Astreya

"Ohmigod, yes," the girl responded, reaching a hand up to the side of her face in an attempt to show just how frustrated she was from that. "I was told all the time that I needed to get more sleep and to stop doing so much but like, c'mon," she spoke, shaking her head in mild annoyance at the memory of it. She was always pushing to get things done and everyone was always trying to hold her back, which was an incredibly frustrating situation for the young woman. "Just let us do what we wanna do, y'know?" she asked, shaking her head. At the mention of 'hero' Astreya couldn't help but to

The young woman shook her hand a few times, still stinging from where she'd decked that log and it hadn't budged. "So, like, what's next?" she asked as she came up behind the fellow. "Your body is strong, but your mind must also be," he mused as they approached a growling sound that continued to get louder as they approached, and soon she realized it was a waterfall. "So you will meditate beneath this waterfall, ensuring to keep focused throughout." "What in the...yeah, sure," she spoke, gesturing toward the waterfall. This whole quest was weird, so far as she was concerned, but

Astreya moved to follow along with the older fellow, he brought the young woman to a field with several tall, wooden cylinders set deep into the ground. "To learn martial arts, your body must be a weapon. You cannot rely on other weaponry to harm others. So for this, you will not use that sword, but your fists and feet," the old man spoke. Astreya crinkled her nose, but she was no stranger to this. Her dad put her through lots of different exercises, and boxing was one of them. She shifted, pulling her hand back before letting it snap outward...and winced. "Ow! What the heck?" sh

As soon as Mel began talking about the concept of 'all work and no play' Astreya couldn't help but to laugh a little bit in response to that. "Yeah that's what I kept trying to tell myself but, like, before I knew it I was adding something else to my plate. I was so totally burned out, y'know?" she responded, shaking her head. And it was true. Between studying, chess club and practice, volleyball practice, cheer leading and then other side projects that she was working on, the young woman just didn't have any time for herself at any point. It wasn't until she had gotten roped into trying

The mountainside dojo was interesting, to her, as she stepped along with him. Not that she was expecting anything too wild or crazy up here, but all she had known is that there was some sort of quest here... and now she had the opportunity to check it out. But things were rather... almost expected? She didn't know how else to put it, and not that it was necessarily a bad thing, but it supremely felt like this was a dojo placed here on the mountainside, rather than something being built due to it being close to resources or whatever. "Frosty, you heading down?" she asked the bird, notin

"Nothing wrong with that," the woman responded with a grin, interested to note that she was much like a lot of the other people that Astreya had met here in the game in that she was a gamer first and foremost and when it came to things like social interaction, she didn't quite have the same amount of experience that other people did. Not that it was really a bad thing, per se, as it allowed them to develop other skills that weren't in the same vein as the popularity contest that was high school. Not that Astreya had really had much issue on that front either- being all-but trained by her fat

The older gentleman watched Astreya for a long moment before he threw back his head and laughed for a long moment in response to the woman's words. She blinked, not quite sure what she was expecting by coming up here, but that certainly wasn't it. "I appreciate your candor, young lady. Here I teach disciples the way of martial arts. If you are willing to learn, then I am willing to teach. I will only train those who prove that they are ready." Astreya's head tilted to the side. Martial Arts? Well, she got the quest indicator, so she might as well. "Sure! I'll prove I'm ready. Wh

Her voice echoed back toward her from the mountainside, and she realized there wasn't much out here to break up the voice around the area, which meant if she yelled again, it would continue to echo. She was very tempted to just yell the word 'echo' outward as loud as she could, but if someone lived up here, she imagined they wouldn't take kindly to that. But it didn't take long from her initial shout for a figure to start to approach her. An older gentleman in a monk's robe, he seemed quite comfortable despite the chilly weather. Astreya noted that she was too, for whatever reason, but

"See, farming might not be so bad if I can like... do stuff all the time, y'know? Like, planting the seeds and watering the plants and like, doing stuff all the time. Fishing just seems totally boring of just like... sitting there," the woman spoke, gesturing outward, even if there wasn't anything there for her to really gesture toward, given they were still out in the wild grasslands beyond the Town of Beginnings. "Back in the real world, like, I was always active. Volleyball, cheerleading, basketball sometimes, so like, sitting still for too long really gets to me after awhile," she spok

Astreya noticed that when it came to her own ideals, Mel didn't speak in on those, which meant, at least to the way Astreya had been raised, that Mel might not agree with her... or that she had her own ideals that she was working toward. So long as Mel didn't want to be a Player Killer, Atreya didn't have any problem with the woman at all, no matter what her goals were. But with Mel dropping the topic, Astreya didn't want to push it either on her end. If it made Mel uncomfortable, she certainly didn't want to cause any problems with her new friend! "Yeah! Well, it was that or Fishing

As she climbed up higher, Astreya started to notice that the landscape was changing a bit, and becoming colder. That was fine- but the thing that she also saw was a large outcropping of rock up above her... and the further up she went, the more she saw that there was a building up here. Was this what they were talking about before? She frowned as she continued up the mountain, struggling to get higher up and to see what was up there. As she came closer, she saw the building in its full glory. Or rather, not really glory, but just a humble little temple up here. "Huh," she spoke as sh

The rock wall analogy wasn't too far off. There was more than once where she had found herself at a point where there just weren't handholds to proceed upward. Because of that, she'd needed to adjust where she was going, drop back down a little, scoot over to the right or to the left and keep going upward, after where she'd seen the handholds to climb. It was a little weird, in the fact that she was having to struggle up this wall. She wondered if there were some sort of climbing mechanics at all? Or if she was just supposed to go about it this way. The line between 'simulation' and

She gave a soft grunt as she began to move, setting one hand above the other to climb the mountainside. It wasn't exactly a difficult climb- or rather it wouldn't have been if she didn't have her armor weighing her down. She considered taking it off, but then again, as she had no idea what somber of nasties would be coming up after her, she didn't really want to risk not having it. The steady movement upward was about what she had been expecting this to be, and thankfully with everything that she'd done up until now, she felt equipped to handle it. The girl's brilliant blue eyes narrow

Astreya paused at the foot of the mountain, looking up as far as she could see, squinting as she did so. This was going to be one annoying climb. She frowned slightly as she rolled out her shoulder, glancing around the area. There was a lot going on, it seemed, when it came to unearthing all of Aincrad's mysteries. She'd heard through the grapevine that there was something neat on the top of the mountain, and so after verifying it with a few other sources, she decided to go on and take a look herself. As she was about to take a step, suddenly there was the sound of flapping wings an

-12/30/21- Craft Roll [1/2] - 202908 CD: 6 [Salvage! +2 EXP] LD: 1 [No Materials Saved] Craft Roll [2/2] - 202909 CD: 7 [Salvage! +2 EXP] LD: 9 [No Materials Saved] --- "Agh!" the anguished shout came from the back room as Astreya frowned, looking at the musical crystal before her. She wasn't exactly a talented musician in the real world, and that was coming back to haunt her now. In addition, given that she wasn't exactly 'good' at playing games either, that really put her in an awkward position of trying to do this. Granted, there wasn't a profession here that sui

The fellow had agreed and admitted that he was a musician in real life, which was awesome to the girl. The idea of someone being able to play music in real life was crazy cool to her, as she wasn't exactly all that skilled in it. Her mother was practically tone-deaf and while her father could hold a tune, he didn't particularly practice often. Astreya didn't have much talent with it... but the Profession itself had seemed interesting (plus she'd been roped and practically guilted into it). "That's okay! I totally don't know much about the profession either," she admitted with a wide g

Hunting Familiar Roll: #202907 CD: 2 (528 Col) LD: 16 (528 Col) 793 Col Rare T3 Consumable (1) Rare T3 Weapon (1) [Cooldown: 0/5] ------- Astreya could feel the girl's own frustrations at being too afraid to actually move forward, and it was something that Astreya knew well, herself. This whole world, Aincrad, had been a terribly dangerous world to live in. There were monsters that could, and would, aggro you if you got too close and be willing to cut you down and attack if you weren't careful. That was something Astreya had dealt with on the second part of the quest lin

From the outside, the storefront itself looks fairly hastily cobbled together, and a wooden sign sat out front with a fresh coat of paint to indicate the fact that it was brand new. "A New Voice - Now Open!" Within, there were a few odds and ends that didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense given that it was supposed to be a Performer's Shop. The several instruments nearby did seem to make sense, but there was also a few places set off to the side, four chessboards with a small sign next to them that stated "I'll be black pieces, feel free to go first!" The interior seemed to

As the woman admitted that dealing with people could be awkward, Astreya couldn't help a small smile flit across her face. The problem, of course, was that in this sort of game if she wanted to get out, and if she wanted to fight on the front lines, she would be forced to do so. At least to a certain extent. She could probably take up more of a damaging role and just sort of go where directed and smack things until it went down, but Astreya imagined that might not be the best either. But she didn't bring it up, at least not yet. Despite her bubbly and seemingly flighty personality,

"That could be!" Astreya responded readily to the other girl's thought that it might be possible that she had poor luck with other MMOs and the people there. "I mean, this is really the only thing I played, y'know? My dad taught me a lot of chess so I'm, like, pretty good at that," she spoke, giving an impish little grin over to Mel. "But when it comes to games, I totally don't have a lot of experience. Oh!" she began, as if an idea had just suddenly struck her and she stood up, looking to the other girl. "We could trade help! You can help me be better at this game, and then, like, I can

As the girl admitted that she was a poor judge of fashion, Astreya had to resist the urge to jump in, to offer to help her coordinate her armor to make sure she looked as stylish as possible. The girl had long since realized that not everyone had the same sort of background that she did when it came to these sorts of things. Additionally, she had to consider the fact that she was kind of the anomaly here. Everyone she'd talked to had been a gamer on some level- she was just...not really one of that crowd (not that she let it bother her (much)). Once the girl gave her reasons for wantin

"Like, I could totally rock a little purse pooch," Astreya commented back to Mel regarding the fact that a lot of pets were cosmetic items. She wondered if that was something that some people might actually have in the game somewhere. She imagined that some of the people here were going to be concerned about how they looked on the outside and all of that and so they'd want to keep things cute and whatnot. She supposed she wasn't entirely an exception, having chosen the armor design because it was stylish on top of being protective. As Mel continued, Astreya nodded, grinning. "Yeah, li

Astreya grinned widely at Koga as the man invited her into his home, seeming to not at all mind that she was coming in and he had no idea who she was. She imagined the big green indicator on her head told him that she wasn't a threat at all or a player killer or anything of the sort. But there was also a line forming behind her, and so the girl didn't want to clog up the entrance at all, so she shifted inside past Koga to where a few other people were already starting to show. As the folks filtered in behind her, she moved over toward a nearby table, laying out the array of pies and c

As the name was returned, Astreya couldn't stop the smile on her features. She knew that most people weren't willing to share their name (for whatever reason) but it didn't bother her in the slightest. Everyone had their own beliefs and that was totally fine by her. "Mel it is!" the girl cheered, as she was the sort to use nicknames as opposed to full names whenever she had the opportunity, mostly because it was easier to say, but Astreya liked to feel closer to people. "If you change your mind about the nickname, just like, let me know, kay?" the girl asked. She missed being around

At the girl's greeting, and agreement that she was doing the first quest, Astreya's smile only broadened, and she bounced in place a little, excited. The young woman was very much a fan of being able to help out the other players, to help them get their feet wet, but she very much understood the fear that came from such things, and so having someone to watch their back while the quest was undertaken was a welcome thing for most players. There were a few that liked to go it alone, and she understood that, but she still liked to offer it to anyone that was willing. "Awesome! I'm Astrey