Chapter 266: Just Preliminary Things...

Chapter 263: Just Preliminary Things...

“Hey!” Artaphernes called out excitedly to Aegis and his members, just as they began to reappear from tiny specs of light forming together. Aegis could hear him before he could see him as his body finished the teleportation process within the simulation, and by the time it had fully formed his body back into the entrance hall of the Kordas arena, he saw Artaphernes and his party walking over to him. “How was the first match?”

Aegis didn’t reply right away, instead glancing to the side where Quinn, Yuki and Tullan were all awkwardly avoiding his eyes. Their reaction made it clear that they’d been watching the ‘match’ unfold.

“Uh. Went great. Was easy.” Aegis shrugged.

“Same.” Artaphernes replied with a nod. “I bet the first couple will be like that. It’s usually only the last two that are tough in these preliminary matches.” Artaphernes explained.

“Yeah, that makes sense.” Aegis nodded.

“Alright. Well, good luck.” He gave Aegis a quick pat on the shoulder while sending friendly nods to the others.

“Thanks.” Aegis replied.

“You too.” Pyri smiled as they watched Artaphernes’ group huddle off away from Aegis’. Once they’d gone, though, it fell deathly silent amongst Aegis’ party. The awkward silence continued to linger for some time, but Aegis felt the uneasiness being placed on him, and eventually he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Is everyone really going to keep making a big deal about it? It’s not a big deal.”

“Some will, but it’ll only bug you if you yourself think it’s a big deal.” Quinn shrugged.

“Well, I don’t, so...” Aegis grumbled back at her.

“Yeah, right.” Darkshot chuckled. “You know, what I don’t get is...” he stepped forward and eyed Lina and Aegis curiously, noting that Lina’s face wasn’t bright red despite her avoiding his eye contact. “This time around, it seems like you’re way more embarrassed than she is.” Darkshot motioned to Lina.

“Yeah, I noticed that too...” Pyri scratched her chin as a mischievous grin grew over her face. “Care to explain?”

“I love it when they do my job for me.” Hae-won said to Aegis’ audience, leaning forward on her chair with a fake, virtually simulated bag of popcorn in her hand. She quickly began throwing the popcorn into her mouth and munching on it loudly.

“Mom, you said you wouldn’t be weird.” Aegis glared at Pyri.

“I’m not the one being weird here.” She tilted her head and raised an eyebrow at Aegis. Aegis saw this and turned to the others, who seemingly confirmed Pyri’s perspective.

“Uhm. It’s okay...” Lina smiled. “I’m just happy to be closer to Aegis... It’s still just a simulation and, well, it’s not our real bodies, right? It was nice to feel close though, so... I am happy.” Lina replied bashfully, fidgeting her fingers while looking down at her toes.

“Oh, what a cute and honest answer.” Pyri replied with a look of disappointment.

“Ah. Ahahaha...” Darkshot rubbed his hands together as he saw Aegis’ face suddenly go bright red again. Rakkan glanced from Darkshot, to Aegis, to Pyri in confusion. “I finally got it.” Darkshot pressed his hand on Aegis’ shoulder and let out a long drawn out sigh. “The mistakes of your youth have finally caught up with you, my inexperienced MMORPG player friend.” Darkshot shook his head condescendingly at Aegis.

“What? What’s he talking about?” Quinn turned to Yuki, Tullan and Pyri, hoping to get an explanation. Instead, though, they all shrugged back.

“Oh, allow me to explain...” Darkshot bowed politely to everyone.

“Don’t you dare, or I’ll kill you.” Aegis glared at him, causing Darkshot to quickly step back away from Aegis with no hint of him intending to stop.

“It’s very simple. Our lovely neighborhood shadow master Lina, here,” He motioned to Lina dramatically, “is a grizzled MMORPG veteran. She’s skilled in not only playing, but in character creation. She spends a great deal of time tweaking her character's body and appearance into her idealized form of beauty. That is what she presented to her boyfriend Aegis the night before.” Darkshot explained, while Lina smiled awkwardly at Darkshot for a brief moment before she too had picked up on why Aegis was acting so defensively about the situation.

[Aegis’ team has won the match. Now exiting the arena...]

A few moments later, they were teleported back to the Kordas arena.

“Nice job!” Quinn cheered at them.

“I wonder what spell they were gonna cast, though?” Tullan asked curiously as he closed out his livestream viewer to look upon Aegis’ group.

“Better we didn’t wait to find out.” Pyri shrugged.

“Still, that seemed a bit easy...” Darkshot shrugged.

“When you fight against gimmick teams, you can usually just brute force them down. At least, that’s what my research told me.” Aegis shrugged.

“Mhm.” Pyri nodded encouragingly at him. “Was a good call. In other games, we had a saying. If your opponent starts doing weird, non-meta stuff, the solution is always the same... You walk up to them and just hit them. Almost always works.” Pyri chuckled to herself.

A few meters away, a bright flash of light appeared and quickly collected, forming out Artaphernes’ party members as they had finished their matches.

“Oh, how did your match go?” Quinn asked them before their bodies had finished forming. If she’d waited to see the dejected looks on their faces first, she likely wouldn’t have asked.

“We’re out.” Artaphernes sighed while looking down at his feet.

“Heh? Seriously?” Tullan asked.

“What happened?” Yuki asked. Artaphernes shook his head and began marching away, heading out of the arena. Only Anazia was willing to look up and answer as they walked past.

“Seraxus.” She replied coldly. The name was enough to send a thick tension into the air. The laughter and small talk died from that point onward - they watched as Artaphernes’ group exited the arena, and remained completely silent until the next match was ready.”

“We’re ready to enter our third preliminary match.” Aegis declared the registration NPC.

“Very well. I will transport you to face your opponents.” The NPC replied, after which Aegis’ group was broken up into small flecks of light and teleported away from Quinn, Tullan and Yuki.

“The matches are going to start getting longer from here on in.” Trellin spoke to his crew. He was standing at the front of one of his three airships as they were hovering in the night sky, above the forests surrounding the city of Kordas. The lights from the buildings were shining brightly on the darkened landscape before them.

Behind him, armed members of the Shattered Pirates were preparing their various winged beasts for combat. They were fastening saddles to the backs of gryphons, wyverns, hippogryphs and various other creatures.

“Our intel reports that the only airship Kalmoore currently has in operation will be the Sky Darling.” He pulled out a long brass telescope and extended it, then pressed one end up to his eye and peered at the city of Kordas. “It’s currently docked at the Skyport Tower, so it’ll be an easy hit and run job on that front. We’ve also discovered that the top guild has been working with carpenter guilds to begin construction on Airships that can fly without using light stones...” He moved his telescope over the city until spotting the shipyard in question.

“Three are in progress. If we destroy their Sky Darling, they’ll accelerate construction and still likely have a way off this island. That’ll mean our mission fails.”

“So what should we do, boss?” One of the Shattered Pirates asked Trellin eagerly.

“Well...” Trellin smirked as he began fidgeting with his interface, until pulling out a large sac from his inventory. “I made a special order just for this mission. Let’s give that kid a taste of his own medicine.” Trellin plopped the sac down and opened the top, to reveal the contents of the bag to his crew members. A collection of brightly glowing red flower petals were gathered within the bag, which brought smiles to the Shattered Pirates crew.

“We attack both targets simultaneously once Aegis’ party enters their 5th preliminary match. That’ll be our distraction. They won’t know what hit them. Everyone, wings up at 30.” Trellin shouted, making sure he spoke loud enough that the crewmembers of all three airships could hear him. They replied with a resounding, proud roar of cheers. UppTodated from