| Author: Starving Wind | Original Source: Joara | Word Count: 4446 characters |
| Translator: Anonymouss | English Source: Re:Library | Word Count: 2767 words |
| Editor(s): Silva | ||
Be that as it may, I didn’t need to do it right away.
After tonight ended and tomorrow morning came, I was thinking of throwing my ace in for the war to get it over with. I hoped that the card called ‘Unification’ will end in our favor.
“In that case, what should I do during the remaining time?”
The clock hand was still pointing at 8am. Katalina had messaged me saying that she’ll come back at 10, so I had to spend over 2 hours alone.
But it wasn’t like I was feeling lonely or anything. It was just that I had too many things I could do in those two hours and they all had similar priorities.
I lifted up the remote controller of the TV.
It seemed like I was just in time for the news, as headlines about a serial murderer and government policies came up. Since it was mostly boring headlines, I changed the channel.
[It really is a critical moment for Blue Sky in general right now.]It was the voice of a familiar host.
“She was called Silvia, right?”
For some strange reason, I couldn’t easily tell male voices apart, but it was the opposite for female voices.
Though I’m sure you could guess some reasons why, I would like to emphasize that I was only familiar with it because I heard her voice often.
It seemed like I was seeing her practically every day on TV because of how she always started her show around dinner time.
Well, it didn’t particularly matter since I liked her show.
[I’m sure every user who had connected to Blue Sky today would know, but the Empire guild’s leader Terror had announced that they will join as part of the Camelot alliance guild. Following this, the Chaos guild and the remaining 8 guilds that were having a fierce battle over the newly discovered raid dungeon paused their warfare.]That’s right, I’m sure they felt it as well.
That this warfare between themselves was critically damaging them. That they had fallen for a trap because they couldn’t resist the profit that was right in front of their eyes.
They’ll have to seriously consider things, though they won’t have much time.
[How is the reaction of the neutral guilds, Mr. Cruise?][Currently, the neutral guild that has at least one territory in possession is taking a careful approach by only observing the situation right now, but the neutral guilds that didn’t decide to approach it that way are in a very sensitive state. Because in the end, no matter which side wins, it will be even harder than before to acquire a new territory after the war.]
[But isn’t there a greater chance that the guild that has numerous different alliances working together would be able to acquire more territory than Camelot which is an alliance that is working together under a single guild?]
Though I started frowning when I heard Silvia’s remark, there was a high chance that the remark was done to keep the show going rather than attacking our guild, which made me put the blame on the cable channel program’s director instead.
[I guess you could see it that way, but the problem is that while Camelot had promised to protect the vested rights of the neutral guilds, the other 8 guilds don’t have any respected guild that can guarantee they could set that up. With the discovery of the new raid dungeon, and at the same time Camelot just standing by when the other 8 guilds were fighting against each other for the possession of the raid dungeon means that they definitely had the wisdom and power to give the neutral guilds under the alliance protection of their vested rights. Even if they were to win against Camelot, there is a high probability that they will start a war with each other soon afterward.] [However, if you were to see how Camelot has done things, they have grown their size while guaranteeing their vested rights as the neutral guilds joined their alliance. The problem is whether they can continue to do so even after the unification of the whole server. But considering that the lord of the alliance is Miss Artoria, she carries so much respect that I think there is a higher chance that the Camelot guild will be successful instead.] [Aha, I see. Miss Artoria is definitely someone that has left a deep impression on me as well. The speech she gave out in the video of the Manchester castle siege battle was very moving indeed.]Manchester siege battle, that would be…
[Ah yes, I remember that as well. ‘No one has the right to ask of sacrifice from another!’, that’s what she said. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that she’s the representation of noblesse oblige.][And perhaps that’s the reason why she was voted as one of the top 100 most influential people in the world in the Time magazine1.]
[That’s right. I believe that Miss Artoria is the only user in all of Blue Sky to ever be put on that list.]
As their topic suddenly changed over to me, I turned off the TV. There was no way I was interested in hearing presumptuous talks about what I could be doing. I was more interested in current situations in Blue Sky or literally anything else.
I bet it would just be more efficient for me to read about other topics and issues going on through the internet and Blue Sky fansites instead. That’s what I thought as I moved onto the PC.
- Tiara kills Sense, the vice-guild leader of Zenon guild –
Seeing a headline that captured my attention, I clicked it in interest.
- Around the time when the preliminary rounds of the Swimming contest in Camelot were over, the reconnaissance parties between the ‘Zenon & Storm’ alliance and ‘Chaos, Majesty, Tempest’ alliance engaged in battle in Haslemere.
The reconnaissance team that was composed of 1 guild member each on both sides engaged in battle and soon requested reinforcements. Following the request, Zenon & Storm alliance sent 4 teams that are composed of 10 parties of guild members, while the Chaos, Majesty, Tempest alliance sent in 5 of them. As numerous casualties mounted up from this battle, Zenon’s vice-guild leader Sense came in himself along with 2 platoons (consisting of 8 teams) under the banner, with the Chaos, Majesty, Tempest alliance sending in 3 platoons as well as Tiara in response.
The battle ended with Chaos, Majesty, Tempest alliance gaining the upper hand due to them having one more platoon than them, and in this battle, Sense had died due to Tiara’s ambush attack. Though he was not in the top 10 ranked users in the server, he was 14th in the rankings as a healer class and his reputation held the Zenon guild together. Though he was the vice-guild leader, he was regarded as having more power over the guild than the guild master ‘Jedi’, and later on, he announced on his own Twitter account that their guild could no longer co-exist with Chaos, Majesty, Tempest alliance. –
As it wasn’t a video, I couldn’t tell how Tiara had killed Sense but considering that Sense was a healer, it shouldn’t have been difficult for her to kill him. But didn’t Tiara receive a request to kill Merlin instead?
“I guess she could have gotten an additional request on top of that as well.”
There was no need to overthink it. Even though the user Sense died, there was nearly no effect on us at all. As stated in the article, the possibility of the Zenon guild becoming allies with the Chaos, Majesty, Tempest alliance should be thrown out the window at this point.
If that’s the case, what position will Storm take in response? Logically, the best-case scenario for them would be to create an alliance with Chaos, Majesty, Tempest alliance. But they already had a battle against each other which was close to becoming a full-scale war, and on top of that, their sworn ally leader had received a fatal injury from them. If they were to start an alliance in this state then they would have to participate in the fight against the Zenon guild and have their guild members leave voluntarily due to loss of morale.
Though some may not know, I received information that because of the close relationship between the two guilds, the members of both guilds were often very close to each other. This could mean that they could end up as enemies, and many would leave the guild rather than fight against their close friends in the game. In the end, the Storm guild will have to make their decision, and the Chaos, Majesty, Tempest alliance needed to offer some rights.
But for all three of the guild alliances to offer the same kind of rights was something that was nearly impossible unless they were a single guild instead. Guilds by nature always tried to make sure they retained the most amount of their own rights, and the representative that argued for it was the guild leader. The more they wanted to be known as someone competent, they would make sure to choose the path where their guild suffered the least amount of harm and that would cause serious disharmony amongst the guild leaders in their argument.
Meaning, in the end, Tiara’s action had led to a great advantage for me.
“Still, I’ll need to pay back for the attack she did on me.”
That’s right. For the first time, I had let a user land an attack on me, and that user was Tiara. Even if she was a female user, a debt was nevertheless still a debt.
There were many choices of whether I should pay her back twofold or exactly as much as she did to me, but my mind still went to the conclusion that I needed some kind of payback on her.
I looked through the sites while thinking that but there weren’t any articles worthy for me to read. Most of them were related to me or Camelot, and because the entirety of the Blue Sky servers was in a war of some kind, all the new information that came out was mostly focused on battles, war progress and circumstances.
Of course, the articles about swimming contests were still keeping a solid position in the corner.
“Looks like I still have over an hour left to kill.”
Even though I tried to pass time that much, it still didn’t go as fast as I thought. In the end, I surfed around the internet more to find anything else interesting when something caught my eye.
- Real time updates on complaints from Blue Sky users –
It was a fancy title but it was simply indicating that it was a chat room. But then again, nothing was more fun than talking in a chatroom where your identity being anonymous is guaranteed. On top of that, if you were lucky you could earn some information that was hard to get from news articles, so in the past, I would come by chat rooms like this once a week or so.
“It’s been a long time. I wonder what username I should use this time.”
As I was someone famous for having no creative sense in naming things, I decided to go with something easy.
“I’m sure there’s Artoria already, so I guess I’ll go with Artoria1.”
-The ID you’ve chosen is already used by another user.-
Hah! I guess I should be happy about how popular I am. In the end, I settled with the name Artoria 486 instead. To think that it would cost me 10 minutes just to make an ID.
I was suspicious, but I didn’t expect all of the IDs from Artoria1 to Artoria 485 would have already been taken2.
[Please keep your manners in chat.]-Artoria486 has entered the chat.-
Knuckle: Honestly, the mood around Blue Sky is so heavy these days that I don’t even feel like going out to hunt monsters.
Tattoo: I agree with Knuckle. Since all the neutral guild members go on their own, it’s difficult to find any party members experienced in raids, and even when I do find a proper party it’s the absolute worst one.
Hallelujah: Worst party, huh… Well for me, my party got annihilated even before the mid-boss of ‘Forest of Giants’ came up.
Tattoo: Welcome to the channel, Artoria wannabe. Whoa, serious? That’s a really terrible party.
Knuckle: That’s why I don’t do any raids these days but simply hunt monsters on the fields. It’s really the best for me since it’s more comfortable and best for my mental health.
Honestly, I agreed with their complaints about the raid hunting grounds going into recession. If you aren’t in a guild or a mid to small-sized guild, the fact that you’d have less experience in raid dungeons was something that’s unavoidable.
There is a clear difference between a group that’s organized working together and some random people with different ideals all working together after all.
Artoria486: Hello everyone, nice to meet you.
Tattoo: Hello.
Knuckle: Artoria, are you perhaps a woman?
Hallelujah: Knuckle, I did hear that you were feeling pretty lonely these days, are you really going to just flirt with completely random people?
I wonder what I should type. Considering my gender right now I should type that I am female, but if I were to do that I would be hit with internet karma later on for committing fraud. I mean, the ones that go around pretending to be girls on the internet are the ones that are frowned upon the most, right?
Before Blue Sky launched, there were numerous tricksters and scammers that fed on people’s ignorance… and this was definitely not me just having a grudge against them because I had an experience in the past of having huge amounts of items taken by them through their scam.
Tattoo: Seeing as how she isn’t answering, she’s definitely a woman.
Knuckle: Whoa, yeah you’re right. If she was a man, she would have said she was a woman after all!
Hallelujah: Wow, we got real Sherlock Holmes here.
Artoria486: What’s the latest hot topic in the chat these days?
I showed neither affirmation nor denial of their claims as I kept on typing.
Tattoo: Wow, a real cool gal aren’t ya.
Knuckle: Yeah.
Hallelujah: I guess the main topic these days are the 3 sizes of the goddesses?
Knuckle: Heh… you’re completely right, Hallelujah. Users like us don’t talk about current politics or anything. We’re simply happy just to see the goddesses that came out of the swimsuit contest.
Tattoo: Actually, are you really the real deal, Artoria?
Hallelujah: Why would the real Artoria come into a chat like this? I’m sure she’s just some passerby who came by here.
Tattoo: Yeah, you’re right.
Wait, so just because I was a passerby I couldn’t possibly be Artoria herself? I suddenly felt the need to be justified.
Artoria486: I really am Artoria though.
Knuckle: Rofl! We’re not such easy guys you know.
Tattoo: Heh, as if. It’s true that you are an easy guy to fool.
Knuckle: Ngh!!
Hallelujah: All right, I’ll believe in you Artoria, but can you tell me your 3 sizes then?
Knuckle: Whoa, look at this playboy right here, smooth moves.
Tattoo: Daaamn.
Three sizes, huh… It was on the back of my mind since Katalina had told me back then.
Artoria486: It’s 35-24-353.
Knuckle: Whoa!
Tattoo: Omg!
Hallelujah: Dayum!
Knuckle: Even IF you do have such wonderful proportions, I still can’t believe that you are Artoria herself.
Tattoo: I agree.
Hallelujah: Me too.
Artoria486: Then what should I do to make you believe me?
I was wondering what I’m even doing now.
Knuckle: Proof!
Tattoo: Proof!
Hallelujah: Proof!
Proof, huh? Well, that won’t be too difficult. But…
Artoria486: And if I do show you that I’m actually Artoria, what will you all do?
Knuckle: Hmm… well if you let me join the Camelot guild, I’ll stand in the forefront of the frontlines wearing nothing but underwear.
Tattoo: I’ll do that as well.
Hallelujah: Count me in too.
Artoria486: I’ll see you all later then.
And that’s how the conversation had ended. The three of them kept saying something to me afterward but I had no intention to play with them any longer. It was because Katalina had returned faster than I expected4.
