Login 2: Canard

Since we were in the central district and the HOME was located at the mercenary district, a different section of the town, we took a warp point to quickly transfer between the locations. When we got to the entrance, Gaspard stopped for a moment.

"Oh, I almost forgot!" He quickly turned around and handed me something. A notice showed up on my screen displaying, you've received the CANARD KEY.

"What's this?" I ask.

"It's a special key to get into Canard. You can only access guilds if you have a guild key to a specific guild."

"Can I use it for all guilds?" I ask randomly, but then realize how stupid that sounds. Gaspard just laughs.

"Hee hee, no, but you can use it for our guild! Canard's a lot of fun, so I hope you'll stay with us!" I nodded and used the key at a barren-down looking door. A small menu box appeared listing all the guilds I could access. Since Canard was my first guild to join, it was the only guild listed in the menu. Clicking on its name, we were transferred inside.

The first thing I noticed when we were transferred in besides the spacious square room setting was another player standing in the room. A PC with short brown hair, with a long tied ponytail, and dressed in green clothes. I also notice his class is also a Blade Brandier, like me. While Shadow Warlock PCs are magic users, Blade Brandiers use a simple sword like a katana. The green PC heard our entrance and turned around.

"Gaspard, are you okay? You sure took awhile," he exclaimed coming forward.

"Sorry Silabus, I ran into some trouble," Gaspard sighed.

"Some trouble? Did you get bullied again? Was it those PKers from Kestrel?" Silabus asked as he tried to cheer up his friend.

"I don't know, but I was saved by this girl," Gaspard suddenly brightens up and looks towards me. I kind of blush at the sudden mention of me saving him and quickly step forward to introduce myself.

"I'm Andante. I just started playing this game. I was walking around town when I heard a yell and saw this guy being surrounded by other players..."

"Yeah! And suddenly she's standing up for me! It kind of got rough, but she managed to drive those PKers away!" Gaspard cheered.

"I didn't...it wasn't like that," I muttered, "They only stopped because they seemed to have received a message from someone they called "master" or something."

"Oh, they must have received a call from their guild master, Gabi," the guy dressed in green explains, "and he's..."

"Silabus!" Gaspard suddenly interrupts, "We should get Andante officially registered in Canard first."

"Oh, that's why she's here, huh? Sorry, I got a little off topic there. By the way, I'm Silabus, nice to meet you. I'm also a member of Canard. We'll get you registered right away, so you'll get an email about it later. Then, you'll officially be a member of Canard!" He then exchanged member addresses with me. "Just so you know, Canard's name comes from stabilizer wings on aircrafts that support the plane. Our guild's main goal is to help new players to The World like while having lots of fun enjoying it. So, welcome aboard!"

"Hooray!" Gaspard cheered, "Another member to our guild! Wait till we tell Haseo!"

"Haseo?" I ask.

"Our guild master, " Silabus explains, "he's sort of always busy with some pretty important stuff, but it turns out he has great leadership skills so we made him our guild master. At first, he was pretty hesitant about it, but he finally decided to give it a try. He'll probably be back later, so we'll introduce you to him then. So, since you're a new player, have you gotten used to "The World" yet?"

"So far I've only managed to explore the central district before meeting Gaspard."

"So I volunteered us to give her a personal tour!" Gaspard explains, "Since she helped me out with those PKers."

"All right then, let's giver her a tour!" Silabus agrees, "That is what Canard's here for. If you'd like, after we give you a tour of the town, we can go to an area to teach you the basics of battling. You'll need to learn them in order to fight monsters in areas and dungeons in order to level up. There's no need to rush anything, so we can take it pretty slowly for you to get used to it."

"Sure, sounds good," I nodded. I wasn't sure how long Welk would take, so it'll be fine just stick with these guys for now to get used to playing "The World".

When we were standing outside in the mercenary district, Silabus goes over some basic knowledge about the root town, Mac Anu. Mac Anu's full and formal name is known as the Eternal City, Mac Anu. It is the root town of the delta server, and is divided into several districts such as the Mercenary district where, I now knew, Canard's At Home is located as well as some of the shops. While I am working part time in CC Corp I should listen from these two to hear more about "The World". It's also nice to start communicating with other players to since they've probably had more experience rather than trying to find out all the information myself. While we were passing through Mac Anu's harbor, Gaspard suddenly brings up a conversation.

"You know, standing here with Andante reminds me of when we stood here with Haseo!"

"Oh yeah," Silabus exclaims, "Haseo was also a newbie player when we met up with him here. Although, he may have not have been a newbie, but his level was at level one."

"What do you mean he may have not been a newbie?" I asked.

"Well..." Silabus thinks for a moment.

"Haseo told us he was really the famous PKK, the "Terror of Death"!" Gaspard explains. PKs were player killers that kill other players for sport. But PKKs hunted on Player Killers themselves. There have been rumors about them that what they do seem like justice, but people say it's still similar to what PKs do. The name Haseo doesn't seem familiar to me though.

"Haseo..."Terror of Death"...doesn't sound familiar," I respond. Not that I expected to know anyway. After all, I've just started playing this game.

"Yeah, at first we didn't believe him either," Silabus admits.

Gaspard starts laughing, "Yeah! Because he claimed to be a famous PKK, and he was only at level 1. Whahahaha!"

"Uh...that was because-" Silabus tried to explain.

"What's so funny!" a loud, edgy voice interrupted. We all jumped and looked behind us. It was an adept rouge dressed in all black scowling and shaking his fist.

"Wha-Haseo!" Gaspard sudden exclaimed as the adept rouge made his way over here. I gave a long look at the PC Haseo. He's a famous PKK, but he's also the guild master of Canard? Canard is to help new players, so it seems like an odd mix to have a PKK to be the guild master. He might still be dangerous, I thought. I quickly moved my PC in front of Gaspard and Silabus.

"Hold it!" I exclaimed.

"Huh?" the black adept rouge stops and looks at me. "And just who the heck are you?"

"I won't let you hurt them!" I warned ignoring his question.

"Andante?" Silabus exclaims.

"Huh? What do you mean, "hurt them"? They're my guild members!" Haseo scoffs.

"You may be a guild master of a newbie-support guild, but you're also a legendary PKK. Isn't that kind of dangerous?" I ask in a cautious tone.

"..." the black adept rouge suddenly looks at Gaspard with a deathly look. Gaspard starts to shake a bit in fear; I move myself in front of him.

"Now now," Silabus interrupts and we all turn to look at him, "there's no reason to pick a fight."

"What the hell is going on, Silabus! Why does this player think I'm dangerous?" He goes up to Silabus shouting. I tried to get in front of him, but he just pushes me away and I fall down on the ground.

"Haseo!" Gaspard whines. Gaspard tries to help me up, but I just stand on my own irritated. What's this guy's problem? How can someone like him be the guild master of Canard?

"Calm down Haseo; just listen for a minute," Silabus continues. "Her name is Andante, and she's our newest member of Canard. She just started playing "The World" and met Gaspard when he was being bullied by some PKers. Andante stood up for him and to return the favor we let her join our guild since she's a newbie and we planned to show her around town." We all fell silent for a moment after Silabus finished explaining

"Hmph," Haseo grunts and looks at me, "and why does she think I'm dangerous?"

"Well, Gaspard was saying how showing her around here reminds us of the time when we first met you and-"

"We told her that you were a famous PKK nicknamed the "Terror of Death" and that's when you came along, " Gaspard finished and kind of laughed. Haseo looked at me for a second and walked forward. For some reason, I held my position, but he relaxed and lost of bit of his scowl.

"...S-Sorry," he exclaimed.

"Huh?" For what?" I was taken by surprised. Why is a famous PKK apologizing to newbie like me?

"For...yelling at you and shoving...you like that. I didn't know you were a new member of Canard," he kind of muttered.

I started to relax a bit too, "Oh...it's fine. I was the one who started this. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding."

"Say Haseo? Since you're already here, why don't you properly introduce yourself since you are Canard's guild master," Silabus offers.

"Yeah, come on Haseo!" Gaspard agreed.

"All right already," Haseo sighs as his guild members smile and push him a bit forward and looks at me. He holds out his hand and gives me his member address, "I'm Haseo, the guild master of Canard. For your information, I'm not really much the PKK "Terror of Death" anymore. It's sort of a long story, but..."

"But then he met us and a lot of other people and had a change of heart!" Gaspard laughed.

"Gaspard!" Haseo whispered.

"It's true," Silabus joined in, "you did change after meeting all of us. Maybe a bit more when you get to know Andante now that she's part of our guild."

"Y-Yeah, I guess," Haseo mutters again. I kind of laugh and introduce myself.

"Pleasure to meet you, Haseo. I'm Andante," I hand him my member address.

"Anyway," Silabus continues, "we were planning to take Andante to an area to teach her the basics of fighting. Would you like to come, Haseo? One of us can switch out so you can join."

"Nah, you guys go on ahead. I still have some business to take care of."

"Okay then, see you later," Silabus calls.

"See you later, Haseo!" Gaspard exclaims.

I look at him again before we leave, "Yeah, see ya, Haseo."

He turns and looks at me, gives me a little wave, and heads off. We wait till he's out of sight before we start moving again.

"Man, Haseo is really cool, isn't he?" Gaspard smiles.

"Yeah, he is," Silabus agrees, "but I do worry about him a lot."

"Huh? Why's that? He looks pretty tough for PKers," I observe.

"Well, it's not that he'd get picked on. It's just that he kind of has to go through a lot of stuff that's weighing on his shoulders."

I was about to ask them what kind of stuff, but I didn't want to get pry on other people's business. So I asked, "Have you ever asked him about it?"

"We have," Silabus answered, "a few times, but sometimes it's just better to leave things the way to are. In other words, we don't want to get nosy on what Haseo is doing. We do worry, but he says he's fine. He's a pretty strong character on the inside, but sometimes he does need support from others even if he doesn't ask for it."

"Hmmm," I wondered. We had arrived back at the Chaos Gate, where I stood moments ago on my first log in to "The World". "So what area are we headed to?"

"Delta Peaceful Leading Freedom. It's a good area to start with for new players," Silabus suggested.

"Yay, we get to go on an adventure!" Gaspard cheered. I felt pretty excited myself, but I restrained myself not feel embarrassed.

"Alright then," I exclaimed, "let's go!" The three of us formed a party together, and then Silabus entered the key words from the Chaos Gate function in order for us to warp to the area. Transfer rings appeared around us, and the scenery of Mac Anu's dome was left behind.