Eclairs Fawn

BiteOfEclairs was the name of the character of Eclairs Fawn in Mother Core Online. She usually told people that she didn't like her name, 'Eclairs', because people thought it was strange—her classmates used to make fun of it in middle school.

In truth, she loved it very much. After all, it was her late mother's favorite pastry.

Eclairs woke up early this Thursday, around half-past three, to play MCO and catch up on her guild duties. If she finished quickly enough, she'd have time to warp to the Danube Coral Kingdom at the bottom of the Seventh Sea. Things were busy at Vanguard Gaming lately, and she didn't have much free time to play or do any other thing for leisure. Even just sitting on a couch and watching a movie on the Holo-TV was impossible to fit into her schedule.

A simple visit to the underwater kingdom of her chosen race, the Danube, would be good enough for some relaxation. She had tried a race with flight before but didn’t like it that much. Swimming through the magical seas of Hierakon was more enjoyable for her.

Plus, she could use the true Siren form of the Danube instead of the weird half-fish, half-human body she had when on land.

"And that's the last one," she said, examining the table full of the meals she had cooked. “I might suck in baking in real life, but at least I can do this here.”

[Grand Imperial Eclairs: +45% Physical Damage Increase, +55 Might, +120 Accuracy, and +120 Evasion for 15 Minutes] ★★★★☆

[Abyssal Umber Eclairs: +40% Magical Damage Increase, +60 Spirit, and -12% Cooldown for 30 Minutes] ★★★★☆

Two hundred for each type of food. And she had to enchant and upgrade them. This should last the Aventus guild a few full-scale wars.

Too bad she still hasn’t unlocked the ninth level of her Grand Imperial Baking Ocadule to allow her food to stack with more meal buffs—that would’ve dramatically increased their price. But she simply didn’t have time to grind levels these days.

"I'm finally free!" Eclairs raised her webbed hands and arms partially covered with blue scales as she cheered. She had filled her guild quota of food meals for the week. That was one less reason for her leader, Grand Mille Feuilles, to kick her from their guild, Divergent Boulangerie. Then she frowned, cutting short her celebration. "Aw man, I have another thing to do." She slowly lowered her hands as she recalled that she had to check their stocks.

She ran down the list of deficient ingredients submitted by the various departments of G-Milf's food buffs empire. Their leader knew her in real life and that she was the manager of a tech store, which was why she was given a managerial position for the procurement division of the guild.

At first, she wanted to refuse—she had too many responsibilities in real life. But G-Milf and her cousin, Derrick Boderson, personally knew each other, so Eclairs was a bit hesitant to reject it flat-out. Ultimately, she demanded to be paid a salary in warblers, not just in-game currency. Her guild leader happily agreed.

"This is going to be a problem," Eclairs mumbled, seeing the items they lacked. "Small feathers, rainbow seashells..."

The Divergent Boulangerie knew that Victores Sors was going to attack the Syndicate a couple of weeks before the war began. There was a massive order of their most potent meal buff offerings—what else would Victores Sors do with that many expensive consumables?

The war was slowly growing, bringing in more and more guilds into the fray. Even those not directly allied with the two top guilds were starting to take sides.

That meant the demand for meal buffs, especially the high-end ones, steadily rose after the guilds had burned through their stores for the rainy days. Most of the meal supply in the market came from her guild, and they were running out of ingredients.

Four-star and five-star meals didn't automatically mean that all their ingredients came from high-level monsters. There were some from rare low-level ones in less-popular maps, which was a major source of headache.

Since MCO drastically limited the drop rate—and also the amount of Essence and Gli—the bigger the level gap between monster and player, low-level players were the best to farm some of the ingredients their guild desperately needed. However, players leveled quickly and would leave the beginner areas soon enough.

And so, only a small supply of those ingredients was making its way to the market. Some players intentionally stayed at a low level for as long as possible to farm these items and get rich later on, but that barely dented the demand.

This war was wiping the meager supplies of low-level ingredients.

"I bet other merchants are hoarding too," Eclairs groaned.

But she couldn't judge them since it was a usual, yet frowned upon, practice to gain profit. In fact, the G-Milf herself kept a stranglehold on the quantity of six-star meals sold by Divergent Boulangerie to increase their price.

Eclairs sighed. "The devs should implement the Mirror World patch already."

Mirror World was touted as the fix-all to the economic problems of Mother Core Online. Along with various new game content, low-level monsters were going to be reskinned as mobs in end-game maps. They were also going to drop the same loot in much larger quantities.

She put up several open-bounty quests for new players, but she didn't expect much out of those. Other guilds were doing it as well. War was an excellent time to be a new player.

Well, not exactly for all. Aviarii and Mardukryon players couldn't connect with the bigger MCO market economy, so sucks to be them. She had no idea what their economies were like.

"A call? Oh, it's Derrick?" Eclairs accepted the connection from the WeeCee and walked to a window to gaze at the castle grounds. "Hey, Derrick. How's Nahebani Federa—Oh, my god! Sorry!" She just turned auto-pilot with the conversation as if her cousin was just on vacation. He was in a war-torn country with Reaching Hands to help with the grave famine situation. Such a dumb thing to ask about how it is there. She hastily said, "I mean, how are you there? And how's the program going?"

"We do what we can," Derrick said somberly. "The people still have a smile on their faces despite their situation. As for me, I'm doing well here. I'm used to these situations being with Reaching Hands for the past year. How about you?"

“Everything’s great. Really busy, but great.”

They talked about the usual topics—family, the store, a bit of politics, and also about MCO, even though Derrick only played for a couple of months before he became active in Reaching Hands' activities. Derrick also asked how G-Milf and the guild were doing. Besides the guild leader, he personally knew other members from the ‘old days’ as he liked to call it.

"By the way," he said. "You messaged me yesterday that Herald visited the store to buy an AU-VR Helm?"

"Yep, yep," Eclairs said, grateful that Derrick couldn't see the sheepish grin on her face. "At first, I was confused when he was calling you Boady. I almost didn’t recall your nickname."

Derrick laughed. "That was what the guys used to call me back then. Fits my huge body, they told me. They just couldn’t picture me as a ‘Derrick’.”

“Oh yeah, he did say you were very large in the past. I can barely remember what you looked like, so I had to check some photos.” She recounted Herald's visit, intentionally leaving out the part where she was rude to him. Hopefully, Herald wouldn’t bring that up when he and Derrick eventually met.

“Man, it really has been a long time. And plenty of things did change.” Derrick narrated about Herald’s past, his father dying, their business failing because of that, and their family debts. “His family had to move to a cheaper city. And Egret wasn’t an expensive place to live in back then, so that’s saying something.”

“He seems to be doing well now,” Eclairs observed.

“That he is. We did stay in contact for maybe a couple of years after he dropped out of school and transferred out of Egret. But after that, he was too busy juggling multiple part-time jobs. Imagine my surprise years later when I found out he was the CEO of Dolly’s. There’s like a Dolly’s in most big cities in the country now.”

They chatted a bit more about Herald. But their conversation was cut short because Derrick and the Reaching Hands had to start preparing for their feeding program for the day.

“Bye, Derrick! I’ll tell Herald you want to meet him.” After the call ended, Eclairs again checked the list of ingredients they lacked. “Oh well, I can’t really do anything about these given the market situation. Maybe I should just go for a swim before opening the store?”

“Good morning, Mr. Customer,” Eclairs said as she saw Herald Stone enter Vanguard Gaming. “How may I help you?” She grinned to show she was joking while she referenced what happened yesterday.

“Good morning, Ms. Manager,” he replied with a confident smile, showing that he understood the joke, which was a relief. Some customers didn’t have any sense of humor.

After learning from Derrick that this Herald guy turned out to be very rich, Eclairs predicted that he'd eventually return to buy premium currency. He seemed like the kind of guy who'd become a massive whale, a megalodon, probably.

Who knows? He might become their biggest customer of MCO's premium currency. And she wouldn't have any conflicted feelings about it.

Whenever a kid wanted to buy premium currency from her store, she'd vehemently try to convince them out of it. They were probably using the allowance their parents gave them, and they wouldn't know how to use the currency they bought effectively.

Out of politeness, she didn’t immediately try to sell Herald premium currency. She told him about her call with Derrick and that her cousin was excited to meet him when he returned to the country.

“I look forward to seeing him,” Herald said. “I owe him a lot.”

Next, Eclairs shifted the conversation to MCO, first asking him about how the AU-VR Helm he bought was performing—it was their most expensive one. She followed it up by talking about the game itself. He shared his first day, and he seemed really happy about it.

"Oh, you have chosen a human and headed to the Kishin Mountains?" she asked. Human? Figures.

A middle-aged man probably trying to recapture his childhood playing the old RPGs. Of course, he'd choose human. But it was an interesting choice to go to the War Shrines of Kishin.

"Yep, on my way there."

"Are you going for a Battle Monk Ocadule? I can't recall what those are called. Like Iron Fist, Flaming Fist..." All sorts of fisting, she wanted to add, but thankfully caught herself before anything inappropriate left her lips.

"Yes, I just find it fascinating to fight with fists," Herald replied, "instead of the usual swords, axes, and bows."

He might not be so generic after all, she thought. They talked for a few minutes about the Unarmed State, which was required for a specific type of Kishin Monk Ocadule. It didn't allow any weapon, including the usual knuckles or war claws.

Then he asked her a weird question. “Ms. Manager, you seem to know a lot about a game. I was wondering about something. What do you think of the viability of equipping two shields? Dual-wielding shields?”