After a minute or two, Molly's eyes drifted away from my hand as she examined her surroundings.

“You okay now?” I asked.

She took in a breath causing the air around us to vibrate.

An incomprehensible whisper came from behind me. The effect was the Banshee passive. Keeping our enemies scared was one of the many tools in our arsenal against the Enlightened.

Molly asked, “C-can I talk again?”

“Looks like it,” I said.

She put her hand up and caught the eye of a waitress. As soon as she arrived, Molly said, “I need something strong.”

Molly immediately put her palm out, and the waitress ran a cloth over it.

The waitress smiled and said, “I’ll bring you some milk,” then wandered off.

“What just happened?” I asked.

She scooted next to the wall getting as far away from me as possible. “You’re asking me?”

“OOC, I need to know what happened to you,” I said.

Her eyebrows squished together. “What is OOC?”

“It means ‘Out Of Character.’ No role-playing, I'm serious.”

Molly pulled her legs up to her chest. “Wh-when you touched me, it was like you were in my mind. I didn't want you to stop.”

“What about when I walked you here? It looked like you weren't even in there anymore,” I said.

“You knocked me out of my body, and I was forced to follow you!” she said.

She wasn't forced to follow me. However, if she wanted to see where her character was being taken, she had to.

I couldn't help but notice that her dress was hiked up too far. “Your legs are too high up, and I can see your–” I pointed at her undergarments and coughed.

Her legs dropped, and she swiped through the air, clearly looking through her menu.

My menu was set to hidden, so others couldn't see my hands move when I opened it. It could be immersion-breaking. I was hoping that the devs would allow us to physically use backpacks to carry all of our stuff one day. There were other games that had the feature, but early access sucked sometimes.

When we get the feature, it would mean that swords and other weapons would need to be strapped to our backs or belts. We could wear most of that stuff already, but if we had to, it would be more realistic. Realism would enhance the role-playing options, which made me excited.

“Charm, did you cast a charm on me?” She looked up from whatever she was reading. It was probably a list of spells.

Molly was technically wrong. While I did need to learn the charm spell, I had to combine it with several spells and skills to create what I used to control the undead. Though I couldn't use magic, I could still learn the spells. I had to find someone to teach it to me, which was expensive.

It took me a while to find other skills I could combine with the spell and still be able to use the outcome. If shamblers didn't have such a limited skill pool, it would have been easier.

“No, I used a unique skill,” I said.

It surprised me when she laughed. “Only the players with max intelligence can learn those.”

“Yeah, and?” I said.

Her face scrunched up as she shook her head. “You would be useless in a party if you did that.”

I shrugged. “Like I said before, I don't join parties.” The meta was for shamblers to max out their physique or strength. I hated the meta.

“Then how did you level up?” Molly said.

Telling her my secret meant the information would be out there, which was the last thing I wanted. “Can I close the drapes?”

“I-I guess,” she said.

If someone maxed out their perception, ghosts or people in hiding were seeable. They could also hear other people's party chats and whispers. The only real safe space to communicate was in the booths. Even then, some people could read lips, though it was much harder to read my masks.

In the past, this type of system would push players to use outside forms of communication. DO, on the other hand, would punish people by halving their skills and abilities if they made calls out of the game. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it was easy to monitor that type of thing when everyone connected with the same device.

As I was closing the curtains, the waitress stopped me and set Molly’s drink on the table.

“Thank you,” Molly said.

The waitress looked me over. “You sure you don’t want anything, honey?”

I shook my head.

“Well, If you need anything else, just let me know,” she said.

Molly and I nodded, and she walked away.

I closed the curtains. “When I said I don't join parties, I was technically telling the truth, but…”

“But what?” she asked as she picked up her drink and downed about half of it.

I said, “I hide in the hordes.”

She sat there staring at me, her lips pressed together. “What hordes?”

“The shambler hordes,” I said.

Her mouth hung open. “What do you mean? They kill everything that gets near them.”

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“No, they don't. Sure they attack every once in a while, but no more than they attack each other.” When I said that, I realized my arm wasn't hurting anymore. I wondered if there was a hidden faction rating with the shambler NPCs. If there was, mine would probably be maxed out.

Molly leaned forward; her hair drooped on the table. “You're telling me that you, what, fight with them?”

“You know you get a lot more experience killing players,” I said. My strength wasn't very high, but even a new player was stronger than a single NPC shambler. Unless a person's character was incredibly strong, my skill tended to overpower most solo players.

“Is that why you still wear your beat-up starter clothes?” she asked.

I nodded and said, “Yeah.” That reminded me of something. “How did you know I was a player, by the way?”

She giggled. “I heard you mutter something about getting revenge. Initially, I was confused but thought you might be a newbie. Not many people play zomb— shamblers.”

After a fight, I tended to get more into my role, and things could get emotional. That was why I brushed off my parents so eagerly and mumbled about destroying the Enlightened.

“Will you show me how you do it?” she said.

With a quick pinch, I checked the time. It had been a couple of hours since my parents called. “I can do one more hunt, but I need to run to the bank first.”

“Okay, but we still need to talk about what you did to me,” she said.

She was right about that. I also wanted to do some experiments with it too. “Let's form a party, and we can talk on the way.”

“I don't join parties,” she said with a sneer. The sarcasm dripping from her mouth was as thick as cheesecake.

I couldn’t help but mock back. “Ha, Ha.” And frown.

While I was opening the curtain, a party notification popped up. I tended to keep the game in immersive mode, which would only allow important notifications to show through. There were probably a dozen in the queue, ready to hit me as soon as I logged out.

My hand hovered over the accept button as I mentally prepared for the pain. I took a breath, tapped it, and closed the menu.

Predictably Molly said, “Hey,” in party chat.

Like the game's ability to hide my hand from opening the menu, party chat hid our mouth movements from the people not in our group.

The pain started as a throb in my left temple, and then it grew into a searing flame behind my eyes. Then tinnitus kicked in, and after about three seconds, it all stopped.

This happened every time I joined a group and was one of the reasons I avoided the feature. We'd talked to the doctor about it, but they couldn’t do anything for me. They suspected it was probably a problem with my Specs. Specs were the devices in my eyes, along with an accompanying brain implant. They allowed me to use the augmented and virtual reality aspects of Dark Offerings. My particular problem was unique.

“Are you okay?” Molly asked.

The pain had passed, but my hand had somehow made its way to my temple, so I lowered it. “I'm fine,” I lied and scooted out of the booth. “Let's go.”

Molly finished her drink in a single gulp, stood on her seat, and just kept walking off the edge. She floated forward a few paces and then turned. “You coming?"

Her ability to ignore gravity was a little discomforting, which made me smile. The fact that she could elicit that feeling from me was fantastic.

I squinted as we left the Frog, the light bringing back an echo of the pain I'd experienced moments ago.

Molly took the lead and drifted ahead. The bank was only a short walk down the road, so it took us no time to get there. It was a solitary building made of red bricks and looked sturdier than the structures around it.

The inside was bare except for three small stands with screens on them. There weren’t any tellers which didn’t bode well for the role-playing aspects of the game. I wasn’t sure if it was only this town with a bare-bones bank or if they were all this way.

Two humans were the only other people in the bank with us. Both wore leather armor painted black with a set of daggers sheathed on their hips. When we walked in, their conversation stopped.

I did my best to ignore them and approached one of the terminals. As my hand touched it, my inventory screen popped up, and I proceeded to deposit all my money and a few crafting materials I picked up earlier in the day. I kept one of the rot regen potions on me, just in case.

That’s a lot of platinum, Kumori sent.

It was right. I found I had little use for money since my way of doing things didn't require jumping on the loot treadmill. The only items I kept were materials for enchanting. While enchanting sounded like something a mage would do, it was actually one of the many crafting skills that anyone could learn. I wasn't very experienced in it yet because I spent most of my time hunting the Enlightened.

Generally, a magic user would create a scroll with a spell on it, and the enchanter would apply that spell to an item. Those objects would need to be periodically infused with energy to keep the effect going. However, when mages chose to max out their concentration, they could create permanent spells. If the enchanter used a scroll with a permanent spell, it would never need to be recharged.

You could only have one ability score maxed out at a time. I decided to master my intelligence and if I decided to change specializations all of the skills I created would be forgotten. Unique skills weren’t able to be taught either.

I wasn’t sure how weapons like Kumo were made. It was a bit disturbing that a sword could see my banking screen. AI wasn't very good in these games, but this one seemed a bit more advanced. Why would a sword care about money?

I want a home.

That made me pause and think. I attempted to place the sword in the bank, and it refused to move.

A feeling of disgust swept over me.

The fact that an AI was able to elicit feelings felt wrong. You would try and leave me with your plants and stones?

You wanted a home, and that's where items usually go, I thought.

After a few seconds, Kumori replied, I demand an ornate scabbard with gold inlays.

As if I would buy it anything. Do I need to bring up that you nearly killed me twice again?

And I'll do it again if you don't find me a home, it said.

That was going to be expensive. If I promise to order you one tomorrow, can we call a truce till then?

Yakusoku.

Which meant that I had another day before it decided to kill me. Then again, if I died, perhaps it would drop as it had for the girl in plate mail. However, if the bonus strength and agility I got from the sword applied to the shamblers I controlled, it would give me a reason to keep it.

“Are you done?” Molly asked.

When I turned, I noticed she was staring directly at the two leather-clad men. Who in turn gave her the same treatment. “Everything okay?”

“No, those guys keep leering at us,” she said.

Leering? Who used the word leering? “How old are you?”

“What– those guys are– how old are you?” she asked.

I had nothing to hide. “Sixteen. I mean, next month I'll be sixteen.”

“I'm twenty-nine,” she said.

You had to be at least fourteen to play DO, and you needed your parent's permission. I'd seen people in their fifties play, but they tended to be a bit slower physically and had problems keeping up with the younger kids. Older people tended to be better in VR games because it was a direct brain connection. Since DO was mainly an AR game, physicality mattered.

Molly covered her dagger with a hand. “I think they want this.”

“Do you think they are going to try and gank us?” I removed my hand from the terminal and backed away.

She shrugged. “I don't know.”

I was extremely picky when choosing my targets, and while these two would be ideal to take out when I had a horde, they would be formidable without one. We could run, but even with the sword's new buffs to my agility, I still wasn't as fast as a human at my skill range. Either way, they would have to wait till we left town to do anything.

“I'm ready when you are,” I said while memorizing the faces of the men.

Molly led us out of the bank and onto the street. We made our way to the gate, and just before we left, I scanned the crowd.

My perception wasn't the greatest, which meant that I wouldn't be able to see them if they were hiding, but they certainly weren't out in the open. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were being followed.

***