[PP-F1] A Break

[Kazzy 0]

You sit down near a lake not far from the road leading to the Starting City, wearing no top and only pants since you just cleaned yourself with its fresh waters. It felt almost heavenly when you dipped yourself into the water, especially when you were exhausted from walking around to find any monster worth slaying but to no avail. The full helmet and sword lay close to you, ready to be cleaned.

You drink the lake's water as the breeze blows through your strong, muscular skin, thirst quenched easily. You feel lucky that there aren't any signs of lake monsters so far. Even if they do, you only imagine them to be sea serpents or anything similarly monstrous, and you wouldn't find any of those make sense to spawn in such a low leveled area. 

You decide against eating your rations for now and pick up the sword, scrubbing it with water with the help of a clean, white moist rag. This and the helmet need to be oiled, you think. 

So far, this whole place is quiet, with no one to be heard or seen beside yourselves. You feel somewhat peaceful and appreciate the quiet.

@Mishiro

[Mishiro 0]

A pebble drops into the ocean and a tidal wave ravages the shores on the other side of the world. Chaos Theory. The ripples in the lake reminded her of it, but - watching the small waves glance off the edges of the shore - it didn't apply here. It was the opposite of a chaotic system; a stagnant body of water where changes are mostly self-contained, and the most a ripple could ever do to disturb the world around it was the occasional splash to the side.

And it was detached from everything.

The girl thought she liked its silence. Seated by the lake's shore, partially obscured by a clump of reeds, Mishiro pulled her legs close to her chest and watched a small family of birds taking turns dipping into the water and then taking to the air as quickly as they came. Even as she was resting, she left her gauntlets and combat boots equipped and was dressed in the cold black iron of her heavy armor set. Beside her was a wicker basket, filled with the coffee beans she had gathered from the nearby <<Garden>>. Casting it a quick glance, she pulled herself out of her own thoughts long enough to give a small, proud smile.

She had well exceeded the amount she set out to gather today, and she thought a half-hour's rest by one of her favorite places in Floor 1 was warranted.

It was quiet and peaceful.

But she never kept her eyes closed for more than a few seconds.

[Kazzy 0]

With the blade somewhat clean, you fish out a bottle of oil purposefully for weapon cleaning from your inventory and another new rag. You deep a bit of the latter into the oil and scrub it on your sword, repeating the process on the full helmet in and out.

With that done, you sheathe your sword and keep the rags and oil in your inventory, just in case. You look at the shores of the lake and let the breeze blowing through your face. Even though this scenery is quiet but peaceful, a melancholic feeling grows in your heart. You cannot help but wonder why. Maybe part of you misses home. Or maybe you feel lonely. Not even shaking your head in denial helps brushing off the melancholy in you.

For some reason you turn your head to another direction of the shore and notice a feminine figure sitting on it with her knees on her chest. Huh, another player here to appreciate the quiet. You look away, but every few seconds or so your eyes dart their gaze at her direction for a split second before you finally decide to stop.

@Mishiro

[Mishiro 0]

She wouldn't. Not after that day she found a girl sleeping beside the Waterfall of the Sage, unaware of the band of orange players closing in on her with their weapons drawn. They had both learned a lesson that day - that the system wasn't their only enemy but so were some of the players within it.

Mishiro thought she already knew that, but experiencing it firsthand was considerably different. Memories of the thin sliver of red in her HP bar with her opponent's dagger pointed at her throat flashed across her mind. Her life was in danger. Jinx would have been matched one-versus-six if she had gone down. Perhaps... in that one instance, it might have been right to—

"It was a close call, but you weren't wrong to hesitate."

No, it wouldn't.

Her gauntleted hand closed around a flat stone. The girl didn't feel any more unsafe now than she always did. Worrying about things that weren't very likely to happen wouldn't benefit her at this point, though she did take the necessary precautions of checking her surroundings regularly and having a Teleport Crystal at her belt as Roman had advised. 

She regarded the stone in her hand and tossed it into the lake, watching it skip once, twice, before going under. Mishiro watched the ripples in the lake and reached around her basket of coffee beans for another pebble.

She didn't mind being alone.