《Dismissing Darkness》 The end of the first final last stand. ThumpTHUMP All eyes are on me as I race forward. ThumpTHUMP Ghost eyes, the remnants of hope from beyond the grave. ThumpTHUMP As the lone survivor here, it is more than a wish, but a duty to kill the beast that ravages our lands. ThumpTHUMP Up ahead, the scales on its face glitter in the firelight spread across the previously prosperous port of Omnen-Amur. ThumpTHUMP Its teeth are coated in the charred blood and guts of my fellows. ThumpTHUMP Its eyes are slitted and flaming with an eldrich gleam. ThumpTHUMP It has no wings like most of its kin, nor is it as towering. ThumpTHUMP It barely can peek over the fifteen foot wall enclosing this fair city, not that the wall stopped it. ThumpTHUMP Claws and bulging muscles helped it help itself to the cattle, the people, and the gold. ThumpTHUMP Here I am with two dainty swords, a grim smile, and the hopes of all those dead bodies on the ground. ThumpTHUMP It moves, charging. ThumpTHUMP I tense, sweat slick on my sword hilt.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. ThumpTHUMP ThumpTHUMP A leap. ThumpTHUMP ThumpTHUMP A thrust. ThumpTHUMP ThumpTHUMP It disappeared. ThumpTHUMP ThumpTHUMP Teleportation. ThumpTHUMP ThumpTHUMP Hot breath on my neck. ThumpTHUMP ThumpTHUMP ThumpTHUMP I¡¯m still smiling because ThumpTHUMP I ThumpTHUMP Already knew ThumpTHUMP It ThumpTHUMP was there. ThumpTHUMP And with that, my blade goes through the beasts eye. The fires flicker out as it screams a final scream. ThumpTHUMP Did I say scream? I meant ThumpTHUMP ThumpTHUMP ThumpTHUMP ThumpTHUMP firebreath! ThumpTHUMP Thump-blip- You Have Died Respawn available in one hour. Proceed to lobby? Yes/No . . .Well, that could have gone better. Hopefully we still get credit for killing it. If we don¡¯t, everybody is going to be super pissed off. All that work we put into our settlement and one damn teleporting dragon comes to screw us over. The guild leader is going to give me hell no matter what, I¡¯m sure. Something like ¡°Why didn¡¯t you just shoot it with an arrow before it charged?¡± or ¡°Why weren¡¯t you at the town in the beginning when it started to attack like the rest of the guild?¡± Lets hope that I can get away from her by logging out and then hiding for a while. I poke the No option. Initiating logout procedure. And then I lost a whole lot of weight. Literally. I¡¯m living in half-earth gravity right now, so all the mass is still there, but the weight that comes with it is magically gone. Not that I get to be super happy about that. Even up in space, especially up in space, I have to stay in shape instead of piggingout on ice-cream and cake and becoming a nice ball of fat that can float amongst the stars. I don¡¯t have a six-pack, mostly because I, like everyone else on the Outlook spend a vast portion of my time in this pod that I¡¯m waking up in right now. Can¡¯t exactly cross the space between stars without long naps, right? In fact, most people don¡¯t even get to wake up because they are termed passengers to be stowed away and live out the magnificence of fifty year-old state of the art virtual reality simulations. I like to call them videogames, but all the techy people on-board frown upon such an oversimplification. I¡¯m not really that popular to be honest, what with the fact that I have one to two PHD¡¯s less than practically everyone else aboard. Doesn¡¯t really dampen my spirits with the fact that most of my job is playing videogames all day every day. As if determined to prove me wrong on my popularity, a bright-green, flashy call notice is blinking on the inside of my capsule as I de-frost. Interestingly, not from my guild-leader. She must be the smaller blinking icon that tells me that I have a new message. No, the call is from someone with more power, a being that heralds dread tidings: my Boss. I hit the accept call button. This can only mean one thing. ¡°Jackson, impressive timing as usual. Get up to the command module, we need your eyes.¡± Work calls, ugh. Background Music of the Spheres You¡¯d think we would have portable phones in the ship, what with how big it is. It would be great to get briefed as you¡¯re climbing up a ten-thousand-foot ladder to get to your office. We don¡¯t have those, so I get a long, boring climb that I¡¯m probably only able to make because the gravity is so low. Once I got off of the cryo ring into the main shaft of the ship, I don¡¯t even need to worry about half an earth-g, just a bit of gravity from the acceleration going on. I could probably fling myself up rungs ten at a time with minimal effort, but that would be dangerous and against safety protocol so I¡¯m not doing that. The fact that I got in trouble when the cameras caught me using that method a few years back has no bearing on my decision. They put cameras in here, why not some sort of sound system? Then I could get back to videogames faster where I could. . .face my irate guild leader who is doubtless waiting to chew me out. You know, I could do with a nice long climb. Really take my mind off my recent demise and wonder what¡¯s going on that they need me to take a look outside. It can¡¯t be something too ordinary, or they would just use the normal telescopes and radio waves to check it out. Anybody can look at those and know what¡¯s going on. They only bring me in when they need to coordinate a few of the different cameras. I think that¡¯s what it is at any rate. What I do is sit in a chair, plug my brain into their computer that flashes images at it. Most people and computers look at that feed of images and get a seizure or something. Something about parsing multiple sets of data simultaneously while cross-referencing for patterns? What it comes down to is that I get a nice, orderly picture from what they send me and I tell them what I¡¯m looking at. I feel a bit like those guys in the starship vats from Dune, but I¡¯m nowhere near as powerful. The way it got pitched to the people who were recruiting for this trip is the easiest to understand for someone without gratuitous science knowledge. They could either take a giant computer with them that weighed a ton and only acted as an image decryptor, or they could take me. Granted, I take a lot of resources to keep running as well, but unlike the computer, I can do other things besides looking at stars. Mostly that devolves into lugging things around through the ship every once in a while or piloting the drones to get a look at or inside the hull. Turns out that my brain is really good at dealing with multiple video input feeds which extends to really great spacial manipulation when I have enough eyes on the scene. Supposedly that¡¯s the opposite of how most people work, but eh, I get to play great videogames for most of my day so I don¡¯t worry about being to abnormal much.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. It¡¯s just times like these where I¡¯m becoming pull-up champion of the universe that end up pretty bored. That and when the guild leader says I have to stay inside the city because there are signs of a dangerous monster in the vicinity and they might need my help to fight it off but it doesn¡¯t show up in weeks and I would rather be out in the woods fighting monsters than cooped up in the city so I take a really quick trip out to one of the known dungeons for a breather and the monster, as if it knew I left town, decides that that exact moment when I¡¯m halfway through killing the dungeon boss is when it needs to raid the city. Is it really my fault that nobody else was able to kill it before it fried them? It¡¯s not like magic immune monsters were scarce, and pretty much any dragon type monster would be a laughingstock if it weren¡¯t magic immune. Somebody should have been able to shoot it in the eye or overpower it before I got there, right? ¡°Jackson, finally. Get plugged in and take a look toward sector 168-177and tell us what we¡¯re headed toward.¡± ¡°Aye Aye, Captain.¡± Captain McGreggor is strapped into his chair. A large man, but mostly muscle. His mustache is certainly the bushiest of any crew member, though it seems to be going grey since we¡¯ve been out here in space. Maybe being woken up so often for important ship things is letting him age a bit more than the rest of us? Might be why he¡¯s so grumpy and formal all the time. I¡¯d hate to think that was his natural demeanor. Nobody should be cursed with that personality from birth. Though, now that I think of it, a baby with his mustache and grumpy face would be hilarious. . . I¡¯ve got time to think as I strap into my own chair and start plugging myself in. You¡¯d think with all this advanced space tech we could do this wirelessly, but I think it¡¯s some sort of safety feature that almost everything is a wired connection with quadruple backups of quadruple backups. That¡¯s also why I can¡¯t just look at the stuff from inside the cryo pod. Ship systems and the pods are on completely separate systems just so that none of the incredibly smart and suddenly bored techies gets the idea of messing around in the actual important software or hardware and mucks things up. I¡¯d say they were paranoid, but a few of the passengers turned into demon-lords intent on ravaging the countryside in-game, so all the safety measures are probably a good idea. Anyway, sector. . . ¡°Which sector was it again?¡± ¡°168-177, Jackson. We picked up readings of a massive object there a few weeks back and yesterday the computer went a bit haywire trying to look in that area.¡± Lets see, type in the coordinates on the armrest panel 168. . .1. . .7. . .7 Got it. Let¡¯s see. . . ¡°. . .Did somebody hack into the sensors, captain?¡± ¡°What are you looking at, Jackson?¡± ¡°Well, uh, I don¡¯t think its the right sensors is all. . .¡± ¡°Jackson. . .¡± ¡°It just looks like a petrified squid floating in some sort of ocean, uh, sir.¡± . . . ¡°What?¡± Tab Two Buffy the Red: Yo, Omni, when are you coming back? You know that Hera is too busy to lecture you now, right? Omnoculus: Yeah? That¡¯s awesome. Omnoculus: How long do you think it will last though? Buffy the Red: Maybe another day or two before she manages to delegate everything out. Buffy the Red: See you for a dungeon run in a few? Omnoculus: Wellllll, probably another few hours until I¡¯m back at the earliest, honestly. Buffy the Red: ? Omnoculus: I have to finish this psych evaluation, and then I¡¯m on standby or something. Buffy the Red: I¡¯ve never seen somebody given a psych evaluation for fighting a dragon before. . . Omnoculus: Not for that, but I have a story about a guy I knew and a low level slime mob that¡¯s similar. Omnoculus: The psych bit is for seeing a space-squid. Buffy the Red: . . . Omnoculus: You know I¡¯m part of the tech crew, technically, right? Buffy the Red: Duh. You may have mentioned it a fewwww times. Omnoculus: Well, they had me looking at space today, like in real life, and I saw a space-squid.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. Buffy the Red: So, how¡¯s the psych test going? Omnoculus: Omnoculus: It scores me at the end. I¡¯m completely sane though. I blame faulty equipment or some sort of prank. Buffy the Red: Somebody would actually screw with the tech that¡¯s floating us through space? Omnoculus: Well, they chose you all because you guys are smart, not because you¡¯re wise. Buffy the Red: Hey! I¡¯m plenty wise! Omnoculus: Sure sure. Remind me to tell the story about the slime when I¡¯m back in-game. Buffy the Red: Why not now? Omnoculus: It needs a proper campfire to tell the story to its full potential. Trust me. Omnoculus: But yeah, somebody might have messed with the equipment, or maybe it just malfunctioned. Buffy the Red: Seems like a dumb thing to do. We¡¯re still safe, right? Omnoculus: Yeah, should be. It¡¯s just the mid-range scanners. Buffy the Red: Good. Omnoculus: Plus, we actually have competent mechanics who are being deprived of game-time right now to look at the issue. Buffy the Red: So, space squid? Omnoculus: Right. A squid shape, tentacles and all, floating in an ocean that was floating in space. Buffy the Red: Ocean? Omnoculus: Maybe more like a nebula, but more see-through? Buffy the Red: So you saw what, if real, was an alien? Omnoculus: There¡¯s no way it was real. If it were, it would be the size of a moon, maybe a small planet. Buffy the Red: So, a really big alien? Omnoculus: Right, if it were real, it would give c¡¯thulhu nightmares. Buffy the Red: That sounds cool. Did you get pictures? Omnoculus: I wish. Then maybe I wouldn¡¯t be here answering questions about how often I hear noises other people can¡¯t hear. Buffy the Red: Too bad. Good luck on the sanity! Buffy the Red: Gotta run, Hera is sending me with one of the caravans to get lumber for rebuilding, so catch up with us when you log back in. Omnoculus: I will try my hardest. Omnoculus: Hopefully I get back in while she¡¯s distracted still. Omnoculus: Why did I join this guild again? Buffy the Red: Boredom, the raids, a competent healer? ttyl Omnoculus: Later. Lunchtime ¡°Again, for the millionth time, the squid object is floating there.¡± ¡°No change?¡± asks the grumpy captain. ¡°No change,¡± I reply. Seriously, I¡¯m stuck out here in reality watching a giant floating might-be-a-rock instead of dodging my guild leader who will doubtless be on my case for missing a whole weeks worth of guildy stuff. There is probably a ton of awesome things related to rebuilding the town, and I get to sit in reality just in case the scanners pick up something weird again. We already have to plot out a new route to move us out of the nebula the squid thing is floating in, so that means I get the joy of confirming what the slingshot targets we can use are so we don¡¯t accidently pass by a star about to go nova or something. Not that the science guys are incapable of figuring that stuff out, but double checking is a good, safe practice. ¡°Alright, Jackson. You¡¯re free for the next few hours. Grab lunch and be back here for the next scheduled viewing.¡± ¡°Aye aye, Captain.¡± Now I can do something just as productive, so long as I¡¯m near a monitor that can ping me if something comes up. Have I mentioned how dumb it is that there are no phones or ship-wide com system yet? Probably only a thousand times since we¡¯ve been drifting through space. Anyway, back to unplugging myself so that I¡¯m not staring at twitching squid-eyeball. Stuff like that is why I don¡¯t eat fish. Water creatures creep me out, and they taste funny. . .fishy even. THankfully, for lunch we just have flavored pastes to curb the ever-present hunger that dewlls within the bowels of men. Swing myself onto the ladder and just free-fall down with one hand on the rail so I don¡¯t go floating out into the center. That way I can get to lunch and maybe ping Buffy for news before I get back to real work. As real as watching a weird rock-thing in space is. Is it really work to make sure that it doesn¡¯t do anything. . .um. . .it blinked at me back then, right? My psyche evaluation came back mostly fine, so I¡¯m probably not in a hallucinating stage yet, right? So, if it blinked right before I unplugged and got out of there, that would mean I missed reporting something that was probably important. . . Captain McGreggor is going to be more grumpy than usual when I tell him. Do I climb all the way back up there right now and skip lunch? That¡¯s probably what I should be doing. We are still heading almost right at it at the moment, so maybe early warning would be good? We are still weeks away from it though, so we should have all the time we need. Plus, I might be slipping from videogame withdrawal or boredom, so maybe checking after I get back will let me know if I was right? Double checking is good after all. Just went over the virtues of doublechecking even. So let¡¯s leave it for now. After all, What¡¯s the worst that could-This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. . . . Huh. Well, that¡¯s interesting. I could swear that that shadow moved. I mean, unnaturally moved. Not like I moved and that moved that shadow. Yeah, there it goes again. . . . This has nothing to do with the squid, right? Just some sort of weird lighting problem? Maybe I¡¯m finally breaking from reality? Obviously the shadows on the ship aren¡¯t growing eyeballs and devouring the light around themselves. The commotion from up above me is probably something to do with the new planned route that we¡¯re going to take and has no relation to the possible shadow monster thing or the squid. Nope nope nope. . . . Ok, that is obviously a beak. No teeth, really, but the thing is right under some eyeballs and looks like its smiling. At me. Yup, giant opening beak-mouth complete with a hole that absoulutely should not open into nothingness that can¡¯t be space because all of the air is still inside. That¡¯s. . .oh, it has a neck too. . . . Did I just get. . .swallowed? Is that Captain McGreggor? Just floating in something approximating space now. Not actually space, I¡¯m pretty sure, since again, I can somehow still breathe, but its certainly not normal air. Captain McGreggor looks like he¡¯s cussing up a storm, but I can¡¯t hear a thing. His face is more red than normal, and his eyes are flickering around through the darkness. When he spots me, they stay focused on my face. Somehow, he looks even more scared and angry now. Still can¡¯t hear him though. After a few minutes of him attempting to sort-of swim towards me with no real progress, we both end up sitting still, waiting for whatever will happen. I¡¯m hoping that this is all just me having hit my head or stress building up or something, because being eaten and possibly digested by some weird space creature sounds unpleasantly boring. Then the pods start showing up. One after another, spaced out away from each other, the stasis pods are sucked in through more beaked mouths that disappear completely once finished eating. It¡¯s like space itself was ripping open and then repairing itself. They aren¡¯t all arranged relative to where they should have been on the ship, so it isn¡¯t some sort of parallel world or anything. Everyone on board is in a large floating cloud. The weird part, if saying it like that is in any way descriptive, is that the pods seem like they¡¯re still working despite not being connected to the ship and the computer system. I¡¯m pretty sure that they aren¡¯t self-sustaining from all the times I had to muck about inside the walls getting things fixed. People aren¡¯t hopping out of the pods either, so that means they either died from the disconnect, or they are happily oblivious to the state of things. Not sure which I would rather it was if I were them. Then came the plants. Plant after plant from the greenhouse was eaten and peppered into the cloud of pods and people. Maybe whatever this is is collecting all the living things? Then why brings the pods, though. It isn¡¯t like they are alive, and it already grabbed the captain and I out of the middle of the ship. Maybe it didn¡¯t want to unplug them? That could be seen as a good sign if it cares for our well-being. . . . Those people might still be playing the game in there with no cares in the world, and I¡¯m stuck out here experiencing some sort of space-horror show. Why did I have to be unplugged when this happened? I really wish that- Oh. There¡¯s my pod. Number 837 stenciled on the top. Slightly ajar like I left it, even though I¡¯m supposed to keep it latched at all times. It¡¯s just floating there, just outside of my reach. Taunting me with its presence from this insurmountable gap of inches. Somehow, I¡¯m starting to get the image of a rather sadistic entity from how this is progressing. Next thing to appear is probably going to be a delicious meal of real food sitting just outside of my reach. I haven¡¯t eaten lunch yet, and this is taking way too long. Room to Wait You would think that living out in space might teach a bit of patience, and you would be right. I possess a modicum of patience that has been honed over long years of tedious tasks. Checking and double-checking all the hull seals that one year, for instance, was a great teacher in boredom. Usually, I had fun things to think about while I was doing those mindless tasks. Things like where in the virtual world I would explore next or how to escape from my last guild¡¯s dungeon and repatriate myself. Usually, my thoughts were not centered on if the faint itching that I think I¡¯m feeling is or isn¡¯t the first sign of space-monster digestive juices. Lets face it, there really isn¡¯t much that you can focus on besides your situation when in possible mortal peril, and all that thinking ends up recursive after the first hour or two. I don¡¯t even have captain McGreggor to mime at since my pod is in the way. Nothing is going on, and even with the threat of death, it still makes me. . .just a bit. . .sleepy. ~ I¡¯m laying on an operating table, tied down with clamps. Two doctors lean over me muttering just outside of my range of hearing. THey gesture back and forth with scalples and needles. Every so often they glance at my face and make what might be a smile that¡¯s hidden behind their surgical masks. I attempt to sit up, straining against my bonds. Instead of pulling myself up, the room tilts down and gravity goes with it. The doctors ignore me, one poking animatedly at a patient chart on his clipboard. Leeroy Jackson typed in at the top. My name. Not important, but my gaze lingers. The sound of pencil on paper draws my eyes away and forward. Standing on the wall, maybe suction cupped to it with the tilt, is a man with a squid for a head writing furiously in a small notebook. He fills a page, then brings the pencil back up to the top and keeps writing. He ignores me just like the doctors do. Like the doctors did. One finally looks over at me and presses my body backwards flat on the table. The room rights itself, perhaps leaning a slight bit the other direction. A stray scalple on a rolling table slides an inch or two towards my head before stopping from friction. The doctors do not seem to notice the gravity anomaly. I decide that I should really inform them that there is a squid-headed man in the room without a mask on which is certainly not proper sanitary procedures. As I begin to speak, I realize that my mouth is numb. Maybe its missing, even. My tongue feels fine, but my lips are heavy and can not open. I attempt to point, but the two doctors are still debating, though one seems to have the upper hand. I have given up, and the squid-headed man checks his watch. It is attached to one of his face-tentacles instead of his wrist. That seems convenient, though I don¡¯t know many people who still have wristwatches. THe notebooks goes in his coat pocket, and the man turns and jumps down through the window sideways, defying gravity. The doctors are quiet now and look down at me. They have lost their masks at some point when I was distracted, and instead of normal human mouths they have long black beaks that open and close with their minty breathing. Something is beeping in the background, behind the doctors. Beeping slowly, incessantly. More beeps join it, desynched and harmonious until everything is filled with beeping and the room fades from white to whiteout.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. ~ I open my eyes and see the lights on the pods around me are blinking furiously. I can even hear them beeping and way in the background an older man cursing in what might be Irish. Below it all, the beeping and the cursing, a low rumble sounds. A momentous rumble. My stomach is grumpy. I still haven¡¯t eaten lunch. I¡¯m still stuck floating in not-space. Just within reach of my hands is floating a tube of nutrition paste. From the color, I can see that its banana flavor. My least favorite, but it¡¯s a start. Unscrew the cap, then suck the paste out of the plastic. Boring, unsatisfying, and bad tasting, but now my stomach can shut up for a few hours. Will another tube show up before then, or will whatever this is be over by then? Maybe if I hope hard enough there will be something better than this paste. Maybe if I hope hard enough, this will all be a dream. I doubt it. I pinched myself a few times and I even had a dream, so I¡¯m awake. If I¡¯m a full loony, there might not be a way back to reality anyway. If this is all real, who knows when and where I¡¯ll end up. The eyeballs that are popping out into mid-air certainly aren¡¯t saying anything. Kind of unnerving how they flicker my way every few seconds. Mostly they seem to be watching the area the captain is in. His antics are more interesting to them, maybe. The pods aren¡¯t getting much attention. The blinking is still going on, as well as the beeping. Every once in a while, I hear the hiss of a lid popping open. No human sound is coming out of them. Are people taking a while to wake up? Are the pods shutting down improperly and malfunctioning? No, when one opens that I can actually see, it looks empty. Not mine, one that should have had someone inside it. Still, instead of the cushioned bed that I¡¯m used to seeing, the inside ends in a black film of something. Less of the same something that I¡¯m floating in and something different. When a tentacle pops out of the blackness to snag a pod and drag it farther off, I see a shimmer around its base that looks similar. Everything is being spread out. Moved from a loose clump into a scattered field. I catch sight of a beak somehow blowing a bubble of. . .something. . . around one of the pods being dragged away. Why bring everything together if it was just going to isolate us all again? Another question I don¡¯t get an answer to. Some of the research types might have a three page dissertation by now, but I¡¯m a bit lost. All I know is that the captain hasn¡¯t stopped cursing. Now that things are drifting apart, I can see three of the black tentacles attempting to shove him into what I assume is his pod. Has this been going on for long? Maybe. I haven¡¯t been paying too much attention to the actual content of his diatribe. His limbs are braced against the edges. Pushing isn¡¯t going to work, but. . . . . .yep, they tried pulling him off. Worked like a charm. The outside is pretty slick, no purchase to hold onto. Got him tied up with two of the tentacles and the third pushed him head-first into the pod. Relative silence, now. The beeping from pods is faint, the cursing is gone, and my stomach is settled. The click and hiss of my own pod opening up has free reign over my hearing. Inside is that black, greasy membrane. One of the tentacles pushes the pod just close enough for me to grab, finally. Two more appear to my left and right out of nowhere. Before they can molest me, I¡¯ll try the membrane. Dignity before disgust, right? The membrane is cool. To the touch that is. Not that interesting otherwise. For what seems to be the gateway to somewhere else, it seems rather lame. Something like this should have a runic border or cool lighting effects. Maybe something different than slightly greasy looking black if it was going for a deep and dark effect. Still, it isn¡¯t too bad. It could be a puddle of blood which would have been super disgusting. I can get my hand through without stopping to reconsider, and once that¡¯s through the rest of me is sucked forward into it. A Whole New World Everything had gone black as I pulled myself into the dark portal that sat inside my virtual reality pod. Just a second of nothingness as my torso and legs were pulled in, and then things began to happen. First, and perhaps most disconcerting, was the fact that I was not floating anymore. THere was cold, hard ground beneath me as I took in the sights. Grass, a sensation that was only a bit off in virtual reality, was tickling my fingers. I could smell the grass and the dirt, feel the touch of sun on my face. I could take in the thirty feet of field that I sat in easily. Mostly because that was almost all there was. Everything else was the blackness of space and stars. We were on an island suspended in space that didn¡¯t seem to have a roof on it, had atmosphere, and the physics-breaking champion of it all was the fact that there was somehow earth-level gravity on something that was smaller than a large building. By we, I of course meant myself and the captain. ¡°Jackson, where the hell are we.¡± ¡°No idea, sir. Perhaps someone drugged the water supply?¡± ¡°We tested that already, Jackson. After your squid-sighting we went over everything filtering through the system for tampering.¡± The captain paced forward towards the edge of the grass. We could be on a plateau, I guess. Still wouldn¡¯t explain the gravity without an incredibly dense planet right beneath us, but it¡¯s a start. I¡¯ll follow behind like the good subordinate that I am. ¡°What I want to know, Jackson, is if we are still in whatever nightmare realm we were kidnapped into, or if this is reality.¡± ¡°Frankly, sir, I have no idea. The grass feels more real than the simulated stuff usually does.¡± We reached the edge. Instead of a nice rocky wall and a planet below us, there¡¯s just space. Floating island confirmed. We take a moment to admire the view. Lots of pretty stars. Captain McGreggor is muttering something creative involving tentacles and japanese ancestry. ¡°Real grass and an unbelieveable island makes it hard to decide, sir.¡± ¡°Very helpful, Jackson.¡± ¡°If you had a computer telescope for me to use, sir, I would be happy to-¡± ¡°Shut up and let me think for a moment?¡± ¡°Absolutely sir. Yell if you need anything.¡± ¡°Mmph.¡± Nice guy. Now that he seems more calm with all the grass and no tentacles, he might be able to figure something out. Meanwhile, I¡¯m going to wander over to the other side of our island and poke around a bit. Maybe take a nap in the sun in a bit. For how small the sun is, it¡¯s rather nice and warm. All this place needs is some water and food and then it would be halfway to paradise. THe other half is elecricity and internet, obviously. Alas, there isn¡¯t anything around that looks anything like a computer or a virtual reality pod. There aren¡¯t even any trees. Just grass and sun and earth. Maybe the tentacles are attempting to bore us to death? Ah, no. Here¡¯s something interesting. Maybe the world had to wait while it was buffering or something. As if the rest of the field that we were standing in was just invisible, the are expanded just in time to catch the wave of humans being vommited out of portals. Most of the portals were a foot or two above the ground, but one guy took a dive from four feet up before jolting awake. He may have screamed like a little girl right before he landed. I may have stifled some laughter. Now, instead of a tiny boring island, there was a big island that looked just as boring but was filled with lots of shouting people. THere were some voices saying ¡°What¡¯s going on¡± or ¡°This isn¡¯t the fantast server¡± with a few calling out ¡°Hey, this is my real body model¡± or ¡°What was the deal with those tentacle monsters?¡± The kind of stuff that nobody was able to answer but everyone asked just to be sure that nobody knew what was going on.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. I just sat and listened hoping that there isn¡¯t another yank through reality waiting for us and that some sort of resteraunt appears out of the blue next. I¡¯m not super hungry at the moment, but being stuck on an island without food would be awful. Oh, and the captain seems to be yelling over everybody to get some sense of order around here. At least half of the people are ignoring him and looking around. One person even looks like he¡¯s. . .huh. . .yeah, he just jumped off the edge. THat¡¯s a whole new type of brave. Also stupid. Who in their right mind would try skydiving in a strange new location without a parachute? Maybe he thought this was still in-game and he normally had wings or something? Either way, it¡¯s a bit. . .yeah. Thankfully, if one guy jumps off a cliff, the rest of the thousand or so people who are standing around do not immediately follow him. Everything got a bit quiet with one or two people shouting questions at the man, even. Maybe the saying is wrong, or it just didn¡¯t account for so many highly educated people in one spot? More likely, the crazed whooping and maniacal laughter coming from below marked him as crazy. The fact that the ground picked that direction to suddenly expand toward does not bode well for the crazy guy, though. Most people hadn¡¯t seen this happen, so there was a mix of shocked expressions and ¡°Awesome!¡±s going around. The fact that the skydiver just suddenly cut out after a second may have contributed to the shock part. Also the giant cathedral building that was materializing into view. That was worth paying attention to. Instead of forming the entire front, the bottom of the building began to materialize rushing forward towards the rear and the roof in similar speeds. It was a large building of large grey stones, fit snugly together into a spider-webbing of seams and inset crevices that held sculptures. Larger statues sat above the arched doorway and upon the bell-tower that forced viewers to crane their neck backwards for a glimpse at the top. Twelve limbed lizards, lopsided birds with exquisitely carved feathers, snakes with way too many eyes, and even stranger creatures were the more visible statues, though there were a few more normal looking creatures like a cat and what may have been a cloaked human. A few of the more adventurous or perhaps clueless people wandered towards the building. I began to approach out of a driving fear of boredom, mostly. No more people had been vomited out of rifts in space, which means that the building was the new thing being introduced, perhaps to get people less interested in jumping off cliffs. When the quicker explorers approached the giant doors, they began to creak open in a dramatic, if painfully slow, way. There weren¡¯t any windows that I could see, but the inside was lit up with torches on stands that dotted the inside of the area. There weren¡¯t any columns like you might expect to see in a giant building of this size, so it made sense that the light sources couldn¡¯t hang on them, and the walls. . .well, there was a reason that there weren¡¯t any windows. To the right and left of the giant empty hall were walls covered in something very familiar to us: virtual reality pods. They were very likely the same pods that were on the ship originally, numbered one through around one thousand. Whoever attached them to the walls was deliberately trying to mess with anyone who had OCD since the pods were lined up in what appeared to be a completely random order. I would need to work to find mine in the chaos. If I wanted to find my pod, that is. Sure, it would be great to see if there was a connection to the game servers up right now, but figuring out what exactly was going on here was probably more important. People were already chattering about their own theories of course. Some people thought that this was the best simulation that we had launched while others were more worried that something had gone horribly wrong. Probably a mix of both. The back wall was composed of a giant mural of stick figures standing on top of a planet holding swords or shooting magic while creatures like dragons crawled up the sides at them. Above it all were countless stars and the silhouette of a giant squid with a single eye that seemed to be watching the conflict below. Along the edges were more creatures, odd, alien creatures that alternated looking inwards or outwards, sometimes stretched out of a tentacle-filled rip in space. In the lower center of the mural was an opening with the same space-rip pattern around the edges that opened into a stairwell. It was quite a bit to take in, which meant that the people outside shouting about it ¡°starting again¡± made me jump a bit. I was still near the doorway, so I could turn and see what was going on. Kind of obvious based on what I heard, but the edges of the island began to expand once again. More grassy plains showed up, the grass began to grow taller, the land sloped into hills, and most importantly, the expanding landmass did not stop expanding. Makes finding food out there more and more likely, so I¡¯m all for it. The Way to a Mans Heart It wasn¡¯t so much that the island stopped expanding out in a wave of creation and more that we couldn¡¯t see anything happening after a while. The first minute or so was awesome as the world came into being a few hills, trees, or streamsat a time, but then those same terrain features started blocking the view. Can¡¯t see the rest of the forest through the trees and all that. There were some points where a mountain zoomed up out of the plains a few minutes in, and the plains just kind of went on forever on one side, but eventually things were popping in so far away you needed a telescope to see anything more than dots. Needless to say, nobody had a telescope. A few people had ignored the spectacle, not too many, but there were some of the more anthropological types staring up at the mural or the carvings on the outside of the building. There was a ton wall-space to go over, so they would be at it for a while. A football-field sized building has a lot of wall space. That was just speaking to the ground floor, even. There wasn¡¯t a way up to the roof or into the bell tower that I could see, but there was a stairwell down. A stairwell down to a locked door rumors said, but that just meant that people couldn¡¯t get into the basement to explore yet. Somehow someone would figure a way in there, I¡¯m sure. Not only is this a crowd of curious college types but some of them had decades of dungeon delving experience by now. I would have been super stoked to figure out all the secrets of this new cathedral-style building, but I had a hunch that I would much rather find some food first before I got hungry again. It might be the trauma of the black space or just my natural human instincts kicking in, but that was my goal. Also, a cathedral seemed like an unlikely place to store food for the newbies. If you considered this like a virtual reality game, then either there was a town where they handed out bread and water to new players or we were expected to live off the land. With not town in sight, well. . .I should get walking. ¡°Hey, Omni!¡± . . .huh? ¡°Oh, cool, you stopped. I wasn¡¯t completely sure at first.¡± I was almost out the door, and then somebody started calling my game tag. I didn¡¯t recognize the voice though. Looking back, she looked familiar, but only a little. Either I completely forgot them after years of gaming while using the same name, or they tweaked their voice and their appearance in-game. Being the lazy and self-absorbed gamer that I am, I just changed my hair color in-game and let special effects and game events modify me further. Other people though. . . ¡°Hey, Omni, you broken or something? Don¡¯t recognize your best guildmate ever?¡± ¡°Welllll. . .¡± ¡°Seriously? I didn¡¯t mod my character that much. Just some height, a little different face, longer hair, maybe a few other small tweaks. . .¡± Hmm. . .maybe. . . ¡°Buffy?¡± ¡°. . .Yes.¡± ¡°You also had a lizard tail.¡± ¡°That¡¯s the part you focused on?¡±This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. ¡°Yes?¡± . . . ¡°I mean, no?¡± ¡°Too late, ass-man.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not. . .whatever. How did you know it was me?¡± ¡°The jumpsuit, obviously.¡± Hmm? ¡°You know that you are one of the very few people with a patch on your shoulder that marks you as maintenance crew, right?¡± ¡°Yeeeeess?¡± . . . ¡°In my defense, I never really look at my own jumpsuit that much. . .¡± ¡°Sure, sure. More importantly, what¡¯s going on? The captain sounds mostly clueless or at least unwilling to say much, and everyone else looks mostly lost. So spill.¡± ¡°Spill what? Why should I know anything more than anybody else here?¡± ¡°For one, you weren¡¯t in VR whenever whatever this is hit, I don¡¯t think. Two, you seem to be wandering away from the most interesting landmark we have here with a purpose. Finally, you¡¯re doing the shifty eyes thing you do whenever the guildmaster catches you doing something you aren¡¯t supposed to.¡± She almost has a scowl on her face now. I can almost see the resemblance to her healer now. Same look she gives me when I just got myself killed by running out of heal-range and we fail a raid. ¡°Well, I¡¯m not completely sure what¡¯s going on, but probably space aliens.¡± ¡°Ok. Longer version please?¡± ¡°Creepy aliens probably kidnapped us, put us here, wherever here is, with some sort of teleportation powers. It seems roughly game-like with the cathedral full of VR pods and the fantasy style landscape paired with the world loading in like it did.¡± . . . . . . . . . ¡°Right, so why are you wandering away from the cathedral? If we go by your logic there¡¯s probably some sort of class system or something to unlock there, maybe magical powers, and at the very least strength in numbers with all the other people.¡± ¡°I¡¯m looking for sandwich trees, obviously.¡± . . . ¡°No really, where are you going?¡± ¡°Ok, maybe not sandwich trees, but maybe some fruit or berries out there so that once I get hungry trying to figure out what the whole mess back there is about, I can do it with a full stomach. I almost skipped lunch earlier, and that was just a gross banana flavored nutrition tube.¡± ¡°Smart enough, I¡¯m coming with.¡± ¡°Fine by me, lets go.¡± And so we were off, walking bravely toward the tall grass. A grand adventure in the works with miles of pristine wilderness ahead of us. The breeze blowing ever so slightly, sun shining down, and the scent of fresh grass combining into a perfect day. I charted a course out towards some of the trees I saw out on the plains, staying away from the hills since monsters could easily hide behind those. Coming up onto a stereotypical goblin camp from two feet away would be bad without any real weapons or armor. Out in the plains we would only need to worry about shorter creatures, if there are any creatures, and the larger ones would be easy to spot from a ways away. Obviously, smaller things could be dangerous too, but if I was right then this area would only have low level slimes or rabbits or something like that. Right, like that rabbit there, hopping its way out of the grass. Pretty much the second most stereotypical of role playing game enemies behind the slime and slightly ahead of the rat. The wolf is up there too, but usually higher on the totem pole, especially for VR games. Instead of a perfectly normal rabbit, it has a small, nubby horn affixed to its head. The beady black eyes, brown fur, and fluffy tail are all normal. Just like how it froze the second it saw us. I froze too. Holding an arm up in front of Buffy so that we can think for a second before acting. It¡¯s a rabbit, so we can probably take it if its hostile, and it might even be a passive mob. Added to that, it hasn¡¯t moved, so if there¡¯s something like a turn-based combat system in this game, we might have initiative and don¡¯t want to waste that. Some of the more hilarious VR games I played on the ship were turn based actually. Very similar to that game that kids were playing on the playground when I was younger. ¡®Ninja¡¯ or something like that. ¡°Hey Omni, it¡¯s just a ra-AAAAGH!¡± Wow that thing can jump. It took the eight feet or so between us in one leap and managed to hit me right in the chest. That really hurts. I think I¡¯m bleeding. Everything feels so. . .warm. . . Life After Breakfast If not for the sudden absence of pain, this would be very reminiscent to blinking and realizing that you just took a three hour nap. The type that you don¡¯t intend to take and seems really inconvenient but the sun shining down was so nice that you just drifted off for a second. Then, hours later you wake up, not too groggy, to a cold sky and an inconvenient truth that time has slipped by. In my case, not so much time as. . .well, the floating words in front of me might explain a bit. ¡®You Died¡¯ Not much else to look at besides the words and a few tiny blips of light in the sky. They might be huge lights, just far away, but perception is nine-tenths of description. The other tenth is conjecture, and it would be higher if not for the fact that most conjecture is composed of description. I¡¯m avoiding the whole bit where I¡¯m dead and floating in not-space again. Maybe not the same not-space, but the dead part is probably true. Who would lie when putting words up in the middle of nowhere? Not me. The fact that my afterlife seems to consist of a very boring nightmare-realm is a bit depressing, to be honest. I¡¯m left with bunches of questions and only one simple answer. Not even a good answer. I could have figured out that I was dead, probably. Not too hard a concept to figure out when you remember being impaled by a rabbit and then slowly bleeding out as your friend stomps the shit out of it. Hopefully that doesn¡¯t anger the rest of the rabbits and she gets back to the relative safety of the group. It won¡¯t help me much, but people would be more cautious once they learn that the rabbits are ferocious killers. At least if they don¡¯t start making holy hand grenade references. . . . . . . . . . Bored, bored bored bored bored. . .hungry? I¡¯m stuck in the afterlife and I¡¯m hungry? I get that I¡¯m pretty corporeal here, but you would think that the dead are beyond that sort of thing. Unless I¡¯m a zombie? I mean, I don¡¯t think I am. I could go for a burger but brains sound disgusting. Maybe in a few more days I could change my mind. Would make for a decent reason for zombies to want food, though there would have to be some reason for brains specifically. Maybe the brain-conditioning will start in a little bit? . . . That was a dumb line of thought. Floating here is making me crazy what with how I¡¯m not ¡®grounded¡¯ in the real world anymore. Heh. At least my sense of humor is still here for a while. I can just stay here getting hungry and making jokes. The floating death message is going to be a good prop for my comedy, I¡¯m sure. Maybe I can even use it as an audience that will hang around for my puns. Mmhmm, I¡¯m on a roll now. High five, death message! Blip. . . . ¡®Initializing in¡¯ ¡¯59¡¯ ¡¯58¡¯ ¡¯57¡¯ Ok, so that¡¯s cool. Maybe this place isn¡¯t going to be super boring like it looked. I mean, countdowns are usually good. If I¡¯m dead a bomb isn¡¯t really that scary, and if it¡¯s a countdown to judgement day, well, I¡¯ve been a relatively nice guy? ¡¯43¡¯ ¡¯42¡¯ ¡¯41¡¯ Or, maybe this is like a videogame and I get to start the day over and try doing better? I would really enjoy a second chance at dodging that rabbit. Then people could cry at my inevitable funeral instead of struggling not to laugh at my ineptitude. They¡¯re probably starting an in-joke right now. ¡°Don¡¯t get Jackson¡¯d when you explore the tall grass!¡± they¡¯ll say. ¡°I won¡¯t, dude. Who would be that dumb?¡± they will reply. Then I¡¯ll rise up as a ghost and haunt the shit out of those people, and somehow ghosts won¡¯t be scary enough and they will say something like ¡°Look out, a ghost rabbit!¡± when pointing over my shoulder before laughing like they made comedy gold right there.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. ¡¯20¡¯ ¡¯19¡¯ ¡¯18¡¯ And somewhere down the line, possibly decades, there will be phrases like ¡®hunting ghost rabbits in heaven¡¯ that mean that someone has died, and people won¡¯t even know that they¡¯re mocking me and in for a knuckle sandwich if I find them somewhere in the afterliAGH! . . . . . . Gravity works now. That¡¯s a plus. So does. . .sand? I¡¯m gonna say fine, black sand. It¡¯s not course, so it feels nice on my feet when I sink in a bit. Hard to see what with the whole everything is black here, but it feels like sand ergo I¡¯m calling it sand. Might have been here the whole time, just out of reach of my toes. ¡®Soul Bubble Initialized¡¯ Huh, that¡¯s kinda- ¡®Progress until possible rebirth¡¯ . . .huh. That¡¯s kinda interesting. These words seem to be sticking around like the ¡®You Died¡¯ message from before though. Seems like I need some sort of connection to the land of the living. Not sure if I need to make that, or if someone else out there has to. It would really suck if nobody picked a priest and they just left me here or couldn¡¯t find my body in order to get me back. The fact that the energy counter is now up to ¡®1/?¡¯ is promising though. If it were all through the ¡®real¡¯ world it shouldn¡¯t show an energy counter, and if that was someone trying to revive me, there should be a stable connection. That means that I should be able to do something about this instead of standing around looking at some floating words all day. Despite how last time went, I think it might be a good idea to go exploring. What¡¯s the worst that could happen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alright, so I didn¡¯t get hit with Murphy¡¯s law, but I am seeing a slight problem with my plan. Wandering around in search of help to get home is great and all, but only if there¡¯s sufficient room to wander. The fact that this place is very much a bubble like it was called isn¡¯t the bad part. I can stand not being able to wander out and find out what those stars are. The fact that the bubble is only about fifty feet in diameter with the progress counter at the center is a bit annoying. Past around twenty five feet or so is a wall of force. I can feel it, throw sand at it, and even see a very faint shimmer if I look closely, but other than that it just sits there. No cracks, no fogging to my breath, and certainly no bending. So I¡¯m stuck here in the afterlife watching a counter go up and trying to figure out how to get a ¡®Stable Connection¡¯ to form. Maybe a nap will help? No, that would be stupid. If I wait too long I just might go crazy from hunger before I get back to the land of the living. Don¡¯t want to go zombie on people when I inevitably come back. Which means I need to figure out how to make a connection to the real world. Doors are a good step. Very symbolic, which is probably what its going for here. If this is a magic focus type deal, I¡¯m probably not going to stumble across it. Having nothing but sand and floating words as materials doesn¡¯t seem that promising for building. That leaves other things like a statue of myself out too. Maybe a drawing of myself would work, but not being able to tell what it looked like with this black sand would make that hard. Plus, I¡¯m not a great artist, so it might not count. Still, Wouldn¡¯t hurt to try. . . . . . . . . One stick figure later, and I have good news and bad news. Good news is that I now have a stable connection. It was at ¡®.2/1¡¯ when I drew a normal stick figure, and then after adding things like hair and ¡°Mike¡± with an arrow pointing to me it went up to ¡®1.1/1¡¯ which is a little confusing but a good start. The fact that the energy cost is at a whopping ¡¯71/1,000,000,000,000,000¡ä is a bit of a letdown. When I changed the name in the sand to ¡°Mike Jackson¡± the connection went up to 1.2 and the energy counter went down by a zero. Which means that I have three options. First, I can wait this out for a really long time and eventually come back. My stomach disagrees with this option. Second, I can try to improve my drawing by adding more things. Being very intricate with this is difficult with the medium unless I make it really big and get a better memory so I don¡¯t smudge it too much walking around. Third is to attempt something new and see if I can do this a better way. The fact that I have not listed give up as a fourth option is mostly due to the fact that I will not be known as the guy who got killed by a rabbit and then wasn¡¯t able to figure out how to resurrect. Simple Geometry Ten hours is how long this took. Ten hours of work and I have shifted my energy requirements down into the realm of days instead of weeks, months or the years it would have taken with a stick figure. One point of energy is roughly a minute of time, so 1,440 energy in a day. Millions would not cut it for getting out of here sane. Thankfully, hunger is coming on slower than I would have thought. That or work is a mighty fine distraction. Not as good as a night of gaming to forget eating, but work and experimentation still works well to curb hunger. In the course of that ten hours, I learned a whole lot. How much of this is applicable outside of this specific circumstance, and how much of this is there for the wrong conclusions, I have no idea. The fact that it has use in getting me back to places with food is the most important part of my learning though. Lets go over the important parts as I¡¯m waiting so that I can maybe make some use out of them when I get back and/or tell people how to get back from the dead in less than a few years. First off, the arrow between my name and the stick figure was super important, conceptually. What it represents is the fact that the rest of these lessons can be linked together if done correctly. Most of them, really, since some of them are a bit more self-contained than others, but the point still stands. I say this because the extra fraction of a stable connection as the floating words call it does not directly help me, I think. It¡¯s more a way to help me work through what works well and what is mediocre at best. Take, for example, the stick figure: lots of work to make it, especially to draw in the details and make it recognizable as me. It is certainly not the hardest way to connect, but it isn¡¯t as good as some. The main draw to it is the fact that it was a concrete representation which helped immensely. My name, similarly, was relatively poor at providing such a strong link. By itself, it only gave fivetenths of a connection. My last name only gave one of those points, but only a few people called me ¡°Jackson¡±. The fact that two weak connections, my name and a stick figure of myself, were able to overlap to create one connection is important. The fact that I could get a similar energy requirement by substituting a hand-print for the stick figure speaks to the fact that stick figures are not that great of a connection type. Even by putting a stick figure attached to hand and foot-prints only took another zero off the number I had to hit. What I needed were things that were directly connected to myself that were easy to connect together to layer the effects. Also circles. The circles were pretty important too. I figured that out when I was drawing another stick-me for a few tests. I started the circle and looked up at the floating words and was surprised that a circle by itself was actually better than a regular stick-figure. That took me down a less-is-more approach to how things should go from then on, or at least an awareness that messing up a symbol was worse than not having one.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Using somebody else¡¯s name would reduce the connection if it were associated with the connection in any way, but without an association it would have no effect. Using someone else¡¯s name, but contextualizing it in doing so, would increase the connection by a varying amount. The fact that I was captain McGreggor¡¯s subordinate was less effective than saying that I was Buffy¡¯s friend, but still more effective than writing that I was an acquaintance of Tom, one the biologists on the ship. Saying that I was the son of Tracy and Kole Jackson was one of the most effective links I could make via names actually. Beating out all the rest was referring to myself as Mike ¡°Omnoculus¡± Jackson. Nicknames have power. Makes me wish I had a few more that I had gone by, but using Omnoculus as my tag for so long was probably why it held so much weight. Most of the people I knew called me by that or some slight variation. The fact that my real name was nearly as potent is a telling factor, especially since it was used so rarely. The next big breakthrough that helped me shave off a ton of zeros was pretty crude and pretty simple. Not thinking of the idea of a voodoo doll in my situation would have been stupid. Names were a good connection, but what about hair, or sweat, or most obviously, blood? I didn¡¯t have any handy dolls lying around, and I didn¡¯t really have disposable clothes to turn into a doll, especially with my artistic skills, but blood can work fine without any of that. So I gave myself a really hard scratch on my arm and let a few drops onto one of my better attempts at making a good connection. It happened to be more effective than anything I had tried so far, with one caveat: it still required a base connection to make it mean anything. A small patch of bloody sand means approximately nothing, at least to the resurrection committee or whoever is in charge of this sort of thing. Still, seven zeros is a lot of zeros. From the original sixteen digits, adding blood to my worst possible attempt put me down to nine digits, and four to five digits would be reasonable to get out of here without going insane over a nagging hunger. That means I needed to create a symbol that gave me four or five decimal points of connection before blood, if that was how it works additively. I¡¯m pretty sure that¡¯s how it works, but my calculations haven¡¯t been super exact. Suffice to say, two circles nested inside each other, my name, nickname, and parentage scribbled in the median, and my hand print in the center, each part with a few painful drops of my blood was enough to drop the energy counter down to around three days at 4800 energy required. Assuming my math all holds up. Energy might be coming in faster or slower. My perception of time in such a realm might even be skewed. I might emerge into the realm of the living hundreds of years past the point I died at. Who knows? All I know is that I now have to wait days before I can get something to eat. That or keep working on making the requirements come down. I think my stomach might appreciate that. A Tearful Goodbye ¡®Progress until possible rebirth¡¯ ''Rebirth Possible: Activate?'' Yesssssss. Finally! Energy full, words changed, and one ticket out of bored-land complete. Now I just need to poke the words that are floating right over the. . .well, they used to be floating right over the center of my bubble. They seem to have teleported over to my herculean effort in design made of blood, sweat, tears, some hair, lots of sand. . .the works. The fact that they are in the middle of my nicely drawn circle seems promising. If the symbolism didn''t matter, I wouldn''t have needed a spot to stand in the middle, would I? Which means all I need to do is walk over there and press the yes button all while making sure not to step in my sand drawings and smudge them. Smudging them can cost me up to a hundred or so energy and I really want to get out of here soon. In fact, I would be walking over there right now if there weren''t still words floating where the energy counter had been a minute ago. See, food is good, and I''m really quite hungry, but at this point I''m in a zen state with hunger. After the first day or so the hunger didn''t increase that much, and I haven''t been exhausted in the way starvation would usually cause. Having the time to really sit down and think about this whole new reality thing makes me think that these new words are probably the most important part of ending up here. ''Player System Setup Complete Generating Unique Reward'' ''47'' ''46'' ''45'' Yup, so this was supposed to be some sort of tutorial, I guess? Show the player that they are woefully under-prepared for the world they find themselves in, and then give them something to use in order to progress. The squirming ball of silver light hovering over the words is probably whatever the reward is going to be. The silver ball of light looks kind of like what a cat in a bag would look like, but without the recognizable paw shapes and no opening and way more legs than a cat would have. About the right size for a cat though. ''29'' ''28'' ''27'' Obviously my hunger can wait for whatever reward I''m getting. Hopefully a good reward for finishing this tutorial quickly instead of a bad one for dying early. There''s a chance I can get a bonus for being the first to revive, but the skydiver might also have gotten here and respawned before me. Everyone is smart enough to figure this stuff out on their own, probably faster than I can with all the time people spent stuck playing games. The only edge I have is my brain''s visual-processing center, and that isn''t super easy to use without specialized machinery or extra-sensory powers like I always rushed to obtain in the VR games. Maybe the reward will be a third eye or something?Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! ''11'' ''10'' ''9'' Whatever it is, the squirming stopped. Now the light is a perfect sphere, floating there a foot above eye level. Must have decided on something. ''2'' ''1'' ''0'' Crack Crack Crackrackrack . . . Huh. It hatched. The bottom shattered open and out popped a silver-toned. . .animal? Maybe a monkey? It has the right proportions, but no long tail. I would say that it''s a goblin, but it doesn''t have pointy ears and it isn''t green. Maybe some sort of pet? If there was an explanation from the floating words, they dispersed when the creature fell through them. It''s just laying there on the sand now, moving a little so it must be breathing, but it isn''t getting up right away. Lets poke it and maybe it will turn over? Poke . . . Fleshy. That''s. . .an interesting feel. Not scales or fur or even plastic texture, but fleshy. . . . . . . Poke poke poke . . . . . . Po- "Will you cut that out, asshole?" . . . "Huh?" It can talk? Finally it rolled over, and it really does look like a tiny person missing a few features. Four finger and toes on each leg and hand. A mouth filled with pointy teeth. Rounded ears that are flat up against the head. A squished looking nose. No hair, nipples, genitalia, fingernails, toenails, eyebrows, or even eyes. At least none that are visible. I can feel it glaring up at me right now. "What, you''re just gonna gape at me?" "Ummm. . ." "Yeah, shut up. I just got created and I don''t like you already." "Then how can you-" "No, but seriously, shut your mouth, giant-man." "But you''re just sho-" "Not one more word." "W-" "Or I kick you in the nads." . . . Can he/she/it even reach this far up? I think its probably a he from the voice, but. . . "So here''s what''s going to happen. You are a dumb giant-man who I, magnificent I, am stuck sharing this bubble with." Which means that I really should just hit the resurrect button and leave, I guess? Maybe after my next death this guy will be more. . .friendly? "By which I mean, on the off-chance I happen to die, which I won''t, I might happen to run into you here. From what I saw of your brief stay in the land of the living, you at least will be here way too often." Wait, he knows what happened before I died? So he was created with knowledge about me, which is probably how he can talk. . . "As long as you leave my resurrection gate alone so I don''t have to redraw one, I won''t even go out of my way to remind you how much you suck." Wait a minute, is he talking about my respawn circle? "Anyway, toodles Mike." "Wait a-" Thunk "Ooof." "I said not one more word." And then, after such a spectacular roundhouse kick, he walked over to my circle, hopped inside, then touched the yes button. A flash of silvery light, and then the asshole was gone. Above my painfully crafted circle a new phrase floated. Well, more like an old phrase. ¡®Progress until possible rebirth¡¯ Lets try this again, for the very first time. With a flash of light, the blackness of the soul-bubble was washed away. Along with sight, the sense of sand underfoot and hunger gnawing at my belly drifted away. I expected it to be a short second of blindness and then. . .wherever I happened to respawn at showing up in front of my eyes. The flash of that asshole imp leaving was a moment, from my memory, and it certainly was not bright enough to blind me for this long. If I''m running out of bad luck, then this is probably a normal part of the process, but that wasn''t exactly how luck seemed to work most days. Bad luck tended to hang around like credit-card debt if it was running in a streak. Really the parallels for that metaphor are so easy to spot, though that might be cognitive bias on my. . .oh, good, the blindness is going away. Instead of sand, a very familiar sensation greeted my feet. The vast darkness was replaced with a much more managable darkness and one small viewing window with an inactive electronic screen. I had woken up to this sight so many times in the past few decades that it was almost calming. I might be tempted to pretend I had just gone through a rather unpleasant simulation if not for a few important problems. Broken electronic screens and lights in the pod were a small sign, but that had happened before when one of the power-relays on the ship had to switch to backup. My view out the small window would be another problem-detail to dismiss what had been going on. Outside should be a view of my ceiling of boring metal, not what looked like a giant room with other pods on the opposite side. Most importantly, there really should not be this much gravity in my pod since the ship just didn''t generate this much. It especially did not generate gravity downwards toward my feet. There was a bright red warning lable with ''This Side Down'' written near the bottom edge of all of the pods, and someone had obviously ignored that in favor of a vertical storage option. Needless to say, I had a good idea of where I was now. Makes a lot more sense now why jotting down my pod number in the circle with my name added a non-insignificant bonus to energy efficiency. Peering out the window on the lid also makes me appreciate the fact that its latched shut at the moment. Falling out of here from ten feet up would be painful, and the footing on the inside here isn''t exactly the greatest. Having been designed for either zero-gravity or horizontal usage, such a shortcoming doesn''t even speak ill of the people who built the pods in the first place. Something tells me they would not have expected this particular usage when dreaming up specifications. More important than the pod is the room that exists outside. I can spot a few people sitting around on the floor, talking. Quite a few of them are even looking over at where I am, though not exactly at my window. Might as well open this up and see what''s in store for me out there instead of being uncomfortable in here. First we just need to unlaaaaugh! . . . Well, I almost fell out and onto the ground right away. The lids swing open quickly. Thankfully, there are some handholds on the inside that were designed to help somebody inside close the machine and just now saved me from falling flat on my face. Swinging from a ever so slightly moving door is a surprisingly adrennaline fueled experience. "Pay up, George. The silver monster must have come out of a different pod." "I swear I looked at the number when I closed the damn thing. It must have been some weird glitch or something, but it was that pod for sure." "Whatever you say. The fact that a silver ball-kicking demon did not in-fact spawn from that pod means you owe me three rabbit steaks tonight." Well, that answers some of my questions. People obviously know that the pods are now respawn pods. People also saw that asshole "reward" on his way out through my respawn pod. The identity of that demon is something I should be careful talking about by the way he''s being talked about. For now, lets climb down from here and poke my nose out the front door. . . . . . .If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. It is surprisingly easy to climb down off the wall once I get a better grip on the actual wall. The space in between the pods has a zipper-like design which almost seems perfect for climbing. Once I have a good grasp on the wall, I make sure to shut the door to my pod. I dislike the idea of falling on my face as soon as I respawn next time. The idea of never dying after today is nice, but more fantastical than the world I find myself in. Expecting people to have a zero casualty rate when theyaredropped into a strange new world with vague ideas of how things work with merely the clothes on their back and setting murderous animals upon them is asking for a miracle. The fact that people already know how the respawning pods work speaks to the fact that more people than just me have already died and made their way back alive. Getting in touch with those people might be a good idea to see if they had anything different happen to them. Say, if they found a more effective way of building energy or if they had a better reward for completing the tutorial than I did. . . . Actually, lets put off asking people about that until I get a look around the area again. I really don''t want to be blamed for any violence used by the short little imp. Which means heading forth out the- "Oh, hey, kid. How did your respawning go?" Or I could get sucked into a conversation here. I don''t want to be super rude and just keep walking, so lets talk to. . .one of the people who were betting about my pod it looks like. The guy named George, I think? "Hi. Well, it was. . .longer than it should have been." . . .Maybe I should have just said it was normal and boring. They might think that''s a bit suspicious if I don''t explain. "Hah! Isn''t it? The time dilation problem is a bit strange." George is wearing a big smile, standing there like he''s complaining about the latest patch notes on a game. Time dilation though? "You two might dislike it, but I would rather wait three days in boredom than sit there for the nine it actually is. Who builds something that dull into a game world like this?" George''s companion, a sharp-faced lady with long blonde hair speaks up, arms crossed. "Oh, come on Angie, think of all the time you get in order to reflect on what went wrong! Instead of coming out and getting eaten by another pumagator there was time to really think things through." "I didn''t need time to think things through. All I needed was knowledge that the damn things are waiting out in the grass in the first place. Ambush hunters aren''t much of a threat once you know they''re there." "The second time, you almost lost an arm, while I used the reflection I needed to kill one with just a scratch or two. Just because you got some sort of magical freeze-beam doesn''t mean that you can ignore planning entirely." "You just feel bitter that your reward is useless in combat, George." "By the way, umm, Mike is it? Get anything cool for your first resurrection reward?" The blonde looks over at me, expectantly. . . . "How did you. . ." "Nametag on the uniform." She points in emphasis and I probably blush a bit in embarrassment. "Oh. Right." "Also, You might have had time to resurrect twice, but that would mean you died on one of the first three or so days before everyone knew we were immortal. So nobody has come back twice yet." George supplies some more enlightenment on Angie''s question, but if I had time for almost two resurrections by now. . . "Nobody died those first few days?" "Of course not. Who would wander out there in small groups after that one girl comes screaming and wailing back up to the cathedral with her friend''s body in her arms all covered in gore? George and I only started exploring farther out after the skydiver respawned." . . . "You wouldn''t happen to know where she is right now, would you?" "Hmm?" "The girl from the first day." "She should be sleeping somewhere around here, last I saw, but. . .Ohhhhhhh." . . . "Bit of trouble getting an energy-efficient respawn I take it?" "Not too bad, I had it down to four thousand energy, but. . ." "That would mean around three days, right? But if you just came back now. . ." ". . .well. . ." Do I say something about getting my resurrection hijacked? Would they hold a grudge over it? Is it my responsibility to make sure the imp doesn''t cause trouble anyway? "Something to do with your reward, right? Was it too powerful to take it out with you unless you waited longer?" "Something like that." "Right, When I was about to go out, I got my regeneration-meditation power, and that boosted my energy cost up another day." "Something that added another. . .two and a half bubble days if the math is right, must be pretty powerful." Thoughts of a tiny silver martial artist run through my head at that comment. "It''s not really. . .usable. . .right now, though, so I''d rather not talk about it." "Alright, I guess that''s fair, no use prying into people''s business. Isn''t that right Angela?" George gives a shrug and a short glare at his friend. "Fine, fine, I won''t pry. Lets go get those rabbit steaks you owe me, George!" "Alright. Nice meeting you Mike." ". . .Yeah, later." With that out of the way, I can get back to what I was doing. Which I guess is now finding Buffy somewhere around here? . . . Pitterpatterpitterpatterpitterpatter "Omni!" Thump . . . Did I just get glomped? Sitting this one out. ¡°Hey, Buffy? Can you maybe. . . let me get up please?¡± . . . ¡°Pretty please?¡± . . . ¡°. . .are you asleep?¡± . . . ¡°Wow, you are.¡± She is literally wrapped around my waist, arms cinched up like a noose lightly snoring. Which seems fairly improbable. Who tackle hugs somebody yelling their name and then immediately falls asleep? Last I checked, she wasn¡¯t a narcoleptic or our raids would have gone much worse in game. Unless the VR pod was managing that somehow, but that seems a bit much. Who would truck a narcoleptic MD across space? ¡°She has been up for days, taking tiny naps and waiting for you to respawn, of course she goes out like a light when you finally show up.¡± Hearing that voice the hairs on the back of my neck start to prickle. I may have been a bit lost when Buffy popped up earlier, but with the clues all here and the number of times I sat through hours of lectures for ¡°misbehavior¡± there is no way I¡¯m going to be confused on who is sneaking up behind me. ¡°Oh, hi Hera, fancy meeting you here, right?¡± ¡°Considering you kept both Buffy and myself waiting more than a week, I would say this meeting is preordained.¡± Her tight lipped smile translates over to reality surprisingly well. Somehow, the fact that it still scares me on instinct even without her glowing red eyes doesn¡¯t surprise me one bit. ¡°So, Omni, now that you have been thoroughly trapped, I believe that you are due for a lecture on dereliction of duty costing the guild immeasurable losses in gold.¡± Yup, there it is, the icy tone of judgement and fun-vampirism. The fact that the world has gone crazy and she still thinks that the dragon attack is important enough to grill me over is both her blessing as a guild master and my curse. The way things are looking, I¡¯m due for around four hours of lecture before we get around to anything new. If I were less pinned down, I might have even made a run for it to postpone this lecture indefinitely. As it is, sleeping women are harder to dislodge than you might think.
¡°. . .have to say for yourself, Omni?¡± ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Guild Leader, It won¡¯t happen again.¡± . . . ¡°Despite the fact that this is the third time it happened again, we can leave it at that. Now, on to less important matters, what bonus did you get?¡± That¡¯s less important? How is our new reality and what magical powers I got less important to a lecture about skipping out on guard duty? . . . ¡°You did get a reward, right? Baron didn¡¯t find anyone who hadn¡¯t yet, but you always have been one to throw a wrench in patterns. . .¡± ¡°Well, it¡¯s. . .complicated?¡± ¡°Meaning embarrassing or meaning complicated?¡±This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. ¡°Bo. . .the second one.¡± The squint in her eyes tells me she doesn¡¯t believe me. ¡°Is it at least useful?¡± . . . ¡°Dangerous or otherwise detrimental to yourself or others?¡± ¡°Wellllllll. . .¡± ¡°Why am I not surprised. Tell me that you are still a competent scout in this world?¡± ¡°I probably am. Even without vision mods I spent years learning.¡± Which is mostly the truth. After I hit mid level in game I always was able to dive out into the wilderness with a perception based dex-build and find all the entertaining locations for the guild to raid. If I didn¡¯t get good at taking advantage of the monster AI and having a good game-sense I wouldn¡¯t have made it into the guild at all. Even if I had, I would have been booted after the first few. . .unfortunate accidents. ¡°Great. What can we do to stay out of the blast-zone of your ability then?¡± That¡¯s a really good question. Is there anything that I can do that makes the little imp less likely to be an asshole and screw with people? If he really just wants to do his own thing, then there shouldn¡¯t be too much. I wouldn¡¯t even mind if they offed him on accident, really. ¡°No, it already ran its course, I think. If something changes and it becomes. . .a problem again. . .I will let you know?¡± ¡°Make sure you do. I do not want a repeat of Phrank and the slime.¡± Ah, yes. She still blames me for that one, huh? Wasn¡¯t really my fault he had to go to counselling afterward. It¡¯s not like she didn¡¯t let me in the guild after that either, so why does she always bring it up? ¡°There is no chance of a repeat of that. No chance at all.¡± I haven¡¯t even seen any slimes in this world yet, so they might not even exist. ¡°I¡¯ll have Baron come over and tell you what we found out by now and explain the rules in a minute. The rest of the guild is going hunting. Try to stay out of trouble Omni.¡± And with that, she walks out toward the entrance of the cathedral. Presumably the rest of the guild is out there where the light of fires and the smell of food is coming from. People have even wandered inside with carved bowls of what smells like soup while the lecture was going on, but Hera whacked me on top of the head any time my attention started to wander so I didn¡¯t get a good look. Looking out that way from my seat on the stone floor, it seems like night has fallen. I hadn¡¯t noticed since the ceiling lights were constantly illuminating the windowless hall. Kind of a dumb time for a hunting trip in my opinion, but she has her own reasons. I can call her a taskmaster, slave-driver, or endless lecture-machine, but she leads a guild like a fish breathes water. Not doing something stupid like taking people hunting when they can¡¯t see and get ambushed by predators is not her style, which means that she knows something I do not. . . . Maybe something to do with the giant flash of light from outside? Either somebody just found a few spotlights or that¡¯s Hera¡¯s plan for hunting. I¡¯m not sure what it is yet, but it¡¯s part of an answer. Hot on the heels of the light, piping hot even, is a pair of carved wooden bowls filled with delicious delicious food making their way over to me. Also a short man with a bored expression that happens to be carrying the bowls. He really didn¡¯t change his avatar in-game, so I can immediately tell who this is. I almost think that he really is a dwarf in real-life seeing him like this. I had always thought that Baron overplayed the stereotype and was possibly the greatest role-player in the guild, but looking at him now. . . ¡°Omni.¡± ¡°Baron.¡± ¡°Rabbit stew.¡± ¡°Thanks.¡± . . . . . . ¡°Delicious¡± ¡°Perspective, Omni.¡± ¡°Fair, what¡¯s going on out here in alive-land?¡± ¡°Killer, mutant animals. Supernatural powers. Various forming factions.¡± ¡°Alright, I knew about the first two. How is the third bit coming?¡± ¡°Mostly guilds from in-game and one faction led by the captain.¡± ¡°No interesting news?¡± ¡°Nothing that tops your every-day.¡± ¡°Alright, anything I should pay attention to so Hera isn¡¯t breathing down my neck?¡± ¡°Follow the rules the factions agreed to. Specifically for Hera? Nothing that you wouldn¡¯t do anyway.¡± ¡°It¡¯s like she hates the idea of me having fun. What are the rules?¡± ¡°Observe basic human rights and do not player kill. If you bring back food some goes to the stew pot to feed everyone, the rest is for yourself. There is also a ¡®no greifing¡¯ clause.¡± ¡°Punishments?¡± ¡°Prison time or execution with kill on respawn, but nobody has been given the second.¡± ¡°Seems about right.¡± ¡°Some things translate over to this world easily.¡± I can¡¯t help but chuckle looking sideways to my short, dwarven friend. He may have rolled his eyes at me, but if he did it was very quick. If this really is reality for us now, it doesn¡¯t seem that bad. Free immortality is nothing to complain about. Maybe I¡¯m just happy to have some food, but things seem to be looking up, finally. Maybe tomorrow Buffy will be awake and I can go exploring some more without death-by bunny. Its out of his hands. Despite the star and moonlight, the plains were dark. Partly, the grass soaked up the light, dull green stalks filled with shadow and potential predators. Still, much of the night blindness was from staring into a raging campfire that sat within a trampled dirt circle. A few stones and a log sat in a circle around the fire, comfortable enough seating for the group still awake this late into the night. Heads, arms, legs; the creatures had these, and even in the right number. What the glint on their skin and the faint shadows revealed were the creatures'' scales, tails, and claws. The creatures sat hunched over, their heads barely taller than the shoulder-blades upon which they rested. They were not clothed against the night wind that gently washed over the plains, but the creatures sat closer to the fire than most would deem comfortable. A few of the creatures sat backwards, adjusting their eyes to the dark and peering out in search of whatever dangers might threaten the group. Others were curled up on the earth near the fire, resting or sleeping though determining which would require a closer look. From my vantage, the creatures were merely a small diorama set up against a dark night. Yes, vantage, for I was looking down on this group from above. Every so often, the branch I was perched upon would sway into vision in the wind. Though I tried to turn my vision, it seemed locked onto the campfire for what seemed like nearly an hour. Not that watching a camp of lizard-looking people was the most boring thing that I remember recently, but getting a look elseware would have sure been nice. It was strange feeling so powerless here, unable to do anything but watch. I feel ready to do something instead of just watching. Watching and waiting had gone on long enough, so surely there was a reason beyond that for why I was here. . . . . . . Finally, movement. After some of the lizard people switched places, some going to sleep, others waking up, my perspective shifted more than a few inches. I was falling, smoothly at first, then interrupted with sharp decreases as I neared the ground. My silver arms slowed me down so that I didn''t break my silver legs. With a roll, I landed, completely silent. Probably. I hadn''t heard any sound yet, even the wind or the fire. Still, there wasn''t much dust, and the grass was nowhere near dry enough to snap and crackle from the roll. My vision once more looked outward, but now it was filled with shadowy grass twice as tall as I was. No matter, the glow of firelight shone high enough to spot the right direction. Onwards, I. . .no, perhaps we. . .slowly pushed forward through the darkness. It wasn''t me doing this. I was not in control here, just along for the ride, so right now instead of me, and it is walking forward. Still, for some reason, we feels like the right word here. Now we peer through one last layer of grass, a thin finger stretched to push aside a thinner opening into the clearing. With a closer perspective, I can see the lizard-people have a second set of eyes, though these are much smaller and a bit farther down their snout. Other than that, everything seems the same as it was from above. Sleepy guards and a bright fire. Our eyes dart around the clearing, checking positions of the slow-waking sentries. Barely a few seconds and we are moving again. Fast. Passing through the grass was an exercise in stealth and speed, but this is a flat-out sprint. We make it ten steps before a warning-hiss comes. Probably a hiss, since that''s the sound a tongue popping out of a mouth makes in my memory. Our spotter isn''t the guard in our path, but one to the side. The warning jerks heads toward our spotter.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. Too late to catch us however. The guard in our way turns, and surprise hits right as we are hopping by, over the log that he sits on. Four seconds in and we are hopping through a hop-scotch of scaled bodies, eyes darting all over for. . .something. Forms on the ground are moving, making this more difficult, but we weave in and out of the moving limbs, circling the fire. Small details, like the egg one lizard-person is curled around or the half-eaten remains of a spit of cooked meat take our attention for a half-second as our eyes scan the area. We move in a circle around the fire, more movement as time goes on. Outside of the tangle of bodies, guards are moving inwards toward us. They tower above us, easily triple our height, maybe quadruple for some, and that makes me leery of what happens if they get a hold of us. Our eyes pay them cursory notice. Then we see it, our eyes locked on something for a real amount of time. A stick, clutched in the hands of a hunched over lizard-person with his back rested up against a log. Blinking eyes and a searching head make him seem groggy, pulled back to reality by whatever noise I can''t hear. We dart toward him, grabbing at the stick. Fingers wrapped around the smooth wood, we pull. For a moment it seems easy, and then the lizard-person''s grip tightens. His eyes widen, he attempts to stand, and he pulls the stick upwards and closer. Also us, upwards and closer. Closer to his mid-section. Close enough for a silvery foot to dart out and smash into the area right between the naked creature''s legs. There isn''t any visible genitalia, but the look on his face, eyes widening further and mouth open in what might be a scream say that some things are universal. We have the stick to ourselves now, so we jump over the log, past our victim. The firelight is casting long shadows and giving the sharp teeth and scaled faces of the guards on this side of the camp a terrifying glow. There are four of them, clustered up and waiting for us. They don''t have any weapons, but their teeth and claws do enough intimidation. We dodge to the right, running along the edge of the makeshift seating. A lizard-person reaches out from over a log and we roll underneath. A guard circles towards us, trying to box us in. We dodge away, left this time, and squeak through a small gap in our pursuers. I can''t tell how far back they are, not with sight alone, but I see the stick in our hand as our legs and arms pump furiously. Going through the grass this way makes a trail, but in the dark, passing away from the fire, it isn''t noticeable. Still, we run. Not even a minute into the grass, we stop and fall prone. A flash of shadow in our eyes as we allow gravity its course. One second. Two seconds. We''re up, glancing behind us a moment before sprinting away again, this time a bit faster, somehow. Behind us, a panther shape is hunched atop a lizard-person while the others are standing behind, teeth bared. . . . . . . Finally, we slow, jogging onward for a while longer. . . . We stop at another tree, this one much shorter than our previous perch. Our stick gets set down carefully, and we pull a different stick off the tree. Not a full branch, but larger than a twig. The wood is dry, not much life in it as it twisted off the tree in one easy motion. We hold it up, examining the stick before retrieving our much more stolen stick. One in each hand, we hold them together, meeting the tips in-front of us. For a while, nothing seems to happen. Maybe minutes, maybe a half-hour, but eventually something changes. In the darkness, the faint glow is obvious. Orange, growing in intensity, it starts on the hard-won stick. The glow grows, brighter, whiter, and then the tip is not glowing anymore, it''s alight with flame. Fire. The new stick catches, and then we hold two torches. Somehow, I can picture a silver face, eyeless, noseless, and sporting a shit-eating grin right now. Not by looking, but from some feel deep in my gut. Then the magic stick goes out. . . . Looking at the arms, we make what might be a shrugging motion. The still lit torch is dropped, plunged into dirt with more kicked over it. It served its purpose, I guess. The magic stick is raised and set in our mouth before we climb up the edge of the tree. A glance around shows a mostly dark plains and a faint pinprick of light way off in the distance. Make that two points of light. One is the camp we raided, the other is a glow that lights up the edge of the horizon. Dawn. When I grow up, Im gonna be a mighty hunter. Such a weird dream. Normally I can¡¯t even remember half of what happens in my dreams, but this one was so vivid. I can remember almost the entire time spent running through the plains, stealing magical sticks, and dodging scaled predators. Other than the short stature and the silver body, I didn¡¯t get a good look at who I was running around as, but I still have a sneaking suspicion that it¡¯s that asshole who keeled me where the sun don¡¯t shine. How many other short silver assholes could there be, right? Hopefully the answer to that question is: not very many. I want the lowest chance of running into him out in the grass while I hint for rabbits. Revenge sounds good, but I¡¯ll leave that until I manage to dodge an attack in this new world. Unlike in the VR games, there isn¡¯t any built-in or built-up instinct in this body for combat. Yet, at least. If I don¡¯t have to worry about dying, I can just keep practicing my skill until I can tango with the best of them. Not that I¡¯m going to attempt to die, but it makes me feel a whole lot more upbeat about going out and exploring than it would if I were still dead. . . . Yeah, that made perfect sense in my head. Maybe I need some breakfast before I go exploring today. It will give me time to figure out the fact that I can¡¯t figure out my dreams before I go out to almost certain painful stabs and scratches. Turns out that I¡¯m still pretty hungry after all the soup I was ferried last night before sleep. Baron was nice enough to bring me a few more before wandering back out to the campfires and leaving me helpless on the floor. I mean, theoretically I could have picked Buffy up and moved out there myself, but for a number of reasons that didn¡¯t happen. I will never vocally list them, especially the reason involving the concept of weight. Not that Buffy was around to hear and be offended by any lists of why we went to sleep on cold, stone flooring. I can remember a girlish ¡°Eeep¡± from around when I was waking up, and then a bunch more cold, but I was still processing that weird dream back then. And then I was awake, alone, and most important of all, free to explore my way to some delicious victuals. From the smell of things, that¡¯s reheated soup. I¡¯m not complaining, just noting it down. Maybe a week of eating the stuff will have me out foraging for steaks and fruits, but right now I¡¯m happy enough to head out there with last night¡¯s soup bowl and prepare for my first real day of adventuring.
The shanty-town outside of the cathedral was somewhat expected. There were makeshift tents, campfires, log seats, and one large campfire that actually had a cauldron sitting atop it. That bit about a cauldron was outside expectations, but it made a certain amount of sense. How else were they making soup? I have no idea where it came from, but the stuff inside of it was more important to me. I almost had tunnel vision during breakfast, after waiting in a short line for some soup. Despite my predatory focus, I did notice a few things. First was Buffy, hiding away across the camp. She would glance over at me, blush furiously, and then hide behind some of the tents for a while before repeating the cycle. I caught bits of that as I was eating, and it made half-sense to me. She had almost always been the closest person to me in the guild, but that was more of a buddy camaraderie type thing. At least that I remember. She didn¡¯t do the whole embarrassed thing before, but I supposed I hadn¡¯t died right in front of her before. At least not when she wasn¡¯t sure I would respawn. Even then, she was usually a good enough healer that I stayed alive if she was around. I¡¯m still not going to assume this is a big romantic thing, despite the cliche appearance. That seems like a road to possible misunderstandings. I would be embarrassed if I got worried to death over someone, latched onto them and then made myself into an nondetachable blanket without their consent. Would I react exactly like this? Maybe not, but people are weird. That was the entertainment and thoughts I had as I ate through my soup. On a more important not to the camp itself, a bunch of people returned through the grass, heading directly to the cooking pot in the center of the camp. It looked like around thirty or forty people, all trailing into the disorganized camp with the sun at their backs. Lazy that I am, I just so happened to be sitting next to it as I finished off the last of this delicious meal.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. They were a weird bunch. Some of them had animal skins crudely tied or sewn into clothing. Most held sticks as clubs or spears. Some few had metal weapons or in the case of one lady what looked like a greatsword made of glass. All of them were covered in blood. Probably from all the animal corpses that they were bringing back shoved over shoulders or carried like stretches through the camp. Other people, the early risers up with the just-a-bit-past dawn, made comments as they closed in. Mostly jokes about the smell or the size of the animals. Some of them were talking about the absence of some people from the party, and that clued me in on who they were, if I hadn¡¯t already figured that out from the person leading them. Obviously, it was Hera returned with the hunting party. There were a few people who seemed somewhat familiar walking behind her as she strolled up. The one who was walking a few steps behind her and trying his hardest not to stare at her butt was Yolt, obviously. A few people back, carrying a cat covered in scales all by himself was probably Jorm the Slightly Ok from how he seemed comfortable with the weight and made walking with what had to be over a hundred pounds of meat seem easy. There were others that weren¡¯t obvious, like the lady with the greatsword and a thin man with a noticeably larger quantity of blood on him, but that was more like an itch at the back of my head on who they might be. Greeting them was the cook who had been passing out food this morning. I hadn¡¯t really paid much attention to him, but he seemed ready to take charge as the group strode closer. ¡°Kevin, get up and get ready to butcher some meat, we need to divvy this up pronto or else lunch is going to be late.¡± Not bothering to give a second look to the spectacled gentleman he had started kicking awake, the cook started walking through the tents to meet up with the guild and their wares. ¡°Hera, good to see your people still alive!¡± he shouted out. ¡°Nice to see you awake, Coral. No need for a rush on the meat. We can pick it up mid-afternoon after sleeping.¡± replied Hera. ¡°I¡¯ll set someone trustworthy to watching it for you then.¡± ¡°If Baron is up, he would probably do it. I¡¯ll send him around if I see him.¡± And that was the end of their conversation. Hera handed off the four rabbits she was carrying to the cook, Coral, and then made a bee line for the cathedral. The rest of her sleepy-eyed party began stacking their haul near the cauldron and then staggering off elsewhere, presumably to sleep. There were loads of rabbits, a few of the cat-lizards, some blue-and-orange speckledbirds, what may have been an armadillo, and what I had somehow missed seeing at first, a giant feathered snake that was nearly twenty feet long. It took four people to carry it tucked under their arm, and the feathers seemed to blend in stunningly with the grass. Taking all of that as both a challenge and a cue to leave, I made my way off into the grass to redeem myself against a rabbit.
Step one, finding a stick, was harder than it would at first seem. The area around here had obviously been picked clean of good wood for club-used or fire-use, so I had to find a tree that was farther out. That took almost two hours of searching, though part of that was me being cautious of any loud sounds I heard in the grass. A few times I was startled by tiny birds or the wind, but nothing threatening showed up to put me back in life time-out. The number of humans in the area and the obvious hunting that had been going on had probably forced the animals out of the area near the cathedral. Considering the fact that I didn¡¯t mind walking out and enjoying the beauty of nature for a few hours, I¡¯d say this was a good thing. Once I had myself a club, I could even spend a few more seconds appreciating the view of sunlit plains without having a heart-attack every time I heard a sound. Eventually, I found a small clearing around a tree that had a few dead-looking branches, perfect for arming myself. The fact that I relaxed so much right then is probably a dumb thing. Almost like fate was watching me, a horned rabbit burst through the grass in the clearing with me. It¡¯s like the animal knew that I was finally equipped to fight it and decided to catch me off-guard as I made a few celebratory test-swings with my new club. We froze, exactly like what happened the last time I ran into a rabbit out here. This time there was not Buffy to brutally avenge my death, and I was not unarmed. Also, I knew that they were missiles of fluffy death that traveled at screw-you miles per hour. Thus, when it inevitably pounced a few seconds later, I managed to get impaled in the arm instead of the chest. Searing pain? Check. Clubbing the rabbit who is hanging from your arm with vengeance? CheeeeAAGH! Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow ow ow. Ow. . . . Ok, that was super dumb. Who hits something that is literally impaled into your arm in hopes of killing it? I mean, It broke the thing¡¯s neck, sure, but I think it might have fractured my arm too. Ow. . . . . . . Lets see, I can leave the rabbit in, an eternal shame on my name, and return to the cathedral like this, or I can pull it out and return to the cathedral while quickly bleeding to death. . . . I think. . . . . . The option where I don¡¯t die because of a rabbit is probably the better choice here? Theres blood on my arm! My God, theres blood everywhere! I have begun to wonder if this new game just really hates me. See, I know that every other group of hunters out here is not being slaughtered by rabbits right and left, so why is it that I keep getting mortally wounded by them when I''m exploring? The people sitting around in the camp weren''t complaining about how difficult these things were to fight, and they certainly weren''t complaining about being ambushed by them right and left. Running into two more rabbits while I carry the one stuck in my arm back to camp is reason enough to think that the game hates me. How else would they find me in a deserted field that I walked through unmolested ten minutes ago? It''s not like I''m making too much noise besides the occasional grunt of pain, and there are enough flattened paths that hunting parties have made. Even the bit of blood I''m dripping is barely more fresh than the trails the other hunting parties have been making. If they were homing in on my scent they should have done that when I was passing through here the first time. That and they should have attacked immediately from the bushes instead of freezing for half a second when we spotted each other. So why. . . Dodge to the left . . .must I be this. . . Spin and let the second rabbit pass through my legs . . .damn unlucky with freaking. . . Dodge the first one again . . .rabbits! They rush me at the same time, one high, the other low. Do I drop the dead rabbit? One horn grazes my cheek, the other dodges my counter-kick. Yes, I have to drop it. This time they spread out toward opposite sides. Pack hunting tactics, joy of joys. High and low, once again. I toss the dead rabbit into the jumper, taking a minor scrape to the leg from the other. My arm hurts more. Pounce on top of the downed rabbit. Its horn is stuck in the dead one. Snap the neck, harder than it seems with one almost broken arm. Pain. Number two stabbed me in the side. Stand up, face off with the little monster. Has it been screaming like that this whole time? Sounds like a horror movie damsel. Summoning reinforcements?If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. Not good for me when I''m losing this much blood. I''m already a bit unsteady on my feet. Brace for its jump. High or low? It went high. Their general preference? Dodge. Spin. React. High again. Dod-what the hell! Halfway to me, the rabbit gets hit by a yellow shadow leaping out of the tall grass. The larger animal glances up at me before dragging its prey off into the grass. No more screaming rabbit. Is it going to come back? Maybe. Better to be on my guard, but I can''t just wait around. Too much blood loss already. Even if my arm is oozing instead of pouring now, I should pick up my kills and. . . Well, it looks like the scaled panther didn''t just take the one I was still fighting. Damn. Now it feels even more likely that its coming for me. If it''s greedy enough to want three rabbits, why not three rabbits and a human? No more wasting time. I start jogging bay towards the cathedral in the distance. If I don''t run into more rabbits I could be just fine. Hissssss. Behind me. Yeah, of course some sort of snake or lizard is out to get me. Can''t risk a look back. Gotta rely on my natural danger sense. Its track record is a bit spotty though, so I''d say I''m probably 75% dead at this point. Probably the giant cat from earlier judging by the fact it hasn''t eaten me already. Cats like to play with their food, right? The fact that I can hear it rustling through the grass and hissing as it comes is a bad sign. HissssSSSSSSS! Oh, crap! It''s coming now for sure. Jumping? Does everything love to jump around out here for some reason? I drop to the ground, let it go over my head. It lands badly, tumbling on its side farther into the grass. No more hissing, which is probably bad. Not even rustling from up ahead. Is it waiting to ambush me? Don''t move, and wait for the attack. . . . . . . Ok, seriously, what''s going on? Did it slink away somewhere? Better wait a bit longer, just in case, straining my ears. Light wind, my own labored breathing, the sound of my heart attempting to slowly empty my body of blood. All usual. This jumpsuit is pretty much ruined though. My side is just covered in blood at this point. Even if the horns are short, they still make holes the size of quarters. . . . . . . Yeah, I need to check what happened up there. Maybe it fell wrong and broke its neck? I don''t believe that for a second since its some sort of feline, but who knows? Just carefully, one foot at a time, walk forward. Silently pass through the rustling grass to find a homicidal lizard-cat. Which looks. . .asleepish? It''s not moving or breathing through, so it might be dead? There isn''t much blood, mostly on the mouth area where it had been carrying my rabbits. There is, however, some sort of explanation. The top half of its head is covered in frost. Its eyeballs are like cloudy marbles, and the skin is rock-hard. If this froze suddenly, it probably died in an instant. Which means that I take the time to fall back on my ass and start breathing again. That was way too close. "Hahahaha! The look on his face!" I recognize that voice from somewhere. Off to the left, sitting on the ground are two people. One is a taller, bulky man and the other is a thin blonde lady. "Don''t be rude, Angie. Anyone would be confused if they weren''t being chased by a pumagator." Yup, it''s those two from the cathedral. "Yeah, but he waited so long to finally check what happened, and then he had this look of pure confusion on his face!" Did I? Probably. I''ve played worse jokes on people. For now, though, I could do with a little nap before I head back to the cathedral. This has been a very. . .exhausting. . .day so far. "Wow, now he fainted! George, can you believe that?" "Maybe it has to do with the blood smeared all over him? Something that should probably be looked at instead of laughed at?" I can hear footsteps as I''m drifting off. ". . .yeah, how did I miss that?" "Self-absorbed joke-narcissism, perhaps?" "But it was hilarious!" "Sure, sure. I''ll put the bandages on and you patch him up." . . . Cold! "Ahh!" "Oh, he''s still awake, George." . . . But wait, he isnt dead! Omni Surprise! When I set out for adventure this morning, I did not expect to return to camp to be a bloody mess in a princess carry by a pretty lady. I figured I would either die or get back under my own power since I was going out alone. The fact that Angie and George stumbled across me was a lucky stroke, kind of, though I didn¡¯t get even a wink of sleep with their constant chatter. They talked, asked questions that I gave one or two word answers to and barely kept my eyes open the whole way back. Maybe the sound helped warn off any predators. I know I wouldn¡¯t go after a group of two creatures who sounded very much alive, at least not alone. I would rather find a lone prey that was wounded or distracted and then ambush them for best results. . .which is exactly what happened to me, now that I think about it. The rabbit cries might not have summoned more rabbits, but that and the blood were likely the reason the pumagator found me. Current theories are that smell is the main tracking method for most animals out in the plains, especially the scent of fresh blood. Angie said their encounter rate always went up after their first battle out here unless it was bloodless. As for why I was saved instead of cat-food? Angie said that was mostly my luck that they set out hunting in my direction and saw pumagator tracks circling the area. They decided to ambush it when they saw it was stalking some prey and managed to kill it as it leaped high enough to be visible over the grass. One ice beam to the head and it was down, but they had spotted what the prey had been, me, and Angie had convinced George it would be funny to wait and see what my reaction was. Then they patched me up with the most uncomfortable bandages, George picked up their freshly killed pumagator, and I was picked up by Angie who is surprisingly strong for a lady. I protested that I could walk, but they said that Angie could shoot her freeze beams without her hands free and I would just slow them down if I walked. George even preempted my idea of letting me get back to the camp by myself on the grounds that it wasn¡¯t a long walk and they would be leaving me to respawn if they didn¡¯t help me back. Happily enough, nothing attacked us on the way back, though I heard a few rustling sounds in the distance. I¡¯m sot sure exactly how long it took, but eventually I was staring up into the sky on a comfy pile of grass with two strangers peering down at me. ¡°Good Afternoon Dr. Weiss, Dr. Lewis. Angie and I found Mike here in pretty bad shape as we were heading out.¡± ¡°Ah, George, fancy seeing you show up here without a half-dead Angie.¡± ¡°Certainly a strange day, Dr. Lewis. I¡¯ll see if I can keep her away for a few more hours.¡± ¡°Bah, you two act like I¡¯m doomed to be injured on our hunting trip.¡± ¡°She has a point. She could end up having to respawn and then we wouldn¡¯t have to deal with the necrotic skin she makes with her freeze-bandages.¡± ¡°Those are a perfectly reasonable solution out there and you two quacks know it!¡± ¡°Come on, Angie, the sun waits for no man and we have to drop off this pumagator at the pot.¡± ¡°Perfectly Reasonable!¡± And then they were walking off toward the center of the camp, leaving me with the two doctors standing over me. One had long blonde hair, though a glance at the chest showed that he was probably male. The fact that both voices were masculine supported that. The other had scruffy black hair and a vaguely interested expression threatening to break out on his face. Also, interestingly enough he has glasses. Nobody on the ship should need glasses, so they have to be cosmetic, right?Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. ¡°Alright, Lewis, lets see what they left us with.¡± said the black-haired doctor, peering closely. ¡°Typical patch job from Angie it looks like. Large bandages on the arm and torso with minor scratches on the rest of the body.¡± answered the other man, walking around me in a circle. ¡°Think you can patch him up? I¡¯m interested in his super-power and he looks rather groggy at the moment.¡± Groggy, me? Bah, I¡¯m just a bit tired. ¡°Looks normal, let me just get these off him-¡± RIIIIIIIIIIIP ¡°Ow!¡± ¡°Oh, good, he¡¯s responsive, Weiss.¡± ¡°A good sign for sure.¡± As they spoke, the blonde who I took to be Lewis reached down to my side where he had just ripped open my wound. For a moment, nothing happened, then it began to itch. Not a normal itch that just stayed there and went away after a few seconds if you left it, but a persistent itch that just got worse the longer it sat there. There was still pain on my side, but it was nothing compared to the itch. If I had the energy to reach over and scratch at it, I would have. RIIIIIIIP ¡°Ow!¡± And then came the arm. I hadn¡¯t noticed the doctor moving since my side was still a nightmarish consternation of itchiness, but there he was, doing something that was severely uncomfortable. The pain only distracted me from the itch for a few moments, and then came a redoubling of discomfort along with the second outbreak. ¡°Should I go for the scratches too, do you think?¡± Wait, don¡¯t tell me. . . ¡°Better to be sure, probably. We have time to spare I think.¡± He should be saving his mana, right? ¡°Alright then. Can you go grab some soup for me? This is rather exhausting.¡± I can regen the last bit of my health! ¡°Sure thing, Lewis. Make sure he doesn¡¯t bolt as soon as you¡¯re done though.¡± Screw this, I don¡¯t want to just lay here and submit to torture! I have to move. . .even though I have literally zero energy. Why do I still feel like I¡¯ve just run a marathon. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, this healing power takes as much out of them as it does me. Make that two bowls, maybe?¡± . . .Of course he¡¯s been draining my own energy reserves to heal me up. What better way to keep me sedated while he works? The only problem is that I¡¯m still awake! ¡°Now, let¡¯s get started from the head and work our way down.¡± Noooooooooooooo! ¡°. . .I could swear I heard you say something, kid. Oh well, probably nothing.¡±
¡°Is this, normal, Lewis?¡± ¡°Hmm?¡± ¡°The crying.¡± These are manly tears. ¡°Oh, well, it¡¯s an extreme case. Some of the ones who come in that are still awake tend to react strongly.¡± ¡°. . .¡± . . . ¡°Supposedly the process causes moderate dermal irritation.¡± ¡°Moderate? He¡¯s curled up in a ball shivering and there are wet streaks on his face.¡± What he said! Who calls something like that moderate! It¡¯s severe at best! ¡°Well, like I said, most people are either unconscious from the pain, have their own guild healers that they go to, or die from the wounds they get.¡± Mental note: find another healer to go to. These ones qualify as mad scientists, not doctors. Until then, play dead and sneak away when they get distracted enough. Who knows what evil experiments they might try on me when they know I¡¯m awake? ¡°Remind me to never let you heal me, Lewis.¡± ¡°Shouldn¡¯t be too hard. Camp isn¡¯t dangerous enough to need healing anyway.¡± ¡°. . .Really? You didn¡¯t see some of the sporting entertainment that happens when some people get angry, or worse, bored.¡± Yeah, why would you stay in camp if you were bored though? You could just go exploring. ¡°Well, I haven¡¯t been here the whole time, and I¡¯ve been relishing the ability to sleep late, so I admit I may have missed some of the camp entertainment.¡± ¡°It¡¯s great entertainment, so long as you stay out of the way. Like going to a boxing match, but with super powers. Speaking of, it looks like your patient is mostly awake.¡± What? They found me out! Better get ready to bolt! Even If I¡¯m exhausted, I can probably make it to freedom and seek asylum with my guild. ¡°Hmm? Ah, yes. Probably hungry as well.¡± Rumble Damn you stomach the betrayer! ¡°So, Mister. . .Mike. Anything you can tell me about the silver line that¡¯s sticking out of your chest?¡± ¡°The what?¡± Can I see my Luck stat, please? ¡°It¡¯s some sort of magical light, like the type that everyone has from their respawn package, but yours is the most interesting one that I¡¯ve seen.¡± remarks Weiss, gesturing towards my chest. ¡°Everyone else seems to either have a glowing mass inside of them or an object that itself glows with energy. The colors differ from person to person and object to object. Angie has a sharp blue energy inside her while George¡¯s is a mellow yellow cloud, for example.¡± Weiss has started pacing back and forth in front of me. ¡°Yours is not the only external glow since some people have what can best be described as an aura around them, but as the name suggests, they hang around a person like a cloud.¡± He stops, pointing a finger back at my chest. ¡°But you are unique in that there is a thin silver wire sticking out of your chest that extends out past the point I can perceive it.¡± ¡°Huh. That makes sense, I guess.¡± ¡°Something special about your power then? I¡¯m quite curious what it is at this point.¡± How do I explain it without sounding like an irresponsible pet owner who let their vicious dog out of the yard? Should I try to explain? . . . Well, maybe I can get something out of this if I phrase it right? I mean, exchange of goods and services is a staple for gaming. . . ¡°If I tell you about it, can you make sure that Doctor Lewis never uses his healing power on me again?¡± ¡°Deal.¡± Weiss says grinning. ¡°What? After healing you back to full health that¡¯s how you thank your benefactor?¡± ¡°So what does the silver line do?¡± Ignoring the miffed face of Doctor Lewis, I start in on what my ¡°reward¡± happened to be. ¡°As far as I can tell, the reward that I got for dying was something like a companion creature like druids or warlocks have in some games. The silver wire is probably the link that connects us together.¡± ¡°Interesting. A bond makes sense, I suppose, though why items aren¡¯t connected to their owners is a bit mysterious.¡± ¡°You mean like the swords that people have been carrying around?¡± ¡°Exactly. They disappear on death with the user, so they are still connected in some way to the owner, we assume.¡± ¡°If it isn¡¯t ownership, then it probably has something to do with the secondary power. . .¡± Weiss just raises his eyebrow at me as if to say ¡°Go on.¡±If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. ¡°When I was sleeping last night, I had a very vivid dream that I think was through the creature¡¯s eyes, so that might be what the connection is?¡± ¡°Ah, so the link is probably connected to a remote activation feature. I might need to hunt down the person who supposedly hasthe teleporting daggers to check that out. That and hope than another person with a companion spawns to interview.¡± ¡°Ugh, I wouldn¡¯t wise that on anyone I liked.¡± I shiver remembering the time I spent around the silver imp. Having more of the things running around would be horrible. ¡°Some sort of side effect from the power? Shared pain receptors, or a separation of your soul?¡± WEll, I guess that puts things in perspective. It could always be worse to the point that I couldn¡¯t just ignore the asshole and let him run off to do his own thing. ¡°No, he was just an asshole who kicked me in the balls and then ran off to do his own thing.¡± Weiss glanced between the line coming out of my chest and my face. ¡°So the rumors of the little silver monster that came out of the respawn pods. . .¡± ¡°Yeah, that was him. Maybe don¡¯t spread that around?¡± ¡°Hah, of course not. People were royally pissed off about that. I hear that Lewis actually. . .Lewis?¡± We both glance to the side where Lewis had been sitting eating soup. Instead of the pouting/insulted look from earlier, his eyes are slits and he¡¯s glaring at me something fierce. ¡°Err. . .would it help to say that I have no control over the creature and think that it¡¯s an asshole?¡± . . . ¡°Doctor Lewis?¡± . . . ¡°I¡¯m really sorry that whatever it was happened to you because of-¡± ¡°It pushed me into a fire. Hopped off my back and pushed me face-first into a campfire, knocking me out long enough to be halfway dead before I woke up. Had to get one of the other healers to bring me back to normal, but that was after I had been laying there for half an hour due to the confusion that happened.¡± Wow. Well, that¡¯s worse than I expected. If that¡¯s normal for the creature than I¡¯m in serious trouble if this ever gets out. I¡¯ll be spawn camped back to level 1! Assuming there even are levels here. I haven¡¯t seen them, and chanting status or menu doesn¡¯t do anything. . . ¡°The kid¡¯s right, Lewis, you¡¯re two men suffering from the same cause. It sounds like it wasn¡¯t his fault that happened. . .¡± Lewis¡¯s face twitches for a moment as he glares over at Weiss. ¡°Look, Weiss, we aren¡¯t suffering together or some other bullsiii. . .hmm, suffering together. . .¡± His face freezes for a moment and then lights up in a horrible grin. ¡°Hey, Mike was it? Which guild are you a part of?¡± ¡°What? Why would you even. . .¡± I still don¡¯t have enough energy to run away, but my adrenaline is spiking a bit and I think that might be a good enough substitute. Lewis is just grinning at me, his eyes alight with madness. ¡°Can I just go with patient Anonymity here?¡± ¡°No.¡± ¡°Well, I don¡¯t think I¡¯m going to tell you when you have that look on your fa-¡± ¡°Omni! What kind of idiot runs off into the wild alone without even a weapon? It¡¯s a miracle that you survived this time without help. Trying to go off and die on me again?¡± I¡¯m starting to get used to that voice popping up out of nowhere. With a slow turn of my head I find Buffy walking up behind me, a gigantic frown on her face and hands on her hips. ¡°Do you know this young man, Miss. . .?¡± ¡°Call me Buffy, I¡¯m this idiot¡¯s guildmate. Thanks for healing him up for us.¡± She doesn¡¯t even seem to notice the evil grin that Lewis has on his face. Probably too preoccupied being annoyed with me. Somehow Lewis¡¯s smile grew wider. It¡¯s touching his ears now, I think. Human faces don¡¯t work that way. . . ¡°I quite agree with his irresponsibility, Miss Buffy. Now, is your guild recruiting? I feel like Mike here could certainly use a dedicated healer with how much trouble he seems to be getting into.¡± ¡°Oh, Hera is always recruiting. I usually take care of healing this idiot up, but I haven¡¯t gotten my respawn power yet so I¡¯m not sure if I can-¡± ¡°Excellent. Just let me grab my things and then we can see about getting everything in order.¡± Weiss only gives me a look like ¡°I tried, kid,¡± before he sneaks off into the rest of the camp. Traitor! Rest and Reflectation Good news: I had some time to figure out how to get out of my new ¡°dedicated healer¡± arrangement since Hera and the rest of the high-ranking officers were asleep still. Bad news: after a hearty lunch of soup, I as well fell asleep. Half-dying and then healing back up took a ton out of me, so it isn¡¯t as if I¡¯m lazy., just exhausted. If it were pure laziness, there would be no way I would pass out with both Lewis and Buffy glaring at me the whole time, making sure that I didn¡¯t run off somewhere on my own. And so, slipping out of this waking world, I once again had a lucid dream. No midnight vigil for stick thievery appeared this time, merely a cloudless sky and a faintly swaying tree trunk. The view didn¡¯t even move as I waited, besides the very slight change in direction from breathing. He must be out in a tree somewhere, sleeping with his eyes open. Which, now that I think about it, makes no sense. He never had eyes when I saw him in the soul-bubble. Teeth and an uncanny way of knowing where he was going, but no eyes. I would say that I might have seen wrong, and the exact features aren¡¯t completely clear in my mind, but the eye thing stood out. What that means for my freaky dream-visions, well, I can¡¯t say I know. Maybe I don¡¯t use eyes to see here. Maybe they were disguised originally, or just very small. Maybe he grew eyes later, or stole some. Unless he looks in a mirror soon or I run into him out there in the plains, I¡¯ll never know. So that was how I passed a few boring hours after lunch. What laying around for a few hours lucid dreaming did for me was give me some much needed thinking time. Going out into the tall grass alone was dangerous, so lets not do that again if I can help it, at least not until I¡¯m over-leveled for the area or get some kick-ass abilities. Going out there to find a weapon was dumb. I have never been a martial artist in VR, always favoring the sword or the spear, so running into a monster without either was like asking to die, even if I found a club out there. Third, and most importantly, I didn¡¯t get nearly enough information on the monsters that are out there before I began my foolhardy quest. So when I try again, I need to fix those problems. The extra company shouldn¡¯t be too hard with Buffy hovering over me. She said in no uncertain terms that I was getting out of her sight over her dead body. That may help with number three as well, but I¡¯ll double check on that. She has been alive for this whole time, so she has to have picked up some things, but probably nothing on the level of any of the hunters. Problem number two, lack of weapons, is something I need to ask around about. I have a hope that the solution was obvious, but I almost think that Hera would have pointed it out if it were. More likely that the triplets are respawning or busy since I haven¡¯t seen them yet. If the easy way doesn¡¯t work, I can just ask around camp, probably. People have to have extra sticks lying around for firewood that I can borrow one of. If Buffy doesn¡¯t know enough about the monsters, I think I can count on Baron knowing who to talk to about intel. Funny thing about a guy who treasures his words is that he ends up hearing almost everything. Good listeners are hard to come by, so people who know tend to talk his ear off after they realize that he actually is listening instead of ignoring them. Everyone used to joke that he was the guilds secret spymaster because of how up-to-date he always was.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. Those three problems addressed, I had another hour or so of reflection on how much I sucked before I once again rose to the land of the awakened. Watching the sun pull lower into the sky and then blacking out before you wake up is super weird.
The sight of Hera smirking down at me as I woke up, while not being a first-time, is always a bad thing. Well, with that smile it is, at least. ¡°Having some trouble adjusting to low-leveled play again, Omni?¡± Yup, she has certainly heard that I came back to camp one foot in the grave. ¡°No idea what you mean, Guild Leader.¡± I could attempt to drive this to the point, but the longer I draw the initial banter, the more likely it is that she gets drawn away by some time-sensitive matter. ¡°I was just noticing that you were having trouble with the rabbits this time was all. You haven¡¯t had this much trouble with normal monsters since sea-world.¡± ¡°So sue me for never taking swimming lessons before that. I¡¯m doing just fine with the rabbits even. I killed every rabbit I encountered while armed.¡± That¡¯s not even a lie. Hera just raises her eyebrow at me. . . . ¡°Speaking of which, have the triplets set up shop yet?¡± ¡°Probably by tomorrow. They just respawned while you were asleep.¡± ¡°How did they even get killed? Usually they hole up crafting until they have weapons of mass destruction at their fingertips.¡± Hera shrugs. ¡°They were complaining about only getting monster corpses back and said they wanted to find some natural stones or plants for crafting. Turns out that Pumagators sometimes travel in packs.¡± ¡°Not Prides?¡± ¡°That would be if they took after lions, so no. Now stop trying to derail this talk.¡± ¡°Why would I try to d-¡± ¡°No, just listen.¡± . . . Yeah, better just shut up and let the lecture come. ¡°I never thought I would see the day that you used your very ability to annoy others to get us a new and highly valued guild member, so good job.¡± ¡°. . .what?¡± ¡°Your doctor friend. He waited until I woke up, then practically begged me to let him be your personal physician at the cost of joining the guild.¡± ¡°You, uh, declined, right?¡± ¡°. . .¡± ¡°Damn.¡± ¡°You know perfectly well how important healers are, especially with an entirely new world to explore.¡± ¡°Yeah, but you are going to regret it the first time he heals you up.¡± I¡¯m mumbling, half to myself, half in the hope she surprises me and changes her mind for the first time in forever. ¡°Hah, no, I¡¯ve heard how his healing works. That¡¯s why I have Addison in my group and you¡¯re team has Dr. Lewis.¡± Nooooooooo! Why? What have I done to deserve this. . .wait. . . ¡°My own team?¡± ¡°I misspoke. You¡¯re scouting for Magnifica¡¯s group.¡± ¡°Awwwww. . .¡± I mean, I wanted a group, but I didn¡¯t really. That would keep me doing group things but I would rather lead than follow. Still, it could be worse than Magnifica. She was crazy enough to let me do my thing so long as I finished whatever tasks I needed to. The fact that she seemed to enjoy it when things became. . .interesting. . .was part of why people thought she was crazy. Not like Hera who actively tried to make sure I got into the least trouble around the guild as possible. ¡°On that note, Magnifica is heading out in the morning so be ready to go by then.¡± She nods a head over to my left. ¡°Buffy can point you in the right direction.¡± . . . ¡°Right.¡± Said guild mate is leaning against the wall next to where I fell asleep inside the cathedral, drooling all over her jumpsuit. She¡¯s asleep, obviously. ¡°Now I have a night-raid to run. Stay out of too much trouble, Omni. Once you can stop-¡± She giggles, actually giggles at this point. ¡°-getting killed by rabbits then you can go on longer scouting missions again.¡± . . . She is never going to let this go, is she? Its not safe to go alone. Going right back to sleep after my nap was just not going to happen. For one, I was feeling rather energized, and for two, I needed to get some errands done before tomorrow. Most things can wait, but for now I need to procure a proper weapon. To that end, I''m going to need the triplet''s help. They still owe me for all the rare dungeon materials that I''ve brought them in the past, and even if they did just re-spawn, they always love a challenge. What better than to ask for a balanced sword when all anyone has is sticks and stones? I''m not saying they''ll manage it, but they will do a better job than most other crafters would at this stage. They also tend to manually craft everything that they can, unlike some people who rely on system help. In games where crafting was more restrictive they either broke the system or just played raging barbarians hell-bent on ending the world as fast as gnomishly possible. I say gnomishly because they almost always pick gnomes for the tinkering perks the race usually gets. Leave it to a crafter to min-max everything they possibly can to create the perfect tool for the job. The tool in this case being their characters. Well, some of it might be the aesthetic as well. People often pointed out that diversity in races would help more for spreading out their workload, but the triplets thing was important to them. That was actually why I had confidence finding them without having seen them outside of their game avatars. Of the people in the guild, they were some of the most open about who they were beyond the little identical gnomes that were running around. In real life, they were triplet sisters who stuck together like glue. One of them went to college for engineering and the other two decided that they should tag along and get degrees too. Not all the same subjects, one was electrical, one was mechanical, and one was a programmer, but they made sure that everything they learned synergized to an amazing extent. When the invite for this trip-gone-wrong came through, they came as a package deal. More to the point, when they started in on the VR portion of the trip, they quickly formed a pattern. Their first game they tried to specialize as different races, one of them even picked a male avatar for fun. After a few weeks, they had figured out how to polymorph each of them into an identical female gnome because as they continuously repeated: "Not having two mirror images of yourself around was just weird feeling." Therefor, even if I haven''t seen them in real life, I just have to find the three identical women who are likely fiddling with some sort of project and I will have found the best crafters in the guild.
In a camp of a few hundred people, it took longer than I thought to find out where they had gone. The fact that it was slowly getting dark outside didn''t help. Eventually I found someone who had seen them getting some soup earlier before the captain had showed up and said something about helping open a door somewhere. The guy who remembered that had been paying more attention to the fact that there were three moderately attractive women sitting around than what was actually being said, but that helped quite a bit. If this were one of the game worlds that I had been to before, finding them with those clues would have been preposterous. There weren''t that many people in the captain''s faction by now, most people going back to whatever in-game guilds they were part of instead of rallying under the banner of a ship-captain without a ship. Turns out that years of working underneath someone in virtual reality is worth more than the real-life hierarchy that existed previously. Most people hadn''t seen the captain besides the few hours before we left Earth. So knowing what door he was determined to open would have been quite difficult without the basic fact that, in the absence ofthe normal starter village or even ruins, there was really only one door that anyone even knew about right now. The cathedral door was the only option. Not the front door of the cathedral since that was pretty much permanently open, but the one that was supposedly in the basement of the place. Even if they weren''t there, checking out the basement sounded like a great idea. Even if it was still closed up, there might be more cryptic clues like the mural in the cathedral. Thus, my search took me back inside and down into the stone depths. Right away, I could tell I was going the right direction. The fact that the air smelled burnt and there was the sound of an explosion from down below was almost comforting. I''m not going to ask how they had found the ability to make explosives already, or why they were setting them off in an enclosed space, but the smells and sounds were almost signature to any gnomish workshop across all the games I had played. There was the one game where the gnome race was only composed of druid berserkers, but that''s a big exception. They were more like halflings in that one, just using the name of gnome because of the earth affinity connection. When I saw ten or so people crouched behind a stone barrier, peeking over to look at a completely in-tact door I knew I had found who I was looking for. The captain was looking gruff and unhappy, glancing at the group of people he had gathered, then back to the door ahead. There were a few people with weapons who looked alert and not particularly useful, and then there was a small circle of people babbling in techno-speak and gesturing at the door or stroking their chins. Among them were a few people I recognized from the ship maintenance crew and three identical looking women who were making very dangerous expressions. Normally, seeing three raven haired ladies with a slight grin on their face and a crinkle in their eyes would be great. They were around five foot four inches tall, not particularly muscled, and they all mimicked the same crouched posture of peeking over the barricade. The fact that I had seen that look almost every time they shut themselves in their workshop before causing something catastrophic was worrying. Usually it meant some type of escalation in magnitude when they were tapping their right feet like that.Stolen story; please report. "Yo, Amandelilisa! I heard you three just respawned." Tactic number one, the one that always worked best, was to evacuate the area and pray for the best. The fact that my respawn point was right above our heads and the fact that I wanted a weapon sooner rather than later prompted a less likely alternative: distraction combined with calling in a favor." """Hey Omni!""" Came their response. "Oh, and hi Dave, Sean." I waved at my two colleagues from maintenanceas an afterthought. I just gave the captain a quick salute. He was up inspecting the door after the blast now, so I tried not to distract him. A "Hey mike" and a "Yo" were what I got in response to my greeting. "Anyway, you three, I was wondering, since you always make the best equipment a guildmate can ask for. . ." "You want us to-" "-get you something to stab-" "-things with since you''re a shit martial artist,-" """-right?""" Sometimes I think they practice the whole interrupting each other in their spare time. They never even start in the same order all the time. Amanda went first this time, but other times Lisa or Delilah would start it off. The only give-away on who said whatbeing theirname-tags. Not normal name-tagsfor the jumpsuit since those were for crew and not passengers, but little ones carved out of stone attached to their jumpsuits somehow. The fact that they tended to space phrasesout to exactly three parts and didn''t stop at the end of thoughts was unnerving at first. Almost makes me believe that identical siblings have some sort of psychic phenomena going on. "Got it on one. Any chance I can distract you all from your. . .explosives-time long enough to get a sword?" They give each other a look, then a glance back at the captain. He''s cussing out the door, not finding what he wants from the sound of things. Lisa shrugged, then Amanda nodded and Delilah grinned. Then, about five minutes later, I had a sword in my hand. . . . Ok, so that was fast. I expected it to take longer than that, even with whatever super powers respawning gave them. I should have counted on the fact that they have made thousands of swords for me before. Each time they would get better, adjusting to my favored types of crafting materials, fixing the ones I broke, and making starting gear for me so many times in the past. It had only been ten or so game-worlds of being in the same guild, but they really knew how to make the type of sword I liked, which was a thinnish, three foot-long double-edged straight sword. Lisa had immediately pulled a few bleached bones out of nowhere; some sort of inventory system, probably. There was some wood in there too, but mostly a bunch of bones. That took all of thirty seconds. Delilah was grinning as she picked them up, twirling them around before grabbing the largest and starting to squeeze it like clay. I''m not saying that she was just squeezing the bone in a way that one would typically squeeze clay, I''m saying that the bone was bending in a way that clay would normally bend when squeezed. I hadn''t seen this particular style of crafting often, but normally they had tools to work with. That was probably the only reason that they were letting Delilah shape the bone on her own, assuming the other two didn''t get a similar power. As she progressed, kneading her pale white sculpture, it took on more of a tree-branch shape than the femur-bone shape it originally was. Then, she started wrapping more bones around the ends, shaping a blade. It looked like a twisted piece of rope for a little bit, then began to shift into more of a patterned steel, if steel were white that is. Then came a cross-guard, a twisted hilt, and a pommel. Those were all less smoothed out, containing more of the rope-like quality the twisted bones had to them. Delilah attached the pieces of wood to the hilt, a nice brown against the white of the rest of the sword. Then she sharpened up the blade''s edges with her fingernails, drawing them across the length from hilt to tip. It was magnificent, looked smooth as polished wood, and even looked super cool. That all happened in about three minutes; barely enough time to take in the process and how deft her hands had been in the shaping. Then she handed it to Amanda. She had been the primary enchanter when they were crafting in-game, and it made some sense that she was the one who finished off the item. Obviously, they each had gotten an ability that matched their individual strengths in crafting. Lisa was always to coordinator, planning out what they were going to build with, drawing out plans, and generally putting out the vision of how they were going to go about something. The fact that she got something like an inventory made sense. Delilah getting some sort of sculptor''s touch was probably because of how much she tended to put everything together when they combined their individual parts into one item of almost certain boredom-defiance. And of course, the fine-manipulation part of the trio and the enchanter got some sort of magical skill. For about a minute and a half, Amanda merely stood in place, eyes closed, holding the sword. Everything was still besides the glowing light-show that was happening in her hands. Red light gushed out, spreading like water over the blade before it darkened into a thick black, absorbed into the bone. Then came rivers of blue, an energy that seemed like water imitating lightning as best it could as it surged over the surface before settling in, a faint blue mark on the white blade. Then, at the end, came a thin coat of what seemed like clear oil, shimmering a rainbow hue. This part seemed to dry up,losing the rainbow shimmer as it varnishedthe blade into an even smoother surface than it already was. And then, as I said, after five minutes I had a sword in my hands and everyone who wasn''t the triplets was gaping at either me, them, or the sword. I mean, most people were running around with badly carved spears at this point and I had what looked like a perfectly balanced bone-sword in my hands. "It would be awesome-" "-if you tried not to break-" "-this one for a while,-" """-Omni.""" Leaving me with an entirely different type of dangerous smile than the one they had before, they turned and went back to huddling and gesturing at the door. "Have I ever mentioned that I love you girls so much?" They just nodded to me, falling back into their explosion plans with the still stunned mechanics. I heard the words "shaped" and "charge" before I decided to leave them to whatever they were doing and pray that everything turned out fine. The fact that the walls were perfectly fine after the last explosion gave me a little hope. The stone barricade was the only thing with any wear on it, and the stone was a different color than the rest of the architecture, which lead me to believe it was brought in from outside, probably with whatever inventory system Lisa had. Ignoring the rest of the talking that had started behind me, I had a new sword to put through its paces before bed tonight, so I raced back up the stairs, eager to get outside. Midnight Snack It feels good to have a sword back in my hand. Phrasing aside, knowing that I can at least count on my weapon of choice when I''m in a pinch. In the past few games I even started dual-wielding swords once my stats were high enough, but without any sort of system help, I don''t think that''s wise. I can''t say for sure if there are healers around who can re-grow entire missing limbs, but I don''t want to experience that sort of healing at all. That is why, for now, I''m going to stick to one sword. That and the fact that I don''t have any extra-sensory vision to help with the dual-wielding. Having more eyes helps immensely with kinetic vision, if you didn''t know. So, for the last few hours before I went to sleep, I was practicing. Not some fancy slash-while-doing-flips practicing, just getting a feel for the weight of the sword, letting my muscles soak in the feeling of a sharp swing. The hard part was stopping the blade exactly where I wanted it to stop; even made from bone instead of metal, the thing is heavy. Some of that may be the fact that I haven''t really swung a sword in my real body, even if I am in a healthy shape. My brain may have the memory of swinging a sword around like a vaunted warrior of a bygone era, but my body hasn''t picked up on that yet. Conspiracy theorists back on Earth always said that the military had secret capsules that would train the body along with the mind when using simulation technology, but even if it were true, it didn''t get sent out on our ship. I''m not even theorizing based on my own pod. When the ship doctor woke up from cryo-sleep after I managed to fracture my wrist during maintenance one day, I complained about being one of the few people who had to use the ship''s gym regularly. He just laughed and said it was a side effect of going in and out of cryo-sleep often enough to keep my metabolism higher than normal. Being frozen over a long period of time, when they do it right, will keep a person from experiencing and sort of physical degradation. Leaving the brain defrosted enough to log into VR was a closed circuit thing, so that didn''t count. It came with some heavier side effects of being woken up, stuff that would disable you for a few hours before you were back at working capacity, but it was much better for a long voyage. Us working types who were on the ship to deal with emergencies didn''t have the luxury of a deep-cryo awakening in worst-case scenarios, so myself and a few others, mainly the doc, some mechanics, and the captain, all needed to use the gym regularly or we would lose muscle mass and get fat. Aging was slower in deep-cryo too, but the difference was nowhere near as drastic. Physically, I aged two or three years over our Forty year trip, but the passengers aged around six months or so, even when frozen mostly solid. If they were completely solid and kept out of the VR game, then they wouldn''t even age, at least not in any realistic time frame, but that meant there was a very real and significant stress on the brain after they de-frosted. Who would take a chance greater than 1% of not waking up permanently if playing around in VR for a hundred years or so was at least one-hundred times safer. Those numbers are all from shorter term tests, but the numbers didn''t vary much in the one, three, five, and ten-year trials they did for cryo-freezing. Somewhat relatedly, thinking about cryo-stasis while doing sword-exercises in the twilight makes the time just fly by. Now, it''s time I find my usual spot in the cathedral and call it a night. . . . I forgot to ask someone about general knowledge of the area. . .oh well. Something to do tomorrow before or during the trip. . . .
Blood. Lots of blood. Red all the way down my arm from the elbow to the sharpened, silver fingertips. Drip, drip, dripping all the way down onto a horned rabbit.If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. I''m breathing heavily, vision erratic. There were more corpses around, crimson splattered across yellowed-brown fur. One was slit across the throat, one had an eye poked out, and one barely even had a head anymore, bashed in as it was. I couldn''t make out much more in the dark. Those were only the few ahead of me in the trampled grass. There were probably others behind me, and the one at my feet had its entrails pulled out, dangling there as the rabbit shuddered. Oh god. It''s still alive, somehow. . . . No. It''s. . .dead now. That was just one last shudder of life. the moon in its eye shines flat, no spark of life left there. . . . I would throw up at this. It''s just horrible. No game world was this. . .realistic before. That or I just knew they weren''t real. I can''t smell the blood, I can''t feel it, but I can see it, and it just. . .there''s something visceral about it. Still, I can''t vomit. Not for lack of feeling, but because this isn''t my body. I''m back, again, it seems. And instead of puking into the massacre, picking a rabbit up by the leg. The slit-throat one. I can''t see it, we aren''t focusing on the rabbit, thankfully, but we are looking around for. . .sticks? Yes, the other, slightly less bloody arm is picking up some sticks, a pile of them, and stacking them near the center of the massacre. We don''t walk quickly, maybe hurt somewhere? I can''t feel it, but we might have a limp. The rabbit gets set down, and we start clearing the grass away, digging a pit. Not a big one, not at first. Minutes go by, then in goes the wood. Shouldn''t we have dug the pit first then collected the wood? Waste less time bringing it over. . . Halfway through tossing sticks in the pit, we pause. The last stick we pick up doesn''t get tossed into the pile. We hold onto the last stick, then we wave it around a bit. Fire. I had almost forgotten that we stole some sort of instant torch a few nights back. Makes lighting this campfire much easier. Now we''re back to holding the rabbit by the legs, letting the blood run out to make for better meat, I guess. Can we eat all of these corpses by ourself? There''s more rabbit meat than we have stomach, let alone whole torso. Maybe some of it is for later, or maybe there were just too many rabbits in one place. I hope we didn''t kill them for fun. Now we slice open the drained rabbit with a claw. It isn''t the sharpest edge, but it gets the job done. Cut the meat off the bones and spear it with another stick, one of the ones we left out earlier. Not the magic stick. The meat skewergets impaled in the ground, hanging over the fire pit. It will cook, slowly. We make more skewers to pass the time. . . . Then, we start working on the second rabbit. This one had it''s head bashed in. Blood runs out of it faster, the blood left inside it. We turn back to the fire, then freeze in place. A slow turn, looking back over our shoulder. Twin glints in the bushes. Eyes. A predator. We spin, arms up, claws out. We dropped the rabbit, I see. Scales and teeth rocket from the grass, firelight bouncing off them like a disco ball. Spin to the side, slash with claws at its neck. No blood, but a few scales break off. Caution, waiting, judging the beast that paces further into the clearing, circling us. We duck the second pumagator. Must have heard it coming. Roll sideways to get away from the first. The third lands on us, dropping onto our stomach. It''s twice our size, probably twice our strength, at least, and it doesn''t matter how fast it is. We''re pinned. We scratch at the creatures neck, scales come away in clouds. Blood sprays down, and it rears back. We might just- Darkness. Teeth close out an already darkened sky. Number one or number two must have bit down. . . . For a moment nothing happens, then with a flash of black, true black like the kind from the soul-bubble, I''m not there. My breath is ragged and my heartbeat is pumping like I''ve just run a marathon. A low murmur of voices is in the background. I open my eyes and see chandeliers. The cathedral. It was just a dream. I know it was just a dream; even within the dream I knew that. Still, I''m slowly backing away from the heart attack I almost had there. . . . I guess, moral of the story: never go camping alone. And then it dawned on him. I can blearily remember the rest of the night. Dreams, not vivid ones, filled with dead rabbits and a creeping sense of being watched. Barely any time seemed to pass before morning light peeked through the doorway into the cathedral. Better to let last night wash away in the light and focus on more important things. Most notably, the fact that I had guild things to do. Hera said that the group would set out in the morning, so it was high time I actually found them. I would be more worried, but our leader for the expedition, Magnifica, was not really a morning person. True to the character she tended to play, you would more likely see her falling asleep with dawn''s light than getting up with it. Are bears usually nocturnal? Doesn''t matter too much. She takes after the hibernate part anyway. That and the root of berserker being bear made sense for why she tended to play some sort of animal-person if she could, especially an ursine one if she could. Actually finding her would be harder than finding the tiny circular ears that would poke out above her head, at least in real life. Everyone on board was pure human, dressed in ship jump-suits with a few pelts thrown over their shoulders. For all I knew, she was a short Asian gentleman who spoke like a olden-day cowboy. I didn''t even have to think of a plan though. Hera already told me that Buffy would know where Magnifica was, so I just had to find her. Most of one lap around the cathedral later, I had found my objective slightly drooling and leaning against one of the floor-level pods. She looked so peaceful, so unaware of the looming threat of being oh so rudely awoken. Yes, she was so defenseless that it was almost a shame what I was about to do. I mean, I would have loved to see her jump a foot in the air on waking up. Sadly enough, Baron was sitting next to her, whittling away at a stick presumably waiting for her to wake up as well. With a font of knowledge already awake, I couldn''t very well justify pissing off everyone else here just for a prank. At least not for such a low level prank. "Mornin'' Baron. Know where I can find Magnifica? Supposed to join up with her group today." He looked up, giving me a grunt of acknowledgement. "Meeting at lunch, we''re" he gestured down at Drooly McSleeperson, "part of the group too." Awesome. That means I have time to get breakfast, squeeze some more information out of Baron and maybe even get some practice time in with my new sword. Lunch was still a few hours away, looking at the lengthy shadows. "I''ll be right back, want any breakfast?" "Already ate."
Returning with a warm bowl of stew, I got right into the meat of the task. "So is there anything else out there besides the rabbits, lizard-cats, and the lizard people, Baron?" He looked up and raised an eyebrow at the end there, maybe about the lizard-people? "A few passive animals, like birds and snakes. Haven''t seen a lizardman yet." "Nothing else that''s lethal?" He shrugs, paying more attention to the whittling with his stone knife than my facial expressions. "Nothing else we know of." Hmm, that''s promising, I guess? It wouldn''t make too much sense if there was too many predators squeezed into one ecosystem, at least not large predators. The rabbits are probably just territorial or something. Though, it never hurts to check. . . "Are the rabbits carnivores, or just assholes?" A chuckle at that one. "Just assholes. Not territorial ones though. They can follow larger groups looking for stragglers." . . .that''s just horrible.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work! "Were they put here just to kill us or something? Why would they even have the built in aggression if they don''t have a territory or eat meat?" No response to that, not even a shrug. Baron seems to think it was rhetorical. It kinda was, but I would really like an answer. To lots of things, like did the rabbits even exist before the world just sort of "generated" out around us. It feels real enough, we get hungry like normal, which I''m dealing with as I think, but respawning and homicidal rabbits don''t make much sense. The pumagators are at least hunting the rabbits, hopefully to eat, which seems much more normal for an animal. The lizard-people were rational looking, keeping watch in the dark, so they seemed real enough as well. Were they kidnapped by creepy tentacle creatures as well? Maybe something to do with the mural on the wall in here. The squid is floating above lots of humans fighting off monsters and other types of creatures on what looks like a badly scaled planet. A sign of our antagonistic nature with everything out in the world? A warning, prediction, or some bit of history that we''re doomed to repeat? I mean, it''s pretty in an ancient mural kind of way, but it raises some damn big questions. "Mrrgph." Ah, looks like I don''t have that much time to wonder about them. A wild Buffy is waking up with a yawn and a few sniffs in my direction. The stew smells good, after all. They must have gotten the salty taste out of the blood and found some plants that masked the gamey flavor, so it didn''t taste too different than some of the stuff my mom made me as a kid. Back on Earth so far far away from here. Yeah, let''s not step back into dwelling on how screwed up things are right now. At least we got past leaving Earth for good years ago. "Foooooooood." "Is that the first thing you want to say when you wake up?" She''s stretching her arms out in my direction, eyes slowly blinking with little real recognition in them. "Fooooooood?" Is she some sort of stew-zombie, doomed to wander in search of properly cooked brains? "Get some yourself, this is mine." She''s even reaching close enough to make grabs at my bowl. "Awwwwww." "No, not even if you were polite enough to say please." And with that she was off, wandering towards the morning sunlight muttering under her breath. Better get back to quizzing details out of Baron and then switch to Buffy for infor on the state of the camp. "Alright, any interesting geography around here? Dungeons? Caves?" "Nothing I''ve heard." "Dang. Just the forest and the plains then?" "Indeed. Mountains are too far away for travel yet." "Not enough people out combing through the whole place to find anything really hidden, I guess. Would be a bit disappointing if there wasn''t anything typically magical around here." "Besides us?" "Exactly. It''s mostly just us with whatever weird powers we have, and some weird monsters. Do they have magic cores at least?" He just shakes his head. Damn. So they''re really just weirdly shaped animals that enjoy killing people? You would expect something more interesting, like the living trees from that one game we played, or fish that breathed fire. Even classics like magically moving slime or undead would be more interesting than a rabbit and a big cat. Is this a non-magical world? It might. . .no, wait, there was that stick that the silver asshole stole. Means that there''s at least magic somewhere here. Maybe if we can find some of those lizard-people we can ask them? Should I bring that up as a goal for searching? Even if they were hostile, we seem to be immortal, so what could they do, spawn camp us? . . . Actually, that''s a scary idea. If a monster got in here and set up a nest, would people just respawn to get eaten and then die? If it was an intelligent monster, would they barter with us using an eternity of torture? That''s. . .I really have to get Hera to get this place fortified. Maybe get her to catch some animals and see what happens in they get in the cathedral without being cooked first? I would rather that this place stayed safe if I have to respawn here for who knows how long. If I get old aged, will I respawn after natural death, dying over and over? "Omni! Excited for the scouting mission today?" Buffy is waling back, steaming bowl of stew in hands. She''s grinning like everyone does before diving into new game content. Everyone but Baron who just grins when he sees the market prices of what we tend to bring back with us. "You know, heading off to battle bunnies in mortal combat sounds good, actually." "Right? Itching to take your revenge?" "Absolutely. That and I want to see how well their fur and pumagator scales hold up against my new sword." She looks a bit envious of the blade as I pull it out from behind me. Everybody I walk past has been complimenting me on it, and I''m really happy to let people think this is just my own personal respawn reward. Wouldn''t want people trying to rob me for it. That would suck worse than having to find it after I respawn if it doesn''t come with me. "Let me eat this stew real quick, then we can find Magnifica." "But we don''t have to be there until noon?" I give a glance at Baron. He wouldn''t slip me bad info, but it might have changed? "Right, but what else would you do instead?" "Sword practice?" "But you''d be missing out on the fun!" "What fun, she''s probably still asleep?" The big grin made everything slip into place right before she said anything. "Exactly. Plus, I know someone who stuffed one of the more in-tact pumagator corpses." "I''m in. Can you do a convincing cat hiss?" Forming the Fellowship ". . .acting like impulse-driven children. I don''t want to see you trying this on me ever again. You''re liable to be sliced in half next time." Buffy and I just nod our heads. I''m trying to keep myself from smiling, and from a short glance to the side, she is too. Our prank worked almost too well. "Now that we''ve got that out of the way, grab the stuffed pumagator and follow me." Magnifica just starts off walking toward the cathedral while Buffy and I glance down at our unfortunate prop. "We can return it on our own, Magnifica. We won''t even blame you for the damage, honest." Buffy cringes at the sight of the thing. It''s split right down the middle and losing the dried-grass stuffing that kept it lifelike. It was her friend that made it, so she''s probably trying to figure out how to apologize. Magnifica stops to look back at us. "What? Return it? You borrowed that thing? No no no, we''re off to find Hera. I want to see the look on her face when we pull this on her." . . . Oh, right. Of course. I did mention that Magnifica is almost as bad as I am, right? ". . .Just how do you think we''re going to use this when it''s split completely in half?" . . . "Oops? It was a beautiful counter though, right?" . . . "Fine, we can put this off until we find another pumagator to stuff. Shouldn''t be hard to find on today." One hand on her chin, she begins to pace, talking out loud. "But we''ll need to do minimal damage to the skin for something like this, which means that we should get someone with precision to take out at least one of the beasts. That''s quite a bit of work though, and really the head is the most fearsome part. Probably much easier to just stuff a head and mount it. . ." "Help me out with carrying this back, Omni?" Buffy gestures to the leaking skin. "Of course. See you at lunch, Magnifica." "Huh? Oh, right. later."
Turns out that making sure we had all the bits of the pumagator was harder than we thought. There were bones in the grass, acting as supports so that the animal wasn''t just a blob. Considering the skin was almost in two pieces, that along with the grass was falling out by the time we got it back to Buffy''s friend. Considering that it was her plan in the first place, I took the first opportunity to skeedaddle after the talking bit started. Sitting through another irate tirade of blame was not on my agenda. What was on my agenda was more sword practice before lunch. I didn''t want to exhaust myself, but I could rest while we were eating, and I needed to have a good feel for the blade if I was going to rely on it. There wan''t any magical resonance or sword-beam switch that I could tell, just a rather sturdy sword that shimmered a bit in the dark. The lightshow of its creation had ebbed to something less eye-catching as time went on. It was still sharp, balanced, and light, but the runic lines that were along the blade were as intense as a day-old glowstick by now. If they did anything special for the sword, I hadn''t found out. What I had to do was not break in the sword like a pair of shoes, but to train my body to its weight and make reacting with it instinctual. Seeing Magnifica wake up and not a second later pull her giant, glass-looking sword from her side to bisect the "enemy" that threatened her made me painfully aware that my reflexes were a bit terrible. Is it dumb that I aspire to cut whatever wakes me up in half? Probably.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. Danger aside, I spent an hour or two on sword-swinging as the sun rose towards its peak.
"Alright, everyone. Most of you here are familiar with how these trips go from the raids that Hera has been leading. Now that we have a better grasp on the area, and since the local monsters have been cleared out, Hera decided that we needed two raid groups instead of just the one that she leads." Magnifica is standing in the semi-circle our guild mates have formed, just on the other side of a smothered campfire. A few people are still yawning, and everyone is scooping stew into their mouths. "For those of you who are new to the raiding parties, the guild, or just need a refresher, I will be laying down the ground rules." She held up one finger. "First, I am Magnifica, your raid leader. My word is law and those who do not follow it will be left to the pumagators." A second finger went up. "Second, while there hasn''t been any traditional loot like in a game, any worthwhile items will be distributed between the raid group as equally as possible. Where equal distribution is impossible, which is likely, the split will be given weight by merit. This means that dangerous jobs are going to have a better likelihood of spoils." Pointing at a man with black-hair who had his hand raised, Magnifica interrupts and talks over him. "Yes, Will, we thought about using a point-based guild-economy for distribution of items in an auction held afterwords, but with the long respawn time and the fact that everyone is woefully under-equipped right now, getting items back into working hands is a priority." "Third," Another finger. "We will be bringing all the meat back for the cooking pot, assuming that it''s just pumagator and rabbit meat. If they say they don''t need it all, you can bargain for a steak or two for yourself. Vegetables or fruit probably won''t make it back unless it has to be cooked, but we are going to distribute it in the group fairly if we find any." She lowers her hand. "That is all the rules of conduct. As for assigning roles, we''re going to run things standard. Combatants are in a circle around our healer and support mages." She points to Doctor Lewis with his cheshire grin and a freckled girl with slightly dirty-looking hands. "They will be keeping us alive, so try not to let them get hurt. Neither of them has instant healing, so think of them more as after-battle triage." "I''m sure that most of you know Omni, who woke me up this morning asking to be our scout. Him and Will are going to be ranging in front and behind us respectively, checking in every hour or so." She points to myself and the dark-haired guy who tried to speak up earlier. "If either of them comes running out of the grass screaming, get ready to fight something. If they run past us and doesn''t stop, start running after them." That''s. . .encouraging tactics. It gives me so many ideas for pranks, but I should wait until things are a bit safer to try them out. "Now, it looks like you''re all mostly finished eating so we''ll do a quick roll call on names and then head out." She points to the first person on the left of the semi-circle, a blonde, athletic looking guy. "Name''s Greg, PHD in Hydroponics. I went by Gorg in-game, played a lot of Orc warriors." He hefts up a thick spear to make his point. It''s more of a pointed tree limb, but it will probably work. Next is the freckled girl from earlier. "Hi, I''m May, Biologist, and I''ve got a kind of plant-control ability. I''ll be trying to trip monsters up with grass." Interesting. I wonder if she could fix Greg''s bent spear, but that''s a question for later. . . "I go by SilverTooth," The next guy smiles, showing off a fake tooth that making his nickname obvious. "I''m a fairly good swordsman, I think." True enough. He''s one of the people that actually gave me a run for my money a few times in duels. He focused more on combining magic and swordplay, in-game from what I remember. "Jim Lowe, went by Flash in-game, and I''ll be electrocuting things." He shoots some sparks from his fingers in a suitable mystical way. He played quite a few wizards from what I remember. Next comes Will. "Will, same as in-game, and I got short range teleportation for my power." He doesn''t show it off, but it sounds useful, especially for a scout. "Baron." He nods to us. A few people look confused when Buffy immediately starts talking after his introduction. "I''m Buffy the Red. I haven''t died yet, so I''ll be hitting things with a stick this time." And now it''s me. I stand and make a bow. "Some of you may know me from my-" "That''s Omni, he has a sword." And with that Magnifica steals all the air out of my sails. I had a whole speech prepared too! "Next." The heavy-set man with a mustache that sat to my right speaks up. "Call me Arnold, and I have a kinetic punch and years of physics knowledge to put it to use." . . . What does kinetic punch even mean? Shouldn''t a scientist know how useless saying something like that is? Aren''t all punches kinetic? In game-terms, it probably means something like a really powerful punch, but he didn''t specify, so it could also be shock-waves or. . . ". . .and that''s all of us, so lets move out. Omni, you lead." Humm? Oh, we''re done with introductions, I missed three people on the end, but that probably isn''t important. To my right is Doctor Lewis, and I know what he''s about. The other two must have had a short introduction. They both have spears like the first guy, and they look like a couple, so it might be the Sams? Whatever, adventure calls! Did someone use a repel? Just like the last time I tried exploring the wide plains for treasure, I have run across nothing in the first hour. Walking ahead of the indistinct chatter going on a ways behind me, I have spotted a few trails through the grass, but no actual animals, sticks, or even interesting rocks. Just dirt, grass, and a slight feeling of pointless caution. Anything that would make for good prey must be hearing the group back there and getting far out of the way. That or they can smell us. I mean, I can''t smell everyone behind me, but that might just be the lack of wind. I haven''t seen any showers or baths set up around the camp yet, so the ever-present smell of sweat and butchered animal underneath a haze of stew-smell is probably sticking to everyone. You get used to smells after a little while, so it hasn''t been on my mind, but it would explain the quiet. It''s about time to turn around and check in so that I''m not assumed missing. I could just holler back, but a quick chat and an answer of where exactly we''re headed would be nice. Just walking away from the dot of a cathedral in the distance is getting mind-numbingly boring. I''ll just- RustleRustle -freeze in my steps for a moment and HSSSSSSSS -drop to the ground. Deja-vu much? Pumagator in the underbrush ahead of me, circling. Alone? Maybe. It''s cut me off from the rest of the group for now. It''s tongue flicks out as it crouches low. Another pounce? HSSSSSSSS It jumps at me, lower this time. I roll to the left, swinging my sword up where I was as I do. The blade catches in something, twisting my arm backward as the pumagator''s weight carries it across the ground I was just laying on. It''s glaring sideways at me, hissing as it does. I caught it below the shoulder. With a yank, my sword is free and I''m pushing myself up to my feet. The cat doesn''t give me time for that, leaping the shorter distance at me, canines dripping with saliva as it lunges. This time, a wide swing as I stumble backward hits with more than just the tip. It''s smile widens as the head jerks to my left from the impact. A thick splatter of blood colors the yellowed grass as I fall back on my ass. Rage, but tempered with specks in intelligence flicker in the beast''s eyes. It wants to jump on me again, but it knows better now. Twice sliced thrice cautious and all that. It circles around me as I hastily push myself back onto my feet. We watch each other, my bruises smarting as its blood drips off the end of its chin. I could go on offence, attempting to end it now, but it has quick reactions. Even when I cut it in the mouth it was twisting away from me. So we wait, hoping for a moment of weakness, hoping for- KZAAAAAAP -one of the members of the group to send a lightning bolt directly into the pumagator''s side. Toasty. The cat is twitching on the ground as Magnifica steps past the mage to decapitate it. The ease with which they dispatch it makes me just a bit envious. I mean, I would have taken care of a cat like that in moments too if I could shoot electricity out of my hands. Instead, I''m stuck with an uncontrollable imp that doesn''t listen to me and gets eaten by pumagators instead of killing them.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. I mean, sure, he lasted way longer than I could against a pack of them, but still. I want a refund. "You alright over there Omni?" "Yeah, yeah, just bruised my arm, and my ego." I mutter the last part. Being bitter and self-pitying isn''t the type of thing to share. I''m certainly not going to grumble about the imp out loud. "Hmm, bruises you say?" Oh no. Doctor Lewis and the rest of the group caught up. "Yep, no injuries so you can stay over there far away." "But bruises could keep you from dodging the next monster, so why don''t you just-" "Nope nope nope. Being exhausted from your. . .healing. . .would be way worse. I''m fine." The light in his eyes dims a little, but he''s still walking closer. "The extent of exhaustion depends on the injury, so you don''t need to worry about that." Nooope. Just keep backing away from the crazy man. "What about your own exhaustion? Shouldn''t you save your power in case of real injuries?" At that, Magnifica actually pays attention and stops grinning at the situation with her arms folded. "Is that true, Doctor Lewis?" ". . .Well, technically my power drains me a bit, but just healing some bruises is almost nothing. . ." He tries to wave it off. I have an idea though. It''s crazy, but it just might work. "Is healing one large injury or many small ones more draining for you, Doctor?" He looks back at me, blinking for a moment. "Many small ones would be more draining, but why do you. . ." "Well, that means we should try to maximize the effect by waiting for larger injuries before using your heal." I''m grinning now. "Right, raid leader Magnifica?" "He''s right, even if his reaction is a bit suspicious. You should wait to use your healing for larger injuries for now. If we had a backup healer it wouldn''t be a problem, but with only one, resource management is a priority." ". . .damn. Fine, fine. I''ll wait. Shouldn''t omni be off getting into trou. . .shouting ahead right now?" . . . "Anything to report, Omni?" "Nope, just boring grass. I think they can smell us and are staying far enough away. Are we going anywhere in particular besides away from the cathedral?" Magnifica nods. "We''re going to make an arc heading in a circle around the cathedral at this point. Next time, we can go out on the trail we take back and continue the circle." "Pie wedges?" "Exactly." And with that, I''m back off into the lonely, boring, grass. Keeping half my attention for any sounds of creeping animals, I take the time to inspect my sword. Blood coated, but no nicks in the blade, which is good. It didn''t feel like it hit any bones, but it did stick in the pumagator''s side when I initially hit it. The impact in its cheek might have scraped the jaw a bit, and it certainly hit the teeth, but that felt smooth when it went through. This is a pretty good sword, especially since it was made of bone. The enchantment must do something to the durability of the blade, keeping it in good shape. Speaking of, I should really clean it off. This isn''t a first, since goop monsters in games would leave traces of residue on weapons, but there hadn''t been any realistic blood that I remember. At least, not with the settings that I kept things on. The smell of the blood alone was giving me a bit of a queasy feeling now that I think about it. This place is too real. Cutting some grass with the sword, I paused for a moment to wipe most of the blood off. Then I took my sleeve, some spit, and rubbed the rest of it off. I wish I had something better, but I didn''t. It wasn''t like my jumpsuit was perfectly clean right now anyway. Whenever the crafters get around to making new clothes, they will be mobbed by the dirty masses. The first one to make a shower or bath will probably become rich. Maybe I should mention the thought to the triplets. . .but for now I should pay more attention to the grass. I really don''t want to get hurt out here with Doctor Lewis just waiting behind me for a chance to use his itching magic.
Thus, we walked all day. The sun slowly traveled downward, and we grew thirsty, hungry, and incredibly bored. I only ran into a few rabbits, but with one sniff at me, they ran off into the brush before I could get a yell out. I''m thankful not to be skewered again, and it''s much more reassuring that they didn''t stick around in a suicidal rage like a normal game-monster usually would, but it is frustrating to have nothing to really do. There were trees to look at, but they were usually picked clean of anything interesting already. There were animal trails through the grass, but I wasn''t allowed to follow them for very far before we had to go back to the patrol route. There was even a few real attacks in the rear that I never got to see since they were over quickly. As we trudged back into camp, sun hanging low in the sky, the only thing that went right for me in the whole trip was the fact that I came back in one piece and without being subjected to any itching-torture magic. A Steady Job Turns out that walking in a circular arc is harder than you would think. People naturally tend to veer instead of walking in a straight line, but keeping the veer consistent is. . .difficult. So that''s why we ended up walking in a rough hexagon for a week, our boredom punctuated by brief panic attacks and much shorter scouting distances. We walked slowly, scanning the horizon for anything interesting, and May would grab samples of plants that weren''t boring grass when we passed them. Everyone else kept an eye out for rabbits and pumagators, eager to score more meat for the cooking pot, but mostly just happy that there was something besides walking to do. Will, our rear-scout, and I had it worst off, I think. While the rest of them were in a group and mostly guaranteed to be fine if an attack happened, we were out and exposed like bait. When the pumagators and rabbits decided that we were distracted enough, they would do their best to get a taste of our blood. Then, once we were screaming in pain, dodging out way back to the safety of the group, we held on long enough for Doctor Lewis to patch us up. We''re thinking of forming an itch support-group after healing some of the more deadly wounds. Going through that process, eating through a canteen of stew, and finishing the patrol is making me seriously miss the feel of old-school instant-regeneration-via-bright-light healers that were common in the past. The rest of the raid group agreed that itch-based healing was uncomfortable, but none of them were in a position to fully experience the horror. Besides our close calls, the only person gravely injured was Baron, and he bled out from a missing throat before Doctor Lewis could get to him. Baron was never the greatest at combat, but I have the sneaking suspicion that he just wanted to get around to unlocking his first respawn reward when he heroically charged out to save me from a pumagator that was on my tail. It was the wink as he collapsed back from the beast, spear poking through its torso, that gave it away. I get not wanting to go on patrols anymore, but waiting for a respawn sounds worse to me. At least out here I get the adrenaline rush of almost dying a few times a day. Still, daily patrol is the most boring part of the day. The things going on around camp in the past week are much more interesting. A large part of the interesting comes from the fact that more and more people are coming back from the dead with their superpowers. People spawning with magical guitars, microphones, the ability to manifest floating paint, and classical illusions is bound to spice up any gathering. Every night is practically a concert, at least now that there''s a sound barrier on the cathedral entrance so people can sleep while the night-life goes on inside. The acoustics in there are amazing, though I hear that respawning into a giant concert takes some getting used to. In a less fun style of interesting, people have started to care about actual fortification of the area. Our patrols are part of that, but some of the more talented control and conjuration wizard people have started building walls and real buildings outside. The people who were supposed to be architects for the colony ship took charge of that sort of thing, making the place look more and more like a blend of fantastical elven architecture with trees growing up over stone foundations, and modern sensibilities with rain gutters, a parody coffee shop, and quite a few apartment buildings. There''s even a jail that the guilds all got together to build, though it doesn''t have many occupants. Still, it wasn''t the people who respawned for the first time that changed things around the camp the most. While everybody who hadn''t died yet was contemplating some dangerous exploring of their own to get a superpower, the people who came back the second time made almost everyone much more risk-prone. There wasn''t any more rewards for respawning, at least not that anyone had reported, but there was a bid advantage to getting back into your soul bubble, apparently. I almost couldn''t not hear about what was going on with that with how much people talked about it at the campfires over food. It turns out that when you''re doing things in the outside world, you build up credits of some sort back in your soul bubble. Supposedly, those credits could upgrade rewards, modify and grow a soul bubble, or even obtain new skills and items. At least, that''s what the speculation is. Most of the people didn''t have enough credits for more than a few minor tweaks, but since all the reports on exactly what was on people''s lists for purchase were different, people were interested in what exactly was available for them personally.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. I would have suicided on the spot myself, but I was both squeamish and paying attention to the fact that the one thing people kept saying was that they had barely any points to spend. If it was a time-based system of reward or a merit based one, I really had nothing to show for my time besides a few rabbit and pumagator kills and by now, a bit more than a week spent alive. Maybe it would count the imp''s achievements as mine if it were achievement based, but I wasn''t going to rely on that. The world was dangerous enough without trying to get killed off. Speaking of the imp, I wasn''t getting any more visions in my dreams. Communication between here and the soul bubble where he probably was was cut off. Since I hadn''t been dreaming in visions when he snuck out ahead of me after we first met, it was probably true no matter who was inside the soul bubble and who wasn''t. The link between us was broken right now. I even had the second opinion of Doctor Weiss when I ran into him one evening. He had been researching all the super powers people had obtained, cataloging them in his head, and making theories about certain patterns. Most of his findings didn''t apply to me, he said, and he was holding off on any public reveals yet before he had a more complete picture, but he did say that the silver line coming from my chest was missing at the moment. That lead to a storm of questions on his part, some "Iiiiiiinterestinggggg"s on his part, and a late dinner for me. Supposedly other people who had string-like connections coming out of them either hadn''t died, or the item disappeared with them when they did. None of the items were alive, and none of them had been broken, so it really didn''t make anything clearer about my own link/bond thing. Doesn''t matter to much to me anyway. I have at least a few more days before the imp manages to respawn if he''s been building up energy in the soul bubble at the same rate that I did. When he does, I''m aiming to be completely out of his ball-kicking way, possibly pulling off a stuffed-pumagator prank on someone with Magnifica and Buffy. We hadn''t pulled anything too amusing off lately, mostly because the camp had become increasingly not-boring as the days passed by, but sooner or later Hera would be sleeping and we would have another stuffed pumagator ready to be unleashed. The new one was taking longer because Magnifica insisted on giving it three heads, convincing the triplets to enchant it for durability, and filling it with fluffy bunny fur. Naturally, this was taking longer than a day or two, especially with the triplet''s backlog of things to work on. After they and everyone else failed at breaking into the downstairs section of the cathedral, they had commissioned a workshop and started making various weapons, tools, and gadgets for people who were nice enough to bring them materials. My sword quickly joined by bone lances, bows, clubs, and other swords of similar caliber. They also helped make pipes for plumbing in the area. That was rather important. Hygiene in general took a leap forward with more people crafting and working on buildings and infrastructure. A man-made bathhouse was in the works, and you could bribe some of the magically inclined to drop water on you if you needed a shower. One of the more timid people in camp had solved our problem with low encounter rate on patrol by using some sort of deodorant ability on us. We rubbed some grass on ourselves before heading out and ran into way more animals after that. Needless to say, between all the groups heading out to explore, he was eating only the primest of steaks at meal times. Can I just take a moment to say that a barter-based economy is a weird? People are literally buying things and services with steaks. I mean, there are lots of service for service trades, but the primary exchange item in the camp has been well cooked food. I love food as much as the next guy, but it''s just. . .it sounds like some sort of comedy routine. Tomorrow, we''re going to start making thinner yet longer pie-slice shaped patrols around the camp. There are more groups heading out now that people are becoming less cautious, and quite a few of the farther exploring groups haven''t come back yet. It might just be larger packs of pumagators, but those groups weren''t idiots and had people who could use area of effect abilities, so I bet that whatever killed them was something new. Maybe it''s a geographic danger, like poisonous plants or treacherous terrain. It could be some sort of monster like a dragon. Maybe they aren''t even dead and they just don''t want to come back because they discovered something awesome. Either way, we''re going to start multiple day patrols farther out and let the big groups hunt up food closer to home. Hopefully we find something cool tomorrow.