“–and as you can see, there are numerous mountains in this region, filled with exotic wildlife. From reports earlier today, it has been discovered that one of these mountains is actually a living being known as a Colossal Adamantortoise.”

Despite the fact that Eunjin was reporting on the current situation live just a few feet away from the other soldiers, the mood at the camp was relatively dark for all the regiments except fifth regiment, that managed to reach Jagged Dorsa relatively unscathed.

After logging back in for the day, It was interesting seeing the stark difference in attitude between fifth regiment members, who were active and lively, taking in the scenery without much worry, and members of regiments one, two, and four.

First regiment had the toughest time. On their fourteenth night since departure, an undead horde rose from a lake near their camp site in the middle of the night, as a deadly battle in the Boglands against the undead unfolded. The undead fought until the sun began to rise, whereupon they retreated back into the lake, only to emerge the next day with fresh undead recruits.

Second regiment’s situation was a bit better than first regiment’s, but not by much. They arrived at the scene half a day after the first regiment’s initial encounter with the undead, and were stuck in the same situation. It took nearly a week of intensive battling before either regiment could move on past the undead blockade.

Third regiment never made it past the Boglands. They suffered heavy casualties at the hands of a swarm of bog dwellers and decided to turn back and return to the capital, at the order of the regiment commander. This decision was not made lightly, but because most of the priests in the regiment were killed, the regiment was no longer capable of sustaining itself to Jagged Dorsa.

Fourth regiment’s tale was the one that I personally experienced. Having made it through the Boglands relatively unscathed, we suffered the bulk of our casualties at the hands of Jagged Dorsa’s local flora and fauna, as well as the dwarves’ boulder ambush on the narrow mountain pass.

And then there was the fifth regiment. Having gotten advanced intel from the first, second, third, and fourth regiments, the fifth regiment took a longer alternate path through the Boglands, avoiding all signs of danger at the expense of a few more days on the road.

And that was why so many members of the fifth regiment were treating Jagged Dorsa like a sightseeing picnic. I could see a healer and female thief taking a self video with a sorceress, who was trying to teach them a trending dance. Without a doubt, they were from fifth regiment.

Actually, on closer look, the parted hair on the sorceress looked familiar. Ah, it was Nora. Why was I not surprised?

“No, you open your palm and then move your arm this way,” Nora said while moving the pretty female thief’s slim arms in a waving motion. “Then body roll.”

Well, it was nice to see that at least somebody was taking things easy after a third of our regiment just got murdered, including our own squad’s archer.

Speaking of which, Aeric and Donovan weren’t looking so great. Aeric had his shield over his head as his body assumed a slouched position, and Donovan was picking dandelions out from the ground for some reason, possibly as a self pacifying gesture.

Books was off with the buffalo hunting party, trying to farm some more potions. Apparently he received two significant level 30 abilities, [Barter] and [Merchant Contract]. [Barter] was available to all merchant classes at level 30, and allowed a merchant to receive a one time 30% discount on a single item from any shopkeeper, one time per shopkeeper. Meaning he could get a new discount from every single unique shopkeeper he encountered in the entirety of Eclipse Online.

[Merchant Contract] was a Merchant of Avarice unique ability. It allowed the creation of contracts that were binding via magic, similar to the one we signed while signing up for the imperial draft, with the stipulation that the content of the contract must contain a business transaction.

That actually interested me a lot, because a business transaction was a loosely defined concept. Weren’t slavery contracts technically business transactions? That meant that Books had the power to create legally bound slaves, and that was just one unique application of the ability. If you thought about it, there were endless possibilities to that ability.

Magic in this game really was only limited by your imagination. Who would’ve thought that my [Summon Cat] ability could evolve into [Throw Cat], which I used to distract Haerin and the rest of them when I was being chased in Talos, and even [Jump on Cat], which just saved me from falling to my death?

Ding.

“Hmm?”

“What’s this?”

All the players at the camp received a new update from the Eclipse AI itself.

[Notification: World Event Update]

Due to changes in the world state, the Orc race has now been unlocked for all Eclipse players.

Orcs are a strong and proud race, with large, powerful bodies and a penchant for warfare. Although they are not skilled at the magical arts, they possess extreme prowess in melee combat, and have high strength and vitality growths.

The Orc stronghold is currently situated at the City of Mountain in the north eastern peninsula of the continent.

[Tooltip: Changing Races]

Although the default race at character select is human, new race options will be unlocked as the game progresses. If you choose to change races, you will go through another character customization process and choose a new class, and respawn in one of the bases of your new race.

You may change races as many times as you want, but each race change will cost 20% of your maximum level. Race may only be changed once every month.

Additional stipulations may be added as Eclipse evolves. We thank you for playing Eclipse Online.

Interesting. So the reason the orc race was now unlocked was because of their successful capture of Mountain and establishment of a breeding base there. No wonder Eclipse Online got to be so popular, the game was reactive and constantly in a state of change.

All three regiments that recently arrived were getting settled in Jagged Dorsa, hunting, foraging, and training in preparation for a tough battle ahead. There wasn’t much happening until the regiment meeting, so I decided to log out.

------------

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon today, so I decided to take a walk for a bit, getting in some vitamin D and exercise to stave off quarantine weight gain. People were out on the streets, but were staying a few arms length away from each other.

Things were a bit different these days. The park used to be full of children playing, but now there was hardly a single kid to be seen.

A very pretty girl in black yoga pants jogged by as I was walking, and I almost tripped on my own shoelaces doing a double take. I walked in a circle a few times around the neighborhood, then headed back home. Honestly these days, I wasn’t talking to too many people outside of work. Most of my high school and college friends were busy with quarantine and their significant others. A pet would really be nice to spend the time with and feel less lonely. It was reaching the point that I was even missing Meat Shield, that stupid cat.

Ding.

I walked towards my apartment, noticing that the door to Euphemia’s apartment was unlocked and slightly open.

“Hey, you there?”

I knocked loudly on the wall and stepped inside, a bit concerned. Why didn’t this girl close her apartment door? We did live in a pretty secure apartment complex, but still. Not the best idea to just leave your front door wide open.

“You okay?” I said loudly.

Her apartment was a bit messier than last time, as several opened beer cans were on the table in the middle of the living room.

“Spoooooon…” a voice came from her bedroom.

I opened the door to her bedroom. Euphemia was tucked into her bed with the blanket pulled over half her face. Her eyes had dark circles, meaning she probably didn’t sleep well.

“You know your door was open right.”

“Oh… thamks…”

“... Thamks?”

It was pretty clear that she didn’t sleep at all last night and was half delirious.

Euphemia stuck her hand out from under the covers and opened and closed her fingers.

“Phone,” she said matter of factly.

“???”

“Give phone.”

“You want my phone?

Euphemia nodded cutely, half her face hidden under her blanket as her large round eyes blinked slowly.

“Yep, I need to find my phone, it’ll be faster to just call it.”

Ah. I took my phone out of my pocket, unlocked it, and handed it to her. She toyed with it for a bit, then started tapping the screen.

Bzzz bzzz.

Bzzz bzzz.

Her phone was vibrating from underneath her bed after she called it with my phone.

“Can you get it for me?” she said with an overly honeyed tone.

This bossy girl...

I walked over to her bed and tried to pull off her blanket. “Get it yourself, lazy ass.”

Euphemia twisted her body to defend her blanket and somehow put me in an amateur arm lock, her soft legs wrapped around my head and right arm as she dragged me head first down to the bed. She was light though, so I picked her up with me although she refused to let go of the arm lock.

“Mmmph, you’re suffocating me.”

Her inner thighs were stuffing my face and right arm together like two pillows with a vice grip, and my knees touching the floor kind of hurt, since I was wearing jeans. She was now grabbing my hair.

“Who’s this Yura girl?”

“Huh?” I blinked. What was this girl saying now?

“Who’s Yura and why’s she sending you heart eyes?” she repeated adamantly.

Euphemia had my phone opened to my text conversation with Yura. Apparently she did send me a heart eyes emoji a few weeks ago when I mentioned food.

“That’s my coworker, and why do you care? What are you, my girlfriend?”

“Is she pretty?” Euphemia completely ignored my questions and pressed onwards.

I wrestled my way out of Euphemia’s interlocked legs and reached for my phone, but Euphemia wouldn’t let go of it.

“She’s prettier than you, that’s for sure.”

To be honest, I just wanted to piss off Euphemia. In reality her and Yura were both attractive to the point that comparison was more of a question of preference than anything else. If they wanted to, they could be celebrities, although that was true for a lot of people.

“Ehhhhh? Show me a picture of her.”

“....”

“Pleeeeeease~”

Euphemia batted her long eyelashes and hugged me through her blanket, with a begging expression on her face and her hot breath close to my face. For a moment, she leaned into with her lips slightly parted, until a spark flew near her eyes and she ducked under the blanket with my phone.

Tap. Tap tap.

A minute later, she resurfaced like a breaching whale in the form of a twenty something year old girl with dark circles around her eyes and her hair in a bun.

“Heehee~”

She had one hand over her mouth as she snickered, and another on my phone which was opened to Yura’s instagram page, which was filled with model-y photos interspersed with pictures of food.

Euphemia opened one of the photos. It was a beach photo of Yura in a black bikini from a few months back, smiling at the camera while standing in waist deep water, brushing her hair back. How she managed to have full eye makeup on while swimming was one of the mysteries of women that I would never understand.

“Wow, look at sister’s body, so slim and shapely. And her face too, glamorous like a celebrity~”

Euphemia zoomed in on the screen, taking a better look at Yura’s figure.

“Since she’s just a coworker, you wouldn’t care if I tapped this twice right?”

This bitch.

“Give it back!”

“Nooo I don’t want to~”

I grabbed both her wrists and pinned them above her head, carefully extracting my phone from the vixen’s grasp, but she managed to press the screen right before I could get to it.

“Hehe~”

I repossessed my phone a moment too late. The heart in the middle of Yura’s picture was already pressed, meaning I liked her photo. To be honest, it wasn’t too big of a deal, but nonetheless it was mildly irritating because it made it seem like I was checking out her several months old bikini pictures.

Of course, Euphemia knew this. If I, a normal straight guy possessing the infamous normal straight guy’s slightly below average emotional attunement for social interactions capacity, could sniff out what she was doing, she was more than aware of exactly what she was doing and probably already planning five steps ahead. That was a bit of a mouthful and I wasn’t even sure if that made any sense even in my brain, but the point was that I could say with a hundred percent certainty that this vixen calculated everything the moment I walked into her room, perhaps even from the moment she left her apartment door open.

She twisted her body to the side and pulled her blanket over her head, looking back at me with mischievous crazy eyes that I swore for a moment had spirals in them, like a manhwa character.

“I’m tired now, good night.”

In my experience, a lot of girls were like this. A chemically volatile mix of one bottle of pure white sand labelled pretty, and one bottle of pure red sand labelled crazy, mixed together into a vibrant pink sand with unpredictable explosive properties that could simultaneously be described as pretty crazy, and crazy pretty.

“You were up late last night?” I asked her, trying to flip her over so she would face me although she was refusing to budge.

“Yeah, had a bit of trouble in Eclipse and I couldn’t sleep,” Euphemia replied while tensing her muscles to resist me. She really didn’t want to be flipped over huh.

“What kind of trouble?”

“You didn’t hear the news? Talos is under siege at the moment by the monster coalition, and the royal army reinforcements that were supposed to come still haven’t arrived.”

Euphemia finally gave in and rolled over, staring up at me with sparkling doe eyes and dark eye bags. She held the gaze for a moment, then sat upright.

“Well, since I can’t fall asleep with you here anyway, why don’t we have some fun~”

“Didn’t know you wanted to sleep with me so badly,” I said mockingly.

Bam.

Her foot went straight into my crotch. This bitch had no sense of reservation when it came to physical assault, did she?

“Wait here. Good doggie.”

Euphemia gave me a quick tap on the head, then stood up in her cute animal pajamas and headed to the kitchen. Did she just call me a dog?

I sat on the bed until I heard her open her fridge, then got up and followed her to the kitchen. A few steps later and I was right behind her.

“Hey, didn’t I tell you to stay put?”

“Who told you to call me a dog?”

Her fridge was full to the brim with beer cans, just like last time, with the compartments of the fridge filled with vegetables and produce. It was surprising to see a girl like her have such an inelegant refrigerator stash, but then again this green tea bitch seemed to be a never ending source of surprises.

“Come here, doggie.”

She took a few beers from her fridge and headed back to her room, beckoning me to follow her like a puppy. I resisted the urge to get on all fours and bite her round ass in true dog style.

When we got back to her room, I sat on her plush sofa chair next to her bed, and she sat on her bed and wrapped her blanket around herself like a blanket burrito.

“That’s right, sit. Good doggie.”

Euphemia put down the beers on her table and handed me one before popping one open herself.

“You know, I saw you on stream,” she said while taking a long drink and staring at me with her doe eyes, as if she suddenly obtained a newfound curiosity in me.

“Really?”

“Yeah, [Nora]’s stream. She goes to my university and is getting really popular these days~”

“I saw she’s getting four thousand views…”

“Ya because she’s pretty and everyone wants to spectate Jagged Dorsa from a safe distance~”

We continued to drink. A bit early for a Saturday afternoon but not bad overall.

“Did you see the fight?” I asked her, trying not to seem overly eager to know the answer. I wanted to probe into how much she actually saw of my abilities from the stream. The last time I fought Euphemia, I showed a few of my trump cards like [Restrain] and [Thunderbolt], so I was curious if someone who had prior awareness of my abilities actually saw them during the fight.

“Yeah, although that stream got pretty messy. Did you know Nora hit one of your archers right in the back with a [Fireball]? And I have a feeling it was intentional too~” Euphemia said while giggling.

Judging by her response, Nora’s stream point of view was so far in the backline that I was far from her line of sight.

Euphemia swayed, slightly drunk, as she crept towards me on all fours.