Freya carefully considered her response to Nightscythe. Tapping her cheek, she stared at the keyboard. She had a lot of questions. It would be best for her own sake for them to meet face to face.

[Freya Evenkey: Can we meet in person?]

[Nightscythe: Sure]

[Nightscythe: Give me 5 minutes]

[Nightscythe: Sakfa town square?]

Freya huffed at the barrage of notifications. She still couldn’t understand how players could type so fast. Heilong said it just took practice. Freya tried to find the right letters as fast as possible, but the pressure of trying to match everyone’s response speed made her fumble more. 

[Freya Evenkey: Yes, let’s meet there.]

After hitting the little arrow to send the message, Freya looked up to find Yina watching. 

“Sorry, it must look weird, right?”

Yina shrugged, “I can tell by the look on your face you’re plotting something.”

Taken back, Freya almost denied it. It was scary how Yina seemed to know everything.

Finally, Freya admitted, “I have an idea. I want to investigate the demoniclasts. I need to learn more about the faction of player killers Sangen talked about. I plan to pretend to be an apprentice. Plus, as an apprentice, I might be able to learn some good fighting techniques too.”

“Aren’t you a little old to be an apprentice?”

“I’m not that old,” Freya said, a little miffed. Out of all the problems of this idea, her age was the least of her worries. Sure, at age twenty-four she was old to pull off the normal apprentice age of eleven, but there were older apprentices too. She was much more concerned about hiding her player status. If a demoniclast with a stolen Player Card identified her as a player, it wouldn’t end well.

Yina cocked her head to the side, studying Freya.

“Hm, maybe you could disguise yourself as a young boy.”

Freya sighed, “I’ll see if that’s possible.”

“With the right clothes, no one will know better,” Yina said confidently.

“It doesn’t matter what I look like on the outside. I need to change the way the game identifies me.”

~~~~~~

“Actually, disguises will help with the misidentification perception in-game.”

“Really?”

Nightscythe nodded. After explaining her general plan to the rogue, Freya was surprised to find Yina was on the right line of thought. They sat in Freya’s rented room with her shaman equipment surrounding them. Nightscythe appeared fascinated by the mess of bottles and dried herbs. She wasn’t sure he was listening to her initially, but it seemed he had paid attention.

“At a high skill level, it doesn’t matter what you look like. But at low levels, any natural help you can get will help maintain the perception filter,” Nightscythe continued to explain. “Still, I have to warn you, Misidentify might be a difficult skill for you to learn.”

“Have you learned it? Rogue’s have an affinity for it, right?”

“I never bothered. But, yes, it’s easy for rogues to learn. I don’t know how hard it will be for a martial artist. At least you’re not a knight. I heard it’s almost impossible for them.

Freya sighed and pursed her lips. She had decided to ask Nightscythe about this since she assumed he had the skill. But it turned out he wasn’t going to be much help in obtaining Misidentify.

“Do you think this plan is feasible? Do you know if it’s possible to use Misidentify to make yourself appear as an NPC?”

“Hm, I don’t know if anyone’s tried it before. I can look on some game forums for you.”

“Please do,” Freya said. “And, don’t tell anyone else about this.”

“Sure, no problem.”

“Also, could you look and see if someones selling a Misidentify skillbook? I can’t access the game forums easily. It would save me a lot of time.”

Infamous Biscuit had shown her how to access the game forums, but it was a confusing mess to Freya. It was difficult to navigate, and searching for things required typing. The slang and references she didn’t understand did not help.

“Oh, do you just want mine?”

“What?”

“I have a Misidentify skillbook. I got it a while ago, but I never bothered to sell it or use it.”

Freya pressed hard on her temples, Why didn’t you say that before? 

Calming herself, she instead said, “That’s great. I’ll buy it from you.”

“It’s okay. I can give it to you for free. But before you use it, let me research more. Maybe there’s an item that could do what you want.”

“Using an item would be easier than learning a new skill.”

Freya never considered that possibility. She ran her finger down the wood grain of the table. There was still too much she didn’t know about the game. Far from understanding the higher-level workings of why and how the game affected her world, she didn’t even know all the basic knowledge.

They chatted a little longer, then Nightscythe disappeared back to his world.

Maybe I should ask Infamous Biscuit about all this, Freya thought, staring at the blue-haired kid’s empty chair. Both players had a lot of knowledge about the game, but she trusted the mature druid much more. But, between the two of them, she knew which would tell her this was a bad idea. She shook her head, I’ll tell him after I leave.