Beautiful, crystal clear water churned and crashed into the sandy white beaches that surrounded Bellcester Shore. The bottom scales of his feet felt the cool, crisp liquid swish and pull around him as it retreated back into the ocean. Behind him, he could hear Cassidy rushing into the ocean. The footfalls of her humanoid tiefling dressed in matching, patterned beachwear were heavy upon the water.
“Fresh air, fresh air!” She called out with bright-eyed excitement.
“You don’t see that every day,” the ranger remarked aloud next to the black haired druid. He was attending to her wand that had been damaged in the previous fight. “How are you holding up Eugene?” His attire had been changed into what seemed to be floral swimming trunks and a festive beach looking shirt.
Eugene picked up a small turtle that had poked its tiny self in between his taloned toe. Carefully he brought the small creature to the edge of the water and let it go. “My condition says Exhausted, probably from the last combat. It’ll probably be healed up with a long rest.” He noticed that his attire had changed to match what he had already witnessed on his teammates avatars nearby. The bright colored attire definitely did not match anything he would have chosen for clothing.
“So we should avoid combat?” Alex remarked as he witnessed Cassidy pulling shells she spotted out from the sandy water. He had then watched Magnolia go out into the water to help assist her in the endeavor. Her beach outfit consisted of polka-dotted patterned swimwear. They were thigh deep into the water, the calmness of the area was welcome comparatively to the previous Viking realm of Mydalr.
“Preferably.” He noted moments before watching Magnolia and Cassidy yanking on something underneath the water. While the water was supremely clear and calm, the area they were at stayed beyond his sight.
The girls’ teamwork pulled up the mysterious thing which garnered not only his attention but Alex’s. And then they began to stand up as the ground and white sand shook.
The girls fell backward into the swirling water as the thing they pulled up happened to not be a large shell, but a monster blue and green mossed crab with a monstrously large claw. Magnolia scrambled back in the water, sputtering water from her mouth. And Cassidy gazed up in wonder.
Alex and Eugene pulled out their weapons from their wrist consoles, the exasperated look upon their avatars showed a mixture of disapproval, irritation, and ‘You have got to be kidding me’.
Cassidy and Magnolia made their way back to the shore. Their splashing was the only thing obnoxiously attracting the crab to their location. Eugene glowered at both the girls who retreated behind them. “You better hope this isn’t a level 20 + monster you two scrounged up.” He called back to them but the greedy ReSolve creator happily brought out her rod.
She started her casting of black magic. “Don’t worry, I always finish what I start.” She chirped this happily which caused him to shake his head. Alex unleashed three arrows into the fleshy bits of the exposed crab. The roar of the beast shook the area with soft vibrations.
“Mags start a scan of the monster.” Eugene finally gave up as he witnessed the burning fire of passion in his team mate’s pursuit to end the threat. All he cared about was the end of this battle so he could pass out without worry.
Cassidy was in charge of dinner that night, as the camp fire roared in the sandy shore pit of Bellcester. From their gigantic catch previously, they were able to procure some crab legs and meat. If only they had something like butter, then it would be dine-in perfect.
Eugene squeezed the water out of his hideously disgusting festive shirt, as Alex contributed to the fire with more driftwood he found from the beach. The ranger also added to Cassidy’s menu for the night with roasted veggies they acquired from Mydalr’s forest.
Magnolia fidgeted anxiously. She knew they recent fight had worn out their swashbuckler even more, and could see the stacking debuffs against him. He had taken more damage than usual, and Eugene’s reaction time was slower. Luckily for them, the large crab was barely a level 17. It was a definite welcome battle comparatively to Emrys. She could still feel the phantom pain from his blows. And yet she still couldn’t forget the agonizing screams he made when Emrys ripped the sands of time from his hourglass.
The half elf had managed to destroy the ring, by sheer luck. Which only brought the fury of his assault onto her, and those piercing ash mauve eyes… Magnolia shivered at the memories.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” The disgruntled dragonborn plucked out two piping hot legs Cassidy had just cooked. Jostled in her thoughts, she accepted one from him. The protective outside of the crab was easy to break, revealing juicy, steamy crab underneath. The soft fluff of the meat melted in her mouth as she chewed vigorously.
“This is good, a bit flavorless.” Alex replied as he made makeshift plates with the cooked vegetables. A small shower of experience rushed over both him and Cassidy, granting them a slightly higher cooking ability.
“Maybe seasoning?” Eugene replied, his wet shirt still dripped in excess water. The heat from the flame would hopefully dry it soon.
“It’f miff’ng l’mon budder.” Came the estute and stuffed mouth of Cassidy.
Magnolia stifled a chuckle as she moved onto her plate of veggies. She picked up the cooked carrots sliced into neat circles with her fingers, blowing on the item before eating.
“Okay, now that our stomachs and minds are at ease.” Alex placed his meal in his lap while he spoke. “I think we can all agree that the NPCs aren’t exactly nonplayable character material. In fact, it appears to me that us as players are quite the foreign topic of discussion to their own way of life.”
Magnolia remembered how the guardsmen acted when she called out Cassidy’s username during conversation.
“Speaking of that,” Alex assessed, “I think before we reach the town of Bellcester Shore, we should agree that Usernames are pointless. I think it would be difficult for this game’s version of townspeople to remember things such as RelicPetals or Engine_Loaded.”
Eugene nodded agreement. “I don’t know if you all noticed during out last fight, but that guy said my username to do whatever the hell he did to me.” He thought back to him calling to the ring to steal his time. “I’m not sure what it was with the usernames, but he definitely did something to screw with me.”
“How are you feeling after that? What exactly did he do to you?” Magnolia spoke with concern. “I only saw him raise the ring and activate it by speech. And then you were screaming on the ground.” She frowned.
“It felt like—I don’t know—like someone was ripping my heart out of my chest, the air from my lungs—it felt like my head was going to split into two. It wasn’t a comfortable experience.” Eugene remarked, staring into the fire. Cassidy poked the embers with her makeshift stick to keep it alive. “He stated my username. We never even spoke our usernames except for Cassidy’s, remember?”
The group went quiet at the rhetorical question. They all looked down at the fire. It wasn’t until Eugene brought their attention back with the statement of: “We need to talk about the giant elephant in the room so to speak.” He looked to each of his friends.
Cassidy wiped her hands. She decided to pick up from where Eugene started. “First we should talk about Origin, and whether or not we are trapped in the game. Second, we need to see if we can contact the VRGE doctors and Engineers in the lab to find out what exactly is happening. Third, we need to see if we can find the other beta testers. There should have been around fifty testers, I counted about ten people in our group, so going off that assumption, five color groups would equal fifty.”
“And let’s say we are stuck—how long would it take before they realize there’s a problem? How much time will pass in here compared to our own time back home?” Alex played with his wrist console once more, testing out the contact help page. When he couldn’t access that menu, he opted for the log out method. Except that too booted him out. It more or less glitched back to the main home page.
“Is this affecting other players, or just specific players? If it’s specific players and not others, this might been something more—malicious.” Cassidy surmised.
“If it’s targeted, then why us?” Magnolia piped up. The inflection of her voice went up an octave as her anxiety shot straight up. “All of us aren’t able to log out.”
Eugene frowned. “We need to gather more information. We won’t know until we find the other testers to learn more. But another thing to ponder is what if the program itself manifested an artificial intelligence?”
“Are you saying one of the program AI’s gained sentience and is playing around with us?” Cassidy questioned. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of something like that—but then again—Emrys didn’t feel like any old NPC antagonist.”
“He felt—real. As strange as it is to say that.” Magnolia replied, her shoulders quaked from unintentional twitching.
Eugene nodded. “Yeah, I have to agree with Mags on that one. I honestly thought I was going to die.” He stared down at his avatar’s hands with grimace. “I don’t think that infinity hourglass on our life measure is a good thing. And I don’t want to experiment what might happen if we do “die” in this world.” The heavy what if hung in the air between them.
“All of these what if’s aren’t going to help us presently.” Cassidy replied and jumped back to her food. “We can’t afford to overthink and over-analyze something we don’t know much about.”
Alex bobbed his head. “Then we should make for town tomorrow morning, and see if we can find the beta testers. We won’t progress the game any further until we gather more information. Going into town may inform us of something we don’t already know as well.”
“Though I do want to discuss something else I noticed.” Cassidy perked back up, turning her attention to Magnolia. The black haired druid froze under the cool gaze from her tiefling friend. “We need to discuss what happened to you in Mydalr.”
“That chosen thing—from Chronos?” Magnolia guessed. “I don’t know, I was desperate to help Eugene. And then time just—I don’t know—froze. Then there was this bright being standing behind Emrys saying I only had mere seconds to destroy the ring. So—I just did that.”
Alex continued to play with his console. “Does your console have any immediate changes or effects? Why don’t you check the Character Growth page. Actually, I think we all should.” He immediately brought up his to show to the group. Half a star was filled in with everyone in the party, and listed under each of their names were titled action moves and descriptions.
“Look at that.”
Eugene and Cassidy did as Alex instructed and saw the same thing. In that moment, the ranger tapped on Magnolia’s highlighted profile. Under the subpage, he noticed that he could now do a special team attack with her.
“I guess because we learned more about each other in Mydalr we were able to grow as a team.” Cassidy replied. “This is an interesting special attack.”
“I am liking my combo.” Alex replied with a smile, “Arrows of Light, very flashy.”
“Swirling Circle.” Eugene said with a slight lilt to his voice. “Special attack between Engine_Loaded and RelicPetals where a myriad of wind-styled swords tornado into a group of enemies.”
Cassidy whistled, and rested her chin upon her upward palm. “That sounds like an awesome AOE attack.” She smiled to Magnolia. “You and I will be experiencing quite the fun attack shortly. I’m excited for our next all-out attack!” She smiled brightly and Magnolia could only feel the concern rise within her.
“Character growth is equally just as important as building up our character levels. Perhaps we should be more aware of character growth situations and events.” Alex suggested with a bright smile. “Although learning of your yaoi collection is a bit of an extreme to character growth.”
Magnolia finally felt her nerves calm down. Her embarrassment about her collection seemed like a distant memory compared to what recently happened. Whether it was due to the fact that they were all actively on their main consoles, or whether it was a pure coincidence, all four wrist bands beeped loudly in notification as a pop up screen blocked what they had been looking at.
Everyone directed their attention to their next Quest, but instead of saying Main Quest 2, it said
SubQuest: Bellcester Shore
Your party has just arrived on the quiet sands of Bellcester Shore. You have vanquished a rare and valuable monster that has terrorized the shores of Bellcester recently. You noticed that this monster crab is unusual for its breed, and way too mature for its species in this area. You suspect that a time irregularity is the cause for the abnormality. Making camp for the night, you take a rest and plan to ask around the Docks of Bellcester Shore to the Northeast.
Magnolia finished reading the description aloud for all of them to hear. “Uh, we knew it was unusual for its breed?”
Cassidy smiled happily, giving the remnants of the crab a thumbs up. “It tasted great. 8 out of 10 points, would recommend.”
Eugene sighed, waving the two of them off with his talons. “Let’s get ready for some rest. Who will take first watch?”
Alex raised his hand, pulling his knapsack to his side to rummage around the bag. “I’ll take first watch. Mags, do you want second shift?”
“Sure, I can do that.” Magnolia replied.
“Perfect, and then Cass can do the third shift. Everyone will have a long rest, and Eugene will clear his abnormal status effect.” Alex procured their camping gear for the group to set up.
“Sounds like a plan. Alright team, let’s set up camp.”
Eugene pulled himself off the sand to stretch. “It’s been a long time since we all enjoyed a beach this late at night.”
They sentiment seemed mutual between them.
“Then let’s record this moment! Maybe they have a picture or record keeper for it?” Magnolia shuffled through the pages before stumbling upon the record keeper. The journal kept note of their adventure up to date, and even had still shots taken when they were in Mydalr. The last picture saved was them sitting around the camp fire deep in discussion.
“Okay, that’s really weird.” She stuttered, and showed everyone her discovery. They too felt a little unnerved.
“And just like that, the joyous moment of enjoying the beach is gone. Thanks Mags.” Cassidy frowned, the feeling of some entity watching them, and taking pictures of them eerily remained in the back of their minds.
