Chapter 7: A Grimm Orphanage

In Fate Online, the famed Character Creation system was perfectly adaptable, capable of giving any player whatever appearance they wanted to have in their gameplay. Thus, it was no surprise that the game was filled with good-looking players - nobody wished to look unappealing after all.

However, it did have its limitations - rules that the creators of the system had enforced for a variety of reasons.

The first one was the restriction on gender. All players, male and female alike, must use character profiles that matched their sex.  This was initially a decision lambasted by critics, stating it was sexist against the 'other' genders, but over time as the creators piled up proof all arguments against the restriction ceased.

The reason?

People were simply not meant to act in a body that were not of their own sex. It wasn't an ethical problem - it was psychological. When test subjects tried to use such character models that opposed their physical gender, they all logged in and logged out very uncomfortably as their minds tried to make sense of the abrupt change in sexes.

The next restriction though, was a much easier subject. While the Character Creation system allowed a player to age their looks to any extent, they weren't allowed to de-age themselves below the appearance of a teenager.

Why is this so? Because nobody wanted a player to look like a child.

It was simple, really. Why would Fate Online, a game for those above the age of eighteen, allow its players to fight anything that looked like a kid? Exploitation of people's aversion for hitting children aside, it was an acceptable worry for the developers, as they didn't want to be blamed by human rights activists on the subject of child abuse.

Thus, in the world of Fate Online, there were no such thing as children.

...Or so I originally thought.

"Mister! Do you want to play with me?"

Yawning a bit from my sleep, I shook my head at the kid in front of me. "Sorry, kid. I'm still too tired."

The boy that I met the previous night pouted. "My name's not 'kid'! I'm-!"

"Konan, right." I interrupted him as I stood from the sofa I slept on to rub at his hair. "Now, why don't you play with Tieza? Don't you have a game that you invented with her?"

Konan went red to the ears. I had a feeling he liked the feel of being petted, much to his embarrassment.

"But now even that's boring!"

For a second, I wondered on how to convince the boy to leave me for a while. As a teenager, I really didn't know how to handle kids, and for some reason from the moment I plucked Konan off of stealing away my meal the previous night the boy clung on me, much to my horror.

Thankfully, for now I was helped out by someone else.

"Konan, Mr. Rain here needs his rest. Leave him be."

Konan hitched in place. "...eek."

"Now, go on or you'll be doing the chores for today."

The boy left in a cloud of dust.

Thankful, I turned to the person who helped me out of that problem. "Mr. Grimm, you really know how to handle kids, don't you?"

The man in front of me huffed quietly as he re-affixed his glasses. "Of course I would be, Mr. Rain. I am the caretaker of this orphanage after all. Even kids would become easy to manage if you have years of experience in it."

Grimm Locke was a man of morals and of a strong backbone. With his grey hair, half-rimmed spectacles, and wizened appearance, he had made for a striking first impression when I had met him the day before. It was after I met Konan, Tieza, and another boy named Conrad - when they found out that I was lost in the forest, they led me here into this orphanage, which was aptly named the Grimm Orphanage after the man in front of me.

Of course, he then proved that striking first impression right when he managed to not only send the kids to their beds, but me as well.

"I don't envy your situation," I teased. "Your hair must've been grey long before it should've been, am I right?"

Contrary to my joking tone, Mr. Grimm nodded seriously. "Yes, you are right."

...A moment of silence other than the chirping of crickets.

I gave out a sigh.

Do NPCs not have a sense of humor, or was it just the man in front of me?

My eyes then wandered over the visible, noisy group of kids from outside the nearest window, then to their collection light grey Alignment Cursors, then back to the man in front of me and his own ash-grey one.

Nope, it was just Mr. Grimm.

Fate Online was the very first VR world that existed.

One would expect that over the past eight years it did, the player count would decrease, but contrary to that expectation, over the years the population that played Fate Online only expanded.

Why? Only because of one very important reason.

The NPCs.

After all, everything else, including the realistic graphics, gameplay, and sheer amount of material in the world of Fate Online was replicable somewhere else. Machinery like the VRT system could be easily dismantled and studied, new worlds and plot-lines could easily be written if one knew how, and with just a few million dollars worth of money one could simply create a new VR world all by themselves.

Except, that is, the Artificial Intelligence that worked everything inside Fate Online.

That was why Professor Brunnings was a famous man in my college - he was the one who created such a revolutionary AI that actually simulated perfect human thought and emotion. He was the one who thought of creating sentient life out of ones and zeros - and actually manage to succeed.

Laws were even created because of him. The AI Rights Protection Act, or ARPA for short, existed because when people realized that the AI that worked Fate Online could actually think and feel, rights activists fought to allow them rights of their own.

Rights to prevent copying. Rights to allow love. Rights to protect artificial life.

It was a hard start back then, but together, my father and his team managed to push and succeed.

Thus, when I was young it came to exist the thought of ["NPCs are alive as well. Respect them as much as respect everyone else."]. Just years after Fate Online existed, populations playing VR expanded as people wanted to meet and talk to these NPCs, and over time even the NPCs themselves gained a right that used to only exist with players; the chance to become an Adventurer inside the world they existed.

Even nowadays, there were talks of allowing AI-Human marriage.

And while I, Rain, entered the world of Fate Online for a reason separate from those who wanted to meet these NPCs, I still wanted to meet these group of living, sentient beings that my father and his team managed to bring to existence.

I just never thought it would be a kid that I met first though. Or an orphanage of kids and their very serious caretaker...

"So, now that you've rested, is there any place you are planning to go to? This orphanage is far off from any public routes, but I could point you to the general direction if you'd like."

I gave a sheepish shrug. "Honestly, I don't have any. I just went off in a random direction without any plans from the moment I exited my starter town."

Mr. Grimm raised a grey brow. "Really now? And I've heard Players like you tend to have determined goals wherever they go. Or a Quest perhaps?"

I couldn't resist a chuckle. "Sorry, I'm just a Fool here. I'm far from any normal player. I'm actually thinking of staying for a while around here until I pick something like a goal."

"A Fool?" Now, Mr. Grimm really sounded surprised. "I've never heard of such a class, and I would've remembered one so... derogatory. Though, I suppose it could mean something..."

He then shook his head, his eyes turning serious again.

"But very well. If you wish to stay longer," at this point, his gaze visibly went up to look at what was no doubt my Alignment Cursor, "you must abide by my rules and agree to some of the work I would give to you. I would not have any freeloaders in my orphanage, Player or no."

"Of course." I raised my hand in oath. "I promise."

The change was instantaneous.

A bright smile was suddenly on Mr. Grimm's face, and his hands suddenly met each other with a loud clap.

"Good!" He beamed. "Now, do your first job here as a temporary resident of this orphanage."

I ended up taking a step back. His grin was cheerily malicious.

"First up, entertain the children!"

As if coordinated, all at once one of the sliding shoji doors that made the walls of the orphanage collapsed, revealing the more than a dozen of kids that were leaning their weight on it, apparently eavesdropping on the conversation we just had.

My face paled as I tried to count and take into list the sheer variety of the kids.

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From boys and girls, to human kids to half-demons - and was that an elf boy? - to obviously prankster-type devil folk to angels to dwarves to more and more and more...

I heard Konan squeak something happily under the heap.

How many kids does Mr. Grimm take care of in this orphanage!?

"And also, fix that door for me as well."

I was really a Fool, wasn't I...?

Thirty minutes and a new Building Skill later, there I was, sitting in the largest room of the Grimm Orphanage, with a circle of thirty-eight kids - I counted, though it was difficult considering the Vargas triplets - all around me.

Outwardly, I was easily smiling and joking with them. Outwardly, they were satisfied with that.

However, inwardly, it was not so.

What should I do- what should I do- what should I do!?

One could say that it was the calm before the storm. The kids were grinning, yes, but in the same time they were visibly vibrating in their seats, obviously expecting something spectacular from me. After all, I was a Player, a level 42 one in fact, so I should certainly had some flashy stuff I know, right?

No.

Even with my inflated level, it didn't change the fact I was just a newly-started Player.

I simply didn't have anything to show them.

Konan, being the kid that met me first, was the worst of them all.

"This is boring~!" Yep, he just did it. Broke the peace, and thereby forcing me out of the safe 'just-talk-and-grin' zone. "I want to see something! Like magic! Or fighting skills! Or cool treasures, and stuff like that!"

Like a switch was flipped, every kid in the group then turned to me with stars in their eyes.

I gulped.

This was it. I was going to be gutted by a group of kids for being a boring, newbie player-

Wait, wasn't there something I could use?

"Ahahaha, alright, alright," I gave them a sheepish look as I called out my Status Window. "Just give me some time here..."

There it was, over my list of Titles. The Hunter titles aside, the Fool (0) shone at me almost cheekily as I read its description again.

'Actors on a stage,' wasn't it?

Well, maybe I really was a Fool then. Fools were what people called their jesters back during the Dark Ages after all...

Quickly, I replaced my other title with the Story Teller.

"Alright! I've decided now." I clapped my hands, acting as if I had just made a decision instead of being forced to take a last option. "I'm going to tell you all a story!"

Unsurprisingly, the kids' reaction to my words was whining.

"Ehhh~!" Konan, ever the vocal one, was the spokesperson of the bunch. "That's going to be boring! Like I said, I want to see something cool!"

There was much nods amongst the children.

"Oh no, but this story I'm going to tell you all isn't just a story." I didn't know how I managed to say those words with a straight face. "It's going to be filled with drama! Action! Romance! Magic, and treasures, adventures that had for years gone untold!"

Untold, if you considered the story being from a book untold. It was never actually been told out loud, right?

"And best of all," I finished, much to the now-interested eyes of the kids before me, "You are all going to see it all happen before your very eyes!"

Or so, I hoped that was the effect of my title.

Thus, I finished my starting piece, and the children were all quiet and waiting for a story. Then, quietly, very quietly, I took out the book from last night again, opening it at the very beginning.

"It all started with the story of an elf who left his home in search for glory..." I began, my eyes only flicking through a page once before I memorized the words, enough to tell it to my spellbound audience. "His name was Al'Gadrin, and well you see, the people in his land had this strangest belief that you were not an adult until your age reached seventy-seven..."

And then, the world around us changed.

The orphanage was gone - now, I and the children were in a beautiful land of fairytales and magic, where people's ages were counted by the decades and all had elfin ears and wings. The floor turned into a rolling sea of grass that could be actually felt.

Even I found myself wonderstruck by the effects of my storytelling.

"Now, Al'Gadrin wanted to prove them all wrong." My voice sounded far away, almost as if a narrator in the sky. "He took on his father's sword without permission for many nights, and trained and trained until, finally, he was sure he could take on one of the savage beasts outside the land of La'Cordia..."

Then, a man appeared over the rolling grass - not with us, but over a distance. With a gleaming sword of silver, he practiced and practiced wielding it, manipulating it like another limb back and fro, before walking away into a far-off city.

Then and there, I knew he was the Al'Gadrin of story I was telling.

"Wow..." One of the kids murmured in awe. Even Konan was vibrating on his seat as he watched as well. "That's amazing..."

I smiled at their expressions, feeling the sweet taste of success.

Maybe, being a Fool wasn't so bad after all.

"Then one day, he went out without permission to go on a quest of his own making..."

It was a few hours later that I finished the story. It was to my surprise then when windows popped up.

You have told the story of 'Conquering The World Tree' by Bathsilda Emmyrs! All listeners now have increased stats!

Your STR has increased by 2!                 Your END has increased by 2!

Your VIT has increased by 3!                  Your INT has increased by 4!

Your DEX has increased by 2!                 Your WIS has increased by 5!

As the bearer of the Story Teller title, you now have gained the skill Sword Mastery: Level 1!

Your CHA has increased by 10!

If it were any other time than then, I would've jumped in joy.

But honestly at that point, I and the kids were all crying - in tears of joy or sadness, I didn't know, as the story of Al'Gadrin really turned out to be all that I said and more.

After Al'Gadrin lost his family and home, in a fit of anger he looked for vengeance. Again, he went on a quest, but this time it was a far more serious matter - a quest to murder his family's killers, the Draven race of lizardmen. Over time, he became stronger, and stronger, up to the point where no one could match him-

Only to feel empty over the reptilian bodies of the Draven he killed. They were always more of them.

But then, he heard of a tree named the World Tree, which people told that if one reached the top, he would be granted a wish for anything. Thus, he went on another adventure, conquering the World Tree, only for his wish of 'Killing all Dravens' to turn into 'Bring back my family' when he finally reached the peak.

Time was rewound. Al'Gadrin, the legendary conqueror from the dead land of La'Cordia, once again became Al'Gadrin, the 62-year old 'child' of the line of Gadrin. Fate changed, and Al'Gadrin the Young One became patient. The Draven race never attacked, and thus his family became safe.

"Alright, note to self, next time buy myself some less emotional books."

I murmured to myself as soon as I finished tucking the children back to their beds, as per the bemused Mr. Grimm had told me to do when he saw me and the kids coming together in a giant hug.

I had never moved so quickly away from kids in my life as I had back then.

"Big Brother Rain..."

Wincing a bit over the affectionate nickname, I gave the girl below me a soothing smile. The elven girl perked up at my expression.

"Yes, Elena? Is there something I could do for you?"

The girl before me sat up from her bed, giving a silent nod. "Big Brother Rain... actually I have a story of my own to tell..."

It was a good thing Elena was looking down on the ground as she spoke, for all I could do then was stare open-mouthed as a window appeared before me.

Quest: A Little Girl's Request!Little Elena of the Grimm Orphanage has a story to tell! Listen to her and go on a quest to find the monster preventing her from sleeping well at night!

Quest Reward: ???

"Well, I'll be damned."