"Really could use a Tutorial Island, but I've gotta say this VR junk's pretty amazing." Henry replied, taking the Leprechaun--ArtifactHunter's hand with a firm grip and shaking. "Kinda blows the rig my friends and I built last summer outta the water. So that's kind of... "

Fucking annoying.

"Irritating. Other than that, it seems like it could be fun once you get your bearings. I guess getting the Easter Event tossed at me right as I sign up's probably a good way to get a trial-by-fire sort of experience." he mused, slapping the English idiom in somewhat haphazardly due to no knowledge of a proper Japanese equivalent.

"Hmm. How viable are shields like this for hitting shit as you go up the ranks, and all?"

He'd decided to roll with the joke build, time to ask the experienced players how well it could work.

Just how gud was he gonna need to git?

"Gaming rigs never go out of style. Have to play my older games somehow." Abraham commented, talking a moment to look over the player's equipment. What he discern about it, at least. It wasn't bad. Sturdy enough. It was clearly starting gear, though, and wouldn't hold up for very long in the upper levels. Naturally he'd replace it at some point. "I've never tried using a shield offensively, but there's no reason it shouldn't work. Be careful who you take on, though. You're going to want to get some better gear before long."

...

"Sorry, did you say something about the Easter boss?"

The college student tried to keep the surprise out of his voice, but he was definitely surprised. Taking on an event boss on one's first day was a bold move to say the least, especially with low level gear.

--SEA TO SHINING SEA
I SLAM TRACKS LIKE QUARTERBACK SACKS FROM LT
NOW WHY TRY AND TEST THE REBEL INS?
BLESSED SINCE THE BIRTH
I EARTH-SLAM YOUR BEST
CAUSE I BAKE THE CAKE THEN TAKE THE CAKE AND EAT IT TOO
WITH MY CREW WHILE WE HEAD STATE TO STATE

"And if you want beef, then bring the ruckus! Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothin to fuck wit!" The husky retelling of the 36 Chambers echoed from a blue-haired avatar of average height, complete with small bat wings and a slightly risque uniform covered up haphazardly by a leather jacket, massive sword slung over her shoulder. Her right hand, contorted in the shape of a finger gun, fired imaginary bullets as she moved it left to right in time with her bars. To see her would have been textbook cognitive dissonance. "Straight from the motherfuckin' slums that's busted, Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothin' to fuck wit!"

Yep! Another beautiful day in Arun wi--helloooooo.

WalliamWillace. What a name. Oh God. Des found herself holding in a laugh. That beat her pun. English speaker? Des hadn't spoken English in a week, since she'd last Skyped her mom. She could feel it itching on her tongue (and the #fire rhymes of Inspectah Deck just didn't have the same ring in Japanese) but she knew she could resist if...if...

"Hey there!" she called out. "Great name!" She paused a second, and then repeated herself in Japanese. Just in case. To be polite. Manners ain't nothin' to fuck wit.

A lot of people were starting to converge on their position. Looked like the newbie was of interest to everyone in close proximity, though she couldn't really complain about that; she had approached WW out of curiosity as well, after all. AntoniusPius wasn't too sure what everyone actually wanted from the first-time player, but maybe they would have some <<Health Potion>> stacks that could be spared. Her order on the <<Auction House>> probably wasn't going to be complete any time soon.

Though ...

Why were they all English-speakers? She was semi-decent at comprehending and speaking the language according to her grades, but there was a lot that she wasn't gleaning from everything these people said. ALO had a few international servers, true (the second-largest one being Brazil of course), so it didn't surprise her to know that Americans played the game, but she'd never met three at the same time on the Japanese server before.

It was probably the Easter event's fault.

Great. Now Komin gets to steal the limelight.

How? By basically diving straight to the cup and forcing gravity and the floor to coordinate in ripping it into shards. Ciryes, starting from when Knock Knock Joke Girl stepped her mad charge's first energetic paces, already followed her sight on the weird girl.

And there she goes! She's making another step forward... and another... one small step for Komin, one giant leap to follow. Bending that little knee of hers, Komin suddenly pushes her leg to jump! Ciryes tries to reach out for the cup, but only half a foot away and the hysterical klutz already makes first contact with the glossy cup. And here it goes, falling outside the table as Komin shoves it away from Ciryes' reaching hand, succumbing to gravity afterwards. After the final, dramatic drop, plenty o' shards of glass have gone places. Not just the floor, but places.

Then the owner walks out, Maybe she ragequitted within the neighboring forest. Maybe not.

End of story.

Ciryes, with her reaching hand now pointing to the spilled drink and a shocked characteristic of wide open eyes and mouth overtaking her childish face, shivered for a few moments. When a few seconds has passed, the Undine made a leap towards the spilled puddle of coffee and sorrowfully drank it, crying at such a waste of a good drink even if it was just a bunch of code.

"No!... Not the precious virtual coffee!

N...N-Nohohoho!"

Besides, bacteria don't even exist here anyway... or do they?

"Thanks." He replied in the same language. "Stroke of inspiration hit me making the character."

KawaiianPunch666?

Why does that remind me of somebody... Whatever, probably nothin'.

"And, uh, yeah." he replied in Japanese once more, turning back to ArtifactHunter and beginning to look a bit flustered at being the center of attention. This was new. Really new.

Wasn't sure he liked it.

"Figured it'd be a fun way to learn on the fly. Kinda like the Asylum Demon in Dark Souls. Long as I've got people backin' me up I oughta manage to survive, right?"

"Meh." Kosuke said to himself, "This isn't as good Momo's coffee."

He put his mug down next to a now empty bowl which had previously housed instant ramen, and sat back with a sigh. The kitten looked up at him with a slightly concerned sounding mew? before continuing with its meal.

"Good thing you got hungry." He said, reaching out to pet it. Alright, He thought, If Momo's still offline, I guess I'll just go ahead and find some people to party up with. He stood up and took his bowl and mug over to the sink to wash. After he was done, he went back to his room, leaving the door slightly open in case the kitten decided to come back in.

He lay down on the bed, and grabbed his amusphere and put it on his head.

"Link start," He said, and a few minutes later he was back in Alfheim.

"Oh," He said in surprise, "What the heck?"

There was an undine, standing near the remains of a coffee mug, drinking a puddle of coffee? He crouched down next to the undine, surveying the coffee cup.

"Uh," He said, poking the Undine to get her attention, "You alright there?"

It wasn’t long before Keisuke realized that he was completely lost. With a bewildered look on his face he looked around at his surroundings, all he could see was tree after tree. He sighed in frustration as he kept walking, hoping to find his way back to the starting city. In the end it was pointless as he just got deeper into the forest and even more confused about where he was.

Upon finding a fallen over log in the middle of the forest he sat down on it and began to think. If I remember correctly you could fly in this game… With the thought still in his mind he got up from the log and tried everything he could to figure out how to fly, he jumped, skipped hopped and even went as far as to use the fallen log as a launch pad but it only ended up with him face planting the ground. After Keisuke’s face met with the floor enough times, he finally figured out the fly assist control, but instead of actually using it he got rid of it because the idea of using something to assist him in flying was not his way of doing things.

Several more face plants later he finally figured out how to hover, and balance in the air. All that was left was for him to actually figure out flight. Alright Keisuke you got this, just move your back muscles, just..move..your..back..muscles.. Keisuke went into deep concentration mode as he imagined moving his wings. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, what awaited him was a sight he had never seen before.

Upon opening his eyes he was high up above the tree line and from the height he was at he could see the area surrounding him. He was completely awestruck; after all it was something he had never seen before. He was excited, his flight may have not been the smoothest in the world but he was slowly getting used to it and not only that he was literally amazed at the fact that he was flying.

「Yes! I’m flying!」He exclaimed loudly as he flew around in the air in a clumsy fashion.

In the midst of his flying antics he had remembered he had read about a special Easter event that was happening very soon and if he wanted to get into it he would need to be quick. Without a moment of hesitation he used his new found ability and made his way towards the event area.

"You both speak English?" Abraham asked with a note of surprise, lapsing into his native language for the duration of the sentence. It was far from impossible, even improbable, to encounter another English speaker, but two at once was nevertheless unusual. Without waiting for an answer, he idly brought up the menu, looking up both of their usernames. Walliam's, specifically, but he looked up... Kawaiianpunch666 as well. ... He had to admit, that was a pretty funny name.

"You might not do too badly." He said to Walliam, answering the question, albeit a bit belatedly. "I've been planning to tackle the boss. I'd be happy to party up with you, if you'd like."

"Sounds good. And yeah, hell of a coincidence, huh?"

Duke sat down in the second most comfortable place that he possessed, the drivers seat of his Nissan 350Z. "How had one sector manage to misplace so much damn money!" He shouted before turning over the engine.

Duke had just gotten a small promotion within his company, since he had done so well at his last title. Now he wasn't sure how much of a promotion it was for him. He used to work a nice 9 to 5 however since his "promotion" he has been working 12 hours each day for the past six days. The only three things that were helping him get through this tough time was, the next pay cheque was going to be phenomenal. The second was that tomorrow was Sunday which meant the company was closed for the day as it was every Sunday, this was really good for Duke since because the Easter event was about to be released people had been increasing orders for weapons for the Easter boss that was rumoured to be quite tough. Thirdly was the fact that he was going to get to play ALO.

As Duke pulled the silver 350Z into his parking garage he knew that tonight was going to be a leftover night for sure. This was nothing but a common trend the last couple of days, Duke knew that he was going to be crunched for time after getting off work later than he planned so in anticipation Duke made three meals worth of food on one night to just pop into the microwave. It wasn't as good the first day he had cooked his barbequed steak and potatoes but it definitely hit the spot. After cleaning up his plate and cutlery it was time to hit the most comfortable place that he possessed, his king sized bed where he would play Alfheim from. Duke decided to lay on top of his red satin silk sheets and placed the Neuro-linker on his head.

"Link Start"

When Duke opened his eyes and rolled out of his bed that was above his shop he heard the to familiar sound of another request for a weapon being placed. He took a deep breathe as he took a second to open up his inbox to see what number that was for today. Request number 11 for the day, Oh dear he thought to himself. If that was going to be the kind of workload that he was going to have because of this Easter event it was going to be a tough couple of days. He pounded his right first into his left palm. " I definitely think that I am going to have to take an extra day off in the middle of the week to keep up with these orders, especially if they keep coming in as quick as I can finish these." He can definitely reward himself with one extra day off given the amount of hours that he has just put in recently.

He opened up his inbox and sent a quick little message to each person who left a request for a weapon that stated. The first message that he sending went as followed;

-=-=- Thank you /Player X/ very much for taking the time to place a custom order at Duk_Hunt's weapon shop. At the moment you are customer #3. Given the increased amount of orders due to the Easter Event it will take a small amount of time longer than anticipated to fulfill this order. I will not give any player a lower quality item due to this influx. At Duk_Hunts we do appreciate your loyalty and will extend a courtesy discount of 15% off this purchase. Thank you very much for your cooperation and happy hunting. -=-=-

He sent a similar copy to each customer and when completed he immediately went to the first back-ordered weapon from yesterday. As much as he would love to check out this event first hand and why so many people were needing so many amazing weapons his customers really did come first. Maybe one day close to the end of the event he would have a quick look, hopefully all the good weapon loots wouldn't be taken. Duke took out one of the multiple ores that were required for the first weapon and placed them in the ore smelter.

The thing about learning languages is that when somebody meets a native speaker, they will discover that it is far more difficult to comprehend the rapidly-paced, possibly accented speech, traits that lessons usually fail to convey. Had the conversation AntoniusPius was currently being exposed to been a recording in her English class, it would have taken around ten seconds for each sentence to be spoken, but amongst these three English-speakers that she had found herself accompanying, their conversations were fast and quite a struggle for her to keep up with. Indeed, she was actually rather lost on what exactly they were saying.

She may have been the studying the language, but that didn't mean she was fluent in English.

"I heard 'bossu' somewhere in there," interrupted the Púca, latching onto the word that best fit the context of the situation. "I'm assuming you two are also going to fight Bon-Bon?"

If they did, she wondered if they would party up with her.

And maybe give her some potions.

No notifications. It looked like her order had yet to go through.

Kei flew through the air and looked at the surrounding area, it was a beautiful sight to see even more so since he was so high up. After another few brief moments of appreciating the scenery around him he stopped and looked around.

「Wait a minute where is the Ancient Forest...」

It was at that moment Kei realized he had no real idea of where he needed to be, other than knowing the name of event area. He looked in all directions with a blank expression as he realized his mistake in just flying off in some random direction. This was a great first experience, lost and already having no clue how to get out of it.

After looking like a lost kid for a while it finally clicked in his mind that he could accept the event quest and as such it would reveal the location of it on the map. Right away he swiped downwards revealing the menu, right away he looked for the event quest and accepted. With that all his problems were solved. Looking at his map he saw the Ancient Forest location. One good thing about his wandering was that he ended up closer to the location of the Ancient Forest as such the travel time wouldn’t be too long as long as he kept on flying.

"Hey Mythrilite! Name's Muncher, PotatoMuncher. Everyone just calls me Pota-" Flicking her eyes back towards him, she pursed her lips as he turned and flew towards the entrance to the boss area. She was having a conversation with him but apparently that didn't mean anything. Rude.

"Hmmpf!

Still, it appeared that he had stumbled onto something important. Hiding her annoyance with a curious frown, she allowed her wings to flutter back to life and took control as she made the short journey over to where he stood. "Looks like some sort of offering. I don't want to waste my ace just yet though so I'll just throw some weapon to it." Nodding, she watched him remove his armour and looked down at her own random collection of clothing. Of course, it was in no way random as most of the equipment was epic or legendary giving her buffs such as increased mana regen and increased spell power.

Sighing softly, she realised that she would have to part with it - it wasn't armour but on a mage, it was just as dangerous if not more. Nibbling down on her bottom lip, she swapped out her clothing for a red dress that slipped down to her thighs. The rest of the distance was covered by white leggings and knee-high boots. She might have had to ditch her battle clothing but she was still going to look good.

Humming mindlessly, she moved closer to the giant thing and discarded an epic Katana in his hands. If she was right then they'd probably be rewarded with something considerably better than that if they beat Bon-Bon. Then again, this game had been known to mess with a few people in terms of the deserved loot drops. "Should we go on ahead or wait for a few more people? If this gets hairy, we're going to die."

@Scarifar

"Hm... Where is it?" Takeshi hummed as he searched the undergrowth.
His red gauntlet parted the scrub, and his eyes scanned the space from behind his closed helmet.
"Is that..." He said, spying an egg-shaped object.
He took it out of the bush and held it up, to reveal that it was a rare black egg! Takeshi cheered loudly, prompting several fellow hunters to give him funny looks before he settled down, embarrassed, and put the egg in his pack.

According to the event, the black egg was 1000 points. That brought Takeshi's total to about 9000 points. 30 white eggs, 10 coloured eggs and one black egg; a total of 41 eggs. He'd been looking all day for them, and it had taken a while to get the ones in the trees (because he's heavy), but he was reasonably satisfied with the result.
"I think I'll get some good money out of this." Takeshi said, stretching his arms.
He was a little stiff, but he should be able to change his avatar's face soon. At least the chin, anyway.

With that said, he wasn't sure what to do for the rest of his face. He'd gotten used to wearing a full helmet all the time anyway, and whatever he made his face into, he'd probably still wear the full helm out of habit. The problem was, he didn't know what to do with his face. The mohawk would have to go and so did the chin, but the rest of it was kind of fine. Maybe he could just use his own face, but the problem with that was he'd be too embarrassed to show it in public. After all, he was often in the company of complete strangers, and not many of his friends knew what his avatar looked like.
I wonder if it's too much trouble. Takeshi thought, yawning.
It wasn't like he wanted people to look at his face most of the time. Maybe he would just replace the chin so he could wear partially full helmets without worrying.

Well, if he did that, he might as well go for the whole thing.

Nevermind. Takeshi thought, shaking off his tiredness. I should make the most of this easter event.

Takeshi activated his wings and carefully began hovering up. Unfortunately, he wasn’t very good at flying. Maybe it had something to do with his armour. Regardless, he kind of had the hang of it. It was good enough to go without the flight assist, but he still had a long way to go.
"Hup." Takeshi said, gaining his balance. "Let’s see…"

Takeshi flew off towards the ancient forest, or the direction he thought it was in.
"Yeah, this is it." Takeshi said mid-flight.
As he zoomed along, he was protected from the wind by his armour. In all honesty, he enjoyed flying, but there was the other problem…

A few hours later

Takeshi had been going for a few a few hours, but he’d be there soon. As he flew, he waved at some other players heading towards Aarun.

Soon, Takeshi saw the ancient forest and tried to slow down, also lowering his altitude. It wasn’t working as much as he liked, so he tried to do it more forcefully. Unfortunately, a tree smashed into his lower body and he lost his balance, spiralling out of control.
"Not again!" Takeshi cried.
As he tried to wrestle some control, he smashed into some more trees. In an attempt to stop, he disabled his wings and suddenly found himself plummeting towards the ground.
"Damn it!" Takeshi said, bracing himself.
Fortunately, the ground was close enough to not kill him, but it would still hurt. A lot.

He smashed into the ground with a loud thump. Takeshi was momentarily winded. As he sat up groggily, he saw that a third of his health had disappeared.
Well, I’ve had worse. Takeshi thought, shakily taking a potion and drinking it. Good thing I didn’t land on anyone…

He got up out of his small crater and looked around. He had found the ancient forest. There was a clearing nearby, probably housing something significant. With that said, he had no idea exactly where he’d landed.
"Huh. I wonder where I am…" Takeshi said out loud.
In the clearing, he saw the silhouette of… a 2 storey tall 8 year old girl?
"What the heck?" Takeshi said.

"We are indeed." Alistair said, returning to Japanese for the sake of the conversation's non-English speaker. His Japanese wasn't quite as excellent as his English (he wasn't a native speaker of the former, after all), but he was fluent. He gestured with a hand towards Schultz, by way of indication. "He was planning to take on the boss, but is a rather new player. I was planning to take on the boss as well, and offered to party with him to help him learn the ropes a little better."

"You're welcome to join us, as long as no one else objects. Our fourth acquaintance is free to as well, though if she does I apologize for any conversations in English."

That spiel she already knew, seeing that she had been talking to the newbie about the Easter boss before the others had arrived. Still, if they were planning on combating the giant eight year old bunny cosplayer as well, then AntoniusPius decided that she'd team up with them. They were pretty high-levelled, after all, and it would save her time waiting in queue for a random party to form. Even if she didn't know these people well, then at least familiarising herself with their playstyles would make synergy a lot easier.

"I'd be delighted," replied the Púca. "Bit lacking in potions right now, but teaming up would be welcomed."

No potions yet.

The market was such a fickle place.

IC:

"Sure, count me in, too!" Des chirped, wasting no time in snatching up what High-Leveled Cute Bilinguist (as opposed to The Inexperienced Hunk) was throwin' down. The young transfer student even went so far as to pause her music in order to better hear what the party was said; in the process she flicked the non-English speaker a quick, bashful grin. When it wasn't instantly returned she tried aiming it at Cute and Hunk. That seemed to do the trick better.

"I could use the help anyway," she said. "Not packing much in the way of big ass weaponry."