EFate: An MMO Story Chapter 72: Eleanor

Closing the chat. Eric found himself staring into Eleanor's eyes, her golden pupils hovering only inches from his own.
"Hey Elle, what's up?" Eric asked with a smile.
"Nothing. Just wanted to see how you were doing. You seemed pretty desparate to get on Strife. You didn't even have time to talk to me," Eleanor replied wistfully, stepping backwards and allowing Eric room to sit up.
Eric laughed, "Sorry Elle, I had a meeting and no time left before it started."
Eleanor sulked, puffing up her cheeks slightly and looking away. Eric smiled, he'd made it a point to talk more with Eleanor ever since his first trip to Elysium. As a result, the two had grown much closer. However, as he'd since learned, Eleanor was the clingy type. She was the type who hated being alone, which meant that as the only non-fairy person she could interact with on a daily basis, Eric was automatically her salvation from the eternal boredom of loneliness.
Not that Eric particularly minded spending time with Eleanor. She was extremely knowledgeable about Fate, and she was also a witty and engaging conversational partner in her own right. Even if she hadn't guilted him into talking to her, he probably would have still enjoyed just sitting around and conversing with her while gazing at the ocean.
"So what are your plans for today? Are you going to bring me exploring again?" Eleanor asked, forgetting to pout as she looked at him in antic.i.p.ation.
"Nope, we're actually going to be visiting a new town for once. We're finally going to leave Tonbura village for a little while," Eric responded with a grin.
Eleanor's eyes went wide, "A new town? Where? Which one?"
"Vindammer Town. It's a little ways southeast of Tonbura."
"Vindammer Town? A few of my friends have players who started there. Supposedly it's beautiful, right on a river that leads to the ocean," Eleanor said wistfully, gazing out at the ocean outside the window.
"Yeah I heard it also has an arena. There's going to be a small tournament held there in two days. So we're heading there to register and partic.i.p.ate in the tournament. If we have time we can check out the river, and maybe see some of the sights," Eric replied.
This made Eleanor cheer, bringing her hands up to her face as she practically vibrated in excitement. Eric smiled, he'd learned quite a bit about Eleanor in the last week. Fairies were more than just simple AI who served the user of the FateGear, answering their questions and guiding them through the game. Unlike other games or programs where the helper NPCs didn't exist except for when the player called upon them, fairies existed at all times, and could actually leave the FateGear lobby to enter the game where they could interact with other fairies.
While Eric hadn't fully figured out where the fairies went, it seemed that there were a number of restrictions upon their movement to prevent fairies from acting as spies and scouts for their players. Fairies could visit areas outside of the normal world of Nasvencia, areas such as Elysium. However, they could not enter Nasvencia itself unless their player called them to their side. Once called to a players side, the fairy was bound to the player, and couldn't travel more than a few metres from the players side. If the player didn't call upon the fairy, then the fairy could only see what the player themselves saw, sort of like watching a livestream.
As a result, Eleanor couldn't experience the world of Fate herself unless Eric called upon her. As a fairy with a fairly large amount of wanderl.u.s.t, this was unbearable to the poor fairy, and as such, ever since they'd started to open up to each other since meeting in Elysium, she often begged for Eric to take her to new and interesting places that she'd heard about from talking to other fairies.
Eleanor's love of exploration had benefited Eric as well, on more than one occasion he'd discovered hidden caverns or dens, often filled with various monsters or wildlife. Often, Eric chose to simply leave the creatures inside alone, content to simply explore without b.l.o.o.d.ying his blade. Unless monsters attacked him first, he found it far preferable to level up his skills through practice and studying, rather than through the slaughter of hundreds of innocent creatures.
Of course if a wolf or other monster attacked him first, Eric showed no mercy, dispatching the monster with a proficiency that would have surprised the him of merely a week ago. Despite the fact that his level was rising fairly slowly, his actual combat strength had improved by leaps and bounds, especially since raising his magic and martial arts to the Journeyman level.
The one exception to Eric's new live-and-let-live rule was goblins. Goblins he wiped out on sight, something that had been requested by Alistair. The militia captain had informed him that many of the monsters of Stillwood Forest were simply normal creatures that wouldn't bother the villagers if they didn't bother them first. However, goblins and other creatures of darkness, as the Nova.n.a.lbans called them, were enemies that had to be dispatched. If allowed to live, they would grow rapidly, turning into threats that could level entire villages if left unhindered.
It helped that goblins, along with elites and many of the bigger, stronger monsters in the forest, were all aggressive monsters, happy to charge Eric on sight. As a result, he was still able to find plenty of situations to put his hard work into practice, combining magic with martial arts and his still somewhat crude swordsmans.h.i.+p to deal with his foes. He really needed to take up Ryan's offer and start practicing with the weeb squad, Eric thought to himself ruefully, remembering how clumsy his swordplay had looked compared to Ryan's in their outing yesterday.
Snapping out of his reverie, Eric conversed with Eleanor for a few more minutes before getting up from the couch. Promising that he would summon her soon, he entered Fate.