Spiritual Ascension Online (SAO AU - SI Quartet) - Chapter 4

Launch Day Part 4

Alchemy in SAO, Imya decided, was fun. In a government building like Prefecture de Police, it was very much reminiscent of regular lab, or chemistry lessons. Pitchers and stations and bubbling, glowing liquids flowing through glass into containers and whatnot. He was given to understand that out in the field alchemists used mobile cauldrons, though.

Shaped rather like onions, if he was to be honest. The suspiciously young-looking, dwarven girl who guided him through the recipes for the simple HP and Mana potions and an all-purpose poison also helpfully pointed out the fact that the poison container fit quite easily into his hand mortar. Huh, synergy. The rhythm minigame required to prepare the ingredients and then operate the cauldron wasn’t too bad either.  Hopefully, it wouldn’t get too hard at higher levels. He always sucked at rhythm games. Precision motions weren’t his hottest area either, for all that right now Alchemy kept to simple, repetitive motions.

Name Pending: [Just finished with all of my tutorials for now. Where next, oh Dark One?]

Black Pharaoh: [<3~. Waiting for everyone at the steps of Notre-Dame, Oni~. I'm sure a devoted fan like you will not have an issue spotting me~.]

Nodding to himself, Imya swung by the police armoury, doubling as a player shop, to grab some better gear. Which didn't mean much, he could afford a single piece of blue or two greens with the starting funds, even with apparent launch day discounts in places. Mulling the choice over, he grabbed some better boots with a small AGI boost and muffle. Considering his skills and gear, he figured he would be acting as a scout for Nefertiti's party.

Then, he was back towards Notre-Dame with its still massive crowds. Ten million was hard to visualise, especially since, from what he recalled, real life Paris wasn't rated for even half that number. He wondered briefly what sort of digital fuckery Argus was accomplishing to fit all of them there, before shaking his head and–  

Well, his oshi was right, he would spot her with no trouble. After all, she seemed to have gone with faithful recreation of her vtuber avatar. A dark skinned cat girl with long, black hair with green tint to it, green eyes with the left being framed by a black wedjat tattoo and black office suit with a scandalously short skirt.

"Hey Nefertiti, Blue Oni reporting in." He waved at her awkwardly, hoping that SAO wasn't going so far as to simulate the blush he would absolutely be spotting out of the game. Even if he absolutely felt the heat on his face from addressing another person so openly, never mind a pretty girl.

The independent Vtuber turned away from her current conversation partner, her moderator slash editor Chrysalis, who was using a very inconspicuous human male avatar. The only thing standing out about him compared to… pretty much everyone around them being the bright, golden eyes. Otherwise, with his pale complexion, short black hair and white suit jacket over black shirt just gave him a stereotypical salaryman appearance,

Nefertiti grinned and winked at him (god, he didn’t care if SAO wasn’t actually simulating blushing, it absolutely felt like it did) before strutting to him. “I think you’re actually first, Cultist Number One~.” She greeted back before bending slightly to inspect him. “You do kinda ruin the theme me’n Chrys got.” She announced, poking his chest with a mischievous glare while her tail twisted behind her. Which was a far safer thing to be focusing on than Nefertiti’s face given her pose was… provocative.

“Not everyone we recruit into our cult can be wealthy and influential, Hotep.” Her moderator jokingly played along, thankfully giving Imya time to get over his internal panic attack.

“Y-yeah…” Imya laughed nervously. “Not everyone can be a big name. You need someone to do the grunt work, eh?”

“Faaair, I suppose. So,” Her eyes flickered momentarily to his in-game handle, “my Nameless minion-” “Nice job gaming the system to let you pun like that, by the way.” “- my minion.” She stressed out, ignoring Chrysalis’ complimentary interjection. Imya could only chuckle nervously. “What’s your current build?”

He shrugged before rubbing the back of his head. “Stealth, Alchemy and Explosives. Figured I will play that ignoble job no one wants and be scout-support for the party.”

“Imya, Imya, Imya, my poor, foolish cultist.” Nefertiti shook her head with an exaggerated sigh. “Forgot that Beastkin have the scouting skills thoroughly covered between Tracking and Scouting?”

“O-oh.” He felt his chest constrict. Amazing work, five minutes in and he already fucked up heavily. He startled when he felt Nefertiti’s hand pat his shoulder. Looking up, he met her with a warm smile.

“C’mon, why the long face? It’s not the end of the world and I didn’t give you guys any instructions.” Then, she pulled him into a one armed hug and he could feel his everything freeze. “Besides, Imya dear-.” He swallowed heavily, doing his best losing battle to banish the images that conjured. “You just gave me an excellent idea~.”

“Stream starts in five.” Chrysalis reminded her mildly. “Not that it matters, given the other three have yet to so much as ping us.”

“See? We won’t be lacking in content and you will have time in the spotlight juuuust for yourself~!” She grinned like the cat who got the canary, chased it with all the cream in the house and pinned everything on the dog.

“C-can you just kill me and force me to make a new account that way?” He asked weakly, already feeling that much more apprehensive, suddenly fully aware what he signed up for.

“Nonsense. Besides, it doesn’t work that way, silly.” Nefertiti laughed as she slapped him on the back. “We ready, Chrysalis?” The man didn’t answer, simply giving thumbs up as his eyes unfocused just a little bit. Streaming in Fulldive was weird, even if somehow easier than regular when you could just think at the people watching you. “Excellent. Gather together, dear Cultists, for today is the day! We are here, me, Chrysalis and BlueOni as the first of our delectable minions of the day in Spiritual Ascension Online!” Nefertiti addressed her stream, a blue play button icon to the left of her name lighting up with a glow as a cue.

“Now, we still have some time before RoyalFang, Schmitt and BloodRose join us. Thankfully, Oni here is done with his prepwork. Now, he planned to act as our scout, which is always appreciative, but didn’t quite account on how SAO Stealth doesn’t have that much to do with it. Fortunately, that does give me an occasion to really showcase to you the single most amazing feature of the game. Namely, stunts. Y’see, I am going to act as BlueOni’s tutor in the venerable art of Scouting and hopefully, Cardinal will nod along and award him with the skill and, who knows, maybe me with some shiny as well~?”

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The axe tutorial was held at the corner of Quai des Orfevres, where a fair few dwarven NPCs seemed to set up their shops, and Boulevard du Palais. It was quite a straightforward affair, mostly guiding the players queuing for it through the motions of the basic attack moves supported by the system. Mindless enough for Marie to split her attention with the deeper description of each Sin's focus as it pertained to the imps she had available. 

[Summon Imp - Costs 1 Sin (unaspected) + 10 MP/HP.  As baseline, has (Caster's MGIx15) HP. Deals 40% caster’s MGI baseline as Fire damage in melee and at range (by flinging bolts of it). Lasts for 60s, the cost can be paid again to refresh the duration. No limit on the number of concurrent summons.]

Of them, Pride and Envy stood out by changing their damage types, with the former focusing on buffing the summoner or itself (mostly itself) while the latter stripped enemy physical defences. Wrath was the only one who lacked ranged options and compensated by getting more powerful the bigger beating it took. Lust was, unsurprisingly enough, CC option while Greed focused on buff stealing. Sloth, as she already experienced, was the thick one of the bunch while Gluttony had a life steal which even had guaranteed conditions to direct the heals to her.

Soon enough, she was done with Axe Fundamentals. Her eyes lingered a while on Lust's tooltip, perhaps more than they should, before she shook her head. Dirty thoughts and the actual utility of CC aside, this was primarily about what she wanted to well and truly cultivate beyond what was immediately on offer.

That left a very simple path. She was a tank, she needed a healer. This way there would be no matchmaking headaches or raid drama. Transmuting a pigeon to hamburger meat in an alley was simple enough, and just like that she had some Sin to go around.

"Cast: Blood. Summon: Gluttony." She commanded, the COMP's clockwork clicking beautifully as the runes lit up and got to work.

A purple blur shot out of the circle formed in front of Marie, filling the alley with the sound of tearing flesh and breaking bones. Then, the imp turned around, covering a hiccup with a surprisingly dainty hand with a raptorial blade growing out of if instead of pinkie and ring finger.

She was, perhaps, two feet tall, with small azure wings flitting on her back, with a pair of black antennae shooting out of vibrantly purple hair stylised into a pair of buns. Even her eyes followed the colour scheme, with bright azure, vertical pupils and bright purple irises, with black eyeshadow accentuating the pale face around them. Her tongue quickly licked a smear of blood from her cheek, revealing a pair of extra long fangs at the top and bottom of her jaw. The imp looked up at Marie with a sardonic grin. "Real bad girl, aren't'ya, boss?"

Goddamn, Argus had taken those comments by the Beta Testers about the imps being cute and gone above and beyond for full release. Look at those fangs! That was one kissable maw right there.

"Hey, murder's fun for the whole family but I can't exactly get away with much right now. And that bit of poultry still got me a pretty face like you coming to say hi, Angboda." Rockefeller said with a grin, for the first time since she had logged in parting her lips to show what she was packing. Pearly whites fitting together like fine clockwork, lovingly designed to flense flesh and crush bone. Dwarves liked their stone bread and gravel stew, character creation hadn't argued overly much. "Come on, I'll have you praying on my veins the whole day if that's what it takes for me to have a pet mantis."

Her right gauntlet promptly vanished into her inventory, giving Angboda a clear shot at her forearm. Technically she could just feed this cute little buzzard mana indefinitely, out of combat she got one MP per second. However, this worked on TTRPG rules by everything the Beta Testers had said online. While the crunch was very much there and it'd function, there was nuance and most importantly, stunts.

The tiny mantis girl tilted her head, looking at Marie in silence for a moment before unceremoniously taking the invitation to chomp down on her arm. It honestly felt a little bit like a mosquito bite, if over a much larger area.

"Starting small, eh? I'd say it's a joke 'bout my height, but teeth like yours can't be bad." She mumbled after a moment, jump-fluttering over the dwarf's shoulder and onto her back. “Don’t worry about keeping the armour off for my sake, boss. S’long as you want me to leech off of you it will work after this. Magic~.” With that, the imp happily went back to filling the air with satisfied sounds of suction.

Speaking of slurping, she needed some health potions. Fortunately, a quick dip into a nearby convenience store proved her suspicions right as the system helpfully informed her of the exact numbers each item in the soft drinks section would restore her for. It did have the unfortunate implication that in SAO-France, Pepsico seemed to have monopoly.

Still, seventy-five bucks for a quarter of your health was seventy-five bucks for a quarter of your health. A twelve-pack should do.