Chapter 032

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‘ ‘ for thoughts.

“ “ for speech.

* * for actions.

Please point out any mistakes/inconsistencies you find and feel free to comment on anything regarding this FF.

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Warning: May contain mature content (18+) of an adult nature. Read at your own risk.

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Asunder Online (and all its chapters) by fidelc123 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Full thanks to Mecani for Proofreading this chapter!

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While Jack was gutting and skinning the bear cub, he was felt fear through his telepathic bond with Charlie. Looking around he found his summon hiding behind a nearby tree. He willed Charlie to come near him, which his summon did reluctantly. He raised his right hand with the intention of casting a fire bolt at him, when his summon instinctively backed away from him.

Jack was puzzled at this behavior of his summon. He questioned his summon mentally, but all he felt through their telepathic bond was a constant fear. He then realized that this was the first time he had used his Spirit Eating abilities in front of his summon. His summon being a fire spirit, was naturally scared at this display of power.

Jack then noticed that his companion had finished butchering Chester’s corpse with a practiced ease. In contrast, he was doing a haphazard job of the bear cub corpse. He motioned him to take over butchering the bear cub while he engaged with Charlie telepathically.

Instead of using words to state his intentions, he used a combination of images and emotions telepathically with it. He conveyed that his spirit eating was only for foes, and he would never feed on him. He recalled the time when Charlie had gone Berserk when he was in pain, and his genuine affection for it. He also conveyed how Irfit had chained his Spirit Eating, and their entire bargain.

He explained to Charlie that he had sacrificed a part of this abomination willingly, to get him, and as such would never use it on him. After a while Charlie warmed up to him, though his summon was still a bit cautious. Jack started feeding his summon firebolts.

By the time Charlie was unsummoned, the feedback he had gained from his summon had regained most of its usual enthusiasm. He turned to his follower Bob, to notice that the Bear corpse was neatly skinned and butchered, except for the hack job he had done on it at first.

Jack: “Looks like you are practiced with skinning and butchering. So you do eat meat.”

His follower looked genuinely puzzled.

Bob: “Why wouldn’t I?”

Jack: “Weren’t you a guardian of the druid coven? I thought that they would all be vegetarians. You know being in tune with nature and everything.”

Bob: *snorts* “And killing for food is unnatural?”

Jack: “There were those giant animals with intelligent eyes there in your coven. And the few powers of the druids I witnessed were plant related and the mana was greenish.”

Bob: “Well they are the awakened. The druids treat them as they would treat each other.”

Jack: ‘Hmm that kind of makes sense. I guess balance and equilibrium are the focus of the druids, instead of being vegan fanatics. That is interesting.’

Jack: “And your healing spell was superb! But I guess if you use it without any nearby burning foes, it isn’t really effective. I should get you stocked up with potions just in case.”

Bob: *smugly* “Yes, that would be prudent. Irfit’s gift is valuable and is like a second chance to survive battles. Its effectiveness will be reduced severely if I have to fight a single strong foe. It will also be utterly useless if I fight foes immune to fire and burning.”

Jack: “Hmm, so we should be cautious either way. Let us start cooking and eating this. I wonder how bear meat tastes like.”

Afterwards he used his sword as a spit to roast Chester and some bear steaks. Chester was delicious, but the bear meat was a different story. It had a tough almost leathery texture and had an extremely gamey flavor. The worst part was the smell while cooking. Jack felt that the smell was so intense, that he had a status effect because of that. Jack forced himself to eat a part of the meat, and dumped the rest of it. He pocketed the bear pelt and addressed his follower.

Jack: “What the fuck was that horrible smell? It smelt worse than shit.”

Bob: “I usually don’t eat carnivores, so I wouldn’t know for sure. But if I had to guess, I would say it was the fat. The smell started when the fat was sizzling.”

Jack: “Nice observation. We should remember to remove the fat next time.”

Jack then browsed through his inventory. He was almost full with loot, mainly the looted Gnoll weapons and so was his companion. He decided to stop at Rotang City to sell loot and resupply with potions. He decided to avoid the Training Hall for now as he wanted to complete the Druid Quest to free the prisoner before that.

They travelled for a few hours before they reached Rotang City. One of the guards greeted Jack by name. He recognized the guard as one of the team members in the Spider extermination Quest. The other guard looked at Bob’s Ears and was a bit cautious, and he was about to slowly draw his weapon.

The guard who greeted Jack stopped his colleague and advised Jack to have companion wear a helm to cover his elf features before entering the city. When Jack inquired about it, the guard just cryptically replied that the nobles wouldn’t like a half-breed in the city.

He was about to ask his companion about the noble deal, but he noticed that the purple-black energy coating his companion had intensified, and he restrained himself from enquiring. Looking through his inventory, he found a low-leveled iron helm, but it would suffice for the purpose.

Thanking the guard Jack and Bob, with his new headgear, entered the outer city. There were a lot more n00bs slaughtering rabbits from earlier. Jack chuckled at the sight, and entered the inner city. He tried finding the player merchant Timon, but he was offline unfortunately.

He sold all the junk loot and gnoll weapons and bought some health potions for both himself and his companion from NPC shopkeepers. He also bought some darts. Even though his Spiral mana bolt spell far outclassed the darts in damage, Force imbued darts were good for luring enemies and tackling them one by one.

Next he went to the tailor’s guild, presented his token and paid ten pieces of gold to collect his spider carapace leather armor. He also enquired whether something could be made of the bear cub pelt. The guild attendant informed him that it was small and furthermore the skinning was far from good so that reduced the material that could be worked with.

This was expected as he didn’t have the skinning or butchering skills in-game and in RL. He was informed that at most, it could be crafted into a pair of boots. It would cost him 4 pieces of gold, half payable upfront and the rest payable on collecting. It would require 2 days ingame for it to be crafted. Jack decided to commission it. Before he left the Tailor’s guild, he inspected his new body armor.

Arachnid JacketType:Armor (Light)Durability:200 / 200Rarity:RareGrade:DThis is a custom made Leather Jacket reinforced with the exoskeleton of a Giant Arachnid without hindering the mobility of light armor. Some of the Arachnid’s power is retained by this armor.

Restrictions: Lv90, 120 Agi and 45 VIt

Bonus on Equip: +120 Physical Def, +10% Acid Resistance. Reduces duration of poisons used by/made from spiders.

The leather Armor was good, far better than any of his current equipment. However, the requirements were pretty hefty, specially the level requirement. This was to be expected as the giant spider was high leveled and it took a team of around 20 NCPs to bring it down!

He still had a few hours in-game before lunch-time in RL. Jack had around 2 days ingame while waiting for his new pair of boots. Frustrated at the piece of equipment he couldn’t use, He wanted to blow some steam ingame. He started a conversation with his half-elf follower.

Jack: “So how do you feel like having some fun? The battle there riled me up, I need to unwind a bit.”

Bob: “And what exactly does ‘fun’ entail?”

Jack: “I was thinking of getting drunk.”

Bob: “I do not trust myself to control my rage if I get intoxicated.”

Jack: “Then how about visiting the brothels? Guard Captain Zubin mentioned them to me earlier.”

Bob: *looks at Jack with disgust* “You can indulge your perversions if you want, leave me out of it.”

Jack: ‘Ooh. Touchy.’

Jack: “Buzzkill. Anyways, I might be away from Terra for a couple of days to a week. I have been spending most of my time in Terra, and I think I need a break in my world. So let’s get you settled at a nearby inn.”

Jack then navigated to a decent, but not posh, inn. His follower didn’t have any money with him, so he made the payment for 2 days, which came at around 30 silvers total including meals. He also gave Bob around 20 pieces of gold, if he was late. He still had 1 platinum and 20 pieces of gold left with him.

He then navigated to the red light district of the City, near the slums and wanted to explore the brothels, and how sex felt like in-game. As he entered one of the cleaner looking ones, he received a system message.

*Ding*

System Notice:

You have entered an adult zone, where sexual services from NCPs can be traded for in-game currency. However, prostitution is illegal in your area of residence (California, USA). VDI’s stand is that this is a more advanced form of pornography, and curtailing it for informed adults goes against the spirit of Freedom of Expression. However, various groups oppose this, and litigation is ongoing. Until this is resolved by your local judiciary, sexual interaction with NCPs is restricted ingame. However, you can still get intimate with other players ingame if you have their consent. If you would like to support VDI’s campaign for a more complete experience, please get in touch with our customer support or our passionate community at the official forums.

Jack: ‘Fucking moral police. Fuck those pretentious prude assholes. They are just pieces of code, and real money isn’t being changed. How the fuck is this prostitution?’

With a frustrated and forlorn look, Jack left the brothel and travelled to the library. He wanted to update Madam Curie about the new spells he had developed, in-case there were any rewards possible. His spirit pact with Irfit made him unable to learn or use any runic magic. His also couldn’t advance Enchanting to Advanced, but he could still use it. This was because Enchanting was both runic magic and a crafting skill!

He navigated the library to Madam Curie’s room using his employee card. He knocked and entered when he heard a curt voice say ‘Come in’.

Madam Curie: “Welcome Jack. It has been a while. Have you reached Intermediate in Mana Control yet?”

Jack: “No ma’am, I am still a beginner at Mana Control. I actually developed and acquired a few spells and I wanted to show them to you while I was in the city for resupplying.”

Madam Curie: “Interesting. What are they?”

Jack: “The first couple of spells I developed, with monsters as my inspiration, namely Mana Breath and Soul Scream. Mana Breath deals damage to anyone in a cone in front of me, and I can use all elements except Soul with it!”

Jack: “The next is Soul Scream. With me as the center, it helps myself and allies fight status effects, while causing a very weak status effect on hostiles! And it also does a small bit of damage to them.”

Madam Curie: “Impressive developing AoE abilities without Sigils. Especially Soul Scream; that sounds like a very useful and unique spell.’

Jack: “The next couple of spells I developed to counter fast agile monsters. I met a kind of striped giant lizards, and I couldn’t hit them with my ranged spells at all! They were too fast and dodged everything at range.”

Jack: “I could only rely on soul scream to temporarily stun them when they were close to me and attack them. However, that was barely effective to deal with a single lizard. No way could I deal enough damage to multiple fast lizards with that strategy. Since I was hunting them alone, I needed to increase my efficiency.”

Jack: “So I developed an enchantment spell and a debuff sustain. My enchantment spell is mana claws, which adds a lot of my magical attack to unarmed strikes! The next one is Entropic Leech. Using some insights in fire and force affinity, I created a sustain which slows everything around me in a small radius while regenerating a small part of my MP! Later on, I found that it slowed down arrows fired at me too!”

Jack looked pleased with himself recalling his accomplishments. Madam Curie maintained her stoic mask outwardly, but she was extremely impressed. Slows and freezes were possible with ice element, but this traveler had somehow managed to replicate it with fire and force affinity, and regenerated his MP!

Madam Curie: “Hmm nifty spells, but they would be more use to a melee fighter if you could cast it on melee fighters in your party. You can’t, can you?”

Jack: “No. They are limited to me. And lastly, I made another spirit pact!”

Madam Curie was shocked and couldn’t help but gawk at Jack. Recovering, she inquired Jack about it. Jack then described his encounter with the friendly Kobolds. He then described how he cleared the caves of the lizards, but left out the part about Lady Salamander. He then described going into fire planes and pact with a fire spirit. He skipped over the details of the bargaining and identity of the spirit.

Jack: “Out of the pact, I gained two new spells! One is a summon spell, and the other is a short ranged teleport. But unfortunately the spirit pact had unforeseen consequences. I will be unable to use or learn any form of runic magic.”

Madam Curie was extremely frustrated at hearing this. Once he was intermediate in Mana Manipulation or Mana Control, he could learn runic skills like Sigil mastery and use it to create more powerful spells. Although these spells created with the aid of runic systems would have longer cast times and cool-down times than purely shaped spells, but they had the potential to be a lot more powerful!

In her eyes, Jack was a genius. He had already developed four powerful spells with his imagination alone, without the support of runic spell casting. She wanted to see what new heights he would have reached if he could have used Sigils! For satiating her curiosity, she had planned to personally tutor him once he was qualified enough! However, due to his spirit pact, he wouldn’t be able to learn it.

Madam Curie: *disappointed look in her eyes* “That is a big sacrifice for a couple of spells. Most arcane spell-casters like me who utilize mana manipulation have to rely on Sigils to create spells beyond the basic mana bolt. While you did create some powerful spells without Sigils, your future spell arsenal will be severely restricted.”

Jack: *sighing* “I never thought the pact would end up like that. Anyways, what is done is done. I just need to be creative in the future, or squeeze out more spells from the Spirit Pact. But during battle, being able to spam elemental bolts and breaths really helps my damage output. Although the pact spells are way more powerful than mine, in the one battle I used them, I finished the battle before I could use the teleport again…”

Madam Curie: “Do keep me informed of your discoveries about magic. Especially if you can acquire or shape other unique spells. If I find them interesting enough, I might have something for you.”

Taking the hint, Jack thanked her and went to his bunk bed in the library dormitory and he logged off. Exiting his capsule, he noticed that it was almost time for lunch. He reheated some leftover beef steak and mashed potatoes and had his lunch. He was grumpy about being denied sex ingame. He browsed the forums and found a whole sub forum dedicated to the issue of sexual interaction with the NCPs. He glanced trough the threads, but that just frustrated him more.

Jacob: ‘Fuck this shit. I wanted a whore ingame and was denied that. Well Fuck you too! I can still get a whore in RL.’

But Jacob was stumped where to begin. He didn’t know any Escorts and had never availed their services till date. And going to the bad part of town for a hooker was too unsafe. For a person like him, it was like asking to be mugged. Not wanting to give up, he randomly scrolled the contacts on his phone. He saw Chris’s contact information.

Chris was the VDI representative who had arrived at his residence with his new Job offer. After accepting his new employment contract, Chris had given him to contact if he needed any sort of help. He had just brushed it off as simple courtesy at the time.

However, his contract was far too favorable for someone to just play games all the time. He suspected that he had some sort of value to VDI, and he also wanted to test out how sincere Chris’s offer was. Most likely he would be refused, however he was feeling impulsive and wanted to give it a shot. He quickly called Chris.

Chris: “Hello?”

Jacob: “Hi there Chris! How are you?”

Chris: “Hello Jacob! I am fine. So what do I owe this pleasure to?”

Jacob: “Actually, I had a sensitive issue I was hoping you could help me with.”

Chris: “Sure what is it?”

Jacob: “Actually I broke up a while ago, and was hoping you could set me up with a date for the weekend.”

Chris: *laughs* “I don’t know about a date, but I can hook you up with an escort. So do you prefer men, women or something in between?”

Jacob: *surprised* “I wasn’t expecting you to be so forthcoming. Women, definitely women. You know where I live. I need to unwind for the evening and my budget is a grand.”

Chris: “Sure I can work with that. I will call you around 4pm to finalize the details and send over someone by say 8pm?”

Jacob: “Yeah that’s cool. Thanks a lot Chris.”

Chris: “No problem Jacob. If you are ever in a pinch or need anything, just give me a call.” *hangs phone*

Jacob: ‘Well that went better than expected. If the escort thing works out, I guess I know whom to use my one phone call on if the cops get a hard on for me. I should meditate now, Need to make the most of my one grand.’

------------AUTHOR’s NOTE/RANT/REQUEST.------------

Here is your new chapter and I am back from vacation! It is a bit short I know, but new project with tight deadlines at work cropped up as soon as I joined and I probably need to work overtime for a while. A chapter a weekend will resume from now on, unless there are unforeseen circumstances.

How do you guys like the character development? I am picking it up a notch. Jacob isn’t a cheery hero, but don’t expect a grim-dark villain either. I will slowly unravel the moral code which he lives by. Don’t expect him to sacrifice himself for innocents. But don’t expect him to go on a murder/rape spree either.

Now I know some readers may have moral issues with the prostitution thing. You are entitled to your opinion and that’s fine. But please remember this is a work of fiction, and it IS tagged as mature and every chapter I put a warning. I may or may not include more controversial themes like mental illnesses, sexual violence, drug use etc. So you have been warned.

However, Fear Not! This is primarily a VRMMORPG story, and it will remain about playing a fun VRMMORPG game. I don’t plan to make this a depressing tragedy or soul wrenching tale of redemption or whatever, but when I feel mature elements can spice up the story, I will add them.

If you want to provide constructive criticism which will help me improve the story and edit/rewrite certain parts of it so that it flows better and makes more sense, please do so. An example for this would be Chapter 24, where I derped big-time in the original version and significantly improved it in the rewrite as many readers pointed out that the interaction I included was ham-fisted/hurried and unrealistic.

However if you just want me to rewrite/edit some parts of my story because you think prostitution is bad, and I am a bad person for including it in my story, I won’t dignify you with a reply. Please consider this as my pre-emptive reply to these kinds of posts.

ALSO, I will skip XXX scenes for this (and most future) encounters, as I have no confidence writing those.

And I also plan to write short side stories about the other characters to flesh them out a bit. I am open to ideas about a SS for Hawk Archer PKer. You could comment/PM a brief description about her RL stuff and why she behaved the way she did ingame. If I like an idea I might work with it.

And if you actually read this full note/rant/request, Thanks a LOT! If you didn’t I still hope you enjoyed the chapter.

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