---------LEGEND---------
PLAYER/USERNAME
Alexander/AlexFae
Amber/Davina
Grace/Lasair
Xia/Genevieve
-------------------------------

Xia connected late and only after finishing all her studies, when she reached the others through a hilly and green area, Xia found them in front of the portal to another dungeon. AlexFae was leaning against one of the columns of the large gate with her arms crossed – and Xia noticed she was still not wearing the premium clothes that Davina had surely purchased – across her chest, Davina seemed to be arguing in a low voice with Lasair, who seemed dejected for some reason that in that moment was beyond Xia's comprehension. They were there to have fun, why the long face?

At least Grace’s mood seemed to improve a little when she noticed Xia, "sorry for the delay, I had slowdowns during my studies", Xia said without accelerating her pace and waving a hand to greet the trio that made up her adventure companions. “Lasair, is everything okay?”

Grace looked at her, smiled slightly and nodded a few times, "everything... everything's fine, it was just a complicated evening."

Realizing what that meant, Xia closed her eyes and sighed, “I'm glad you're here.”

"Oh?" Davina put on a flirtatious expression, “you're glad? Hmm? Maybe you would also like to hug and kiss her?”

Xia felt uncomfortable, even more so by imagining herself hugging and kissing Lasair, “s-stop it! Do you want to make her mood even worse?”

“P-please Davina, these a-are very inappropriate things to say…” Lasair said, stiffening her shoulders and straightening her back.

In response, Davina snorted and stuck her tongue out at them, “anyway… AlexFae! What are you doing still wearing the F2P dress?” the Frostbinder summoned her fairy and rubbed her chin with her free hand, “no, I didn't forget to pass you the premium suit. Why aren't you wearing it?”

“Well…” AlexFae looked away, she seemed to be made uncomfortable by something, something that was understandable given that Xia too was trying not to think about how she was dressed so as not to do the whole live broadcast covering her chest, “it's too skimpy of a dress.”

“But you can't say no! Then we would be mismatched!” Davina replied, puffing out her cheeks, "and then I already bought it, the game doesn't allow refunds."

“Come on! It's not so bad if we're mismatched, right?” AlexFae stepped away from the rock pillar and looked at the other three girls all in turn, “you're not serious about it being mandatory, right?” She asked focusing her attention specifically on Xia, the most serious.

“The corset is tighter than it looks. Like, much, much tighter,” Xia said resignedly, sometimes she wanted to have fun, too.

Davina slowly started to approach AlexFae, “put it oooon… put it oooon… PUT IT OOOON!!!”

“Kyaaaaaaa!!!”

- - -

Once AlexFae was forced to wear her beautiful purple skimpy dress, they ventured inside the dungeon. The dungeons were instances separate from the world, this meant that the landscape inside could vary greatly compared to that present at the entrance; the interior of that specific dungeon was a green, hilly landscape, with a ruined city in sight. The sky was still in an eternal sunset that colored the few clouds above them orange and red and a path of smooth stones semi-devoured by vegetation offered to guide them to the gates of the abandoned city.

“A wave-dungeon”, said AlexFae, preceding the others by a few steps – perhaps to hide from the fairy-camera her cleavage enhanced by the premium dress, ignoring that in that case she was showing it her butt – “the challenge will begin when we arrive in the city center and will consist of waves of monsters arriving in succession until the boss arrives.”

“W-will it be possible to place us strategically? Exploit the landscape to our advantage?” Lasair asked with a hint of hesitation.

“I think it's even recommended to do so. This,” AlexFae gestured vaguely toward the ruined city, “is a dungeon I abandoned long ago when I realized it was simply impossible to complete alone.”

“It's the ideal place for our trial by fire,” Xia commented, “Davina is the one among us who is most at risk of not reaching the end of the battle given her current level, it's best for me to stay by her side since I'm a [Guardian] and I have spells that can make her survival if she's targeted.”

“My hero,” Davina blew a kiss towards her, in response, Xia tried to ignore her.

“I agree, I will instead occupy a high point and use my arrows,” AlexFae clicked her tongue, “this brings us to Lasair…”

“Uh!” Lasair winced, “of course! What… what should I do?”

AlexFae put a hand on her chin, “usually it's the [Guardian]s who are responsible for concentrating the enemy forces and keeping them back, in this case Genevieve won't be able to fill that role, so your position will be to keep the monsters out of the building I will use as a shooting point.”

"I'll do it!"

Xia smiled to herself, Lasair seemed down in the dumps when she saw her, but now she judged her to be more than motivated to prevail over the enemy hordes and the dungeon boss. The real world had been locked out.

They walked to the entrance to the city. A torn down gate high enough for one horse to pass over another and at least two wagons side by side across the width loomed in front of them. The gray walls worn by the merciless passage of time had collapsed here and there, revealing behind them the crumbling forms of collapsed houses, collapsed roofs and abandoned furniture covered in dust.

“Very good, get ready!” Davina exclaimed, summoning her own fairy, to give her the command to record their actions. Xia still felt a little uncomfortable knowing that she was being broadcasted live on YouPipe, however, the thought that some of the advertising money and donations would have come to her kept her motivated to grit her teeth and bury her social anxiety. "Hi everyone! My name is Davina and welcome back to the world of LotA!…"

Xia let her finish her monologue and participated in the introduction mostly by striking poses that showed her B-side rather than her A-side, striking cutesy poses with a face that never changed expression was quite uncanny, so Xia tried not to show it as often or put it in full view. Having made the appropriate introductions, they crossed the entrance to the abandoned city.

It was a disturbing and sad place at the same time. The city seemed to have been abandoned hastily and not organically or over time, perhaps the result of some invasion in its past that had damaged through many battles to the point that no one had bothered to regain control and rebuild when it was all over.

Xia glanced at her frame rate; the place was full of particular details but the flow was stable, she was terrified that it would fall during the waves if they were too numerous, she even thought about not participating so as not to jeopardize the conquest of the dungeon, but it was stronger about her, Xia had to be there too, Xia wanted to win.

They walked visiting the streets of the city, stopping at some abandoned and dilapidated stalls whose tattered cloths were blown by the breeze, they even passed in front of a ruined temple whose writings and statues had lost all meaning. The next destination was the square: the open space and the reddish sky above them almost made Xia dizzy, the square was at least a 165 feet long and 100 feet wide. There were statues that must have depicted ancient heroes of the city and it was in front of a tower that looked like a bell tower. In the center of a square made up of hexagonal stones there was a sort of giant soap bubble that was constantly deforming as if there was something inside trying to get out.

“Ready?” AlexFae asked as she approached the giant bubble and reached out to touch it.

“Maybe it's better if we decide on the positions first,” Xia said, crossing her arms under her breasts, “I imagine you'll take the ruined bell tower.”

AlexFae nodded, "I was thinking of a formation like this: me on the bell tower, Lasair inside of the bell tower, perhaps on the stairs where she won't run the risk of being flanked or hit from behind. You and Davina could go to the opposite side of the bell tower", she pointed to a three-story rectangular building that in the past must have been a barracks or something similar, "the monsters can climb, so we could organize ourselves so that Davina's spells cover us and I will cover you with my arrows.”

Xia turned her head to bring her eyes to Davina, who realized Xia was trying to make sure she approved the plan as decided and gave her a wink with a thumbs up.

"Prepare yourself!" AlexFae said touching the bubble.

The moment AlexFae's fingers touched the surface of the bubble, it burst, releasing a blood-curdling scream.

[WAVE 1]

Xia started running towards the building established as our strategic position, behind her she could hear Davina running at full speed to reach shelter before being targeted again in the open field. AlexFae and Lasair probably did the same, though she didn't turn around to see it with her own eyes. Xia kicked down the door and let Davina enter the house just as behind her she began to hear a noise that would surely have caused goosebumps on her real body: the sound of insect legs and jaws that clicked ominously, but the sound was so loud that it seemed as if the insects producing them must have been the size of large cats.

Xia traced the somatic components of a spell and as soon as she entered the door of the large ruined house she made a turn of one hundred and eighty degrees, raised her hand and pronounced the words to release the spell, "[Mystic Shield]!"

Two green and yellow centipede-shaped insects brought their four upper claws down on Xia's magical shield, for now her FPS rate was stable and even though she was experiencing some small slowdowns it wasn't something that was rendering her completely useless. “reach the top floor! I'll be there in a moment!”

Xia got rid of the first two monsters and found herself facing three more who were trying to get through the door moments after their 'brothers' had exploded into colored bubbles. A few blows from her sword were enough to send them to monster afterlife too. Outside, some large centipedes were pierced by a hail of ice crystals.

“Everything okay down there??” Xia heard Davina's voice coming from both the stairs and the front door.

“They're so ugly that it is almost a pleasure to put them out of their misery!” Xia responded in turn, raising her voice, when they were live streaming Davina disliked the use of the chat to talk since it couldn't be viewed and therefore her audience wouldn't have had the opportunity to know what was going on 'in their heads'.

[WAVE 2]

Things were starting to get complicated.

The second wave of monsters seemed to Xia to be twice as large as the second; when her frame rate slowed down too much to even anticipate an attack from those nasty creatures, she began to move backwards towards the stone stairs to force the enemies into a narrow space where she could fight better despite the slowdowns.

Step by step, retreat after retreat, Xia ended up on the top floor, where Davina was still bombing as many monsters as possible, "I'm almost out of MP!" Davina exclaimed trying to contain her worry, “how many more waves will we have to resist before facing the boss??”

“That's a good question,” Xia bit the corner of her lower lip, another wave of these proportions and her computer would definitely have decided to abandon her.

[Genevieve: Girls, how many more waves do we have to face? My frame rate is almost down the sink]

[AlexFae: Three waves in total. We’re almost there.]

[Davina: my MPs are below 20%, if I continue like this I will have to use some magic regeneration crystals.]

[Lasair: Refill the MP bar in the short space between the end of one wave and the next, I'll come to help you!]

As soon as the last of the colorful centipedes was killed, Davina called the fairy back to access her inventory, the user had a perfect close-up of Davina's cleavage seen from the palm of her hand, who knows if this would have increased the donations. The Magic Points were partially restoring when the system notified them that the third wave had begun. Xia knew that her computer would have not been able to withstand the mass of monsters that would have attacked them soon and so she had to think of a creative solution: her MP bar was still at 80% and at least some of the centipedes would enter through the stairs, she then approached the top of the stairs and after having performed the procedure to activate her [Mystic Shield], Xia made it materialize so that it blocked the access from the staircase. It was the best she could do for Davina, she would have to worry about the rest until Lasair arrived or the number of monsters dropped below a leved that would have allowed her computer to restart working properly.

As the army of centipedes began to pile up on the stairs and try to get past Xia's shield, the world became a slow slide show.

[Genevieve: my FPS just dropped to 2. Try to hurry, Lasair.]

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