"We should keep moving and catch up to the NPC. My transformation only lasts a minute and we should make the most of it." You say motioning to the next cave entrance. Ryuji nods and tears his glaive free from the zombie just as Irene finishes her trance. The three of you regroup and begin to run through the cave system once more, all pretense of stealth lost. Not helping was the fact that Ryuji was constantly gushing and asking questions about your abilities. "What else can you do? How long is the cooldown? What buffs do you get? Did the coat come with the costume?" He asks, eagerness overtaking any sense of restraint on his curiosity. "I don't know anyone who's ever gotten this far!" He concludes. You suppress a small sigh building up. You had expected him to explode with excitement given his love of the game but you hadn't really expected to see him get this excited. Still, you couldn't help but share a bit of his enthusiasm. How long had it been since you had eagerly spoken about the game with someone just as passionate instead of trying to avoid the conversation with non-answers? You pull back your helm, allowing it to fold back behind your head and somehow vanish causing Ryuji to let out a noise that sounded like a mix between a squeal and roar of excitement. "It folds back..." He manages to eek out. "It's on a 5 minute cooldown. So it's really more of a boss fight kind of ability though right now I don't think we have the luxury to hold back big CDs. While I'm in this form, these are considered two handed weapons." You say raising your fists. Ryuji's jaw drops. "Waitwaitwait. You're dealing two hander damage with your fists alone? I've seen how fast you can swing those things and you're telling me they can hit as hard as a warhammer?" He asks. "Yup. Only while transformed though. Untransformed I have the Brawler's [Powerful Fist] skill but it seems to scale better because I can't really wield anything else." You continue. "Also, I'm considered to be wearing light armored outside of my transformation and medium while transformed. Stacks with the bit of damage reduction my class gives. Class seems to give me a handful of abilities from other classes to pick from on level up but it seems to lean towards fighter and brawler skills." You pause for a moment. "But I get this feeling that there's more to it. Almost like the game is keeping note of what I do and adjusting for it. I got a weird quest regarding another player on the tutorial island and now I'm expected to grow under strife, whatever that means. For the moment it seems my class progression is locked until I meet some kind of requirement. Nothing about this class is straight forward and the power seems to compensate for it." You say, drawing your helmet back on. "If I'm honest...that's the fun part."
You continue on your way through the tunnels, avoiding dead ends and taking down what stragglers you find along the way. Thanks to the woman's...less that subtle approach, most of the mobs near the start of the dungeon had been taken care of. Even so, you feel a sense of unease as you continue. The scale in your pocket makes your skin tingle. It feels cold and burns at the same time. Like a flame that threatens to freeze you but leaves your body burned and charred. In a way it was like a strange interpretation of the term freezer burn. Part of you worries that your body might freeze up once more or worse. If you could get visions while touching it then what other kinds of mental effects it could have on you. Could it mind control you? Or maybe kill you with some strange magic? You grapple with the possibilities. >What do you do?>Keep the scale for now. It doesn't seem to be causing any damage and you don't want to worry your friends. Your small bonus to damage reduction and debuff resistance might be enough to keep you all safe.>Give the scale to Irene. Her class has higher defenses against magical effects as a caster. She might be able to resist any ill effects.>Give the scale to Ryuji. He has a higher HP pool and higher physical stats. If the scale deals damage, he'll be able to withstand it longer than you and Irene.>Write in.
>>6318305>Give the scale to Ryuji. He has a higher HP pool and higher physical stats. If the scale deals damage, he'll be able to withstand it longer than you and Irene.Dragon spear man? We have the opportunity for guan yu here, gotta do bro a solid
>>6318305>Keep the scale for now. It doesn't seem to be causing any damage and you don't want to worry your friends. Your small bonus to damage reduction and debuff resistance might be enough to keep you all safe.We'll shoulder this burden ourselves, no need to force it onto our friends. We're a Hero after all.
>>6318305>Give the scale to Irene. Her class has higher defenses against magical effects as a caster. She might be able to resist any ill effects.
>>6318304But also tell them about it so we can confirm the heretics involvement to them.
>>6318398Dropped my vote>Keep the scale for now. It doesn't seem to be causing any damage and you don't want to worry your friends. Your small bonus to damage reduction and debuff
>>6318398+1>>6318304>Keep the scale for now, bit tell your friends what's going on.No reason to keep it secret from our friends. It is alarming that we're considering mind control as a possibility, though... This is just a game, right? We aren't playing a vidya where a shady billionaire can actually control our speech and behavior, are we??
>>6318304>Keep the scale for now. It doesn't seem to be causing any damage and you don't want to worry your friends. Your small bonus to damage reduction and debuff resistance might be enough to keep you all safe.we should tell them, but not right now. i think irene already knows but i might be misremembering>>6318508i would be surprised if mind control can affect players. how could that realistically work? so at most the scale bearer would get some nasty debuffs i assume
>>6318333Support, for the same heroic reasons
>>6318508"ZenSoft and the department of Health and Safety assure you, the public, that full dive VR is completely safe. There are a litany of laws, safety restrictions, and medical studies to prove this. Any stories or records of harm resulting from the use of the full dive VR systems was purely out of misuse of the equipment or anecdotal." - Some government announcement. We can trust the government...right?>>6318568If you want the full mechanics for how mind control works I can give post an explanation. Right now, John has no indication that such an effect could apply to him and his friend. His mind is kind of running all over the place because he knows it's an effect that the game has but it's been so long since he's played he's not sure if it's become more common or rarer. Not to mention the fact that both Roland and Irene who have been playing all this time have said that the game is being way different than what it's ever been. So John's kind of grappling with his end game experience kicking in and expecting crazy stuff from happening. >>6318333We'll shoulder the physical burden for our friends but share the burden of knowledge with them. Writing. Board thinks the post is spam. Probably from me trying to include all the posts that voted. I won't include them but I did count them.
You slowly come to a halt and dig out the scale from your pocket. It glows dully with that same blue hue that you remember from the prison. The shine seems to avoid your direct gaze, flickering and running along the edges to hide in your peripheral vision. You expect the strange tingling feeling to do the same but it persists. The icy burn lingers where the scale once rested and soon begins to spread through your hand. You quickly stuff the object back into your inventory in another pocket. By now your friends notice you lingering behind and come to a stop. "Hey man, what's up?" Ryuji asks. "Nothing-" You begin but the fact you're absentmindedly flexing your hand to try and get rid of the strange feeling makes you think otherwise. ""The scale started feeling funny." You begin before explaining the situation. "Might mean we're on the right track, though. Or it could be that the heretics know someone picked it up and we're walking into their trap.""Seems a bit too roundabout to get the scale to fall into the wrong hands." Irene says. "Be easier to simply leave it laying around where the guards could find it. Why go through the whole process of sending a transforming monster man to rampage throughout the city?" She motions for everyone to follow her. "If we were an organization dedicated to helping dragons attack the city what would we gain by leaving something like this around?""But what if it does brain control you?" Ryuji asks. "Like you'd get some kind of powerful leader under your control." He pauses at that. "M-maybe we should drop the thing.""That's the thing. If the guards even got a whiff that this is connected to heretics, they'd put the thing under lock and key so far and fast that no one would ever see the thing again." Irene counters. "I think it wasn't meant to be found. Maybe we weren't even meant to live through that attack.""Then those visions...we weren't meant to see it." You wonder. "Obviously the game would want us to but for the owners...I don't see why they would want anyone to get a hint of their location.""Wait then how about that npc? How'd she know about this place?" He asks. "If the city knew about this place then they would have stormed it, right? They didn't seem like the kind of guys to let this sort of thing fester. Especially those Inquisitor guys. They could have asked one of the big guilds to take care of it as a quest." Irene seems to think about it for a moment.
"That is weird...but we can't spend all this time speculating. We'll have to ask her once we get out of this cave." She says. You all pick up the pace and make your way though the cave system. A cold wind begins to blow through, leading you all to the exit. The bright light blinds you for a moment but you soon see the bridge before you full of scattered corpses. In the center of the dead, you see a makeshift campfire and the woman sitting next to it tying a bandage around her arm. She pulls it tight with her teeth before slowly getting up as you approach. "I appreciate the assistance. The Fury herself must have come through in my time of ne-" She stops midway just as a necklace begins to glow a faint blue...and you feel the scale in your pocket flare up with a wave of cold. A second seems to stretch for hours before the woman brings her weapon to bear, gun leveled against her arm. "Heretics! I should have assumed you'd turn against one another but you'll not find me so easily fooled!">What do you do?>Sprint forward. Attempt to disarm the woman. With your speed, you might have enough of an edge.>Try the diplomatic route. Explain what you're doing here and that you have a dragon scale.>Keep the scale a secret. Try and turn the conversation around. Ask what she's doing here without backup in the middle of a blizzard no less.>Argue that now is not the time to fight. Both parties are injured, you're deep in enemy territory, and you should find a better place to rest. For now, the enemy of your enemy is your friend.>Write in.
>>6318878>Try the diplomatic route. Explain what you're doing here and that you have a dragon scale.I assure you the dragon man that rampaged in the city is quite dead, could you explain why this scale is so important to them?
>>6318878>Keep the scale a secret. Try and turn the conversation around. Ask what she's doing here without backup in the middle of a blizzard no less.
>>6318878>Try the diplomatic route. Explain what you're doing here and that you have a dragon scale.
>>6318878>Sprint forward. Attempt to disarm the woman. With your speed, you might have enough of an edge.i dont think shes in the mood to talkthat might change if we can disarm her and force her to hear us out tho
>>6318878>Sprint forward. Attempt to disarm the woman. With your speed, you might have enough of an edge.I think it'll be easier to negotiate with her when she's disarmed
