Acanthus

Hello yes one Gungan please. Muzzle preferred Gungir's Shard | 248140 | [10 Mon] Caches and expends a craftable consumable. The item to be cached must be submitted to a player's evaluation thread. Once confirmed, players may use the item to provide a buff to their characters once per thread. Other players can be affected by this item’s effects (eg. feasts, mass healing crystals), but the item cannot be used in combat. This item is tradable until an item has been evaluated on it, and a character can never own more then 1 evaluated Gungir's Shard at a given time. This item can be reset by

No quests this time. Just slaughter. Beautiful, fruitful slaughter. Four more goblins lay before her, freshly harvested. “Today is as good a day as any,” she said out loud. Changing her direction, she began to move in the direction of the nearest floating island. It appeared a good distance away, maybe two or three kilometers. There would be plenty of foraging opportunities along the way. Deciding to take a break from the flora of floor 1, she changed tactics. Equipping her mattock, she stopped and worked on some of the rocks along the way. It didn’t seem realistic for such rich nodes to

Acanthus turned a color reserved for PK markers. Her eyes slid down to Kat’s lap, where Mari’s thumb playfully stroked the girl’s thigh, and Acanthus realized that she was sending an awful lot of false positives to her friends. The carriage had not yet stopped before Acanthus tumbled out, nearly caught under a slow wheel. “Ah, um, my hand just slipped on the door. Also, it was getting a little hot in the carriage. Just a lot of heat. That’s my bad.” “Absolutely.” Acanthus was grateful for the invitation, something to direct her gnawing anxieties towards. “Lead the way, Kat.” The d

Acanthus received the Topaz gemstone a quickly tossed it into her inventory. “Yes, thank you.” When she looked up, Ariel was talking with the dragon still. It looked like they would be continuing along the chain. Surely not the *entire* chain? Acanthus had intended to catch up on Katoka’s soundtrack. And her other daily routines still called to her… Acanthus sighed internally. It was a change of plans, but probably a good change. Finding people willing to do this quest was not easy. She could always catch up later. “Next quest is this way, Ariel. And… Um…” Acanthus looked back at the

Acanthus watched Freyd pummel the grotesque from a whole being into thin layers of blood on the dungeon walls. It was the first time she had seen him laugh. And even then, it wasn’t a laugh. Eerie cackling bounced off of the walls, lending to the unsettling air, but it did not slow her down. Acanthus was no stranger to strange behavior in combat. How people preferred to fight (and cope with the fighting) was their own journey, and she had little desire to judge. But she did have an uncharacteristic desire to pry, if only a little. “Sounds like you’ve been to Floor 29 for that bugged quest

Acanthus looked to Ariel, and the Gambit. And then the dragon. With a sigh, she sheathed her sword. Three times she’d done the quest, and every time she had been the one stuck talking to the dragon. She liked dragons, but her fascination with the quest had ended a while back. She spoke plainly to the wounded dragon, like asking a stranger for directions. “Hi, yes. Acanthus. You don’t remember me because it’s a new quest instance, but—” “Be ye friends or foes?” The dragon rasped. “I—we’re friends. And who talks like that? They didn’t even talk like that in the 1400s.” Fuzzie

Acanthus grinned back. Nicknames were not really her thing: they were so informal. And she didn’t really know how to be informal. But she had engaged with the bit for a little too long, and now Mari—Marigold—had accepted the name. Ah, a little informality won’t kill you. Kat extended her shotglass with a playful pout. "Another?" Acanthus laughed. “Enjoy it for now; once we’re done, you’ll have to pace yourself.” * * * The cart hobbled along with its familiar pace. The three girls rode in the carriage side by side, with Acanthus crammed to the side like nori in a bento box.

A familiar signature at the bottom of the LFG post. Acanthus grinned, and leaned in to finish the rest of the message. “The Ripper, hm? I’ve been meaning to swing by and get that chain. Freyd seems to get a fair amount of use from his. I can think of worse ways to spend a day.” She arrived in Glyndbourne (far later than she had intended) and approached the group with an apologetic nod. “I lost track of time. I hope I didn’t keep you all waiting too long.” Acanthus chided herself for slacking off. In the real world, she made an effort to be places before anyone else. And while she had

Baldur, Made it down to the Coliseum. Whenever you’re ready. No rush. Acanthus had been putting off this day far too long. Ever since she had visited for tea, she dreaded meeting with the samurai again. It wasn’t his fault, he had been nothing short of the perfect host: gracious, pleasant, and accommodating. The fault was with her. She had left on an awkward note, practically begging to be released from the conversation that she had started. “We have veterans returned from battle, broken and crying in their sleep. I am one of them.” The bluntness of his

If the info brokers were to be trusted, Sand Crab was hands-down the most popular respawning fight. Acanthus believed it, too; anytime she was in town, there was another group of people on their way to the beach. There were always six, always engaged in that kind of small talk that made you think they were all on the same page. It made Acanthus just a tinge jealous. She had killed the crab once, a while back. But it had been so long ago, she strained to recall how it had gone. Morningstar and Freyd, Oscar and Wulfrin, and Cordelia… it had been too long since she had seen a few of them. Sh

Belregor’s form shattered into pieces that struck out against the players. Each step around the boss forced different images into shape: Hirru, then Mina, and finally Lessa. The thought of fighting players chilled her to the bone. Rise. Clash. Move; dispatch. The river of time slowed sluggishly, washing to shore painful memories of careless rage. Acanthus recalled the rhythm of that fight: the heavy reports of steel on steel, footwork thudding through the sand like a dance that afforded no mistakes. It was a rhythm that lifted Acanthus effortlessly above herself and allowed her to ri

"I have a request. It's a bit of a larger order, so I don't know how you want to handle pricing. Just name whatever you want and I can pay." Requesting from @Demian. Plain Tofu and Rice | ROLLID | T4 Demonic Feast | ACC II | Protein II Generous portions of bland staples to share with the party. The absence of seasoning is a Demian staple itself.

Another call to kill Terra Firma. How could she refuse? One day, that scale was going to make the difference between life or death. It never hurt to have some additional mitigation whenever it counted the most. After getting lost in Fortaleza longer than she cared to admit, Acanthus finally found Ciela, waiting just off the main path through town, sipping on what looked like a refreshing drink. “I’m still not used to seeing you in all that armor,” Acanthus remarked. She approached her friend with a warm smile. “Not that it’s a bad look; it’s just that we only ever seem to meet up for

“Right, an adult. I’m sorry.” When she was a child, it bothered her for adults to talk down to her so regularly. Here she was, doing the same thing. Something in the boy’s—the man’s—attitude shifted. Gambit sprinted ahead of the other two, inspecting rocks and shrubs for any sign of dragons. “The searching skill… doesn’t actually work that way, right?” Acanthus whispered to Ariel. “I typically activate it so that it can tell me where to go. I have to be close to wherever I’m searching, but I don’t have to…” She trailed off, observing the boy enthusiastically turn over rocks and peel apart

The force of the titan’s quake left her reeling in its hand. With a sense of dread, she looked out over the landscape again, only to see Pinball flying off the mountain. Her breath caught, and she swallowed the urge to yell or scream, or Cardinal forbid leap off the mountain to check on him. The fall would not kill him—it was mathematical certainty. But that did not change the height she perceived, or the cold wind whipping through her hair, reminding her that she would meet the same fate if she did not finish the job. As if to remind Acanthus, the Colossus rumbled, shaking loose bits of

“I t htink that four set ts of S tairs wil be a goo d w aty to sober up just enough.” Over the long trek, her speech slowly returned to a semblance of normalcy. “The nickname… I didn’t mean to make it a thing. My mind was just wandering from syllable to syllable. Mari. Gold. Marigold. The funny thing is that I’m not really sure what you’re hearing. I’m speaking Japanese; is that what you’re hearing? Puns and word associations don’t really translate very well either. So how does Cardinal know what to say on my behalf? Honestly,” Acanthus slugged something amber from a dark bottle (wit

A bear statue? Did she mean the totem? From Scents of the Wild? The remark about a minor damage boost certainly matched. Acanthus opened her mouth to say something, and then closed it again. Ariel knew what she was doing, and Acanthus did not want to risk the revelation that she did not. This quest yielded a boss fight, and possibly some other mysterious benefit. Perhaps it was a bear statue. As far as she had asked around, nobody had ever completed the quest. Whatever rewards lay at the end of the chain remained hidden to her (and all the info brokers she had talked to). “Last time

Her tactics had changed since the last floor boss. She was used to maneuvering: to rolling underneath the broad swipes, approaching from the flank, and taking advantage of the chaos. With heavy armor, she became the chaos. With uncharacteristic disregard, she waded to the front of the fighting, eager to test her vitality to the limit. She had survived no fewer than three spectral knights. This was the fourth and nothing more. “What a pathetic boss fight.” She caught a hewing blow meant for Jomei, straining under the weight. “Do some damage! I guarantee I’ll hit you harder. So come on!!”

Scrolling through the LFG posts was something of a guilty pleasure for Acanthus. There were scores of posts from mid- to low-level players, with tone ranging from begging to entitlement. “I need this quest item!” or the evergreen, “Can anyone help me with this field boss?” Most of those posts were followed by listing gear that would barely pass a large boar, let alone the Ripper of Glyndbourne. She watched these posts populate and wither in the forum with a detached sense of schadenfreude. They deserve to languish in the middle floors. They have not put in the time to grow as you have. If

Katoka took a single sip and grimaced. Mari swiped the bottle and demolished it as an afterthought. Her audacity stunned Acanthus. Then, she laughed, loudly and wordlessly, until tears formed at the edges of her eyes. “That wa s a TERRIBLe idea.” Acanthus desperately tried to catch her breath, clutching her sides as Mari sputtered near the end of the bottle. “Keep goi nf, you’ re almost hther, Mari. gold. Marigold.” Acathus chuckled again. She couldn’t help it—everything was brighter and funnier. “I fuck in, fucking tol d you. It’s terrible.” She doubled over laughing as Mari complimented

Custom Skill Proposal Name: >run_cmd swap(int *x int *y) (Disabuse System) Mechanic: Whenever you activate [[Assault Mode]], instead swap two of your core stats as though you just activated Temporal Distortion (Quest Reward from <<Down the Rabbit Hole>>). Description: A skill that can only be learned when the truth of the game is confronted: you are lines of code in the same way that your enemies are living, breathing creatures. Did Kayaba foresee the denial of his reality blossoming into its confirmation?

Appraisals (Each ID Links to the crafting date.) (2) Aincrad Lullaby | 245530 245531 | Instant Lullaby 2 Off to sleep, never to wake. (2) Minimalistic Etude | 245533 245685 | Instant Hypnosis 2 A few seconds is all it takes for the listener to lose focus in the heat of battle.

Compared to the previous floor boss, Acanthus felt entirely unprepared. She had helped with a few field bosses for this raid, but nothing she wanted to bring. The lion’s fur sounded nice, but shed part of her ability to weather damage. And the crystal tempted her, but the thought of opening herself to a brutal counterattack sounded foolish. She would rely on the bolder members of the team to commit to the supposed weakness. But no other preparations had been made. The floor boss was a rush project with a firm deadline, and Acanthus couldn’t bring herself to care. The spice of death slowly

"Whenever you have a moment, I have a larger order to place. I'll come find you after the floor boss." Purchasing. Creme Brulee x5 Payment. 10 Materials sent to Demian.

"Thanks for coming through on short notice. I have a few rarer tea leaves for your troubles." Purchasing. 4 Imperial Grey Quarter (DMG 3) Payment. 24 materials sent to Kingsley.