Ordinary

Chapter 3: Not Enough

Kaze woke up to the sound of song. A gracefully sad tune of a string orchestra played from his phone. The absurd heat sought to suffocate the dead-eyed boy. A tear rolled down his left eye, mixing with sweat and spreading across the already soaked pillow and sheets. The light of the blazing morning sun illuminated his room, almost leaving a mirage at his window.

"Still not good enough..." he whispered in a dizzy mix of a sigh and a morning groan.

After a minute of such misery, Kaze finally got up, no longer willing to bear the oppressive smell of sweat. He reached for his phone on the floor.

Forgot to turn off my alarm... I guess it's been a while since I've had to. Usually I wake up moments before it goes off, but...

He squinted at the window, peering into the street beyond. My first actual empty day in the last couple months, and nothing to do with it.

A week had passed since the incident with Mores. Kaze had been spending four hours per day helping people who wanted to do the Mythril Fall raid in PDP. Since it was new, there were many who were willing to pay to experience it to the fullest. No matter how repetitive and frustrating it may have been, the money was decent. Even with some clueless players that were raiding for the first time, Kaze enjoyed it. As much as one could enjoy fixing problems in dysfunctional parties anyway. None of them had pulled a stunt like Mores'.

This time he had been using his personal PDP account. As expected of someone who spends hours in such games, his collection of items was vast. Throughout the week, he used only a saber. To add to that, he'd been playing with the Final Curse. He thought that if playing like this had sharpened the blue-haired saber user's form and technique so much, perhaps he, too, could learn. 

The best he had done was stack up nine Purge, nowhere near as much as Runa could pull off. No matter how much discipline, dedication, and caution he'd shown during the week towards actually practicing, the result was pretty much minimal. His combat skills and movement had benefited negligibly. That much was obvious to him from the recurring dream.

I've seen him six out of the seven days so far. The one time I didn't see him was because I hadn't slept, running around in NAR instead. The Knight of Echoes, Kaze loudly breathed, putting on the set of sports clothes that hung from his chair near the PC.

He had followed the entire aftermath of the great VR disaster. One police conversation he'd overheard on the disaster channel before it had gone dead was of this entity. Apparently, it was to be the final boss of the game the players were forced into. The kidnappers actually planned on releasing the survivors if he were ever beaten. Rather, during court they said they were 'ordered to'. The police believed it to be a lie, as no organization leader was found. However, the criminals had used the symbol of the so-called knight as their logo. Thus, Kaze was sure that the thing had to somehow be close to the heart (if not the actual heart) of all of it. He'd obsessively researched everything about it, only managing to find out a trickle of useful information from a user on a forum who claimed to be a survivor of the VR disaster.

A tall and muscular male in vermillion armor, with a greatshield and a longsword. The armor wasn't the practical kind, at least in terms of real-life standards. However, it wasn't as exaggerated as most endgame armor sets in fantasy games. The helm's slit loosely resembled a bird in its shape. The whole outfit red tip-to-toe, with snow white trimming. The sword had a similar design, the hilt looked like something intended for one-handed use, but the blade was far too long and thick for any normal man to wield it so. His shield was like a giant red mirror in the shape of a emerald cut octagon gem. It had repeating diamond-like cuts within it. Echoes, Kaze sniggered.

There had been rumors that he could make an appearance in Nemesis AR before the end of the summer. After all, the game's focus was getting to certain areas in real life, fighting through hordes of mobs with other players, to reach a final boss at the location.