"I think I'm happy to boil it down to being hurt, like, emotionally? I guess that's the closest to the truth. But if I tried to sue CC Corp for emotional damages, they'd fuckin' bury me in legal fees and paperwork," Ornery lamented, as Ouroboros awkwardly patted him on the shoulder - he had no idea what Ornery was talking about, but he had picked up on the tone, and the tone wasn't all that pleased.

Ornery could not feel the pat, but he was aware of it - he'd set subtitle logging to "on", just in case he ever had to take his headset off or turn the sound down, and he could see it right there, in his chat window.

[Ouroboros is patting Ornery on the shoulder.]

[Ouroboros looks a little concerned.]

[Ouroboros is wondering about something.]

"... Thanks for the concern, bud. Too bad you can't talk yet." He gave Ouroboros a light pat, glove against metal, and continued onward alongside Talebrook with Ouroboros trailing ever so slightly and awkwardly behind. The construct sped further ahead once he'd realized there were enemies nearby, trying his level best to shield both Talebrook and Ornery with his metallic body, though he wasn't even nearly fast enough to catch everything.

Ornery, for his part, had busied himself with looking at the level ranges, dodging in that lazy way where you can tell he knows how to dodge, but isn't paying enough attention. A couple frozen boulders smacked him directly in the center of mass, but Ornery was fairly unperturbed.

"They... are. I wonder if the field is responding to our progress, thus far. That is mildly anomalous, but I suppose the golem isn't too far above the allowed level range. Kind of a dick move on the devs' part if that's intentional... no way you could speedrun this if you're of-level, if'n these really scale up to one's performance..."

Talking about it hadn't prevented him from absently, almost on autopilot, flying at the Frigid Golem with a Gale Blade, piercing into it in a drill-like motion. He needed more speed. Speed was nice.

"... I'm gonna have to datamine their algorithms if I want to create an accurate simulation," Ornery finally decided, fingers still idly tapping at his keyboard as he maneuvered around the enemies to try and make sure any attacks aimed at him would not catch Talebrook in the crossfire. He saw what that barrage had done to their HP bar. The vibe wasn't great.

Ouroboros, dented as he was from the earlier assault, opted to hide behind a frozen wave for time being. He was brave enough, as a suit of mobile armor naturally might be, but he wasn't stupid.

Ornery needed to put practically no effort into ripping the Frigid Golem apart, overleveled as he was. His Berserk condition hadn't left him, and he was left with no time to think - though one of the soldiers was dead, the other one was still alive, heading for Talebrook. With his improved speed, Ornery practically manifested on top of the remaining monster.

He didn't need to use a skill. A basic attack, coupled with Twin Speed, was enough to cleanly separate the Soldier's head from its crystalline body, Ornery's blades acting like scissors.

"Chop-chop, little shit."

Ouroboros, who'd started towards Talebrook to try and futilely give his life to try and shield them from the sword-wielding humanoid chunk of ice, stopped in his tracks and slowly shook his head.

[Ouroboros is simultaneously relieved and disappointed.]

[Ouroboros thinks about something.]

[Ouroboros reconsiders.]

... Ouroboros decided not to give Ornery a thumbs up, or any other form of praise, lest the man decided that Ouroboros had actually l-l-l-liked him or something.

Ornery, blissfiully oblivious, sheathed his blades and grinned at Talebrook.

"I hope you're right! Good job on taking one of 'em out. You usually play ranged classes in single-player games?"

The ASCA turned his metal head away, pretending to stoically ignore the gentle pat delivered unto him by Talebrook. The pink glow behind his metal visor gave him up, of course, and they would be able to notice it with ease - far more ease than on a classically out-of-the-box colored ASCA, since Ouroboros had been painted in a very Ornery colorway.

[Ouroboros pretends not to appreciate the praise.]

[Ouroboros is embarrassed.]

Ornery giggled quietly at the scene, and nodded to Talebrook, far less shy than his metallic pet.

"Hey, what else're friends for? I'm a pretty shoddy tank, but I do usually go for melee classes, myself, though I'll learn anything that's most efficient in a given game I'm trying to speedrun. Was," he corrected himself, "trying to speedrun. It's been a couple years since I've last gotten a game with the intention of getting my name on any sort of score or speed leaderboard."

Ouroboros looked a lot shinier and happier after the Repth spam flying his way, and he looked a lot more confident in trailing alongside Ornery and Talebrook. No longer would he hide behind frozen waves... at least, not until the next pack slammed him in the helmet.

Ornery nodded to Talebrook yet again in response to their question.

"As a matter of fact, I did play Twin Blade in R:2! I had considered running a second account to try out additional classes, maybe test my hand at the Adept Rogue, but I didn't really have the time to powerlevel two accounts simultaneously... and by the time I felt I'd done everything I wanted to on my Twin Blade account, the game was getting, uh---it was getting noticeably broken." He awkwardly laughed.

"What's with all the... server trouble. And then it shut down. Anyway, I played Heavyblade in R:1, but as I might've already mentioned, my career back in the first ever version of [The World] was short and not particularly illustrious. I thought about trying another class in R:Fusion, but I went for Twin Blade just 'cause I'd get to run away from PKers faster."

Ornery glanced under his feet again, scanning the ice below for any shapes swimming by, as he walked alongside them.

"In retrospect, I should've investigated the PK culture, or the lack of, more closely. My choice might've been different if I had known the danger was practically nil in comparison to R:2. But what's done is done, and I'm pretty happy with where I've ended up. Twin swords look pretty cool and I get to run like an anime ninja when my speed's stacked up, so I think that's neat."

"What... would I have chosen?" Ornery mused as he walked. Though his attention was focused firmly on the ice below, it had never taken him a lot of effort to talk while doing something else. Why, he'd been a speedrunner! A streamer! An internet sensation (within a fairly limited circle of people interested in platformer speedrunning strats and-slash-or danmaku highscores)! He could perform the wildest pinpoint jumps and slides, dodge countless amounts of projectiles, and calculate the exact second he needs to pull a save-reload trick, all the while conversing with his audience!

All of which meant that he could hold a conversation quite competently while otherwise preoccupied with anything from soldering a board to killing things in a VRMMO.

"... The question is, are we talking about the classes as they are now, or the way they were at launch? At launch, I might've picked Flick Reaper. Scythes are cool, AoE room-clear potential is really nice, and I've never cared a particular amount about looking or feeling, ah, 'cringe' according to arbitrarily decided and perpetually-shifting social standards. Which's to say, I don't really care if people called me an edgelord. I mean, look at the design I picked for Ornery." He gestured at himself. He did maintain a certain degree of separation between Ornery the ingame character and the man behind the screen who only went by this one-off pseudonym.

Before he could finish his tangent, though, the ice started to crack, and Ornery paused in order to prepare for the boss monster's inevitable appearance. He'd also hurried away from the point where all the cracks had started from and prepared for the exact moment it emerged so he could either take a hit for Talebrook, being the only excuse for a melee class here, if one didn't count poor Ouroboros, or start dodging.

As the furious serpent emerged and immediately came bearing down on him, Ornery figured that dodging it is.

So that's what he did. A Twin Blade was a Twin Blade, and a Savage was a Savage. The first attack was easy enough to dodge, given he'd been anticipating one, and that dodge gave him enough of a speed boost to nonchalantly ice-skate away from the magic blast.

Ouroboros had correctly judged that trying to take an attack meant for Ornery would just lead to him trying in vain to catch up, so he'd stationed himself in front of Talebrook, instead.

"If we're talking about how they are now, though, I'd have gone for Wavemaster. I'd love to feel for myself how the new spellcasting mechanics work," Ornery finally continued his thought from earlier, as if he'd never paused. "I didn't like the idea of playing an offensive caster in R:2 because they were kind of redundant, with all the weapon mods, and the formulaic spells that every other class could get their hands on. Here and now, though, there's spell variety! A customizable spellbook! You can be an edgy little bitch and pick the edgy elements! I dunno, I think it's neat. If I ever roll an alt, I'm gonna get nasty Wavemaster-style. Prob'ly not, though. Got my hands full with this one, and I've, like, got a life and a fiance, yeah? I can't no-life the way I used to."

"If you get enough elemental weapons, you're not gonna have any problems covering just about any base even as a caster, anyway, and you can bring those into a weapons shop for a quick level tune-up when they get a little obsolete!" Ornery advised whilst inertia carried him across the ice.

The Berserk condition he was afflicted with ensured he couldn't keep skating away from attacks for too long. The aforementioned forces of inertia let him get away with the first two dodges, but now, he was far too fast, and the compulsion to tear the Frost Serpent apart was, unfortunately, still there in the form of a status condition without an expiration time. Fortunately, Ornery could still talk in this state, but his character had forcibly turned towards the Frost Serpent.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it, no more dragging it on," Ornery groused as he rushed towards the furious boss, activating his wings almost absent-mindedly as he saw the ice being broken along the most convenient routes.

Ouroboros wobbled in place as the ice below him cracked in several places, but held on tight, ready to take on the barrage of ice shards, for better or for good. Fortunately, he was meant to be something of a backup tank - unfortunately, they were fighting a level 17 boss, and his HP took a very, very noticeable dent as the ice shards kept raining on him. 50%, 45%, 30%, 20%...!

Ouroboros turned to Talebrook with a dramatic thumbs-up, ready to faint, his purpose fulfilled...

... And then, Ornery descended upon the Frost Serpent's head, going for the eyes with yet another Chaotic Strike.

"What do we say to the big fat snake? NOT TODAY!"

It was only thanks to Talebrook's healspam that Ouroboros didn't get chunked down to the very last sliver of his health. The ASCA rigidly bowed to his saviour, puffing steam.

The chat subtitle logging kept chugging along.

[Ouroboros is thankful.]

[Ouroboros is trying not to look flustered.]

"Well, that's not the purpose of a carry, is it? What kinda lame high-level friend would I be if I helped you out only to take all the loot?" Ornery asked after descending back down to the ice, allowing his wings to fold behind his back and fade away. He didn't really like walking with them out - a lot of people liked having their wings out all the time for the aesthetic of it, but he thought his run cycle looked kind of silly if he kept them out.

"We'll see what's in there, and if there's a couple nice things, we can divide 'em equally. Otherwise, we'll discuss, yeah? I want to be fair about it. You did your best too, Tales, and... I mean, if our earlier hypothesis turns out to be a workable theory, it's actually kind of my fault that the monsters were that strong." He scratched his head with one of his mean-looking blades, glancing to the side where the last bits of the serpent had just finished dissipating into thin air.

Ornery didn't often look sheepish - not while he was particularly in-character, anyway - but the longer he spent playing with a person, the less of a pretense he ended up keeping up. There was Ornery the awful scaly internet troll who talked about butts and mullets, and then there was "Ornery", the player behind the face, the guy with the leaking Kansai dialect and the R:2 trauma and pessimistic opinions about CC Corp.

Shiroyama Yemon didn't like taking credit for things he didn't do, or avoiding credit for things he did do, for the better or for the worse. Perhaps it was a matter of upbringing - his parents never punished him for owning up to breaking things as a child, or accidentally making his first home computer unusable by writing baby's first virus. They didn't yell at him for calling them out on not doing something they promised they'd do, either.

He did learn to lie over time, but he still had trouble being unfair about things like credit, and loot, and division of labour.

He was the kind of guy who felt bad every time he got so sick he couldn't do his half of his house chores.

"If it's something equippable that I don't have a better in-slot for, I'll consider it, but I want you to get somethin' nice too," Ornery said, finally, turning to head to the beast statue. "You kept my little buddy alive and didn't get killed, so that counts for quite a bit. I've had to play with people who are way less pleasant to party with, and were way worse at the game, and I didn't take their loot, either."

He had to be careful with acceleration - he was a Savage, so his doubled up speed buff also had no expiration time. If he wasn't careful about where and how he was going, he could skid into the water.

Ouroboros had no such issues, being inherently on the slow side, so he simply chugged along at a normal person's pace.

Ouroboros might not have been capable of holding grudges in the truest sense - he was still just a virtual pet in a virtual reality, and Ornery hadn't exactly futzed around with his code in any meaningful way yet - but he definitely chuffed steam in a pleased way as Talebrook accompanied him. He even gave them a nod of acknowledgement, which, from a pet with the Tsundere personality, probably meant something.

Maybe healing the ASCA affected whatever internal friendship tracking mechanics might've been implemented into the pet system? If NPCs could remember players, there was no reason why pets wouldn't be able to.

As they came closer to the Beast Statue, Ornery gave an impressed whistle. Truly, whoever worked on the assets for the field went way harder on it than they strictly had to - of course, given it was a video game, it was reasonable to assume this wasn't all modeled specifically for this one field, and that these assets could be encountered at a later point, but this was the first time he'd seen this particular boss room layout and this particular loot chamber.

"Oh, that's niiice. Lemme just snap a screenie..."

He hurried to take a screenshot before Talebrook could open the chest, and then, patiently waited for them to inspect the loot. Once they had done so, Ornery stepped over to look at the items, as well.

Two lowbie armors, one clearly for a caster or a ranged class that would have to worry less about getting hit and more about MP consumption, and one clearly for a melee DPS or a tank. Two HP pots, one MP pot, one rez pot. It wasn't that bad, all things considered - of course, it didn't remotely compare to the loot one could get in higher-leveled servers, but it was loot, nevertheless.

"... Mm... you know, that's fair. You probably don't have any use for health pots, and you won't have any for rez pots, either... plus, if I grab the rez pot and we party up in the future and end up somewhere that absolutely kicks your lily rear," Ornery mused, looking them over, "I could bring you back up. I think that's pretty fair. Sounds good to me. Maybe we could go to a Theta field next time we meet up, eh? See what kinda loot falls out?"

In any case, should the items be offered to him, he would quite eagerly accept them. His inventory was getting pretty cluttered, but he was fine with being an item hoarder.

Better to have it and not use it, than not to have it when you want to use it.

"... Uh---if you gotta head off, feel free to go ahead, by the way. I want to take some aerial screenshots of the area, so I'll be sticking around a little longer. I wanna ask Nobs if he knows who worked on the assets."