• It was yet another chilly Bramunez night and the Golden Seal Team was just about ready to venture back into Curtis Castle. Currently, its three members were tying up loose ends and taking last minute requests from around town...

    ...Well, Angela and Tude were, but Frantz was being his usual angsty self and perusing the current Wanted Board requests. His expression seemed to darken with each posting he looked through, as if to scorn their very existence. Finally, he took one from the board and squinted down at it, muttering darkly at the thing just as his two equally strange teammates came up.

    "Hey, uhh...you okay, buddy?" Tude was looking at the half-vampire, concerned that he was speaking to a piece of paper. Angela hadn't even noticed, instead cheerfully skipping over to the portal before looking back and wondering why no one was following.

    "...No. No, I'm not..." murmured Frantz, tearing his eyes away from the offending parchment long enough to give the blonde a grim stare. "Have you seen these?" he asked, waving the paper in his hands.

    Tude shrugged. "No. Why? Aren't those just bounties for dangerous monsters?" Frantz nodded, but his severe expression didn't change at all. He instead held the paper up to his face and read it aloud.

    "Wanted - Sinful Seraph because I don't like his face." He paused, as if to let that horrifying phrase sink in. Both Angela and Tude looked unimpressed. "'Because I don't like his face,' for god's sake!" repeated Frantz, raising his voice even higher.

    "Okay, so what?" asked Angela, speaking for both of them. They did nonsensical quests for the townspeople all the time. Sure, they could always refuse, but doing those seemed to be the only way to move forward through the castle.

    At this, Frantz burned the paper in his hand using a burst of black magic and threw down the smoldering remains. "Aren't you tired of this? Tired of all this ▟▟▟▟?" Upon uttering that last word, Frantz stopped and massaged his throat. He could never get used to the profanity filters.

    Both Angela and Tude exchanged a glance, already agreeing with the half-vampire but seeing nothing they could do about it. Angela had gotten it all out of her system back before Tude came along while the wanderer himself had complained as soon as they'd gotten started in the cathedral area.

    Frantz, however, had never spoken until now. Apparently, the ridiculous Wanted Board had been the last straw. "And look!" he continued, grabbing another random quest and ripping it off the board. "The reward. They're Moonstones. What the ▟▟▟▟ am I going to do with Moonstones? Collect a pile of them and trade them back to the same people who are putting these missions up? I just can't wrap my head around this...this...whatever the hell this is. And what do we even get for these? Weapons? We have weapons. In fact, we have better weapons!" Frantz punctuated his rant with yet another paper burning, which probably would have attracted an angry reaction from the guards in front of the portal if they weren't busy chatting about how they would defeat Vlad by themselves (despite the fact that they never have nor ever would move from that spot in all their mortal lives).

    Tude uncomfortably scratched his head and tried to interject before Frantz could go any further, but Angela put a hand on his shoulder as if to say "let the poor guy vent".

    "And don't even get me started on Icestones! Besides the fact that they're the exact same unobtainable type of useless object as Moonstones, they're for titles. Titles. I got about forty of these damnable things and then I'm asked for 800 more just for bragging rights. ▟▟▟▟!" This time, he kicked the Wanted Board. The wood splintered as his foot went through it. "But you know what? I could handle all of that, all of it, but then we have this incredible amount of other ▟▟▟▟ to tolerate day in and day out. Like how we're about to finish scouting an area and then one of us is stuck fighting the boss alone because the rest of us can't see it."

    Surprisingly, Frantz wasn't met with uninterested stares when he refocused back on the two. On the contrary, Angela now looked positively indignant while Tude was gazing back in the direction of Elma's office, as if gauging the strength of the wall versus his gauntlet should he decide to bring it down in protest to the cruel gods above. Judging by his +10 crafted weapon and incredible physical damage, it wouldn't be a problem.

    "You're right. So ▟▟▟▟ing right," seethed Angela, not even bothering to comment on the censorship of her words. That outrageous ban on profanity was already firmly engraved in each of their minds as an unforgivable consequence of their selfless work in Bramunez.

    Tude, however, didn't miss the opportunity. "And you know what? I'm sick of these words being stolen out of my mouth. It's been too long since I've been able to curse like a proper adult...or, hell, like a teenager. Sure, I could change the word around a bit, but the effect is never the same." He actually almost did demolish the wall next to him this time, holding himself back through sheer force of will.

    Frantz looked between the two of them, inwardly pleased that they were finally showing some emotion on the matter. "...Yeah, and here's some irony for you - I have Curse Mastery, yet I can't say the word ▟▟▟▟ like decent people." The observation brought an involuntary smile to their faces, despite it being a rather lame connection between an in-game skill and a profanity filter.

    "Wait wait, hold up! You know what's really ▟▟▟▟ing hilarious?" asked Angela rhetorically, clearly about to follow up her thought with something else. Tude, however, beat her to the punch. "That we are ordered on mass genocide of nature's creatures constantly but aren't allowed to say '▟▟▟▟'?" Tude paused, then turned and started carving in the word he'd been censored from saying into the wall with a finger of his gauntlet. When he was finished, the letters read "Butt". Still, the Knight-Guards didn't so much as look at them despite the acts of vandalism that had been committed right then and there, instead remarking on the shapes of various clouds in the sky. They were clearly retarded.

    A few moments of silence followed, each of the three thinking to themselves about several of the things that drove them positively insane about Bramunez. Just the other day, there was a female in an inexplicable Chinese side-boob dress that showed up in the Steamworks and pummeled the Viper before anyone (even Tude, whose style she emulated) could act. A similar thing happened with some incredibly hot chick in her underwear mowing down enemies just a bit faster than Frantz could, leaving him to gape in wonder as he began to doubt the usefulness of his vampire powers.

    Then there was the lack of proper Mithril around necessary to forge some of Estel's creations. The only way to get Mithril apart from digging around in the Shrine was to dismantle otherwise powerful (but attainable) gear that had been painstakingly gathered in the course of their questing. And, honestly, how the hell did this gypsy know precisely how many souls of the same monster were needed to create an incredible weapon that couldn't even be bought anywhere?

    "You know what we should do? We should complain. Petition. Protest!" exclaimed Angela, pumping her fist into the air. Surely those that controlled the world around them would see reason. A world with swearing, with gold sinks, with balanced PVP, with glitches that go away after a few days rather than remain forever, with weapons that didn't take sweaty six-hour sessions at a time to have a chance at piecing together. Never mind the fact that they weren't at the level cap yet and thus did not have to deal with the Altar or any of those tear-inducingly repetitive grind dungeons in order to even compare to those with god status accessories on their person.

    Clearly, they were all forgetting that repetition and nonsensical questing was the standard for their kind of 'adventure'. And it wasn't like anyone they could have possibly complained to actually had the power to address all these grievances, nor would most of them even need addressing. And, uhh, since we've already broken the fourth wall an incredible amount of times in the above, let's just completely erase it by adding in that this game is broken in too many ways and that it will eventually fall into obscurity as the thus far impressively dedicated community tires of it and moves on (don't ban me!).

    Frantz sighed, reverting back into his standard angst-mode. "...Look, I know I brought this all up when we could have just grit our teeth and gone with it, but there's not really anything we can do." This time, it was the other two that were unsatisfied.

    "No, no, this has gone on long enough. Let's slap some sense into that ▟▟▟▟▟ Nadia." Tude stormed away, his face and tone quite resolute. Angela followed without any hesitation, leaving Frantz behind at the broken Wanted Board. The half-vampire looked left and right as if to check if the coast was clear (minus the mentally deficient Knights).

    "a**!" he announced triumphantly, pleased to hear the sound of his voice instead of '▟▟▟'. "...Okay, so at least we have that..." he murmured, coughing into a gloved hand and composing himself before following his incensed companions to Nadia's office.

    Once there, the threesome walked right through the gate and towards the door of Town Hall...and yes, they did literally walk through the gate. Those steel bars are transparent and anyone can walk through them, begging the question of why they even exist in the first place.

    Regardless, Tude was about to throw open the door before a small boy whom nobody had ever seen before emerged from it. At first he seemed innocent enough with his pale complexion and wide-eyed aloof expression, but then the massive scythe in his delicate looking fingers came into full view and the Golden Seal Team stepped back in alarm. "W-what!" stuttered Angela, watching as the boy slipped past them without so much as a glance in their direction.

    "Oh, it's you three. Can I help you?" asked a bored voice from within the office. Both Tude and Frantz tore their eyes away from the scythe-boy to regard Major Nadia, but Angela continued to gape at the clearly underage 'soldier' that had apparently just gotten a pass to the cathedral area.

    "...Uh, yeah...listen, we've got some complaints that...you know, simply have to be addressed," replied Tude, trying and failing to sound as charged-up as earlier now that he was facing the cold and disinterested Nadia. She yawned and beckoned the trio into the spacious office. Frantz had to shake Angela a little to get her focus off of the boy that had by now disappeared.

    Tude gulped. "Well, like I was saying-"

    "Who the ▟▟▟▟ was that?!" screeched Angela suddenly, surprising even Nadia.

    The Major herself, though, was the first to recover. "First of all, I don't condone that kind of language...even if it was only implied and not 'said' due to the ban. And, if you must know, that would be our newest magic specialist and scythe-wielder. Real prodigy, actually. Would you believe he's not even old enough to look at girls sexually the same way they do to him?"

    Angela slammed her own scythe into the floor, creating an angry burst of magical wind as a result. "That's not fairrr!" she wailed, fully prepared to follow through with the tantrum that had been building up inside of her. "I made a deal with a demon sword, for god's sake! Why do you think I'm so good at magic? Why do think my sword changed into a scythe? Because it wants to reap the eternal souls of all that it cuts down! How is it that some kid with nothing remotely that cool can be just as good as me?!"

    "...Better," corrected Nadia, casually looking for dirt under her fingernails even as she spoke. "He's actually better. Faster. Probably beats your style in every way."

    A deathly silence settled in, only broken by Nadia tapping her fingers against the desk impatiently as she waited for the three misfits of the military to leave. Fortunately for her, it seemed all the wind had been taken out of them. Both Tude and Frantz were at a loss for words and Angela's face was set into a pitiably forlorn expression, indicating that she probably wouldn't recover from this incident any time soon. To say that they were collectively depressed would be a mass understatement.

    After a few moments, Frantz quietly tugged Angela out of the building with Tude following from behind. They stood outside the gate, right in front of two more idiotic Knight Guards that were conversing about nothing and opening their face plates constantly for no reason.

    "I, uhh, give up," mumbled Frantz, heading up the steps to the cathedral area without another word. After a brief glance at Angela, Tude followed suit after sighing and muttering darkly about how he could possibly afford to buy gems off the Auction House with the current economic problems plaguing Bramunez.

    That left Angela, sitting near the fountain and trying to make sense of the shota that had one-upped both her and Graestra. Her eyes were glazed over in a dreamlike state, her mind having been thoroughly overloaded. Eventually, she too stood up and followed the others.

    "...Right...it's time I went for +15...heh...heh..." she whispered, knowing full well that she would not be getting +15.

    The End.

    ...Now wasn't that a good use of your time?