Arabelle

it takes a great amount of an-typical stammering and fumbling, 'no, it's fine, really!'s, for her friend to let arabelle hold on to her baggage as she rushes off into the stable with ashvini to prepare. waiting, arabelle slightly indulges her curiosity. the bag is made out of cloth, closed at the top with a drawstring. it would be rude to open it outright and poke about an's things, but nothing stops arabelle from trying to feel out the shapes of its contents through the fabric. these are... bowls? more additions to the dragon hoard of items an likes to keep in her shop? the clop of

…excuse me? she’d gathered one thousand? so caught up was she in the most aggressive farming she had ever done in her entire life that she had forgotten to keep tabs on what ordinary players killed mobs for: the spoils. (not the fun of killing things, like some psychopath. but she isn’t a psychopath. she’s aincrad’s best girl with one (1) questionable hobby. as a treat.) arabelle is certain, though, that she had not actually physically picked up above one thousand petals. her loot finder trinkets must have absorbed them while she wasn’t looking. she is in genuine awe, scrolling up her sys

…except, she thinks as she stares blankly at her interface, she is forgetting something extremely important. arabelle swaps over to her equipment and buffs loadout, almost expecting to see that she had been mopping up trash all this time with the same setup she uses for boss battles, and huffs out a sigh of relief when she finds that isn’t the case. (four mobs leap out from the bushes at her, and without taking her eyes off the window, she flicks her weapon with her free hand and sends them flying back out of sight. or rather, they fly a short distance before they disintegrate midair. fun

unless they are the flowers in her garden she doesn’t like her possessions too colorful. her food too tasty. her weapons and her armor mainly possess muted tones. and her only reason – old habits die hard. still, looking by itself isn’t unpleasant. arabelle gets a little caught up in her window shopping. she forgets to check her energy bar. by the time she notices it is already full, it must have already been about a couple of minutes. shocked back into action, the woman elbows her way past queues of people doing the same thing as her. she rubs her thumb impatiently against her scythe’s k

“thank you!” arabelle tosses over her shoulder as she tucks the braid into her inventory, because she is a good and polite girl. she takes to aimlessly walking about ylvon as she waits for her energy to regenerate. this city is not so abundantly decorated as dagans, which had been brimming with banners and paper lanterns and flowers. like ronbaru, ylvon’s festivities are largely concentrated at its center. a couple of npcs the curious player asked told her the people of this city dedicated themselves to building altars inside their shops. they displayed both their prowess at their crafts

so: she is perfectly fine. arabelle stretches her arms behind her head, bending the muscle back to its limits, a groan passing through her lips as she strolls past srona’s gates. there are fewer wagons here, moving slowly along in a queue for inspection, and she, walking on foot, is entirely unhassled. she sleepily follows the movement of the freight to the delivery point, where another npc pops up to talk to her, and the woman amuses herself in watching it visibly recalibrate to accommodate her unusual method of travel. the option was surely open to them – but was the game just expecting

her ears are sharp. she would hear, of course, the branches snapping and being twisted every which way to accommodate the movements of bodies, the soft chirrups from behind. coordinating? she does not care to discern whether there is any meaning to the sounds. at the last second, as the leeches break out of the shadows with their thorns stretched out like claws, arabelle whirls around, her scythe primed for one last shot. three bodies drop. the last, almost appearing daunted, sets itself farther behind but meets the undiscerning blade all the same. arabelle, in the quiet, harvests the loo

she has enough stamina left for two more shots. she gets far into srona without seeing another mob. as she spots the city in the distance, arabelle stops and redirects herself. she walks back and forth atound the outskirts, her eyes sharpened for her last group of mobs. the vale is quiet for a couple of minutes until the game coughs up an answer: light flashes and four leeches spawn out of nowhere, already wrapped around their flowering plants. her expression twists, half in sympathy, half in frustration. how unsightly, and how unfair that the game was dooming these blooms at the point of thei

when the last plant had perished, she continues to linger in the forest, picking flower petals off the ground. disappointingly, nothing else jumps out at her. arabelle stands, dusting off her hands on her slacks, and takes that as her hint to move on. she climbs back up to the mountain road and continues to follow it. she passes the occasional wagon carrying freight but finds every time to her dismay that the driver is an npc. friendly, though. one offers her some spare food and water upon learning that she’s towing along the same delivery (and helpfully does not question why she does not

this is a bigger pack than the last one. perhaps less players had been by to thin the herd -- one would hardly care about the next three legs of the quest when the barest minimum needed to achieve completion status was a delivery to a single city. it was unlocking the sequel that anyone needed to go all the extra trouble for. whether arabelle herself would run this quest to its full course is all down to her whimsy, honestly. she heard it wasn’t anything unusual in terms of experience or reward. certainly not the sort she would clamor to get firsthand experience of. thankfully arabelle is

more and more pop up at the sound of their fellows being killed. oh, she had stumbled into an entire pack of them…! sword art in constant activation, the spinning gears of her weapon working in overdrive to carry itself forward in the rare cases she falls just short, arabelle hacks, tears, and decapitates every leech that dares to be drawn to the commotion she is kicking up on her side of the woods. she falls seamlessly back into the routine of killing everything in sight. she enjoys it, or, well, normally it is more fun beating up things that could actually put up a fight; it makes

but she isn't too serious about it. all the fun is in ronbaru and in the satisfaction she gets from uprooting leeches. out the city gates. arabelle marks her next destination on the map -- ylvon, srona to the east -- and compares it to her current location, turning herself in the direction of the mountain roads that would take her there the fastest. still, there are stretches of road where it bends, taking a longer route around to avoid some obstacle that she could easily skip because she is going on foot. that is also where the mobs she is looking for tend to rest. once again, she must p

the npc takes the flimsy the player was holding out to them. the npc then does a double take at the player and her visible lack of the aforementioned supplies. arabelle smiles, the bright window of her menu still floating in front of her. "...and where is the delivery?" the npc asks, weary. "here." arabelle looks down and pokes a button on her interface. then she clears the way, taking a step back. five crates stacked in a pyramid fall to the ground with a heavy thud. "that should be all." she snags a braid from the npc's wrist, twirls it in the air, nonchalant. "enjoy." one dow

see: everything turns out just fine. arabelle makes it into vesh without spotting another leech. as she crosses the boundary, she collapses her scythe back into a key. pockets it and twines her fingers behind her back, tipping her head skyward (ceilingward?) to look at the colorful streamers, and the strings of bright yellow flowers wound loosely around them, criss-crossing the streets. there had been an entire queue of wagons waiting to be admitted at the gates. and inspections. she had simply bypassed all of them, walking unnoticed past oblivious guards. if they could barely catch playe

so she readies her weapon and splits from the main road. she bounds across a field dotted with colored crystals. a single heavy swing takes out a line of four. then she winds her scythe back up. another group of leeches is close behind the vanguard, slithering forward on thick crawling vines. their bulbs open. she twirls on her feet, letting the momentum from her previous strike carry her into the next, and in the split second that her back is turned the living plants fling needles of thorns. their attacks evaporate. none of them have even the slightest chance of hitting her. she has

the plants' remains crumple to the ground, and quite proud of herself, arabelle executes an about-face, wandering back to the light of the ground crystals. her scythe feels heavier in her hands and she feels the beginnings of exhaustion spreading from her chest to her limbs. she keeps following the trade route. if she doesn't take too much detours, she'll make it to the first delivery point in time with her energy dropping to zero. then she can handle her business and shop around vesh a little while waiting for it to regenerate, as opposed to troubling herself with finding a place to rest out

she shuts them up. in the patch of forest she's stepped into, there are fewer crystals above and below. the light is at her back. holding her scythe defensively across her, arabelle's eyes catch unusual movements in the dark. another group has sprung up and quite foolishly the four leeches are coming after her rather than running away. oh well, makes the hunt easier. spinning back her weapon, blade tip to the ground, it begins to whir. she grips the stem with one arm above her head and the other behind her and she casually backs up -- just one step. with no sight, she waits for the s

area cleared. arabelle runs further down the road, already winding up another sword art. the gears at the head of her weapon spin like clockwork. thrum. as much as she wants to keep circling back, carefully rooting out individual sprouts as she would have done had the infection struck her own garden, she has places to be and her energy is best spent on killing clusters. she's walking back anyway. the next set of victims detach themselves from the base of a tree. their bulbous heads turn the approaching player's way and the petals open, the prey animal instinct of making oneself bigge

where the flowers are blooming in abundance for diwali, there the leeches are also. the living plants are everywhere. they are easy to spot even in floor 27's eternal night. they dig at the soil beneath ronbaru's outer walls. they sup from the roots and stems and trunks of whatever flora they could latch onto -- many of which happen to be the flowers hiten is asking for. these are as good as dead, for the weeds had wrapped so tightly around the blooms that they had practically subsumed them, but arabelle could still beat a handful of petals out of them. she mourns for them, but the only t

it takes her an annoyingly long time. then she spins on her heel with finality and exits the logistics hub, leaving the empty wagon behind. no one ever told her how she ought to deliver the goods, only that they had to make it to their destinations. thank cardinal for systematically embedded superpowers! players take it for granted almost every day, but these npcs couldn't fathom disappearing an entire city's worth of cargo then rematerializing them later in a different place with no tradebacks at all. her steps light as always, arabelle reaches the edge of ronbaru and retrieves a key fro

arabelle learns that she is not quite immune to losing things either. (received.) 5,400 Col -> Bistro

this boy's food is awful but in the end she cannot resist the allure of cheap prices. and aincrad lacks for better option. who knew the cook profession was so unpopular? or rather were their buffs so coveted that guilds closed their crafters off to the public? these musings wander through arabelle's mind as she, quite reluctantly, seats herself on a folding chair and waits for her order. she props her chin on her palm and watches the boy go through the motions of preparing the food. oh. she gets it. she doesn't think he's even adding sugar! on sweets, nonetheless. what a weirdo.

Skill(s) Being Dropped: Charge (10), Quick Change (8) Mod(s)/Addon(s)/Shift(s) Being Dropped: -- SP Incurred Towards Limit: 18 SP Refunded: 18 Cost: 18,000 Col

it's your favorite magical girl! ♡ arabelle, ever the helpful girl that she is, pops by ronbaru's logistics hub, carrying a flyer they had put forth requesting the assistance of players. the task was simple. floor 27, with so many of its residents having gone off to party, and the 'party' eating up triple more resources than a regular day, is in need of a lot of grunts, as many grunts as it could get, to transport goods across its cities. it offers meager compensation and a 'chance to see dagan, srona, braso, and ordsea's local ce

[11/12/2024] # aarti: 14