Aetharan

That, right there, was the very center of the problem.  He couldn't be a hero, not really, but he wanted to die as one.  His greatest fear, and darkest demon...  was that he was terrified of his life and death ultimately meaning nothing.  Death wasn't something to be afraid of.  Not on its own.  Dying alone wasn't even all that bad.  Dying without having made a difference...  that was the soul-breaker.  He'd crumbled because he knew, in his heart of hearts, that he wasn't getting out of Aincrad alive.  Even if he breaks it, now that he has this sense of purpose, he doesn't believe that he'll live through that breaking.  He didn't want to die without having made a difference in this world, though.

He had to go out with his ledger in the black.

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(Out of Combat recovery.  HP improves to 21/25.)

Alright, so he'd accepted that however this death game ended, the him in the other world wasn't one of the people he could save.  He was oddly at peace with that, and something told him that he really shouldn't be.  Oh well.  He'd given up on Aaron years ago, truth be told.  Aetharan hadn't been born here in SAO.  It was just the first time he'd truly had a body of his own to wear.  It could be worse, now that he thought on it.  This persona may be taking over where his creator had left off, but there could be peace in that.  Aaron may go out peacefully, dying in his sleep, while Aaron did his damnedest to die a hero.

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(Out of Combat recovery.  HP improves to 20/25.)

Yeah, that was it.  He was one of those who could honestly say that he didn't really have a life worth mentioning in that other world to go back to.  He wasn't fighting for his freedom, because here was just as good as there, for him.  Probably better, in some ways.  The thing was, there were thousands dead already, even before the first floor has been cleared.  True, that had slowed down a lot after a bit, but people were still dying by the day, and others were just flat-out giving up.  Just like he had on the first day.

"I'm not a hero.  I never was, and never will be.  What I can be, though...  I can be an avenging angel.  I can become death, here.  It may not be a healthy life, but it's a life.  I woke up the other day, after who knows how long in that fugue, and I woke up with a purpose.  Whether I came to it on my own, or I'm being helped along by some doctor...  it all boils down to a simple truth.  Here, I can help.  Here, there are thousands of little sisters to protect.  They may not be mine, but their big brothers aren't here, are they?  Somebody's gotta do their job by proxy."

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(Out of Combat recovery.  HP improves to 19/25.)

So, the question now existed:  Why was Aetharan-- no, Aaron-- striving so hard to fill his life with a purpose?  With this purpose?  Ah, but the reason for that was all too simple, wasn't it?  Until this world, he'd been what?  A waiter.  One with a bad knee, on top of that, so even that career didn't have much longer to run before he was physically incapable of keeping it going.  He was one who lived to serve, and actually took pleasure in those hours of bringing others happiness...  but he was alone.  No family to take care of.  Not even any pets depending on him to serve as their can-opener.

That was it, wasn't it?  In that other world, Aaron didn't have a purpose.  If he died in that hospital bed, he would be given a pauper's funeral.  It'd be the last verse of Eleanor Rigby.  He'd be buried along with his name.  Nobody attending to hear the sermon except for those who had dug the graves.  In that world, Aaron was a nobody.  Here...  Aetharan could make something out of himself.

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(Out of Combat recovery.  HP improves to 18/25.)

That wasn't a healthy attitude to take, and he knew it.  That train of thought was drifting down philosophical roads traveled not by the hero of the story, but by the villain.  Oh, they were often the most tragically easy ones to relate to, but that didn't make them better people.  Aetharan was not Full Frontal.  He was not a vessel to be filled with the desires of the people.  Trying to pretend that this cause, this roaring rampage of revenge, was him?  That would lead to a very bad end.  No, he had to live for himself.  He could not let his soul be subsumed by his mission.

That meant that he had to look more deeply at something that he really didn't want to.  Aetharan had to look at Aaron.  He knew why he'd chosen the mission that he did, and he believed it to be a righteous one, but he had to dig out why he needed a mission so badly at all.

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(Out of Combat recovery.  HP improves to 15/23.)

(Aetharan gained a level.  HP improves to 17/25.)

It was that house he'd been sheltered in during his fugue.  He wasn't the only one who'd broken, after all.  Not even on that first day.  Some had recovered.  Of that, he was vaguely aware.  Others had regained just enough faculty to walk out that door and find a cliff to leap from.  As the stress continued to build, others had cracked.  Beds once emptied by a suicide had been filled again by those newly fallen into despair.  And that was it, wasn't it?  Aetharan wasn't fighting to take revenge for Aaron.  Aaron wasn't worth the effort.

The others, though...  they needed a voice.  They needed to be avenged.  Every tear fallen, every heart wracked with despair, was an insult that this world needed to pay for.  He could serve as that voice.  An avatar of vengeance for the broken.

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(Out of Combat recovery.  HP improves to 14/23.)

That was getting closer to the core, wasn't it?  He wanted to destroy Aincrad, and not to win like everybody else probably did.  No.  Aetharan was after something more personal.  This was a blood feud.  He was trying to kill this game out of a sense of vengeance.  It wasn't just for Aaron, though.  No.  The wound to his own psyche had been one thing, but Aaron had always been...  weak.  Sensitive.  Easy to hurt.  Quick to cry.  Even the greatest emotional wound he'd ever suffered before, his divorce, hadn't been able to drive him into a blood-seeking vendetta.  So what was it?

What in the world had focused him so sharply on retribution?

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(Out of Combat recovery.  HP improves to 13/23.)

He had to continue digging.  The breaking of Aincrad was not the core, just a stepping stone in this journey.  He knew that he had to do it.  If not him, then somebody else.  There was no way that any of them were getting out of here alive unless either he or one of the others met that goal.  Aincrad must be beaten, or they were all going to be corpses.  That was only logical...  and yet logic was not the reason that he was so devoted to the cause.  So why?

Break Aincrad, as it broke Aaron.  Oh, so now he was beginning to look beneath the surface.  The man that Aetharan had been, and had killed so that he could emerge as a force in this world.  Aincrad had broken Aaron.  That man had logged into this game, expecting to kill a few hours at a time to make his life feel less empty...  and when the news had hit that he, along with everybody else, was trapped here, Aaron had been one of those who absolutely crumbled.

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(Out of Combat recovery.  HP improves to 12/23.)

The recitation had helped, and although he had initially intended to embrace that mental construct of the void, it now filled with the calming music of that half-forgotten album.  The works of Poe paid tribute by Parsons.  It was soothing.  Waters may no longer be still, but the ripples were those caused by a gentle waterfall.  Fitting, considering where he was.  What he was doing.  Yes, this would do.  Music was allowed to stay, and just like that it was a non-issue.  No different than the void had been before, serving as a background while he sifted through his thoughts and looked for one to pick up.

There!  That one.  All of his turmoil had, in one way or another, focused around this thought.  Break Aincrad.  This locus wasn't the true core of the problem, but it did lay at the center of the maelstrom.  He struggled for strength with that goal in mind, the breaking of this world.  It was the reason he trained.  The reason he strove to grow stronger, in game terms, and the reason that he worked his skills as a smith.  He was forging weapons-- forging himself into a weapon-- with the singular goal of utterly destroying this world in which he'd found himself trapped.

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(Out of Combat recovery.  HP improves to 11/23.)

He wasn't sure how long it took, but eventually the breathing trick started to run by itself automatically.  When he'd tried this in the real world from time to time, though never under a waterfall, it had usually taken him about a half an hour to get to the point where his breath was this steady without him having to concentrate on it.  Now that it was, though, he could begin to let his mind drift-- if only very, very cautiously.  The key at this point was to start picking and choosing which random thoughts he fed into that imaginary flame, and which he instead picked up to inspect more closely.

He needed to keep his focus.  Inspiration?  Yes, inspiration.  There, in one corner of his mind, a track he'd not listened to in years, yet in this calm, one that he could recall perfectly.  The music would help, and the spoken words...  they were fitting.

"For my own part, I have never I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it. There is, however, a class of fancies of exquisite delicacy which are not thoughts, and to which as yet I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt to language. These fancies arise in the soul, alas how rarely. Only at epochs of most intense tranquility, when the bodily and mental health are in perfection. And at those weird points of time, where the confines of the waking world blend with the world of dreams. And so I captured this fancy, where all that we see, or seem, is but a dream within a dream."

What more fitting way was there to describe trying to meditate in this virtual world?

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(Out of Combat recovery.  HP improves to 10/23.)

He could do this.  It wasn't as if he was trying to learn to Channel or something stupid like that, after all.  Just collect his thoughts.  Try to bring order to the chaos that was his own mind.  That wasn't such a difficult proposition, was it?  There were keys to success in this kind of thing, and ultimately, they had a tendency to creep (if in corrupted forms) into fantasy literature even when authors weren't the type of person one might expect to meditate.  The flame and the void were useful tools, as a mental construct.  On the flip side of that was the body-- Inhale through the nose, for the duration of seven heartbeats.  Exhale through the mouth, using the same count.  As the mind calmed and the heart slowed, the breath would follow suite.  Seven in, seven out, and feed all but the numbers into the fire.  Embrace the void that remains.  Seven in, and seven out.

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(Out of Combat recovery.  HP improves to 9/23.)

How had Flynn put it in the second Tron?  The man had been knocking on the sky, and listening to the sound.  That was how the movie had chosen to depict meditation, and for a hippie trapped in a digital world, it seemed to work.  The man had certainly been mellow.  Grinning, Aeth decided that the only way to find out whether this was going to work was to try it.  That's why he was here, wasn't it?  He waded across the pool to that rock and climbed onto it, glad for the hand-holds that it provided without managing to be jagged.

Once in position under the water, he assumed a lotus position.  It was amazing how much easier that was to do in this world, after all those years in the real one being unable to hold it for more than five minutes at a time without his knees screaming in agony.  Eyes drifted closed, and he focused on steadying his breathing.  Now would come another bit of fun from popular culture that he'd found actually did work for him-- he began to clear his mind by focusing on the image of a single flame, as if disembodied from a candle, and feeding his decidedly difficult-to-corral thoughts into it.

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(Out of Combat recovery.  HP improves to 8/23.)

On second thought, there's no real point in checking Battle Healing anyway.  This thread's quest is one of writing, not combat.  By the time it's done, normal recovery should cap Aeth's HP.

After the fifth or sixth time that an NPC had told him he needed to chill out, Aetharan decided that just maybe he should look into those rumors of a waterfall on the sixth floor that, by all accounts, made the perfect place to sit down and work on one's own mental health.  You're a bucket of crazy, Aeth, and you know it.  Maybe it's time to try to do something about that.  Yeah.  That necessitated another trip into that uncomfortable jungle area, but it seemed to be a trip down a safe path and into a well-protected area.  He wasn't going to have to deal with any monsters other than himself, and as much of a monster as he suspected that he was, at least that was one beast that he knew wasn't trying to kill him!

The trip itself, from arrival in Amazon to reaching the waterfall, was uneventful.  That much was beneficial.  A quiet walk was always a good thing.  Before he knew it, he was standing on the edge of that pool of water, looking out over the Waterfall of the Sage.  "Well, then...  that rock looks like it was just designed for standing or kneeling on for some classic meditation-under-the-waterfall trope indulgence.  I wonder if it's as calming as people say."

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(Out of Combat recovery.  HP improves to 7/23.)

Rolling to check whether Battle Healing procs.  It doesn't.

(ID# 29505 results: Battle: 7 Craft: 6 Loot: 10 MOB: 9)

It was done, at last.  The loot window cropped up in his vision, and he clicked 'confirm' without even bothering to read it for the moment.  He could double-check his inventory once he was somewhere safe.  He only gave himself a few moments to breathe before taking his winnings and walking back to town as fast as he could.  The rest of those little wasps may not be nearly the threat that the Queen and Princesses had been, but he couldn't take much more, so he played it evasive and defensive until he was sure that he was in the clear.  He was going to sleep forever after that little fight...  and he was disappointed in himself that it had gone so badly for him on such a low floor!

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(Out-of-combat recovery, HP to 6/23.)

Summary Post

Kills: The Wasp Queen (30 HP), 2x Wasp Princess (16 HP each.)

Rewards:  480 Col (400 for 1 page, 80 from kill).  4 SP (1 from thread, 3 from quest.)  The Matriarch's Stinger (poison, quest drop.)  2 Materials (Steel Ingot.)

Aetharan sighed.  Of course that had been a useless maneuver, except for the fact that it kept her away from him.  A defensive standoff wasn't going to get him to his bed in one piece, though, was it?  No, he needed to decide this fight.  He was getting tired.  His head, against all reason in a world without pain, was throbbing.  That was his eye, and he knew it.  He'd been too active, processing information his brain wasn't accustomed to for too many hours today.  He needed to beat this thing.  Maybe, when this was done, he could have some kind of meal better than the bland bread he'd been subsisting on.  It may come cheap from the NPCs, but it was...  unmemorable.

Here she comes.  Thrust!  That stinger may have gotten into his shoulder one last time, but at the same moment he finally managed that final strike on her as well, ramming his half-pike straight into one of her eyes.  The last enemy vanished into a gleam of light.

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(ID# 29398 results: Battle: 7 Craft: 2 Loot: 10 MOB: 10)

(Exchange Results:  Aetharan drops to 5/23 HP.  Total Critical for (2+2-2=2) damage.  Princess B drops to -3/16 HP.  Normal hit for 4 damage.)

(Effective loot die 11 on killing blow.  Princess B drops 16*5=80 Col in addition to 1 Material.)

(Battle Results:  3 kills.  Drops are The Matriarch's Stinger, 2 Materials, and 80 Col.)

This fight had grown stale a long time ago.  He was sick of it.  Just wanted to go home and curl up in bed until it was time to go back to work at his forge in the morning, that was it.  All he had to do was finish off this last monster.  One little scratch, ****it!  She was on the last sliver of the reddest part of her ****ing health bar, after all!  He didn't have to score a great hit or anything.  He just needed to connect, at all!  Blade whirled desperately, not even caring if he couldn't get a proper strike this way.  Even a slash with the butt-end's ground spike would be enough for this!

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(ID# 29397 results: Battle: 3 Craft: 10 Loot: 20 MOB: 1)

(Battle Healing proc.  Aetharan improves to 7/23 HP.)

(Exchange Results:  No dice for either side.)

"Come on, missy...  It's time to put an end to this already.  Come on down and let me skewer you into next week!"  He really didn't want to have to jump for this.  He had no delusions of being a Final Fantasy dragoon or anything, after all, even if he was a lancer at heart.  No, check that.  He couldn't picture himself on a horse, even if there was a system for riding them in this game.  He was infantry, through and through, and he dared any swordsman to match the range on his pole-arms with anything shy of a claymore or nodachi!  When the Princess started to dive for an attack, he slammed his bloodthirsty half-pike straight at her center of mass!

Unfortunately, she skated past the tip of that weapon to sting him on the left forearm, drawing a hiss from his lips.

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(ID# 29395 results: Battle: 3 Craft: 4 Loot: 3 MOB: 6)

(Exchange Results:  Aetharan drops to 6/23 HP.  Normal hit for (2-2=0, min 1) damage.  Princess B remains at 1/16 HP.  Miss.)

Do or die time.  She was on her last sliver of health, and he could still take a few hits without being knocked out.  All he had to do was scratch this Princess one last time, and the fight would be over.  Cue victory fanfare, collect his Col and get back to town to rest up and recover.  Yeah, recovery was a big thing at this point!  Shifting his grip, he actually flipped to put his dominant hand at the fulcrum and his off-hand providing thrust.  Maybe swinging from his right would be enough to get past his enemy's guard this one last time that he really needed to.  Goddess, he hoped so!  Sadly, the attack was met by his target flying up out of reach.  At least it meant that he was out of her stinger's reach as well!

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(ID# 29394 results: Battle: 2 Craft: 8 Loot: 14 MOB: 2)

(Exchange Results:  Misses all around.)

This battle was almost over.  He knew that if he could pull off his best swing, she'd be dead right there.  It was far more likely that he'd have to hit her twice more, but that was alright by him.  That HUD in the edge of his vision made it obvious that she'd still have to hit him four times.  His battle healing had effectively negated that last strike's effect on his health.  Good.  That's why he'd trained that skill in the first place!  This time, he went for the point where her middle right leg connected, a grin on his face even though she was once again trying to sting at his solar plexus.

Once again, the two seemed to be striking in tandem.  His hit actually severed the limb that he'd been aiming for the base of, but she actually managed to clip under the lower edge of that breastplate and get him in a rib.  It should have hurt, but this death game didn't include pain in its algorithms.  Being this far into the single-digits was worrisome, but nothing he couldn't handle.

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(ID# 29392 results: Battle: 9 Craft: 8 Loot: 11 MOB: 9)

(Concentration cooldown, round 5/5.)

(Exchange Results:  Aetharan dropped to 7/23 HP.  Critical hit for (2+1-2=1) damage.  Princess B dropped to 1/16 HP.  Critical hit for (4+1=5) damage.)

Well, then.  That little trade-off had just proven his mental math perfectly, hadn't it?  Both of them had done maximum damage at the same time!  As she pulled away from him, he grumbled with slight worry.  She'd brought him down to a third of his max health, but she'd still have to hit him at least four times to finish him off, and he only needed three more swings at the best.  This fight may be close, when all was said and done, but it wasn't going to be his loss!  He yanked that weapon out of her, only to immediately take another swing at her, this time aiming for the Princess's face!

Once again, the exchange went evenly as far as hit-to-miss ratio went, but his baby was a lot nastier than her stinger could ever hope to be.  Even better, he could actually feel his battle healing doing its job for once.

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(ID# 29389 results: Battle: 8 Craft: 10 Loot: 10 MOB: 6)

(Concentration cooldown, round 4/5.) (Battle healing proc.  Aetharan improves to 9/23 HP.)

(Exchange Results:  Aetharan drops to 8/23 HP again.  Normal hit for (2-2=0, min 1) damage.  Princess B drops to 6/16 HP.  Normal hit for 4 damage.)

Now it was go time.  The most damage the remaining enemy could possibly pull off was two at a time, and that was half the output of a normal strike for him.  A third of his best hits.  She might have more health than him for the moment, true, but she'd have to hit him five times to finish him even if his battle healing didn't kick in at all, and he only needed four to slaughter her.  If he got really lucky, he might do it in three.  If the Lady didn't turn against him, then he'd be alright.  Squaring against her, he braced his half-pike to wait for her to charge, readying himself to counter as hard as he could.  The exchange was about as pretty as it could get.  The Princess managed to skewer his shoulder as well as her stinger ever could, but at the same time, that readied half-pike ran straight through her lower abdomen.  It wasn't a fatal blow on its own, but it was harsh.

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With only one enemy remaining, I'm going back to rolling once per post.  She can have the die that used to belong to her momma.

(ID# 29387 results: Battle: 10 Craft: 6 Loot: 15 MOB: 10)

(Concentration cooldown, round 3/5.)

(Exchange Results:  Aetharan drops to 8/23 HP.  Total Critical for (2+2-2=2) damage.  Princess B drops to 10/16 HP.  Total Critical for (4+2=6) damage.)

"Oh, come on.  Stop dodging!"  He really needed to work on his accuracy if he wanted these fights to go quicker.  Damage was great, but not enough on its own.  All the damage per hit in the world was worthless if he couldn't actually make the strike!  That was going on the list of stats to find a way to improve, then.  Concentration helped, but only one attack in six at best.  If the ability hadn't been on cooldown, he was sure he could have gotten around that little bit of evasion just then!  Deep breath, lunge again.  Finish her off, so he could focus her sister and call it a day!  That was all he had to do, right?  Yeah.  Just two kills, then he could go to bed.

Spear slammed through the first Princess, but the distraction of watching her dissolve gave her sister all the opening in the world to manage the best hit a wasp had pulled against him through this whole, stupid, long fight.

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(ID# 29384 results: Battle: 7 Craft: 1 Loot: 7 MOB: 2) (ID# 29385 results: Battle: 2 Craft: 7 Loot: 5 MOB: 10)

(Concentration cooldown, round 2/5.)

(Exchange Results:  Aetharan drops to 10/23 HP.  Miss.  Total Critical for (2+2-2=2) damage.  Princess A drops to -1/16 HP.  Normal hit for 4 damage.  Princess B remains at 16/16 HP.  Not targeted.)

(Effective loot roll on killing blow: 8.  1 Material drop, no bonus.)

He had that first Princess on the ropes now.  All it would take is one more hit, and he'd be down to just one enemy again.  Just one more strike, didn't matter where!  She was in the red. All he had to do was finish her, and it'd be an incredibly one-sided, unfair fight again...  with the advantage to him.  No more distractions, no more being flanked.  Just stabbing at something with less health, less mitigation, and less damage potential than himself.  Farming trash mobs.  If it wasn't so boring, he could do it all day, one at a time.  He just hated messing with them like this.

Sadly enough, he didn't get the hit he was after with this exchange.  Princess A danced just barely around his half-pike, and managed to dig her stinger into his forearm for his trouble.  Thankfully, her twin seemed to have stung a rock as hard as she could, which was giggle-worthy.

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(ID# 29380 results: Battle: 5 Craft: 2 Loot: 16 MOB: 4) (ID# 29381 results: Battle: 9 Craft: 1 Loot: 14 MOB: 1)

(Concentration cooldown, round 1/5.)

(Exchange Results:  Aetharan drops to 12/23 HP.  Critical hit for (2+1-2=1) damage.  Critical miss.  Princess A remains at 3/16 HP.  Miss.  Princess B remains at 16/16 HP.  Not targeted.)

He could do this.  It was just a matter of viciousness and persistence, and he had plenty of both.  Well, at least he had the former when he was facing computer-generated enemies.  He wasn't sure he could turn on a fellow player, even if they were a PKer.  ♫Just keep swinging, just keep swinging♫...  No, he was not in the ocean looking for a deformed clown fish, but that was a funny bit of internal soundtrack nonetheless.  "Let's see if I can poke a hole in your thorax so deep that I can see daylight through it, shall we?"

A moment of clarity struck him as entirely different music, something soft and calm, drifted into his head.  It guided what would surely have been a miss into a successful strike on the first Princess, dropping her into the red but not yet killing her.  At the same time, she jabbed her stinger into his left leg, drawing a hiss of momentary phantom pain from him.  Her sister buzzed annoyingly past, but missed by a mile with her sting.

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(ID# 29378 results: Battle: 5 Craft: 4 Loot: 6 MOB: 7) (ID# 29379 results: Battle: 8 Craft: 4 Loot: 4 MOB: 4)

(Activating Concentration for +1 to BD.)

(Exchange Results:  Aetharan drops to 13/23 HP.  Normal hit for (2-2=0, min 1) damage.  Miss.  Princess A drops to 3/16 HP.  Normal hit for 4 damage.  Princess B remains at 16/16 HP.  Not targeted.)

Aetharan couldn't help but breath a little sigh of frustration.  This was losing its sense of fun, and starting to feel a lot more like digging down in that mine yesterday had.  If he wasn't careful, he'd start breaking out in song again, just to pass the time!  And that would be bad, mmkay?  No more singing.  At least, not today.  Instead, he leveled his weapon for another strike.  Glow indicated a readied sword-art, and he dashed forward in an attempt to rip that bug a cloaca, even as she and her sister did their best to perforate his torso in return.

Unfortunately for Aetharan, that shot of his went pretty wide.  Thankfully, his target was intimidated enough by it to do a backflip instead of stinging him!  Her sister, on the other hand, actually managed to get that stinger of hers into his shoulder from behind!  It wasn't much, but even scratch damage added up, and he'd taken a decent amount of it since engaging the Queen.

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(ID# 29374 results: Battle: 3 Craft: 1 Loot: 9 MOB: 5) (ID# 29375 results: Battle: 1 Craft: 12 Loot: 2 MOB: 6)

(Exchange Results:  Aetharan dropped to 14/23 HP.  Critical miss.  Normal hit for (2-2=0, min 1) damage.  Princess A remains at 7/16 HP.  Miss.  Princess B remains at 16/16 HP.  Not targeted.)