As stated before, Sato Yui was not born in a family of means. This is not to say that she was born poor, but her family would never be able to, say buy her or her younger sister the best clothes, or book trips to exotic places like the Bahamas or the Lunar Trade Station, but she was able to have buy, medium quality clothes have a dog, and have a nice mattress with nice, clean sheets to lie on the weekends. And she was very familiar with the sensation of her sheets under her and blankets covering her body while waking up.
Which was why she was surprised that the first thing she felt upon waking up was a hard piece of wood touching her back. Then came the feelings of her arms and legs, that similar to how they would feel when she was utterly bored in class and decided to just not move a limb to see what happened. And finally came the dizziness, feeling as if she had a hungover.
{Which she never had. Our protagonist is a decent sort of person, never having touched alcohol on her life or succumbing to other vices. After all, she was already addicted to anime, there wasn't any more money for anything else.}
So, with all those sensations and more helping to jump-start her brain, Yui slowly started to open her eyes, and what she found dumbfounded her. She was tied upside down to a wooden post located in the middle of what looked like a very crudely made wooden construction and all around her, to her growing horror, where the bleeding bodies of a plethora of animals, from small rodents to big game like boars, with very crude butcher hooks going through them.
She made to scream, but stopped when her hearing came back full force, and with it the rhythmic sound of drums and voices, alongside all the flies that rounded the corpses. What was going on?
The last thing she noticed was that she was, for some reason, completely naked. Looking up (down?) she gasped at what she did and didn't see, meaning the lack of two somethings that should have been there and the very obvious presence of something that shouldn't be. And at this point all the event of last evening came rushing back to her: the server shutdown, her falling from the sky, the voice, all of it.
"What is going on?" She asked no one "Am I still in the game?"
Was there some kind of bug that removed the lewd content inhibitors and stopped her from opening the menu? Was the company hacked?
'What game are you talking about, partner? Can I play too?' Spoke that same ethereal voice that seemed to echo from nowhere.
"Who's there?!" Yui asked scared.
'It's me, partner!' It answered.
"Where are you?" She asked, getting more desperate by the minute.
'Right here, on your left hand. Have you forgotten?'.
Slowly, almost mechanically, Yui glanced towards her arm for the first time since the server shutdown. Her left arm had a 'normal' shoulder (where did she get all that muscle from?), but everything below the first few centimeters was fundamentally wrong. To start with deep red veins looking more like tentacles started to spread from the initial point, each time becoming more common, so much so that at the elbow all of it was the same shade of red, from this point on the arm became bulkier, the fingers were vicious looking and the nails had a deep black color that sucked all light from its surroundings, and what appeared like cracks in a barred land spread evenly throughout the arm, with a ghostly blue hue deep within the fissures. And the focal point of it all was the deep violet bloodshot eye that existed in the center of the back of her palm.
She knew this arm. She went through great lengths to even reach the beginning of the questline for that class, Devil Arm. Devil Arm, like a few other classes in Yggdrasil, were considered Special. That means that you required to fill a prerequisite to adopt it. Not all of those were difficult requirements. Some, like the 'Dancer' class, or 'Entonomancer', required that your character where of a certain gender or race. Others like 'Ninja' required a certain level. And finally, those classes that were like 'Devil Arm' required that the player completed some quests. And she completed those, and that was her reward.
But she had never heard it speak, and no one that shared this class with her even mentioned it. And the true horror of her actions finally took hold of her. In pursuing an ideal character that looked cool she imprisoned a demon inside of her body. And now it gained apparent sentience.
'You went quiet there for a moment. What are you thinking about, partner?'
And apparently it wouldn't shut up.
So, swallowing all of her fears back inside, she decided to just ignore 'It' alongside everything else that happened to her. If she escaped and reached a city she could probably locate a GM and demand clarifications, as well as ask for help after she shouted his or hers ears off.
Maybe this was Yggdrasil version 2? With advanced AI settings and improved gameplay and this was a new area? This was very much possible, since the technology advanced by leaps and bounds from 10 years ago.
So the devs decided to port everyone that was present at the end to this new game, like a secret beta, and she would be one of the first to explore it. Yes, that was the most logical reason she could find for her situation, and that's what she was going with. But no matter how cool all of that sounded, she had things she needed to do tomorrow, thus she needed to find a GM and log off. With this in mind, she decided to make her way out of wherever she was. Maybe this area was like a tutorial?
As it turns out, escaping was easier done than said. She just tried to spread her hands apart and the ropes, that seemed to be made of vine, broke like tissue paper, the same happening to the ones binding her feet, and before hitting the ground she felt herself placing her hands in the ground and jumping to a straight up position in one impressive feat of acrobatics in such a small room.
"Huh, neat."
'What's neat, partner?' She steadfastly ignored the hand. Don't talk to the hand.
It seemed like the controls were similar to the ones before, where she just needed to think what she wanted to do and her character would take action. And that was the basis of most melee classes in the game. While magical classes would need to cast a spell, most melee classes would resort to mostly using fighting styles and techniques, with the occasional buff and special attack mixed in between, and so in Yggdrasil your combat efficiency would be based on your reaction time and decision making skills.
Well, not that she was all that great in that department, since she didn't really focus too much on PvP.
Now that she was free and upright she was about to make her way towards the door when she noticed somethings she missed before, the first being that many of what she previously thought were corpses were alive and barely breathing. What was just a cruder version of a slaughterhouse suddenly turned into something close to a torture room, where the victims of whoever put them here were left to bleed to their deaths.
Those devs were hardcore.
And second was a big Demi-Humanoid creature bound in chains and with its hide filled with bleeding cuts and gashes. It looked like a mix between a human man and a crocodile, with a bluish hide, slightly webbed hands and fleet and a large tail, and Yui could instantly recognize it as being a Lizardman or some sort of werelizard. They didn't exist in Yggdrasil mk 1, but were present in many other forms of media. Frankly, she never thought about them missing in the game.
Yui would think that this was just a corpse, but the slight movement of its chest and flaring of its nostril proved that it was just badly injured, maybe nearly dead.
"Is this some sort of NPC?" She thought out loud.
'Some sort of what?' Damn it.
"Never mind it." And now she was answering her hand…
Walking closer to the lizardman, Yui tried the usual conversation starter. Even if heavily injured on the outside, an NPC would always answer
"Hello"
She obtained no response. Was this an NPC or just the scenario?
"Hello" She tried once again, louder. Maybe this was a problem with the server. And once again no response was given.
Deciding to make her way to the door, she stood up and started walking. As soon as she started to inspect how to open it, she heard a whisper of some sort coming from behind her.
Looking back, Yui saw the lizardman had his head slightly lifted, and was looking straight at her.
So, resigned to try one last time, Yui walked over and greeted him, and this time she did receive a reply of some sort, it was barely a whisper and she wouldn't be able to hear it had the not been silent as a grave. But the problem was that she couldn't understand it. It was in a different language.
Not receiving an answer, the lizardman repeated what he said at first, and grew agitated when the only response he got was a confused look.
It was at this time that the door opened and in walked a creature Yui wasn't too fond of meeting again. It walked like a human but had the head of a cobra and four pairs of arms and each could equip a different weapon, and it was called Serpent people.
Serpent People were well known in the Humanoid realms of Yggdrasil, being one of the most common enemies for the areas between level 20 and 40 in the game, their poison, multiple arms and damage over time mechanics being a perfect combination to teach new players how to fight against those mechanics. They also were also known to be extremely annoying to deal with if you did not have any counter for those mechanics.
As soon as the Serpent Man processed that one of its prisoners had escaped and was in the process of helping another it made a loud sound between a yell and a hiss and all the noise outside ceased a few moments later.
Not wanting to find out how many more of them were outside, Yui lifted the wounded lizard carefully and setting it on her shoulder, made her escape out of the building.
By which I mean she just threw the poor bastard over her shoulder and kicked the enemies on her path, just like she did with any NPC unlucky enough to be part of an escort quest on a VRMMORPG.
Despite the surprisingly easy way she dealt with her first enemy, what made Yui stop once she locating at which she found herself in. She was inside a mangrove, and close from the sea, if she was to go by the salty smell in the air, and all around were crudely made and poorly maintained wooden constructions with a bonfire on the centermost point of the small village, with close to three dozen serpent man in what might have passed for ceremonial clothing surrounding it.
Just as she finished inspecting the scenario all hell broke loose, with every single serpent-person that had anything close to a weapon running towards her with clear intent to do harm.
Dropping her recently-acquired charge like a sack of potatoes and receiving a grunt of displeasure in return ('Huh, nice work there devs') Yui prepared herself for the onslaught activating the first instance of her Martial Lord class [Control of the Air Sphere], a skill that allowed her full control of a certain area around her, making it easier on the player to dodge, block, redirect every attack and strike back at any enemies on this said area, with its size varying depending on level and her attributes, and since she was a level 100 Yui's area would be pretty big. That was in Yggdrasil 1.
Here, however, it worked differently, it seemed. Instead of just making it easier on her by allowing a more autonomous response from her character, Yui was surprised by how she felt when she activated the skill. It felt as if the world had slowed to a crawl, as if everything and everyone but herself was moving through mud, and she could feel the next move of everything on it. This surprised her to such an extent that her focus was disrupted and the technique was cancelled, resulting on her taking a hit from a club to her arm and another from a spear directly to her heart.
Now it was the serpent folk's turn to be surprised, since both hits apparently did as much damage to their enemy as being poked by a toddler, and they took a step back in awe.
Taking advantage of this lull in the battle, Yui once again activated [Control of the Air Sphere] and now, more used to the effect of the skill, proceeded to punch the closest mob in the chest with such strength that it flew back and hit a tree with a splat, the noise of its bones fragmenting being heard by all, Yui included.
'Eww'
Damn, those devs didn't pull any punches. This was definitely 18+.
From that point onwards Yui proceeded to kill each and every single mob in the vicinity with a variety of punches, elbow strikes and kicks that to an onlooker would look like a coldhearted massacre.
To Yui she was just dispatching the enemy in the most efficient way without wasting mana and getting used to the full range of movement that was available to her by the new effect of her skill.
Finally reaching the last enemy she quickly dispatched it, a hatchling by the looks of it, with a drop kick that sunk its head on its body, she turned around to where she left her change and made her way to the NPC, that in typical NPC fashion was just sitting still and shaking like a leaf.
"Hello" She tried again. And once again the lizard man didn't answer her with words. Instead he pushed itself to its feet and tried to limp his way out of the village.
Having no patience to deal with this kind of thing, she made the gesture to open her inventory to pick two potions she knew she had and would help in this situation, just to have absolutely nothing pop up.
'Duh.'
Trying to remember how she did it the first time, she waved her hands in the air for a while until she saw both of them being covered by some sort of black hole and she felt this items on her hand. Repeating it until it felt natural to open her new inventory, something that she found out could be easily done just by thinking about getting some item inside and reaching for it, she turned around looking for the NPC, seeing that it only now was starting to clear the village.
Using her powerful legs, she cleared that distance with a leap and landed just behind the lizardman without it even realizing she was there due to her [Silent Steps] passive.
Stopping it with one hand she proceeded to hand the first potion to the lizardman and after a brief second of surprise it tried to refuse. 'Weird behavior to a NPC' She thought. It seemed like she would have to do it the hard way, something she wouldn't have even thought about if this game wasn't so well programmed.
So, running out of patience she grabbed the lizard by its neck, parted its mouth open and proceeded to pour all the contents of the potion inside it until there was nothing left inside of the bottle.
At first the little thing was outraged, but that look soon turned into surprise and then awe as the potion, a common [Healing Potion], worked its magic and cured most of his wounds.
The second potion was one she bought a long time before, when she still walked with her first guild. In Yggdrasil information was currency, and many kinds of information were locked behind a language barrier. There were sever methods for most players to unlock a language, but there were four that were more commonly used.
The first would be to pay a hefty and be taught by a special NPC, one for each language, and there were several. Having spent something close to five years in the game, she had passed by most of them.
The second would be to use items like tomes and books to learn a certain language. You needed a total of fifteen books for each language, and they couldn't be the same book, of course. All of the other languages she knew she learnt like that.
The third way was by using the item [Shooting Star], and no one was stupid enough to use it like this.
The fourth way was to drink a special kind of potion that would allow the user to understand any and all languages, as well as be understood, for a set period of time determined by the size of the portion, and only spoken words, not written. And that is the method she was about to use.
Downing the potion in one go (Dear Lord, she had never drunk piss, but if she had she was sure the taste would've been the same .), she tried for the fifth time. Would it work?
"Hello."
The widening of its eyes was answer enough.
"I can understand you." It whispered with a deep hissing voice, in that unnatural way that was caused by the potion. "Who are you? What are you? What do you want with me?" It asked.
And looking up and down Yui, said once again "And why are you naked?"
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So, did you like it? Please tell me, the only way I can improve is with criticism, and if I improve you'll have more fun reading what I write, so it's not like you won't get anything in return.
Also, I'm not sure I'll be able to keep something close to an update schedule, but I might try.
Finally, I want to say that none of the places, innovations or 'historical events' that happened in the 'real world' I describe in this fic will have any effects on the story. This is just me having fun with the world where Ainz and my OC came from.
Thank you.
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Sato Yui/Uzumaki Naruto
Human - 0
Martial Artist - 5
Martial Lord - 10
Ki Master Outer - 15
Ki Master Inner - 15
Thief - 5
Ninja - 15
Avenger - 5
Demon Hunter - 10
Devil Arm - 15
Ashura – 5
Known Skills:
Passive –
[Dark Sight]
[Silent Steps]
Actives –
[Control of the Air Sphere]