[F01-PP] The Best Time to Begin is Now | <<The First Lessons>>

[Plum 0]

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<<Quest>>>

PLUM

Lv. 1

HP 20/20

EN 20/20

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It was a beautiful day to be abandoned on Floor One.

"Sorry. It's just not worth keeping you in the party."

Plum rubbed her temples, frustration pressing down on her brow. The words wouldn't stop echoing through her head, and worse yet - they called forth every memory of the exact scenario playing out, every time her chosen group of the month decided she was more trouble than they could manage. Who were they to decide that, anyway, when she was the one paying them to get her through dungeons? She could make sense of not wanting to carry dead weight when it was literally a matter of life or death, but she'd made her position very clear before they took on the job, that she was not system-literate by any means. When the game first started, and the players began to understand the gravity of their situation, Umeko joined those who stayed within the safe confines of the Town of Beginnings. SAO was meant to be a fun way to unwind after work, and her first experience with full-dive gaming. Whenever she played video games before, her preference had always been cozy little farming sims or visual novels. In-depth system mechanics were well outside of her forte, and she was not about to risk her life trying to learn them.

"Haven't you done Dorian's quest?"

Of course she hadn't. When eventually she did begin to push out from that initial safe zone, it was only with a capable entourage. There were folks who only knew how to play to kill or farm EXP, and those either a little uneducated or too stressed to see the patterns in puzzle-solving : enter Plum. She operated as the brains on a team, identifying objectives and making sure they were following the right clues, without lifting much of a finger herself. It had worked so far - as she warmed up to the world she was trapped in, she did want to see more of it, to fulfill her original goal of uncovering hidden treasure. But she had never invested the time into actually boosting her stats, until finally it had become a complete hindrance, rather than a simple player quirk.
And so, here she was, alone in Tolbana and trying to get her act together.

{ WC : 380 }