And we're back!
With something... a little surprising.
Enjoy.
Miracle Quest - Part 1
"Well, that was a bit of a bust." Rusty said with a groan, stretching as he, Bemmon, Pierce and Veemon stood in front of one of the many TVs around the digital world.
"Better a bust than something big though." Pierce shot back. After they managed to finally save a Holy Stone a few days ago, things had gotten pretty quiet, though according to Penny and Qrow's latest report, Black was just wandering aimlessly.
That was the good news.
The bad news? Nero had been suspiciously quiet… and Lionheart was missing.
As in, he'd just vanished from Mistral somehow, which was very worrying.
He'd been acting… off recently, and this was just making things weirder.
"I knew we were going to change things when the three of us decided to come to Remnant, but at this point we're so off script we might as well toss what little of our future knowledge remains into the trash," Pierce sighed.
"Isn't that a good thing?" Bemmon pointed out.
"Considering the alternative is basically watching the world torture the hell out of Team RWBY and what's left of Team JNPR while Remnant goes to shit? Definitely," Pierce snorted.
"Thanks again for that," Rusty chuckled awkwardly.
"Besides, at least this way we can look forward to what's coming next. Good or bad," Veemon added. "Anyway, let's go back. I'm getting hungry."
That earned a few chuckles as they quickly pointed their Digivices to the TV which glowed as they were sucked in. However, instead of the usual trip through the dimensional tunnels…
"Since when does this place have turbulence?!" Pierce shouted as the four of them were flying erratically inside the tunnel.
"I dunno, but we'd better hang on!" Rusty gasped. However, right after he said that, the turbulence got worse, shaking them both up to the point they suddenly felt like they were in a washing machine…in a high tier spin cycle.
That was why everyone back at base was shocked when Rusty and Bemmon suddenly came flying out of the screen, crashing into the ground.
"Are you both-?!" Aile was about to say, but both got up and ran to the bathroom and well…yeah.
"We'll take that as a 'no'," Hawkmon winced.
A short while later saw the two come back, looking a bit wobbly. "You do NOT want to go through the tunnels today," Bemmom groaned.
"Did something happen?" Ruby asked curiously.
"Did Pierce not tell you?" Rusty asked, groaning a little.
"Pierce… hasn't come out yet." Emerald said, looking at the computer screen nervously.
Rusty blinked at that, sharing a look with Bemmon "Uh… he and Veemon were right behind us and went through that spin cycle with us."
The group went silent at that, before they all looked back at the computer in worry.
"Oh fuck… we gotta get in there and find them!" Yang said, about to jump towards the computer had Pyrrha and Nora not grabbed her suddenly.
"Calm down Yang! We're worried too, but we can't just rush without a plan." Pyrrha told her.
"Yeah, and besides, it's Pierce!" Nora added in as if just saying that was obvious.
Gyro smiled a bit at how sure of his brother she was, before he sighed "They're right. We need to plan first, and figure out what happened. Gennai's still looking over Norn, but he can at least help us since he's on this side. We'll make sure to let everyone else know to avoid going through the gates as well for now." he said, before he smiled "And like Nora said, it's Pierce. I trust my brother. He's fine, and if we don't find him, he'll come back to us on his own."
"Okay, where the heck are we, and how are we going to get back?" Pierce said in annoyance as he and Veemon were trying to navigate the area they'd abruptly found themselves in. It was a forested area, not overly dense, but still not easy to navigate, and dotting the area were a few bits of ruins that looked like rusted over metal or machines.
"No clue, I don't think we've ever been around here before." Veemon said as he looked around "Maybe we ended up on a different continent in the Digital World?"
"That'd be nice, but something's telling me we're not THAT lucky right now," Pierce frowned. "...and that's very ironic coming from me, yes," he added, earning a small chuckle from Veemon.
"Well, nothing to do but find our way," Veemon shrugged.
"...or we could try contacting the others," Pierce said mentally kicking himself for forgetting until now that they COULD communicate with each other via Digivice. With that in mind, he grabbed his D-Crest and well… "Uh…we got a problem."
"Oh boy…" Veemon groaned as he looked to Pierce's D-Crest, and true enough… "How does that even happen?"
The Digivice was cracked, starting in the middle and spreading all over, and when Pierce tried to activate it,all that showed up on the screen was static. "Heck if I know," Pierce groaned. "Good news is though…I'm pretty sure this is…okay…give or take. Don't ask how I know, I just…know."
"Well the Digivice IS a physical representation of a bond, so…I guess us not needing to have someone manually repair it makes sense," Veemon sighed. "So…same plan as before?"
"Same plan as before," Pierce nodded.
With that the two of them kept exploring, finding some random fruit trees on occasion, though while they were filling, the fruits tasted rather bland strangely enough. Either way, they continued on, till the two of them started to hear a commotion up ahead, glancing at each other before they nodded, with Pierce drawing Pandora X as they started walking faster.
Reaching a tree and hiding behind it, the two peered around carefully to see what was going on, catching a rather surprising sight.
"Dammit! Screw you, you asshole!" a girl with short, raven black hair, wearing what looked like the clothes of an adventurer complete with leather armor, shouted as she ran from a group of goblins.
No, not Goblimon like what you might expect, but literal goblins, like the kind you'd meet as the starter enemies in an RPG.
"The heck?" the partners muttered in confusion together, before looking in the other direction, seeing a tan skinned blonde man wearing a similar getup, looking at the running woman with a smug look.
"Heh, that oughta teach her not to trust everyone. Not that she'll remember the lesson for long." the man said with a rather obnoxious laugh as he threw his head back.
"Jeez, could you be any more stereotypical?" Veemon muttered, earning a nod from Pierce, before the two moved quietly to get around the man as he jumped down from the tree. Once on the ground, the man seemingly manifested a crossbow, already loaded with an arrow bolt, taking aim not at the goblins, but at the woman.
"Wow, you're a REAL piece of shit aren't you?" came Pierce's voice behind him, right before he felt a sharp blow on the back of his head, and everything went dark.
"Lie down for a while," Veemon said dryly before he and Pierce turned to where the girl was still trying to get away from the goblins, having pulled out a sword which she was swinging…well…let's just say Jaune was better with a sword than she was. BEFORE the twins took to training him up.
Either way, the two charged forward, Pierce having Pandora X at the ready, and well…the enemy were goblins. Typical RPG goblins, not Goblin Slayer goblins, and these two had experience literally saving the world. Do we need to say how this ends?
"There, problem solved." Pierce said after he'd gotten rid of the last goblin, the girl falling on her butt as she let out a sigh.
"Oh god… I thought I was a goner there." she said "First my starter was way too low on HP to keep fighting, then that jerk uses a lure and just cloaks himself." she muttered, before looking up at Pierce "Thanks, you really helped me out back there. Would have sucked to lose all my loot from getting ganked by those things."
Pierce hummed a bit, confused by the way she worded that and how… unconcerned she seemed about possibly dying to goblins… or worse considering what he knew of goblins "No problem… wanna go kick his shit in a little bit though? I left him knocked out back there." he said, pointing back towards where he and Veemon had left the guy, his partner idly picking up coins the goblins seemed to have dropped when they died.
"Oh definitely," the girl said, before walking over to the guy…and almost comically started kicking him right in the balls.
"Yeah, she really needed that." Veemon muttered while carrying a few gold coins in his hands.
"So…while she's busy getting her revenge, I'm not the only one that thinks this kind of feels like…" Pierce started, but Veemon finished for him.
"Like we suddenly walked into a game?" Veemon checked, earning a nod. "...what does it say that that's not the strangest thing that's happened to us?"
"That our lives are WAY too weird," Pierce sighed, right before he idly noticed what appeared to be a crystal on the ground. Picking it up, he idly noticed that the girl had one floating over her head, while the guy didn't. Humming a bit as he looked at it more closely "Did I knock it loose when I hit him maybe?" he muttered to himself, before blinking in surprise as the crystal sparked for a moment as he held it, before melting into his body… and a moment later some kind of hud became visible in his eyesight, and judging by the startled noise Veemon let out, it just popped up in his vision too.
"Hey uh, Pierce? What's this weird stuff I'm seeing?" Veemon asked him, jumping as the coins he was carrying disappeared, before seeing something pop up in his vision about the money being added to his wallet… or, rather to Pierce's wallet if he was reading it right.
"That's what I'm trying to figure out." Pierce muttered as he focused a bit and was trying to see if he could bring up a menu of some kind if this WAS a game, not being too surprised when one came up after a few moments and he started scrolling through everything in it mentally. "Yep, we're in a video game it seems," Pierce confirmed.
"So we are. Now what do we do?" Veemon asked.
"...let's go with the flow first THEN try and figure out what's going on," Pierce said.
"Probably the best yeah," Veemon nodded, right as they noticed the girl coming back, looking a LOT happier now.
"Had fun with your bit of revenge?" Pierce snorted.
"Eeeyup. That felt really good, and the best part is I can do it without feeling bad. This new Dive VR is something else," she grinned.
"It really is, isn't it?" Pierce said. "So uh dumb question, but seeing as I'm less logged in and more my friend shoved the helmet on my head, which game are we in again?"
"I'd think the Veemon you got with you would be obvious. We're in Digital Story Online, or DSO for short," the girl said in mild amusement.
"Ah…right. Sorry, this whole account is literally something my friend set up, so I really am a bit lost," Pierce chuckled awkwardly. "So…what was the goal of the game again?"
"Well this game was made based on Digimon Adventures, so much like the final arc, we as Tamers need to raise our Starter Digimon while also taming additional Digimon to add to our teams. From there we need to climb up Spiral Mountain, defeating the various bosses so we can eventually reach the top and defeat the Dark Master," she explained, and totally missed how Pierce and Veemon twitched at the mention of Spiral Mountain.
"And just to check, we're in the starter area, right?" Pierce asked after a moment.
"Yep. Not even on Spiral Mountain itself. Down here we got mainly trash mobs and the like. Apparently the devs wanted this place to be purely for basic leveling up and stuff. Can't start taming wild Digimon until you start climbing the mountain," the girl huffed at the last bit.
"Honestly this almost reminds me of Pokemon mixed with a fantasy RPG." Pierce said thoughtfully.
"Yeah, it was kinda compared to that. Difference is unlike Pokemon you can choose from a LOT of different Digimon as your starter. I went with a Floramon since she's my favorite… it's too bad they're just programs though. Having an actual Digimon Partner would be super cool." the girl explained "Oh, I just realized, I haven't introduced myself. Name's Annette, nice to meet you." she said while holding out a hand.
Pierce grimaced a bit at the idea of Digimon being nothing more than programs, before putting on a smile as she introduced herself "Pierce, nice to meet you too."
Anette grinned at him a bit, before she gained a curious look. "Come to think of it, that spear you got there. Where'd you get it? It looked way too high leveled for the beginner area," she said, looking at Pandora X hanging off his back.
"Well…like I said…" Pierce sighed.
"Right, that's not really your account per say," Anette nodded. "Still…the game's not been out for THAT long. Was your friend a Beta Tester or something?"
"Can't help you there. He really just shoved this on to me without much warning. Still I figured I might as well play and then log out later," he shrugged at the end.
She looked ready to ask something again, before they were suddenly covered in a glow that blinded them, and when it ended, they found themselves in the center of a town, surrounded by other players, all apparently being warped in.
"This is… the starter town, right?" Pierce asked slowly while reaching down, being relieved when Veemon grabbed his hand to let him know he didn't get left behind. With that bit of reassurance, he focused on where they were, a rather typical medieval type town…with the most notable thing being that the sky had turned a rather oppressive shade of red, with lots of screens, as if for a mass announcement. Pierce was just thinking how this felt like a lawsuit waiting to happen assuming SAO existed in this world.
True enough to his thoughts on the similarity to SAO, everyone's attention was soon drawn to a single figure that appeared on the screens, said figure's features obscured by a robe that covered their entire body, while the real one was presumably standing on the tallest building in town.
"Greetings," the figure said, his voice carrying through the town. "I am Akiyoshi, or as most of you would recognize, the creator of Digital Story Online. Before we begin, I would like to thank you all for supporting my dream and creation," he said, sounding pretty sincere. "That is why I would like to congratulate you all on becoming a part of my vision," he said, gaining confused murmurs from most of the people while Pierce frowned, having a pretty good idea where this was going. True enough…
"If you all check your menus, you'll notice the Log Out option is not available anymore. That is not a bug or an error. As of now, and until someone clears this game, this world is your new home," he declared.
"Called it." Pierce muttered in annoyance.
"And here comes the swerve ball." Veemon added with a mutter of his own.
"Now, I'm sure you're thinking 'well, that's not too bad, it'll take a lot of tries but someone will get it eventually.' Well, that's where you're partially wrong. Each and everyone of you gets only a single chance. Because if you die in DSO? The game will send an electrical signal to your brains that will fry them to ashes, killing you instantly." Akiyoshi added almost casually. "Oh and seeing as I've set this live to be seen all over the world, don't bother trying to force anyone out of the game. That'll kill them as-" he paused as several players abruptly screamed and vanished. "...well, I tried to warn you," he sighed, before he seemed to brighten up. "At any rate, thank you for your support and joining me in this Digital Adventure. Good luck," he said, before he vanished. There was a pause before he suddenly reappeared. "Oh, and I've now removed the profanity filter. Feel free to vent," he added before vanishing again, right before the angry swearing started up because well…normal reaction.
"This guy's nuttier than Kayaba," Pierce muttered under his breath.
"Oh god, oh god! What are we gonna do?!" Annette started to panic next to him, before she grabbed onto him "We're gonna die! There's no way someone can clear a freaking MMO of all things!"
Pierce just let her have her little freak out for a few minutes as he and Veemon patiently waited for her to calm down. Honestly, if everyone else wasn't so busy freaking the hell out, he'd have stuck out like a sore thumb with how stoic he was being. Eventually she started to stop freaking out. "Feeling better?" Pierce asked.
"Not really, but that did help, yeah," Annette admitted.
"Right, let's go somewhere a bit more quiet, we gotta plan." he said, putting a hand on her shoulder and guiding her along with him and Veemon.
She was his only friend here at the moment, so she'd be a good source of information for him to help him figure out how to go about this. With that in mind, he led her over to a nearby building, and promptly kicked the door open. "Pardon the intrusion," he said as he was in the middle of barging in. At this point Veemon was laughing at the bit of breaking and entering.
"Wait, was that always in the setting?" Annette blinked at seeing Veemon laugh.
"You tell me," Pierce shrugged. "Anyway, we need a plan of action seeing as we're now in a Death Game."
"Yeah…I REALLY didn't think I'd suddenly be participating in a Digimon version of Sword Art Online," Annette winced. "You're taking this pretty calmly though…"
"Not my first time potentially facing death." Pierce said with a shrug, before sitting down at a table "Anyway, just to recap, how does getting to the top floor work again?"
"Well…" Annette trailed off, looking at him in confusion as she sat down. "According to some Beta Testers who made guides, there's a boss on every single floor of Spiral Mountain, with a total of 100 floors, but the dangerous ones are the bosses of every 10th floor."
"So something you'd need a big raid party to attack then." Pierce figured "And every other floor can be cleared with just a regular party."
"Pretty much yeah," Annette sighed. "Oh this is the worst! How are we going to survive 100 progressively more difficult floors?! How long is it gonna take?! Can we even stay alive that long?!" she started freaking out a bit again…until she felt a firm hand on her shoulder, Pierce having done that to try and keep her calm.
"Deep breath Annette." he said, completely calm himself, which did help her a bit as she took a deep breath "Right, as for how we'll take care of this… I'm gonna let you in on a secret." he said, before turning to Veemon and nodding, confusing her a bit.
"We're not even from around here to be perfectly honest." Veemon said "Some freak Digital Gate accident dropped us off in this game, and obviously in some other dimension on top of that."
Annette…paused when she saw him talking, her expression a mix of 'Error 404' and 'Brain processing'. It was honestly kind of comedic. Eventually though…
"...that's not some highly advanced program that was secretly given to a Beta Tester, is it?" she asked, looking a bit wooden.
"I'm not no." Veemon said before grinning "I'm a completely real Digimon!"
Annette stared at him for a long while… before suddenly falling backwards and fainting.
Pierce sighed as he watched her hit the ground, which was at the very least carpeted "Well, should have seen that one coming."
"How do you think she'll react when she hears you're a Chosen and you helped take down Spiral Mountain back home?" Veemon asked him curiously, poking Annette with a stick he got from somewhere.
"Hopefully better than this." Pierce sweatdropped.
It took… a few minutes for her to wake up. Once she did he started to explain what had happened to him and Veemon, going back a bit to the beginning to give her context, until he'd recapped up till the weird storm in the middle of the Digital Gate where he'd been separated from Rusty.
Annette was silent as she took it all in, apparently thinking deeply "This is… honestly, really freaking crazy. I mean… you're like one of the Chosen from the anime, just… you know how to fight, and apparently that translated into your level too." she said, as during the discussion they ended up checking Pierce's stats at one point… and he was Level 100… out of 200.
He was the only person with a level that high at the moment, save for probably the creator who could make himself level 200 on the spot most likely.
The only other highest level players were the beta testers who got to keep their levels, most of them being about Level 40 or so.
"Well…at least that means I've got a head start," Pierce sighed "Only issue is truly steamrolling everything will be hard. My digivice cracked when I landed here, and while I still feel my bond with Veemon, it's like there's something preventing me from sending him power to evolve."
"That's…a problem," Annette frowned. "But you're still okay, right?"
"If you mean we can fight? Pretty much yeah," Veemon shrugged. "Evolution or no evolution, we're not just gonna sit back and let a nut job do as he pleases."
"In short, we're going to clear this game as fast as we can," Pierce smirked a little. "Though it helps that I THINK we can still use the Digimental of Miracles, just… it takes a while to charge, a whole damn two weeks, so it's a last resort type of thing."
Her eyes widened at that "Holy shit you have Magnamon still… in the anime that was a one time thing and he only ever really did one attack before never being used again."
"Extreme Jihad is REALLY tiring to be fair." Veemon said with a chuckle.
"That… honestly, if I'm right, Magnamon is as strong as an Ultimate, so you should save him for the big bosses in case your Digivice hasn't restored itself yet." Annette said thoughtfully "Wait, what's your Ultimate anyway?"
"UlforceVeedramon." Pierce answered "He's literally the fastest of the team in a fight."
Annette blinked at that "I was expecting… nevermind, that's a really good one actually… if you're able to get it back you could just blitz all the bosses and they wouldn't be able to move while you do that."
"So we got a battle plan at least," Veemon chuckled.
"But we have another thing to worry about. The other players. If this is going to be anything like SAO, we're gonna have to worry about the people who can't handle this, and end up resorting to…questionable…actions," Pierce sighed.
"Let's…take it one step at a time…" Annette groaned. "I don't think my brain can handle us trying to figure out everything in one go."
"Fair enough." Pierce said "Well, while everyone's panicking, how about we go take care of the Floor 1 boss?"
Annette stilled at that "Uh, wait, but the guides made by the beta testers say you should have a party of three and all be at least level 10 with one healer around."
"Yeah, but… I'm not really bound by the rules." Pierce reminded her, making her blink several times.
"Oh… right… you don't have to worry about that kinda stuff." she said when she remembered he wasn't even an actual player, but someone who was moving his actual body around and thus didn't have any sort of lag in his movements.
"That's why, we're going to see how far we can go for now… and see if we can't give everyone a head start," Pierce said as he and Veemon moved towards the door.
"Right, that makes sense." she said, getting up and following them "The guides made by the beta testers cover up to the 25th floor at least, so I know where the boss arena for the first floor is."
"Lead the way then," Veemon chuckled.
"Somehow I get the feeling this is gonna be good," Annette couldn't help but chuckle a bit.
"I suddenly feel like Saitama right now," Pierce snorted.
"That makes two of us," Veemon chuckled as well as the data fragments of the recently defeated Boss, a BlackGreymon, faded away. A boss that the two of them had defeated in one hit.
"Holy shit I am SO glad I found the record feature before you got in his aggro range." Annette said as she walked up to them "I'm gonna upload this online as soon as we're free from this hellscape." she said before shaking her head "Anyway, the boss clear message should be going out to everyone now, so should we head to the second floor? There's apparently a town on every floor with how huge they are."
"Yeah, let's go. We can scope out prime homebase material before anyone else gets there." Pierce said, shouldering Pandora X as the gate to the second floor opened up "At the very least, we should clear this game a lot faster than Kirito cleared SAO."
"Considering what you told me you were in the middle of… yeah, you really need to hurry back." Annette said, having figured out what 'arc' he was experiencing that was apparently similar to the Digimon anime of her world… but she didn't tell him what to expect, which… he respected honestly.
Spoilers and all that. Plus cosmic retribution might come into play and make him face something worse if he prepared for what she knew.
Still, he hoped he wouldn't be here too long. The others were waiting for him, and he didn't want to disappoint them.
Eeeeyup, an arc just for Pierce and Veemon.
Some fun stuff is gonna happen in it, trust me.
I won't say what, of course, but it'll be pretty epic.
So, hope you enjoyed, and are looking forward to the next Miracle Quest as Pierce fights his way through the SAO ripoff lol.
See you soon, because...
The Adventure Evolves.