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Forging from up ahead, the foreboding sounds of footsteps on approach just kept growing louder and louder. Apprehension had me materializing a normal iron sword in my clutch, for all the good that would do.
Level 4s aren't exactly the type of players you'd want raiding the dungeon.
Arishia merely kept an amused watch, not even gearing up for a potential fight in our hands. No, just a smile and her arms folded across her waist.
Even for a Level 15, that's pretty cocky.
Within all encounters of life, two choices will always remain as options, only waiting for your discretion to use them. Flight or fight.
I think we all know the appropriate choice… as another dreadful scream filled the open air.
"Yeah, I'm sitting this one out, chief," I said, already in a stance for a hundred-meter sprint, "Bye-bye forever."
I only took one retreating step before I was met with her answer.
"You could run. Then I could catch you. Then I could do things again that you don't want me to."
I paused.
"Then again, I'm not saying I would do it."
I dared another step.
"But I could."
I sighed.
"Or you could stay here with me. Then I could not do those things."
Silent cursing aside, I also felt my face contort to all sorts of things as a multitude of different feelings swept away like the sea.
Begrudgingly, I returned, drawing up by her side. "Explain to me how staying with you is the better option here."
"That's simple," She simply said, jerking her head to three lively silhouettes emerging speedily from a narrow corridor. "You aren't screaming in pain right now."
The stiffness clamping my body shut slowly eased up upon realizing that the three approaching figures were fellow players. Though they weren't mobs, it still wasn't the most welcoming of sights.
"They might recognize me," I muttered.
Arishia merely snorted, "Tone down that ego there, Your Highness. You aren't that famous. Just how many people do you think knows about you?"
"I'd wager to say 30% on day one. But then there's word of mouth and the twisting of details so I'd bump that figure up to a strong 60 now."
The three were finally in meager distance, collapsing to their knees with desperate gulps of air a couple of meters away from us.
"Then guess you better pray that they're the remaining 40%," said Arishia, approaching the three whom had taken notice of our existence.
Reluctantly, I trailed her movements, obscuring my presence with her figure, which wasn't easy since she's so damn slender. I laid a surreptitious gaze on our newcomers as they eyed us with equal scrutiny.
Two guys and a girl. All ranging from levels 8 to 10.
A scrawny looking guy with bright blond hair. Level 8.
Another one littered with enough freckles to be able play connect the dots on his face and form a picture. That one had orange hair. Level 9.
Their usernames were just forgetful doodles of shitpost memes, so I'll leave that up to your creativity. Do what you will with their names, I don't care.
The one that did deserve some recognition, however, was the lady sandwiched between them. Why? Cause at least, she, I knew. And I wasn't the only one either.
What the hell are the chances of this?
A cascade of raven black hair drooping to her shoulders, frazzled strands jutting out like a deranged person. Dark brown eyes, wide-open, meeting Arishia's appraising look.
A smile broke out on Arishia's face, "Well, well, well, what do we have here?" She turned towards me. "So, this is as good a time as any. Care to express your thanks to the nice lady who gave you your infamy?"
The nice lady, out of breath, sputtered out, "In-Infamy? I didn't give anyone-"
Upon catching sight of me, she stopped dead in her sentence, a frozen gaze.
It was an uncomfortable few seconds, as a wave of different emotions came blowing by. Confusion, as her eyebrows furrowed. Shock, as it arched upwards in an instant. And finally, realization, as her lips formed itself to a giant 'O'.
A very good foreteller of what would next slip out her mouth.
"Oh."
Her stare, together with the other two guys', was a very unbearable thing to bear for me. Staring is rude, you know?
More to diffuse the tension than anything, I mustered a response, "Hi, Ayako."
It's no doubt the awkwardness wasn't a feeling exclusive only to me. Ayako felt it too and it showed well on her face.
"Uh… yeah… hi," She finally said after a while, "How goes… the hackin', Cap'n?"
The boys gave mystifying looks of concern and muttered something irrelevant to the plot so I won't bother adding it. But between Ayako's apprehensive look and my reluctance to step out of Arishia's shadow, it was evident they were putting two and two together.
I cleared my throat, "I'm pretty sure I mentioned it before, but I'm not a-"
She got up at once, her hands frantically waving in the air, "Oh, no, no - I know that! Ahh my bad, really shit choice for words." A grimace filled her troubled expression, "We three just got out of a tight spot just now, I get a little jittery - a little loose - when tight spots happen. I didn't really mean to say that… I was trying… you watch my streams… you know… small joke."
"Yeah, no, I get it..." I nodded my head, a forced smile. "Funny."
The sounds of Ayako's feet scampering was one I did not expect to hear, nor did I expect to see Arishia being practically shoved to the side by her. Least of all my expectations, however, was being swiftly accosted by the almost maddening look on her face, mere inches from my own.
Then again… there's a lot - A LOT - of things I did not expect from today, so at this point, it's just par for the course.
Timidness was a prominence in her demeanor, her hands were all over the place as if she didn't really know what to do with them. She also stumbled a few times on her words, but eventually, we managed to progress to the point of basic verbal communication.
"Listen, Sora, I'm really, really sorry, okay? What happened to you, it's all me. But I didn't mean for it to happen, believe me!"
Her sincerity was genuinely unsettling. I don't even know what she was apologizing for.
"Uhh, okay… sure," I said, slowly distancing myself from her overpowering remorse, "What'd you even do?"
"What I did? I streamed you, that's what I did! Turned you into a symbol to be hated and despised, that's what I did! You tried to warn us, tried to help us, and we brushed you off - I brushed you off."
My eyes drifted cluelessly for aid. Arishia was there, grinning away like an idiot, barely restraining laughter through that smile of hers. Meanwhile, the two guys standing off to the side, though befuddled, continued remaining useless to the situation so they were ignored.
Ayako continued, voice smothered to a whisper, "Should have listened and we didn't, now we're paying for it and instead of blaming ourselves, we went ahead and blamed you… convinced ourselves you didn't try hard enough, didn't do enough, whatever makes us sleep better at night, right? I didn't know so many people thought that way, I didn't know hate could be so scary."
I returned to find a watery shimmer in Ayako's gaze, and that more than anything, spurred me to respond.
"Alright, I get it! You feel guilty. Very, very guilty." I attempted a reassuring pat, which malformed instead, due to my rigidness, into a slam dunk onto her shoulder. "What is it then, you want my forgiveness? Cause I'll give it to you, it's not like I blame-"
"No, I don't want your forgiveness!" She shouted, shaking her head fiercely, "Get mad! Shout, spit, hit me - do something besides brushing it off! I know the repercussions of that stupid stream and please don't try to deny it. I only wish I was being hated alongside you, instead, you had to bear with it all on your own."
Her guilty conscience was honestly overwhelming. For the first time, I actually found myself at a total loss for words. Well shit, do something, this girl's nearly on the verge of tears here, at least acknowledge that fact, come on!
On impulse, my shoulders gave a half-hearted shrug.
Good job, me.
"Not much comfort, but you couldn't have known it would turn out like this," I said, scouring the details of mostly everything in sight except for her expression, "Unexpected things always happen and hey - you don't see me crying about it."
She gave a quiet sniffle. "I ruined your life."
"Can't ruin what's already destroyed, unfortunately. Trust me, aside from a couple of dirty looks, I'm not really all that affected by it."
To the side, Arishia was suddenly assaulted by a spontaneous fit of violent coughing that she barely attempted to suppress with a closed fist.
Something tells me that her little scene wasn't at all spontaneous as it seemed.
Ayako shook her head again, "You don't lie very well, do you?"
"Anything to get you to stop, I guess," I replied, a hand ruffling the back of my head, "Not really fair to lay this on me all at once, you know."
Finally, in motions so slight, the curve of her lips instantly dissipated all the gloom that had festered. The same smile and all its implications of optimism that won her an audience spanning across the country now on display once more.
Her hand made to wipe the small tears that had formed, "I know that… but I just needed to let you know, somehow, that not everyone in here hates you. That I don't hate you, at least… as little comfort as that sounds."
Ayako, honey, you have no idea how much comfort that is. Holy shit, why did it take this long for someone to say that?
"Yes, yes, so happy you manage to clear your conscience of all wrongdoings" Arishia spoke out loud, with all the subtlety of a blunt axe. "But this is neither the time nor the place."
As much as I wanted to disagree with her, I agreed. The dungeon had no care nor regard for character development when there's danger to be plunged into.
Arishia turned to address one of the guys. "I believe it was one of your voices that graced my ears with agonizing screaming. Just what were you running from?"
True to a background character, someone else had spoken in their stead, that someone being Ayako.
"We don't know, actually. I was in the backlines of a big group that had tons of NPCs with them. Somewhere along the line, things got messy, and they told me to book it and run. So they sent me running with those two."
"Protect the queen type of situation, huh? You're level 10 though, just five levels from mine, so you might have been useful in a fight instead of a detriment." Arishia raised an eyebrow. "How many of them in the group were fans of yours?"
"I don't know, probably around half? I don't keep track of these things."
I joined the discussion, "So you saw absolutely nothing?"
"The last thing I saw was a bunch of NPCs and players running about, probably retreating from the thing that attacked us."
My gaze magnetized to the ominous corridor they emerged from. "Where even were you when the attack happened?"
Instead of a response, all I received was silence. I turned towards her and was met with an intense gaze.
I cocked my head in bemusement. "What?"
"I'm surprised, like legit." She said, sounding true to her word. "If it were me, I'd want nothing to do with helping out on boss raids after being treated like shit. You're nobler than I thought. If you didn't already have my respect then, you'd get all my respect now. Props to you."
It was hard to maintain a straight face of solemnity. Especially difficult when you have a red devil sniggering by the sidelines.
"Ah, yeah, well - that's just me, I guess. The good samaritan."
Arishia patted me on the back, much to my complete and utter dismay, "Yep that's him alright, Sora the Benevolent. Anyway, back on topic, where were you before all this?"
Ayako swept her hair to the side, deep in recollection, "I remembered someone saying we were close to the boss room. It was a squarish type of room… took a while to run from there to here that's all I got."
Ambiguity wrapped with an extra layer of ambiguity. The sense of danger was undefined, and it was clear that we wouldn't get a clear grasp by simply asking questions.
Arishia seemed to be thinking along the same lines, for a sword manifested in her firm grasp and immediately afterward, she began making a beeline towards the foreboding entrance.
But not before turning back to greet me once more with a mischievous smirk, "Well Mr. Samaritan, care to take a look with me?"
I forgot how much I do not like her.