MIND GAMES: Guild Tryouts

Chapter 22

>Fight!<

—Ivy runs out of her waiting area and into the arena, ready for action. She quickly realizes that her daydream of having a sunny and peaceful battlefield isn't going to happen. Rain and the torrential wind slapped across the bark of the trees surrounding her. The leaves of the trees seem to make a canopy that she could run underneath to be safe from getting completely soaked.

'This is the *WORST*!!!' She drastically thinks to herself.

She continued to pace around the wooded landscape for a little over five minutes, not finding any sign of another player. Ivy could easily wait things out—like the tree campers in Axel's match—but like Axel, she wanted action. She was here for a reason, not for free entry.

The trees surrounding her were thicker than any redwood she had ever seen in pictures. Their branches also were massive, covering up the other fauna and bush underneath them like how Goliath towered over David.

'They look perfect for climbing and stalking from!' She thinks to herself, 'I just have to find where Kira is, and we have this in the bag.'

Concentrating hard, Ivy activates her Aspect. In a short moment, one of the branches on the tree nearby sprouts a load of new segments that allowed her to climb her way to the top of it quickly. The wood felt soaked and slippery, but Ivy also used an all-purpose combat knife from the weapon rack to help herself climb with some moderate stability.

Her bow and her quiver both swang slightly as she reached for each climbing spot and advantage, throwing off her balance ever so slightly.

After reaching the branch she was climbing towards, she covered up her presence by shrouding herself with her surroundings. She then proceeded to leap across the forest, from branch to branch and from tree to tree.

It seemed that no one was in her radius, and Ivy started to slow her roll when she came across a stream of water below her. She stopped almost immediately as she approached closer and closer to it, seeing a color not visible anywhere else.

A deer-like animal calmly took a drink from the said stream, even with the dense rain and stiff winds. Ivy admired the way it continued to thrive through the environment, which motivated her further. Looking down the stream, Ivy notices another abnormal color in the distance, except this time it wasn't fur.

'A Player!' She thinks.

According to how they ran their hand through the stream, they seemed to have a water Aspect. From the looks of it, the drawback of their power was finding a water source first instead of creating water from the air's humidity.

Aspect isn't just conjuring up magic or summoning overpowered spells. It all dealt with the way Aspect changes the aspect ratio in the game's engine. Think of the game world being made up of three-dimensional pixels, and Aspect changes their properties, i.e., their aspect. Axel's Aspect—for example—changes the pixels around him to increase in temperature, creating fire. Some other players, like Stan, can make items such as a deck of playing cards much more valuable in practice by changing their properties and other related tricks.

For this player to require a source of water was beyond Ivy, but she didn't hesitate. Ivy quickly draws the bow she picked up in her waiting room bow and reaches for a Mythril-tipped arrow inside of the bow's additional quiver.

Steadying the projectile on the string of her bow, Ivy pulls back on it to draw it. The limbs of her bow go from being lazily horizontal to a straight vertical as Ivy focuses on this shot. The player hasn't yet moved, so she had to take this opportunity immediately.

She estimates the wind blowing hard to the east would affect her overall shot by a large percent. She compensates by tilting the angle slightly. Next was the accuracy, which would be hard to calculate on a new bow.