Sean found their tail-stash already being raided by two oversized rats. He was ready for a tough fight, but one beast grabbed a tail and fled, and the other charged at him. A single axe was enough to make quick work of one rat, even without support. The beasts were halfway through the eighteen tails he had gathered, but eleven quest items remained – including one more fresh tail from the rat he killed on the spot. Hopefully enough to complete the quest for himself, even if one was half-eaten.
He also recovered his second weapon, just in case – Twin Strike didn't work with only one axe, and it was his strongest skill right now. Then he stashed the tails behind his back and made his way back to the gate. The traffic was almost exclusively inbound. He figured everybody was preparing for the night, players and merchants alike. Owners of two large cargo wagons seemed to be arguing about who should go in first, and Sean slipped between them. He couldn't tell if they were players or NPCs. The inner open area was completely covered in shadow – the sun was low behind the wall, but the sky was still bright.
Emma was waiting inside the city walls and, of course, already on her phone.
"I hope I didn't keep you waiting for too long?" he asked once he got close enough for a conversation rather than shouting.
"I was about to leave, actually, so–" she started and looked at him, then smirked and said, "How is this not cosplay!"
"What?" he asked, confused. "I'm wearing the same armor that…" He trailed off and glanced down. It was messy, with a hole in his chestplate and one shin-guard missing. Seeing it brought back painful memories.
"I meant the…" she said, then pointed behind him and cleared her throat suggestively.
He looked back and noticed… the rat tails, of course. "Umm, right. I'm not cosplaying a tail or– Just one sec!" he tried to explain, then quickly locked both axes into loops on the side of his belt and retrieved the tails. They were heavy – each weighed maybe a pound, but they added up to quite a bit. He asked, "Any idea where to– Or what to do with these? Do I need to carry them to that Realm Defenders place or…"
She simply shrugged, back to her phone.
Sean scanned the area for somebody more knowledgeable about the game. It was clear that some players were heading off to the side, including a few with visible low-lvl player tags. He examined their destination and it seemed to be a local Realm Defenders office – the sign was pretty self-explanatory and the location convenient. A small queue was forming, but the players were being processed smoothly.
"Let's go this way – there's some kind of branch office that maybe I can–" he started, but she was already rolling her eyes. He sighed and pleaded, "Come on, it'll only take a moment and it's not like I can haul these around, or into restaurants and such." He raised the bundle of tails for emphasis.
Emma glanced at his trophy and frowned a little, then commented, "Fine, whatever. But if anybody asks – we don't know each other."
"Sure," he remarked and they went to queue up. Luckily, the quest-candle was still in his pocket, though broken into pieces from the fight. The queue took maybe a minute, but the service was quick and frictionless: the middle-aged NPC in the window took his candle and the tails without a word and gave him a bunch of coins, then asked if he wanted another quest. When Sean said 'no,' the local man turned to another player. Not even ten seconds to process him – DMVs could learn a thing or two from this.
Sean collected his reward: he counted one silver and thirteen coppers. He didn't complain about three more than he remembered the quest reward should have been – the board note said '1s10c.' He wondered if the NPC had seen the sorry state of his armor and added a bonus, or maybe it was the extra half-tail… there were already many players behind him, so he didn't bother the local worker anymore. He pocketed the coins and glanced around.
Emma was waiting a few steps away, socially distancing from him by the looks of it – but he wanted the dinner to go smoothly, so he stepped over to some guy wearing a fancy robe and cloak. No player tag, but presumably a Mystic. Nothing else to do in the queue, so maybe he would get some useful advice? "Hi, if I may – you seem experienced," he started. The young man already looked annoyed, so Sean quickly added, "Do you know of any good places around here to eat? Actually, does food even work in here?"
The other player eased up a little when the question wasn't too tedious, and answered, "It does, yeah. You can just… Why not the Adventurers' HQ, the training place – they have it all."
"Oh, I didn't know they also had–" Sean started, but the queue moved and the young guy was next in line, so he concluded, "Thanks and see ya!" The player simply nodded at him, so Sean turned around and walked to Emma. He explained, "We can go back to the training place, should be simple enough." She glared at him, so he followed with: "Why, do you know a better place to eat?"
Emma sighed and remarked, "No, but… it's on the way to the portal place, so whatever."
Sean considered it briefly. That was a much better point than his, so she basically convinced herself! Then again, he had no idea how portals or general travel worked around here either. "Okay, let's go then," he offered and… looked around the open gate area, trying to remember where they had come from. There were so many exits.
She started walking, but looked back at him to point at a narrow alley. "This way," she said, and he tried to remember… was this where they came from?
He caught up to her and wondered out loud, "Did we come from there?"
"Uh-huh," she said and resumed walking.
Sean glanced around, but everything appeared the same. They had walked the other way maybe an hour ago, but he couldn't remember many details. They had first seen the gate from that angle, so now heading to the left seemed like a good idea. He still asked, "How did you know we came from this alley?"
"What? Oh, the blacksmiths…" she mentioned, taking her eyes off the phone for maybe one second.
He nodded. Of course – this side of the entrance featured several artisan shops and various gear supplies. He had noticed them on their way in, but wasn't looking to buy anything, so he had ignored them then. Now they were already passing them and he recognized… or sort of remembered them, maybe?
He stopped by one and said, "Hang on, maybe they could fix this or–"
"Seriously?" Emma cut in. "You're worried about cosplay armor now?"
"First of all, not cosplay," he argued. "The tails on the belt were just easier to carry, and armor saved my butt a bunch of times, not to mention–"
"Clearly not enough…" she interjected.
He countered, "It still worked. But wait here… only a minute, okay? Or a couple tops!" Then he added with a smile: "Not to mention that half of this damage is 'your' wrong spell choice, so…"
She rolled her eyes, already back on her phone, so he walked up to the blacksmiths.
It turned out that they couldn't repair his armor on the spot – the damage was too extensive and the whole front section of the chest piece had to be replaced. Sean remembered the more experienced Tanks – so he asked the blacksmith how much a proper set of heavy armor would cost. It was only two silvers for simple starter gear, but he opted for something better. He could afford ten silvers with that golden gift from Bruce. As the NPC gave him his change, he learned that a gold coin was worth fifty silvers, so the instructor had been rather generous. Then again, Sean had no idea how much high-lvl people earned from quests – maybe it meant nothing to the guy.
He left the Warrior kit for repairs and exited wearing brand-new low-lvl heavy armor. It was still cloth and leather, but padded with steel plates sewn in. It felt heavy, but Knight's innate ability remedied it somewhat once he wore the full set. Apparently the armor was called 'Jack of plate, ' but it was the first time Sean had heard the name. It was still more cumbersome than the leather kit, but he hadn't been chasing the monsters around earlier on – quite the other way around, in fact. And he felt so much better protected in the proper armor, though he left the iron helmet hanging behind him.
"That took forever!" Emma exclaimed once he was done.
"What?" he asked. "Oh, sorry. Wait, how long did it–"
"Like eight minutes!" she cut in, then added, "It was supposed to be one."
Sean sighed, but then decided to turn it into a joke: "Okay, fair enough – but please don't shoot any more magical projectiles at me…"
She squinted hard at him, then turned and went up the alley. He followed.
After half a minute of silence, he decided to comment on the fighting again, "But today's rat hunt wasn't so bad, was it?"
"Yeah, until you screwed up…" she complained.
"Well… busted, I suppose," he admitted, then remembered the loud ringing. "Actually, didn't you hear anything right around then? Some kind of loud banging or bells…" He tried to recall more details, but it almost seemed like the sound was coming from inside his head.
Emma looked up from her phone and said, "I guess… there was something like that, but a few fights earlier. More like a fanfare… with just one bell? I thought something had happened, but you finished off a rat and that was it."
It suddenly clicked – Sean had heard the racket when he killed off the first rat, so he speculated, "Right, must've been the level-up sound and– Umm…" He realized that he had probably heard all fifteen classes leveling up at once. He couldn't admit that, so he lied, "Yeah, it was just one bell – but I was focused on the fight, so it completely freaked me out."
"Yeah, no kidding," she commented.
Sean also connected the dots and said, "But if you leveled up sooner, then you must've killed a few rats before we partied up – how did that go?"
Emma sighed, and he wanted to change the subject so as not to annoy her, but she went on explaining: "More like a couple of them. It was hard." A tiny pause. "Not just waving some axes around and–"
"Hey, it's actually hard work!" he interrupted.
"Whatever," she said and paused for a couple of seconds. "But when you cast spells, it's like… not only does it drain you mentally, but you have to run if they get close. And the stupid spells don't work, like I have to keep trying for anything to ever come out of the stupid staff, ugh!"
Sean nodded. He hadn't tried any caster spells yet , but he could speculate: "You mean the cooldowns?"
"The what?" Emma asked.
"Skills have cooldowns," he explained, "so you can't use the same one all the time."
"Then how do you do it all the time?" she asked.
Sean realized that the last remark had been a bit unfortunate. He had been switching between skills from different glitched classes, getting around cooldowns… but he quickly improvised, "Uh, you mean the normal strikes? And when the skill activates, it simply hits harder."
"So unfair," she complained.
Sean countered with: "But you have to get close and– I mean, muscles get tired too, you know." Emma groaned loudly, so he added, "There's no unfair anything. And you have two active skills instead of Fighter's single attack."
"Hella confusing, though," she remarked.
He frowned a bit. He didn't have problems with his three attacks, but then again they were all physical strike skills – he hadn't tried to cast any spell… yet. So he offered, "Yeah, I guess… but you'll figure it out, I'm sure!"
After a few steps, she asked, "What do you have, then?"
"I have what?" Sean asked, confused. Did she suspect he had glitched his classes?
Emma clarified, "As your second skill, or does your class not have–"
"Ohh that!" he cut in, then explained, "Yeah, it's… something to do with… physical resiliency, I think?"
"Like what?" she pushed.
"Like… I don't remember the exact description, but reduced blood loss and higher pain thresholds… or something like that?"
"So overpowered," she complained and sighed. "No wonder you didn't faint or scream – that rat got you pretty bad."
"Oh yeah, it did," he admitted. "It still hurt a lot."
"Yeah, but like…" she trailed off.
He glanced down at her tattered pant leg and asked, "Was that what happened to your leg?"
"Don't…" she said and paused. After a moment, she started explaining: "I thought the skill was supposed to kill these rats easily – and it can, but it doesn't always work and– Right, cooldowns." A small pause. "I was able to cast it two or three times before they caught up, and even then I had to run around. At some point I tripped and wasn't able to get away in time, so…"
Sean nodded and took a moment to process it. At least he had worn some armor to protect himself from the nasty claws and teeth. The leather pants and even the shin-guards hadn't been much, but were still better than her jeans. He was still curious about what happened, so he tried, "Oh, so they got you… did you respawn?" He wasn't sure if her clothes would reappear on her or how that worked.
"No, some player finished that monster-thing and…" she trailed off again.
Sean remarked, "Yeah, the other players are pretty helpful, surprisingly enough. Funny how they went for our legs in both cases."
"Where else would rats attack?" she asked rhetorically. "Even freakishly large ones?"
"Fair point," he admitted. "It's still something we have in common, I suppose? Even if only–"
"Don't," she broke in.
"I'm just saying!" he protested. "But hey, so– Wait, what's with all the blood on your pants?"
"It's…" she said and sighed, then explained, "There was a lot of blood, and everybody kept telling me to heal myself. Because I'm a Healer, right? But I wasn't planning on getting hurt – that Australian jerk made it seem so easy, the first few levels anyway." She exhaled wearily, then continued, "So I haven't even tried that stupid healing skill and only practiced the offensive spell."
"Right, you left pretty quickly," Sean commented.
"Don't start preaching," she instructed. "You weren't doing too well last time you were on the ground and screaming for your life."
"Was I?" he asked, more to himself than her. Back then he had been so focused on the fight that now he wasn't sure. He recalled, "But didn't you just say I wasn't screaming? The unfair bit that–"
"Whatever," she cut in.
He smirked. So she had exaggerated that part. One more detail about her story got him curious, so he asked, "How did they know you were a Healer?"
"Because of the stupid player tag," she answered.
Sean nodded and remarked, "Oh, right… so that's why– Right. Makes sense why you wanted to hide it! Not ridiculing, but… Wait, so how did you get better? Did you walk back to the– Are there NPC Healers at the gate? I forgot to check when we were there, umm…"
Emma answered after a moment: "I think so, but– Look, I couldn't get up, okay? It was a lot messier than your leg." She sighed. "Some dude carried me back to the gate, but we came across some Healer and– Ugh, everybody just kept complaining about everything. Wear the stupid cosplay, learn your skills, don't fight alone, blah-blah-blah. And the guards showed up accusing us of attacking each other and– It's only a stupid game, nothing in here matters."
He smiled when she mentioned being accused of PVP – the accidental skill use seemed to be a trend. But he also sort of saw why she kept calling everything stupid, so the most important question remained: "Why are you here, then?"
She stared at him for a few steps, then tried to dismiss the whole thing: "Just forget it. Doesn't matter."
He insisted, "No, but… I'm actually curious? You keep saying that everything's stupid and–"
"Stop…" she interrupted. "Focus on walking. And the dinner… weren't you supposed to be starving?"
"Well…" Sean started and realized that he was. The pizza was great, but it had been hours ago and even then he had only eaten two slices. At least they were approaching the plaza – he could see it in the distance already. He finally stated, "People here matter."
"What?" she asked.
"You mentioned that nothing in here matters, but I think people do," he explained. "The time together, the teamwork, maybe even–"
"Sure-whatever," she cut him off and focused on her phone.
Only now did he notice that she had taken a break from the screen for a while as they talked. But hunger became a much more pressing issue – he hoped the food there would be good!