Private - First times

Ashnor Ironth made his way down the path from where he had first logged in to Terrasphere, and was now on his way to the closest village he knew of, "Honeyhome" as the map called it. Ahh firsts, he though, Firsts were the best, and especially in a game like this, where this entire concept was a first for him, it was great. There had already been plenty of firsts in the time that Ashnor had been logged in: first steps in VR, first kill, first player met; along with plenty more to come he was sure.

Ashnor took in the scenery as he walked, with all of the massive trees of different types, be it oak, elm, ash or birch; they were there. Along with all sorts of shrubs and bushes, complete with assortments of berries, non of which Ashnor would be willing to eat with out identifying them first. Ashnor continued on walking and began to daydream - another first in VR - about what he was going to do once he reached Honeyhome, perhaps become blacksmith - that was why he chose the mastery in the first place - and help the commo-

Ashnor's thoughts were interrupted as something rather large rammed into his lower body, toppling him and causing him to let out a loud grunt as he hits the ground. Attempting to recover from his fall, Ashnor turns his head around to see two growling wolves, one of which was recovering from ramming into him. "Well crap, how did I not notice you two?" He manages to get to his feet and equip his hammer, readying himself as much as he can for combat. "Give it up for being distracted, I suppose."

@Angel Singer

 

"Eep!" Angel nearly fell out of the tree she'd been climbing. Why hadn't she figured out if one could climb trees in this world or not? It seemed you could, which was... well, everything was really cool considering her brain literally thought that this new virtual body was her own. "Whelp," she dangled for a moment. "This is how I die. Climbing an oak tree." she chuckled to herself, amused by her own joke. Good thing no one else was around though! That would have been embarrassing~

Then she heard the voice of a guy speaking to something that was... growling? She looked down and saw the voice... er... the guy... facing down a couple of big, angry wolves. She swung enough to latch her feet onto the lower branch and balanced on it again before sliding down into a sitting position. "Uh, do you need help?" she called down to him. She hoped he didn't. It was hard for a girl who didn't like pain to be the heroine she envisioned herself as in this world. Fortunately the wolves both seemed to be of an appropriate level. She'd been learning the color coding of their names and stuff.

 

Ashnor readied himself and his hammer until the wolf that had first attacked him lunged, surprising him and causing the hammer to swing wide of his target. luckily, Ashnor managed to dodge the wolf but that left him open to an attack. The second wolf then attacked, clamping down on Ashnor's arm. Ashnor yelled out in pain from the bite and raised his hammer, activated the bludgeoning skill and brought it down onto the wolf's head, stunning it and causing it to let go of his arm. Ashnor backed up from the pair of wolves, clutching his injured arm as he heard a voice come from somewhere above.

"You know, help might be a bit useful, if only to make this a bit quicker" Ashnor suggested, glancing between the girl in the tree and the wolves. "I mean, you aren't just gonna watch me kill them, right" Ashnor chuckled and returned to looking at the wolves. The bite on the arm from the wolf had done a fairly significant amount of damage to him, probably about a sixth of his total hp, he guess. That wolf that got stunned also took quite a beating from the hammer to the head, and was looking a fairly worse than Ashnor himself.

 

Angel hopped down from the tree with a 'hup' noise. She'd been fighting some of the weaker creatures lately, so she was pretty sure she had combat somewhat down. The girl landed in a crouch and popped up, a somewhat more serious look on her face. The easiest way to fix the situation was to cast a shielding spell on the guy, weak though it was since she was still pretty new. So, she did. A quick selection later, she was casting the spell as the game took over her body for a moment. It was always a weird sensation.

"There!" she called out as she readied her sword. "That should help for a hit or two!" she ran up to stand beside him as the wolves attempted to regroup, themselves. "Sorry, I'm not too skilled at combat yet, but I'll try to help okay?"

 

"Hey, thanks" Ashnor says, giving a quick nod to tree girl. As the previously stunned wolf approaches Ashnor, he prepares to strike the wolf, his hammer glowing. Ashnor swings the hammer right before the wolf reaches him, hitting it's legs and sending it sprawling."HA, see how you like it, wolves" he shouts at the wolves after hitting it, then backs up next to tree girl

"Hey, so tree girl, what exactly does that spell do?" Ashnor asks, also then realizing that he also has spells of his own. Ashnor quickly swipes his hand to the side, opening the magic menu as he begins to skim the descriptions of the spells.

 

"Uh... It's like extra health kind of?" she was momentarily distracted by answering the question and the more injured wolf took that opportunity to attack her. She squeaked and tried to move out of the way but the sharp claws on its feet still scratched their way across her arm. "Ow!" she winced, but instead of immediately recoiling she turned around and slashed through the wolf, which crumpled dead as it skidded to a stop.

"Oh hey you must have almost killed that one," she pointed out as she whirled around with an energetic hop in order to face the remaining wolf. "Okay, you can have that one," she took a step or two back once she was sure it wasn't already trying to eat her and moved to start a healing spell on herself to dull the pain. "Ow.. ow... ow..."

 

"Ah ok, I was just wondering, thanks" Ashnor says, acknowledging what she said with a few quick nods. As he finishes reading through the two small spells he has, Ashnor selected the first spell and his hands began to move along on their own. This was quite the strange experience for him, being in control of everything about the Ashnor other than his arms.

As Ashnor begins casting his spell spells, a few pebbles and small rocks rise up off the ground, and once finish, launch themselves over at the remaining wolf, only about four of them hitting. This still dealt a decent amount of damage to the wolf.

 

"Yeah.... no problem," the girl sighed as the pain receded. Why wasn't there just a 'no pain' setting anyway? Ugh. Everything else about this game was amazing! Maybe she should just concentrate on staying away from things? But she couldn't do that while she only had protective spells in her arsenal...

She shifted focus on the creature as it fell back from getting hit by the rocks. Angel bent down and picked up her own rock. "Well, this is a VRMMO right?" she gave him a playful wink. "That means we can try different things." The wolf moved to lunge but it was pelted by the rock she'd thrown and whimpered, then it was struck again by her sword as she swung into it.

"Wow, this one seems to have more health than the other... unless there's like critical hits or something?" she blinked as the wolf began to shake off the hit. "Eep!" she hopped back. "Quick kill it!"

 

Ashnor chuckles as he watches the girl just like, throw a some rocks at the wolf. "Heh, yeah I suppose, but it won't be as good as something you have a Mastery in." As the wolf tries to recover from tree girl's attacks, Ashnor makes a final attack on it, his hammer glowing as it swings like a baseball bat towards the wolf's abdomen. The wolf hits the ground, shudders for a second and then is still.

"Whew, that was pretty intense, wouldn't you agree?" Ashnor turns to tree girl and outstretches his hand for a handshake, "Oh my name's Ashnor by the way, Ashnor Ironth. What's your name, I'd prefer to not continue calling you tree girl, you know."

 

"... You call me tree girl?" Angel giggled in amusement before doing a little curtsy in greeting before taking his hand gingerly. "Close, I'm Angel." She winked as she took her hand back. "Fighting things in this game certainly is... unique..." she glanced at the dead wolves, her grin twisting into a thoughtful sort of grimace. The dead canines were just a bit too realistic for her tastes.

"Anyway, nice to meet you," she concluded. She wasn't exactly in the habit of running to people's assistance yet, but it was also hard to ignore people in trouble. She didn't like to see the good people and NPC's killed after all. "I actually haven't met too many guys in my short time on this game. I didn't realize MMO's were so popular with girls."

 

"I mean, what else was I to call you? It's not like I knew your name at the time." Ashnor gave a quick laugh. Angel's giggle brought a smile to his face and he says "Nice to meet you angel, and yeah, it feels pretty darn realistic. Although I doubt either of us has had any real combat experience in real life." Ashnor tries tossing his hammer into the air a few times and catching it while he talks. "So Angel, what were you doing up in that tree in the first place?" Ashnor points at the tree angel came down from with a questioning look on his face.

"Anyways, I was on my way to the nearby village, Honeyhome I believe" Ashnor points in the direction he was heading down the path originally, "Should just be few minutes walk from here." He says, making a gesture with his index and thumb close together. "If you wouldn't mind of course, you could join. On the way there I was thinking we could talk more." Ashnor suggests with a shrug, he wondered if she would actually take him up on that, she didn't seem like she was in a hurry to go anywhere at the moment.

 

"Uh?..." Luna didn't have an answer for what she should be called instead. 'Miss' maybe? Like her teachers called her when she was in trouble! No wait... "Yeah good point." She looked straight up into the tree above her. "I was seeing if I could climb it, you know?" she shielded her eyes as she tried not to fall over while looking straight up. "I'm like, really excited to see the limits of this game!"

She paused mid-look and moved her gaze down to his face when she was asked to walk with him. "Er, I suppose I'm hungry. I think it's me and not real me. Hunger in video games is so weird when they're this immersive!" she rubbed her bare belly as it growled, but she still checked her meters just in case. Yup, her character was hungry, but on the plus side that did remind her to check the real world clock. "Sure! I bet villages have someone who would like, sell me food or something right? Not just that first one I went to? I might have eaten all the apples..."

Angel's diet was pretty healthy just because in the real world she wasn't allowed sweets or caffeine since she was already hyper. "Er!" she blushed and giggled again. "What I mean is, I'd be silly not to walk with you if we both have business in town right? Plus you were a gentleman and invited me~"

 

"I suppose you could say the sky's the limit in terms of what the game can do" Ashnor says to angel and pointing up at the sky. He then chuckles, laughing at his own joke. "Yeah, but, that does seem like cool thing to try and figure out. How deep does this game go." Ashnor says this with thoughtful look on his. As Angel goes on about eating something in town, Ashnor realizes that he too is a bit hungry. "Oh yeah, I totally for got that there were needs for the characters in this game." Ashnor quickly opens up his menu to check his stats. Health had a tiny bit off , Hunger and looked about 3/4 full, Thirst is a bit less than that, While fatigue was almost full, Energy was down almost half way - looked like Geomancy was pretty tolling on it.

"Yeah, turns out I'm pretty hungry too Good thing we are heading to the town. And yeah, Honeyhome probably has like, an inn or a tavern with cheap food we can get." Ashnor rubs his stomach, imagining what sort of food they would have in town. Who doesn't like food anyways?

Ashnor laughs and begins talking in the most fake posh accent he can muster, saying, "Why yes mad'am, that would be quite silly of you. And of course I appreciate your compliment." Ashnor steps to the side out of the way of angel and points both his hands down the path like some sort of butter or something. "Ladies first?"

 

"If ladies go first I'll be in front of you," Angel chided playfully. "It's really hard to have conversation when standing in a line...." she took on a thoughtful pose. "Unless I walk backwards..." she shook her head and hopped over beside Ashnor. "Let's just walk together okay? Real world me isn't that much of a proper lady anyway. I mean, I'm a lady but not a Lady with like a capital L. I think it would have a capital L...?"

"Anyway!" Angel tore herself away from that line of thought and started moving forward energetically, practically skipping and hopping the first few steps. She did have to actually slow herself down for the guy to keep up. "Let's see what the town has in store, yeah?"

 

Ashnor laughs again as he begins slowly walking along the path with Angel. Ashnor was amazed at how much energy this girl had. "I suppose it would be quite hard to do things like that, yeah." A smile grows across Ashnor's face as he listens to Angel talk, shaking his head passively and quietly laughing to himself. "Not a Lady with a capital L, are you? Huh, well i suppose that makes two of us then." He says, intentionally leaving what he said a little vague, gotta keep her guessing, he supposes.

"Yes, yes, at this pace, it'll be dusk by the time we get there" Ashnor (again) is surprised by how how energetic and fast she is, actually having to go into a bit of a jog to keep up with her before she slowed herself down. "Well, we can only imagine how it will be for now, since we still have a little ways to go until we're out of the forest, then it should be located a short distance after that." Ashnor pulls up the map in his menu to check the distance.