Alex's Room, Le Chevalier

"Silver," a tired sounding Olrica greets when the call connects.

"Good evening. I suppose I don't need to tell you why I'm calling?" I kick off my shoes and sit on the edge of my mattress.

"No. What the fuck was that?"

"I should preface this with a few things, so bear with me," I clear my throat and sip from my bottle of energy drink, "First, and this should go without saying, this conversation never happened as far as other people are concerned. Do not tell Hadrian or anyone else you know about this."

"Like I could," she grunts,"Sure, whatever."

"Second, is that while I likely know more than you about this...situation, I am not omniscient or in possession of all the answers myself. I don't know why it's happening, I only know that we aren't the only ones affected; Irikis Falk is also an Inheritor, and the memories - because that is what they are - are real. Leave your scepticism at the door, or this conversation will not go anywhere," I take one last swig, then cap the bottle and put it on the floor.

"Ok, back up. What actually is this?"

"This isn't the first '2108'. Nor is it the first time we've played Astral Reckoning. For reasons that I do not understand or have any insight into, we have Inherited memories of, let's just call it a parallel timeline for the sake of argument. It's why I know about Rambling Rose, you, Hadrian and a number of other things. I lived it - or at least, was a spectator to it as a nobody, know-nothing player looking up at you all from the bottom rungs."

Olrica goes quiet on the other end of the call.

"So, you're claiming that you're...what, a time traveller or whatever?"

"Of a sort. I have the complete memories of who I was up until 2138, when a worldwide event in-game ended in failure. I immediately woke up in my younger self's body the day before Astral Reckoning, and have been working towards preparing for that event ever since. It's the only lead I have," I confess.

"...I only got flashes. All of them related to Henna," Olrica goes onto explain what happened in her visions of the alternate-past. By the end of it, I somehow find myself disliking Hadrian King even more than I already did.

"I see. Well, thank you for sharing. This will be extremely useful information going forward," I thank her sincerely, "I only knew that Rambling Rose dealt with Geronil and that something caused your relationship with the guild to sour shortly after, leading to your highly public resignation."

"What...else do you know about me?" Olrica asks reluctantly.

"Not a great deal, admittedly. You joined up with some other corporate interest group as an officer and faded into obscurity almost immediately," I explain, "Rambling Rose...didn't last. Hadrian's deal with Arevas drove him completely insane over the next couple of years, until he had to be institutionalised. He used his power to impose heavy unofficial 'taxes' in his new 'kingdom', gathering sacrifices for his master and to sate his own newly-found need to hoard valuables. When another guild from the kingdoms got provoked by his attempts to expand his influence, they crushed him and took Meteo City for themselves for a short while. Hadrian's family tried to kick up a stink about it, but they didn't get anywhere."

Olrica laughs darkly, "I believe the phrase for this is, 'rewarded as a traitor deserves'."

"Indeed. I'd already left the city by this point, so all of that is just reported news and hearsay, though," I continue, "So, that just leaves the question of what you're going to do with this information."

She sighs, "I don't know. To be honest. This is all pretty surreal, if it's true."

I sympathise with her confusion, "It is. For better or worse, that has yet to be seen. If you'd humour me, I'd like to make a suggestion."

"Go ahead."

"Join my team. We've both got more to gain from working together, and Rambling Rose is a dead-end for you even without taking your Inherited thoughts and feelings on the matter," I offer.

After a moment of consideration, Olrica rejects me, "No. I can't just abandon my contract with his company on a moment's notice like that - this is still my job. Unless you can foot the bill for my severance fees and offer a competitive salary, that's not something I can do. In all likelihood, by the time I'd quit Rambling Rose in this other timeline, I'd made sure I had somewhere else to go."

I frown, but don't really have much cause for objection to her pragmatic approach to it, "That's completely reasonable. So, in other words, you're willing if the money is there?"

"Yeah, basically. Putting aside whether this alternate timeline bullshit is real, I'd be willing to listen to anyone who could make me a better offer - Hadrian and his closest cronies being insufferable just lowers the bar," Olrica admits, proving my evaluation of her mercenary-esque thought process correct, "So, unless you can offer that, no deal."

I scratch my head, "While I can't offer the same as him right now, I can certainly do so with the way things are progressing within the next two months. If you are willing to give me a chance, I can promise to give you the benefits of my knowledge for that long - at the end of which, you can take your new, much stronger position to shop around for a better employer."

"Are you asking me to do volunteer work for 'exposure' right now? Seriously?" she asks incredulously.

I wince, "I suppose that's not too far off the truth. Sorry."

Olrica sighs, "Look, Silver, I like you and all, but a girl's got bills to pay, and I'm not hearing the clink of coins, you feel me?"

Sighing, I try one last tack, "Other than a sum of money I evidently can't pay, what do you want for your cooperation?"

"Hm. I don't know if there's anything you can really offer me? I've got a pretty stable gig here. Not the most glamorous or the least stressful, but it's better than the imaginary shit you're offering, no offence," Olrica equivocates, "Tell you what. If you can manage to deal with Arevas yourself without sacrificing anyone to him or becoming his bitchboy, I'll consider lowering the bar just for you."

I exhale, "I'll...see what I can do."

Her proposal is my best shot to get her on board early, but the caveat is not something I can consider all that digestible. Confronting Arevas was likely going to be a certainty after hearing her story, but coming away from the encounter unscathed isn't something I have much hope of accomplishing. Something she's well aware of.

What she's saying in other words, is that if you can't do better than me, why should I follow you?

She laughs, "Anyway, if you're really from the future, can't you just like, go win the lottery or something? Pretty sure you could afford my prestigious company if you snapped up a few tickets."

I grunt, "As I mentioned, I don't know everything. It's been thirty years, and even if I had eidetic memory, which I don't, I never paid any attention to such things."

"That's a shame," Olrica mutters, "I was gonna ask you for some numbers."

"If I had them, I'd be using them to buy myself a house or apartment of my own," I tell her drily, "When the time comes to confront Arevas, will you be joining me?"

She breathes in deeply, "I'll think about it. Oh, before I forget, the local teams have started clearing the Vacantsoul Foreman more consistently."

"That's excellent news. Thank you," I smile, anticipating the windfall of currency and Terrorstone that await me upon my return to the city.

"No problemo. I'm gonna hang up and go make some ramen or something. See ya," Olrica hangs up without a chance to respond.

Throwing my phone on the bed, I unleash a yawn I'd been holding in. That didn't quite go as well as I'd hoped, but I still got a lot from that conversation. Between myself, Olrica, and Irikis, we have three different people now with Inherited memories, while the extent and content of them differs between us. Irikis at the bottom, remembering the puzzle solution for The Failed Mage's Regret, Olrica recalling multiple key moments in the Magpie Demon storyline focused on her friendship with Henna and me, transferring my complete self.

If I find more Inheritors, there's a chance I can establish a pattern and make some inferences from it. Something to seriously consider, once present matters are taken care of. The biggest issue, of course, would be how to approach such people if and when I find them. Depending on how much they remember, they could be more or less amenable to a polite conversation about it.

Concerning those present matters, however, is the question of how to deal with Arevas once Geronil is defeated. There is absolutely no way we can kill him, or fight him directly. Even restrained and weakened, he could deal with hundreds of thousands of me and barely feel the strain.

What I do know, however, is that demons are legendarily obnoxious to kill permanently. Thus, most get sealed away for someone else to eventually deal with. The Shards of Terror in Miner's Nightmare both do and don't follow this logic, as even if they're difficult to kill if you don't target their 'real body', they're not true demons - only a distant echo of the Authority of one. It says a lot that the Dragon Knight who kicked the shit out of Arevas decided to imprison him instead of just stomping his essence into pieces, though I admit I don't know the full story of that confrontation.

I'm sorely tempted to try asking Jannis for help in this matter. Odds are she'll just demand I deal with it myself as a challenge to overcome, though. As a rule, Jannis dislikes interfering in the affairs of others and denying them the chance to grow from the experience. There's also the matter of me not knowing what the hell the Title she gave me does or what she's planning on giving me at Level 10. Asking for more may very well be pushing my luck a little too far across the line with her.

Rubbing my tired eyes, I take a step back from the whole thing mentally, and observe it from the bigger, metagamey picture. The Magpie Demon is a low-level Quest chain concerning the first main storyline of Meteo City's development. Examining it from the perspective of a game designer, this shouldn't be some impossible task, it'd be like the hero of a story seeing a wounded dragon flying over his village one day. A, what's the phrase? Paper Tiger. Scarier than it actually is.

Looking at the dungeons in the area and my own experience, I can say with fair confidence that there should be a gimmick to this whole story that I'm not seeing. I'd like to say that it's to prod another Dragon Knight into action, but that's not something just anybody can do, and they live on an entirely separate continent besides, rarely leaving it.

The Empire of Stone likely won't move for this either, even if they should. They're a bit busy trying to hold their borders in the north at the moment, and short of Arevas directly escaping, the powerhouses residing up there aren't going to move and risk leaving a vulnerability to exploit on the frontlines. Meteo City is a low priority for them.

I still have time to think this through, fortunately. I'll have to quiz Olrica some more on the subject, maybe dislodge some pertinent information she may have neglected to place importance on. Discussing it with the team would also help - we're all in this together after all, and a different perspective may find a solution I'm incapable of finding myself.

Before I go to bed, I should perform a quick check-up on the progress of the other starting zones; I've been neglecting them the past few days.

Nostraza Town is doing just fine and dandy. Players are starting to branch further out, following the red carpet treatment that the starting zone offers for it's difficulty curve. The local Angler and Tailor players are also progressing fairly well, but the Tailors have hit something of a wall in terms of Proficiency gain because of the low-tier materials they've been mass-producing, and prices are on the rise for components in equipment recipes, which a few enterprising players are taking advantage of - one or two names here that I vaguely recognise, but nothing concrete.

The Town of Forgiveness is doing ToF things, is the best way I can describe it. The Door of Penance opened yesterday as well, and the ceremony that the local priesthood put on has the local teams in a frenzy of curiosity as to what is going on with it. The answer is something I already know: The so-called 'Door of Penance' is one of the fixed entry points for The Land of Exile, and it opens once a month according to the lunar cycle - notable particularly because it's also a two-way portal, with a well-established camp of Penitent Warriors on the other end.

Taladi's Waystation is on it's way to stabilising. By now, most of the smaller teams causing chaos around the place have either given up on the game or been forced to join larger organised alliances similar to the Darkest Dreamers Alliance in Meteo City, with at present, five major clans engaged in a battle for supremacy. They're all names I recognise, interestingly, but I'm still curious as to which way the winds of victory will end up blowing. As I recall, the eventual victors would be Frontier and The Huntsman Collective, who enter a truce period after dealing with their rivals, mainly because they focus on different areas - Frontier being more interested in resource areas, exploration and infrastructure, while The Huntsman Collective only really care about fighting monsters, clearing dungeons, and PvP. In other words, perfect partners to develop the zone, ideologically.

Other noteworthy information is that the highest level players right now are a woman called Indigo Manstead in The Town of Forgiveness, at Level 9, someone I remember as being one of the big players in the early raid scene and a fairly well-known streamer, and a man from a rival team, also at Level 9 called Oep Shae which I refuse to try and pronounce who is leading the charge on The Squire's Dream. They've made some decent headway into Easy Mode, as well.

In other words, I'm not too far behind the curve - and after tomorrow I'll be roughly on the same level of progression if all goes well. Even so, there's one last thing I should do before I sleep, now that I'm thinking about it...