ROSA

We left the guild house in a hurry, snatching some fruit from a fruit bowl on the way out, just to tide us over until we managed to find a good ramen shop. I was trying not to think too hard about ramen, because any time I dwelt on it for too long, I began to salivate. It had been a while since I had proper food, and I was almost embarrassingly excited for it.

“I’d like to find those skill tree trainers first, if that’s acceptable?” I asked Amelia as we reached one of the main concourses, a large solid catwalk that was held up my too-thin cables in many areas. The Taeru was literally a walking health and safety violation.

“Acceptable,” she said with a smirk, wiggling her dark lavender eyebrows. It was rather unusual how I could become so accustomed to her race’s strange appearance and then suddenly find myself snapped out of it, noticing details anew.

We stood there on the side of the concourse and stared at each other for several moments as I fought the urge to kick her into action. I settled for linking my hands behind my back, raising my eyebrows and dipping my head slightly, trying to signal that she should take me to said skill trainers, because I had absolutely no clue where they were.

“What?” she frowned, tilting her head at me like a confused puppy. “Why are you pulling that cute anime girl pose?”

“It is not an anime girl pose, it is me attempting to get you moving. I am not familiar with the more niche facilities and services within the Taeru, and will need you to guide me to where I need to go,” I explained with as much patience as I could muster. Had her episode earlier caused more issues than we’d thought?

“Oh!” she exclaimed with a sheepish grin, rubbing at the back of her head and sending her gravity defying hair floating off in all directions. “My bad! I thought you like, knew where to go and stuff.”

“I am an irritable hermit, why would I know anything about a cramped, dirty city like this?” I frowned, doing my best not to pout. I hated that she could get pouts out of me. I did not pout.

“You were an irritable hermit,” she said with a wink, taking a few steps down the catwalk and gesturing for me to follow.

“Am,” I corrected with a disapproving look.

“Were,” she chirped back happily, not at all perturbed by my attempt to curb her enthusiasm.

All I could do was sigh and follow after her in silence. It was hard to argue with such bullheaded and indomitable optimism. She was constructed wholly of chaos and teasing smiles.

“I’m thinking we go to the Taeru Academy of Arcanomechancial Arts,” she told me as we walked, glancing back as though to make sure I had not disappeared on her. “It’s the closest thing they have to magic school around here. I think the professors there will teach you skill trees, for a shitload of gold, of course.”

“Money will not be a problem,” I assured her, staring aimlessly over the edge of the railing and down into the ruddy light of the bustling city.

I’d derided the place earlier, but there was a certain charm to the great war-city. A sense of activity, but also, paradoxically to the nature of those that maintained it, a sense of safety. It was hard to feel threatened by the outside world when it was separated from you by several meters of magically strengthened steel.

Our trip wasn’t all that long, five minutes of walking before we arrived at our destination. The Academy building looked like a large traditional japanese castle that had melted in the sun, slumping sideways against the inner wall of the Taeru.

We entered midway up the structure through a small and carefully manicured garden. They even had a little water feature, as well as sunlight that appeared to have been refracted down from above through a vent. Pretty ingenious work, but then again, everything the artifisuki did was some form of mad genius.

The reception area was beautiful, with gently shifting and changing magical sculptures floating free above their pedestals. I stood entranced on the threshold for a moment, marvelling at the one closest to me. Two long interlocking twisting spirals of bronze oscillating amongst each other, never quite coming into contact, but always so close, like a pair of hesitant lovers.

“Can I help you both?” a quiet, polite voice asked.

Amelia and I both turned to face the newcomer, a small artifisuki girl in mage’s robes. She appeared to be about sixteen or so years old, so she was probably a student here. Maybe she was working as a greeter?

Hooking her thumbs into her belt, Amelia gave the girl a nod and a warm smile before she nodded at me. “Yeah, my friend here, Miss Moneybags, she wants to talk to someone who can train her in the basics of a few skill trees.”

“My name is Rosa,” I said quickly, throwing a glare at my erratic companion. Switching to what I sincerely hoped was a kind smile, I turned back to the girl. “I would like to receive training with the Arcane, Ranged Casting, Barrier and Force trees. If they are available, that is?”

The poor girl blinked, confusion flashing across her face before she carefully schooled it and nodded. “Yeah we gots some professors you can see for that. Let me just see if they’m available. ‘Scuse me a second.”

She bowed low, then rushed off to the main reception desk. She ducked down and tapped at a glass orb that I hadn’t noticed until now. When the orb began to glow from within with an ethereal light, she spoke quietly into it and waited.

“Huh, I didn’t realise long ranged communication devices like that existed in the game,” I murmured, just loud enough for Amelia to hear me.

She hummed wordlessly for a moment, staring contemplatively at the orbs for a few seconds. “Magical tech and advancement in magical knowledge in general is all over the place in CORA. Pagutum and Joret have been in a bit of a tech race, with Pagutum leading recently, but other than that… it doesn’t seem to go too far. The NPC factions guard this stuff pretty jealously, and it’s only really since that phoenix guild has been operating that it’s spread too much further.”

“Interesting,” I mused, glancing around at everything. It was hard to believe this was simply a virtual world, running in datacenters somewhere in UNC. No other game had come close to this level of depth before, from the people seeming real, to the deep history and political landscape.

I cringed a little when I remembered that I had been slaughtering them by the hundreds too. There was always that twinge of guilt whenever I cut down an NPC, regardless of their lack of real sentience. Cutting short a tiny story, regardless of how real or fake it really was.

Laughing quietly to myself, I realised that was why I’d focused on killing players whenever I could. They respawned, their story wouldn’t be truncated, I would be merely a mention in it, rather than a brutal and gory full stop.

“Miss Rosa?” the girl was back, smiling hesitantly at me. “The first professor will see you…”

****

Amelia was still stunned as we left the academy, her eyes wide and roaming aimlessly across the small garden. “Rosa… I’ve never seen a player spend so much money in one sitting…”

I shrugged, feeling just a little smug inside. I had to say that I liked seeing her a little shocked.

“You said you were just going to buy four,” she hissed, turning to me with an incredulous expression all over her face. “But… but instead, you bought sixteen. What the actual flying fuck?”

“I believe that since you have gravitational powers, it might be considered that you would be a flying fuck,” I said mildly. “Not that I am propositioning you, of course. Just an observation.”

She waved my little quip off with a flick of her slender fingers. “Har de har,” she groaned with a roll of her eyes. “That’s not the point, the point is that… well… shit. I don’t know. It was a terrifying amount of money and frankly I don’t know how to process it.”

“If I am going to be making spells for that absurdly large gun of yours, I require many different options with which to build those spells,” I explained, exasperation threaded through my tone.

“What about ability points?” she asked, yelling actually, as she threw her hands in the air.

Schooling my expression to careful neutrality, I popped my menu open and navigated to a tab that had been flashing incessantly at me since I’d started playing this game. “Nine hundred and twenty five ability points available to spend,” I droned, reading from the aggressively flashing line of text before me.

Her eyes boggled at me. “What the fuck? What level are you? What are your stats?”

I gave a quiet giggle. “Level 128, but my stats are all over the place because of how my race works. My strength is at 240 because it’s useless to me, but my speed is at 1480 and my power is at 1270. Speed is how fast I can move and attack, but my attacks are magical. My gear isn’t the best, whatever I could scavenge from the dead.”

“Wow,” she breathed, shaking her head wryly. “Although, I don’t know what I was expecting. With how much you mow through people, I’m surprised you aren’t higher. So our next stop should be the markets I guess, find you some top of the line mage robes. Maybe a cute little mage staff too!”

I felt a smile forming, and my instincts tried to bury it, but… why not smile? Here was someone, a friend even, who cared enough to help me gear myself out. She even seemed excited about it all. Maybe it was the promise of amazing spells for her to fire, but I got the sense that Amelia wasn’t really in the game for the combat. She was a sociable girl who wanted to make friends and hang out in a fantasy world first and foremost.

“Yeah, a cute mage staff sounds good,” I told her, giving her a tentative but heartfelt smile. “But first… I want ramen. I’m so hungry.”