Corvo

As she started introductions, Corvo peeled the pipe from inside his cloak and ignited it. The long drag he took started at about where she gave her name, and ended once her familiar had been introduced. "Pleasure's mine," he said wearily as he exhaled a plume of gray. "Corvo's the name," he told her. "Though I'm not much important round these parts yet, just you wait."

She quickly found one of the materials she was looking for, and he attributed it immediately to the gear she had selected prior to beginning. Smart thinking. Players had the ability to learn the game and optimize their opportunities the longer they lived inside it. Of course, there were other things to consider- but he'd much rather not, really.

"Leather?" he blinked, "yeah, sure, pigskin and other hides are often dried out and treated to make leather. You probably won't find much of that outside combat. But, I'll help you cut through a few, if'n you want?"

@Krysta

Uhhh.... eh?

Sometimes in Aincrad when people spoke, things came out that he didn't quite understand. No, that wasn't right. He understood just fine, but he genuinely felt a dislike for the things that were being said, or the way they were delivered. He felt a chill run down his spine as she finished speaking, and he forced a small smile onto his face.

"Oh, I see," he replied simply. There's always gonna be someone who says way more than they have to. Maybe she's afraid. Maybe she's conceited. You put yourself in this situation, don't get in her face. Don't. Get. In. Her. Face.

"Can't say as I ain't disappointed to hear I'm hardly the Knight in Shining Armor I'd hoped to be," he said sarcastically, "but I'm certainly touched by your generosity. Let's get moving, shall we?"

He found himself surprised, frankly, by his restraint in saying no more than that.

@Krysta

"...eh?" 

He gave her a quick once over and quirked an eyebrow. "Naw, I ain't sick or nothin'. At least, not sick in any way the system's got a way to help with." He shook his head slightly and reached up, nursing his slight headache. 

"I noticed you were working on one of the beginner quests, and I was wondering if you needed an extra pair of hands to tag along. Generally it's not that hard to finish any of the requests here, but I haven't had much of a chance to get out and it's safer to travel in groups until you're stronger, so I figured I'd do that until I could manage on my own."

It wasn't his first idea, but all of the friends he had logged on with had lost contact with him or worse. Already he had heard tell of one dying, and all the contacts in his friends list had been pissed away. Dead or otherwise, he was trapped in a world with no one he had ever known. 

It was enough to ruin anyone's day, and he had already reached the point where his day could not get much worse.

"So, what do you say? I stick around while you get your quest done, help with any killing needs done, and you reap the reward while I get some experience. Fair deal?"

@Krysta

The blurring effects of alcohol burned off far too quickly for his liking. It affected the Heads Up Display and impaired some of the commands and made a few numbers skew into and out of range when he experimented by traversing the town, but he dared not test it beyond the walls. At least, he hadn't become that worn down about life in Aincrad yet.

He stared down at the blade in his right hand. Simple, balanced, perfect for someone who had never used a weapon like it before- but boring when you were intimately aware of how they could be applied in the real world. Curves on knives were like curves on a woman- nice to look at, nice to feel, and if you glanced toward 'em in the wrong way, you'd regret it.

He spun the weapon idly between two fingers as he thought about that comparison. It made him chuckle. "Another boring day," he muttered to himself, leaned up against one of the shops that littered the Town of Beginnings. It would be nice to see someone worth kicking rocks around with for a bit-

You can count on me...!

And there she was. The questgiver was silent most times when he hung around, but today, it seemed his luck had finally cashed in and thrown him a bone. He shoved the weapon quickly back into its sheath and pushed off the wall, glancing toward the girl who had just accepted the quest as she passed by. She seemed confident, like she knew exactly what she was doing, even though it was a very low level quest.

How was he supposed to ask if she wanted an extra set of hands? He'd never exactly been the Party Face before. "Afternoon," he greeted awkwardly.

@Krysta

Honestly, I like the idea of a hard reset.

He blinked.

If he hadn't seen it happen right in front of him, the degenerate might have thought he was watching a comedy. The girl faceplanted in the shallows just next to him, and he blinked. There wasn't really a better response than that.

Well, except maybe the standard "are you okay" most polite people would offer. Corvo watched the girl for a moment, forgetting himself as he gawked at the fact a player in this world could be so unused to the system that literally aided them with movement.

How are you not dead already? was what he wanted to ask.

What he actually said was, "that... was impressive."

@Gladiolus Alliance

ID# 87715 Battle: 8 Craft: 6 Loot: 5 MOB: 8

Pastels bled through gray-black clouds as the sun slowly dipped behind the horizon. Murky and dark, the deep water reflected the dying light like a brush had dipped in it. Ripples on the creating waves washed back toward Corvo as he sat at the edge, tossing tiny pebbles toward oblivion. 

Somewhere at the end of that pixelated sunset, the world actually did end. It wasn't like his own reality, where all of this just stretched on infinitely across time, and at any given point in time and space, there existed a sunset. In Aincrad, it operated on a timer.

One a day. For everyone. He rested his face against his palm and sighed, heavily. Surrounded by people, but totally alone. Now I know how the Cap used to feel.

He glanced back at the crowd, still growing since the time he got there. They all look excited to be here, he observed.

That was good. It must have been difficult for them to find that happiness, all things considered.

"Nothin' over this way," he mused as he walked along the path, careful to avoid any form of combat. It wasn't that he couldn't fight, so much as that he was focused on his current task and didn't want to get sidetracked with unnecessary entanglements.

"If'n I only got one left to find, I reckon I can take a little bit of extra time finding it." Though he had no intention on shaking the local boats down for their item drops, it made for a viable option if he continued to struggle in his searching. He had entertained the idea initially, but his ability to find four of the items made him wary to deviate from the tactic.

Trial and error had shown that most likely would be the case regardless. "And fighting yields excess experience," he argued to himself.

Ever the practical man, was Corvo.

He hurried further down the path, eyes skimming over the dirt for any sign of his quarry.

(4/5)

It rushed at him again, and he batted the tusk away with a slap of his dagger. The blade ricocheted off, and the beast brought its head back around. Corvo let out a grunt from the impact and braced for a pain that never came.

His eyes narrowed in disappointment. "Make it feel real, at least," he seethed between gritted teeth. Corvo gripped his dagger tighter and shook his head out to dispel the ennui.

The assassin fell back on one foot as the creature swiped again and escaped a second strike, narrowly. Corvo let out a snort. "What, you thought I was gonna lie down for you?"

He threw up a single finger for the creature to observe. It remained oblivious to his taunting. Still, Corvo found satisfaction in the gesture.

Boar: 4/10 HP

Corvo: 16/20 HP // 0/2 E

"Finally! he called out, exasperated as he pulled a material from the dirt and sent it to his inventory. "That only took forever to find."

It also meant he had only one left to gather. That bit gave him a refreshed sense of purpose, and he yawned loudly as he considered his next course of action. There were a few directions to choose from, each of them as promising as the last.

"If I go that way," he glanced toward the forest, "I might end up getting into trouble with the Nepents. Not strong enough to deal with that, yet."

His eyes traveled over the path and toward the small safe zone several kilometers away. That road was straight and quick, and promised the fewest altercations. Of course, it also took him further away from town, where he had to go to turn the quest in.

"Maybe..." he looked toward the edge of the floor, where several boars did spawn, but was close by. "That might be the way to go."

(4/5)

"Sheee-" Corvo bit his tongue as another material slipped through his fingers and returned to the ever constant stream of data that made up Aincrad. 

The redhead stood himself back up and stretched his back, stifling his annoyance. There was no use in getting worked up, after all. "You wanna get stronger, ya gotta play the game," he told himself.

Then he laughed, abruptly.

"I'm gonna have a bad habit of talking to myself by the time I get home. Hope my family understands-" He stopped short, and his sentence turned into a sigh. His eyes were glass and distant, and he relaxed his shoulders as he glanced up at the sky. How long had it been since he last saw them? When would he see them again?

His expression instantly soured. "They're gonna say a whole lotta I told you so's," he lamented at a grumble. That made him kick another material, instantly destroying it without ever touching it. "So much for just wanting to spend more time with friends." 

And not a damn friend in sight.

(3/5)

But it looked like the menu was blank, for now. The boar evaded his reckless attempt to eviscerate it in a single go, and Corvo kicked at dirt as his gambit failed. Fortunately, in the process of getting out of the way, the boar gave up its own opportunity to deal any damage.

The assassin lurched forward as he turned about, and his body swayed with the motion. Everything about it felt real, and it made him want to let go of rational thought and give himself over to the fight. That was something he would do only if he became comfortable.

He wanted that, so desperately. It was the only thing about this world that he could actually relate to. "Skin and bones get traded in for pixels, and suddenly nothing is sacred," he spat. The ground was sullied, no different than if he had spit in the real world.

"Give me something interesting to do, piggy," Corvo drawled, "and I'll get this over with quick like."

Corvo: 18/20 HP // 0/2 E

Boar: 4/10 HP

The next blow landed effectively, slamming into the chest of the creature as it lunged at him. It thrashed on impact, making every possible attempt to strike out only to fail. When it collapsed to the dirt, it shuddered before weakly working to its feet.

With a defiant grunt, it wheeled around and trotted away, then turned about to face him once more. It seemed the creature had a one track mind, and that track was "let's kill Corvo."

Fortunately- or rather, unfortunately for the boar- its chosen prey had similar instincts. He slumped over after the initial carnage, allowing his body to relax rather than tense up. His joints loosened and everything moved fluidly. With several sickening cracks, the assassin finally rose to his full height, and he bounced on the balls of his feet.

There was amusement lit up in his eyes, and malice evident in his grin. "Round three," he cackled hellishly. "Bring it ON. I WANT SOME BACON!"

Corvo: 18/20 HP // 0/2 E

Boar: 4/10 HP

He had almost forgotten that it was a prime dating spot.

Almost as far as he could see, couples compromised of low level players dotted the horizon, looking over the colorful, blooming flowers and surveying the seasons of Aincrad. "Piss off," the Crow cawed as he pushed shoulder to shoulder with another male player.

"Hey, watch it!" the brown haired youth scowled as he turned to face Corvo. The girl on his arm pulled at him, but he tugged his arm free. "You blind?"

The redhead turned his head slowly and glanced back over his shoulder. "You don't hear so good, do ya?" Corvo asked as he fixed the man with his single eyed stare. "I said piss off. I ain't tellin' you again, boyo."

The redhead tugged his dagger halfway free of its sheath.

"Woah man," the other threw up his hands disarmingly. "Look, I don't want any trouble."

"Trouble found you, kid." Corvo pointed at the path and spat. "Kick rocks, or I'll kick yer ass."

Corvo watched the two players flee in a hurry, no satisfaction evident on his features. "I feckin' hate people like that," he muttered to himself. 

The feeling's mutual, he recalled someone telling him, once. The thought made him laugh aloud. "The games don't change much," he muttered fondly, "neither do the people, and neither do I."

He tried to steer clear of any other couples, more interested in his entire reason for being there. His gaze centered on the gazebo that overlooked the central lake, and Corvo made his way toward it intently. "From there, I should be able to see..."

It tagged him first. 

Before he could fully mount his attack, the mob was already in motion. Corvo did his best to get his own legs moving, but it was moments too short. "Got to work on that reaction time," he noted as the red line flickered across his leg. 

"But one good hit deserves another."

He pressed off the wounded leg and twisted tightly in the air, bringing the blade around and into the path of the creature as it raced past. The boar let out a high pitched whine as the weapon tore deep, and a bright red light burst free of the newly opened, gaping wound.

Corvo alighted on the ground feet first, knees bent, and his fingertips last. He glanced up to see the enemy shaking its head, reeling from the attack. "That one looks like it hurt," he nodded approvingly.

The blade spun end over end in his grip, switching from a forehanded grip to a backhand. He felt familiar weight as the weapon landed evenly in his grip. "I'm getting used to this."

Corvo 18/20 HP // 0/2 E

Boar 6/10 HP

The boar appeared so quickly, he barely had time to register it before he swing and missed. Respawns ran rampant across Aincrad, and their frequency and random nature were a leading cause of player death in the game. Luckily for Corvo, the boar was just as oblivious as he whipped past and landed in the dirt with a loud thud.

"Okay," he muttered to himself as the Sword Art he had readied flickered and faded out of the weapon. It marked his failure at his first attempt, sure, but also gave him a nudge along the learning process. Corvo was adapting.

He staggered over himself and rolled skillfully to his feet, landing low and with his weapon at the ready. "So that's how it works," he muttered to himself. The feeling was different from exerting himself in reality, and the expenditure of energy seemed to have no ramifications other than an inability to utilize any skills until he accumulated more. That caused him to smirk wryly.

"I get it now," he said, as if speaking to his newest victim. The boar reared its head and stared at him with beady, red eyes. "Which means bad news for you, porky."

Corvo: 20/20 HP // 0/2 E (used Sword Art, missed)

Boar: 10/10 HP

"Alright, so to test out how those Sword Skills work, I guess I should find another boar and stab right into it." Corvo smacked his fist against his open palm as if he'd made a major breakthrough and turned his gaze to look across the open plains of the first floor. Nothing was readily apparent in his field of vision, but that did not mean there were no mobs to be had.

It simply meant he'd have to do some looking around to find them.

"Well, I expected that," he muttered to himself. This early, they rarely grouped together except out in the more isolated areas, where people with more experience went for training. "If I take one more down, it out yield just enough to level me up one good time. That'd be ideal, because I don't want to take any risks with my health this early on."

It was true, the mobs on the first floor weren't immediately deadly, but as one faced more of them, numbers added up. Luckily, health accumulated quickly if one invested the time to increase their level and skill. He wasn't sure how much exactly, but anything would be a step in the right direction.

"Right now, I have twenty," he pondered aloud.

Corvo: 20/20 HP // 2/2 E

Another material evaded him as he plucked it, and it dissipated into the immaterial. He recognized the frustration that many established Crafters felt when they went into the field for their trade, and it only made him want to not deal with that at all.

"Guess the game's trying to tell you that you can't just live on fighting mobs," he said with a humorless laugh. "Oh well, though," he glanced at the ground where he found the item, and wondered if there were more to it than just scooping up items. 

"Is there some specific way I have to touch them?" he pondered aloud. He went for another softly glowing material in order to test his theory. The item shivered the way they all did when he got close, and he picked at it slightly higher than he had before. When he pulled, it snapped pitifully, and as it entered his hand, it disappeared the same way the other two had.

"Must be something to do with pressure," he guessed, "or handling. They seem to be pretty delicate."

(3/5)

The red haired assassin glanced over at his diminished health bar and across his HUD to energy. His lips turned downward slightly as he realized that in this world, his stamina was relegated to points and set to a standard metric. Just like in the real world, his ability to perform tasks was limited by his endurance.

Unlike the real world, however, that number was absurdly limited. "Only two points?" he questioned. "That pool undoubtedly rises over time as level increases," he postulated, using experience from other games as a basis. "So, the Sword Art system must run off that same stuff, and consume more of it."

He looked through his list of attained skills and scrolled over the highest one available. It appeared to add a nominal amount of damage to his base attack, and so he would use that information to increase his output as he grew more familiar. "So, if I chain this one in with my automatic attack," he scratched at his chin as he reviewed the numbers and crunched away.

"I should be able to keep a fairly consistent stream of damage, provided I find a way to keep that energy replenished."

Surely, a skill existed to that effect?

Corvo: 20/20 HP // 1/2 E

The boar pressed what advantage it had. In the slow moments before Corvo managed to get ahold of his own movements, the creature raked him with its tusks and drew two thin lines of crimson across his avatar. The knicks flickered and data scattered outward from them, but it was the assassin who would have the last laugh.

His dagger plunged into the beast, so deep he thought it would burst simply from the absurdity of the impact. It did something almost like that, but instead of inflating like a balloon and popping comically, it shimmered faintly and discolored before scattering into a stream of data.

Wordlessly, Corvo slid the dagger back into its sheath and huffed.

The first kill was always the most iconic in a game. He remembered several times in other situations where he was getting used to skills, pressing buttons and auto attacking. None of them felt this real. None of them gave him the satisfaction of actually using his own thoughts, impulses, and reactions to win the day.

It was chilling to think that this could stimulate him so much.

But the grin on his face was wide, wider than he wanted it to be. Kill more, he told himself. Take all the experience you can. Rip everything apart.

He exhaled, loudly.

"No," he reminded himself. "Gotta think smart. Too dangerous. No second chances if I screw up."

Boar: DEAD

Corvo: 14/20 HP // 0/2 E

Yet another success.

The moment he waltzed out into the meadow on the first floor, Corvo had seen largely triumph. He hardly believed it to be possible, yet he felt the sinking sensation that it would not last. If he could manage to harvest one more item in a row, he figured he'd try his luck at a lottery or something.

No use in letting them hot hands ice over without yielding some pay out, after all.

The assassin carefully sent the fourth of five collectables to his inventory, where it would wait in safety for him to turn it over to Zackariah. "So, what do I do once I collect it all, I wonder? Seems like a whole lot of work just for him to get a couple of materials."

That thought gave him pause. Would Zackariah put the materials to use himself, or would the older man put Corvo to work trying his luck at the craft himself? Those thoughts only caused him to shake his head. "I'd probably end up poisoning myself," he muttered.

(3/5)

The red headed deviant took one last drag from his pipe before he noticed it. A young kid in a hurry to get some place, running toward him and looking everywhere but straight ahead. He raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth to call out, but it was too late.

The kid was moving too fast. Corvo lifted an arm and held it out, connecting with the shoulder of @Pinball as he barreled into the redhead. "Oughta watch out for what's ahead of you if yer plannin' on running through a crowded area."

Not that he cared, of course. Corvo only spoke up because he was the one who took the impact. He grunted as he pushed the boy gently away. "Not everybody's as nice a guy as me round here," he added, "might be you coulda ran up on someone who decided to hunt you down later. Being careful could save your life down the line."

As he finished speaking, the assassin pried the pipe from his teeth and turned to leave.

"That's all for the free advice," he added as he began walking away.

"Ack!"

The successful blow quickly fumbled into a sloppy failure as Corvo rushed past the boar. His feet carried him faster than his torso could twist, and he swiped hard, wide of the beast. "Gah," he muttered to himself as he managed to right his direction, but ultimately fail in doing any damage to the mob. "Some of these moves are a little sloppy."

It stood to reason that without any ranks in weapon skill, he would be subject entirely to the game's algorithms even with his previous training. "Looks like I'll be spending plenty of time investing points in stuff, later."

He skidded to a halt nearly five feet from the beast. It stared back at him, health bar flashing danger as it heaved to take in each and every breath it could. Victory was almost certain-

"Just don't screw this up," Corvo told himself.

Boar: 1/10 HP

Corvo: 16/20 HP // 0/2 E

He saw the tusks, but did not feel them. Red light roiled outward from the dual wounds, and the rogue grit his teeth as he was forced backward. "Good hit," he grunted. 

Corvo brought the blade down and jammed it into the beast as it drove into him, intent on making the creature pay in blood for every drop it spilt.

"But I can hit just as good, dontcha think?"

The smirk on the redhead's face only grew as the beast whined loudly in protest. It reeled backward to get free of the blade, which gave Corvo room to take a step and get his footing back.

He drew a line across his palm with the blade to test its sharpness, visibly displeased when the game's settings disallowed him from taking damage that way.

"Some things just ain't as good when you're gaming."

Boar: 1/10 HP

Corvo: 16/20 HP // 0/2 E