Chapter 0043

Sylphie lead them three miles out of the city. The trio traverse paved roads, well worn paths and lumpy terrains.

Well yes, but not really.

The Aeralis is a race with flight capabilities. Road conditions doesn’t matter when they are flying.

“Finally, we’re here.” Leviene gasped as she landed on the ground. In movies, the director or is it the producer like to make things dramatic when the main character reach their destination by having the main character kiss the ground or get on their knees and pray. Leviene use to laugh at these dramatic moments. Who would be stupid enough to kiss the ground? Seriously.

A certain acrophobic Perrian Let with big black and white wings that’s who!

“If you were afraid of heights then why did you choose a race with wings? It goes against common sense. If you have wings, why do you have to be afraid of heights? You can fly. It is a part of your instinct to take to the skies. If you were afraid of heights then you should choose a land bound race instead of a race whose sole advantage is flight.

And don’t give me the I’m-trying-to-get-over-my-fear bullshit. We both know you would rather stick your head in the mud and pretend everything is alright unless you are forced into a corner.

Your lack of common sense never cease to amaze me....”

You have earned 2 Endurance points.

Really! Seriously you stupid game! 2 endurance points! It is totally worth it! Leviene gloated over her stat points… until she lost her breakfast on the nice ground she just kissed.

“Kyaaah!” Seeing Erica running away from was totally worth it. The vomit is digital anyways. It disappear after three seconds. Leviene’s rumbling stomach takes a lot longer to settle down, but who cares!

After a bit of a rest, Sylphie broach the topic Erica was previously harping about, “Why did you choose a flight class if you are afraid of heights?”

“I’m not scared of heights. I’m scared of the descent.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” Erica sniped.

“Actually it does.” Sylphie said with a bit of thought. “Levienes fear leans towards visions problem rather a psychological one. When we were playing Dark Drake Kingdom, I think you were having problems when your avatar had to fallen off a cliff too. The fast drop simulated by the graphics gave you a headache. You always ask me or your brothers to do that part for you.”

A moment of silence followed the Sylphie’s explanation.

“Ah. That make complete sense. You don’t have a sense of direction. You are blind as bat. Now you have motion sickness.”

“How you do equate me getting dizzy when I get blurred vision with motion sickness, Erica.” Leviene wanted to pick a fight, although not so much with Erica as with the condition she’s in and the label slapped on her.

“It is the definition of motion sickness. Motion sickness is a condition in which a disagreement exists between visually perceived movement and the vestibular system’s sense of movement. Visually induced motion sickness, in motion is seen but not felt due to the motion being detected by the visual system but nothing is sensed by the vestibular system. This generally occurs when people go watch IMAX or 3D movies. Going by your symptoms, you have a little bit of both, though more focused on the visual aspect instead of the auditory or movement aspect. Though I wonder if it could be more considering your sense of direction and your inability to recognize the same pattern over and over as you pass by it.”

“You have motion sickness too? You know the definition by heart, so either you or someone close to you have it. You aren’t close to your parents. The constant complaints mom gets from your father about you not visiting or accepting any visitors is a pain.” Leviene is really curious about Erica. She knows superficial information about Erica but nothing on a personal level.

“Not me. A friend of mine has it though.”

“You have friends?”

“I’m not a god damn neet like you. Ofcourse I have friends.”

“Enough!” The impatience voice cut into the squabble. Sylphie didn’t mind them chatting but they have more important things to do. “We didn’t come out here to pick at each other’s wounds. We came here to grind.”

“Where are we by the way?” Leviene asked. She’s not much of a leader. During the entire flight, Leviene focused on the mechanics of flying and landing. Fly until the flight bar is drained, walk until the flight bars filled up then fly again. After repeating the cycle over and over again, Leviene slowly developed a headache, leading to the previous episode.

“Pixie Hills.”

Pixie Hills, as the name implied, is large plot of land with many rolling hills and zipping fist size mosquitos, Leviene assume were the mobs they were farming.

The mobs ranged from level 2 to 15. The weaker mobs were around the edges while the higher level mobs concentrated on faire ring on top of the highest hill.

Leviene gave Sylphie an indecipherable look.

“What?”

“How are we going to fight that?” Leviene said with exasperation. Erica’s cluelessness is acceptable. Sylphie’s leading them to fight quarter size mobs zipping around the area faster than a fly hopped up on crack is the problem.

“The mobs here are hard to kill for their levels so most players don’t come this way. We can kill them without the worrying about other players tagging our mobs. Also, we need to work on our team work. It wouldn’t do us any good to overkill an easy prey, so Pixies are good for testing our ability to work as a group. I noticed our secondary stats are not acquired through equipment, but earned through hard work. We can level Precision and Dexterity here as well.”

“Our kill rate won’t be high.” Leviene pointed out. The experienced player doesn’t mind mindless killing for loot, however the situation needs to fit her criteria, namely the experiences per time spent, respawn time of the mobs and the available herbs/ores/lumber she can farm during her down time.

Since she didn’t pick a collecting profession, the last point is moot now.

“It will could be higher than other players since they have to compete with each other for the mobs while we hunt unobstructed.” Syphie continued, “Let’s farm here for a bit before we decide if it is a good spot or not.”

Erica looked dismayed but agreed to Sylphie’s proposal. The trio decided to put Sylphie spot healing watch with her druid while Erica and Leviene went straight dps. Once they got a rhythm going, Sylphie can switch to dps.

Leviene gleefully smirked. “Serves you right! Make me go full healing while you when hybrid healing and dps. Now you have have to heal us!” Leviene thought to herself. She’d never say it out loud though.

Sylphie switch the loot experience from Equality in Combat to Friendly Freebies. Equality in Combat splits the experienced from each kill equally among the party while Friendly Freebies gives the player with the most damage twenty five percent, the player who killed the mob twenty five percent and the remaining fifty percent is split among the group. By doing so, it allows Leviene to level all three of her characters without them leeching off her kills too much. Leviene need to kill three times more than they do.

That isn’t right. She needs to kill three times more than Erica and one and a half times more than Sylphie.

Leviene was about to start grinding when she yelled, “Ah I forgot about the wardrobe mod.” The short Perrian Let open up her character screen, pushed a button down at the right hand corner and carefully about the wardrobe mode for Leviene, Altreyes and Rayael.

The greedy Perrian Let cried a river when she saw the three crystals she conned from Lady Valdis of Tainsoar disappear.

“What is wrong with you? I’d thought you’d be happy to earn money, instead you look like you filed for bankruptcy. Wait, you’d be happy to file for bankruptcy because you have no money and the bankruptcy will wipe away your debts. You’d have to suffer from bad credit for the next seven year, but can borrow money from Sylphie at a reasonable rate. Sorry to burst your bubble but a bankruptcy doesn’t wipe away student loan debt. Hmm… you look like a cheating spouse who had their wages garnished.”

“Ugh. I’m just seeing my hard earned money disappear when I buy the wardrobe mod.”

By now Sylphie notice the duo doing nothing but chatting. It peaked her curiosity since the duo rarely have a civil conversation.

“Where did you get the money to buy a wardrobe mod?”

“I completed the quest so the NPC gave me money.” Leviene look at her cousins in puzzlement, “Didn’t the NPC gave you money for completing the quest?”

“No.”

“Just the skill.”

“Oh.”

“What do mean oh you silly twat?” Erica raged. Perhaps it was a good thing the two never became friends when they were younger. Erica might have suffered a heart attack before she graduated high school due to Leviene irritating behavior.

“I meant your charms aren’t good enough to earn you money.” Leviene taunted.

“Are you looking for a fight? If you are, I’ll give you one.” Erica retorted.

“Could you tell exactly what happened?” Sylphie queried.

“I finished the quest, but the cheap NPC gave said I already profited enough so she won’t give me more loot. I cried a bit and she threw in the money.” Leviene said with an air of superiority.

Sylphie became very suspicious. Leviene isn’t living up to he silly hijinks. There has to be more to it. “How did you complete the quest?”

“Oh. I owe another NPC a favor for giving me the quest item, turned in the quest and acted cute for more loot.” Leviene tried to play off her debt to the other NPC but Sylphie wasn’t buy it.

“What exactly did you promise the other NPC?”

Leviene looked at her two cousins, shrugged her shoulders and admitted, “I promise introduce one of my relative to him.”

“You sold us out you crazy idiot!” Erica scream and launched herself at Leviene. Sylphie stood by to watch the fight.

After two minutes of a one sided beat down by Erica, Sylphie asked, “It wasn’t Anya was it?”

“No. I specifically excluded Anya. Everyone else is fair game. You guys can take care of yourself. Introducing a guy to you guys shouldn’t be a problem. And...”

“And?” Erica growled.

“And I get the feeling he wasn’t interest in the two of you.” Leviene helplessly replied. She knew her answer wasn’t the best considering she isn’t the best judge of character out there but she can’t say it was a feeling she got now could she?

“Based on what?”

“Uhhh… your looks?”

Sylphie turned her back on the idiotic duo as Erica launched into another one sided beatdown.