Caelus Online

75. The First Immortal Army (Part 1)

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2027, September 24th, 19:17 PM,

Caelus, South of the Caelesian Empires Northern Border Checkpoint with the Allenos Kingdom. 

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Tyrell's POV

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Tyrell could not help but laugh. Usually, if anyone out of their little group would get themselves into a spot of entertainment or trouble, it would be Ben. Whenever Ben came to visit Chester while they were all still at university, and even after they graduated, it was always Ben getting into some sort of irregular situation.

Be it ending up in a fight in the club because someone was trying to start something, buying some party drugs from some random guy cycling past on some back street of London, or learning about the local hierarchy amongst the homeless in Bournemouth while smoking a joint, Ben was always the one. 

But, for once it was not Ben, but instead Chester. Well, Aurora or Astaria now. That was a whole lot of weird shit he did not want to unpack without something strong in his glass or his joint. 

Hell, everything went from getting paid to play MMOs with a close mate to the apocalypse and gender-swapping gods. What the fuck was he supposed to do with all that? He was just one guy with a hammer and some witty comments.   

So, he had in his many years of wisdom, said fuck it, rolled with whatever happened, and once the time was right, chilled out with a joint to forget about all the insanity. 

And then there had been last night that ended up being quite strange if he were completely honest. Well, at least the strangeness entering reality and not just confined to Caelus Online. 

When he had first seen Chester turn Aurora walk through the patio doors, well, he was stunned. As he assumed was the situation with the others, any lingering doubt regarding the veracity of the story was blown away as soon as he had seen him? Her? 

That sort of beauty was not something normal, let alone mortal. Whatever the gods did to get her looks like that, they went overboard. It's one thing seeing that sort of thing in a game, there is always some positive correction to a character’s looks - that is unless the player makes some kind of troll character - but it is another thing to see such a face and figure in reality.

With a slight sense of looming trepidation, he realised that Caelus was now also becoming reality along with all its quirks, and apparently, that included the positive correction to looks applied to real life. Somewhat unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but something still to note.

But yeah, while he was not completely attracted to her new looks, he could truly appreciate beauty when he could see. He was a cultured man after all. But if he had to pick between slapping Aurora’s ass or Aiysha’s, he would always pick Aiysha.

Granted, there was that whole ‘Aurora is actually Chester so I would be slapping a brother's ass’ aspect, but ignoring that, white girls never really did it for him. Yeah, he would happily get with some white bird on Astaria’s level, but when given the option, a black beauty would always be his pick. A man likes what a man likes after all.

‘But Aiysha? Damn, her ass jiggled like blackcurrant jelly, man was smacking dat like a drum. That was a fun Wednesday evening, god bless whatever caused dating sites to become a site for casual hookups.’

Tangent about Aiysha’s ass aside, seeing Chester just turn up like that was honestly insane. His- her sense of fashion had always been good, he could tell just by looking at that Lilly bird he was with while they were at university. Granted, it was a conservative leaning sense of fashion, little showing skin and tons of class, but she may have been pushing the boat out a little if what Roxanne was hinting they bought in London yesterday was correct.

But seeing Aurora’s change from dressing someone else to dressing her now female self… yeah, he had to take an extra long drag before giving her his greetings because the whole situation was completely and utterly fucking batshit insane. 

And what hit him even harder was just how casually Aurora seemed to have accepted it all. Yes, she had already been through some truly crazy things according to the few discussions they had about the 3 years of time travel. But to see her casually sit down, cross her legs like it was natural, and just look so… feminine, was odd. 

Half of it might just be because of her incredibly womanly looks tinting any movement and actions, and the addition of her physical anatomy allowing for easier crossing of the legs. But it was strange to see. Especially the giggles. That was a bit odd and would take some getting used to. 

And that was not even beginning to talk about those illusions. Magic, on a completely mundane porch, showing dragons? Nah, that was another ‘take a long drag and roll with it moment’.

But that was all irrelevant, he would be there for her, trying to keep interacting with her like they always had. After all, having a rock to cling onto in a storm was sometimes necessary, and since her entire life now was apparently a world changing storm, he would have no qualms about being that rock. Even if he couldn’t wait to pull out the plethora of jokes and innuendos he had come up with over the last few days.

But all these changes might have distracted him into what had become such a distracted train of thought. Aurora was usually the last one of the group to end up in something weird. Well, Ben levels of weird anyway. Chester-Aurora had always encountered some strange Chester-Aurora themed things, like having a long discussion regarding how applicable the legality of allowing a cow to walk on the streets in daylight hours was within the modern political framework, with the single most upper class and conservative member of the house of commons. 

Fuck, he had laughed his ass off hearing the recap of such a stupid conversation.

But in her current case, she had provoked a tribe of Gnolls into madness because she had apparently accidentally killed their chieftain with a lucky Hail Mary of a strike as she was getting herself killed.

And that chieftain was over level 75. Like what the fuck!? She was out there killing level 75 enemies while he was stuck helping newbies kill level 2 goblins. He was so going to kill a dragon now. 

At least on the plus side, her actions had got him out of training newbies and part of a small force comprised almost entirely of their new guild. 

It was quite amusing, after they had decided to turn in last night, he had jumped into one of the spare pods at Aurora’s place. Entering the game and feeling the crazy disorientation going from mildly drunk and very high to instantly sober was damned weird. And Aurora was apparently used to it? Like god damn, such a waste of good rum and weed, it was such a fucking rich person thing. 

But after the slight disorientation, he had got his wits back and had returned to his new ‘work’, picking up a group of 5 new members of the guild who had managed to stand out amongst their peers and helped them do some levelling while teaching them what he knew, which admittedly was next to nothing, but definitely far more than the other 99.9% of players. 

It had been a relatively boring session, guiding the others through killing goblins while listening to the music of the creatures screaming vocals and whooshing sword sound effects that made up the beat, provided by a single recruit who he shall keep unnamed. But that all changed when Aurora messaged the guild's leadership chat with her newfound predicament.

His little group of newbies had understood that he had to run off and help their guild leader, so he had run off and reunited with some of the other guild leaders alongside the members selected to go on this excursion outside of Haligrad. And following a surprisingly short period of organising they had started to make their way down to the southeast. 

They had gathered around 130 players in all, 20 of whom were clearly military trained given how they were organising everyone and talking to each other. He could not overstate how good Aurora’s decision to get them on board was, organising gamers was always such a pain in the ass, but having a group of imposing military-trained personnel in charge? Well, he wished he had known them in the past.

Their large group had managed to turn into some sort of public procession until they reached the border since many curious players had decided to follow their small army, because that is exactly what their group was, a small army. 

It was quite amusing to see the bandwagon effect as people just followed, but all the extra people had unfortunately slowed them down crossing the border with all the chaos and the guards trying to follow their local law and restricting all the low level unaffiliated followers from passing. 

That said however, their small army had managed to grow by a further 20 as there were 4 other unaffiliated players who were eligible to cross the border, so had been able to bring their own parties to follow and join.