Soul Art Online

- Arthas -

"A bard is a no go. I can't sing to save my life." I denied.

"A musician is also good." Veena said.

I did have experience in playing a piano but I don't see myself doing it.

What Shiroe wanted to discuss was a subclass for me. Although, we were having a bit of a problem in doing so.

We wanted something which would keep me from killing and exploring to help me calm down my mind so our choices were cut in half. 

The waiter came and kept three mugs of his honey mead on a table in front of us before coming to us and taking our order.

"Hmm, how about a blacksmith? We don't have one in our team and weapons and armour do take a lot of money to make."

"Blacksmithing is quite hard in this game. We need to practise a lot and it will take a lot of time away from levelling." I argued. I didn't want to give away my advantage in levels.

"What we want is something that will take your mind off of things, something that you enjoy. Perhaps you can try out some hobbies and we can think of some classes related to those." Veena suggested.

"Hmm." The idea sounded good. "Alright, let's go with that."

I did have a hobby.

A very odd one.

___________________________________x__________________________________

"Calligraphy?" Shiroe asked again as we walked towards our destination.

"Why? Is there anything wrong with Calligraphy?"

"No….there's nothing wrong per say. I just didn't think you were the type to have such a hobby."

"My grandpa had gifted me a set on my fifth birthday. I liked doing calligraphy in my free time. It helped me focus."

"Calligraphy would mean a Scribe class. You already have the Villager Class levelled up. I needed to go to the Head of the Village but here we need to go to the Mayor's office or the Scholar's Academy."

And that's exactly where we were headed towards.

When we figured out what I wanted, Shiroe led me to get the Class while Veena went back home to practise her own Herbalist Class Skills.

The process was easier than I thought.

They offered the Class to any maxed level Villager.

After that we bought a ton of materials for me to practise Calligraphy. Shiroe told me that he copied several books to level up his Class Skills and even sold them later on.

In this place, there was no printing press. All the books were written by hand and copied by Scribes. The Academy even offered quests for it.

By the time we returned, it was late night. Shiroe separated from me and went to his own home.

He had found a small place to rent nearby. The place was not as good as ours. It didn't have a bath and had only one small room but on the plus side, it had a lower rent, allowing him to easily rent it out.

- Kuroka -

"Are you sure you both want to do this, Kuroka, Arthur?" Vali asked her once more.

She took a deep breath and answered. "Yes."

Arthur was just his usual stoic self and nodded, his eyes never leaving the bed where Ley Fay lay, unconscious, that abomination of a gaming helmet on her head.

Kuroka remembered that the girl had been extremely excited about the first VRMMORPG in the world and couldn't wait to try it and how happy she was when she finally got the gaming helmet.

Who could have thought….?

And as if this was just the beginning, bad news just kept coming.

Vali came with the information that even her own sister, Shirone was in a similar situation right now, along with the little sister of the new Lucifer and her other fellow peerage members.

She had almost rushed and invaded the Gremory Mansion had Vali not stopped her by force….not that going there would have helped.

Everyone had seen how the Game Master dealt with anyone trying to interfere with his game. Not only would she kill herself, she would also endanger her sister's life by going there by herself.

Kuroka was at her wit's end on what to do.

The next piece of information he brought gave her some hope.

He told her about how the Satans were planning to send people inside the game and how it was also approved by the Game Master.

All they needed was to order a VR set from the official website and they could go inside the game and rescue everyone by completing the game.

He became silent for a moment before speaking. "Then take care. We will make sure your body is protected here."

They had offered help but she wasn't sure what she would face inside the game and if their strengths would even be of any use inside the virtual world so she didn't accept their help.

Ultimately, only three people were going to go inside the game.

Her, Arthur and Eliane Westcott, Arthur's maid and lover. She was the descendant of one of the founders of the Golden Dawn Magician Organisation as well as Ley Fay's maid and magic tutor. She had become a maid in the service of thePendragon family and was the one who took care of Ley Fay all this time.

Her relationship with Arthur was not accepted due to the difference in their statuses so Arthur had left his house so as to not implicate her due to their relationship.

When she found out about Ley Fay's situation and that Arthur was planning to go inside the game, she had pleaded to accompany them.

She was also a master magician with enough skill for other members of the team to recognise her.

After all, this was the person who had trained Ley Fay into the excellent Magician she was today.

She looked at Vali and Bikou, the latter waving her goodbye as she closed her eyes and darkness overtook her.

The game started and she was asked to choose her name. She chose her character name as Kuroneko and logged in.

When her eyes opened again, she found herself standing in the middle of what looked to be a village.

She was taken aback for a moment as the surroundings looked too real for it to be a virtual world.

Perhaps the only thing which prevented her from thinking that she had been teleported to a different world altogether were the two bars at the corner of her vision.

She looked towards the side and saw her own reflection in a window pane.

It was almost the same as her usual appearance except the absence of her Cat ears and tails. She was dressed in coarse faded clothes which wouldn't look out of place in a mediaeval villager.

Over the next few minutes, she checked several functions of the system to get familiar with everything and then looked around to check the place.

Her appearance attracted the eyes of quite a few players. They stared at her wide eyed but didn't approach her, instead choosing to stare at her from a distance.

She wondered what was up with those looks and went ahead and talked to a few of them.

One of them, a woman who looked to be in her forties, was helpful enough to explain everything to her.

What she found out next sent shivers down her spine and increased her worries even more as she thought of her sister's safety.

Anyone who dies in the game, died for real.

Then there was the thing about time passing quickly inside the game.

What had looked to be less than a week from the outside, was already more than three months in the game world.

Was Shirone already?

No.

Shirone would be safe.

She wasn't weak.

….at present, Kuroka could only console herself with the words.

She had to grow stronger as soon as possible and find her sister.

She went around and asked for a few things and made plans to level up faster.

__________________________________x___________________________________

Two days later, Kuroka found some problems.

First, she wasn't even remotely near her full power. To gain power, she needed to level up.

She had already read everything she could about the game and knew what she needed to know about the class system.

That said, without her strength, hunting was difficult. Hunting around the village borders was too slow.

There were several people who were in the starting village, still hunting to get a T2 Job Class and they often hunted the weaker prey near the borders of the starting village. And with the spawn time being what it was, it made levelling up very difficult for the people.

If she wanted to level up faster, she had to use some other means.

What she had found out was that this game offered a large degree of freedom in the actions of a person. She was about to test out just how much that freedom was.

Over the next week, she spent all her time hunting. Especially at nights, when there were fewer people near the outer parts of the town.

The level of monsters also increased slightly but that was only for the better.

She might have lost her power but her experience was every bit as useful as it was in the real world.

When they were younger, she had survived in the Underworld slums, protecting and feeding her sister all by herself.

Hunting and escaping others is not difficult for her.

She found out that she could use poison to hunt and used her money to buy poison from the Village Shop. It cost her a lot but she could manage.

She didn't spend her time in the village inn and that saved her a few extra bucks.

After getting poison, she could easily hunt higher level animals, although she had to hide and wait for them to slowly reach a near death state where she could just end them with a single strike.

It was an exhaustingly slow process but it did give her more experience than anything she could get while hunting near the village borders.

Once in a while she saw a few players coming to the forest but they never did so at nights and they were almost always in teams so it was easy to avoid them.