[PP|F2] <<Long Live the Queen>> Boiling Point

[ChaseR 0]

Chase's playful tone shortly went away after her comment, realising he must have struck a nerve or something like that. With a simple nod, he remained quiet while they headed to the teleport plaza, saying little and only following Shay around. "How do we use this?", he asked her, never having operated the teleport plaza to travel between floors before. Then again, it's not like he'd ever thought to try it either, so... Whatever the case, it was new to him.

His mind was, even now, thinking about all that they'd done so far up to today. Sure, four quests were nothing to scoff at, but in Chase's mind, that was more progress than he could have made on his own over the past few months. He was certain that he had gotten much stronger than before, feeling more confident in his swordsmanship and the knowledge, as little as it was about the world around him. Then again, the fatigue would hit him if they kept questing for much longer without any rest, as keeping track of all of these and absorbing so much information like a sponge drained all his energy like crazy.

Spoiler

Name: ChaseR
Level: 12
HP: 240/240
EN: 24/24

Stats:
Damage: 8
Evasion: 1
Accuracy: 3
REC:2

Equipped Gear:
Weapon: <<Cloud Cutter>> (T1/Perfect/2HSS): DMG III
Armor: <<Sky Blue Apparel>> (T1/Perfect/Light Armor): EVA I; REC II
Misc: <<Warm Earmuffs>> (T1/Perfect/Trinket): ACC III

Skills:
Two-Handed Straight Sword [Rank 3]

Extra Skills:

Mods:

Battle Ready Inventory:
Starter Healing Potions(heal 50HP)*3
T1 Rare Health Potions (heal 40HP)*5
Field Rations*1
Immolation Potion*1
Requires Extended Weight Limit 1
Requires Extended Weight Limit 2
Requires Extended Weight Limit 3
Obtained via Item Stash (Housing)
Obtained via Dimensional Backpack

Housing Buffs:

Guild Hall Buffs:

Scents of the Wild:

Wedding Ring:

 

[Shay 0]

Shay walked on to the teleporter and grabbed the boy by his wrist, not even offering a moment to answer his question. She looked up to the sky and called out to whatever system made this stupid teleporter work the way it does. "Floor 4: Snowfrost!" She called an in a flash of light, the both of them were suddenly in a much chillier zone. The town was covered in a thick layer of snow and even still it kept falling. "Come on." She said walking out of town and summoning her blade to her off hand in case they meet any monsters a long the way.

The walk took 20 minutes from town. It was far out on purpose like she explained. Soon, the sight a beautiful red tree topped with a blanket of white came into view and the temperature started to come up. A house sitting over a hot-spring could be seen with Shay's sign on near the stepping stones.

"Owner is away, will return some time."

Skipping over the stones, Shay opened the door to reveal a small room with a piano and a counter. Performer crystals are found a chest near the piano, likely blank ones. She walked behind the counter and turns on one of the crystals that sits upon the counter. A soft, high-pitch song plays through it while she gathers some items. The only other notable thing in the room is a ladder leading up to an attic of some kind.

Spoiler

"Name: Shay
Level: 17
HP: 340/340
EN: 34/34

Stats:
Damage: 8
Evasion: 3
Accuracy: 1
BLD:12
REC:2

Equipped Gear:
Weapon: (Katana)Murasame α: BLD 2; DMG 1
Armor: Leather Overcoat: EVA 3
Misc: Deep Red Tie: Recovery 2; ACC 1

Skills:
Curved Sword [Rank 1]
Katana [Rank 4]

Extra Skills:

Mods:

Battle Ready Inventory:
T1 Support Song(Mass) - HP Recovery 2
T1 Support Song(Instant) - HP Recovery 1(x2)
T1 Support Song - HP Recovery 1(x2)

 

[ChaseR 0]

Chase felt somewhat caught off guard as she grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him on top of the teleporter, and before he knew it, he was in a completely different floor than before. "W-Woah, that was... Just like the first day, wasn't it..?", he thought to himself, thinking back to what Kayaba had done to teleport them all to the Town of Beginnings around two hours or so after he'd launched the game. He didn't have much time to think about it however, as he followed right behind her with his hand on his hilt, same as she had her own blade in her off-hand. "She'd said that it was far away, so... There might be monsters on the way there. Doesn't that make it less accessible though..?"

He pondered as they began to head over to her shop, letting out a deep sigh and staying mostly silent along the way. His clothes kept him warm enough, although he still felt rather chilly. He didn't mind it though. His warm earmuffs helped keep him cozy and nice throughout the small trip, and by the time they were done, a small hut began to come into sight. They entered, and the boy quickly felt welcome with how the music started playing right away, smiling a bit and looking towards the ladder right away- everything else looked normal, but... "Where does that lead?"

[Shay 0]

It was pretty apparent that he wondered where ladder went to. It was some what out of place. Not that is was that much of a deal or anything though. "It leads to a loft, where I sleep. The limitations to what I can built with my shop is so much. I can only have one room really, so I made a loft up there that has a hammock. This is my entire house." She mentioned as she finally dug out a handful of the small black crystals, turning off the one she had just started playing for silence.

"Quiet now. I'm going to try and make some crystals." Setting the first crystal on the piano's lid, she began to play. A beautiful song to start, as she began to play, Chase could feel the soothing sound of the keyboard easing the aches in his body. The first crystal she tries to make shatters halfway through as the tempo picks up. She throws her hand in the air and slams them onto the keys. A message appears before her denouncing the piano as an immortal object. She takes a deep breath and continues. Luckily the next five crystals turn out much better than the first one did.

[ChaseR 0]

"So she really has made the shop her house... That's a creative way to use it... Maybe if I do the same when I get a shop, I don't have to pay that crappy inn anymore and I can sleep properly...", he thought while hearing out the little patent that she'd made for herself, letting out a sigh and opening his mouth as if to speak before being told to quiet down. Not having much of a choice really, he quietly looked for somewhere to lean on, settling on the bench and waiting for her to begin. She looked so composed before starting, and as the song began to play, Chase already felt much more at ease.

"That's... That's not the game. That's her.", the boy looked in awe, closing his eyes without even realising just because of how relaxing the atmosphere was now that her beautiful music was filling up the room. All before an item shattering could be heard, and then a loud thud from the piano keys to follow right after. He jumped slightly and looked at her almost in a fight or flight response, having instinctively reached for his sword before realising she must have gotten annoyed at failing to craft a crystal again. "I'm certainly not talking to her about music again...", he reassured himself, hoping that the next attempts would come out better. And thankfully, they did.

[Shay 0]

The frustration of being so good at one's hobbies only to have their crafts be destroyed right before them was probably one of the most infuriating things in this game. Crystal after crystal would shatter no matter how beautifully or perfect you play the song. After about five minutes, she could finally be finished with playing the same song over and over again, gaining several different results from this craft. All of them had healing effects though, which is what she was shooting for.

Once she was done, she shut the lid on the keys of the piano and moved the five crystals she had produced into her inventory. She turned around to see Chase enjoying the music playing. That at least put a slight smile on her face. Not many people got the chance to actually listen to her play live, and even in the real world, the only people that listened to anything she played were her instructor and her late parents.

"Pleased? People don't really know that I have this skill. I'd say three- well, now four -people actually know about it."

[ChaseR 0]

Chase did, in fact, enjoy the music all the way until she was done. Even when she was done and asked him, he only responded with a small nod and smile, his face having brightened up after a fairly long day. He already knew not to question why she'd kept a secret. She didn't enjoy being asked too much on it, and that was alright. "Yeah, you were great. So what do they do?", he finished, looking at the crystals and raising an eyebrow. He knew that she'd make some crystals, but the rogue never clarified what they would be used for.

Then again, if he looked into the professions and everything else tomorrow, then chances are he'd probably be more well informed on what her limits were, as well as his once he picked one for himself. "Can we break up for today after this? It's pretty draining.", the boy proposed and scratched the back of his head awkwardly. Truth be told, it was only the first day he'd gone out to manage anything, and as a result he'd spent a lot of his energy absorbing all the information around him like a sponge, learning how to fight and even do quests. It was a lot to take in a single day and keep going, especially for someone as unfamiliar with the system as Chase.

[Shay 0]

"These crystals in particular are made for healing. I have no idea why they do that compared to a potion, but I'm not going to question it. They do what they do for the sake of either protecting me and my party, or weakening our enemies. That's all that matters." With that, she ushered the boy out of her house and locked to door to her home via her console. Once that was done, they skipped over the rocks in the hot spring and started to make their way back to the teleporter. This boss would be lucky to last two seconds against the both of them.

"If you want to break, yeah. I don't mind. I'm getting kind of tired anyway. Being near those hot springs makes you tired pretty quick. Its nice to relax in them though." She mentioned looking ahead to the destination before them. It was annoying how far out she had chosen to live, but the spot was serene if not scenic.

[ChaseR 0]

"They're potions with extra steps then.", he mumbled lowly to himself, shrugging it off and trying to focus more on the task at hand. All they had to do was go find the Wasp Queen, if he remembered the name right in the first place, kill it and then turn the mission in. With how much practice they had up to now, doing every single of the beginner missions and getting Chase to become more and more familiar with the system, it should be a relative piece of cake. At least he's level twelve now too, compared to the measly one from a few hours ago.

Progressing this quickly made him feel even more hopeful for what the future held, but he was getting sidetracked. Putting his mind back on track, he gave her a glance and nodded, before looking at the path they were taking to the teleporter and grinning. "I haven't used a hot spring before. Seems nice though.", the bluehead commented, thinking that at some point, he wouldn't mind trying one out. Then again, to ask Shay if he could use her house for the hot springs would be beyond rude, even for how rough he may be with his words from time to time.

[Shay 0]

"I offer the service of the hot spring to anyone who buys from my shop. Since you are my duo partner for leveling, I guess I can return the favor by letting you use it if you want." She shrugged. It was a nice way to get people to come to her shop. Even if she was keen about leveling in the game as quickly as possible, she sure as hell knew when to relax. She had been doing it for a literal month after Titan poofed.

Walking into Snowfrost and stepping on the teleporter, Shay looked to her duo partner and gave him a nod. "Give it a try yourself. It's not hard, just say the floor and the name of the town you want to go to. Basically repeat what I'm about to say. Floor Two: Urbus!" She called out and with a quick flash of light, she was gone.

[ChaseR 0]

With a quick glance to the side, he looked at her when she offered and replied with a shrug. It was obvious he wanted to try it out, at least while they were still in the earlier floors after some tiring day, but... They had time until then. "Why not, one of these days.", he responded before tensing up just slightly when they'd reached the teleporter. With a somewhat hesitant expression, he stepped on and watched her teleport away, furrowing his eyebrows. "R-Right, of course I'd have to learn how to use this at some point... C'mon, just repeat the same words she said, nothing you can go wrong with there..."

Like so, he took a deep breath followed by a confident shout, maybe too loud for his own good. "Floor Two: Urbus!", he finished and clenched his eyes shut, only to see a blue light cover his body. By the time it was gone, he opened his eyes to find himself on the second floor, completely new and different compared to the first floor. "H-Hm... So this is Urbus? What's the first floor called?"

[Shay 0]

"Floors don't really have names. It's just Floor 2. Most players remember it by that, or by the main settlement." The rogue explained as she wasted no time moving through the town of the floor, which was considerably smaller than the Town of Beginnings. But they weren't here to sight see or anything. They had a stupid wasp to kill.

The forest of the floor wasn't as thick as the third floor at least. She made their way to the location of the wind wasp and noticed it floating around there alone. She could help if she wanted so she removed her sword from the saya and threw it into the ground, it disappeared the moment that it made contact with the grass. "If you don't kill it on the first attack, I'll jump in and help you. Don't need you taking a tone of damage since your still new to fighting. You'll get the hang of it as we continue fighting."

[ChaseR 0]

As they got to the fields, Chase silently took a look at the boss. He could tell that it was stronger than most monsters he'd faced or seen up to now, if not the strongest, which was probably the case, but that didn't unsettle him any. He had taken no hits up until now, and the monsters had all died almost right away. With this in mind, he took a deep breath and removed his sword from its sheathe, gripping it tightly with both hands and starting to move towards it. Without looking at Shay, he asked her with confidence in his voice. "Okay. But if you could, I'd like to try this alone. If you could do it alone before, I can too."

An orange glow formed around Chase's blade before he jumped towards the Wasp Queen, almost slipping due to unstable footing right before he did so, but making it nonetheless. Once he was right in front of it, he let his sword go wild, throwing undercuts, overcuts and some horizontal slashes through the middle of the Wasp Queen's body right at her. By the time she was going to attack, even if she looked like she was going to miss, she was too dazed from the boy's attack and failed to move even a bit. Seeing her HP bar having almost completely depleted, he was certain he didn't need help with this. 

Chase: HP: 240/240 | EN: 17/24 (-9, +2) | DMG: 8 | EVA: 1 | ACC: 3 | REC: 2

The Wasp Queen: HP: 2/50 (-48) | DMG: 20

Cooldowns; Stun 2 Turns

Edited July 9, 2020 by ChaseR

[Shay 0]

Shay took an aggressive stance like she was about to rush in and murder the giant bee with a single stroke - which she wasn't, she was only going to basic attack it - before Chase spoke up. He wanted to take the boss on alone, which seemed fair. When she had done this quest so long ago, that orange player had carried her through it. She hated the idea of being carried through a quest and wanted to make up from it back actually taking the Queen on this time. However, this wasn't about her. This was about empowering her ally and raising his confidence. With a gentle nod, the girl did as he asked, reforming the Murasame's saya back into her hand and sheathing the blade in an instant.

He rushed in, slashing the bee nearly in half. It fell to the ground completely limp from the attack that he had made. It was actually more impressive than she imagined. He had made so much progress in just a single day. Five quests done and several levels gained. Hopefully he doesn't get too used to leveling up so quick. It would be a little more difficult to level up from this point on.

[ChaseR 0]

He didn't hear a response, but her not rushing forwards to finish the job was enough of an answer in and of itself. "Thanks.", the boy said with a quick look over his shoulder before he continued, lowering his sword to just above the ground and charging at the queen in order to give the final blow. As he jumped at it once more, he got a clean hit from the ground up to the insect, cutting all the way to just in the middle of its body before pulling his blade out only once he had practically cut it in half.

With that, he landed and kept his sword to the side, panting as he heard the body drop right behind him and disappear into blue fragments. It wasn't long before the loot window appeared in front of him, which got a small smile. He sheathed his sword once more, accepting the Stinger he'd gotten from the boss and turning around to look at Shay. "Now we just have to turn it in and we're going home for the day. Right?", he asked her happily, glad that he could land such a good hit without the game's system assisting him this time around. More than anything, his performance was astounding for the time being, and that made him glad enough on its own.

Chase: HP: 240/240 | EN: 18/24 (+1, -2, +2) | DMG: 8 | EVA: 1 | ACC: 3 | REC: 2
The Wasp Queen: HP: 0/50 (-2) | DMG: 20

Edited July 9, 2020 by ChaseR

[Shay 0]

Shay nodded as he returned to her, closing the loot window of the stinger poison that she had acquired for being apart of the group when the wasp was killed. "If that's all you can handle for today, sure. I will admit that I am a little bit tired, even though I didn't really do anything for more than half of those quests. I'd offer you a room at my place, but you would likely be more comfortable in an inn than on the wooden floor of my shop." Shay mentioned as she started to lead him back into town.

"So, you're now in the teens of levels I presume. You're pretty close to my level at least, which was the whole point of us doing quests that I've already completed. When I'm ready to start questing more, I'll send you a message. If you really want to join the front lines and help them fight, then we really need to start getting some of the games content done."

[ChaseR 0]

Chase grinned at the offer, although it did feel rather odd to be invited to her home no less than a day after they'd met. He'd probably take her up on the offer, but... The bluehead wanted some more time to pass, at least until he's equal to her in terms of strength. If everything kept going along at this pace, that wouldn't even be too far off from today. Maybe in... four, five or so days. He already wanted to head back to Urbus tomorrow, to check the shops and whatnot. "Of course. How many more quests are there to be done until we can move to the second floor?"

So far, they'd done all quests on the first floor of the game. If there were a total of twenty three of them though, he was certain that meant they'd slowly have to use the missions and climb further and further up ahead. In the end, they might end up in the frontlines much too quickly, provided they kept getting levels like so and finished quests like this, one after the other and in quick succession. But there was something that bothered him. "It's been god knows how long, and Shay is already more knowledgeable on the game than I am... But she still hasn't reached any higher levels. Why is that? Something must be wrong. It can't be this simple, I'm not too good or anything like that. So what is it?"

[Shay 0]

"We don't have to complete a number of quests to move to the next floor. We could travel up to floor 24 right now if we wanted and do whatever the hell we wanted up there. It would be ill-advised, but there are some bosses in the game that players our level could easily handle and we will. There's a boss on floor five that we could easily handle together. It's an easy one to do because there's a lot of introductory bosses for lower players." Shay hated all this explaining, but he was still learning. It's still only his first day.

"Once we're done with that we could probably work on tackling some tougher bosses. It will help once we've maxed out our weapon skills, then you can invest in some tanking skills while I invest in support. We'll be a two man team that can take on just about an bosses with us alone."

[ChaseR 0]

What she had to say was interesting, to say the least. He'd thought that floors would indicate just how strong one would have to be to do anything in them, but quite the contrary... It got a sigh out of him, really. It was a system he couldn't understand or get behind, but at the same time one he never had to get behind in the first place. "I see... So it's really weird like that.", he mumbled lowly to himself and looked down at the ground with his eyebrows furrowed, keeping his arms crossed and tapping his foot silently. 

It was then that the exhaustion struck him and he began to feel more and more tired by the second. Maybe he'd pushed himself a bit too hard for a starter on the first day, seeing as the wave of fatigue struck him almost instantly and quite hard at that. "A-Ah, right. I'm beginning to feel tired, so... Should I send you a message tomorrow when I'm ready for the minotaur quest? Late morning, maybe?", the boy asked her with a sheepish smile, giving an awkward laugh. He wasn't too used to waking up early in the morning, and without an alarm clock around it'd be hard to keep track of when to wake up. At least for him. "I'll be crashing at the inn again, but... I should ask if I can sleep at her place tomorrow."

[Shay 0]

"Just message me whenever you're ready. I don't care what time." The girl said as the two of them stopped in front of an inn on the second floor. She placed a hand on her hip and returned her weapon to her hammer space looking to Chase with a slight smile. "You did great today for a noobie. You didn't take a single hit I believe and you nearly destroyed every single boss that got in your way with a single attack. That's pretty impressive, I can't lie and I've been playing these sort of games for a long time."

With a quick nod, she could see that Chase was reaching his limits now. He was going to sleep well tonight. She gives him probably up to 2pm before he wakes up tomorrow, maybe even later than that. She could be lenient on him for that. "I'll see you tomorrow. Message me when you're ready." The raven haired woman slowly walked off towards the teleporter. Damn, she was more tired than she expected for doing almost nothing.

Spoiler

Rewards:

SP: 3 Quest; 1 page; 1 event
Col: 200 per player
Matriarch's Stinger - +1 DMG potion