Astra eats her fire-roasted mole and clears up her campsite before we get moving. Dwayne and I recently rested, and Astra's dinner compensates for sleep, so we are all able to walk through the night. (It's actually a clunky game mechanic that breaks with reality and means that so long as you sleep you don't need to eat and vice versa.)

Astra's a pretty gorgeous fox-girl. She's a couple of inches taller than me (about half-a-foot taller if you count the ears). She has lustrous orange hair fading to white at the tips and keeps it tied back in a ponytail. A spray of freckles covers her nose and cheek bones. She wears a drab green outfit that looks like shorts and a matching vest. It doesn't provide a lot of coverage, but it isn't nearly as revealing as my outfit. Her breasts are either large B-cups or smallish Cs.

It's extremely weird being in the position of finding myself attracted to a girl while comparing my not-all-that-dissimilar body to hers. She's taller, leaner, and more athletic. While I'm more petite and curvy. Her skin is very pale but still in the human range unlike mine. I wonder if she finds me nearly as attractive as I find her, but realize that's probably unlikely. And even if I didn't normally find myself in the friend-zone IRL, I certainly will in this situation.

Astra tells me she's a level 3 Warden.

"What exactly is a Warden?" I ask.

"It's the ranger class for this species. Gives me bow, knife, and tracking skills. What are you exactly?" She blushes and corrects herself, "I mean what's your class?" She also adds in a self-conscious voice, "That goth-girl look is killer, by the way. Might have been tempted to select it for myself if I came across it."

"My class is Mystic. It's basically a mage with spells dealing with death. Goes with the whole Banshee thing."

She says, "I didn't see any of those options in character creation."

Dwayne jumps in almost shrieking with his high-pitched voice, "It's because of the crash. It changed all the species."

"What crash?"

It turns out Astra came in afterward like I did and this is the character she chose. We explain everything we know about the system crash (Dwayne even gets a bit graphic about the weird sex stuff the game now has, although he doesn't mention his encounter with the lich.)

When he's done, I ask Astra, "Did you have any problems in character creation? I mean, did you notice the AI trying to force certain choices." I'm curious if she had a problem with the AI pushing female as a gender or trying to take her other choices from her.

"No. I did think there must have been some kind of an upgrade because the options weren't familiar. But I was able to get pretty much exactly what I wanted. Actually, it was better than what I'd planned on. This fox species is dope compared to the wolf one in the original game. Plus, I always wanted to play a foxkin."

"So, you've played Feronia before?"

"A bunch of times. I love these immersive games. Getting to play different people and really feeling like you're in the body. It's awesome. Is it your first time?"

"Yeah." She follows up and asks me why I decided to play Feronia. Both the reason for me playing and why not one of the other genres like the outer-space game or the western one.

I don't want to tell this beautiful girl that I decided to play just to hit on someone, so I just say, "Some friends invited me to join them. So they were the ones who picked it." Before she can ask where they are, I add, "I got delayed, and they logged in before I did. And unfortunately, you need to use character names for the Communicator to work. I wish they'd just kept their real name like I did. It would make it so much easier."

"You used your real name? So did I!" Her brow crinkles in thought. "It strange though, I've always hated Astra and pretty much cringed whenever anyone used it, but since I started playing, I've come to love it. I'm not even sure what I used to dislike about it."

There's something about this I want to explore (something nagging at me), but Dwayne jumps in and changes the subject. "So, you just play these games alone? You must die a lot."

"I usually find a party pretty quickly. Part of the fun is meeting new friends." She smiles, but Dwayne doesn't, indicating there won't be anything fun about this friendship. Astra asks, "So, are you two starting a party? Are you friends outside of the game?"

This time it's me that's quick to get my answer out there, "No! We just met and decided to travel together. We don't have any real plans except for reaching the village."

Dwayne doesn't seem to take offence. "Yup. I'm hoping to team up with some bad-asses like me." In a not so quiet hushed voice, he says to her, "I can't keep saving Triste's bacon for her."

I want to argue this outright lie. Perhaps say something about how he better buy a truckload of health potions if he doesn't want to die in his first fight without me. But I know it will come out all awkward and make me sound dumb, like all my comebacks. So I stay silent.

After a couple of minutes, a man's voice calls out, "Halt!" He stands and rises out of a bramble of heather bushes that hid him. His gray cloak blends his features with the darkness. "This is a toll road. It will cost you two gold to pass. Each!"

"Two gold? Are you out of your mind? I'm not paying that!" Dwayne says.

"Then, you'll die, Little Miss."

"Oh yeah? You and what army?" But he's not even finished talking before four more emerge from the darkness to surround us. 

Detect says they're bandits ranging between level 1 and 3. The most advanced of them being the human man who stopped us. The others seem to be a range of species all of them are taller than the three of us, except for a wood sprite that's about the same height as Dwayne. They seem to be all armed with swords or staffs of different sorts. I don't see any bows.

None of them on their own would pose much of a threat but at nearly two to one odds, it's not a fight we're prepared for. I have enough gold for this toll, I can even pay for Astra if she doesn't have the coins, but before I can suggest this option, Dwayne is screaming, "Die!" And letting loose with his wave attack.

Before Astra and I can react, the bandits swarm around us. A cat-woman with a quarter staff comes for me. I let out a Wail, but all of them seem to resist it. So, I begin my Dance of Death as the cat-woman slaps her wooden rod across my shoulder blades nearly sending me tumbling on my face. But I keep my feet and don't miss a step of the choreography that I somehow know as though I've practiced it for years. My new dress hugs my body but stretches to accommodate my moves. It's a huge improvement over the cape. Although, I'm happy I kept the thong on since the dress rides up my hips a bit, and it was barely covering things as it was.

The cat-girl wails on me with her staff until she keels over from the dance. Then, the sprite stops their attack on Dwayne (who's getting hammered by three of the bandits) and attacks me instead. Between the waves and the dancing, we chip the bandits down until the remaining three look bloody and tired, but then they all pull out health potions and revitalize.

I dance a bit more, but as my magic dries up, I draw some life out of the sprite, then finish them off with a swipe of my knife. I go to help Astra, but she's finishing off her bandit with her dagger. Only Dwayne is still fighting. Or rather, he's drinking a health potion between getting bashed with a club. We go to help, but he waves us off, yelling, "I got this!"

He's fighting a male felinoid, and they're pretty evenly matched. He clubs Dwayne, and Dwayne stabs him with his trident, until they both look like they're ready to fall down and die. I'm just about to step in, when the cat-man finally drops.

When the last bandit dies, Dwayne collapses to the ground. "Fuck! I can't believe I'm out of health potions again."

"Maybe we shouldn't have attacked them then," I say, mustering as much irritation as I can.

Astra says, "Yeah, that was dumb just charging them like that. We weren't even ready."

"Is that why I had to carry the both of you? Maybe next time, be ready!"

I'm about to smack him despite the fact he's a girl and smaller than me, but it looks like the slightest tap will kill him. Heck, he looks like he's already dead. Maybe even a bit lich-like come to think of it.

Instead of slapping him, I say, "Perhaps we should rest and recuperate."

"Finally, you have a good idea." He doesn't even move, just switches off for his sleep period.

We loot the bodies and come across three pieces of equipment we can use and three items of value. This isn't the first time we each got something we could use after a battle, and it makes me wonder how random the item drops really are.

We place a pair of tier 2 black sandals (that we got off the sprite) next to Dwayne along with a small emerald. Astra takes a new leather armor top (also tier 2). It looks a bit like a tank-top with thick seems running in contour with her waist and under her bust. It's a medium brown which messes with her dark-green ensemble, but she doesn't seem to mind. I let her her have a black pearl which is the better of the two remaining pieces of treasure.

This leaves me with a silver necklace and the only magical item we found. A silver nipple-ring with white crystals on either end of the little barbell. I'm not entirely thrilled with adding to my body jewelry collection (seriously hasn't the game heard of earrings), but it does give me a 5 point bonus on my Defense. And at least, no one will see it and it doesn't actually require my sensitive nipple to be pierced. The game just installs (that's probably not the right word, but that's what it feels like) it on me.

And speaking of my sensitive nipple: it's a whole lot more so with the ring in it, and I feel the slightest rub of the dress against it.

Astra and I leave Dwayne where he's sleeping, sitting up in the blood soaked dirt of the road. We settle down in a spot where the grass is pressed flat forming a bit padding against the hard ground.

Before going to sleep, I pull up the system and look up the listing on Liches, since the way Dwayne looks has me concerned. I skip over most of the article and read the part on the infection.

"...if the subject should orgasm from the actions of a lich, but survive the attack, they will be infected with the lich's essence. Each time their health is reduced to a minimal level (5 Life Force points or less), they will be turned a little more until they become a demi-lich (it takes 10 instances of having reduced Life Force to fully become this monster)."

I look up Demi-Lich.

"A demi-lich is an undead creature that resembles a lich in most ways with two exceptions. They do not posses the power or equipment to drain life through sex. They are also in all respects slaves to the lich that turned them, even if that lich is dead. When in contact with their masters, demi-liches will obey them without hesitation. When separated from their masters, they will attempt to fulfill what they believe their masters' wishes may be. If a demi-lich increases 10 levels after their transformation, they will evolve into a full lich."

Damn!

Dwayne had drank two health potions and was pretty much bottomed out on life. So, he'd probably added 3 lich points just in that battle. How many did he have before that? How much humanity did he have left? How much longer before he was a monster attacking us?

Yet, another reason to go our separate ways, it would seem.