Pollux

She struggled with her attention split. Yue Hua’s main priority was still watching over Firefly. She had identified a thin, delicate flowering plant on the ground shortly after she sharpened her sight, but if she crouched down to properly dig it out, the tall brush in front of her would obscure her guildmate from her vision. So, Yue Hua took to awkwardly nudging the tip of her farming boot into the ground, scraping the soil away from the plant, as her focus still rested on the girl and the cat in her peripheries. One centimeter too far, and she accidentally snapped the plant’s roots, extinguis

Firefly's (hopefully) cat was seated atop a half wall, beckoned by the spyglass. It was white, with a fluffy face, and its blue eyes watched them back as both players quietly exclaimed their appreciation. "So cute," Yue Hua gushed behind Firefly. She was just about imagining squishing its little cheeks and playing with it along with her guildmate. "Your move, Firefly. I'll stay back here." She was hardly the clumsy sort but she did not want to trip on anything and ruin Firefly's chances. Familiar taming was a delicate thing. Though a number of creatures in Aincrad were friendly to pl

Was he blushing? They continued to walk, the spare teleport changing hands, and Yue Hua was ready to prod back with the same lightness she had maintained so far when her companion, whom in her eyes was now carried away by the excitement of the next task, began to race ahead, metaphorically. "So, Hua... Did you have any plans on what you were planning on doing if you got out?" Yue Hua didn't. "I think if we do..." Dexter, like everyone else who looked to the future, had his own wish. There was a commonality between beginners at any pursuit envisioning themselves at the

Yue Hua's mood was quick to improve. Slipping between pocket realities, she felt herself swept up in the same childlike amazement she had when the Trackers first discovered the location and decided to build there. A secret place accessible by items only they could hold or a specific sequence of steps known only to them -- or anyone curious enough to investigate, as was what defined their guild's shared characteristic. More than everyday magic, Yue Hua thought she had never felt more a part of a whole. She resurfaced beneath the shadow of Taft's cathedral. The reflection of the hill laid b

Yue Hua had enough experience with mysteries to know that she wasn't an easy hand at it. Lucky that she was shadowing her bored guild leader, if one could equate enjoyment with some level of skill. "Usually, they don't like me," she said, dead serious. But in contradiction, her horse was happily nuzzling her hand after she had compulsively showered it with pets and hugs as soon as Morningstar had led it to her. She added, "It's the tail. Apparently it's heavy and I set them off balance with it." So, after a quick traversal through her menus, Yue Hua waved it off. From Tolbana th

Well and truly blinded. She had intended to simply pick whatever she found along the way but a strange competitive instinct -- against the game, maybe -- flared up in her when this approach yielded her nothing. Yue Hua trudged around in circles, her eyes trained on the ground. Less than a month into her stay, she had more or less identified the places where materials were most likely to spawn. She checked all of them, combed through spots of overgrown grass, picked unlabeled leaves and flowers, and recited the instructions she had spoken to Dexter during his lessons back to herself.

Yue Hua gracefully sank into an empty chair. Appeased, she looked out the window, appreciating the wide view of their lands afforded by Morningstar's office. Some way down the hill, she had put up a shed for her alchemy with an open-fronted attachment where she liked to relax after a day of crafting. She had foregone that today, eager to test herself elsewhere after her and Wulfrin's trip to the desert. It was quiet, save for the rustling of pages. When the sound stopped, Yue Hua went over and slid the journal closer to herself. She skimmed through its contents, finding a few key par

厌倦你浪潮般涨落地爱我 当作莫名靠岸惶惑地来过 再说了从未幻想过你爱我 天马行空都埋没 Four weeks after the founding of the Trackers Alliance, on the fourth day of the frontline's raid preparations, autumn's hand was picking the leaves off birch trees and great piles of drained orange and brown were gathering at every inch of their territory. The morn was peaceful and cold and the bartender had long concluded his shift. Soft rapid footfalls, the pace of a brisk walk, sounded down the main hall and the door to Morningstar's office slammed open with vigor. "Leader," Y

She didn't want to mope over what any other player might have called a blessing the entire day. Yue Hua took a moment to calm down, which outwardly consisted of staring intensely down at the ginger root in her hand as though it were a talisman. Some cures needed not to be mixed into tinctures. Sending back replies dressed in her desired mood also helped. HUA: t3? r u even asking? HUA: ofc it's a huge help :triumph: :triumph: HUA: i owe u 24 small faovrs HUA: or 5 medium HUA: or 2 big HUA: :thumbsup: HUA: on that note is there anything that i might be able to do for you today?

She cut into the last pancake with slightly more aggression than necessary. The crafting board. She knew but it was only the written confirmation that brought the untidy knot of her feelings to surface. More preferred to the lighter parts of the event, the Trackers hadn't chosen to tackle it as a guild. So she hadn't minded the task at all, preferring to craft to her own preference rather than follow Hiten's schemata, until Sibyl, who had barely spoken to her since their first meeting, dropped her a message. Was she still at rock bottom? A small amount of EXP to bump her stat line up

Yue Hua's eyes squinted shut, pleased, and she nodded her head vigorously at Wulfrin's observation. Anyone fully aware of the exact circumstances of her skip might have said that Yue Hua had not been the one in the muck chopping away at quests and mobs herself. But she had done that song and dance one disastrous reset ago and she considered making creative use of one's resources a skill in itself... even if this one in question had done it completely rogue. All told, she was supposed to walk off with the credit and the favor owed gave her some much-needed direction. She dreaded the day sh

Yue Hua's hand trembled with the urge to grab another. The second victim: cuttings of mint held together with a string. Good for one potion, the material hung next to other herbs stored in the same way, exactly at eye level. Her long years of being a greedy virtual loot goblin in video games then the following also(?) years(??) long stint of being a greedy physical loot goblin as an aimless wanderer starved for resources in Aincrad called to her. Yue Hua listened to the voices. She swore she was also going to replace this one later. She almost knocked everything over when a string of

She continued, alone and uninterrupted. She swung open the door to the pantry and she internally flipped through her limited knowledge of recipes. Their bartender NPC's duty hours ended far earlier than when Yue Hua usually woke up. Breakfast, if not bought from the shops in Taft, had to be prepared by herself. She went back and forth between closely packed shelves and the small cooking area squeezed next to the window, picking up two small sacks and a carton, pans, utensils, and a bowl. Once everything was gathered at the counter, she stared them all down with a frown. Flour. Eggs. Sugar

A shaded bubble beneath her last communication informed her it was sent. Already a stroke of luck, considered. She waited, lazing about in her bed, running a comb through the feathered end of her tail. She relished the soft, silky feel of it, then moved on to her hair, which rarely gave her trouble since she moved so little in her sleep. When she ran out of knots to untangle and the other end of the line remained silent, she resigned herself to more waking moments with the mystery. Yue Hua drifted out into the quiet hall, eyes half squinted shut against the brightness of the morning. Her

"Of course," Yue Hua remarked. "That is what our guild is for." She could not help but recall that Firefly had said almost the exact same thing during their first meeting. She mulled on it as they walked along the town walls, folding her hands behind her head. It made her the picture of ease, though she was still poised to respond to danger should it impossibly present itself this close to town. "I suppose I could say I'm here for the same thing. My trouble with levels aside, I have always been curious about what was going through Kayaba's head when he made all this. Creation reflect

厌倦你浪潮般涨落地爱我 当作莫名靠岸惶惑地来过 再说了从未幻想过你爱我 天马行空都埋没 On a crisp late autumn morning in Floor 11, swathed in thick quilted blankets in the room she occupied within the guild HQ's dormitories, Yue Hua woke to find that she had skipped two entire tiers in her sleep. She dug herself out of her blanket cocoon, bleary and befuddled, and she tried to piece together how she might have bested an army of high value monsters, perhaps five hundred strong, in less than eight hours, then promptly forgot. It must have been a mission of quite extre

"Oh," Yue Hua said softly. He was proving to be quite the attentive student. Picked up the technique with ease, even if through sheer bad luck the game refused to give him his material yield, and held the skill long enough to turn it on her. She blinked owlishly back at that bright blue gaze, and for a moment appeared at a loss for what to say and what to do in return. She let Dexter bring her hand up to his head and she very gently ruffled his hair, her fingertips brushing above the curve of his brow. Such earnest words for someone he just met. She found this amount of naivete quite ador

Among the hundreds of hard-earned things that Yue Hua lost after her supposed death were her vanities. Layers upon layers of them: the horns, the pointed ears, the feathered tail, the length to her hair that would be spectacularly unmanageable in reality, if not impossible, and the colors she had spent months in her brewery matching unto one another to create a unique yet harmonious whole. It was no understatement to say that her body was her masterpiece -- and walking off the edge of Aincrad had not cremated it at its most beautiful, only wiped the slate clean. She sorely regretted it an

厌倦你浪潮般涨落地爱我 当作莫名靠岸惶惑地来过 再说了从未幻想过你爱我 天马行空都埋没 [post01.] In her dreams she kicked about tufts of leaves in her enclosure and watched them slowly fall. Clouds like torn cotton hung above a house on wooden stilts and the pond it overlooked. She had loved, in the first empty days, sitting with a leg up on the wide open window and simply letting her eyes rest on the scenery. She had left her seat once she grew so fidgety she nearly fell off. The leaves settled. A swipe of her boot against the biggest pile took them to the air once a

Her numbers problem was all sorted but Yue Hua had already made arrangements. Would be a trouble for her guildmate if she suddenly canceled last minute. So did she pop up at the agreed time and place precisely five minutes before they were agreed to meet, her gait quickened a half-step above the usual, which in the language of Yue Hua that was still unfamiliar to her fellows, meant that she was eager for someone to praise her most recent feat. "Hello, Wulfrin," Yue Hua greeted, slotting her name beneath his in the party list. "Notice anything different?" The desert was dry and misera

[You retraced a familiar path. From sound and pressures of air, you carefully gauged the distances between yourself and the bodies of the surrounding crowd, giving all moving figures a wide berth. You thought you were actively hallucinating on top of your weariness and the fine radioactive slurry your senses had melted into -- but in front of you, approximately three steps to the right, had been a genuine flower bomber. You considered terrorism a passing disinterest, and much more amiably, you offered your contribution to the station. Hiten's booming voice came half a person's h

[Ever since your cohorts drank the event dry of its novelties, your leader had reined them all back in and redistributed their regular tasks, albeit with double the off-hours so nobody could in good conscience make fun of him for showing favoritism toward his wife. You made yourself scarce to escape any straying ire and between your own work you made a lazy routine of checking the cumulative progress on the only goal you could not accomplish by yourself. You forgot to knock on wood, as the superstitious type would say. Forty-eight hours before closing, the lines on the tally had not moved

(Received.) [You racked up two counts of impersonation in a single day. In my defense, Your Honor, you pleaded against an imaginary court, I was just being a silly goose.] Yue Hua did, too.

She was starting to suspect that she was snatching materials from right under this boy's nose. But she had checked every time, just to uphold ordinary player etiquette, and they seemed to be looking in different directions. Yue Hua thought for a second. "Have you ever strained your eyes trying to read something from a considerable distance? Let's say a sign from across a street. Try applying that to yourself right now. Try not to squint -- it narrows your peripheries; for a <<Search>>, that's counterproductive, and you don't want to get into the habit of crippling your sight o

"Heh. I can see that." Yue Hua wasn't going to rag on him any further. As it was, quarreling with an unusually limited range of movement thanks to her tail, Dexter had less success looking for Zackariah's materials. An apt consequence, she had decided. "At fighting? I won a solid half of the duels I attended back then," she shared proudly. "So if one considers that a decent sample size, I could say I am better than about fifty percent of the player base. Though right now -- I am suffering a bit of a setback... so it may be a while before I step back into the ring. "Don't worry.