Chapter 2: The Azure Rouge

“Now then,” he said as he turned to face the PKs, “I’m not a noob so you’ll have some fun out of this all right.” The two PKs readied themselves; they didn’t expect the guy in red to be a high lv character, but the girl was right this guy won’t stand a chance against the two of them. “Hey those are some rare weapons there, why you just give them up and we’ll leave you alone eh?” said the male. He was referring to kite’s Dual Blades, they didn’t look like any other blade there you could simply find anywhere, so they had to be rare. The blades had slightly longer handles that normal dual blades and where crimson in color. The actual blades where long, wide, and jagged; near the base of the blade they split into two blades one being shorter than the other, and was considered the back blade while the longer one was considered the front blade.

“Yeah they’re rare; I’ll even let you have them if you can beat me” said Azure confidently. Without warning the male charged at him with his sword to his side to swipe at Azure’s body, it was countered though when Azure used one of his blades to block it. It was a repeat of the last attack only this time the female PK came from the side to swipe at Azure. This forced him to release the Male PK, to dodge her attack. Unfortunately he didn’t get away unscathed, due to the range of her attack, and because it was a rapid attack type he was still hit by the attack. “Looks like I still got you” the female PK said with a grin. Kite didn’t have to answer as she once again wiped her scythe at him, causing him dodge again. This time though once she had swiped at him two or three times kite finally saw an opening, she could only swipe about three time before would pause, most likely the game didn’t allow for a flick Reaper to attack constantly not to mention it was a big weapon so she was bound to have plenty of opening whenever she just finished swiping. He used the Whirlwind on her dealing quite a bit of damage, one he was finished he quickly raised his weapon to block another attack attempt from the male PK, “don’t think we’ll let you get off that easy” he said. Unknown to Azure at the time the female PK had recovered from his attack and swiped at him, unlike before he didn’t have time to dodge her attack and was injured. From the extent of the damage he could tell that these guys were at least the same LV as him.

When he recovered fro the attack Azure moved away from the pair, “I guess I have no choice” he said as he put away his Dual Swords. “Oh? Are you giving up already?” said the male PK, “I didn’t think we where that rough on you, maybe you aren’t as good as you thought you where.” Azure ignored the taunting, and reached back with his right hand to pull out another weapon, it was a wide bladed sword with of a blue greenish color. “Huh? So you’re an adept rouge heh, well no wonder you’re a weakling, “taunted the female PK, “don’t you know that adept rouge can never be as good as the actual class for each weapon.” Once again kite ignored the taunting once again and with his left hand reached back and pulled out another weapon, it was also blue green, the blade was also wide and sort of wavy. What odd was the handle was curved and there was a barrel that reached midway on one side of the blade, it was not a sword at all but a bayonet, the weapon of a steam gunner. Azure was wielding he weapons of a Blade Brandier and a Steam gunner at the same time, it was unheard of because of the restrictions that the adept rouge had when picking his classes. “wh-what? h-hey you can’t do that!” yelled the male PK, “that’s cheating.” “y-yeah we know that adepts rouge can’t possible have the abilities of a Twin Blade, Blade Brandier, and a Steam Gunner! That goes over the point limit.” “ah yes the point limit in total an adept rouge get four points to spend to pick his classes, this is so certain unbalanced combinations don’t occur and give some people unfair advantage,” said Azure with a smile, “but you see I’m not just any person, see I have a friend who is a system administrator and with certain connections I was able to choose three classes; I really only needed one more point and it was given to me for reasons that you wouldn’t understand, so now I can able to do this.” He points the bayonet at the female PK and fires; the shot hits her in the shoulder and deals significant damage to her. “I can fight the guy easily while I can deal with you from long range so it’s a win-win situation for me” said Azure with a smirk.

While the two where in shock in Azure attacked the male PK with both the blade and the bayonet. This dealt twice the normal damage and caused the male PK to stagger. When the Female tried to swipe at him again Azure used the steam gunner skill Thunder Spark, when turned his attention to the make PK, who was paralyzed because the Blade Azure used had been customized with paralysis ability. Unable to move the male PK could only watch as Azure drove both weapons into his PC dealing critical damage to him. Now that the make PK had been taken care of Azure focused his attention to the female, now that he had a long range weapon and knew of her opening he just had to combine them. His plan wouldn’t be put into action though, because she started running away, but he wouldn’t let her go so easily. He shot her in the back which caused her PC to fall then finished her with another Thunder Spark. That was it for the two PKs, Azure didn’t bother to see what their names where, but he was sure that they wouldn’t underestimate him again.

After putting away his weapons he spotted SilverRose walking to him, she didn’t look happy “hey what’s the matter with you?” he asked. “Wasn’t hat kind of cruel? She was running away and you shot her in the back, that’s not like you” she said. “Well in all fairness it could have been a guy” he replied. “What?” “Yeah some guys play as female characters and disguise their voice so I could of shot some guy who likes to play as a girl.” “still…” Silver rose said with a worried expression, “you’ve changed; this isn’t how you used to play.” “But I was awesome right?” he said, “Balmung is the administrator that helped me and you already know why CC Corp would be willing to do at least that one little thing.” “Yeah I guess…hey I don’t have too much time left so I think this might be it for today” she said. “oh, wait how much time do you have left I want to show you one more place” he said quickly, “I promise you won’t have to fight there it’s just something I want to show you.” SilverRose nodded and followed Azure to the teleporter to warp back to town, once their SilverRose made Azure the party leader so he could pick the area. “Now I’m sure you’ll remember this place. Delta: Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground” when he finished the pair where surrounded by golden rings and where taken to the area.

When the pair arrived the stood at the end of a long path that led to a large church like building, around them little orbs flew around with trails of light behind them. “Hulle Granz Cathedral, the place where our adventure first began, way back then” said Azure as he led the girl to the building. “I can’t believe this place still exists in this game. Shouldn’t it of been lost or something?” said SilverRose. “well they merged the old game with this one so they probably kept this place as it was, in fact there are many area like this. They all something in common such as there are no monsters in them, they are all related to the back story of the game, and they all have the words Hidden Forbidden as the first two words,” said Azure, “not all areas with Hidden Forbidden as keywords will be a Lost Ground as they are called but some are, this is the first one I tried a while back.” the pair finally reached the doors and entered the cathedral. It looked exactly as SilverRose remembered it, there was only one thing missing “hey wasn’t there a statue on the altar before…and what’s that sign on the altar?” she questioned. “Aura is gone remember, that statue signifies that, and that sign is said to be from a guy named tri-edge, no one knows what he looks like and there hasn’t been any rumors for a while so people assume that he has been dealt with.” SilverRose walks around a little before turning to face Azure, “Looks like nothing is how it was before huh, even this place changed.” “Yeah and nobody really remembers us for what we did, but we didn’t do it for the fame, we did it to rescue our friends. Besides I have a successor who takes will take care of the world until he grows out of this game a well.” “Huh? You have a successor? Who is it?” she asked. “You’ll hear about him a lot, his name is Haseo, he’s an adept rouge like me” he replied, I knew he was my successor after I saw a video that reviled a secret of him from the Sage Palace tournament.” “Oh yeah, I heard about those tournaments, it’s where players can go to fight each other and the Emperors are like the strongest players who you have to beat in the tournament” She said, “but what is this secret?” “He uses Skeith, the first Phase we ever fought” replied Azure. “Skeith, you mean THAT Skeith?, she said surprised, “ but how? Are the others out there too?” “I’m sure the others are out there too, but we won’t have to worry. Everything is under control and besides, it’s not our business anymore” he said. “I guess your right,” she paused, “oh crap! I have to go it’s getting late and I have to get to work early tomorrow!” “oh yeah I forgot you graduated last year, well you should get going.” “right,” she said as she ran out, “I’ll talk to you later Azure.” Azure smiled before walking out of the building himself, though the moment he opened the door he could of sworn he saw some data noise, but it could of just been his imagination.

After the door closed a young girl with pale skin, blue eyes, and a long flowing black dress and hair appeared on the altar. Her giggling echoed throughout the room, “Welcome back Bearer of the Bracelet, I hope that you will be able to make things interesting, it would be so boring if I only Morganna’s children where able to play and that copy isn’t good enough.” she smiled as she faded away into black dots. At this same moment the AI called Azure Kite is alerted of a problem in the world and once again beings its hunt of a familiar anomaly.