After breakfast, we headed out as a group, planning to go to the Adventurer's Guild, both to pick up possible quests in the direction we were travelling, maybe something we could turn in when arriving at another branch, and get some information on local traders. At the end of the day, the local Guilds were the first stop for most adventurers coming to town, making it a prime location for merchants and a valuable contact at the same time. While it might not be the most profitable to sell to those large, long-established merchants, looking for a smaller place and comparing prices would take a long time, while giving little reward.

As we moved through the streets, following the directions given to us by Delmar’s wife, Londri, I noticed that somehow, quite a few eyes, especially the eyes of guards seemed to fixate on me, whenever I stepped into their view. Some of those eyes even stayed on me, tracking me in a way that sent a shiver down my spine.

“Why do I feel so watched?” I asked Sigmir, after looking around once more, making sure that it wasn’t just my imagination.

“Because they are watching you.” she replied, speaking just as softly as my question had been. Thanks to our connection, I could feel that she, too, was rather alarmed by the attention I was getting, to the point that her hand went down, to the loop that held her axe.

Once I thought for a moment, why would the guards suddenly keep careful track of me, I realised that I might know the answer. After all, I knew a certain idiot who thought that selecting a couple traits that severely hampered my integration into any civilised society, especially when it came to the first impression, was a good idea. Once one added those traits to a reasonably high level of power, and a couple other distinctly dangerous traits that I had picked up on the way, would give any guard who had a modicum of experience the right, or for me wrong, idea.

For a few moments, I debated how to act, if I should hope that nothing bad would happen, because obviously trouble never managed to land at my feet to trip me up, or if I should simply admit defeat and start a massacre right here and now. Neither idea seemed terribly realistic but luckily, I had a third option. Lenore, who had followed my train of thought, was already snickering in the back of my mind, amused by the fact that she, the spirit-beast, was better suited to exist in a city compared to me, the supposedly civilised humanoid.

“How long do you think we’ll need to take care of everything?” I asked the others, considering the details of my plan.

“At least a full day, more likely two.” Adra replied, while Sigmir and Rai nodded in agreement. Thinking it over for a moment, I had to agree, even if it greatly annoyed me. Part of my plans had been to seek out the Mages Guild, if there was one in town, and get a look at the ideas of some other spellcaster’s ideas, hopefully getting inspiration regarding my magic-usage.

For a while I had been a little stuck with my magic, unable to advance. I had learned parts of the dwarven art of runecrafting, and worked to absorb it into my spellcasting but it was a lengthy, difficult process. But the process had given me the idea to take a look at the writings and research of others, thus my idea to visit the mages guild.

But with the way I was watched, I had a feeling that I’d likely get me, and the rest of the group, into trouble before I even got to the Adventurers’ Guild, let alone finding the time to research for a few days.

“Love, I’m afraid I’ll have to retreat into my Hallow while we are in town. Otherwise, I might get us into trouble.” I decided, causing Adra to chuckle softly, speaking before Sigmir could reply.

“You mean like you’ve got into trouble in the last, let me think about it, five, I think, towns we’ve stayed in before?” she asked, an amused grin on her face. “Maybe you begin to turn self-aware.”

“It might have been seven but I wiped two of those places off the map, so would you still call it a town?” I asked in response, trying to portray an image of confusion, “For one of the times we got into trouble you should be grateful, otherwise, you’d likely have ended up getting bled by those insane dryads.” I added after a moment, an eyebrow raised.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

The talk of places that had been wiped off the map must have been a little louder than I had thought, or maybe that particular guard had good ears, given the way he began to pale beneath his beard.

“Anyway, you can ask Lenore if I’m awake and Love, please take care of my things.” I added, pulling off the magic bag on my waist, handing it over to Sigmir. That way, they’d be able to sell my share of the loot as well. Just as I was about to push myself into my Hallow, Sigmir reached out, giving me a rather possessive kiss that interrupted my concentration.

“I’ll head out of town soon, we can wait for Adra, Rai and Ylva some distance down the road.” she told me, obviously unwilling to banish me into my Hallow for too long. With slightly weak knees, I gave her a nod before I vanished, forcing Lenore to quickly flap her wings in a slightly awkward hop to Sigmir’s shoulder.

Within my Hallow, I felt oddly discontent. Sure, I wouldn’t bring trouble to the others or myself but at the same time, didn’t I just hide away? Mentally grumbling to myself, I started forming Darkness-runes in my mind, trying to find patterns within them, in an attempt to link the runes together in a way similar to the connecting-patterns I had found for Ice-runes. It was mostly a mental exercise, without a directly obvious application, I could hardly make an item out of Darkness, as I had with Ice, and inscribe runes into it. Nonetheless, gaining a deeper understanding of runes felt like a worthwhile pursuit and it was something I could do while hiding out.

After poking around for about an hour, I told Lenore that I’d be gone for a bit and triggered the log-out process, still a little annoyed with the impact of my traits. Certainly, the positive traits I had gained in exchange, the massive increase in Astral Power and the boost to skill-acquisition, were great but their impact felt less obvious.

Getting up, out of the capsule, I had to chuckle to myself and my biased evaluation. On ninety out of a hundred days, the benefits outweighed the demerits of my traits by a lot, it was only those ten days on which the demerits came to bear that were incredibly annoying.

Looking out of the window, I realised that it was late at night, a time where most people would be deep asleep. Not quite hungry just yet, I decided to get some fresh air and put on a warm jacket. Morgana, my avatar, might be able to ignore the cold and control hail and snow, but my normal body wasn’t quite as lucky.

A short walk up the stairs brought me to the roof-access and after opening it, I pulled my cloak tighter around me, a cold wind billowing around me. While there was no snow, the winter-night was cold enough to be a little unpleasant, at least for a moment. Chuckling to myself, if only for a moment, I stepped outside, letting the cold air flow into my lungs.

It felt weird, the time I had spent in the capsule, living as the Avatar Morgana, had given me a bit of a disconnect, when it came to temperature. Intellectually, I knew that the temperature around me was a couple degrees above freezing, the wind making it feel a little colder, but if I would have to make a guess based on feeling, I would have thought the temperature massively lower, simply due to the resistance my Avatar enjoyed.

It made me wonder, how about people with less similar Avatars, after all, Morgana was strongly based on my body and the attribute-points I had used were focused on my mental attributes. While the physical capabilities of my Avatar were a lot higher than those of my physical body, my regular, physical exercise helped to lessen the disconnect, especially as it focused on self- and body-control.

But what about someone who lacked such exercise? What about someone who played a powerful physically-oriented character in-game, but was just an average person, with little exercise outside? Wouldn’t their body-control get thrown out of whack, possibly to problematic levels?

The idea that someone might reflexively think they were able to do something, possibly something as simple as crossing the road before a car reached them, because they were accustomed to the physical stats of their Avatar, only to get hit by said car because their bodies weren’t able to keep up, was a little frightening.

How would such accidents and idocies impact Road to Purgatory? If there was a correlation between such accidents and people playing the game, things could get blown up in the media, especially if there was an actual causation.

Shaking my head, I made a mental note to add an addendum to one of my test-reports, maybe they could add a warning-label or something like that. Just to keep the game out of trouble.