“Hey Rose?”

“Yeah Val?”

“What was it like, when you died?”

“Hmm. I didn’t feel anything. Well that’s not true, but I didn’t feel the right things I don’t think. I was still in full dive, so as far as I felt, I was just fighting a boss that I wandered into by accident and then mid-fight everything sort of went sideways.”

“Sideways?”

“Yeah. Um, I think that was my VR gear trying to comprehend the inputs my body was giving as I, um, breathed my last.”

“Do you know why you died?”

“Well, I wasn’t super unhealthy. I probably could’ve stood to exercise more than I did or eat more ‘actual food’ as my mom would’ve put it but all in all, I don’t know why I died.”

“Then doesn’t that mean that you could still be alive out there? Maybe you’re just asleep!”

“Val. Buddy. I appreciate the sentiment, but I’ve already been in here for like 8 years watching you grow up. I’m pretty sure I’m not getting back outta here.”

“But don’t you miss your family?”

“I mean, I used to really miss them. Back when you were smaller and I couldn’t talk to you I thought, every day, how much I wouldn’t give to see Cecilia again, to hold her tight and never let go. To apologize to Mom for yelling at her that one time. Well, all those times. But I think I’m moving on. And besides, I got you squirt. You’re my family now, right?”

“Yeah! I am! I’ll always be here for you! Also, I’ve told you before, I’m not a squirt! I’m already 13! I’m almost an adult!”

“You’re right, I forget sometimes. Sometimes I look at you and you’re still the kid I saw when I first got here. Hard to think that you’re gonna be a big hero here soon!”

“That’s just what my dad wants me to be. The next generation of duke saving the empire. I don’t even like the empire. Dad always says how worse it is in the barbarian countries but your stories make them sound so much nicer than here.”

“Well the game didn’t describe it as the ‘Despotic Empire of Treston’ for no reason whatsoever. The Empire doesn’t have a great track record for playing nice with other people. That’s kinda how you get to be an empire.”

“Hey Rose?”

“Yeah Val?”

“You said before that there was someone in the empire you really didn’t like. Who is that?”

“I’ll tell you one of these days Val. You’ve gotta get out on your own first though. You only got two more years until your quest starts, right? It’ll be here before you know it!”

“It’s my dad, isn’t it Rose?”

“...”

“It’s ok, I’ve known for a while.”

“Haha. What gave me away?”

“Um. The way you glare at him whenever he’s in the room. The way you call him ‘Ro-butt’ instead of ‘Robert’. Um, one time when you thought I was asleep you said that you’d never let him hurt me like he did you.”

“Ah. Gee. Um. Look, Val, I’m sure he’s a great guy, but-”

“No, he’s not”

“- I just feel like- wait he’s not?”

“Yep. I know he’s not!”

“Aaaand how do you know that?”

“Because he hurt you. And anyone that would hurt a crafter who couldn’t even put up a fight can’t be a good person. Also, anyone that would hurt you can’t be good.”

“Alright. Fair enough. Good talk buddy. I’m. Um. Going to go float over there for a bit. See what I can’t see.”

“We’re gonna have another crafting lesson today, right Rose?”

“Sure are buddy. We’re not done with what we were working on yesterday, right?”

“Right!”

So that kid over there, running off to the sword practice they hate? That’s Val. Their father calls them Percival but I’ve tried a lot of names for them over the years and Val is the one that stuck so that’s their name to me. My name, as you may have gathered, is Rose. What you may not have gathered is that I’m the soul of a girl that used to play a VRMMO named Legend of Treston so much that I died while playing it. Truth is, unlike what I told Val over there, I do know how I died. Or at least, I suspect how I did. Poison. I think my parents poisoned me. Yeah not great but that’s just how that cookie crumbled. 

I had thought something was off about the taste of dinner that night but didn’t think more about it until I was in game and suddenly my gear started getting weird inputs, almost like a certain girl in a Full Dive suit was spasming uncontrollably. Weird how that happens when your parents see you as nothing but a parasite when in reality you’re the one paying their bills. But yeah I was the parasite, sure dad. 

It’s not all bad, cause somehow my soul ended up here in LoT. I miss my little sister, Cecilia, who as my parents put it was “actually our daughter unlike a freak like you” which I thought was a harsh comment towards someone you’re supposed to love unconditionally but hey what do I know about familial relationships? Lia deserved better than them, which is why I tried to give her everything I could while I was alive. I just hope things worked out for her. Not like I have access to her info .

Weirdly enough, if it can get weirder than a ghost in a VR game, I have access to my old character’s menu and everything. My ghost also looks like my avatar, which I’m eternally thankful for. I’d hate to have to try and explain being transgender to Val over there, though something has told me for a while now that they may understand more than I give them credit for. But yeah I can access the menu, which means I can also access news feeds I was subscribed to in life, which is how I know for sure my parents poisoned me, cause it was in the papers. Lia is, well, was, in protective custody. Guess she’s probably in foster care by now. At least I know she got what was in my will, the papers mentioned that at least. 

But yeah, hi! My name’s Rose, no last name worth mentioning. I was a 16 year old Pro-Gamer, not, like, competitively professional but as in I made my living by playing games. Specifically by crafting high end gear for people in LoT. I was actually on retainer for the strongest guild in the game, Gilt Glow, and personally hold myself responsible for getting them to that position. 

Now you may be like “But Rose! Can’t you just level a character by spam crafting the same stuff over and over as long as you have the materials?” and to that I’d laugh in your face and throw you out of my workshop because that’s not how LoT works at all. Crafting in some games like you mentioned is all about inputs and outputs. Input material, output gear, output crafting experience, rinse and repeat ad infinitum until max level. However LoT has a lot more to do with cooking and mad science. There’s no set way to craft any one item and on top of that, the exact timing for certain parts of the process changes from attempt to attempt depending on quality of the materials, quality of the tools, time of day, weather, star sign, the passing gnome’s shoe size, current tectonic activity, and who knows what else. Oh and also the crafter’s level in the various relevant skills. This is all to say that I was known as "The Mad Engineer” for a reason and it was because I may have been a little insane when it came to being able to make the things I did. 

Without any tools to measure any of the various conditions with, crafting requires quite a bit of intuition on the part of the crafter. A lot of feeling it in your bones, of putting your heart and soul into 5 pieces of iron ore and a smelter and knowing that if you pour it a second slower your ingot will be F-rank and you’ll be headed back to the mines for another shot. To say I got addicted to the system quite quickly is an understatement. 

But yeah 3 years to get to the top of the crafter rankings in the play time I could eke out between attending school and scrounging money for VR Cafes. Then another year of living at the top of the world, or so it felt to me, with my own Full Dive Pod and paying my parents to leave me and Lia alone and then BAM ghost time. 

I think I’ve said it before but being a ghost isn’t the worst. I get to hang out with Val whom my soul has been attached to since I got ghosted (har har) by my parents. What was less impressive is that Val is the ducal prince of the Quentin Dukedom, the Sword of the Treston Empire. The Despotic Treston Empire that is. The baddies of the game Legend of Treston. Those guys. Val’s not evil, heck I think most of the people in their life aren’t but their dad gives me bad vibes. Like major ‘my parents’ vibes. Whiiiiich is why I haven’t even tried to sleep once since coming to this game as a soul. I need to be vigilant, in case someone tries to hurt Val. Most people in Val’s life write off my existence as an imaginary friend or, as they grew older, a propensity to talk to themselves. Their Dad though, good ol’ Robutt, has a tendency to look straight at me. He’s never spoken to me directly, so who knows if I’m just paranoid, but Robutt’s healthbar does call him the “Duke of Souls”, which can’t be good for me. Or, well, maybe it explains why I’m still around. I’ve read plenty of stories about game devs using actual magic to make VR games work so maybe this is one of those things. 

I was finishing up some materials gathering in an unfamiliar area when an insidious fog rolled in. Which was my cue to start bolting but, as great as my luck is, I ended up running towards the source of the fog. A Giant of a man standing around seven and a half feet tall, a mountain of armor and muscle with a sword the size of me in his hand, pointing between my eyes. A four phase health bar with the name “Robert Quentin- Duke of Souls” branded on it. Now I don’t know about who you associate with but for me, I tried to avoid boss fights that had nothing to do with me. And from my extensive reading in the forums and on the wiki, not only was the good Duke Quentin a Raid Boss but they were also fought in a raid dungeon an hour’s ride away from where I was at the time. 

I have no idea what he was doing in that field that day and no way to find out. No one else ever mentioned on the forum that he showed up there so I think it was a one off thing which…doesn’t actually make me feel any better. Just confused. Still, Val is a cute kid at least. Their arms look like twigs compared to their dad, heck their entire body looks like a twig compared to their dad. They have the same vivid red hair and emerald green eyes but where the Duke of Souls looks like some kind of fiery giant, Val has an ephemeral quality that makes it seem like they might disappear if you don’t keep an eye on them. I’m, uh, hoping that has nothing to do with long-term exposure to chronic haunting. Their hair is a little shaggy and hangs in front of their eyes, giving them a bit of a moody appearance but I know it’s because they’re really shy and want to hide from the stares of people who only see them as “the Young Duke”. I think it’s awful how so many people can look at a child, a unique and irreplaceable individual, and just see another iteration of their parents. Speaking of Val…

“Percival, you must look straight at your opponent when dueling. There can be no room for hesitation, no room for misjudgement. Everything from the moment killing intent is sensed to the moment they lay dead at your feet must be known and understood exactly as you wish, or else it is your life that will be lost. Is that clear young man?” The Duke’s echoing boom of a voice rattled the windows in their frames nearby while Val glared at the sword in their hand. It’s hard to tell why he glared at the sword and not his father; despite their father’s immense and overbearing presence, Val never cared about their dad being there or not and at times treated him like part of the backdrop. Kid was fearless about some things for sure. But still they were glaring at the sword. I floated up alongside and took a look at the sword myself. There wasn’t anything particularly offensive about it, it wasn't covered in wolf turds or anything. I could barely smell, but it didn’t smell like rotting offal. It didn’t look all that well balanced nor all that good of a piece but what could you expect from an NPC smithy. Heck, this might as well be a low level drop, that’s what it was meant to be: starting equipment. Wait a minute. 

“Hey, um, Val. Are you mad at the quality of the sword he handed you?”

I got no verbal response but I did get a nearly imperceptible nod and I saw their eyes scanning every flaw and imperfection in the sword. Holy smokes I made a monster! During yesterday’s lesson I had them go to the armory and showed them every defect I could in the weapons there. Granted they had kicked us out before long but really the quality of their arms left much to be desired for a Ducal Family. It wasn’t the family’s personal armory I suppose so I guess it was to be expected? Wait! Seems like Daddy Dearest noticed that nod. Oh shit! I start shaking Val’s shoulder for all the no good it does me, not like they can feel it, but their dad is saying something. 

“Percival I know you can hear me. If you feel truly comfortable ignoring my advice, then I suppose I have nothing left to teach you. Shall we arrange for a match to test today’s lesson?” Aw crud puppies, that's the part where he nodded! “Very well then, Helias! Come, duel my son and test him on disarmament techniques!”

A female knight by the Duke’s side, one of his personal guards, known as “The Knight of Flowing Sun”. She had to fight the Duke to a standstill in order to gain the position and she made that look easy! The Duke has to be punishing Val with this! Helias never struck as the type to bully a child unnecessarily but also she is being ordered to by her liege lord so who knows what she’ll do! Aaand Val is….still glaring at their sword. 

“Oy! Val! Snap out of it! You’re about to get your ass handed to you!”

“But Rose! Look at this thing they gave me to fight with! It’s an insult!”

“You’re gonna be a snob about weaponry now!?” 

“Young Duke Percival, raise your blade please. If you do not I will be forced to attack an unready opponent and you may be injured.”

“Shit Val, just fight with it for now!”

“Fine! Fine! I’ll fight her with it but I won’t be happy about it.”

Thank god Val can listen to reason to an extent because Helias was getting a lot of pressure directed at her from the big guy to teach Val a lesson about…I don’t even know, listening to their father? Probably that. But thankfully Helias is actually kinda chill. Though HOLY SHIT she just started swinging! Jeez lady, give someone some warning before you just start trying to take their head off! I thought she was chill, but you wouldn’t know it from the moves she’s throwing at poor Val here! Her first move was to literally decapitate them. Val blocked it though! Damn, half the time her sword’s a blur and the other half the time she is too. Most of what I see is the sparks flying where Val blocks her attacks with their sword. Every attack. And they’re not even sweating! They even look bored. 

I knew they drilled the sword into Val from a young age, heck I’ve been here for most of it, but this might be the best Val’s ever fought. Holy shit even Helias is off put, she just stopped dead with that parry. She clearly wasn’t trying her hardest but she’s getting a, um, little more competitive it seems. Shit, seems like she isn’t the type to lose easily. Val was just standing still blocking everything she threw at them but now it’s a little harder to follow. Every time she goes to disarm him like the Duke just taught, Val either blocks it with their sword or suddenly their hand just isn’t where it was a second ago. 

Huh, maybe I was too worried for them. It’s been….5 minutes now and Val hasn’t given an inch of ground. Hasn’t actually moved more than about a foot total actually and anything they gave up at one point they took back later. Meanwhile Helias is..um…almost dancing around Val trying to follow the Duke’s command. I’m getting bored but the Duke looks. Hmm how to describe that look. Can you imagine the look of someone who just got their cereal spat in? Mix that with the textbook picture of a proud father on the face of a grizzly bear and you have a vague image of the Duke’s face. Honestly it’s comedy gold. Buuuut I’m getting bored so let’s have Val end this….if they can. 

“Val, if you can hear me, can you kick her ass?”

Another imperceptible nod but suddenly Val is nowhere to be seen. Holy shit did I vaporize them!? Oh no they just started moving as fast as Helias aaaaand I’ve lost all sense of this fight. IT’s like looking into a cloud of steam with sparks flying inside, though I know it’s just their afterimages.  I knew that my ghost counted as level 1 for some intents and purposes but it sucks that that means that all of my combat perception helpers are gone too. Not that I ever had many of those but I had the basic ones that allow you to see high-speed enemies move. Wait, does that mean that Val here is already on par with a boss?  Helias flies out of the “cloud” with a boot print on her face as she takes a dive into the floor and now Val is above her with a sword at her throat. Damn that seems like it hurts. Definitely gonna leave a mark or something.  Holy shit does this mean Val is stronger than her? Are they stronger than the Duke? I think the Duke’s asking that question as well. 

The Duke gives a few fake coughs into a fist and says “A good showing Percival. Helias, you’ll be spending the next few weeks training. Percival, you’re dismissed from sword practice for the day. Either return to your studies on financials or find some other way to productively occupy yourself. Eltheim and Kenneth, train with Helias. The rest of you, with me.”

Aaand off he goes. Good riddance. Helias looks kinda shocked, maybe a little concussed; that fall looked really bad actually. Val offers her their hand and she takes it with good grace and maybe a bit of nausea as she gets to her feet and wobbles a bit. Yeah, definitely concussed.

“Pass her either a green potion or a magenta pill whichever you have on you.” I whisper in Val’s ear and they proceed to produce a small packet of hand-made pills in a light magenta color. Val proceeds to explain that taking one should help offset her nausea and help her recovery from the hard hit and also apologizes for the unsportsmanlike conduct of, and I am not joking here, “spin-kicking you into the ground”. Helias seems to take it well and gives a bit of an uneasy laugh and proceeds to swallow the pill, though her face turns at the taste. Yeah I agree girl, those things are not nice to taste when you don’t have the right ingredients to adjust for taste. Unfortunately for her, when I taught Val to make them, we didn’t have access to Violet HIll Honey Mint leaves, and any other flavor will either dilute the potency or make it poison so we had to do without. But anyway, off topic, 

“Val! When did you get so strong?! You wiped the floor with her!” Val just shrugged, walked over to a squire among the knights, and presented the sword, which, upon closer inspection, is missing quite a number of chips and pieces and was overall looking like a piece of scrap. No wonder Val didn’t want to hit her with that thing, it would’ve left a nasty scar. 

“Throw this away, it’s seen the last of its usefulness” Val says as they pass the scrapped sword to the squire who does a double take upon receiving it. Yeah this is the kid that passed the sword to Val not 20 minutes ago in ‘pristine’ condition. Just goes to show how hard Helias was hitting towards the end, how bad the sword was compared to hers, or both I suppose. 

“So what’re we doing after this Val? Going back to finances? I know how much you love budgetary tables!”

“Uggghhh not on your life! I’ve had enough figures to fill up a lifetime, I want to learn more about crafting!”

“I kinda figured you’d say that. So here, yesterday I showed you how you could go wrong with an average iron sword. We'll see if we can’t get everything ready to make one by the end of the week, how about that?”

“Yes! Wait, how? Don’t we need a forge? I don’t think the blacksmith is gonna let us borrow his forge just willy-nilly like that.”

“That, my dear friend, is why we have to make our own!” I place my non-corporeal arm around their shoulders, spreading the other translucent hand across the sky. “Crafting is about the glorious journey from having sticks and stones and a dream, to making weapons and armor the likes of which haven’t been seen in generations!” I curl my spread hand into a fist and spin to face them saying “If you share my dream, then come with me to the hills out back behind the castle and we’ll start this crafting journey together. Are you with me?” I look at them with bated breath but they just give me a resolute nod and say “All the way! Let’s go!” and run off leaving me to float behind them. 

I figure I should note that they can’t actually leave me behind and vice versa. I have a range of about thirty feet where I can go through anything but beyond that I just kinda press up against a glass wall. If I’m lazy and don’t feel like thinking about floating, which is how I move my body, I can just kinda ride Val’s coat-tails so to speak, though they tend not to like when I do this as they think it ‘shows moral degeneracy’ which I’m pretty sure was a term I taught them as a joke but whatever. 

Once we got to the hills out back they arm themselves with a sturdy branch that looks around C-grade as far as materials goes. Well, if I were to use it for a staff or handle. For a bow it’s the wrong type of wood all together, no spring to it really. Though a more springy wood can be good for certain staves, typically you want a stiffer wood and this is off topic. Sorry. 

Another note is that while I can access the remains of my player-character menu which I think is interesting from a whole “ghost haunting the system” perspective, Val has their own kind of menu they can access, different from both a normal player-character menu and the one I have currently with certain features removed, such as the chat, world map, and logout features. I have tried to contact support before but all I got was an error message in the past. But Val’s menu states their character class as “Undetermined” which is not a status that can happen to a normal player. There are also a few odd things compared to normal that make sense from the whole “NPC menu” perspective. They also have no chat, no world map, no logout, and no staff support. Also, neither of us has heard any other NPC talk about menus or anything so it’s possible this is something unique to our situation. Val has said that they don’t remember if they used to be able to open the menu before I was attached to them. I can also see their menu when they open it and vice versa. 

Anyway, crafting. I instructed Val to run around getting good rocks. What constitutes a good rock you ask? Good question. For our purposes, we need ones that are heat resistant, sturdy, squarish or with the capability to be shaped, and a few other details. Now if you were just eyeballing it, it would be really difficult to tell the right rock from the wrong rock and trust me it was difficult for me to learn the difference. But a smelter or a forge will know the difference and when they do they make that your problem. This is all to say that Day 1 of sword crafting was spent gathering the right rocks for the smelter and the forge. After about 4 hours we got what we needed. It was at this point that I wished, not for the first or the thousandth time, that I could interact with the physical world somehow so that I could draw diagrams of what everything was supposed to look like. Instead we had a rousing few hours of going back and forth with me pointing and telling where to put rocks and how to fit them together and in the end after a lot of grief the smelter was finished and the forge’s base aspects were well on their way. It was at this point that that same squire, I think their name is Jackson, started heading towards us sounding out of breath as they informed Val that we were summoned for dinner. 

The Duke seemed to get a kick out of Val’s dirty clothes, saying that it’s natural for boys to go on adventures instead of staying indoors looking at ledgers all day. Val was quiet for most of the dinner and left once dismissed. While hanging out in our room, I showed them my menu with the wiki page for smelting up and walked them through the process to try and get it out of the way for tomorrow. I’m looking forward to how well they do with their first try.