46 '...it actually helps, counting'

The first thing I did was to call Go and see if he was awake to talk about this with and, thankfully, my best friend was awake. I told him everything I knew about the situation starting from when I found the friend request to waking up just a few minutes ago. He said that it was good until it was not and then we would just have to find a way to deal with it.

He hung up right afterward and I think he went back to sleep as if we were actually in reality. I decided not to bother him with it anymore for now and got up to freshen myself up before dressing and heading out into the manor. Lady Mara and Lana and a few of the others were currently having breakfast together at the table.

When I walked into the room and up to the table, though, everyone who looked up to greet me would just stop and stare as if they were looking at a bug. Finally, when I sat down at an empty seat beside Lana she asked me, "Did you draw that on your face?"

"No, Melpomene gave me a kiss on the cheek and now I have a tattoo," I reply bluntly, staring down at the empty table settings while wishing I had something to distract myself with.

"The GODDESS Melpomene?" Lady Mara asks suddenly, looking up from her food sharply.

Upon hearing these words all of my friends who were getting ready to start laughing at me and making jokes suddenly spit out their food or drink at the mention of the word 'goddess'. Nodding my head while frowning with half of my face as the new maid finally comes over with a cart of breakfast foods, I say, "I didn't know she was a goddess until just now, but yes. THAT Melpomene. She's honestly really nice but I would have liked to know what she was doing before she did it!"

[It was more fun this way]

"I have a heart on my face, how is that fun?!" I demand of the empty air, shocking the others who could not see the system prompt. "No, you're right, this mark is for your amusement so of course it really is actually fun and I just don't get to enjoy it the same way you do. Thank you but at the same time I want to kick you in the shin."

"Correct me if I'm wrong…" Lana says slowly as I start eating the sausage and eggs on my new plate, "but did you just tell a goddess you would kick them in the shin?"

"Would and want are two different words, do I need to clean your ears for you?" I ask wryly after finishing the food I had been eating. "I'm sure she understand my personality well enough to know I would not actually kick her. Besides, I have her mark, if I end up on her bad side… I don't even know what will happen."

Cutting into the conversation, Lady Mara says, "And see that you don't! The last time Melpomene bestowed her mark on a mortal and the mortal earned her ire was about two hundred years ago and now the world had one less mountain. Do you want to make the world have one less Sierra? No? Mind your manners. You might come back but we would not."

"Yes, Lady Mara," I sigh dramatically like a child that had just been scolded. Then I just quietly went back to eating.

As silence started to settle over the table after that, Oleander suddenly says, "I'm sorry… but the books I was given did not cover your religions. Who, may I ask, is Melpomene?"

Frowning slightly, probably because this conversation was actually taking place at all, Lady Mara says, "To tell you about one divine I need to tell you about the others. First, there are three types of divinity. There are the Righteous, Neutral, and the Forsaken. The Forsaken are evil gods who… essentially, they got bored and wanted to start over but the other gods won't let them. Now, to weaken them, their worship has been banned for three thousand years and their worshipers are hunted like the dogs they are for believing in ending life as we know it.

"Next there are the Righteous," she continues after letting her last words settle in for a moment. "They are the divines who stopped the Forsaken from leveling the world to start over again because they believe in taking responsibility and justice and all those pretty words. The Righteous are good gods but their believers are just as fanatical as the Forsaken.

"That's why I have always worshiped the Lady of Fate, Melpomene," she says at last, coming around to the main point while giving me a meaningful look that I could not quite read. "The Neutral are the honest gods, in my opinion, they don't care what happens because they're only involved for entertainment but they take care of those who take care of their interests. Now, if only my husband followed Melpomene instead of Uller the god of war."

Fate? She meant tragedy, right? Melpomene, are you a troll?

[I was not involved in her family's deaths. Besides Lana's parents, that is. Also! All things are fated to end so is fate not perfectly described as tragedy?]

"Damn, I can't even argue with that," I mutter, surprising everyone at the table once again. "Sorry, Melpomene is pretty active today. I'll, uh, try to keep it in my head."

"Mr. Harlow, please go clean Hack's face for him," Lady Mara says suddenly while Mr. Harlow hurries around to my seat where he starts wiping my face with a dampened towel. More specifically, he was trying to wipe off the Melpo's Mark.

When it obviously did not go away, Mr. Harlow could only say, "No… I'm sorry, ma'am, but it is real. Very… real."

"If you worship Melpomene then why does everyone keep acting like this is a bad thing?" Ivana asks curiously. "Shouldn't you be looking at this like he is the biggest blessing in the world? I'm confused."

"Ivana, remember when I asked YOU who Melpomene was?" I ask curiously, reminding her of when I asked the ground about a player named Melpomene. "Weren't you the one who told me where the name comes from in a different world? Knowing this, you still feel the need to ask?"

"We just got here and started and you've already ruined us," Papi sighs, holding his forehead in his hands. "This is worse than that time when someone tricked Merch into buying a cursed weapon and mini-bosses kept spawning on us whenever we went out."

"That was the best thing to ever happen to us," I grumble irritably, know Papi had been forced to spend money to compensate for his equipment breakage since he did not use crafting skills or characters early on when we met. "Using money costs money, Papi, that's why I make everyone blacksmith and work leather. It's one thing to do it but to rely on it is another, we've talked about this."

"No, it sucked for everyone," Oleander mumbles in the same way I had responded to Melpomene's system prompt. "I was not even a combat character back then and you dragged me out every day to mob bosses. However, what Papi said isn't necessarily true, either. Papi, you're a paladin, so why on Earth would this be a bad thing? Being next to a chosen one or some shit should make your powers stronger. As well, how many players can say they have half of his shit? You're mad we're being carried but we all know I don't mind being a pretty little princess in a big man's arms."

"Did she just come on to me?" I ask in confusion, looking around the table that was now laughing awkwardly. Even Mr. Harlow had to clear his throat to hide the fact he had laughed.

"Do you make it a habit to carry every lady around you like a trophy?" Lady Mara asks as half a joke and half a show of his disapproval.

"There isn't a single person on my team that I haven't held in my arms as close as a lover," I say shamelessly.

"That's it," Papi says suddenly, standing upright and drawing the pick hammer I had made for him from his inventory. "I'm killing him, I'm really going to do I this time." Then he raised the pick hammer overhead and threw it like an ax over the table.

The table was only about five feet wide and the weapon itself was about the same length while Papi was not a very experienced weapons thrower. He could not make adjustments for the distance and weapon size to allow it to rotate properly, so I simply stood up in front of it and allowed the rounded spikes at the top of the hammer to strike me dead in the middle of my chest. Half of my health bar disappeared in the same instant it appeared and I was thrown back into the wall five yards behind me.

Coughing as I cast First-Aid on myself, I slowly get up from where I had bounced off of the stone wall and ask, "Feel better now? Or do I need to come over there and give you another hug? It's been so long since I got to just throw my arms around your neck and give you a good squeeze."

The others were all on their feet and holding onto Papi, who was now yelling at me to bring him his hammer so he could do it again until he did feel better, while dragging him away. Returning to my now broken seat that had become more of a stool without its backing, I sit down while rubbing my chest and say, "He has a wife, for the record, and I only like women. it's just so much fun to get him mad like that."

"If the two of you had broken anything, I would have had you kill yourselves to pay for it," is all Lady Mara says in reply, raising a teacup to drink from without even looking at me. "Lana, dear, once he has finished eating please take him to the library until his guests arrive. Keep him company, if you like, I need to go through some old business dealings to look for something that might be helpful to us."

"Do I have to study? I was going to work on developing a skill from the book I was reading last night," I say as only half of a lie. Melpomene had made a very good point in my dream last night about how to develop skills. 360 Edge was learned through repeatedly using the same spinning attack to finish mobs, but apparently I could just swing my sword a thousand times and still learn a skill.

"If you're actually going to train instead of sitting on the ground, then by all means," Lady Mara replies as Mr. Harlow pulls her wheelchair back from the end of the table. "Magic is something that will take time for you to learn, especially on your own. Spend time on your weapons while waiting on your teacher."

"Yes, Lady Mara, and thank you," I say while getting up and halfway bowing until she left the room.

"I just love how one moment you're the crudest and rudest of people and then the next second you're almost proper and even bowing," Lana remarks while gesturing for me to hurry up and finish my food. "You even made your own friend try to kill you! How do you live like that?"

"Well, you don't always live," I reply with a wink before picking up my plate, turning to the side, and noisily empty my plate in only a few moments. "My compliments to the cook, that was wonderful. Also, he and I met because his daughter randomly got a crush on me in one world and then he called me to that world to fight me because, well, it's his daughter. Nobody won but I totally beat him so now he basically has to let his daughter follow me around and follow me as well but we still, you know, I piss him off and he tries to kill me."

Leading the way out of the kitchen, Lana laughs and asks, "Why do I feel like he is not the only person that has tried to kill you?"

Giving her a shocked look as if I had been offended, I say, "I will have you know that the only people on me team to try to kill me were Papi and the assassins. How else do you get assassins for followers without constantly paying them? Impress the hell out of them." Then I told her all about how I met Merch over the course of several conflicts and vaguely told the story of how I killed myself escaping from a pretty face.

Outside in the back yard where the others were all paired up and practicing their own skills or tactics I took out a Hardened Bokuto to get to work. However, having never seen this weapon before, Lana had questions about the item before asking if I had another one. After giving her one I took up a slightly wide-legged and forward stance with the sword held in both hands up high before, like an anime character, I started chopping my sword down through the air.

But of course, what else would Lana do besides start copying me?

Unwilling to curb her enthusiasm I simply continued on with my exercise without ever saying anything even to correct her actions whenever she did them incorrectly. Mostly because I wanted to see how long it would take before she was actually properly copying me. Right now her legs were too much wider than her shoulders and she was not tucking her arms halfway through the chop to scythe the sword downward in a slicing or slashing motion while chopping.

By the time I had counted one hundred swings, though, she was standing in a proper position with better balance and knew to pull in with the attack even though she was not good at it. Now, though, I lowered my sword and asked, "How many times have you swung your sword?"

"What?" She asks in dumbfounded surprise, looking over at me and upsetting her balance.

Shaking my head sadly, I make her stand up straight and say, "Your feet should not be more than the width of your feet beyond your shoulders unless the technique requires it, always keep your knees bent at least twenty or thirty degrees so you have mobility room for shifting your body. Good, now, raise your arms up about yay high with the bottom of the hilt or pommel roughly level with the middle or upper curve of your forehead," I say while using my sword to gently prod her limbs.

"While chopping down and out you only extend the sword about halfway so it does not point straight forward and halfway through the swing you work your arms in toward your body from the elbows, almost like the arc of your swing is drawing most of a circle but the very bottom is flat. When you strike a real body with a real sword, this is how you transition from chopping into someone's armor to slicing into their flesh. You will practice this while hunting… eventually. I'm sorry."

"I knew you were really busy…" Lana says softly, awkwardly practicing the stroke that I had just taught her. "Now, though, I realize how busy you were. I thought you were just out raising your level to get stronger like most guys, but you… have way too much going on!"

Smiling softly, I reach out to lightly rub her head before taking up stance myself and saying, "Don't forget to count, Lana. You have to perform this stroke a thousand times to turn it into a skill. I should only have to do it nine hundred more times. Also… thank you, not just for understanding but accepting my friends and I into… this. This is more than we could have honestly hoped for at this point in our current lives."

Finding herself quickly losing her breath now that she was in motion again, Lana says, "You're welcome! You did something… good and deserve to… be rewarded for it. If not for… the crystal, though, your… friends would be… freeloaders."

"They're not that bad," I assure her with a laugh. "They will, at least, pay for any damages they cause. Also, breathe in while raising your sword and exhale on the attack. Measuring your breathing is an important part of both exercise and combat. If your breathing is erratic then so too will be your actions. Are you counting? I can't hear it. Start over."

"One! Two! Three! Four! Five..." Lana suddenly started calling out, restarting her count after my teasing.

"Good… it actually helps, counting," I say a little distractedly while mechanically performing a quick sequence of ten chops before pausing to mark the set in my head. "On those rare occasions where I have to fight people, it helps to just count my sword strokes. That way, the injuries and killing blows become nothing more than any old practice stroke."

*