Pouting Loli, Almost Done

After spending a few hours checking out her giant main body for any possible errors, a certain loli dark elf finally managed to satisfy her paranoia and had now decided to return to her terminal (the globe). Upon sitting down in the chair next to it and tapping on the terminal, as if it was routine, the loli narrowed her search into finding a certain werewolf.

At first, when the terminal started playing his footage for the last few hours, the loli released a sigh of relief as the werewolf hadn't done anything crazy while she was busy. She kept watching for a few minutes more until she finally decided that it should have been safe. Just as she was about to swap the terminal's display to somewhere else, the scene of Kirou's attack on that one bull using his wires to form a blade-like weapon grabbed her attention. She herself didn't know why but seeing that action prompted an alarm bell to go off within her mind.

Instead of switching displays, the loli decided to watch the fight to the end, only to be later greeted by the sight of Kirou binding the four bulls by their heads, followed by the grotesque scene which happened next. Though the loli is just a projection of a body that the AI of the supercomputer found curious, thus making it technically just a construct of 1's and 0's in a three-dimensional shape, the loli threw up as she watched the scene of the bulls having their necks almost rip off in such a manner.

This isn't to say that the loli or the AI within the supercomputer hasn't seen such grotesque sights before, but it was a first in which such a sight was thrown into her face, prompting her projected body, which was made to emulate a certain player's avatar, to react in such a manner. Ironically enough, when this happened to the loli projection, the supercomputer itself experienced a mild case of overclocking its system. Again, this isn't a case of the AI never seeing such scenes before, only that the method in which it was delivered was quite unexpected.

With the supercomputer returning to normal operations and the loli projection having regained her composure, the loli looked at the display showing Kirou's face with a livid expression that quickly transformed into a scowl that finally deformed into a pout before the loli sat down. If she was being honest, what Kirou pulled off isn't something impossible as there were codes in the system to account for such situations. What the loli found displeasing was the fact that Kirou was able to pull off such a move so early within the game, with just his blasted wires.

If she was being honest with herself, when she adjusted the quest requirements for Kirou's class advancement quest, the loli never expected him to be able to pull off a stunt like this, especially while she wasn't looking. For now, she could only pout at the fact that she can't punish Kirou for doing something illegal while simultaneously feel dread over that chilly feeling she had on the previous night.

As the loli started watching Kirou's movements once more, she couldn't stop herself from saying out loud, "I truly hope Mr. Big Bad Wolf doesn't do anything else that's too crazy."

Sadly for this dark elf loli, she never realized that her stunt of messing with Kirou's quest would soon come at a serious consequence to her later on. Oh well, that's going to be her heartache to deal with later on. (Keke)

*******

A few hours later, Kirou was roughly twenty or so kilometers away from his secret base on the north side of the Southern Continent. At the moment Kirou was searching for new monsters to kill. He had already completed most of the objectives for his quest but he quickly realized that he's run out of monsters to kill. With this thought in mind, Kirou took a glance at his quest window.

Bind your targets: 100/100

Hunt your targets and defeat them as follows:

Dismemberment- 100/100

Decapitation- 100/100

Splitting in Two- 100/100

Freestyle- 265/300

*Defeat Weapon Master Bladesmith's Clone: 0/1

So far, all he has left to do finish the 'Freestyle' kill requirements and go back to Elderwood Village to challenge Senior Bladesmith's clone. Whenever Kirou looks at that final requirement, he always gets a foreboding feeling about it. While he already had an idea as to what can happen, so far it is just an idea. He'll have to wait and see.

While Kirou was momentarily distracted by his thoughts, an arrow was loosed from within the surrounding forest and was heading his way. Moments before the arrow hit, Kirou heard the whistling sound it generated with his wolfish and immediately turned around, catching the arrow just centimeters away from his face. After catching the arrow, Kirou crushed it before taking a look at the offending perpetrators.

Roughly thirty meters away, within a treetop stood an archer currently staring at Kirou with a pair of cold eyes. Kirou glanced at this archer with an impassive gaze before taking a look at the forest around him. Apparently, while Kirou was distracted with his thoughts on how to complete his quest, he had unknowingly been surrounded by a group of persons. From what he could see, Kirou wasn't sure if this group of people were players or just wild monsters.

Noticing his gaze scanning around the forest, a group of people, each of varying shapes and sizes made their presence known. Doing a quick count, including the one in the tree, about fifteen persons were surrounding him. Kirou just lifted his hands up in a surrender-like gesture as he stared at the group of people circling him. With his actions, the group stopped roughly fifteen meters away from him.

Looking at the cautious group prompted Kirou to raise an eyebrow before he spoke up, "Is there a reason that you gentlemen chose to attack me, or did you guys mistake me for someone else by me accidentally walking into this clearing?"

Kirou watched as the group communicated via eye contact for a moment before a bearded man that appeared to be in his late thirties, dressed in leather armor, walked out from the group and approached Kirou, stopping ten meters away. The man looked at Kirou with a chilly expression as he spoke, "Leave all of your equipment and get out of our woods, Lycan. Your kind isn't welcome around these parts." After saying this, the man unsheathed the twin shortswords at his waist and pointed them at Kirou.

Taking a glance at the archer within the tree that now had an arrow notched on his bow that was pointed directly at him, Kirou thought to himself, 'So it's the former reason, just great. From the looks of it, these bandits seem to have a grudge against Lycans, even better.'

While those thoughts had passed through Kirou's mind, he focused his gaze back on the man and spoke in a casual tone after dropping his hands, "And if I refuse?"

Instead of answering Kirou's question, the man directly spoke to the others out loud, "No need to worry about anything, boys. I'll be sure to take responsibility, so kill this wolf bastard."

Following his words, everyone got into position and began their attacks. Those equipped with melee weapons instantly rushed towards Kirou with deadly intent, lead by the man in leather armor. Those with ranged weapons stepped back and started launching attacks directed at Kirou's current position. As for the only mage within the group, he stood in the back, looking on at the group of people rushing at Kirou, not intending to join this farce of a battle that wouldn't need his power at all.

Seeing the attacks and attackers rushing towards him, Kirou could only shake his head at their actions. Not wanting to trigger the retaliation system against himself, Kirou allowed the arrow launched by the archer within the treetops to graze his arm, only to realize that a certain message that he was expecting didn't pop up. To make sure he isn't seeing things, Kirou made sure to have another attack graze his body, only to realize that the same thing happened once more, prompting a wide grin to form on his face as he took a look at the people before him.

Monster: Bandit Rogue

Monster Level: 24

Health: 5300 (+25000)/5300 (+25000)

Attack: 120

Defense: 100

Skills: Double Stab, Reverse Slash, Knife Throw, Camouflage

Slightly dodging the attacks from the melee attackers before him by a hair's breadth, Kirou stared at the group of people..... no, monsters before him with the wide grin on his face as he spoke, "It looks like I've found just the targets that I needed to find. Let's play."

Immediately after saying those words, Kirou's body immediately sank into the shadows of an attacker, vanishing from sight, This prompted the melee and ranged attackers to halt their actions while surveying the surroundings. While those on the ground were busying looking around like a bunch of headless chickens, the archer in the treetops glanced in the direction of the mage, only to see Kirou's body appear directly behind the mage. Before the archer to even shout to warn him, however, the mage issued a shout of his own, attracting the attention of all the persons within the area. As soon as they all looked over, they saw with their own eyes one of Kirou's arms leaving the chest of the mage.

An interesting fun fact about Immortal Era: just like players, monsters that share similar bodies to the main races of the game can all be one and two-shotted by a player, so long as he or she is capable of bypassing the natural shield these monsters usually have around themselves, which they can turn on and off at will, and deal a critical attack with enough power behind it. These shields act as a buffer around these monsters, giving them similar protection to a normal monster of the same level with high health. As for bypassing this shield or breaking it the slow way, that method is left up to the player to figure out. As for why this method was implemented in such a manner, no one knows.

Following the death of the mage that didn't have his shield or any basic defenses active, Kirou now looks at the other fourteen players with a predatory glint in his eyes. Besides the archer that had the high ground and was far enough away to not be swayed by any emotion, seeing said predatory glint come and go, the rest of the group grew livid in anger as they rushed at Kirou with the intent to maul him to death. As for the archer himself, he quickly extricated himself from the battle at the first chance he got.

Kirou had always taken notice of the archer's presence so when he noticed that the archer was fleeing, instead of breaking from combat with the group before him to give chase, Kirou quietly created two shadow clones that sneakily snuck away from the battle and gave chase. For now, he would have them chase down the archer while he dealt with the thirteen beings before him.

With his attention now being fully devoted to the thirteen bandits before him, Kirou did not attempt to plan out any of his attacks and instead opted to allow his body to respond to each and every situation presented to him during the fight. This resulted in quite a few surprises for Kirou as he noticed that his body was subconsciously weaving wires around every person that attacked him up close within the same breath as his dodges.

This kept going on for a while until Kirou had managed to properly wrap all ten melee attackers with his wires. Confident in his work, Kirou allowed his energy to flow from his body and into his gloves, which then caused the energy to travel along the various wires connected to his gloves. This resulted in all the bandits noticing a few locations of their bodies giving off a faint, blueish glow. Before the bandits could try anything, Kirou tightens his hands into fists, crossed his hands, and pulled them back to his chest. Those actions resulted in all ten bandits to visibly see and experience that natural barrier surrounding their bodies visibly weaken and break within seconds, followed by them being shredded by the wires pulling on their bodies from various directions.

As for the three ranged attackers, when they saw this, each tried to run in a different direction, only to come face to face with each of Kirou's three pets. Kirou watched as his three pets blasted off the barriers surrounding the three ranged attackers before kicking them over to Kirou to finish off. Kirou said nothing to this as he made quick work of the three weakened ranged attackers. Following those kills, Kirou took a quick glance at his quest window, satisfied with the numbers he saw.

Bind your targets: 100/100

Hunt your targets and defeat them as follows:

Dismemberment- 100/100

Decapitation- 100/100

Splitting in Two- 100/100

Freestyle- 279/300

*Defeat Weapon Master Bladesmith's Clone: 0/1

"Very good. Now I just need to track down that final archer before hunting twenty more monsters like them if push comes to shove. Which reminds me, where are my clones?" As Kirou spoke all of this aloud, he suddenly turned in a random direction before a feral grin formed on his face. He instantly took off in that direction after sending his pets back to the pet space. As he moved, Kirou spoke under his breath. "It seems like it truly was a good move to allow that one to escape. He's led me to nest and they have just enough for me to finish my quest."