NOVEL WEB Chapter 16: Onwards!
Maria was sitting on top of a rooftop dangling her feet and humming to Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
She grew up listening to her eldest brother, Mikael, playing classic songs from Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, and other famous composers on the piano and other musical instruments.
Despite being the next heir to the Heltania family business, father Corinthos didn't restrict his children in learning or pursuing their hobbies. As long as just one of them was willing to inherit the family business, then they can pursue their dreams freely.
It could be said that Mikael had taken the bullet for his siblings, but that didn't deter him from improving on his musical ability. Especially since his siblings dearly loved it when he sat down and began playing.
"Ma~ri~a!!"
"Hm?"
Maria looked down and saw someone calling out to her. It was a girl with curled horns on the sides of her head. She had a scaly black dragon tail growing from her rump and black dragon wings on her back. She had reddish black scales decorating the sides of her face and her eyes were entirely black with golden pupils. The girl calling out to her looked very familiar too.
When she saw the name above the girl's head, Maria immediately knew who she was and why she was so familiar.
"Oh! Lizzy! I almost didn't recognize you!"
Maria dropped down from the building and landed lightly in front of Lizzy.
"Really? You just saw me on the video call earlier~"
"Ehehehe~ you look so different compared to the video!" Maria said as she sized up her best friend. No matter how she looked at it, Lizzy's avatar was the epitome of awesome, while she...
"Waaaah~ you look so cute, Mary~"
Lizzy immediately hugged her friend who was just so cute to look at. They were friends from real life so seeing the same person, but with wings attached to her back caused Lizzy to just lose it!
Maria responded in kind. She dropped the axe she was holding and hugged her back.
BANG!
The axe broke through the stone pavement of the street and embedded itself into the ground.
"Woah!"
"Wah!"
The two girls both jumped in surprise from the abrupt bang. Maria turned her head back and remembered that she was carrying around the large great axe with her.
"M-Mary! What's that?!" She exclaimed while pointing at the large axe behind her friend.
Lizzy grew intrigued when she saw the weapon. It had black smoke circulating around its entirety and it exuded an ominous aura.
"A-Heave-ho!"
Maria grabbed onto the handle and once more placed the weapon on top of her shoulders.
"I got this from my quest reward!"
"Woah!! What grade is this thing?! It sure as heck ain't just a rare grade weapon!"
"Ahaha~ it's actually an e—mmphffhrrmmph?!"
"Shhh~ not here Mary~ we don't want others eavesdropping on us! This is confidential info!" Lizzy quickly blocked her friend's mouth. The clueless girl was just about to blurt out some very important info.
Lizzy had already noticed that she and her friend were drawing the attention of everyone around. Seeing two young beauties-in-the-making hugging each other, not many can resist that! She didn't want her friend's private information to be leaked out to others.
As for calling out each other's names, Lizzy had long since noticed that her friend's IGN (In Game Name) was her very own name. She couldn't help but sigh at this. She should have informed her friend beforehand not to use her real name when creating the avatar.
Her IGN was Lisbet, so Lizzy was just an endearing nickname her close friends called her. Her real name was Elisa Bethell, so there were no problems on her side.
"Let's go meet up with the others! Then we'll talk all about it with them~"
"Un!"
The two immediately walked towards the teleportation building with Lizzy leading the way. Maria resolved herself to make sure she remembered what the building actually looked like. So that next time, she won't be so clueless of its location in other cities.
Most of the buildings in all the NPC cities had rather similar designs, probably only a small tidbit being different from city to city, but nevertheless they still looked similar.
The two soon arrived at a tall building with two large hourglass stone sculptures placed on the sides of the large entrance. There was a large hexagram crest on the front face of the building. Inside the building was a humongous hall with small open rooms that had glowing magic formations in them.
Each small room represented a city, fortress, frontier town, or faction outpost. The frontier was the area also known as the neutral territory which separated the two factions of light and dark.
Lizzy led Maria over to the farthest end of the halls where the magic formations within the small rooms had all begun to glow red instead of the earlier blue color.
"We're here Mary~ by the way, in order to use the teleportation functions in the building; you can only use the ones that you've successfully fulfilled their level requirements! You can't be under leveled when using some of these formations, but most of the NPC cities don't have that requirement."
"Okay! I'll keep this in mind!"
"Alright, we're going to the Torin Frontier Town—here we are!" Lizzy walked over to a small room that had the words Torin written at the top of the doorway.
Inside, the magic formation was glowing red and a pedestal with a small orb on top of it was situated at the center of the room.
"By the way Mary...why don't you put that weapon of yours inside your [Inventory]? Isn't it exhausting to carry that around on your shoulders?"
Weapons and equipment all had weight inside the game. So judging from Maria's large great axe, it seemed very heavy to walk around with it.
"Huh? Well, it's not that exhausting! This thing's actually pretty light~" Maria said as she once more began swinging the large axe around.
"Woah woah woah! D-don't swing that dangerous thing around Mary! What happens if you damage the formation array? It won't be usable if you damaged it and you'll have to pay a hefty fine if you do!"
"O-okay! Sorry about that..."
"Never mind, just put that away for now okay?"
Maria began fidgeting nervously at her words. Lizzy saw her act like this and had a hunch.
"Uhm...I don't know how?"
"..." Lizzy silently facepalmed when her hunch was spot on.
"Call up your [Inventory]"
"Okay~"
After a round of explanations, Mary was able to successfully store her weapon into her inventory, but now that she looked at it... wasn't Lizzy's weapon holstered on her waist?
"Uhm...Liz? Why do I have to store my weapon and you have yours placed on your waist?"
"Huh? Oh that...Well, it's because your axe attracts WAY too much attention!"
"Oh?"
"Attention is good and all, but if people see you carrying around such a unique and cool looking thing...wouldn't they want to try and steal it? The Thief class is a part of the game y'know, and they acquire the [Steal] skill at level 10!"
"W-wah! I don't want that!"
Maria began to furiously shake her head at the thought of her weapon being stolen. It was such a cool and obviously strong looking thing! It also had her name on it, literally, and she didn't like the thought of it being taken away from her.
"Well, enough of that, let's head over to Torin. Then we'll have to move deeper into the neutral territory and get to Almester Village. That's where we'll rendezvous with the others~"
"Okay!"
Lizzy walked over to the pedestal and placed her hand over the orb. After paying the required fee, 2 gold coins, for both her and Maria, the teleportation had begun activating and the two were whisked away to Torin Frontier Town.