CaTastrophy427

The previous chapter, Chapter 9.5, is an actual (side) story chapter instead of just a drop list chapter that's just there for flavor and reference. It follows Artemis IRL and introduces one of the characters we're seeing in this chapter, so if that's something you want to see but skipped bc of the previous .5 chapters, go give it a read. It's not required to understand this chapter, but it does provide some interesting context and information about a couple of recurring/main characters you'll otherwise have to piece together throughout this book and maybe even the next couple of books

After spending several hours embedding arrows into hay bales, I returned home to my still uncomfortably lonely house, made myself a simple meal, and escaped into the VR pod shortly before the clock struck six. Surprisingly enough, Artemis also logged in early, and was sitting with her back facing me while typing in the air, presumably either exchanging messages with a friend or posting in the forums.

“Hey Art, you’re here early”

“Jesus fucking christ, don’t startle me like that”

My tap on her shoulder caused her to levitate several inches into the air, her voice rising an octave as she whirled around to face me.

“Sorry, sorry. Uhh... mind if I ask what you were doing?”

“Ah, a friend of mine said he’d come help when I was venting to him about the fuckwads spawncamping us”

“A friend of yours? I don’t know how much help he’d be against level 70s specialized in PvP combat if he’s about your level...”

“He’s not, he’s quite a bit higher than the PKers, actually. He started playing a few days before I did, almost at the start of the game, and didn’t waste time dicking around with crafting classes and exploring every nook and cranny of our starting town like I did”

“Ah, that makes sense. So, how long until he gets here?”

“Should be less than an hour, from what he said earlier. And he’s bringing a couple of his guildmates”

Oh, that’s nice. We might actually be able to make it out if that’s the case.

“So, do we still try the gates to see if they’re being camped?”

“What else would we do with our time?”

“We could buy some loot boxes...”

“Trying the gates it is”

Two deaths later, we spotted a group of three people in flashy-looking gear coming towards the east gate... but only for a moment, as we were standing outside of the gate and so were instantly cut down a third time - or rather, Artemis was, I managed to run back into town with a sliver of HP left, and sent Artemis a message saying as much. While waiting for her to get back to me, the trio got close enough that I could see their names, two of which I recognized.

[Shit Seeker]

Ram-Dam-Ash-Stick

[Level 307]

[Crazy Disturber]

White Powder

[Level 146]

[Noble Sacrifice]

Stalwart

[Level 289]

It was a team from Aspirations, I wasn’t expecting them to come as I hadn’t received any reply from White Powder whatsoever. I almost ran out to greet them, before remembering that that’d be suicide. It might be funny for them to see the person they came to meet get cut down in front of them, but let’s not do that.

“Hey, over here!”

“Hmm? Gaia? Is that you? I thought... Momo always said he had a brother, but you’re... well...”

“Oh, these things are a prank from the fucking sadistem, ignore them, I am a guy IRL”

“Your face does look like the picture Momo showed me of his brother, so I’m inclined to believe that you’re who you say you are. So, he’s really dead?”

Ram-Dam-Ash-Stick - her real name is Ashley, from what Momo told me - is as blunt as he said she was. Someone else saying it, even as a question, hurt way more than I was expecting it to, and I felt some tears welling up in the corners of my eyes.

“Yeah... he left me this Sun Sword and a note, telling me how to get his Bladelord class”

“If you have that class, you should be able to join us if you wanted”

“Cain, now’s not the time to give him an invite”

“Right, sorry. I’d prepared myself for the worst, considering what you’d said a few days ago, but... it really doesn’t feel real. I guess I’m trying to distract myself”

“You and me both. Still, you have incredible timing, if you’d come without saying anything any later, you might’ve missed me, I was planning to move to Deuxor in a few hours, just waiting on a couple of people before going”

Stalwart’s eyebrows rose when I mentioned Deuxor, and White Powder turned to talk to him.

“Hold on, isn’t that where you’re headed next? Think Gaia could tag along?”

“I’d have to ask the princess if she and her teammate would be comfortable having another group join them, I’m just her bodyguard. But she usually doesn’t get along with strangers very easily, so I doubt she’ll say yes”

“Sheesh, what kind of rich kid can hire someone nearly level 300 to be their escort out of a starter town. Still, I wouldn’t mind the help if it’d work out, I’ve been dealing wi-”

“Hey Gaiaaaa, my friend said he’s about to arr...ive... Oh, he’s here, and you’ve met I see”

Eh? Wait, what? The trio from Aspirations were looking about as perplexed as me, and Stalwart in particular had a very strange expression on his face.

“Wait, princess, you know Gaia?”

“You made friends with him pretty quickly, eh Stahl?”

“Princess... I told you to call me Stalwart when we’re in-game”

“And I told you to call me Artemis. If you won’t change what you call me, I’m not going to change what I call you. And to answer your question, he’s the party member I told you about earlier”

“I see. I still can’t change your title, I would feel like I’m showing disloyalty to-”

“Oh shut it. If loyalty to my father means ignoring my feelings, you’re dishonoring yourself, you’re dishonoring me, you’re dishonoring my father, and you’re staining the honor of the family. My father never asked you to call me that, you decided that that’s the way you’ll show your loyalty, and to put your own decisions above my feelings shows you don’t respect me. That’s not something my father would see as loyalty, they’d see it as selfish willfulness. You’re part of the family, and that means following the orders of the head of the family and their heir above all else. You can call me princess, but don’t say that that’s loyalty”

Damn girl, you’re sounding like a mafia boss or something with that tirade.

“So, I take it... you two know each other IRL?”

“Yes. I work as one of her personal bodyguards, at the boss’s request”

“The boss he’s talking about is my father. It’s complicated, and you don’t need to know more than that. Maybe someday I’ll tell you, but for now... no. So, Stahl, how do you know Gaia?”

“Remember how I said my guild had some business in this town? It was to meet up with someone claiming to be the younger brother of one of our members, bringing news of his death”

“Yeah, that tracks with what Gaia said to me. Who would’ve thought the quirky but kinda depressed newbie I met when the rest of my party wiped on a boss was related to your guild?”

Not me, that’s for sure... and I would’ve said as much, had all three of the Aspirations members not said the same thing first. Now it’d just be awkward to say it...

“So, shall we go?”

“If there’s nothing else the princess has to do here, come, join our party, and we’ll leave after giving you a few buffs”

After clicking on [Yes], I joined their party, and Artemis joined moments later. From the party menu, I could see my teammates’ classes, and saw that the heavily-armored Stalwart was a dualclass between Saint Samurai and Stalwart Defender (both tier 4 knight-path swordsman classes) while White Powder was a Blood Tribute Shadow (the tier 4 class in the assassin path of the rogue tree) with the Poisonmaster subclass. He wore a metallic grey hooded cloak and had a LOT of extra pouches attached to his belt.

Finally, Ram-Dam-Ash-Stick was a dualclass between Astral Ancestor Totem Chief (the warrior tree’s tier 4 astral class) and Miracle Monk (a tier 4 healer class that can fight quite well, either unarmed or with a staff), which explained why she wore an orange kasaya while being covered in glowing blue tattoos from head to toe. 

None of the three carried any weapons openly, but I suspected they all had hotrings... well, maybe not RDAS, she might fight bare-handed for all I knew at the time. Most people above level 70 or so have a hotring for their weapon of choice, it just makes no sense not to if you can afford it. Of course, some people with legendary weapons might not be able to find a hotring that can hold their weapons, but... if someone appears unarmed, they usually aren’t.

“So, let’s go. Deuxor is to the southwest, so we’ll have to go out another gate”

“Why bother? We were planning to crush these PKers, weren’t we? Let’s swing by a few different gates, and take out the people camping there”

“It’ll work maybe once at most, no?”

“Nah, they’ll be slapped with enough of a respawn penalty that they won’t be able to warn the rest of the guild that we’re sweeping ‘em up. We’ve done this before, it’s pretty simple when they’re scattered like this. So, since you’re a bladelord, you’ll be the bait, with our buffs you should survive a few hits easily”

RDAS gave me a few buffs to defense and temporary HP shields, plus some flat damage reduction, while Stalwart gave me a single buff, which redirected 90% of the damage I took to him at a 1:2 ratio. Then, they sent me out the gate and followed behind while under White Powder’s group cloaking effect, and sure enough, I was attacked immediately.

I took damage in the 20s to 40s after the first hit shaved off a little over 120 HP, but with almost 1500 HP including the shields, that barely tickled. Shadeslayer, to his credit, noticed that his backstab combo didn’t kill me, and tried to run, but bumped directly into Stalwart’s shield, who simply hugged him tight against that shield with his other arm and... fell forward. 

The sheer disdain Stalwart felt towards his ilk was palpable as Shadeslayer got crushed to death instantly, unable to put up a fight. He probably didn’t even know how he died, having backed up into an invisible player and then been trapped and killed within two seconds. We ran back inside, and as we went towards the south gate, I asked RDAS how she got her epic Seeker title. It came from the Boss Seeker title, which I immediately tried to get via title combination, using the Boss prefix from Boss Baby and the Seeker suffix from Title Seeker.

3% was incredibly low, but then again, my achievement progress was also low. I’d only killed two bosses in 24 hours without dying, whereas it wants 5... or for you to have beaten every standard boss in the vicinity of your current town at least once, on that one I’m 3 for 6 - or probably higher, given that that’d be 50%, so there must be some bosses linked to Ichishiro I don’t know about.

This did remind me, however, that I could get titles via combination using cosmetic titles, so I decided to play around with them at a later date. And RDAS noticed the titles above my head change color, or at least the suffix, as the prefix stayed silver, which she commented on.

“Damn, you have a unique title already? What does it do?”

“It’s just an upgraded version of the Boss Hunter title series. Substantially harder to get, and you’re fully locked out of it at this point”

“Shit, I was gonna ask. Oh well, how many titles do you have? There’re probably a lot you could get through title combination, right?”

“You know about that? I figured...”

“It’s well-known amongst the top players, but so few newbies have multiple compatible titles that it’s treated as a myth at best”

“Ah, I see. Now, to answer your question, Boss Seeker was my 15th title”

“Goddamn, I didn’t get even 10 until I hit level 70 or so, and I think 15 took me until sometime after my second talent awakening, maybe even my third”

Holy shit. Well, time to show off I guess. I started with Boss Seeker, then changed to Boss Hunter, and finally Boss Baby. I then changed back to Boss Seeker, mostly because I was going to show off Death Seeker, Title Seeker, and then Spawn Seeker before swapping to Spawn Grinder, Class Grinder, and finally Title Grinder. However, halfway through that series of changes, I modified that plan to include one more at the end.

“Hello, 16th title! Nice passive, nothing else of note”

“Oh wow, you had enough to get that one too? I’d heard about it but I’ve never seen it myself... actually, how are you displaying a title with no prefix or suffix effects?”

“The Title Grinder title lets me do that. Need 10 titles per awakening, and 2 of each rarity below mythic, at level 50 or a multiple of it”

We uneventfully swept through the next two PKers in much the same way as the first, giving me three more level ups in each class, and we didn’t bother clearing the 4th gate, since we wanted to go west, not north. So for the first time, I was setting off towards a new town... well, second if you count my initial spawn I guess.

CaTastrophy427

Well, that was fast. Like really fast. Like blazingly fast. I wrote this and 9.5 in about a day and a half each, plus a couple days in between when I wrote essentially nothing (30~40 words at most) bc I wasn't feeling great lol. So, remember to vote in the poll on chapter 9.5 regarding the dialogue formatting, as that poll will close when I release the next chapter of my other series. The poll on this chapter won't close, it's mostly just for fun but please do leave your response(s). Come to my discord if there's anything you want to say, and uh... I remember that RDAS's name was a reference to something but I can't for the life of me remember what (forgot to write that down oops) so if you can tell me please do