By a lake in Ninetails

    The sun shines down on the calm lake waters as barely any sound outside the normal ambience is heard. If it wasn't for all the undead attacks going on around here there would absolutely be some group of people fishing here, or picnicing or something, the cooler temperature might have something to do with some of it too. No instead at the moment there is only one person in the immediate area and that is Setsuna as he flips through a book slowly, studying the pages as he goes.

Goldenblade is, in fact, here for the fishing, having taken a break after she and a group of players fended off the undead army at a village nearby. She figures it's probably safe here since most or all of the undead in the area were killed. She knows that, she took part in some of it. She's got dark circles under her eyes because what she hasn't done a lot of is sleep; she's a bit tired, but not really in the mood to sleep. She calls a greeting as she sees Setsuna, and wonders, "What have you got there?"

    Setsuna is startled out of his reading at the sound of the voice and looks around confused for a moment as he seeks the source of the voice and calms a little seeing GoldenBlade. "For a second I thought you were something else. " He settles back in and gestures to the grass near him. "A borrowed journal on the monsters in the region, kinda meant to be something that has been kept uptoday by the hunters guild and all that. However it is just general information and poorly sketched ascii like pictures. Fortunately the hand writing is in a readable font at least." Taking a moment to look around again before back to GoldenBlade "So what about you? "

Goldenblade peers at Setsuna, and wonders, "Who else would I be? I'm a bit too meaty for a skeleton, and a bit too spry for a zombie, and a bit too alive for either, not that they didn't have a go at me." She chuckles, approaches the lakeshore, and considers the journal. "Do they say what kind of fish in the lake?" she wonders. "Back in the real world, you could get a bit of meat off any fish. Now, most of the fish you get, you get nothing, and then you get lucky and get a bit of fishmeat, but it fills you for a day, even menu cooking. Tasts like cardboard, but you can survive. And it's better than my oldest son's wife." She shakes her head. "Her parents were rich, so she lever learned to cook. He lived to come over and have his mom's cooking whike she was alive," she says wistfully. "Luckily, he's got a daughter that cooks for them. Has since she was twelve, so they don't have to eat out, eat instant ramen every meal."

As to what she's doing, she explains, "I figured I'd see if I could catch anything. I don't have the skill for it, I think, but even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while."

     Setsuna nods his head and upon hearing the request begins to page through it at a decent enough speed to see if any form of mention of the lake, fish, sea monsters, etc. As Setsuna gets to the end of the book he looks at GoldenBlade and shrugs, "Nope nothing on fishing at least that I saw." Looking at the lake and then back to GoldenBlade, " You could always try to swim down and hunt the fish with a blade, or if you found the right spell chunker, then perhaps the old dynamite trick would work? " He suggests options as he watches the water.

    The tall albino girl wanders down to the beach. Mostly just killing time Wisteria waves when she spots Setsuna and Golden. "Hey." she offers somewhat lost in thought as she pads along to look at the water.

Goldenblade looks over at Setsuna, then back at the lake, then smirks. "You're probably right. This game confuses me. Some things, like cooking, /must/ be done manually, or you wind up with soggy cardboard for supper. But you /can't/ do normal first aid, only healing magic. Where is the rhyme or reason." It's a game, but she doesn't understand the normal tropes of games at all, having never played any, not solo games or pencil-and-paper.

When Wisteria arrives, she calls, "Hello there! Another tourist to Ninetails?" she wonders. "Or have you come to fight the undead also?"

    "In the end all you can do is trial and error, " Setsuna says as he looks up to see Wisteria tracing the waters edge and he gives her a friendly smile. "Hello there. Seems everyone is looking for some time by the lake." At the mention of the undead from GoldenBlade his attention would be turned back to Goldie, " Is that what brought you this way? The undead? Here I thought you just heard this was the best fishing lake." He grins obviously thinking his own joke is funny.

    Wisteria chuckles "I did come up here to fight undead." she says "Gotta see everything if I'm ever gona find a way to break things and wiggle out of this trap." she says with a shrug.

Goldenblade shrugs about the undead and fishing. "I took a commission to assist in the fight against the undead. We fought a battle in a village closeby. We killed an army of them. Not all, but all that were closeby, I think. So I am taking a break. When the villagers mentioned this lake, I thought I would come see if the fish were biting. But I did not cut the bodies up for chum, I do not think I could stomach any fish that found that palatable."

She smiles to Wisteria, "You, too? And have you found any yet? But yes, it will be nice to wiggle out, though I am told it will be at the end of the Tower. But then, we must keep the world on our side until that happens if we are to live in it, yes?"

    Setsuna nods listening to GoldenBlade's tale, " I have recently had a similar experience. Villagers, undead, rawr, argh, hurrah victory. You know how it goes. I believe she was in fact there with me. " He gestures to Wisteria before continuing, "As for doors in or out, there are many different ways one could wiggle. Wiggle into a crack and find a boss killing dev sword, wiggle under a door and find a debug room. Wiggle up up down down, left right , left right, then write the letter B and A in the ground and you could become an immortal object. You never know where wiggling gets you."

    Wisteria shrugs "I've never been a game person." she says "Mostly I just came here to talk with a friend, she moved to Kyoto and I still live in Tokyo." she smiles a little "I wonder if it's been as long out there as in here sometimes." she kicks a rock sending it bouncing. "But Gilgamesh warned me... we won't like what we find at the top." she says "And he soloed at least ten floors and finished climbing... though he says it's taller than it was when he climbed it."

Goldenblade nods to Setsuna about he and Wisteria fighting the undead together. "Well done," she says. "Hopefully enough edventurers can fight them off, and pare down their numbers until they are not a threat." The rest of Setsuna's comments draw a blank look. "Are you saying there are game programming errors that let these things happen? Or that they are hidden away like prizes to find? That seems strange." But video games are strange to Goldenblade and she does not claim to understand how they happen.

She nods to Wisteria, and said, "I joined it, too, to keep in touch with my family. My son said it would be better than long distance phone calls, and I would be able to walk and move much more easily. And he was right," she laughs. "But I miss my family, and as convenient as this is /for me/, I'd like the opportunity to log out and see them again."

    Setsuna listens and tilts his head at one point in confusion, " Gilgamesh? " He really should have paid more attention to lore and stuff in the past, he really was paying for it. "Which one is Gilgamesh again?" He shrugs and keeps moving in the conversation for now, probably wasn't that important to know who Gilgamesh was. " So think of it like this. Assuming you still believe it is a game and haven't decided to believe this is now real life, then this place was made by humans. Humans in general never do anything right, they also sometimes do things they think is cool to do even if they aren't suppose to. So it stands to reason there are such things like that. Such things to get us all back out to friends and family faster."

    Wisteria chuckles "He's the king in Alne." shesays "I heard about all that kind of thing.. and seeing the stuff that's been going on with the tower and the after effects, and talking to Gilgamesh has me wanting to find other ways if we can so." she shsrugs "I poke every quest, delve every dungeon, fight every boss, and look for things that aren't right."

Goldenblade offers a shrug to Setsuna. "I know it's a game every time I check my inventory instead of looking through my pockets, and I find a cooked haunch instead of a poptart in a wrapper. With no pocket lint on it. Everything says it's a game, as real as it may feel. But I don't know anything about these computer game except that if you play it a certain way, you gain things and make the game easier than it would have been if you hadn't. The rest, I hope you ae right, but it is beyond what I can do."

She hrms to Wisteria, and agrees, "I go on quests, and fight bosses, because that is how you get better in the game. I will look for things that aren't right, but do not rely on my old eyes. I can tell a burnt brick from a fly ash brick, but the things here are too strange for me to tell one from another."

    Setsuna nods his head, " Trust me when I say I am certainly on your side of that logic. Whatever it takes to get out." His eyes drift off to the blue lake, " We need a whisle." He chuckles to himself imagining a whirlwind coming to carry them all up to the top of the tower. "Its these kind of things thoughts said aloud that got me out of the taverns. They make sense to me at least. " Looking back at GoldenBlade, "However like you I haven't paid enough attention to know when something is right or wrong at the moment. Hence the reading and information gathering. If nothing else maybe something will come from it."

    Wisteria nods "Yah I just look for stuff that doesn't belong, sometimes it's game stuff I didn't know, sometimes it's nothing, sometimes it's an immortal cliff face with footprints going into it." she shrugs "I mean.. Mizukichi found that one but still the point stands. If it looks weird it's either suppose to be there and so it's a clue, or it's not and so it's something we should poke."

Goldenblade ehs to Setsuna. "A whistle? For what?" She whistles sharply, though nothing happens. "If you can find holes in the game, we are all behind you. But no one's told me these things except for you. But gather all the information that you can, and I will as well, and we'll see what may be done."

She hrms at Wisteria, and considers that. "Things to investigate. That's wise. Is there some sort of way to tell others these secrets? Or do they evaporate when shared?"

    Setsuna shakes his head in GoldenBldaes direction, "Don't worry about the whistle, just a random stray thought that came out. " Turning his head to Wisteria, " So wait someone really found footprints walking into a cliff face?" Any other time he would of laughed at the bug but this , this was one of those things he was talking about earlier. " So do you know what was behind the wall?"

    Mizuki has been... around! She's dressed in a hawaiian shirt, shorts, and a sun hat for the beach. Waving, nodding in response to comments about wiggling out of the game, or the reminders that it IS a game... Although she looks a bit solemn when talk turns to secrets, and finally speaks up: "Besides the impenetrable wall with footprints going into it -- which we still haven't been back to investigate -- I haven't found anything like that again. Although there is something else I've been wondering, recently."

    She looks up at Wisteria. "There are all manner of creatures in this world. Some, are very powerful. If we could find some kind of extra-powerful version of monster taming... or if we ever found a powerful monster we could TALK to... what if it could help us fight the floor bosses? And the waves, if needed..."

    When asked about the wall, Mizuki adds, "It was in Ezzo. Back in the first few weeks, right after the rescue. Every object in the area, every rock or branch, not just the cliff face, was an Immortal Object. I figure someone who knows things about the game -- a developer, or someone who knows one, or a playtester or something -- holed themselves up in a secret room. Unfortunately, we kept looking for signs, and then we talked to another NPC, and then the subject came up of whether we're all data now in a CC corp computer somewhere and by the time we thought of posting a guard we were already on the ship back. Haven't been back to Ezzo since..." she shrugs.

Goldenblade nods to Setsuna, shrugs about the whistle. So many details, it's hard to sort the clues from the fluff. She glances at Mizuki, but says, "I think extra-powerful monster taming would be useful, but then again, so would extra powerful swords and extra powerful fireballs. I think all of these things will help us fight floor bosses. That's one of the reasons I'm putting together an academy. If everyone shares their research and we teach each other, then we can all be more powerful and win floor boss fights. Speaking of which," she says, changing line of questioning, "It occurs to me that floor three and floor four bosses were close together in time, but I have not heard about a floor five boss. Has it been found yet? Has it been searched for?"

As to Ezzo, she thinks back to her one trip there. "Gah, I don't think I spent ten minutes ashore there. We sailed over to pick up refugees. Is it safe to go back? Maybe a trip would have value?"

    Mizuki shrugs at the question about a floor five boss. "I've been too busy fighting zombies..."

    Wisteria notices it's a Mizuki "Mizukichi!" she says and throws her arms around her smol friend hugging her tightly. "Yah I've been mostly htiting dungeons and stuff."

    Setsuna listens to the explination of what happen on Ezzo and then checks his menu for the time. He frowns before standing and looking at the group that had gathered around him. " I fear I must excuse myself, I have to meet someone about some potnetial enchanting supplies. It was a pleasure to speak with you all." He gives a bow as he excuses himself and begins to walk in the direction of the near by town.

Goldenblade nods as Setsuna departs, and yawns. She's been up way too long, herself. "I should head back to camp and sleep. I will see you all some other time, and hopefully we will break out of this together." She bows her head, and departs.