Chương 149: B3 Chapter 5 - Grind Phase

When Veyra said, "Get back to work," she was quite boringly talking about killing more Astral Shadows for levels, until we felt ready enough to attempt the mausoleums some day in the near future. That day wasn't today, or tomorrow, or any day of the week after that, during which we spent hours upon hours invested in the beautiful art of grinding. In classic MMOs, grinding usually meant sitting down with music or a podcast in the background, while performing a menial, boring, and repetitive task over and over again.

For some people, that may have been true in Wonderwind as well. For me, though, the grind was a deadly workout. The Astral Shadows were fucking brutal. A single misstep at the wrong attack pattern would log us both out for two hours, taking a chunk of progress with it. We died on both Tuesday and Wednesday, which made us go back to practice, or in Wednesday's case, back to Movie Night Simulator.

The successful hunts consisted of me emptying my stamina bar over and over again in the deadly dance to kill one monster, then waiting to recover. With each level up, and especially with each additional point placed into [Eviscerate], the process got easier and faster. The character level in Wonderwind was still the backbone of any build. If an item offered a percentage increase to max health, for example, character level provided a big part of the base stats that got increased.

The amount of exercise felt nice in a way, until I remembered I was in VR with my real body lying in bed. I seriously needed a healthier lifestyle, didn't I? Unfortunately, grinding muscle in real life didn't offer levels.

"Just a few more, and I'm level 375," I said with a satisfied smile at the end of Friday.

"And probably a few months before we reach four hundred," Veyra said, troubled.

"I'm not sure if that'll be enough. We might need new items as well for the mausoleums. Zenith Protocol is outleveling us at this pace."

"They're spreading XP for a lot more members, though," I said.

"They're not entering the mausoleums either."

"We can't use a grind phase as an excuse," Veyra said.

"Whoever clears the first mausoleum will have a huge advantage clearing the others as well."

"Grind phase, huh," I said as I sat on a tree stump. That was a common phrase in the community referring to boring timespans of the endgame, where all top players were busy headbutting the same grind every day. There were fewer boss battles, and generally just less viewers watching livestreams. Fans were merely waiting for whoever could break the grind phase first to go explore new content. Usually, at least one grind phase happened each year. The community was used to it.

Still, the forums were rather boring right now with the popular posts being stuff like ErrinLol's wedding images. She'd lost a chunk of her more devoted fans after posting those.

"The good thing is that we're not underleveled at all anymore," Veyra said.

"I could even say we're going to the US Masters with a level advantage. Did you see that one forum post about it?"

"Which one? I've been busy." She grinned.

"Oh, you have to see this. Come with me for a bit." She grabbed my hand and we teleported to safety of our guild hall. On the couch, she showed me a post through the system menu and grinned from the side while I checked out the post. It was titled, " Team Solo Mage has registered for the USA International Masters after seven months of tournament inactivity." By DivineMichael, 2, 862, 991 upvotes: " Ain't no way they're entering a 5v5 as a duo hahaha, this is gonna be funny.

Is it bad that I'm hoping for another miracle from them?" Reply By TheArbiter, 2, 165, 781 upvotes: " These two feel like the biggest outliers since Dragrath. We hear nothing from them for months, until they suddenly show up with some absolute broken bullshit builds. 5v5 is a stretch though. Eon Covenant should win, realistically""No, no, these are the boring comments," Veyra said. She looked like she was holding in laughter.

"Sort by controversial. And look at who's arguing." I gave her a suspicious glance but did as asked. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. By VeilShot, 13, 756 upvotes: " Solo Mage really isn't that good lmao." Reply By Greenwitch, 286, 567 upvotes: " They have a roughly sixty percent chance to take all three matches against you in the finals. You can maybe win a map or two if you're lucky."

Reply By VeilShot, 1, 389, 176 upvotes: " I've seen them fight first hand. I've dueled Assassin. He taps Soul but would struggle against Lrekk. Veyra is better, but she has no support. The matchup isn't fair for her." Reply By Greenwitch, 3, 189, 279 upvotes: " What about that one time they wiped your guild while you were on a break?" Reply By VeilShot, 12, 865 upvotes: " Lol, in what world does killstealing and running in for grab gear pieces account to wiping my guild?

I'm done with yall forum trolls, I'll be back after their wiped out." Reply Greenwitch, 25, 645 downvotes: " They're" I shook my head with a hand on my head while Veyra laughed at me.

"Patrick is a menace on the forums, oh my god. His comment history is gold." I laughed with her, until I noticed another comment beneath, having been posted just five minutes ago.

"Wait," I said.

"Is Dragrath joining?"

"Huh?" Veyra asked and leaned closer. I showed her the comment. By BingusBob, 157, 589 upvotes: " Oh wow, this just got interesting. Dragrath versus Assassin rematch?" Reply By BrotherManBill, 127, 854 upvotes: " Wait, this is Dragrath's first time entering a 5v5 right? Is he going alone?" Veyra's face suddenly got serious. She opened up the competition's website to check the entrants. She scrolled a bit, then paused on a specific name.

"Oh wow, he's coming!"

"For real?"

"SwordShiba and Hibana are also listed," Veyra said. I grinned slowly.

"We already beat him once. Shouldn't be hard unless he brings a full guild, right?"

"That's a funny thing to say about the top one player," Veyra said with an amused smile.

"Eon Covenant might still be harder. We'll struggle if we don't get a guild with us as well."

"I could ask Eve, I guess, but that's about it."

"Oh, the necromancer?" She tilted her head.

"The one from Cupcake Crew who betrayed us? You still talk to her?" I leaned back and sighed.

"Nah. I barely know her these days. I think she'd be excited to join if I invited her, though. Her set was pretty good."

"The armor stacking strat?" Veyra thought about it for a few seconds.

"It'll be strong if she doesn't die right away. Protecting her will be a problem though. Nobody in her guild is nearly good enough to survive against top players. She probably won't even qualify for the competition."

"True enough..." Eve wasn't in the top five hundred. She was a good player, but she still kept a job. True top players essentially had to play full time to keep up.

"I have a few friends from Zenith Protocol I could invite over, I guess," Veyra said.

"A few of them are American too."

"You better not be talking about Henrift." She snorted a laugh.

"No, I chatted with Aurinn and her friends a bit. Mostly about our relationship."

"Oh, really?" I smirked at her.

"What did they ask?"

"Uhhh…" She looked away.

"Like, girl stuff?"

"You're getting red, Veyra."

"It wasn't anything weird!" She looked away, flustered, until she sighed.

"Regardless, everyone in that guild is nice. If we want a sure win, I could ask them to join us. I'm also down to just go have fun as a duo as long as we don't completely embarrass ourselves."

"So what do you think about Patrick's sixty percent estimate?"

"He was trolling, clearly," Veyra said.

"That was just pure rage bait. You struggled in a duel against VeilShot, right?" I crossed my hands.

"I guess he had the upper hand. It's not like I was getting stomped, though. The terrain was in his favor."

"So in an even field, you think you'd win?"

"Absolutely."

"It's not an even field, though. He'll have four team-mates."

"Yeah, but I'll have you." I added a dumb little wink to that, fully expecting Veyra to roll her eyes like she usually did. She laughed for sure, but instead she said, "You're slacking on your flirting game, Aiden."

"Oh, is my princess upping the difficulty?"

"Should I?" Veyra asked with a head tilt that was definitely suggestive.

"Should I start playing harder to get?"

"Or maybe…" I said with a suggestive smile of my own.

"What if it's your turn to make me flustered?" She chuckled softly at that.

"No, no. I can't. I'm not that type of person. Although…"

"Yeah?" She contemplated something. Slowly, her expression shifted, like she'd just gotten some grand plan. The smile was almost sly.

"Okay, it's my time to flirt. Bear with me." I waited. She chuckled at herself, before she said, "Oh, how tired I am." She moved closer with exaggerated motions, like she was acting.

"I need to sleep, but the log off button is so far away. Can you help me out a bit?" I blinked at her.

"Yeah?" Slowly, she pulled the laces of her robe, an inch at a time, until the top came loose. Her chest showing as much as the game allowed, she got on all fours on the couch and approached me. She placed a hand on my thigh.

"Who's red now?" she whispered and leaned even closer, pressing her forehead to mine. She grabbed my hand and slowly guided it down to her thighs.

"You can help me log out, can't you?" System messages bombarded me with warnings of being touched. I ignored them and moved my hand deeper, and it didn't take a second for my view to go black. [You have been timed out for 2: 00 hours.] [Reason: Sexual Content] Veyra:" Uh, well I think I made you red >. >" Veyra:" There's no way I just did that (⁄⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄⁄)" Oh my god, this woman. I just loved her way too much. I didn't respond by text. Instead, I sent her an invitation straight to Movie Night Simulator.

Only one more day until Veyra flew to America.