[F29-EV] DELIVERING THE SWORD. [#1]

[Bistro 0]

<<event.>>

Spoiler BISTRO | Lv. 13 | DMG: 16 | HP: 260/260 | EN: 44/44 SKILLS Spoiler mod count: 0/5 TWO-HANDED SPEAR | RANK 5/5 [BASE: Proficiency] +7 DMG [ADDON: Ferocity] +2 DMG [ADDON: Precision] +1 ACC [ADDON: Stamina] Reduce EN of all attacks by 2. [SHIFT: ST] +3 multiplier, +2 EN cost to ST-I, ST-II, ST-B.   COMBAT MASTERY: DMG | Rank 3/3 [BASE: Proficiency] +6 DMG data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAPABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==

DAY OF FLOOR TWENTY NINE FLOOR BOSS FIGHT, TEN SECONDS BEFORE FLOOR BOSS COMBAT WAS INITIATED.

to: night
night: its real
bistro: sorry? i wasn’t under the impression that it wasn’t.

 

bistro hadn’t been on the twenty-ninth just yet.

she had, however, followed up on the current events as per a woman of her disposition. gathered reports from players who visited. traded information with brokers. sold more than just night’s contact information to hackman for the scoop (what night doesn’t know won’t kill her). so by far, from what she could glean from her accumulated reports, something was terribly amiss about the twenty-ninth.

which was incredibly disturbing. equally so when demian’s personal survey hadn’t been as detailed as she had initially hoped. the man had volunteered his own perception of events after touting an outing with night (unheard of behaviour, if you’d asked her. her pawns rarely chose to work together). all conclusions of his were drawn to a singular outcome:

stay out. do not venture there.

needless to say, with the knights having been on the horizon, bistro had been exceptionally intrigued. but that era had came and went, especially given night’s own warning to be kept clear of ‘unless the world had ended’; leave it to aincrad’s best to ensure that it wouldn’t, even devoid of one of their strongest fighters. but that left bistro devoid of intel.

one look at her contacts list as she prepared to step through the teleporter on the first caught her by amusement. she had but finished looking over her gear (it wasn’t of the best quality as of her current stature, but surely the floor wasn’t made out to be as chaotic as it was an anarchist’s wasteland, right?) and saw demian’s location broadcasted to his contacts.

floor twenty-nine.

for what chagrin the man did give to her about her likeness for snooping and his detest of the floor, he still found himself there on such an important day. bistro knew him well enough to know demian wouldn’t be caught dead amongst the frontlines. so, given recent events, it begged a simple question behind his return: why?

 

to: demian
bistro: i’m coming up.
 

[Demian 0]

Demian | L30. | HP: 600/600 | EN: 93/93 | DMG: 19 | ACC: 4 | EVA: 3 | MIT: 36 | BH: 30 | LD: 1 | AA Spoiler equipped sword. ACC III, ABS. ACC armor. MIT III (36) phantom. EVA III br-inventory Teleport Crystal (1) Ordsea Crystal-B | FREE ACTION: +5 HATE/THREAD Fruit Juice (5) | [23/10/20] +10% HP RECOVERY Fruit Juice (5) | [23/10/20] +10% HP RECOVERY Fruit Juice (5) | [23/10/20] +10% HP RECOVERY skills Spoiler mods: 2/5 STRAIGHT SWORD R5 aoe-shift. stamina, precision, ferocity COMBAT MASTERY DMG R3 QUICK CHANGE ENERGIST BATTLE HEALING R5 emergency recovery HOWL focused howl SEARCHING R1     extra skills: PARRY justified riposte data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAPABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw== buffs Spoiler   data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAPABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw== sword arts Spoiler ST | x12 -> x15 | x20 AOE | x15 -> x18 TECH-A | x12 | STUN | 13EN TECH-B | x12 | DELAY TECH-F | x8 | AOE STUN  data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAPABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==

DAY OF FLOOR TWENTY NINE FLOOR BOSS FIGHT, THIRTY MINUTES BEFORE FLOOR BOSS COMBAT WAS INITIATED.

demian woke up with a terrible start.

it must’ve been late. the sky was of a dark pitch, and he hadn’t packed up his food cart for the day yet.

something registered in him. 

demian had never once passed out.

 

 

it took him a moment to realize that where he had been positioned, he’d been slumped against the glass walls of a room set against the sky. he checked his appendages, his faculties, his precepts. he felt himself slow, and demian was never slow.

demian closed his eyes and realized the date had changed.

if he could comprehend the motion as fear, he would’ve abided by it, instead of going through the messages sent to him while he was knocked out. this clearly signalled cardinal’s influence — the jest, the mockery — scathing, he realized, the emotion he was feeling was fury upon his own injustice.

the last message he’d received was from day, two days ago.

to: day
day: night’s heading out today again
day: let’s meet up for lunch? :)

then, almost immediately, she sent him additional messages.

day: doha fvb zllr pz pu aol spnoa. pu kplz lza kbwspjpahz
day: играй роль эмиссара. Я больше не буду с тобой связываться.
day: [attachment.jpg] 

(in this image, he found, was a snapshot of a message seen from day’s perspective. night was beside her, he thought, studying the photograph. on it was a list of night’s complaints to bistro about her role as a broker, but forwarded to his employer was a missive: the discovery of the twenty-ninth floor boss amidst the wilderness.)

the floor boss had never been outside of its confines before.

it was only after reading this that demian hastily typed out a message to day and sent it.

demian: so the playbook has changed.

the read receipt never updated. day never saw it. in fact, he watched her status vanish before his eyes.

his head pressed against the glass behind him, demian deflated, scorning the lack of purpose to his very existence.
 

[Bistro 0]

to: demian
demian: what are you doing here
demian: get off this floor right now

bistro stepped off the teleporter to confirm that there was a lack of a safe zone. strangely enough, there was a grave absence of life around her too — whether it be buildings, npcs, or even monsters.

so she took it upon herself to reply to demian, in the false safety of the teleporter, knowing that she could flee to a different floor had there been an ambush.

bistro: it’s too late. i’m already here

but she knew he’d read this sooner with the dash across the fields before her, a bright light making its way in her direction. if only it wasn’t paired with the telegraphing of new monsters spawning, as well, she could remain certain that her saviour in question was here to take away the spotlight for the day.

it was okay, she figured. bistro was more than used to this, and it was better someone else than her. the way she saw it, demian had never seen her perform in combat before, and she intended to keep things that way for as long as she possibly could.

so she feigned a false prowess in her gestures, moving at uncomfortable timings once the enemies started to materialize, cutting down the ones closest to her just as the light left their visage. demian was moving fast — bistro wondered if he was capable of rivalling her own efficiency, or if she was simply overestimating her own abilities. at the end of the day, her esteem won, and in what time she spent in consideration she had handed the rest of the assailing group off to demian. bistro would’ve cleared his distance easily, with the spear. the enemies by count, not so much.

and it was one thing to be a participant in battle, but another entirely to watch it from a short distance away. between demian’s wide swings blending dark smears into the background, she was almost certain each outgoing strike to clear the field had been on purpose — ensuring she wasn’t going to be caught in the crossfire. did demian know she was just as capable of dodging and weaving as well as any other player? 

she didn’t think to ask. she simply went with the most important question between them.

“so what took you so long?”

bistro shot him a smile as she folded her arms. demian never once looked away from his prey.

“i was in the middle of something,” demian lied.

“something new you’d discovered on floor twenty-nine?”

“if you’re planning on asking me to share with the class,” he spat, “maybe you should let me figure it out first.”

“now, now. i wouldn’t dream of asking you to share misinformation,” said bistro, who was counting off his kills in the horde. there was an influx of grotesque creatures she could only spy from a distance due to parts of their bodies exposed with glow: eyes, fangs, underbellies and more. demian was always quick on the uptake, so she had become attuned to, and figured he likely had observed the same despite the skirmish. “but two heads are better than one, are they not? surely you can share what you’ve learned with an adult and maybe we can work things out together.”

[Demian 0]

demian eyed his uptime.

“that’s not funny,” he scowled, tracking the spawn points of the great flood. there was no reason to target bistro upon her entrance to the twenty-ninth, so he figured, and that was what annoyed him the most from the ordeal. for he had deduced the radius of which their enemies had spawned from, and hence drawn the conclusion of an area of effect.

this wasn’t a warning. this was the game trying to kill her by overwhelm, and this was demian’s way of fighting against the change in the rulebook. because the last time something this severe had gone wrong, the world was engulfed in darkness, taking him and day with it

the last time beyond that, so too was his world swallowed whole, and nothing could have prepared him for his new normal.

but now he knew. and, enlightened, chosen or otherwise, he had never been set on allowing himself to go down without a fight. at the end of the world, he would fight like he always had.

(day had recounted to him on having done the same.)

“i didn’t know you had a sense of humor,” bistro quipped to him, pulling out a spyglass from her inventory. “but then again, i didn’t take you to be a volunteer for the worst parts of floor exploration.”

demian gritted his teeth.

“i’m not a volunteer.”

“of course you’re not,” bistro replied. demian’s estimation of where she had pointed her lens towards was to the beach, and that was not where demian had known where to take it. far from it. something in his gut had told him about anything but its keeper would’ve been the best for saliency and innocence’s sake. “if you were, you too would be at the frontlines fighting whatever those spectral knights are. unless you had a change of heart over the past few days?”

demian rolled his eyes as his patience wore thin. in one swift move, he jabbed the back of his blade against the nearest wave of baddies, sending them flying backwards, and jumped to bistro’s side. the leap was almost superhuman, distance covered in accountance, but he gave his employer no time to object. he grabbed bistro’s wrist as she lowered her scope.

“who do you think i am,” he snarled, “night?”

in an instant, with the flood of the spectre of heat against their vision, they were gone.

[Bistro 0]

bistro figured the best time to ask questions was when one was out of danger. that’s how brokers often did it, and that’s how her clients, from demian to grimm, had compiled their findings to her in the past. no sense in breaking away from procedures, now. so when demian had performed some sort of magic and told her to run, she decided to keep her mouth shut to do so, keeping pace with wherever he had dragged her away to, even if she couldn’t see his traces in her sights. 

(although, bistro had to object, because magic didn’t exist for players in aincrad, not really… and she knew night would be the one to explain otherwise. but bistro could only suspend her disbelief in the context of a lack of information, so, especially with someone as cagey as demian, magic it was.)

the world distorted just as they came to what she could identify as a settlement, but was clearly under siege from the way the flames carried out the work of its monster masters. there were beasts on all fours and covered in numerous abscesses that haunted the rooftops of the buildings from below, and shadowy figures that swayed, lingered absentmindedly from the apparent comfort of on high. demian had worked quickly — with one swing of his blade, he cut through the debris scattered across the foundation of the establishment closest to them. then, letting go of bistro’s wrist, he summoned something from the ether and lobbed it at the mess of dried, unkempt flammables. he stopped, and bistro’s rush forward allowed her to pass him by — which was bad news to her. she wasn’t even aware of where they were going.

so bistro slowed and turned around. hadn’t the chance to register the fact that demian’s play had been to scoop her up mid dash just to carry her waist-first, body pressed close to his as he took the leap up to the building soon to be on fire. dangerous work, if she was ever questioned, but even in dire times, her mind was fixated on demian’s apparent absent consent. when they both touched down on sturdy shingles, she shrugged him off hard, and was almost convinced he was about to fall off the rooftop.

“desperate measures,” he reasoned, voice hoarse. demian’s voice was rarely ever hoarse. she followed his gesture down towards the onslaught before them — in their run, so she realized, the enemies had never stopped spawning.

no. they had always known where she was. demian’s speed simply outpaced the lot of them.

“i took some liberties with disguise,” he explained, squatting upon the ledge, but that was the least of bistro’s concerns for the moment. below them, like hungry dogs, the contorted beasts jumped at the players almost hypnotized, a vicious chorus emerging from the growing stampede. the building, however guarded it was from the moat of fire demian had set alight around it, would only be shrugged off by those at the base of the gathering of enemies. because, afterwards, through a mass of bodies, bistro figured the thread was likely to be avoided by confident others stepping on their peers to try to get to the players. 

and even up to this point, bistro hadn’t even figured out why.

“so what did you find out?”

demian was quiet for a beat. his gaze was cast towards the rising sea of corpses below them, and contemplation was mired across his face, betraying his facade, in the most desperate of times.

“i found the sword of the keeper,” he explained, holding up the blade in his grasp. cast in light, this time, as demian held it aloft, she watched as the edges of the weapon but wavered in an uncertainty, only giving way to a brightness she had only seen once in her life. bistro felt the thrum of its intensity once its glow was revealed, almost forgetting the intensity of obfuscation demian had to conjure to explain how he had managed to keep it hidden for so long. and yet, bistro remained quiet, for it was not her place to be editing her colleagues’ reports as they were in midst of composing it. 

“everything on this floor must’ve been looking for it. except, that didn’t happen until just a few moments ago, and i was walking around like everything had seemed fine.” demian rolled his eyes. “until you showed up. or even for a time slightly before that. i had a theory on why it was happening. after seeing you here though, i have to revise it.”

“i didn’t know i was such a wrench in your works,” bistro returned.

“then solve it, ‘adult’,” the blade’s handler shot back. “i shared what little i know, now you work this out.”

“with you,” bistro corrected, keeping the quantity of enemies visible in the corner of her vision. “where did you find it?”

“the lighthouse.”

“and what were you doing there?”

demian growled. “next question.”

“why,” bistro tried, “does everything on this floor want it?”

“because it belongs to the floor boss,” demian replied, and a shadow shifted where he doesn’t see it, but bistro clearly does. demian continued, and so does their assailant, “and i assume, if it goes into the wrong hands, it’ll be bad for your little investment, wouldn’t it?”

things then happened in snapshots. 

first: the shadow jumped from a stack of gathered bodies from the ground floor. it is angled towards the blade, a beacon of hope, with a maw dangerously close to the shape of a flytrap’s.

second: bistro had leaped towards demian. she carried no hopes, only one expectation: she would’ve gotten him to angle the sword away from the shade’s trajectory.

third: she missed.

fourth: bistro collided with demian, echoing the lack of consent she often scolded others for in their interactions. the shade skimmed the top of the players’ bodily crash. the pair tumble and fall into the abyss below, wordless, leaving only curses in their wake.

what happens where bistro can’t see is this: the creature, now having obtained the blade of legacy locked in its jaw makes a mad dash towards its keeper on the far side of the floorscape. along its torrid path, animosities grow tracing its shadow against the dying light, draping the facades of the long fallen and forgotten upon their form.

so does the hunt for the missing blade begin.

[Demian 0]

DAY OF FLOOR TWENTY NINE FLOOR BOSS FIGHT, TWENTY SIX MINUTES BEFORE FLOOR BOSS COMBAT WAS INITIATED.

demian scanned his messages beyond solving day’s ciphers. bistro had left him a message prior as well, and he simply hadn’t responded. he chose to continue that trend as he drifted around, familiarizing himself with his newfound location.

cardinal had chosen to place him atop the lighthouse. the same one he had shuddered over thinking about the man in the cage, and the same one he left with night only several weeks ago. but the dates were now different, and so must’ve been his objective.

demian only noticed then that the lighthouse was turned on.

it had been dark on the day they left, as far as he could remember it. if cardinal could do what it wanted, then it could prescribe him false memories, as far as demian could guess. needless to say, the moment he felt out this realization, he clung onto it, like a child desperate for any semblance of comfort.

in realization of his own pitifulness, demian drew back a fist and plunged it straight into the heart of the lighthouse — its fresnel lens, shattering the blade’s case into pieces. had he the mind to register pain, he would’ve noticed a lack of hurt.

but what else was within the false lockbox other than the sword? a shadow, perhaps, a false image of someone he knew. it wasn’t day, though that would’ve been his first guess, for their signatures in binaries looked almost identical at a glance. it looked very much like one of the knights that bistro had been talking about a few days ago, which he only read, and silenced his replies about. the similarities made sense only after the figure removed their helmet from their face.

it was night(?).

“does this belong to you?”

demian stayed quiet, battling the encryptions cardinal had then decided to enforce upon his vision. as though fragmenting into pieces thereafter, night(?) but looked upon the sword in disappointment.

“hm. … i suppose it was never mine.”

when the scene before him was unscrambled, the figure allegedly night was long gone, and all that remained was a lost blade ready to be claimed.

[Bistro 0]

thread summary.

BISTRO

+ 1244 xp | (622 * 2)
+ 120 col
+ 1 Mon

DEMIAN

+ 1866 xp | (622 * 3)
+ 120 col
+ 1 Mon

Spoiler

thread progression.

link.

3115 words | 622 sects
6 posts x 20 col = 120 col