6Yuuki:So much hard work... -_-
KuroHi: I know right, but it's worth it!
Disclaimer: I do not own ½ Prince or Second Life.
Shadow's POV
We formed our party and made our way to the level 15 monster fields. As a way to gain experience fast, we created a system. First, I would aggro the monsters and lay a web of wires for them using Wire Trap, a new skill I learned. Once they were caught, Yuuki would take them out in close combat with the help of Aaandy. Meanwhile, if some monsters managed to escape, I would use my second skill, Dagger Throw, and take them out from afar. Although I had to sacrifice some time in retrieving my twin daggers, it was a pretty effective strategy.
After around one hour of training, we had all managed to gain around 4 levels. Our current levels were: BlackShadow- 16, Yuuki-16 and Aaandy-14. I managed to keep my wings a secret for the meantime, hiding whenever the time limit was near until the cooling time ended. I didn't want to go through the trouble of explaining why I was an elf with wings. While we were resting, Yuuki noticed something about his weapons.
"Huh? Why do my wrappings look different?" he said. I looked at the bandages around his hands and noticed that they really did look different. They were more new looking, almost like they were even made of some type of metal. Suddenly, the ground began to shake and a huge gust of wind knocked us over.I looked in the direction of the wind and screamed as I saw the giant figure in front of us.
"DRAGON!"
A level 25 dragon was currently rushing towards us, shaking the earth with every step. "Wire Trap!" I exclaimed, creating a web of wires in an attempt to immobilize the dragon. The wires wrapped around the dragons body, but snapped in a matter of seconds.
"Left Straight!" exclaimed Yuuki as he sent a powerful wave of energy towered he dragon. It successfully hit, knocking it back. Above the dragon, a display read, "-75HP."
"Aim for the eyes!" I shouted, as I threw one of my knives at the dragon. "Dagger Throw!" The dragon was quick to react, and blocked it with its wing.
"We need something like an archer," I thought as I looked around us, trying to figure out a strategy. I was too preoccupied with my thoughts to notice that the dragon was getting closer to us until the last second. "Shit!" I thought as the dragon began to bring its foot down upon us.
"Sonic Arrow!" shouted an unfamiliar voice. A shinning arrow zoomed past me from behind and lodged itself in the dragon's left eye, knocking it backwards.
I quickly turned around to see a human archer, poised and ready for battle. He had golden brown hair that covered one of his orange eyes. He was wearing a layered robe, the bottom layer gold and the top layer black. The black portion was trimmed with gold ribbon and was fastened at the neck with a beige owl pin. He had a matching beret and longbow.
"Add me to your party so we can defeat this thing!" he shouted. Yuuki quickly sent him the invite and we began to battle the dragon.
"Right Hook!" exclaimed Yuuki as he leaped upwards and delivered a critical blow to one of the dragon's wings, shattering the bones.
Using the distraction, I retrieved my second knife and ran under the thrashing dragon.
"Twin Slash!" I shouted, making a deep X-shaped gash on the dragon's stomach.
"Balistia Shot!" shouted the mysterious archer. An arrow surrounded by a whirlwind of fire whizzed past us and bore into the dragon's right shoulder.
Meanwhile Aaandy was using his staff to defend us from any incoming mobs as well as using Medium Healing to heal the team at the same time.
Within minutes we had defeated the dragon. We quickly skinned the dragon and even took some of its meat. Apparently, dragon skin can be used in many high level armor and the meat was very valuable. We picked up 8 gold coins, and a few silver. After we had distributed it equally, we turned to the newest addition to our party.
"Wait, is that you Kenneth?" said Yuuki as he strode to the guy.
"Alex? I mean, yeah it's me, but call me by my in-game name, Hank," Hank stated as he grabbed Alex's hand and shook it.
"Hank here was apart of our Muay Thai class. Remember Shadow? The guy who always low kicked everyone."
"Oh yeah, now I remember!" I exclaimed. Hank looked very different from how I last saw him. In the past he was pretty skinny and average, but now he had a larger, more muscular build.
Yuuki began to chat with Hank. We found out that he had just moved to our neighborhood and was going to go to our school starting tomorrow.
As Yuuki was talking with Hank, I noticed that his wrappings looked different again, they seemed to extend further up his arms. "Hey, Yuuki, could you let me see your weapons?" He held out his arms, and they had in fact changed. I light bulb went off in my head as I realized what type of weapons they were.
"Dude! Do you have any idea what these are? These are evolving weapons!" I exclaimed.
"Evolving weapons?" questioned Yuuki as he tilted his head to the side in confusion.
"Evolving weapons are rumored to be a new type of weapon that is not just a growing weapon, but changes its form as it levels. It continues to get stronger as the owner gets stronger. They are supposed to be extremely rare, even rumored to surpass godly weapons!" I explained.
I could literally see question marks coming out of his head as I finished explaining. "*Sigh* Just never EVER loose those wrappings alright?" I concluded. Yuuki nodded his head and went back to talking with Hank.
"Would you like to join our group?" Yuuki asked.
"Sure, I'd love to!" he replied enthusiastically.
"Let's see, we have a thief, brawler, priest, and archer now. I think we should get a mage and a bard now to complete our party." I announced.
"Ok, but what's our team name going to be?" Aaandy asked as he swung his staff, accidentally hitting a level 18 flame slime. The slime became really angry and started to chase Aaandy. Soon, a few more flame slime joined in, chasing Aaandy around our group as we sat down and rested, pondering what we were going to name our team.
"How about The Box Brigade?" suggested Yuuki.
"Why that name?" Hank asked.
"I like boxes."
I smacked Yuuki on the head. "We can think of a team name once we find two more members. For right now, it is almost time for me to wake up. I'm going to log off right now. See you guys later." I signed off and removed the visor.
Once again I got ready for school, changing into my second persona. As I stepped out of the building I ran into Alex again and we walked to school. Apparently, Kenneth was transferring into our class. He had immediately recognized Alex and began chatting with him excessively about Second Life.
I had asked Alex beforehand to keep who I was a secret so that I would not gather unneeded attention. He agreed and refused to answer Kenneth when he asked who exactly BlackShadow was.
Luckily, I looked very different in my school disguise from how I had looked when we were younger. Alex told Kenneth that BlackShadow was one of their old friends from Muay Thai class who moved away. Kenneth soon gave up on trying to get info and instead suggested names for our team to Alex. Later in the day, Alex told me some of the names, but none seemed to stick with us.
Later that day, we signed on to Second Life and to my surprise, Aaandy had found two more members to add to our group. What was even more unexpected was that both of them attended our school as well.
"Hey guys, I'd like to introduce to you Arashi6 and Monte. " Aaandy first motioned towards Arashi6, an elven bard.
Around 5 foot 10, he had a light skin tone, medium length curly brown hair that partially covered his pointed ears and deep red eyes. He looked very agile and thin, but you could tell that he was not weak. A scar ran across his face, from his left to right cheek. He wore an open black dress shirt that exposed his tanned chest, a white bandanna tied around his right bicep, a leather studded belt, black skin-tight jeans, and knee-high leather laced boots. On his back, he had a large black guitar case that had a leather strap strung across his chest. One silver stud earring was on his left ear, and he also wore a silver necklace in the shape of a moon.
Next, Aaandy motioned to Monte, a demon mage. He was dark-skinned, and his eyes gleamed with different colors, his left a bright blue, while his right was a warm chestnut color. Although shadowed by his hood, I could make out a pair of small purple horns, surrounded by straight jet-black hair that framed his triangular shaped face, ending barely touching his shoulders. He was around six feet tall, and had a medium build, not too muscular, but not too skinny. He wore a black cloak that went behind his shoulders. The hood that was attached went over his head and ended in a point. Underneath the cloak, his armor consisted of light chain mail underneath a black leather tunic trimmed with red. For pants, he wore a pair of black cargo pants. In his hands, was a metal staff with a green gem embedded on the top, surrounded by a spiral case. He also had a bronze pendant around his neck shaped like a teardrop.
"Well, now that we have a decent group, we should compete in the Adventurer's tournament that is going to be held today," I suggested, "Since they released global, the Second Life developers decided to have an additional tournament this year."
"How about we all go to the inn to discuss some strategies or hang out in the meantime?" Monte asked. Everyone agreed and we started to walk towards town. When we arrived, we noticed a big crowd around one of the tables. As we came closer, we saw that a few players were having a casual game of poker. All of us besides Aaandy decided to join in. He had left to go compete in a pie eating contest on the other side of the room.
There was only one space available, so we each took turns playing. Monte went first, sitting down at the table as the dealer dealt him his hand. Yuuki stood in the corner with his arms crossed. The rest of us surrounded Monte and watched the game go on. Monte had a bad hand, but was able to bluff his way through the first half of the game. The second half, one of the other players took the chance of taking on Monte's bluff. Monte lost badly, and began to sulk in the corner across from Yuuki.
Next was Arashi as he stepped up to the table. However, he soon lost as badly as Monte. Both Arashi and Monte started sulking in the corner.
"We suck," Arashi said tracing the ground patterns.
"Agreed," Monte replied doing the same. A depressing storm cloud hovered over the duo.
I sighed and sat in the seat. I needed to win the money back. I looked at the cards dealt to me, they seemed pretty good. The other players made their bets, sadly they didn't bet as much as I would have liked. In the end I managed to win with three kings, earning a good portion of our money back.
After me, Hank joined the table, and quickly won us another good sum of money. He was pretty good at bluffing and intimidating his opponents. He had earned back almost all of the money we had invested.
Finally, Yuuki joined the table. He took a seat, looking very nervous. Considering his bad luck, I highly doubted that he would be able to win back even the small amount we had left to earn. When he received his cards he seemed to sulk, seeing his expression, his opponents began to raise their bets as much as they could.
I began to get a bit nervous, hoping that by some miracle, we wouldn't come out broke from this game. Yuuki tried to bluff and followed through with their bets. The other players set down their hands. They were all great cards, and they began fighting amongst each other arguing over who had won.
BANG! Yuuki suddenly slammed his hand on the table. The room went silent as the players turned and looked at him nervously. He lifted his hand to reveal his cards, four aces.
"Alright! I won!" exclaimed Yuuki as he collected all the copper and silver coins. Not only had he earned back our money, he had doubled our funds!
"Wow Yuuki, I can't believe how lucky you are to win with all aces on the first hand. Considering your usual luck, this is a huge surprise," I remarked. The other players began to leave, hanging their heads down in shame.
"I know right!" He put the coins in a pouch, and I quickly snatched it away from him.
"And considering how irresponsible you are with money, I'll be handling our finances." I stored the pouch and looked to the other side of the room. Aaandy had won the pie eating competition.
"And the winner is Aaandy with a total of 200 pies! In second place is Chompy with 15 pies!" said the announcer. Literally everyone in the room sweat-dropped at the huge difference in numbers.
Aaandy was standing on the platform, laughing while he was being handed a pouch of silver. I walked over to him and snatched it, switching it for a leftover pie from one of the other competitors. He quickly forgot about the money as he started to eat the pie.
"Make that 201 pies," corrected the announcer, a look of exasperation on his face.
"Hey guys!" called out Yuuki as he motioned towards us. We walked over to the group.
"What's up?" I asked, Aaandy following close behind.
"I just thought of a name for our team! How about we call ourselves The High Aces?" he exclaimed.
We all thought for a moment, and as we looked upon each other's face, we knew we all had the same opinion. We liked it.
"The High Aces it is!" we all said.
"Guys," interrupted Aaandy, "I'm still hungry."
We all collapsed onto the ground. "Way to ruin the mood." I thought, as I took out a few silver and gave it to Aaandy to buy food with.
After lunch, we made our way to the Adventurer's Guild to register our team name. Afterwards, we made our way to the tournament area. As we signed up, I noticed that we were receiving a lot of stares from girls, and I mean A LOT of girls.
I also noticed a few guys staring at us in envy, probably because they weren't getting enough attention. I sighed as I knew what had caused all of this, our looks. Our team is practically full of bishies!
Without warning, the girls began to swarm around us, and every step we would take, they would follow. Some even attempted to grab onto us, but we managed to dodge their grasps by a fraction of an inch. Yuuki got pretty ticked off at all the crowding, and blew his top off.
"GOD DAMMIT!" he yelled as he punched the ground, creating a giant shock wave that sent many of the girls flying away with hearts in their eyes. System Notice: Player Yuuki has killed... Another batch of around 8 names showed up, and Yuuki lost 80 fame. Player Yuuki has learnt new skill: Mallet Punch.
I coughed lightly as the smoke cleared, revealing Yuuki surrounded by a giant crater. "Well, that takes care of one problem. Now, I'll go sign us here," I told the others as I left to go register our team into the competition, and drew a team number from a box. "Let's see, Team 486?" When I came back to the group, I noticed a few more craters in the ground. I let out a huge sigh as I heard another system message.
System Notice: Player Yuuki has received a bounty of 500 Silver Coins. Has received alias: "Demon Fist Yuuki"
"Greeeeeaaat..." I thought as I rolled my eyes. Yuuki was standing there laughing maniacally, he was just asking me to hit him. WHAM! I delivered a sharp punch to the back of Yuuki's head, creating a lump the size of a baseball.
"We really need to teach you social skills," I said as I tossed him a small health potion. "We are Team 486, our match is in 30 minutes, get ready."
Yuuki suddenly became serious, "We need a battle strategy. I will be the close range striker, attacking from the front with Monte as support with defensive earth spells along with some offensive if needed. Hank should be stationed a good distance away, and attack the center with ranged attacks. Shadow, I need you to sneak around and attack from the back. I know it will be risky since you're attacking alone, but we will attempt to keep the opponent distracted. Arashi will protect Aaandy and back us up with ranged attacks. Aaandy of course, will be healing us, but be wary of your surroundings. Both of them will be able to bring up our stats with various buffs as well. Got it?"
I rarely saw Yuuki get serious but when he did, I knew he would always thoroughly think things through. We agreed with the strategy and headed off to our first match. We were matched up with Team Sparrow.
We stood in the tunnel as they announced the teams. "To my right is Team 254 Sparrow!" cheered the announcer. I heard the audience cheer and clap for the team, so I assumed they were either good looking or really popular.
"And to my left, is Team 486 The High Aces!" said the announcer, signaling us to head out. Yuuki and I stepped forward, followed by the others. As we left the shade of the tunnel, the crowd became dead silent.
I remembered hearing about a similar occurrence when Second Life had just come out in Taiwan. Apparently, the leader of Infinite City, Prince, and the Odd Squad had entered the first ever Adventurer's Tournament when they had first formed together. The crowd was said to be so silent that you could hear a pin drop when Prince and his team first came out.
I looked at the other team. They consisted of two male warriors, a female healer, a female archer, and a male mage. I noticed the two girls were staring at us with hearts as eyes. I turned to Yuuki who had multiple tick marks surrounding him, he began to mumble.
"Damn bastards not even one clap, I'll kill them many times over."
"I think they aren't clapping for another reason," I mumbled.
Yuuki's POV
"Battle Begin," the announcer yelled. I ran forward in rage followed by Monte, backing me up in my charge. Shadow quickly followed, running behind us in our shadows. An arrow whizzed past us and headed for Aaandy. Luckily, Arashi had blocked it with his guitar case. We quickly stopped at our positions, and realized they had a similar strategy to ours. Two figures rushed out of the enemy's group, a warrior and the mage. The mage quickly revealed his element as he sent a large tsunami towards us. As the tsunami roared towards us, Monte quickly raised a shield of rock. The water slammed around it with a loud crash, and Monte pushed the shield forward, clearing a way.
We both quickly ran behind it, and a bright light surrounded us. I soon felt the buffer spells take effect. I saw Shadow latch onto the shield and understood her plan, I needed to keep the opponent distracted. As soon as she flung herself up, I punched through the shield with a Left Straight. The shield sent a large cloud of dust and left our opponent startled. I quickly located Monte, "Monte, launch me up." He seemed confused but nodded, he raised his foot and stomped on the ground. A huge rock ascended from the ground, throwing me up into the air. I quickly rose above dust and noticed the shadow of the warrior and mage. I was soon out of the dust cloud and saw Shadow hovering next to me, black wings beating rhythmically. I was at first surprised at her appearance but smirked, they suited her.
Shadow's POV
I latched onto the shield of rock as Monte sent it forward. Using the momentum, I flung myself over the wall and into the air. I disabled my Hidden wings, and hovered in the air. I didn't really care about hiding my wings anymore, I even wondered why I hid them in the first place. I heard gasps and squeals from the audience, mostly girls, but ignored them and focused on the match. The wall of earth crumbled with Yuuki's punch, sending a plume of dust swirling around and filling the air.
Soon, I noticed something fly through the cloud heading near me, but as the dust cleared away from the object, I realized that it was Yuuki. He looked at me, at first surprised, but quickly turned serious as he gave me a smirk. The look on his face, a mix of child-like ambition and mischief, made me realized what he was planning. With a smirk in response, I began to race towards him. I released my wires and began to wind and shape them around Yuuki's fist.
Yuuki's POV
Shadow quickly flew at me and began wrapping my fist in wire. I was glad she had realized my plan with just a smirk. The wire soon began to take shape in seconds as we free fell. Her wires began to spin around me at a ridiculous speed. The spinning of the wires made be a bit dizzy, and I felt like puking. However, I shook it off and focused on my opponents.
When Shadow was finally done, I was only a small distance away from the ground. "Spinning Iron Mallet!" I yelled out as I swung my wire-encased fist to the ground, causing the ground to shake from the force of impact and create a giant crater. Several pillars of light flew from the dust cloud.
Shadow unravelled the wires, and I landed back on the ground in a crouch. I tried to stand up but stumbled a bit. It felt like my brain was still spinning. After a few seconds of recovering, I looked around. The entire platform was barren except for me and BlackShadow. I had killed all of our opponents as well as our own teammates.
"Ah... We over did it." I sweat-dropped as Shadow landed next to me.
"Uhh... I think we went a biiiit to far on this one..." Shadow whispered to me as her wings disappeared.
I knew our team mates would be pissed. Heck, I would be pissed too if I were killed by my own teammates. Both the announcer and audience were left speechless.
"Umm... Do we win?" said Shadow as she waved to the announcer.
The announcer snapped out of his trance and yelled, "T- Team 486, The H-High Aces have won!"