Everdark Central Square, day of election...
Matte had lied down prone against the scaly tiles of her building of residence, Poe's Respite, and despite having to share seats with the various pigeons and crows, she was in a constant grin, and for good reason.
Though her <<Hide>> wasn't high enough for the avians to not notice her, it WAS high enough to avoid the attention of most lazy fliers who weren't searching for an address or a street name. The election, for the Imps, was around 6:00 AM in the morning, a time where people had their eyes burned awake from an all-night grindfest or were half-asleep from a relatively good dream.
She had slapped on her bulkiest armor, too, to grow the leveling multiplier up by .01%. It was crafted in a tutorial sequence given by a kindly old NPC hunter, who taught her how to make leather armor. In all honesty, the end-result and process was more of a tedious chore than a lesson, but at least she could dump her poor-quality hides into some revenue, regardless if she had no EXP growth from the curve. In the scheme of things, that seemed awfully small, but it wasn't like she could spare every waking moment lying still under rotting briars or making leather armor. She had to train two very different weapon proficiencies, as well as their associated skills, to prepare to compete against other players for hunting grounds, front-line rights, party positions, etc. Simply put, she wasn't going to be slaving away in the cities if she wanted to survive, especially at the risk of politics inside the game.
And so the flying rats cooed and clucked around her, adjusting to the fact that she was harmless so long as they didn't step on her face.
Using <<Reveal>>, she strained her eyes as murky silhouettes pulsed through the various windows of the adjacent buildings. She stared and studied her neighbors' weak points, which almost always centered around the head, heart, and groin as prime targets for critical hits. Thus, these points flashed a bright red, before flickering off.
What she was really trying to look at, though, were the dozens of small dots half a mile away, three blobs resting in over 10 dozen candidates each. Sure, she could focus on an area, but at her distance, their faces were all but blobs; it was hard to tell who was who. And of course, she might be able to close in on the third building from the square itself, but the curve was exponentially lower at that distance for <<Hide>> and <<Reveal>>. Perhaps if she could just...focus on a face...
...boy, there were sure a lot of cloak-donning people, both in and out of the crowd! Was the selection that tense?
