While I was blankly staring at the message about my debt, the redhead grinned with satisfaction. “You better watch out,” she said, and with a wave of her hand yanked me and sent to back to the ship. She did that without an explanation of what had just happened, which wasn’t nice.

Oh, I knew what happened, but I wanted her to admit it before I strangled her.

The ship was still cruising the same as if I had never left, so I leaned on the railing and checked the river below us, still flowing. The woman, who was unmistakably Ian's boss, had an odd hostility towards me. Was it because I exploited the game? Come on, I was only doing what anyone could!

With a swift kick to the wooden plank holding the railing, I regained my composure. “That! She’s…” gritted my teeth and balled up my fists, but refrained from swearing.Her interest meant I had to be careful with my future exploits, because they flagged me for sure. It didn’t matter though, because my goal had already changed.

With the help of Duke’s soldiers, I’ll support Lisa in her fight with Dmitry. Then I’ll ask Katherine if she could help me explore the Forgotten city, so I could prepare for the main quest I got from Duke - Irwen’s declaration of war.

“Let’s do it!” With a grin on my face, I kicked the plank again, relishing the satisfying thud.

The monotonous sailing continued for two more hours until Village Number Seventeen came into view on the horizon. While the captain's deep voice boomed from the deck, I was leaning on the railings and observed the bustling activity.

As I made my way towards the port, the ship started suddenly swaying, that made me stumble and lose my footing. Desperately trying to catch a yard, I flailed my hand, but I was a few inches short and fell onto the deck. “Son of, gimme that!” The captain yoinked the helm from his subordinate, pushing him out with his shoulder, and steered the ship properly. “Quickly, lass!” he yelled in my direction.

Not wanting to hold them longer than I should, I jumped down to the dock and wave at them. Sadly, they no longer paid me any attention and disembarked without stopping. Nobody was waiting for me; it was anticlimactic.

No matter; I clutched the document from Duke and strode towards the center of the village into sunset! Wait what? It was four hours already?

As everywhere else, these villages were almost identical, down to the now shining magical lamps. Either developers, or elves, were lazy, or had used some kind of uniform building plans. And original names for villages. The latter was probably closer to the truth, because as far as I knew about imperial officials, they loved to flaunt their power over their subjects and force them to build the same proper imperial way.

Well, except for the building in the center of the village. Every other building was one or two stories high at maximum, but the guildhall loomed above them, casting a shadow even at the two stories high shop.

As I looked around, some players were gawking at the building, clearly amazed, or maybe surprised. Hah, wait till you’ll see the Tower of Eternity for the first time. The stream of players was heading inside, so I just let the flow take me with them.

Over twenty counters welcomed all the players and even that wasn’t enough, because at least an hour long queues sneaked around the spacious hall. White columns that were evenly spaced throughout the room supported the ceiling, and the workers used them to hang notice boards that were filled to the brim with quest papers.

Countless lamps cast a calming, yellowish glow over everything.

On the right wall, near the other end of the hall, was an inconspicuous door. I strode there, although all the murmur of hundreds of players silenced my confident steps. I had to weave my way through the motionless morons, who refused to make way for me.

One lone guard was standing in front of the door, blocking my way. Her medium armor tightly wrapped around her, but devs gave her much more leeway than to me, because she didn’t have any cleavage. But she had a mean look, and a put hand on her silvery sword, when I came near.

“Halt.” She stopped me with a rude gesture of her hand and pulled her sword ever so slightly. “Missy, private guild area, go back to the queue.”

My nervousness only reminded me I was in an enormous crowd, but I squeezed out, “No need!” Flashing my nicest smile, I presented her with my beautiful signet silver ring with a snowflake insignia. “I am Princess Charlie, baronetess of the Empire. Let me through. I need to speak with the Guard Captain.”

The woman just laughed at my weak show of power, pulled out her sword and threatened me with its sharp point just under my chin. “This is the guild, even the Emperor himself has to wait in the queue, that’s the law!” What? I was thinking about my answer while she measured me and licked her lips. “Try me, squeak.”

I frowned under her uncomfortable stare and shook my head, backing slowly. “No need for violence.” Stupid guard! Was that all work for naught? Why couldn’t I even skip a queue? Her triumphant grin felt like rubbing salt in the wound, but I refused to let my anger show.

She was right. The guild was independent and hated politics, but Mayor and Guard Captain had offices up there, so they weren’t that innocent. Why is everything set to get me? Why do I face so much setbacks? With a sour face, I joined the long queue and pondered about the stupid system.

“Charlie!” a familiar voice woke me up from my slumber. What, where? Why? Following the sound, I found the culprit. “Here!” Katherine was waving at me while jumping with joy. She was roughly in half the queue! Wasting no time, I ran towards her, pushing the other players out of my way.

Her arms wrapped around me in a tight embrace, and I felt all of my nervousness dissipate. Damn, why was she so beautiful? Instead of her pretty face, I glanced up where should be an icon - telling me she was streaming. “No recording?”

“Nope. ‘cause that’s boring!” Gesticulating to the surrounding crowds; she threw her hands around wildly. “I killed ‘em in three hours and finished quest! This worse than gettin’ streamers’ badge!”

“Badge?” I perked up my ears. “I thought that’s difficult.”

“Wat?” Her eyes widened, and she flung her palm into my hair, laughing and making my haircut a mess. I frowned, and I tried to push her hand away, but she held firm, and thanks to struggles, even pushed on me. Her strength was much higher, so I staggered. She then finished, “No way! Just ask ‘em and you get it!”

Thanks to her, the waiting wasn’t boring and half an hour was up in no time. Naturally, I squeezed out only a few words at a time, but that was an improvement! Katherine turned in her quest and now was my turn. John, it’s only talking with the clerk. Nothing hard. I placed my hands on the rough, white-wood counter, which was still smelling like a new straight from the forest, and smiled at a young Elven man sitting across.

“Hello!” I blurted out, materialized the Duke’s message and threw it at him. “I need to talk with Guard Captain!”

The man had no problem catching it - was that a common occurrence? “A minute, please.” After breaking the seal, he adjusted his glass, leaned closer and examined the order with care. “We will do as ordered, miss.”

He jotted something on an official-looking paper with a perfect handwriting and folded my message, hiding it. “Our forces are to bolster your fortress, baronetess. It pleases me to inform you that the Fire Tamer has been defeated, so I am empowered to deny the request for additional forces. Will that be all?”

After the Lisa’s request I half-expected we won’t be faster, but this? “I… see. Thank you.” Arguing with him would be pointless - I learned it the hard way with the angels managers. “Could you at least post a quest to help defend us?”

“Naturally,” the clerk said. “We need your…”

It took me twenty minutes to just post a quest. Bureaucracy at its finest. That meant there was a new hero, and it was Dmitry. Same as in my previous life, I changed nothing. Per usual, as it seems. “Wat now?” Katherine's voice woke me up. Her voice? After posting the quest I was thinking, and in my internal pondering, I somehow left the guild and was standing just next to the waiting girl. “You said somethin’ ‘bout Lisa?”

Lisa. That poor girl. “I did, didn't I?” I couldn’t hide a sadness in my voice. “What we can do now? Dmitry is strong. Very strong.”

“Tat’s just naïve, Charlie!” She took advantage of my grim mood and pat me on my back. Her every slight move sent a pleasant sensation around my skin. “Ya know ‘tat!”

While quickly backing from her hand before I started purring, I let out a sigh. His every videos were awesome and no one could argue he was a pro at Rimelion. Yeah, people argued if it was right to support the demons, but we didn’t question his skill. Although Lisa needed support right now. What was one day of waiting compared to her friendship? “Let’s go there regardless of that.”

“Walking…” Katherine grumbled, and patted her thighs, which were exposed, courtesy of the developers. “Tat’s tedious! Slow!”

Blushing at her action, I glanced away and focused on where we were. Strange, these days I was so unfocused, more acting than thinking and what not. Where was my level-headed, analyzing warrior? Instead there was I, scared of getting hit and… Instead of looking around, I was thinking about why I wasn’t level-headed anymore. Charlie!

Okay. We were in front of the guild building, just next to the constant stream of players. NPCs erected their stalls here and were hawking their wares - even a few players tried their luck with selling wolf furs. Just next to these idiots were swooshing horse-pulled cars on a stone-paved road. Oh yeah, that just might work, let’s ride! So I turned to my favorite streamer, who was still massaging her beautiful thighs. “Hey Katherine, let’s catch a ride there!”

“A ride? Like no walkin’?” As she grabbed me by my shoulders, her eyes sparkled with excitement and curiosity. “Do ya hav’ quest?”

No way - what was she doing? Something like this wasn’t something my stupid body could fight, so I just shook my head. “Oh,” she said, deflated, let me go, slouching her shoulders. “Teasin’ like ‘tat…”

“No teasing, we can ask.”

“Ask?” she asked, her eyes boring into mine. A sudden rush of blood to my cheeks made me feel self-conscious. Instead of answering, I took her hand, leading her down the bustling main street. Players like her still didn’t know the NPC were almost… were alive. In our world, hitchhiking a cart was a thing of the past, but here?

Sadly for us, hitchhiking was hard. Despite my initial enthusiasm, there was a slight problem - almost nobody wanted to go through the area we were heading to.

Yeah, I should have known that, because who would want to travel next to the barren lands crawling with fire monsters? In the end, after I asked like a hundredth farmer if he goes there, I got a positive answer and he even agreed to take us with him. His cart was average, clumped together with nails sticking everywhere, but hey, don’t look a given whiskey in the bottleneck.

Sacks of smelly goods, wheat and what-not were haphazardly flying around when we squeezed in and he cracked his whip. A fellow whip user!

As a bonus Katherine was grinning at me like if we won a lottery, and she repeated “Wau, ‘tis like real” until I silenced her with my dismissive look. The evening wind was icy and stung our cheeks as we rode through the countryside for tens of minutes. These were the moments when the game truly shone. Riding under stars on a wobbling cart, with a streamer I always wanted to meet and towards a fight with a dangerous enemy.

“Katherine-”

“Just Kit, please.”

“Okay, Kit, what do you want to select after you get to level ten?”

She pondered for a moment, resting her head on a sack, and said, “Dunno. I was-”

Suddenly, the cart shook violently, causing me to lose balance and crash into a protruding nail, reducing my hit-points by ten. Before I could curse at the stupid driver, a deep howl pierced the silent night.

“Wulfs are attacking!”