Log Horizon IC

Karakui

The Slightly Villainous One
Original poster
FOLKLORE MEMBER
Invitation Status
Posting Speed
  1. 1-3 posts per day
Writing Levels
  1. Intermediate
  2. Adept
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Female
Genres
Fantasy, Modern Fantasy
The fox-girl slowly opened her eyes, raising one arm to shield them from the sun that beat down intensely upon her. "What is this? What happened to the world?" She spoke out loud, to no one in particular. It was then that she noticed that her arm was not clad in the jumper she had been wearing earlier, and instead wore the silver armguard that was her signature item for that character. "Wait... is this Elder Tale? Am I inside the game somehow?" She had heard about the Sword Art Online event in the news a while back. "Could it be related to that?"
 
It almost reminded him of Sword Art Online. Almost. Then, he remember that SAO was set twenty years or so into the future, was ACTUALLY a virtual reality video game, and started off with the truth of the ‘death game’ being revealed by a jackass game developer who pretty much forgot why he did any of this by the end of that game.

On the other hand, the glorious timekiller of a MMORPG that was Elder Tale used only the true master race of gaming consoles: PCs, and didn’t have anything to do with connecting to ones neural network or whatever the fuck that meant. And thus, the blue-haired teen couldn’t help but scratch his head, confused as to how he actually got here. Magical computer screens sucking him in? A god from another world summoning him to this Elder Tale lookalike? A powerful delusion brought forth by the stresses of his reality, and his desire to escape from it? Welp, regardless, Cororo, the unorthodox Monk, didn’t care a lot at the end. After all, he might as well consider it a vacation, eh?

Getting off his feet and stretching out his tanned arms, Cororo took in a deep breath of fresh air, enjoying the sunshine and the unpolluted sky. It definitely wasn’t a bad place, this virtual reality, Elder-Tale-rendered variation of Akihabara. The half-collapsed buildings had an oddly ‘safe’ feel to them, and, due to the fact that literally no one made an ‘ugly’ character in MMORPGs, the town was filled to the brim with pretty, cute, beautiful, handsome individuals, all of them sporting similar expressions of confusion. It was just a game, so why were they so serious? Might as well enjoy the fantasy while it’s still there, right?

Cororo laughed silently at the foolishness of others, before noticing a familiar character model. “Oi, Kuroaki!” he called out, waving, “Enjoying paradise?”
 
Kuroaki turned as she heard the familiar voice of a player she often partied up with. "Cororo! Still running that ridiculous magical tank build I see." She walked over, stumbling a little what with having to deal with the weight of three extra tails. "Don't suppose you have any idea what happened here do you? No one else seems to." She glanced around at the other players who had been trapped there, most of whom were sat on the ground, looking about as confused as she expected she did herself. "This is Elder Tale, right? But without the keyboard how do you think we're supposed to do combat?" She smirked a little as she had an idea that amused her. "I bet it's like those old superhero things and we have to shout out the name of the skill, kind of like voice activation."
 
Cororo grinned as Kuroaki almost faceplanted, before turning his palms up in the air in an admission of ignorance. “No idea at all,” he replied, “But it’s probably magical? Like, I doubt there’s anything scientific about getting sucked into a game world while your MMO was patching.”

He stretched out his limbs once again, this time surprising himself with the fact that his leg could go up a full 180 degrees and touch his nose, without any strain at all. It looked like the Monk class was full of yoga practitioners, huh? The dark-haired boy scratched his chin as Kuroaki, clearly bloodthirsty, went on to talk about combat and skill usage. “Well,” he said, “Glad to see you’re already prepared to go on genocides again. I’d probably die of embarrassment if I had to shout out my skills…but hm…I’m pretty certain there’s a way to access the skill bar. I mean, it’s not like our Bags of Holding can be accessed without the inventory menu…”

And, with that, taking full advantage of his flexibility as a Monk, Cororo began making odd symbols in the air, hoping that something would trigger the ‘hotkey’ that would bring out the menu.
 
"Genocides were the best part of this game. They always were." She smiled as she watched the monk do his peculiar dance. When she was sure his stamina stat, if that still existed, had decreased sufficiently, she gestured to an empty area in the top right of her vision. "I already found it. It's up here. You just have to look there and think about which menu you want to open. But that'll be a real inconvenience when it comes to hunting things, which I assume will need to be done, so I'm guessing there's a more useful system. Well anyway, you know how we were going to set up a guild? I finally got enough money to buy a guild building, so we should see if we can find the others. Also, I'm starving. Let's get some food."
 
Violeta woke up to see that she was in a very familiar place. She hasn't been here herself before, but she felt like she has seen this place before. TV? Webpage? Old photographs? She had no clue. Not until she walked in the direction of a sign that says Akihabara and ended up at Akihabara in a matter of minutes.

"Elder Tale?" She questioned. A game she use to play has come to life. She has heard of one instance before, but she never thought this would happen to her. "Maybe I should've left gaming when I could." She pouted to herself as she walked through the gates. "Tavern? Tavern." She asked herself as she made her way towards a well known tavern. The Moon Cloud.

At the Moon Cloud, there was a bouncer NPC. "Hello, good sir." She said as she started to walk in through the door, only to be stopped by a body moving in front of it. "Hey! I was allowed to coming in before this was a game." Violeta argued. "Sorry anyone under 5'1, can't be allowed in without someone above that height. Even so, no booze for them." Violeta continued to argue to the guard outside.
 
As she waited for her Monk-y comrade to figure out the menu systems, she looked around for a place that might distribute food. She knew that it made sense for their to be a hunger system, given that this world was their new reality, but she was a bit annoyed that apparently she started out hungry. Her eyes hovered for a second on an NPC-run tavern, one of the most popular in Akiba. It was then that she realised she recognised the tiny person who was attempting to enter the building. "Hey, Violeta!" She called out, waving her arm above her in an exaggerated fashion. "I was just about to message you..."
 
If Kuroaki had actually waited for Cororo’s stamina stat to decrease by any noticeable amount, the two of them would probably have been in that same place for another hour or two. Thankfully, the magical monk’s attention span was shorter than his stamina bar, and soon, he stopped. Following the fox-girl’s directions, he envisioned a skill tree and grinned when a holographic screen popped up before him. So it was still a game after all. He was hardly as worried as Kuroaki about the inconvenience though, and commented, flicking the screen away, “Well, don’t know about you, but I’d imagine that pressing a button on a screen would be easier than doing whatever mumbo-jumbo incantation shenanigans, eh? And hey, you’re a sorcerer! All you have to do is point and click~”

It was clear that Kuroaki was getting to her hyperactive stage though, bounding from the topic of guilds to the topic of her stomach. How was it that she was even hungry? More specifically…who even bought food in a MMO? “Just go chug a health pot,” the Monk suggested, still fiddling around with the menus. Didn’t look like there was a setting option, sadly. He’d love to see what a low-resolution, pixelated Kuroaki would look like, if only to mock her by take screenshots of it.

Oh, wait, screenshots in Elder Tale could only be taken by third party software. Ah, what a pain.

Perking up from his menu explorations at the mention of their cleric-friend’s name, Cororo smirked at the sight of her getting blocked off by an NPC bouncer. “Wow, didn’t know you were such a rebel, Violeta. Trying to get wasted already?”

That did bring up the question though. Was it even possible to get drunk?
 
"Hey, Violeta!" Violeta heard so she halted her argument with the NPC. Violeta turned around to see it was Kuroaki and Cororo. "I was just about to message you..." Kuroaki spoke to her.

"Really? Then what are the odds we meet here." Violeta said politely. She didn't check to see if everyone she knew was in the game as well. She just wanted food and wine. “Wow, didn’t know you were such a rebel, Violeta. Trying to get wasted already?” Cororo replied to her. "How do you know? I just wanted some wine to calm down, and relieve the stress of being stuck in a game. Unfortuantly, they are discriminating against short people who are old enough to drink!" Violeta managed to say the last part loud enough so the NPC bouncer could hear her.

"Anyways," she started "What brings you guys here?" She asked
 
"Did you really just ask that? I imagine what brought us here was exactly the same thing that brought you and everyone else here." She walked up to the NPC bouncer. "This little cleric is with us. Don't worry, I'll make sure she doesn't drink." The man scowled, but stood aside. She thought something seemed off about him though, as if he wasn't just a collection of pre-scripted dialogues anymore. "Come! Let us dine!" The inside of the tavern was about as she expected - noisy, dimly-lit and packed with NPCs and Adventurers alike. She bought a large bowl of some kind of stew and a mug of an equally nondescript liquid, and took a position on a small table close to the wall.
 
Wait, what. Violeta was actually over 20 years old? Well, no, that would totally make sense under the context that Violeta and Kuroaki were both middle-aged otaku who simply used female avatars…but wait, what the hell? Why would a tavern discriminate against height, of all things? What if they were just one of the midget races, like dwarves or werecats? “Geez…,” Cororo shook his head slowly, “But yeah, bouncer bro, as a responsible Monk-parent, I’ll make sure my daughter doesn’t consume a single drop of alcohol within the premise of this building.”

With a laugh at his own joke, he sauntered inside, taking in the…really actually rather depressing atmosphere in the air. While the NPCs seemed to be chattering loudly enough, it looked like all the adventurers were just glumly looking at their plates of food. Clearly, medieval cuisine wasn’t to their liking, which did make some sort of sense. Ah well, it’s not like he’d be going to buy any food the first place. Settling down on the same table as the fox-girl, Cororo took a quick glance at his inventory, before waving one of the waitresses over.

“I’ll have twelve…flagons, I guess? Of your strongest drink. “

Because yeah, now that he thought about it, he really did want to see if getting drunk was possible.

“Oh, and how’s the food?” he asked, turning back to the sorcerer.
 
"Twelve flagons? Bit much don't you think? Or are you planning to see if you can die from alcohol poisoning here? The food isn't bad actually. Could be better if it didn't have quite so much salt though."
 
Violeta decided to sit with her friends that let her in with her slice of apple pie. Cororo ordered twelve flagons of the strongest drink they sell here. "Do you mind giving me one of them? I am 21 after all." She asked as nicely as she could. Before she got an answer she shoved a piece of the dessert in front of her into her mouth. Inside, she was hating the food. All it tasted was like sugar. She contained her disgust. "I could also help save you from that alcohol poisoning as well."
 
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Shirayuki Momoka thought it was a completely normal day. She had gone on her daily quest for loot and ate a few things at a nearby tavern to replenish her health because she had gotten hurt quite a few times from a plethora of enemies. She was sure that if she hadn't used Kurimuzonkirā, she definitely would've died.

She laughed at herself in the real world. She needed to get a life... And fast. But, she did have a date that she was going to go to in a few hours. Which she was very excited for. She had gotten ready and was going to get something for herself to eat, but hunger came second to her desire to complete one more dungeon. And once she had done that, she was going to log out.

That was when she miraculously found herself sitting at a bar. She shook her head. What exactly am I doing here? I thought I was sitting at my computer, about to log out. Was I passed out drunk? No way... I wouldn't have done that the day before I had a date... She looked around and thought this bar seemed oddly familiar. She looked around and then saw someone she had teamed up with a few times. A fox-girl, whose name she couldn't recall at the moment.

The fox-girl and her friends seemed to be going on with life as usual. I-Is this Elder Tale? The fox-girl... I've teamed up with her a few times. What was her name? She paused for a second to ponder what her name was. Oh! Never mind that! I'm inside ELDER TALE! She seemed both excited and concerned at the same time. Some of her best life experiences were inside this game. When she had finally reached level 40, she screamed. Her hard work had paid off and she was sure that the game would bring her even more fun, if she just waited for the new expansion pack. And when she did, it was amazing. Until this. She was sucked inside the game.

WHAT ABOUT MY DATE?! I NEED TO GET BACK! She searched for the options section of her main menu. Wait, where was the main menu? She had no idea. That's when she decided to ask the fox-girl and her friends.

"Hey! D-Do you know how to access the main menu? I need to get out of here! I have a date in about an hour!"
 
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Kuroaki turned in her chair, to find a somewhat familiar face. "Oh, hi Momoka. Menu's just up here". She gestured to the top of her vision, as she had done so earlier. "Unfortunately, it seems the log out button doesn't work anymore so I can't see you being back in time for that date. Say, how about us four go and slay something? I'm eager to find out how much has changed."
 
"H-How can you be so calm at a time like this? We've been stuck inside of a game. This shouldn't be possible! This sounds so much like a weird anime!" She was a bit disappointed that the log out button wasn't working. I can't even go on my date anymore... This is what I get for being 21 and playing games all the time. She sighed heavily. I suppose I should make the best of this situation if I can't go home. She ordered a piece of pie from the bar because she hadn't eaten anything in the last few hours. She waited a few seconds until the pie was actually given to her. "You know what? That doesn't sound like such a bad idea. I'm also a bit curious about the new system of play. I think it'll be a bit more fun now, since we actually get to physically move instead of just pressing a hotkey." She waited for other people's responses while she took a bite out of her delicious looking pie. But once she actually put it in her mouth, it... It tasted like... Not a piece of pie. It tasted like some nasty mush that was only made to look like a piece of pie, but she ate it because it was the only thing that would satisfy her hunger.
 
“Twelve flagons might not actually be enough to kill me, you know,” Cororo responded airily, stroking his chin, “After all, Monks DO have high HP…even if it’s offset by my Race of Ritual traits…”

Of course, that wasn’t actually the plan, and when Violeta took notice of the one dozen frothing wooden mugs of Elder-Tale-esque moonshine, the dark-haired man grinned, pushing the drinks towards the cleric. “It’s not like there’s Driver License IDs here anyways, Violeta,” he said, “Go ahead and chug it all!”

Before the drinking challenge could begin, however, another familiar face popped out of nowhere, this time the human assassin that saved their ass when they almost got wiped during a boss raid. To this day, Cororo wasn’t sure how Momoka was able to solo a boss when she had no survivability as an Assassin, but, well, he wasn’t going to ask. It was probably super sketchy stuff like scripting and what-not. He smiled wryly at her panic, and simply sat back and enjoyed the half-happy, half-gloomy atmosphere of the bar.

“Hey,” Cororo pointed out, “Maybe your date was playing Elder Tale and got sucked in as well? Or is he not that type of person, Momo? And please, it’s not like the Wii got super popular and fun just because you could move around in it. But I’ll be down for some legal genocide…at least after I see Violeta chug 12 flagons down.”

Really though, he wasn’t looking forward to seeing blood and guts spill whenever he fought a monster. Hopefully Elder Tale was still a PG-13 game, but seeing how real everything was now…troubling…
 
Violeta took the drinks happily. "Thank you, Cororo. Apparently, the bouncer doesn't think the same thing." She said with a tone of resent. She lifted the drink to her mouth to get a taste when she saw a good assassin, Momoka. Violeta has personally seen her skills before, but it may not mean much coming from a celric. After 3 more flagons, she spoke without feeling any hint of getting drunk. "The new play should be interesting. As long as we fight low levels, just in case I can't use my healing magic. I wouldn't be able to get you out of a pinch then." Violeta commented. She was surprisingly sober.

After much chugging and emptying of cups, she was able to finish the last remaining 8 flagons left. "Not drunk, and it didn't taste so good. At the same time, I feel pretty full. For a well-known tavern, it could use a better selection of drinks." She then looked towards the entrance where the bouncer was. "See? 12 drinks and no one stopped me! That NPC must be scripted wrong." She mentioned loudly.
 
"Guys... what if they're not scripted anymore? What if they're actually sentient people now and they're plotting to take over the world!" She said it with an obvious tone of humour, unaware that that was somewhat the truth. "Well anyway. Looks like we're all here. Lets go get a trophy item to celebrate the opening of our new guild!
 
Momoka giggled. "That sounds good to me. I'd like to get a feel for things. This character is a bit taller than I actually am, so I'm having a bit of trouble walking." She attempted walking around in a circle, but she stumbled more than a few times. The circle soon turned into what looked like a drunken fit inside the tavern. She was sure that the others were going to laugh at her. "I promise I'm not drunk. I swear." She chuckled at her own clumsiness. Attempting to be funny, she tried to saying her next sentence in a slurred tone. "Well... I'm ready to go. What about you guys?"