CaTastrophy427

I'm testing out another formatting change, this time, to plain ol' dialogue, hopefully making it stand out a bit better. Poll at the end, love it or hate it, please rate it. It's slightly more work to do so here as the formatting doesn't get pasted from the draft on Google Docs, but it's how I normally have it when writing, just for my own convenience.

Logging out and opening my VR capsule, I was once again greeted by the familiar fuzziness that is reality for me. I levered myself out of the capsule and reached for my clothes, only to be greeted by an empty chair where I would normally have a bra, panties, and a simple gown. Sighing, I remembered that this tended to happen only when I logged out earlier than expected.

“Stella? Are you there?”

No response. None at all. So, I slid my feet into the pair of slippers that thankfully were where I expected them to be, and walked a few steps to the pull bell by the window. Not twenty seconds after I’d pulled the cord, a rapidly approaching set of soft footsteps warned me of the loud noise that was soon to follow as my maid flung open the door with a bit too much force.

“Forgive me for intruding, princess. I was not expecting you to finish so quickly, so I was busy washing your clothing”

“Stella... for the fourth time this month, I don’t think we’re so poor that I wouldn’t have enough clothes in my wardrobe for you to be able to wash my dirty laundry while still leaving a set of clean clothes for me to change into. If I truly do not have enough, please bring that up with my father so he can get a few more sets made”

“I’m terribly sorry about that, I simply forgot”

“You’re quite forgetful, it would seem. But, no matter. Please bring me something to wear, I don’t like being naked, even if it is just within my own bedroom”

Stella left in a hurry, not even closing the door behind her, and returned about a minute later to help me put on the clothes she brought. She turned to leave, but I stopped her.

“One more thing. Could you call Stahl for me? I noticed he was offline earlier, so he should be available now”

“Of course, princess. Is there any message you would like me to pass on, or do you just wish to speak with him yourself?”

“Just ask him to come here, I’ll handle the rest. If he’s busy, tell him it’s not urgent, I just want to talk”

“Very well. I’m sorry for my previous blunder. Call me if you need anything”

She left, much less hurried this time, and even remembered to gently close the door behind her. I sat down on my bed, fell to the side, and grabbed my tablet. However, I didn’t even get to decide on what to watch before there was a knock on the door, and a deep but gentle male voice came through, crystal clear despite the heavy slab of solid wood standing between us.

“You called for me, princess? May I come in?”

“Enter, please”

“Thank you”

Not that I could make out more than a faint blob and some movement at that distance, but I knew that my door was pushed open just enough for a tall and muscular man in his early 30s to enter my room, softly closing the door behind himself as he always does. As I was in a casual position, he correctly assumed that this was not a formal request, and so didn’t ask before he pulled out a chair and sat down. It took me years to train him to do that, as I hate the stuffy procedures my father’s subordinates have ingrained into them to show respect to him and myself. Neither of my maids have changed how they act around me very much, and besides Stahl, only one of my other seven guards has relented in that department at all.

“So, what can I do for you today?”

“Mostly, I had a frustrating experience in-game and wanted to vent. If you’ve got any solutions, I’d love to hear them, but let me say what I want to say first, okay?”

“Underst- er, sounds good”

I spent a good half an hour talking to him about what I’d done over the last few days, as the previous time we spoke about the game, I was still traveling with the chuuni rogue and the hotheaded swordsman. I went over the impromptu field boss raid, shopping with Gaia, the loot boxes and the smith’s quest, gathering the quest materials, and finally got to the part I wanted to vent about, the PKers’ overreaction and spawncamping.

“I mean, technically you’re not being spawncamped. You’re able to survive so long as you don’t leave the town, and you could still use a warp scroll to go to another town, though it sounds like your friend doesn’t have that option. Well, besides that, there really isn’t much you can do on your own. Would you like me to deal with it?”

It was a good-natured suggestion, though I’d already refused similar ones in the past, for a simple reason.

“Stahl, you know I hate getting your help, I want to experience the game the way a normal player would”

“A normal player wouldn’t get their starting town camped by a PK guild. Come on, tell me, what’re the levels and PKP of the ones killing you two?”

“Low 60s to high 70s for the most part, and PKP anywhere from 10 on a red name to 90-odd on a black name”

I answered, not because I was accepting his help, but because it was another thing I wanted to complain about. We helped kill two level 40-odds, and immediately we started being targeted by people almost thrice our level.

“Damn, you pissed off a pretty fucking big fish. If you don’t show that you have a strong backer, you’re going to get hounded by these guys for the rest of your life, you know”

“I know...”

“Besides, you said Ichishiro? I remember hearing that my guild had some business there that we’ve been pushing off for some reason. I might as well take care of that while I’m there. Two birds with one stone, no?”

“Oh, fuck’s sake... Fine. Come on over and help if you really want to”

I felt rather defeated, he’s so good at getting me to let him help me that it almost always leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and not because I’m freely getting help most people wouldn’t even dream of having, but because I’m losing an argument I started without being able to put up much of a fight.

“Oh yeah, what’s the family doing?”

“Well, we recently opened a fifth location for our restaurant business, Golden Health made an interesting breakthrough in our cancer research, and the stock price of Aurum Electronics has gone up 47% over the last two weeks. Other than that, we’re making plans for a second storefront for Olden Yet Golden, our antique trading subsidiary, and-”

“If I wanted to hear about the company, I’d’ve asked about the company. I asked what the family is doing”

Stahl groaned, mumbled an apology for misunderstanding my question, and then spoke with a bit more of a serious tone than before.

“We’ve been clashing with the Bianchinottis a lot, and Boss just finished executing some plans he’d been working on for much of the past year, taking out three of the smaller gangs at once. The Sparkriders, the Hell’s Murmurs, and the Angels of Asphalt have all been caught in one fell swoop. Over 200 people have been put in jail at once, and the Boss seemed quite pleased with his machinations”

“That’s good. How many did we lose?”

“Nobody on our side was caught up in this, though we did have to burn a contact we’ve had for years. Even if the fuzz suspect the tip came from the competition, the three bones we threw them were enough to get them to ignore the little matter of who was throwing those bones and where they got the bones in the first place”

If that’s the case, my father has made a pretty decent chunk of progress towards his goal of cleaning up this city. The three gangs Stahl mentioned were some really big names in the local underworld, and their combined influence was enough that even the Aurum family couldn’t fully ignore them to focus on the Bianchinottis.

“Besides the Italians, who have we yet to deal with? The Russians are in hiding and might even have left, the Irish have come back under our wing, the Chinese were fully purged a few years ago, and then...”

“One more small gang, plus the French and the Greeks. We’re close, so very close”

“Have there been any changes to the plans for dealing with the Paradizos? I liked their boss’s daughter... Minerva, I think? She was really nice to me, even when everyone else tried to ignore me or brush me aside. I’d like to be able to become friends with her after all this is done, and she’s smart enough that I think she could be a good asset if we can get her on our side”

“The boss has been trying to figure out how to make that happen, but she’s a bit too smart, she’d likely see through anything we do to her group”

Ah, fucking hell. She’s the only person even close to my age I feel comfortable around, everyone else walks on eggshells with me and I hate it when people do that. Oh, wait, there’s Gaia. Fine, she’s the only one I’ve met outside of the game.

“Well, I’ll talk it over with my guild and then I’ll head on over to bring you and your friend out. If I hurry, I should be able to get there this evening, we’re pretty close after clearing Foaly’s 14th Near-Surface Lab. No luck getting a Section 8 Key though”

CaTastrophy427

The formatting change is something I initially tried in my other series, and the reception there was generally positive thus far so I'm asking y'all over here too. If you followed my updates in my discord server, you'd know that chapter 10 is coming soon because I decided to release this together with that, even though it's chapter 9.5 and not chapter 10.5.

Also in that discord server, if you can find any of the references to other works in this chapter, speak up there for... clout? Brownie points? IDK, maybe there'll be some actual prizes later on. Don't say anything in the comments here about the references, I'll neither confirm nor deny any attempts at pointing them out until that reference has been found by someone in the discord server.

Anything else... uh, no, not really, just remember to vote in the poll and I'll see you (metaphorically speaking) in a couple of days.