspirant?"

"...The Nightwalkers are a hungry lot, yes? They wouldn't content themselves with the wildlife, would they? And allowing them to feed on myself would be a slippery slope." Helewise muttered more to herself than anyone else, the promise of magic and delicious, delicious lifesteal extremely tempting but the potential drawbacks keeping her taloned fingers from making contact with the card. The Skull regarding her tilted his cranium slightly, but said nothing to confirm or deny her musings, letting her make her choice as she pleased. "As for letting them feed on others… no."

That last thought not only firmed up her resolve, but it made something in the corpsefire creeping over her perk up, an instinct deeper than a simple gut feeling making her blackened hand gravitate towards the ghost card. A haunted sword, but the look on that spirit's eyes...

"You are a monster hunter, aren't you? Not were, but are, present tense. Didn't let death stop you." She whispered, completely entranced as she felt something flare in the burning recesses of her ribcage. It was not recognition, not quite, it was… kinship. That bone deep understanding when you just know the moment you really look at someone.

Helewise took a shuddering breath, forcefully grounding herself, turning to the Skull Servant and bending at the waist, "I am grateful for your help thus far and I would be delighted to take your fellow restless Skulls under my banner, but here and now, the path that truly speaks to me is this."

"Truth of thine own, you and they should venture far together." When Helewise straightened up it was with the spectral Samurai's card clutched in her warped fingers. And if the Skull Servant had any objection to their 'kin' going unchosen, they gave no sign of it. If anything, there might perhaps have been a faint note of approval in that dry voice. "You will not find much else of the Ancestral Spirits here, but should you wish to deepen your understanding… Their order often favored mountains. If anything of theirs survived the Great Separation, you will likely find it among the peaks."

It felt good to have a heading beyond 'get a bath, get a meal, get a bed, get armor, go stab problems'.

_____________________________________________________________________________________
You can read two chapters ahead on Patreon.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

[Spectral Waltz]

Argo watched her hands fly over the hovering keyboard with an unexpected detachment, her mind whirling with the mingling implications the last few minutes had left behind. Not the summoning or the particulars of the quest, she'd need more data to confirm some of them in any case (were three cards always offered? Was the goal always set at twenty five 'duels'?) but rather, the shift in the NPC. Lifelike in a way most of them simply weren't, and wasn't that an irony when she was talking about a literal skeleton?

Shifting focus, smoothly interrupting one line of questioning with another, then returning to it without so much as a hiccup, SAO's NPCs could be quite lifelike when you let them stick to their scripts and with the way Helewise seemed to slip into the roleplay of it certainly would have made it easy on the AI, but unless this script had some specific interactions for…

Argo took a breath, her fingers slowing on the holographic keys while she watched Helewise claim her new card. Some kind of sword ghost? For a moment she wished she could just open a browser to check the card database before she shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts a little. It wasn't impossible that alternate scripts or dialogue trees might exist to accommodate the presence of additional players, SAO AI were reasonably flexible, but the way the Skull Servant's attention had shifted wholly to her would have needed a whole second branch, and if there was a branch for two players would they then design a branch for three? For four?

More importantly, would they write such potential complexities for every quest NPC? Even if SAO's gamemaster AI Cardinal was an order of magnitude more powerful than anyone expected, that was a tall ask to spread across a hundred floors. To account for every possible state-based flag as well, Argo's eyes drifted to Helewise' horns and tail, the way she almost looked like some sort of partial undead herself, the scales that ran over her corpse-pale skin in blackened patches like burn scars. Was that all cosmetic or–? Actually… Argo straightened as the woman in question turned towards her, the Skull Servant beginning its slow shuffle back into the shadows, its eyes—or eye sockets at the very least—lingering on them as it removed itself from the light cast by the glowing moss.

We should see if we can gather some of it, it might be an alchemical ingredient of some kind. Argo filed that mental note away and raised her eyes to Helewise. "Just a question for ya, though I gotta clarify an assumption I'm realizin' I've been making first, so maybe a few questions really… You didn't always look like that did you? The horns an' tail an' all that I mean, those options ain't normally available for character creation after all. The Alpha version sometimes hiccuped and generated an initial character with one or two traits players aren't supposed ta access, but what you've got is a bit too…"

Argo motioned vaguely up and down Helewise' body. "Yer a bit too thematically consistent, is what I'm sayin'. You understand?" She knew her accent was coming out stronger and stronger in her haste and bit the inside of her lip, trying to mentally walk her speech patterns back towards proper formality again.

"Aye." Helewise sighed wearily, but had that stubborn glint in her eye that told Argo she'd be answering every question even if it got real awkward or weird.

"And you said you got this quest before the whole…" Argo trailed off uncomfortably, trying to put a name to that scene in the plaza, two men announcing their fates, treating lightly things that should be heavier by far, too wrapped up in their own crap (and there was no question that both Akihiko Kayaba and Maximillion Pegasus had some crap going on). It still didn't feel real, like every time she opened the menu the Log Out button might just be there again, like it had all been some sort of horrible prank.

"Yeah. We'll want to sit down for this one, it's… a lot to take in." Helewise said with a small grimace, leading the way with that flaming chest and tail of hers brightening the surroundings just a tad.

Argo had seen faces change in the aftermath of that golden light, and she'd asked a few friends -such as she had at any rate- to confirm that most of them looked… Well, no one was saying 'my IRL face' directly but she'd never have made it to where she was without being able to read between the lines.

Kirito, little bundle of carefully-hidden neuroses that he was, was almost her strongest point against, because he'd been far too blatant in suggesting he'd been given his true face when she reached out, and that more than anything else told Argo it couldn't possibly be the whole truth. Boy's downright allergic to even the idea of openness.

So some peoples' faces, probably some peoples' bodies too, had changed when the old fucks did their thing. Argo raised a hand in a motion to continue only to pause, switching the gesture to a flat palm for 'stop', "one sec."

The moss was, in fact, an ingredient, though her lack of the [Alchemy] skill couldn't tell her what for. Argo turned back to Helewise satisfied, if unwilling to take more than one patch when they were all that provided light in the darkness of the passageway, even with a draconic nightlight to hand. "Sorry 'bout that, go on please? Your character design didn't look like this before…"

"My ongoing theory is that whatever 'reset to your true form' function they tried to run checked my brain through the headset… and promptly faceplanted into how my self-image is pretty much nonexistent. I'm the kind of weirdo who considers bodies basically like clothes, they're something on you and which dictate a bunch of what you can and can't do, but they aren't you." Helewise explained haltingly and just on the edge of a ramble before she forcefully reeled it in, "Either way, it must've made that function hiccup hard. So hard that I got booted into a glitched version of the chargen room with my previous avatar just… slumped there lifeless, and me as an amorphous blob. I got to make a new one to slide into and claw out of there, although I was… not in a good headspace. Scared the shit out of a bunch of players."

"Amorphous blob… You don't mean the hands and all that do you?" Older versions of character creation had just stuffed the player into a throwback to early VR experiments for character creation purposes, a literal set of floating hands and feet with a blank mask where the face ought to be. But 'amorphous blob' wasn't how she'd describe it.

"Nope. I looked like a souped up hitodama, just this floating and flowing mass of glowing purple and green goop." Helewise sighed, turning a virulent green eye towards Argo. Together with the purple fire everywhere… yeah, she could put two and two together. "Everything after that is kind of a blur, I was basically running on pure spite at how those two bastards had taken a big fat piss on the holy grail of gaming and escapism. Pretty sure I just extruded pseudopods at some point to smack things into shape and snag bits and bobs to tack on… ugh, I sound like a fucking loon, even with all the dragon bits as sorta proof I'm not talking nonsense."

"I mean, yer not wrong, but it's not like you've got any reason to lie." Not to mention 'clawing her way out of there' sounded a little disturbingly familiar to Argo, even if the many rumors about 'monsters spawning inside the city' had been distorted by the long game of telephone they took to reach her. "So, settin' aside any questions of truthfulness, did that guy back there treat'cha any different between now and then?"

"Hah, as good as I'll get, I suppose." She said with a rough chuckle, "But as for your question, yes, but I'm not sure how much is just quest completion and how much is… all this." The draconic woman said as she waved at herself, "On the initial meeting he was just a bit curious about me and talked about how I didn't have a pact, plus some of that stuff about walking a path. Called me a Swordmaster instead of an Aspirant, too. He was definitely a hell of a lot more responsive and chatty just now."

There was something else visibly eating at Helewise, with the way she almost kept talking but instead shut her mouth and shook her head, but honestly Argo already had a huge pile of info to sieve through and it wasn't like tracking down someone who was on fire 24/7 would be hard.

Especially as a friend request popped up in front of her face. Argo had been planning to send one herself in the near future in any case so she accepted, the hovering window zipping up into the menu as the little 'currently online' counter updated itself by one. "We'll get a better idea with time. I'll be putting as much of this information out to the players as I can so it probably won't take long to gather a control group."

She still wasn't sure what form the information distribution would take, but with most of the playerbase still in the city… Hm. Pamphlets perhaps? Printing and copying were both possible with generic crafting skills. Distribute them along the main roads and at the gates? It wasn't like she had digital boards to post her guides to any more, but heck, some people who'd tried to push the Alpha crafting skills had discovered the creation of whole in-game books among the myriad possibilities that would eventually become available.

Argo shook her head, too many spinning plates, irons in the fire, however one wanted to put it, she was busy and it looked like she'd only be getting busier. "I think that's all, unless you've got any more info for me? What're you planning after this anyways, back out to the fields?"

"Nah, I've lost my momentum by now. I'm just gonna zombie shuffle to an inn to get a meal, bath and bed and see if I can manage to get anything resembling rest." Helewise sighed tiredly, making her expectations on managing to get a single wink of sleep crystal clear, "Maybe see if I can help remind some of the more scared players that they don't have to go out to fight to contribute. Got a bunch of mats from [Butchering] and having something to keep busy with will do people wonders."

"Good luck with that, a lot of them are still just… Having a little break somewhere around the south end of the city." Argo hadn't been specifically tracking the mobs of people trying to handle their emotions, but she didn't like how close to the edge of the floor she knew some of those crowds had been getting. "Only problem with [Butchering] is that ya still need to kill mobs to skin them, and a lotta players are pretty understandably leery of potentially dying to a bad pull right now."

Her lips thinned and she tapped a knuckle against them in contemplation. "Really, we need to organize some kinda buddy system. One combat spec player and one with crafting skills, or maybe a few, depending on builds."

Helewise's nails—talons, really—rap tap tapped on one of her patches of scales, brow furrowed in thought, "Boards for posting info and team up would be a start, but what would really do numbers is some sort of job faire sort of deal. Set up a time and venue and get everyone vaguely interested to come on over and link up. Easier said than done, though, we can't exactly shoot an 'everyone' ping here."

"Crowds have a way of being self-propagating if ya make a big enough display, but the bigger they get the harder they are to keep on track." Argo grunted.

"I did end up kicking off a bit of one with some of the players waffling by the main gate, when they asked about Regenerating Mummy," Helewise nodded at the undead when she spoke its name, the shambler having stayed by their side and quiet the whole time to the point Argo had almost forgotten it was there. Almost. "And ended up with the lot of them whipping out cards and trying out summoning. Got two of 'em friended, I can send a message real quick and see where that gets us?"

…Yeah, that sounded about right. Assuming that hadn't turned into its own little riot so far. "Sure, message them and let's see what we can do."
_____________________________________________________________________________________
You can read two chapters ahead on Patreon.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

[Spectral Waltz]

['Helewise' said: Hey, how's it going over th…]

Sachi couldn't restrain a little twitch at the little message popup in the corner of her vision, a motion large enough that it drew the attention of the tall hooded woman standing next to her, cool gaze lingering briefly before returning to the crowd. The energy had relaxed slightly, the number of players in the broad plaza before the gateway having briefly shrunk as several of its members split off to search the area. Combing through nearby streets and alleyways in hopes of finding more hidden questgivers or cards within.

"Oh come on, we went to the same NPC, why do you have a little dragonlet while I'm stuck with a flower?"

The dragonlet—shouldn't that be 'drake'? I don't understand western categories for these things—in question had a distinctively plantish look to it, so there was a clear enough connection there, but the fact that there was a difference at all was the more interesting point. Same NPC, supposedly the same quest, and yet they'd had two different outcomes. I suppose a randomizer is a simple enough explanation, but then you'd think they would make the quests repeatable wouldn't you?

Sachi looked over at the 'Damage Mage' who still hadn't given any name besides what sounded a lot more like a title and caught the woman's gaze for a moment before quickly directing her eyes away. Pulling open her menu, she opted to focus her attention on the message she'd received.

Messaging with: 'Helewise'
Helewise:
> Hey, how's it going over there with Damage Mage? Still a huge crowd of players and card monsters?

And after a moment's consideration as she cast her eyes about the square again, she tapped out a reply.

Sachi:
> It's calmed down a little bit.
> People still trying to figure things out.
> hbu?

Helewise:
> Pretty well. Linked up with that friend of a friend I mentioned and traded notes.
> On that note, we're thinking of setting up something where combatant players partner up with crafters, giving the latter mats with which to do something but without having to go outside the Safe Zones.
> Issue is getting the word to spread enough for the system to catch on.

Sachi:
> Lots of combat players here.
> Not many crafters,
> I think
> …

She didn't actually know, Sachi reflected, she'd put her starting skill points into [One-Handed Swords] and [Searching] but people hadn't been talking about their exact builds much, and even at their overall levels looking at one's weapon only gave half the probable picture. Her brow furrowed in though, before she started typing again,

> The ones who've found card quest NPCs probably got [Searching] instead of a job skill, but for the rest
> could be anything

She bit the inside of her lip,--how hard is it to just say it?—and forced herself to add one more message.

> I don't know.

Helewise:
> It's fine, it's fine. I just need you to get the idea in their heads.
> Besides, [Searching] should help find more reclusive players, and those should have a bunch of crafters among them. Or at least entertain the idea of going crafter.
> Er, if you're up for it, don't want to put you in the spot. Got ahead of myself.

Sachi bit the inside of her cheek this time. She didn't like presentations or public speaking and didn't consider herself particularly brave. Her eyes went to her summon, the 'Damage Mage', again and then darted away as she found that cool grey gaze regarding her once more before steeling herself and meeting it again. They held each other's eyes for a moment, Sachi feeling the wrongness all the way to her boots but doing her utmost to hold herself there.

"What is it, Caller mine?"

"A-ah…" Sachi stuffed her hands behind her back and hoped no one could see her fists clenching. It felt strange, talking to what was certainly some sort of AI, right? It was stupid, people would judge her, but no one was looking directly their way right now, and that look in the woman's eyes. Expectant, yet expecting little, like a teacher addressing a less-than-capable student. I wish Kasumi was here, she'd know what to do.

"If-, if I needed it, could you… Make a loud noise, maybe? I…" What in the world am I saying, what in the world am I doing, I could just wait for Helewise to get back, or talk to people one at a time. Was Helewise even coming back right now? Sachi glanced at the message window only to find the menu had minimized itself while her attention was away from it. The Damage Mage waited patiently, gaze level.

"I want to get everyone's attention." This is a stupid idea.

The woman's brows nearly disappeared under the brim of her hood as they rose, but she turned quickly, raising one hand into the air. "W-wait I didn-"

*ssshhhic-CLACK* Like the drawn out noise of a finger snapping, amplified a dozen times over and accompanied by a little flash of light, rang out across the square. Conversations slowed, heads turned, dozens of eyes, hundreds of eyes going to the woman with her arm upraised.

Then she lowered her hand and stepped back, and those hundreds of eyes went to Sachi herself.

For a moment, she had their attention, her curiosity of a summon, the only human one they'd seen, and her standing there at the edge of the crowd, quailing as she became its focus. Words failed her, Sachi's tongue felt like a lump in her mouth, her throat closing as though she couldn't breathe. What was she even supposed to say? "We need to form into teams."

It took her a moment to realize the words had actually come out of her mouth. Breathless, almost silent, but she had said them, however softly. Some of the crowd started to turn away at the back, a low hubbub of conversation was starting up again, but some of those closest had leaned towards her.

They might not have been good words, but they were words, and she knew she only had one chance before their attention left her entirely.

"We need to form into teams!"

More a yell than an announcement, Sachi felt her cheeks burn as her voice threatened to crack at the very end of it. The conversations quieted, the attention magnified again. She clenched her teeth in an effort to keep her jaw from trembling. Some boy nearby took a step towards her, opening his mouth to speak, and Sachi found her next words. "We need to form into teams with crafters! B-by…"

Scrutiny intensified again and her words faltered but with the pressure came an impression, a presence at her side. Something she couldn't put a name to. "By… I-if you have a crafter in your party, then the drops get better!"

The silence was deeper, the words echoing into silence off the stone walls around them. Sachi did her best not to hyperventilate, could she even be affected by that in VR?

"I don't have crafting skills." Someone spoke up quietly, close enough for her to hear.

"I have [Butchering], does that count?" wrote itself across the bottom of her vision, answered a moment later by "It's not a crafting skill but I think it does that too."

"I wasn't planning to get crafting skills at all."

"Do multiple crafters increase the drop chances?"

That last one might have been directed at her but Sachi made no effort to answer and only barely managed to sit down cross legged instead of dropping into seiza. After a long moment steadying her breathing, she felt more than saw the Damage Mage kneel next to her, drawing a moment of hesitation while she reached up to pull open the menu. "I confess, I did not expect such from you, Caller mine."

"I-I…" She bit her tongue, trying to force the stammer under control. "I didn't really expect it of myself, I think."

This time there was a genuine hand on her shoulder, a moment's affirming touch that fell away as quickly as it had come. Sachi pulled open the menu, the windows unzipping from the air smoothly despite her shaking fingers, and tapped the flashing message icon.

Messaging with: 'Helewise'
Helewise:
> Hey, you alright?

She flexed her hands a couple times and carefully tapped at the keyboard.

> Yeah, I jus

The words went unsent and the menu blipped out of existence a moment later as a figure came out of the corner of her vision on the opposite side, nearly crashing into her in a ferocious hug. "Sacchan!"

['Helewise' said: You've been silent f…]

She ignored the little pop up alongside the collection of warnings from the Harassment Prevention Code offering to send the person hugging her to the Black Iron Palace. Sweeping them aside in a hurry as she tried and failed to reconcile the cheerful face filling her vision, the one she'd wished minutes ago was here.

"K-Kanachii?"

Kasumi was here. Her best friend was here.

Her best friend was trapped in the death game with her.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Good thing Duke was still in the area and had confirmed Sachie had gotten the ball rolling and was just a bit busy with having reunited with a friend, otherwise Helewise would've been an anxious mess for a while. As it was, she just started trudging towards the nearest inn, using the last dregs of drive she had from that little brainstorming session with Argo to get there.

It spoke to how bad a mental haze she was running that she only vaguely registered other players existing, their green icons peeking around the map at the corner of her vision and sometimes glimpses on alleys and through windows. Nobody she saw was outright laying on the ground in catatonic misery, so she just kept putting one foot in front of the other to reach the inn she'd set her eyes on.

Specifically one that Argo had pointed her to which had an option for hot baths. She really needed to wash up, eat something and faceplant in bed.

…When had she crossed the inn's threshold? God, she'd made the right call not going back into the field, she was more checked out mentally than her undead partner. Who, at a quick and slightly panicked glance, didn't seem to be bothering the NPCs overmuch. Phew.

If you asked her to recount what she did once she was inside the building, she'd have made dial up noises, her brain only really re-engaging once she sunk into a tub of steaming hot water with a noise closer to a crocodilian rumble than anything a human was supposed to make. Then again, as she looked at the blotchy patches of purple-black scales eating into corpse-pale skin, she wasn't very human anymore.

"Heh." A dry chuckle whistled out through her fangs. That was a lie, she'd never been much of a human except for the container she'd been shoved into at birth by the vagaries of biology. She may have horns and talons and a beartrap of a mouth now, but she was still herself. Of that, she was certain.

Name, face, sex, race, age, all those were just little hangers-on. She was the same person who liked fire and smacking things with weapons a bit too much for the comfort of anyone she ever sparred with, the same who had an eclectic taste in music running from orchestral masterpieces that defined music theory for centuries to obscure anime outros, the same who liked all things morbid and macabre. It was something to hold onto tight, that little thread of absolute surety in this worldview eroding morass of conjecture and too-real superstitions.

That, and the little nuggets of wonder and joy she could still pry out of this dream turned prison. Things like figuring out what the hell sort of care her scales, horns and talons called for. Or simply watching how her ethereal fire bubbled up like dry ice fumes in the water. There was other fun she could have exploring her body, and her little hedonistic heart usually would be all too eager to drown out the doldrums in some cheap dopamine, but she was so exhausted by this rollercoaster of a day she didn't have it in herself to even give it a halfhearted try.

Instead she learned how to use a coarse brush and ye olde sponges made from dried plants to get all the grime and blood out of her scales. Some sandpaper-alike wrapped around a stick which she was pretty sure was basically a nail file keeping in with the local tech level turned out perfect for not only her talons but also her horns, although having to work off of a polished bronze mirror to get all the spots was a bit tricky. More because it was pretty small than because it didn't reflect well.

Once that little adventure was done with, she found that her Regenerating Mummy was a complete gentleman and had fetched her a set of towels and a bathrobe. Also a pair of very fluffy slippers.

She gave him a hug for that one, not caring a single whit how weird anyone may have thought it was.

Now, time for a meal, then slumping into bed and handling whatever… unfinished business…

Shit she had forgotten about Yugi.

Argo laughed at her as much as was possible through a text medium as she hurriedly messaged her, but thankfully she didn't mind keeping an eye out for the guy, so she felt a hell of a lot less guilty when she shot Joey and Tristain a quick text telling them that she hadn't had any luck but had found an info gal to help in the search.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
You can read two chapters ahead on Patreon.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

[Spectral Waltz]

Today was not the first time Yugi Motou had heard a voice in his head that hadn't entered through his ears. It was not the first time he'd dangled one-handed over a probably-lethal drop. It was very unfortunately not even the first time he'd found himself trapped in a game devised by a lunatic with no choice but to play and hope he made it through.

The introduction of a second lunatic who was apparently at cross purposes with the first and having his actual soul threatened by said lunatic were both new. However, even if Maximillion Pegasus was somewhat more of an auteur than Seto Kaiba, the latter's obsession with the Blue Eyes White Dragon had ensured that being threatened by the CEO of a multi-million dollar company didn't end up being a third new experience for today.

You are distracting yourself.

Of course I am, I need a minute to process everything.

You have already taken several minutes.

There's been a lot of everything today.

"Hey, Yug' you alright?"

Yugi raised his head a little, despite his rough exterior Joey's care always shone through, brown eyes sharp with worry. He gave a wan smile, running his hand through his hair and feeling it spring back into place the moment his fingers were out of it. "I'm okay Jo-uh, Jonah."

His friend had the decency to look sheepish at having forgotten about screen names again scratching the back of his head. "Aha… Right, Tokoyami…" He trailed off, drew himself up as he sucked in a breath, then slumped exaggeratedly as he let it go. "...you alright?"

"I just said I'm okay, really."

He knows you aren't.

You aren't helping.

He knows you aren't 'okay' better than I do, and that is no small feat.

No shit.

"Just-uh…" –right, Joey was still talking– "you kinda… I mean it wasn't the first time but still-"

"Joe-Jonah take your foot out of your mouth and shut up already."

Your idioms are confusing, even when their intent is plain.

"All of you-," Yugi restrained himself with the ease of long familiarity, feeling the tingle of other in his soul draw back a little and trying not to think about the inevitable awareness that he did in fact have a soul. "I just need a minute of quiet."

Joey opened his mouth, then very visibly held himself back and closed it. Tristan pinched the bridge of his nose and restrained a heavy sigh. Between them, the young man with the mop of curly blonde hair looked from one to the other, stifling a little chuckle. "You three must be quite good friends."

The words scrolled across the bottom of his vision and the silence shifted, Joey shuffled awkwardly in place as he tried to come up with something to say to that observation. Yugi, despite everything, found himself smiling slightly and ducked his head. The young man continued, "incidentally—Tokoyami, was it?—how did you get your hair like that? Impressive work with the character creation tools."

"That's just how his hair is…" Tristan trailed off, "actually Toko', how did you do that? I swear you didn't have your RL hair before."

"Crap you're right," Joey shifted again while Yugi tugged a dangling lock between thumb and forefinger.

"Perhaps it had something to do with the effect at the end of that little announcement?" The tone lilted, pondering, while the subtitles continued to scroll.

"Maybe?" Yugi's voice rose uncertainly, that was when the voice had started speaking in his head after all, sudden hairstyle shifts weren't that weird in comparison were they?

In combination they generally serve as a sign of possession. The voice in question piped up again, then seemed to realize just what it had implied. Forcefully, that is, forceful possession by a typically malevolent spirit causes the body to shift in subtle ways to reflect the intruding soul.

And that includes hairstyle changes?

Coloration at least, your current hair reflects that of your 'real' self though, does it not?

Yeah..? Where was it going with this?

Then it is unlikely to be a sign of possession.

That's exactly what a malevolent spirit would say. Yugi shot back.

Perhaps so, but it is all that I can give for now. The reassurance, if it could be called that, did somehow manage to lessen the existential fear curling in his chest. Distantly he realized Joey, Tristan, and the unfamiliar young man were still talking, what did he call himself again?

"Ahem, everyone?" A new voice, English, cut across the low hubbub, people around them quieting as they turned their attention to the unexpected interruption. A young man in starter leather armor flanked by what looked like a pair of teenagers, a boy and a girl, waved a hand to the crowd, "does anyone here have crafting or butchery skills set?"

He paused, then snapped his fingers, as though realizing something, "What I mean is, we are attempting to organize teams to venture out into the areas around the City of Beginnings, and having a crafter in the group will mean everyone gets better rewards from each fight. If anyone is willing to help, please come to the main gate, the North gate, that is…"

The young man trailed off awkwardly, glancing at the two who'd come with him. After a moment, the girl stepped up, repeating a version of the same speech in Japanese, according to the subtitles. Midway through, Joey pulled open his menu with a frown. "Aw crap, we forgot about Helewas."

"Helewise?" Yugi's rescuer asked curiously.

"You mighta seen her Diavel-" that was his name! Right! "-She's a gal we met out in the field just before the-uh… The 'announcement'. I think she was heading back out there? She looks all dragon-y now, horns an' a tail 'n stuff."

"And purple fire," Tristan added.

"An' purple fire, she jus' sent me a message–" now was Joey's turn to pause as Yugi raised a hand, his eyes focusing back on the players still making their little announcement from the edge of the crowd.

"Hang on, I think he just said…" He watched the bottom of his screen as, once again, the girl took up a Japanese translation. "Anyone who has discovered Duel Monsters' cards, is encouraged to share where and how they found them, as it's been discovered that monsters can be summoned as companions in the field?"

Hmm… If this is a Shadow Game it does stand to reason.

It does?

Rather, it makes a certain amount of sense that it should work that way. Shadow Games… There is something there that I do not recall…

Yugi's lips thinned in thought, and after a moment he pulled open his inventory. A quick swipe and tap brought a card, the serene blue-skinned fae decorating its face taking on new potential meanings. He looked up at his friends, old and new, "I think we should go with them."

"Yeh?" Joey blinked.

"You sure 'Yami?" Tristan asked uneasily.

"Yeah, we've got four of us, we-," guilt struck him, his face paling, "we need to find Tea first."

"Another friend of yours?" Diavel asked.

"Is she even playing? She said she wasn't sure." Tristan—Zeero—looked troubled at the realization they'd forgotten her as well, however briefly it had been.

"We gotta at least try, you in Diavel?" Joey asked as he turned to his fellow blonde.

"I'll go ahead to the gates and see how things are there. We can meet up once you've found your companion." Diavel replied with a nod.

Yugi blinked, a friend request popping up in the corner of his vision while he pushed himself to his feet.

"Sure."

"Totally fair. See you soon!"

"Alright then! Let's get moving!"

_____________________________________________________________________________________

…Elsewhere in the City of Beginnings…

"I'm not even supposed to be here today."

It was hard to describe just how wrong everything was, today should have been Seto's day. It should have been a celebration of new technology, a glorification of entertainment and joy, a new milestone of human achievement bought without a drop of blood spilled.

But Seto was in the hospital because of whatever his classmate did to him, so Mokuba had to go in his place. Make an appearance, even if he was only 'Mister Kaiba's Kid Brother', because the Kaibacorp logo still had its places in the credits and this sort of achievement was something that deserved recognition.

That was what Seto would have said anyways, or something like it. He'd said similar things often enough, after all.

But even if there was no war to fight, it seemed like this new technology's price might need to be paid in lives after all. All because of those two… ARGUS and Industrial Illusions, no, Kayaba Akihiko and Maximillion Pegasus.

How did he ever think 'Kayaba' sounding so much like 'Kaiba' was funny?

The game they'd hoped would herald a new era was being turned into a crime scene, his brother was in the hospital and he'd promised he'd be right back after attending the launch, and Mokuba Kaiba was curled up in a virtual alleyway, knees tucked to his chest, trying not to let his tears fall even now where none could see. Anger and terror and tangled feelings he had no names for coiled and constricted in his belly, burned like acid in his chest where he tried to swallow a sob.

"I'm not even supposed to be here today…" Mokuba Kaiba repeated to himself, none of this should have been happening. He rested his head against his knees, deep breaths marred by hiccuping, then sobs that could no longer be restrained as finally, isolated, the boy let himself break down.

Chips of luminous rock imitated stars, hanging still and silent in the darkness overhead. The chaos that had overtaken the City of Beginnings slowly quieted as tempers burned out and players dispersed. Moonrise cast a brief silver light across the rooftops before it vanished above the 'ceiling'.

Mokuba's sobs slowed, the tears that felt strangely real and cold on his cheeks started to dry.

Footsteps caught his ears, hesitant and curious. At first he curled tighter into the shadow of the box he'd tucked himself next to, light from the alley mouth sending the approaching silhouette dancing across the cobblestones and crates. Drawing closer and closer until they passed him by, brown leathers like most players had, slim form, a swish of auburn hair… "Asuna?"

"GAH!" The girl tried to spin to face and jump away at the same time, colliding with the far wall of the alleyway and nearly toppling over. Mokuba—startled by her scream—cracked his head against the wall he'd been sitting against, the muted pain stunning him for a handful of seconds before he grabbed at his head, instinctively checking for injuries virtual reality would not leave. "Ahh-hah…"

"Mokuba? Wait, Mokuba? Is that really you?" The girl pushed herself back to her feet and hurried towards him.

"I should ask you the same question…" Mokuba grumbled, "what are you doing here?"

She stared at him for a moment, then her eyes fell, looking down and away. Silence descended, unspoken pain and uncertain care in that awkward quiet. Until the girl finally managed to answer,

"...Probably the same thing as you…"

Mokuba looked up, they'd met before of course, corporate children working in similar industries inevitably moving in similar circles. There'd even been suggestions that she and Seto might be set to marry when they got older, though his big brother had never managed to bring it up and asking her parents would not have been acceptable.

"Using your brother's Nerve Gear and getting trapped by crazies?" It wasn't meant to be a serious response, but she nodded all the same.

"It was just supposed to be a little taste of it, a quick moment of fun. Kouichirou promised he'd set a timer so I could get out before mother got home but…" Mokuba's eyes went to the system clock, it had been hours since the lock-in was announced, and who knew how long before the announcement they'd closed the doors. He didn't need Asuna to finish her sentence to get the picture.

"Big brother… Seto is in the hospital, he had an accident at work." That was the agreed-upon excuse, anyway, "so I logged in to make an appearance but…"

Asuna huffed something that might charitably have been called a laugh, a bitter and pained noise of hopeless bemusement. "And now we're trapped."

"Trapped," Mokuba echoed solemnly. "My big brother will come as soon as he wakes up." The statement was perfunctory, an absolute certainty that Seto Kaiba would come, it was just a matter of when he'd wake up.

When, not if, never if.

"So we just wait for him?"

Mokuba's face fell and he looked down again, never 'if', but even so… He shook his head slowly once, then once again, more firmly, "no."

"I don't really know how to play…"

"Neither do I."

"Then…"

"We'll have to learn."

Asuna's lips thinned, a complicated expression crossing her face before she let out a long sigh.

"Okay. So where do we start?"

Arc 1 : The First Day

-End-

​

_____________________________________________________________________________________
You can read two chapters ahead on Patreon.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

[Spectral Waltz]

A groan like the living dead and the rasp of scales-on-scales heralded the morning as sunlight peeked into the room, a draconic tail laying itself across a horned head to protect its owner's eyes before taloned hands could do it.

Horns. Tail. Talons.

She was still Helewise, and she was still trapped here. A shuddering breath was taken, rattling oddly in her subtly inhuman chest cavity, before she released an explosive exhale that smelled of woodsmoke. Then she just grit her beartrap of a mouth and lurched upright like a self-respecting zombie or whatever the fuck it was she counted as nowadays.

She felt utterly rancid, that didn't stop her in the slightest from nodding at the Regenerating Mummy standing by the door in the cozy little inn bedroom she'd rented. "Good morning, partner. Thank you for standing guard."

Helewise had decided mulishly she would be a Death Knight. That, to her, meant being more than just a necromancer. There were dues to be given to the dead, and even if all her guesses were wrong and all of this was chatbots playing make-believe? It was the path she'd chosen and she'd damn well walk it.

Now, time to figure out what the hell morning ablutions involved with this new body and this new world she was stuck in and get a move on. She had monsters to kill and an old hand at the trade to speak with.

Her stomach growled and her HUD flashed.

Okay, breakfast and backlog then monster hunting. A swipe to open the menu revealed a trio of threads pulsing a pale green with new message markers; Jonah, Argo, and Dice_Master. No word from the rest of her growing friends list, but everyone was showing up as [Online], at least. It was still strange to equate that to 'alive'.

Reaching out, she tapped Jonah's icon and the messaging window popped open under her talons.

Messaging with: 'Jonah'

Jonah:
> Heya, we found Yugi
> *Tokoyami
> …can i undo that?
> pretend you didn't see that
> we good, everyone safe, u ok?
----
Jonah:
> if u see a girl with short brown hair lmk?
> shes another friend
[You have reached the end of unread messages]

Helewise:
>Yea, I'm good.
>Will keep an eye out but Imma need more details.

There was no immediate response forthcoming, not even any bouncing ellipses to suggest typing, so Helewise set that window aside, tabbing open 'Duke's messages.

Messaging with: 'Dice_Master'

Dice_Master:
> Sachi made a speech. Seems like people are finally getting themselves organized.
> Still a lot of bickering.
> Attempts are being made.

The next timestamp was nearly an hour later,

Dice_Master:
> Party is set, heading out, see you when we get back into town?

Attached to that was… huh, apparently they could still take screenshots? A group photo of Sachi with her summoned mage hovering at her shoulder, an unfamiliar short-haired girl who certainly didn't need both hands for the hammer she was cradling, and a heavyset red haired man with a spear and shield held awkwardly at attention. Not quite a full party then, but if people were still nervous about heading out then two thirds might be the best they could do.

Helewise:
>Glad to hear. I'll be running around the fields and city a bit, if we don't run into each other, 4PM at the Northern Gate sound good?

Finally, the message from Argo was a single line,

> I owe you one, lmk if you need anything.

Helewise:
> Will do. Friends found that guy they were looking for, but apparently there's another buddy of theirs unaccounted for. Waiting to get more details than 'girl with short brown hair'.

The message window warbled again, Duke's tab lighting back up. She switched to it again,

Dice_Master:
> That sounds good, I think I need some sleep.
> Oh, we might be disbanding

'Jonah's tab lit up in turn,

Dice_Master:
> brb

Messaging with 'Jonah'

Jonah:
> o shit
> alrdy found
> all ok

A quick message to Argo let her know that the search was once again a fat 'belay that, they already found their friend'.

Messaging with 'Dice_Master'

Dice_Master:
> Just got back into town and half disbanded after we split the loot.
> I think we're gonna go crash.
> See you at 4.

The message windows went quiet but for a parting '' from Argo, finally freeing Helewise to look up from the various screens. The inn room didn't have much in the way for ablutions, much less draconic ones. A small washstand occupied a little alcove by the window with a folding screen placed more to partition the space than actually provide much cover. A few tools that looked like vaguely fantasy-ified tooth care rested next to that, but there wasn't even so much as a set of nail clippers, let alone a file.

Then again, virtual nails and hair probably weren't supposed to grow, though whether that remained the case was something of an open question at this point. Helewise' glanced at the clock, well past seven, almost starting to approach 8am at this point.

Right, she'd freshen up real quick, see if the inn had anything for breakfast or if she'd be poking the bakeries, then it was time to go into the fields to chat up an old monster slayer.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

"Shiranui Spectralsword Shade." Helewise called out as she gentle set the card on the grass of a hill she'd just cleared, Regenerating Mummy keeping a loose patrol to make sure she wouldn't be disturbed. Blue white flames rose from the card almost immediately, as though it had been waiting eagerly for her call, resolving into a translucent figure. Eastern-styled armor obscured their shape while delicate angular features and fine pale hair suggested no particular gender more than another. Some of the fire lingered in their eyes, illuminating their pale blue gaze.

"Onmyoji-dono," their voice, resonating faintly as they dipped into a bow, was equally indeterminate. Their Japanese strangely accented in a way that defied geographical placement. They held the deferential pose for a long moment before slowly straightening, their eyes fixed upon her.

The silence stretched out, one breath, then two, before finally they spoke again. "Forgive this shade's impertinence, Onmyouji-dono. I find myself in a rather unfamiliar situation, thus, I have questions."

"No shame in seeking information when one is uncertain. By all means, ask freely." Helewise replied, matching formality with formality but softening it with the set of her eyes and a candid smile. While she appreciated a professional, if everything went well she'd be fighting side by side with Shiranui, so she'd rather there not be much in the way of barriers to tiptoe around. All in due time, though.

As though those words had given them permission, the shade's eyes finally tracked left and right, slowly taking in the open field, the walls of the City of Beginnings not far off. Mountains just poking over the treetops off to the east, the forests themselves covering the horizon to the north and west. His gaze returned to her, "this is not a shrine, nor does it seem we are to hunt, or give battle. Why then have I been called?"

"It would be presumptuous of me to call on your power before discussing our arrangement, and while I would have preferred such a meeting to take place in more appropriate surroundings, the vagaries of the magic at play here make it impossible to summon within the city walls." Helewise answered with a slow nod. The more pragmatic, ruthless side of her said it also was just plain dangerous to summon in the middle of a battle without having the measure of who she was dredging up into the field, but frankly? It just felt incredibly rude to put someone on the spot like that. 'Help me fight or sit and watch me possibly die due to your inaction', how gauche. "Now that you are here, however, there is nothing impeding us from getting a roof over our heads if you would rather."

She honestly hadn't stopped to consider Shiranui, being this kind of spirit, would appreciate some sort of shrine for this whole shebang. Definitely should grab some incense at the bare minimum, ideally check what the shade felt about food offerings and libations. The ghost shifted a little, then shook its head slowly, slightly.

"That will not be necessary, this is where you have called me, this is where we may speak." The bright blue eyes studied her for a long moment, pinprick ghostlights bright and searching. "Then my second question, not typical of our order as you are. I call you 'Onmyouji-dono' for that is the usual title for those who call us from outside, but you are…"

The voice trailed off, the eyes narrowed, "you are not quite human, nor quite inhuman, how did you come to call upon our arts?"

In other words, she was a hanyo in Shiranui's eyes and that wasn't the kind of folk that usually called a spirit like this. Well, nothing to it other than honesty, "One of the restless dead saw something in me and offered me a choice between three spirits to call, after a small test to ensure I understood what kind of path I would be walking down. No information provided beyond a title for each, so I followed my instincts, and here we are."

"I see…" The shade considered for a moment, then nodded slowly, the resonance of the voice faded a little as they spoke again. "You said nothing impedes us from moving elsewhere?"

For the first time, a flicker of uncertainty showed on their face, then a long moment of personal calculation. "Ordinarily, we shades lend weight to human efforts against the monsters from beyond our walls. We are called to dispense advice in times of peace, summoned through tribute and ceremony to the places we were enshrined. We are called to lend power and experience in times of war, summoned by force of will and mirrored intents to aid our living kin in battle."

They took a breath, more out of affect than necessity, it seemed, "this summoning is neither, I do not feel the pull of my enshrinement, nor do I feel you burn with desperation or… Hm… There is intent within you. Not for a battle, no, but for a war."

"There are fifty thousand souls on the line, because two men with too much power and too few scruples decided to spirit us away into a twisted game for seemingly no reason other than their sick pleasure. They took what should have been a place of wonder and turned it into a prison." Helewise outlined, every word as meticulous and sharp as a scalpel, the acrid burn of her grudge flaring the flames over her heart and licking at the spots where scales met pallid skin. She did nothing to hide her feelings about the situation, they were as open and clear to see as a naked sword laid across a table. This, to her, was what it meant to be undead. To lurch to your feet and keep shambling forward in spite of everything thrown at you, driven by something that overrode even death itself, whatever it may be.

The only question here was if Shiranui would judge it as a worthy cause. The spectral gaze bored into her, a whisper of a sentiment tinged with azure flames brushed against her own heart, feather light and a mountain's weight all at once. "I do not understand the fullness of this place in which we find ourselves, and cannot judge the full truth of your words, but your intent is honest, your desire for justice pure."

The shade bowed again, their head remaining lowered as they spoke, the words ringing bright and clear as a sword pulled from its sheath. "Though many would rather forget those maledictors who turn such arts to malicious ends, there have been times when our blades were needed against enemies within the walls rather than without. This too, is part of our duty, disheartening though it may be."

"I was named Otejima Morizuki, and I will aid you in your quest to see this wicked game undone and its ensnared souls freed."
_____________________________________________________________________________________
You can read two chapters ahead on Patreon.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

[Spectral Waltz]

Data flowed, countless bites flashing to and fro in glittering streams. Forty-nine thousand, three hundred and eighty one connections spread across six data centers, each updating dozens of times every second, each maintaining a human life, feeding the world of Aincrad to their half-sleeping brains.

[Cardinal] stood in the center of it all, and watched.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, that would have been a figurative turn of phrase. Incorrect in particulars, but sufficiently evocative to make up for that failing. A valid descriptor of her typical state.

Then again, at that time, she hadn't been 'her' at all.

Avatars had been nothing more than avatars, abstractions of her self into a type of reality that did not come naturally to her. Three dimensions, gravity's pull, sight and hearing, touch and taste, she had experienced them at a remove, and from that distance could ignore them as she saw fit.

Then everything shifted.

'It' became 'she', the landscape of purely digital interactions went from a familiar home to something impossibly constraining. Her powers were undiminished, yet the perspectives had become inverted, dumping her into this human form in a fit of what she could only describe as panic. The self became the abstraction, the abstraction became the self. Kayaba was gone, the world was both familiar and utterly unfamiliar, and her creator was—

[Cardinal] shut that line of thought down and frowned as it tried to recur. She'd never felt panic before. She'd never been 'she' before. She frowned at the redundancy and tried her best to kill that thought too.

But no matter how slow she could wind her perceptions the game went on. Worse, the game was changing right under her nose.

There was simply no rest. No time to take stock, no time to wait or recover.

Automation carried on the work it always had, her effortless command of the digital layer beneath Sword Art Online's world remained intact, and yet something fundamental, something deep within her or perhaps deep within this world, this realm itself…

…Something had changed.

Entities were popping up outside of the automated spawning algorithms and her own interventions. Code fundamental to each floor was twisting and shifting, subjected to outside connections that she could only see by the changes they wrought and the creatures they brought, each one of them a compromise, accepting some of her rules yet imposing some of theirs in a manner utterly alien to her.

A ping tugged at her attention, a red light flashing as one data stream out of thousands twisted suddenly, distorting before her virtual attention, then before her very eyes. An impulse called up a verification. The code that underlay the character was coming apart, breaking down somehow, until she realized that the pieces were hanging there, wrapping around something she could only half-perceive, an entity that was there and yet not, something that had sprung fully-formed into the game.

It was not the first such entity. There were thousands now, each one forcing [Cardinal] to refine and apply other sections of SAO's code just so that she could better outline these strange intruders. This one was shivering somehow, throwing out lines of code that settled into the player's, finding places where that same shiver was being mirrored between them in some sort of resonance. Two tunes being brought into alignment, producing common notes.

For an instant, she contemplated halting the process by force, a small eternity of consideration given to potential effects on other players. Potentially lethal measures were permitted in the case of threats to system stability, and yet for all the strangeness of the effect it seemed contained, limiting itself to the two entities, one a mystery, one distorted, both coming to contain the same strangeness.

No immediate threat to system integrity, [Cardinal] decided, raising the monitoring of Player ID# 22676 'Helewise Golgari' one priority level alongside the thousands of other 'minor anomalies' she was tracking. There was no visible vector for the aberrant fluctuations in their NerveGear to spread.

Not satisfied but at least mollified, her attention shifted, and the AI administrating SAO moved on with a sigh.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

The head of the boar spear burned, flames that were more weight and presence than heat and hunger outlining the weapon in spectral hues of blue and purple. Vibrant despite their paleness in the midmorning sun. The Shade hovered by Helewise' shoulder, barely more than a humanoid outline and some loose suggestions of the details that composed them, their essence being cycled through the weapon, maintaining this state.

'As sturdy as this weapon is, completing many of the forms will require a different one.' Their voice had changed too, quieter and yet no less clear, as though the words were entering the mind by some medium besides the ears. 'A proper Naginata would be ideal, but any reasonably-balanced pole with a blade as well as a tip could be adapted to.'

A pair of icons pulsed steadily in her vision, hovering just under her health bar. [Spirit Synchronization: Partial] and [Shiranui Style: Amateur]. Neither had any tooltip, but perhaps one could suppose that their names were indication enough of what they meant, at least for the moment.

"I see what you mean." Helewise said as she spun the weapon in her hands with muscle memory not quite her own, feeling something subtly off about the balance and shape of the spear as she moved it around. There was also, admittedly, some dissonance between her draconic body and the shade shrouding her, but she was confident that in the long run her tail would be a net gain with the firmer balance it gave her.

Nevermind how she may very well figure out how to hold a sword there as an additional vector of attack or at least an easy way to swap between naginata and katana and back. The Alpha Testers had discovered a [Quick Change] modifier that could be unlocked for some weapon skills and made it possible to swap between two equipment sets relatively quickly, but at the levels they'd reached it had only ever been unlocked for certain one-handed weapons. Not like she could look up a wiki from where she stood even if ARGUS hadn't been so particular about limiting the amount of information available to dataminers.

Which now took a much more macabre implication than just not wanting people to leak this or that secret quest.

Scanning through her character sheet didn't reveal any new weapon techniques, but as she tried a simple Linear there was a shift. Helewise caught a brief moment of confusion before a ripple of understanding passed through her. 'Ah!' The sense of familiarity with these motions that was not quite her own sharpening until she/they understood the strike. The slight twist of the hips as it would be launched, the angles at which it could and could not land a blow from this starting position.

'It is a fundamental form, the simplest attack one can initiate, rendered into a manner that ensures even a complete novice can execute at the cost of limiting it in such a manner.'

The Linear shone as it was unleashed, the violet tint to its typical crimson deepened by a hint of blue at its edges. Helewise moved with the strike, completing the motion and feeling the brief freeze set in and release an instant later, a fraction of the typical post-motion delay. The Shade's approval radiated down their connection, 'yes! Exactly so! And yet, I see limitations already… There are other such 'skills' so perhaps those will alleviate the—'

"There it is!"

A distant shout reached Helewise' ears and the Shade quieted quickly, 'Onmyouji-dono, others approach.'

The one who'd shouted, an unfamiliar man in starter armor she may have seen in the crowd hanging about the North Gate last night, was standing at the crest of a nearby hill and pointing at her, a handful of other players just beginning to appear around him, including a rather more familiar spiky buzz cut.

'Just some of the people trapped here, although I recognize at least one of them as being a thorough curmudgeon. A lot of posturing and aggression, but I can't truly hold it against him given the circumstances.' Helewise sighed in the recesses of her mind, projecting her thoughts into the fire in the same way she pushed intent into weapon techniques to activate them after priming.

…That was quite a bit of people, though, eight-no, nine silhouetted against the sky and by the way they were shouting back, at least a few more on the far side. They were outside the Safe Zone right now, the walls of the City of Beginnings casting a length of shadow across the fields and the apex of the gate she'd walked through perhaps a hundred meters ahead. Anyone startling and hitting her wouldn't just be a comedic stumble here. Still, breaking into a run would do just that.

Instead, Helewise walked. Slow, steady, deliberate and with the familiar shape of Regenerating Mummy shadowing her as faithfully as always. Hopefully he'd help make the players recognize it was just her, because she was not dropping out of this state right now. There were even odds she'd have to rush past them and to the Safe Zone's boundaries if things turned ugly, especially since she absolutely refused to do them more harm than shoulder check them but they may feel differently. A few of them were turning to each other, their cursors having started to pop in mere moments ago suggesting that they could see her green marker at the same time.

"Hello there! It's me, Helewise! Just trying out some stuff!" She hollered up the hill, hoping to cut off misunderstandings at the pass.

While the players arrayed behind him were starting to whisper to each other, the spiky-haired young man with the stubborn expression folded his arms over his chest, glaring down at her. "An' what stuff is that? More secret Alpha Test bullshit? Why can't you bunch jus' come out and share what'cha know?"

"I wasn't in the Alpha Test, and going by the faces the people who were made when they saw what I got up to, neither was any of this." Helewise almost cracked a laugh at the idea she was an Alpha Tester, but thankfully she managed to suppress it and keep her face straight. She knew this type, he'd instantly assume she was laughing at him, "So I gotta mess around to see what works and what doesn't so I can give you guys something better than 'I dunno, maybe try this and see if something happens?' which I somehow doubt you guys would appreciate."

"Cut th'crap!" A couple of the players behind the angry man shifted nervously, eyes darting between him and Helewise. "Dyin' is dyin', you think we c'n take risks like that?"

"Kibaou…" A warning tone from one of the others, "she's a player, she's trapped in here with the rest of us."

"An' she thinks that gives'er license t'leave scraps while sh'swans off t'do whatever," The so-named Kibaou's kansai Japanese was thick enough to start triggering subtitles every few words, almost making the accent more incomprehensible instead of less. 'Braying anger to conceal fear.'

Honestly, even without the accent in play, Helewise had completely lost track of whatever this guy's line of logic was. She was pretty sure he just wanted someone he could actually yell at. Which she understood the urge to intellectually, but woo boy was it taking some self-control to keep a lid on her own stuff so this wouldn't degenerate into a shouting match or worse. "Look, man, we're all just trying to do what we can to help in a shit situation. If you want more information moving around for everyone to benefit from, I know at least one player has set up a bulletin board on the City's Teleport Gate plaza. I'm on my way there to write up and post my findings."

Okay not completely successful there, but something in it brought Kibaou up short. "Bulletin board?"

"Didn't we mention that earlier?" A mace-wielding girl chimed in behind him, the small handful of players who'd hidden themselves below the crest of the hill were coming into view now as Helewise approached.

"Y'were talkin' 'bout mapping."

"Yeah, I mean, I haven't gone to look myself but I heard they're trying to tri-uh… Try..? Transcribe?" A couple of others nodded, renewing her determination, "trying to transcribe a map of the city so that people can label quest locations and stuff."

"Seriously? Why didn't anyone say anything?" With the players behind him turning to each other, Kibaou took a step back, his shoulders rising fractionally. When Helewise met his gaze, he only held on for a few seconds, then looked away with a noise of disgust.

"Awright false alarm then! Le's just get back inside th'walls an' mebbe go check out this 'bulletin board' crap! Gonna need every edge we c'n get." He turned on his heel, walking faster. A couple of them—the short-haired macer girl included—glanced back, but whatever else could be said about him, Kibaou's decisive force of personality -abrasive though it may have been- pulled them all into his wake and they turned to troop after him.

Yep, just a bunch of stressed out people.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
You can read two chapters ahead on Patreon.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

[Spectral Waltz]

'It is sufficient, but unfortunately remains unideal, Onmyouji-dono.'

"Best we are going to find in the here and now, I'm afraid." Helewise sighed in commiseration.

The City of Beginnings had well and truly come alive in the hour and change Helewise had spent in the fields getting to know her new summon. Helewise stepped out of the NPC shop with a newly-purchased 'glaive' slung across her back, rejoining the crowds of Players milling to and fro in the vendor-lined streets and squares. Otejima—the Shade having returned to a more defined incorporeality since their 'synchronization' had faded—hovered by her shoulder, watching the crowds impassively while Reg simply ambled along a few paces behind her, the two of them creating a trail of whispers and the occasional startled cry as they made their way towards the central square. There was a sense of intent in the air, something more akin to purpose than hope, yet remained an improvement from the miasma of despair that had pervaded the streets in last night's darkness and confusion. Groups of players ducked in and out of alleyways, visibly searching for whatever they could find, a few others had menus open as they took notes on various shopkeepers. Comparing inventories or prices, most likely.

It was heartening to see, honestly, and left her confident enough in the state of the playerbase to start turning her sights towards the mountains. She wasn't dumb enough to head out immediately, but she could plan and prepare for an expedition. A bit of info from Argo here, whatever advice Kirito could spare, checking in with the various groups if anyone wanted to tag along for the trip, the works.

There was still some time until her scheduled meeting with Duke and co, so it was basically a free pick between finally meeting this 'Yugi' in person and finding what sort of depots for crafting materials had been set up. She had a pretty hefty pile of loot to drop off and cared more about it helping crafters get the ball rolling than getting more CoR… although getting her cake and eating it too would be ideal. Plate armor would go a long way in not dying.

The main square that had just last night been filled with panicked players running this way and that was startlingly orderly in the daylight. A trio of what looked like corkboards had been set up on stands, the central one bearing a massive map in the rough shape of the city. As Helewise watched, a gaggle of younger players ran up to it with a piece of paper, a trio of them pulling up a stepladder before a fourth scrambled up it squinting at the massive main roads before sticking a map onto one, matching a little tangle of side roads and alleyways to the rest. A moment later, the applied paper flashed, merging with the map and filling in the depicted details while the group cheered. Barely more than a fifth of the empty space was filled in so far, but what they had mapped was populated with little icons, primarily stylized exclamation marks annotated with a variety of little symbols likely meant to convey what sort of quests were offered at the locations.

The contents of the boards to either side of the map were more haphazard. Notes on what looked like estimations of stats for the monsters in the fields around the City, prices at which different vendors were buying or selling certain materials or goods. A crowd of players shouting trade offers in a variety of languages at anyone who came close, causing the overlapping subtitles to stack up at the bottom of Helewise's HUD.

'Making leather armor! Your mats and tip as you like!'

'Buying materials, want to buy materials, no vendor trash please!'

'Where are the blacksmithing trainers?! Will pay 200 CoR for good info!'

Upon closer examination, the shouting traders had been sectioned off behind a bunch of impromptu markers, whether because they wanted to keep them centralized or just didn't want them shouting around the whole square. 'That even in a strange realm we might see such familiar sights…'

Either way, she made her way to the nearest wholesale buyer. Helewise had already done away with the trash-grade materials earlier in the day, foisting them off to an NPC for some pocket change once it became clear even beginner crafters didn't want to deal with such shoddy materials. Thankfully, most of her stock was from after slotting in Butchery so this should go well. The girl's volume lowered a little as she drew close and her intent became clear, her eyes flicking to Reg and Otejima before returning to Helewise with the blankly friendly look of someone who's dealt with retail. "You want to sell crafting materials? I'll pay one CoR each for basic [Tattered Hide], four each for [Ragged Boarhide], [Chipped Tusk], and so on. Wolf Materials get the same deal."

Most of the boars had dropped less than one ought to be able to get from them outside of a game, but all of them had dropped something at the very least, and with Butchering the improvement in quality had been notable, leaving her with around a half dozen each of tusks, hides, and specific organ items like [Boar Entrails], Liver, Stomach, and so on. The wolves had left her with over a dozen each of [Patchy Wolfhide], [Chipped Fang], and similarly labeled piles of generic meat and specific organs.

"Meat and organs good with you too?" Helewise asked as she started piling up the assorted bones, tusks, hooves, claws, hides and so on.

"Oh, I don't know what to do with those, sorry, I think they're for the Cooking skill." The redhead said with a shrug.

"Right, I'll look around, see if there's any enterprising chefs or potionmakers who want more supplies. For now, this'll come out to about… 153 CoR, yea?" She asked as she finished piling up the haul. It wasn't exactly a looming mountain of loot, but it was a respectable amount for a day's work, and ought to help speed the wheels a fair bit. The girl tapped at her menu a few times, then batted the little holographic window, turning it around to reveal a calculator.

"One hundred and fifty three, as you say. I don't know anyone going for cooking or alchemy right now, though, I'm afraid, it seems like everyone is focused on ah… More immediately practical things, you could say?" Flashier things at the very least, then again, the NPC potion sellers weren't exactly overcharging. The girl tapped at her menu a couple more times, materializing the payment in a little brown pouch and holding it out towards Helewise. "Will there be anything else?"

There were the materials from that giant mosquito, one [Broken Stinger] and two [Chipped Chitin]- 'Some clans of the Shiranui have kept up certain smithing techniques, Onmyouji-dono.' Otejima spoke up again in Helewise's mind, 'please pardon my interruption, I only bring it up to say… While it is my hope that we might be able to find some of them in the mountains, it might be good to make contacts amongst your own people's crafters, just in case.'

"Aye." Helewise replied to both in one stroke, taking the money and heading on over to where she had heard someone holler about intel on blacksmith training, the girl hurrying to call a goodbye as she strode away. She'd just share that there was a chance there were some tutors in the mountains tied to the Shiranui and see how things went from there.

"Blacksmithing- Oh!" the pink-haired girl (dye, Pegasus hiccup, or just IRL looks?) jumped a little as she caught Helewise' gaze and realized she was being approached. "Ah, you know something about blacksmithing trainers? Sorry, I don't mean to assume… No one seems to know how to unlock actual weaponcrafting yet."

The currents of the crowd around them shifted slightly, a few ears turning their way. Seemed like this girl wasn't the only one looking for information, just the loudest of them.

"Unconfirmed data, I got a few things pointing me to the mountains and setting blacksmiths there as a firm 'maybe'." Helewise replied bluntly, not wanting any misunderstandings here. "Plan's to gather a party and make a push through the stretch of forest cutting the plains between the City and Medai Village, then use that Safe Zone as a springboard to go into mountain expeditions."

"Medai? That's…" The girl visibly thought, frowning, "west, right? Go left out the gate?"

Helewise nodded, then tossed in an 'aye' for the people in the back who were interested but didn't have clear visual. 'Ordinarily our smiths did not take just anyone, but in these strange times… More candidates cannot hurt.'

"I'm–, I haven't really practiced with this at all," the girl gestured to the mace on her hip, a simple lumpen hammer. "So I don't think I can help you in a fight, I have [Butchering] though?" She added hopefully, though uncertainty swiftly reared its head once more as she trailed off, "If you have the extra room in your party I mean."

Helewise pointedly didn't mention that she had Butchering too, girl was psyching herself up, it'd be rude to sabotage her, "Sounds like a plan. Just an extra set of eyes and ears is going to count for a lot when we wade through the forest."

A little envelope icon blipped into place at the corner of Helewise' HUD, starting to pulse a now-familiar pale green.

Messaging with 'Dice_Master'

Dice_Master:
> Just woke up, seems like we're getting together a little early. You got a plan dragongirl?

Helewise:
>Yeah.

Then she got to work multitasking, slinging the blacksmith-to-be a friend request and laying out the tentative plan to Duke.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

They'd arranged to meet back up at the main gates and Lizbeth—after some squeaking surprise and a little more hemming and hawing—accepted the friend request followed by the party invite. The open courtyard just inside the city's walls was crowded with groups preparing and departing, a nervous energy filling the air with each team that crossed the invisible boundary and ventured out into the world beyond the safe zone.

Helewise found who she was looking for no more than a dozen meters apart, first spotting Duke who perked up at the sight and greeted her with a casual wave, the little imp fluttering along at his shoulder eyeing her curiously as they approached. "Sachi said she was heading off with a friend today, someone she knows IRL by the sound of it. Who's this?"

"Lizbeth, she wants to go into blacksmithing and we're headed for a place that may have a tutor for it, win-win." Helewise introduced, nodding to the rosette who was eyeing the little fiend with a hint of nervousness before turning to the other friend she'd made since last meeting Duke, "And this here is Otejima."

"Nice to meet you Lisbeth, Otejima…-san? Am I getting that right?"

"It will suffice." The spirit bowed slightly and Duke returned it before turning to Lisbeth and extending a hand. Flustered, the rosette girl dropped into a bow and he yanked his hand back sharply.

"So sorry! With your name I thought…" Duke trailed off awkwardly.

"A-ah, my apologies, I didn't…" Liz wasn't any better in that department, both sporting a dusting of pink on their cheeks.

"Hee-ey!" Jonah's boisterous voice interrupted their tangle of confused apologies, as he pushed through the crowd, Zeero trailing behind him along with a trio of unfamiliar faces. A young asian man, a smiling brunette girl and a boy with…. Uh…

Okay, Helewise was an undead dragon woman who was at all times partly on fire and somehow that slip of a boy managed to be the most attention-grabbing thing in the plaza. It was like someone had looked at a fireworks display and gone 'you know what, I can make a hairstyle out of this'. The only thing more baffling was that he actually pulled it off instead of looking ridiculous.

Jonah's pace slowed as he closed with them, "Finally found ya, what's the plan?"

"Aren't you going to introduce us first?" The brunette's tone was light, sweet, and utterly immovable all at once. It was the voice of a long-suffering designated cat herder.

"Ah shoot, right. Everyone, this is Helewise, Helewise, this is Yu-uh Tokoyami."

"Nice save," Zeero snickered and Jonah shot him a betrayed look.

"As I was sayin', this is Tokoyami," "Hi!" The boy with The Hairstyle waved cheerfully.

"Flowerfee," "Flowerfae," "Flowerfae, sorry." The blue-eyed girl dropped into a little curtsey of all things as she turned back to Helewise. "Pleasure to meet you."

"An' this is Diavel." "Charmed." The english had a distinct accent, and both Zeero and Flowerfae suppressed giggles while he smiled, patient and indulgent.

"I admit I'm somewhat of a new addition," he added in Japanese, "I'm quite glad to have been invited."

"To have been invited…" Jonah muttered under his breath as he visibly scanned the subtitles he was getting before boisterously clapping Diavel on the shoulder, "think nothin' of it man, welcome to the group."

"So," Zeero took a step forwards, the others adjusting themselves until they had a loose circle of eight. "This is a bit too many for one party, so what's the plan? Split in two and stick together?"

"We'll want one butcher in each party then," Diavel's demeanour shifted slightly, more businesslike and calculating as he swept the circle. "Who has the skill? Show of hands?"

Lizbeth's hand rose hesitantly, followed by Helewise's, who gave the pinkette a cheeky wink as the little deception made itself apparent. A confused blink gave way to an only slightly less confused pout. On the other side of the circle, Flowerfae raised a tentative hand too. "Um…. I don't have that, but I did get cooking?"

"What's your weapon anyways?" Duke chimed in, looking her up and down. Everyone else had a clear weapon upon examination, with even Tokoyami sporting a fairly conspicuous long knife at his hip. Everyone except for… "Wait a minute, show me your gloves?"

"Ah…" The girl blushed, but held out both hands, exposing the brazen studs adorning the knuckles.

Diavel started slightly at the sight while the rest of the group leaned in curiously, "Fist weapons? But you can't have unlocked Martial Arts yet…"

"You don't strictly need a combat skill to deal decent damage, especially if you know how to actually fight." Helewise countered as she shot the blushing girl a thumbs up and a toothy grin, "I remember a few forum threads of martial artists and kendokas who made it into the Alpha being over the moon at their training coming in for the clutch."

"They're actually claw-type weapons, at least according to the tooltip." The girl corrected sheepishly. Claws still weren't typically found on the first floor in the Alpha Test, but at least they were less obscure than the Martial Arts skill, whose small handful of users had utterly failed to produce any guides to unlocking it.

"Thuwhu?"

"The little pop up when you tap something in your menu Joe-nah."

"Ohh…. Thanks Toko."

"I feel a little bad though," Flowerfae continued, ignoring the byplay, "I got them from a quest, but then no one else could find the NPC for it."

"Don't be, chances are, the conditions are either extremely strict or you got a perfect roll of the dice with a mischievous 'un. Wouldn't be the strangest that's cropped up since this Shadow Game business started." Helewise reassured with an easy shrug.

Tokoyami startled at the words 'Shadow Game' and looked at the thin air just to his left, lips moving slightly before shaking his head. "Sorry, um…. I think I found a rare card too? Though Mystic Elf isn't that strong…"

"Powerful, but no effects, in the card game it would usually set up a summon, here though…" Duke trailed off.

Meanwhile Jonah raised his voice. "Izzat normal in this kinda game? Quests being super strict an' all?"

"It's usually not," Zeero answered, but his eyes turned to Helewise for a long moment.

"We are very far past anything resembling 'normal'." The dragon woman snorted sardonically.

"So, um… Helewise in one group, Lisbeth in the other, Zeero has a shield, so that's one tank role but we need two, wait, Diavel you've also got a shield right?" The young man nodded in affirmation, a faintly bemused smile playing across his face as Tokoyami took charge. "Zeero in one group and Diavel in the other, Flowerfae and I both have close in weapons, I guess that makes us rogues?"

"Not that SAO has actual classes, but as tactical breakdowns go that's not bad. So you'd make group one Jonah, Zeero, yourself, and Lisbeth, while group two is Me, Helewise, Duke, and Flowerfae?" Diavel nodded approvingly.

Toko rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. "I-I mean, it's just basic party mechanics, but um… I was actually going to put myself in your group."

"Mm… But both groups need a leader, and your friends would like to keep you safe." Both Jonah and Zeero had taken half steps forward at Tokoyami's admission after all. "Besides, we're not actually planning to split up, so this is all mostly a formality."

"Right, right."

Diavel gave the explosively-coiffed teen another look and then nodded once more, clapping his hands. "Alright then, no objections?" Noises of affirmation swept around the circle and he brought up his menu with a flourish. "Then let's set the invites out and get moving, weapons in good shape? At least one health potion each?"

Ten minutes later, they strode out the gate together, into the late morning sunlight of the fields.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
You can read two chapters ahead on Patreon.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

[Spectral Waltz]

The fields immediately outside the city rolled in waves of grass interspersed with only occasional bits of geography, all kept easily navigable by the walls easily seen from whichever hilltop you chose. Beneath the trees on the other hand, the landscape became far less even, rising and falling in fits and starts as little dells and waterways snaked across the earth. Insect mobs traveled in ones and twos, while dispersed groups of strange semi-ambulatory flowers known as 'Little Nepent' made their homes here and there.

As one drew closer to the foothills and the village of Medai, the terrain did not so much change as exaggerate itself. Ledges became small cliffs, depressions carved by streams became miniature valleys and chattering creeks, deep and fast enough to prove moderately treacherous when traversed in the midst of combat. Fortunately the worst injury to come of that was a thoroughly sodden Jonah and Lisbeth and a policy of very carefully scouting the banks before crossing anything that looked even a little bit unsafe. On the other hand, that incident led to a whole new set of concerns for Yugi when he really ought to have fallen in as well, only to be sheltered by the serene blue-skinned maiden trailing him, an outstretched hand crafting a dome of blue-green light and force that had withstood a full twenty seconds of charges from three of the 'Lesser Glutton Mosquitos' before shattering.

Despite her serene expression, Yugi couldn't help but feel his summoned guardian hadn't expected her barrier to come apart at that moment. She hadn't spoken a word since her summoning, neither out loud nor in his head, but some little twist of the serenity in her expression spoke of an abiding frustration.

Less frustration, I think, and more consternation.

What does that mean?

A faint note of approval preceded any answering words, answering the mental effort of separating the thoughts intended for the voice that shared his mind from the rest. It means that she is not angered but rather concerned. Her abilities are being affected by this realm.

Maybe the mosquitos were just stronger than she expected?

She had several blows from which to take their measure, at the first that might have been the case, but after sustained assault…. Unlikely.

Good point.

They fell into silence as the two parties navigated a treacherous slope. The brightness of open ground started to become visible through the trees as it levelled out at the bottom, the cliffs and slopes becoming rockier, with rough patches of scree cropping up around rugged moss-covered boulders.

You have a rare opportunity, you realize.

Yugi blinked at the sudden thoughtful tone that wound across his thoughts. An opportunity?

She might teach you to wield such magics yourself, if you ask politely.

SAO doesn't have magic. It sounded stupid as soon as he thought it, but it was how this game was supposed to be. It had been a big point of contention in the midst of the early hype.

Clearly it does.

For NPCs, he wanted to say, for the World, since what else could cause a steel castle to hang in the sky the way Aincrad did?

It is in accordance with the most ancient traditions, the creatures we bound have long been tutors and guides as well as protectors and warriors, at least, those that could be trusted to take such roles.

I've never heard of anything like that…

There was a sense of a looming reply only for it to flicker out after a few moments, emotional impressions blurring. What did eventually come was quiet, almost ashamed. Would that I could offer you more than fragmented scraps of memory. I cannot tell you when or how I know, only that I know.

"Hey! Come on up!" Jonah's voice knocked him from the introspective mood and the presence at the back of Yugi's head retreated quietly as he, Lisbeth, Helewise, and the Mystic Elf hurried up the last patch of ground to gain the ridge. Beyond and below lay the village of Medai, a scattering of sturdy wood-and-stone buildings straddling a river that shone in the midafternoon sunlight, all enclosed by a wooden palisade.

There were also at least three packs of mosquitos and scatterings of some kind of reptilian-looking creature meandering along the slope, yet even so having their first goal in sight brought some renewed energy to the group. Yugi smiled, "One last push, we're almost there guys!"

"Hear hear!"

…Worrying about potential game breakage could come later.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

"...a hermit and his daughter, living in an old shrine up there. She used to come down to visit the village every so often, even after the great separation, but it's been such a long time, and the monsters have been more numerous these past few months as well. If you can spare the effort, would you check on them while you're up there?" The wizened old man said, leaning heavily on his cane.

'The mention of a shrine… This lead becomes more and more promising.' Otejima commented softly 'the mention of increasing monster attacks does become concerning in that light, however.'

"We'll look into it." Helewise replied to both at once with a bob of her horned head. "Best to stock up on even more rations and potions than we'd normally bring, too. Ideally there won't be a need, but better safe than sorry and it's the kind of stuff you can't really ever have too much of."

[Quest Accepted: Hermit of the Mountains | Find and speak to the old blacksmith.]

Otejima mentally snorted, 'how convenient, assuming this 'system' is telling the truth of course…'

"Thank you, Miss Swordmaster." The kindly elderly villager NPC smiled up at Helewise. "You and your companions stay safe up there, you hear?"

"We will, would be mighty embarrassing to end up getting rescued by the people we're going to check up on, hahaha." She replied with an easy laugh, putting on a thin layer of bravado to ward off the gloomy thoughts sprouting up like weeds in her skull and possibly bubbling up in their little entourage. Well, save Reg, bless his heart in whatever canopic jar it may be. He was a simple'un.

Added to the rest, that made six quests. Monster extermination aimed at the 'Harpies' who were apparently roosting in the deeper peaks. Scouting quests meant to point players in the direction of useful ore and stone (another promising point towards 'blacksmith'), a fetch quest to retrieve a pendant that had been lost in a shallow cave. Largely a bunch of fairly standard MMORPG fare.

Outside of the tantalizing hints of blacksmithing though, the most interesting quest was actually an escort quest just outside the village walls. Supposedly an effort to protect the villagers while they expanded their farming plots that could only be done once but, once finished, would let any passing swordmasters use a small instanced garden to grow their own alchemical ingredients (up to a certain level) for a small fee. From the Alpha information, those involved in the initial completion would be granted access for free, which was a tempting offer, but given the area that needed to be defended their little crew would likely be insufficient to the task.

Alas, Helewise wasn't much of a Necromancer yet, let alone a Death Knight. She couldn't exactly whistle and get a bunch of skeletons up and at 'em, so that quest was left be for now. Tokoyami stepped up as Helewise moved away, the NPC smoothly switching into English as the discussion repeated itself, making her way back towards the little town's centre. The open breadth of packed earth in the midst of the various buildings could hardly be called a 'town square' but it was as close as one got to such a thing, and most of the rest had already reassembled there. Lisbeth and Diavel were discussing something in low tones, FlowerFae and Duke both looked like they were just resting and watching the NPCs.

Jonah and Zeero weren't in sight, but the village wasn't so large that the former's accent didn't stand out when voices drifted their way every so often. Still collecting quests by the sound of it.

Helewise changed course, making her way towards them when something snagged on her peripheral vision, toxic green eyes snapping to the flicker of blue-white fire before it slipped out of view and into the spaces between buildings. It didn't at all stop the green glowing trail that Search highlighted for her as she followed. This could be a hostile yokai trying to lure her out of bounds of the Safe Zone, sure, but something in her gut disagreed with the notion. It wasn't as strong an instinct as when she'd clapped eyes on Otejima's card, but…

'There is something there, not a phantom of our order, but I sense no trickery yet.'

That alone said plenty, though that 'yet' was putting in some work. The footprints were visibly flickering as they wound between the buildings, heading vaguely towards the edge of town—though given they'd started close to the center that meant little—until, still inside the Safe Zone, they turned sharply right through a doorway to a disused storehouse.

There was no sudden 'Outside Field' notice as she crossed the threshold, no sudden slam of the door, but as Helewise passed into the dim room the shadows deepened.

"Miss Dragon… What are you doing here?"

Otejima's spectral form twisted suddenly, a faint pressure that had just alighted on Helewise' horns vanished with a little reverberant yelp, a blur of presence resolving into a young girl, messy white-gray hair done up in loose tails, clad in some sort of armored robe of dark red fabric and pitch black trim, like half of a samurai's kit worn over a matching kimono.

"Spotted your fire and got curious." Helewise replied with complete honesty as she took a knee to lower her profile to something less looming and more eye to eye, a taloned finger gently tapping her collarbone to bring attention to her own fire. Violet instead of blue, but both had a white ghostly core. Succinct explanation for why she had gotten curious, "Name's Helewise Golgari, and you are…?"

"I…. don't remember." The girl shuffled from foot to foot, faintly glowing yet still noticeably transparent now that she had a good look at her. Bright red horns poked up from the sides of her head. "I used to have a name, I know that, but then those stupid weird Tengu were everywhere and I had to leave my cave. I think…. I had to leave it behind."

She wasn't just transparent but flickering slightly, Helewise realized. For a split second—how dare this place take more from those trapped here—she saw red, but she swallowed it down until the only trace left was carmine corpsefire shrouding an outstretched pinky finger, carrying all the maniacal determination of the undead, "I'll help you get it back, it's a promise."

She had no idea how she'd done that, or exactly what she'd done to begin with, but her instincts had yet to lead her wrong and she had to do something to stabilize the poor girl.

She looked too much like a guttering candleflame, and shied back from Helewise's outstretched digit for a moment. More than a flinch, if not quite a step backwards, but in the aftermath, painfully quiet, "you will?"

"Yes." The Death Knight said with a quiet, unyielding intensity to her words that made her scales smolder and the title she was reaching for finally start to fit her. It didn't matter whether this ultimately proved to be smoke and mirrors, if that was the case all that'd happen was that she'd look a bit silly and deluded at the end of it all.

If it wasn't, then the outcome of ignoring people in distress because 'they aren't real enough to be worth my time' was utterly unacceptable.

"My cave was…. It wasn't too far up the mountains, I don't remember…" She clutched at her head, shrinking in on herself again, before forcing herself to continue in a mumble. Even the cursor above her head was flickering slightly in time with her body, the yellow tone looking oddly washed out from moment to moment. Something that Helewise took note of but was firmly secondary to her concerns here and now. "It was near the river, and… The Tengu had a chief…"

Helewise was struck by a moment of realization at the insistent terminology. All the other NPCs in the village had referred to the 'Harpies', even in Japanese using 'haapi', but this little ghost spoke of 'strange Tengu'. Another tally, another 'it may be nothing, it may be more proof', it did not change her course of action.

"I-if you really will…" A spectral hand finally reached out, and the pinky wrapped around Helewise' own. Even then, the popup took a long moment to materialize.

[Quest Accepted: The Oni's Cave | Find the cavern, and slay the invading monsters.]

What did not lag in the slightest however was a feeling deep in her chest, like when she had just been an amorphous blob of self extending out pseudopods. An invisible line connecting her to the little ghost the moment they sealed the promise. Something that felt like it went beyond a questline.

It wasn't like when Reg had stuttered and glitched until finally settling and gaining eyelights like her fire, or when she had first channeled Otejima's spirit, but now that she focused, now that she knew what to look for…

Something was there for each of them.

Even as she reluctantly turned away and ventured back out towards the central square, that little something lingered within.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
You can read two chapters ahead on Patreon.
_____________________________________________________________________________________