Chapter 0047

Sylphie scanned her surrounding. 10 people within a 100-meter radius: Three openly coming to towards them, three in stealth mode coming from behind them and four towards the line of trees to provide cover fire for them.

The three coming towards them are probably the tank classes or melee combat classes like Erica’s Sword Dancer class, though judging from their macho behavior Sylphie believe they chose a plate wearing class.

Sylphie can’t say for sure because she doesn’t know how equipments are supposed to look like when equipped. They barely started playing the game.

The three stealth class positions themselves behind the group to prevent them from running away. Amateurs! When you approach a target, approach them from behind. Depending on their stealth to come in line of sight of the target and then circle around them, what is it if not stupidity?

They might be trying to avoid revealing the four range classes behind them. It is like the blind leading the blind. Two words: Name Tags.

Leviene turned hers off in the Temple of the Fallen. Sylphie remind Erica to turns her off at breakfast. Leviene is such a zombie in the morning; she didn’t notice the changes made.

As to how Sylphie can see stealth players, it is one of the abilities of the Hidden Eye of Untold Secrets skill she got as a quest reward. She didn’t tell the other two about her abilities. Erica wouldn’t understand if she told her and Leviene will pout since she has a stealth character.

Something along the lines of, "I can't hide anything from you at all." It may sound childish, but that is Leviene.

Despite being very family orientated, Leviene need her privacy. There are times when she would cut off all communication with everyone for a day or two.

[Sylphie whisper to Leviene]: Leviene someone stealing the herbs I was going to pick!

“What do you want?” Erica sneered.Ignorance is truly bliss. Erica doesn’t realize the situation they are in. Isn’t it obvious? 10 men against three women in a world where there are no laws. Erica probably saw only three people approaching them and not the other seven hidden reinforcement.

“We’d like to invite you ladies to accompany us for the day.” A muscle bound blond hair man going by the name Big&Strong said with a disgusting leer.

“No thanks. Can’t you see we’re having a heart to heart conversation? And you had to interrupt at the most inopportune time! Do you know how often that girl,” Erica pointed to Sylphie, “admit that I am right? Never, because this is the first time she would have said it but you guys had to interrupt. Can’t you read the mood? Of course not! That why you probably never had a girlfriend in your life. Silly, clumsy and tactless!”

Maybe it was the leer or maybe it was the way the men act that clued Erica on their current situation.

Sylphie had to applaud her actions. Even though they weren’t close nor did they particularly like each other, Erica position Sylphie behind her during her rant, intending to protect the heiress she despised.

“Ladies, I think you have the wrong impression.” A tall, slim man with blond hair and blue eyes, going by the name Foremost_Interest according to his name tag, approach the duo. “We’re here to ask you to party with us since there are dangerous monsters in Arashia and gentle girl such as yourselves are not accustomed to such rigors. You can rely on us to protect you against the monsters in the area.”

Blondie was trying to be charming and suave but his knight in shining armour grates the nerves of the two very independent women.

Erica has seen many charming people when she attends parties thrown by the wealthy. She’d seen the cool collect men possessing an air of mystery, the funny jokester with a genuine smile, the daredevil with hint of danger and everything in between.

She can tell the difference between true gentlemen and men who treat the event like a high-class bar meant to pick up one night stands. This Foremost_Interest comes off as slimy rather than charming.

As for Sylphie, who lives and breath high society, these packs of brats are nothing more than closet otakus who found themselves in a new world without laws, trying to establish their might and bully the weak. In short, potentially strong idiots on a power trip.

Change that, idiots on a power trip.

Three people already died to Leviene’s ambush, and the Assassin is quietly working on the fourth one. Erica’s ranting worked to their advantage.

“We don’t need or want your assistance.” Erica said out loud while privately sending a whipster to Sylphie.

[TresBelleSoliel whisper to Sylphie]: I’ll hold them off for as long as I can. You take Leviene and run for it.

Sylphie was pleasantly surprised by Erica’s action. Today is a day full of surprises. Inside of that harsh exterior is a kind sweet girl after all. How did they raise Erica to be the prickly jackfruit she is right now? They don’t know what they are giving up.

“Ladies, won’t you reconsider?” The charm Foremost_Interest displayed before was washed away, leaving an ugly visage.

“We don’t need your help.” Sylphie said authoritatively.

“Then don’t blame us for what we are going to do next.” A twisted expression appeared on blondie’s face before they withdrew their weapon.

Sylphie immediately cast Star Flash, breaking the player’s stealth.

Druids have three trees: Shapeshifting, Nature and Celestial. Shapeshifting allows a Druid to change in different animals for either tanking or fighting in melee range. The Celestial tree is the spell casting portion of the Druid tree while Nature contains the healing and support skills.

Leviene was right when she suspected Sylphie went a hybrid spec rather than a pure healing spec.

It is stupid for anyone to go pure healing in the beginning of a new game. First of all, anyone who needs a dedicated healing in the beginning sucks. It’s better the jettison the person rather group up with them. It is another story if the person happens to be family, but unsurprisingly, most of their family is pretty good with video games. Second, healing spells are strong in the beginning and becomes weaker as the player become stronger. It is only towards end game or when they are preparing the fight a strong boss that healers should go pure healing. And lastly, you can’t heal the mobs to death! Trying to solo level as a healer is harder than domesticating a feral cat. It takes a lot of patience and hard work for the possibility of gain.

Sylphie intended for her Druid to become a healer and caster dps while her Stancers become a melee dps with some tanking abilities. She might go into shapeshifting for the stealth abilities in the Shapeshifting tree, but that will much later.

Star Flash is an instant cast AOE spell in the Celestial tree with a 10-meter radius around the caster. It basically works like a flash grenade with a little bit of damage added in.

The players in stealth mode immediately popped out. Once a stealth player takes damage, they lose the stealth abilities. It requires high damage to bring a player out of stealth mode at higher levels.

At low levels, Star Flash is all that it requires.

“Six big guys against three little girls. You dare to call yourselves men.” Sylphie sneered while she started fighting the two people rushing towards them. The stealth class players are still blinded by Star Flash.

Erica took on the other blond while Sylphie engaged in a battle against the black hair wanna be jock.

“Take a closer look. There’s ten of us.” Foremost_Interest said while he drew his weapon, intending to join the fight. It seems Foremost_Interest thinks he’s the leader of the group since he stood back while his ‘henchmen’ started attacking.

“Erica focus on surviving!” Sylphie ordered Erica while she parried an attack from the third member of the group that approached them, a black hair muscle bound idiot going by the name of BlackGod.

Sylphie hid her wince when she parried the attack.

Even though Sylphie was able to peek into the fabric of Arashia, she only had a glimpse of the complex system that govern this world. A glimpse was enough to infer the makeup of Arashia on a theoretical level.

Actually living and fighting in Arashia is a different story.

Although Arashia mimics a virtual reality game, it is not a virtual reality game. Game developers can not create a realistic game because once a player experiences real pain, they’d quit the game. No one wants to play a game for entertainment purposes only to have it mimic the hardship of real life. They came to the virtual world to escape reality!

However, the fighting in Arashia feels real to a certain extent. When Sylphie parried the blow, she felt the recoil in her hand. Sylphie expects the pain to be tone down to about one-tenth of the original pain they would have felt on Earth, but recoil and indirect attacks are reduced by one-fifth.

Still, pain or no, Sylphie chose to fight.

She had an advantage over these losers. They may have numbers on their side, but these repressed closet geeks who sits in front of the computer all day long know nothing about real fighting.

Not only was Sylphie trained to become the next leader of the Deveraux, she was also trained in martial arts. Once she takeover Deveraux Inc. she’ll become a target everyone want to take down. Her bodyguards and secret forces will do their best to protect her, but her safety will ultimately be in her hands.

Judging from the strength of the blow, BlackGod put all of stat points into strength. Sylphie allotted her points into agility, intellect and wisdom at a 2:1:1 ratio. Due to having extra stat points from her alt, Syphie was able to fight somewhat on par with BlackGod.

Unfortunately, the blind from Star Flash wore off so now they have to deal with the three stealth class players on top of the three idiots from before.

Sylphie immediately cast a HOT on herself as well as Erica while dodging BlackGold and the two players coming from behind.

Erica took the burden of fighting Big&Strong and the other stealth player.

As for Foremost_Interest, well, he died.

The sequence of event went like this:

Foremost_Interest got critically hit by Leviene’s Void Ball -144 HP.

Foremost_Interest got critically hit by Leviene’s Void Ball -144 HP.

Foremost_Interest got critically hit by Leviene’s Void Ball -144 HP.

Foremost_Interest got critically hit by Leviene’s Void Ball -144 HP.

Foremost_Interest had died.

Sylphie did say it was six against three. It was their fault they weren’t paying attention. She hope the bastard suffered.

Leviene cast three consecutives HOT, one per person then changed into Rayael to engage the stealth player targeting Erica.

Sylphie smiled while she continues to fight three people. Rayael’s instincts are better when she’s in the zombie state. If Rayael was conscious, then she’d try to help Sylphie instead of Erica.

Erica is a graceful woman. Her mother drilled it into her that when mingling in high society, social etiquette and a dignified aura are the two main criteria others used to judge them. When trying to attract a man looks and grace are the main factors.

“Men are simple creatures.” Janet Taylor Burkett would always say to Erica, “They follow their base instinct. They might deny it, but the first thing they are attractive to is the face, then it is the way a woman moves. They might deny it or say it was your face that caught my attention, but I like you for your personality, but all of that is hogwash. How did they know a woman’s personality when they haven't even talked to them yet? So you have to take care of your face and learn how to walk like a supermodel.”

Sylphie and Leviene may give Erica a hard time for choosing a Sword Dancer as her class, however, it suits her.

Regardless of her compatibility with the class, Erica is still new to fighting. She may be able to take one person on, but she definitely can’t take on two people, nor does she know how to coordinate with Sylphie and Leviene to take down her opponent.

Therefore, it is best of Leviene and Sylphie coordinate with Erica to take down her opponent.

Rayael was able peel off the stealth player from Erica and position herself so her back is to Erica with her opponent between her and Sylphie.

Block.

Block.

Block.

The Guardian rolled under the stealth player’s attack to Sylphie’s side, blocking three attacks sent her way by Sylphie’s opponents then turned to attack one of the assailants with her shield reducing his HP from 63% to 13%. With an Aggrieved Strike from Rayael and a regular attack from Sylphie, the player died.

With perfect coordination, the duo then turned finish off the other stealth player Rayael pulled off of Erica with a Brilliant Sun Fire and an Aggrieved Strike.

Rinse, repeat and all the stealth class character is dead, leaving the two ‘henchmen’ BlackGod and Big&Strong.

BlackGod saw their reinforcement dying within 10 seconds of each other. He tried to contact their ranged back up hiding in the forest earlier but got no response.

The three girls took a little longer to take down Big&Strong since he’s more of meat shield class rather than a squishy dps then turn towards BlackGod.

Sylphie smiled a gentle demur smiled. If Rayael was cognizant, she would realize it was Sylphie I-am-the-Queen smile, and she’d make a beeline for the nearest exit as fast as she could because Sylphie only smiles like that when she giving out punishment, like a queen punishing insubordination. Unfortunately, Rayael changed to Altreyes and is sitting in meditation mode to recover her mana faster, therefore she doesn’t know what is happening around her, not that she did in the first place.

Erica also knew there was no easy way out for BlackGod, so she mercilessly cut off his head while he was paying attention to Sylphie.

Blood splattered everywhere as the head rolled, then disappeared as if it was never there in the first place. The corpse remains.

“This is good day indeed.” Sylphie thought to herself as she braced for Erica’s barrage of questions.

____________________________________________________________________________

“What the hell was that?” Erica yelled at Sylphie unconcerned of the corpse on the cold ground around them.

Maybe because it was a game or maybe because they were trying to harm them, Erica felt nothing as she was cutting them down.

“That was scum getting their punishment.” Sylphie answered in a casual manner, as if killing people was an everyday occurrence.

“Not them.” Erica sneered, then kicked the head of BlackGod away from her, “I mean that.” Erica pointed to relaxed Altreyes meditation to regain her mana.

Sylphie looked around, not understanding what Erica meant. Erica knew Sylphie wasn’t trying to play dumb. She serious didn’t know what Erica was talking about.

“I mean Laurie! What the hell was that about?”

“Ah. That!”

“Yes that!”

Sylphie paused a bit to rearrange her thoughts, “Leviene bottles up her emotions. It may not seem like given her ditzy behavior but she does have a strong sense of right and wrong and she know better than anyone how her actions can affect others. Therefore, aside from her childish temper tantrum she throws once in a while to throw people off to how she is really feeling, Leviene doesn’t go overboard in anything, nor does she care about anything beyond the superficial, family aside.

“However, bottling up her emotion is not the best way to handle her feelings either. When her emotions overload her, Leviene goes on autopilot or she blanks out large chunks of time. I first notice this when we were playing Dark Drake Kingdom. Leviene would come home, turn on the computer, start playing the game for hours at a time. Then she sorts of comes to, relaxed and stress free. She, herself doesn’t notice the problem. I tried probing the issue but she evades it and I wasn’t in the best condition to confront her either, so we left it until now.”

“So, the massive killing machine I saw earlier is Leviene venting her frustration?”

“Yes. From the looks of it, she been frustrated for a while.”

“She was like this before the fight with the scumbags.” Erica said with certainty. It all began to make sense. Sylphie pulled her over here for a talk. It wasn’t because they really needed to talk. It was because she wanted to get her away from Leviene.

“Yes.” Sylphie confirmed Erica’s conjecture.

Erica began to review her memories of Leviene and realize she didn’t know much about her silly cousin aside from the rumors and gossip her mother told her and from what she overhears at family gathering.

Looking back, Erica realize how gullible she was. She truly thought Leviene was a pampered princess everyone flocks to please, never realizing that if Leviene is as she had imagined, she wouldn’t be going to nursing school paid by the federal government and student loans.

Erica graduated college on financial aid as well, but that was free money from her point of view and student loan, with their relatively low interest rates is a good deal as she invests in herself.

A pampered princess didn’t have to worry about student loans if she didn’t have to. Knowing Leviene’s attitude towards debts and interest rates (she hates them with a passion if she is the one in debt), Erica should have known the image she built up of Leviene is completely different from reality because Leviene will never take out a loan if she didn’t have to.

Erica thought Leviene could ‘borrow’ from family and never paid it back. Given her hatred for debt, she’d only take it from an institution if the interest or repayment is worse than taking out a student loan. Since Leviene didn’t have to pay it back, the family money would be her first choice.

It isn’t.

So there is something abhorrent about the interest or the repayment.

“I guess I owe her an apology.” Erica sadly said. She didn’t want to reflect! It is easier for her to see Leviene as a rich spoiled brat than a trouble relative.

“You shouldn’t.” Sylphie denied easily.

“Why not?”

“Because Leviene will use it as an excuse and push some of the problems she had onto you. Believe me, you aren’t ready for them.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the Y’s.”