“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said to the sleeping Emma. She didn’t respond, and I hadn’t really expected her to.

In the room next door, the racket continued. Cursing, I tried covering my head with a pillow, wondering if this night could get any worse.

There was a knock at the door.

I threw the pillow and may have screamed a litany of curses. I stomped to the door and yanked it open. Max stood there looking awkward. It starkly contrasted with his usual look, which could best be described as complete indifference.

“What?” I demanded.

“I don’t have anywhere to sleep.” He said, averting his eyes.

Realizing I was standing at the door in my underwear it was now my turn to feel a little awkward. “All we have is a floor.”

“I’ll take it,” Max said, still desperately trying to look anywhere but at me.

“Fine,” I said, rushing back into bed beside Emma.

Max entered sheepishly and barred the door. He looked around the room like a puppy trying to find a spot. I gestured to the floor next to the bed and even pulled off one of the blankets and handed it to him. He was screwed for pillows, I wasn’t about to try and sleep without mine.

Rolling the blanket up, Max laid down on his back and used it as a pillow. Folding his hands on his chest he closed his eyes and feigned sleeping. We lay in the dark room in silence, listening to the noises next door.

“It’s like Slade’s wrestling an angry banshee,” I finally said into the quiet.

Max giggled. “What’s a banshee?”

“A ghost that kills lost travelers by screeching.”

“Oh…” Max said softly. “More like a blender full of cats in heat.”

I laughed. “Maybe a glass alarm clock inside a tea kettle.”

“Someone is scratching rusty door hinges on a chalkboard.”

I couldn’t stop giggling, “I think it’s a steam train running over a werewolf.”

“Okay, stop,” Max begged. “Or I’ll never get to sleep.”

“How can you sleep like that anyway? Hard floor. Blanket for pillow. On your back.”

“You sleep on your side?” Max asked.

“Stomach.”

“Weird. Anyway, my dad took me camping. A lot. In the summer you didn’t even want to cover up, just lie on your back staring at the stars and feeling the wind and everything move over you.” Max said. He paused for a bit, then asked, “Why did you sign up?”

“The money,” I said.

“Just the money?”

“It’s a lot of money. What do you mean by just?”

Max hesitated, “You seem so competent. Not like Slade, where you can tell it's bullshit and bravado. But, like, you don’t actually need to be here. You’d be great anywhere.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But that’s the truth. I lost my job and was rapidly headed to losing my apartment, stuff, everything. I grew up poor, it’s hard to keep losing everything. This will add a lot of extra padding, so next time I’m about to lose everything, there will be a big soft cushion. What about you? Why did you sign up?”

He laughed, “Three months away from everything. No distractions. Three months to become an expert on something. It sounded like heaven. The money is incidental.”

“Well, you can leave it to me if you don’t need it.”

More laughter from him. “The money will be nice too, but I thought it would be something else.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“I really thought this was going to be a training simulation for Mars. Even just the journey to get there will take nine months. An enclosed simulation, experience on something like that would guarantee acceptance once people start going.

“You want to go to Mars?”

“Why not?” Max said. “A whole new world to shape.”

“If you think about it,” I said. “Is it really any different from what we are doing right now?”

He hmm’ed and we sat in silence. Eventually the caterwauling died down and in the quiet I finally found myself drifting off.

“Good night Victoria,” was the last thing I heard.

I woke to a pounding on the door. Rolling out of bed, I saw Max lying on his back, looking up at me in my underwear. He turned away quickly, blushing crimson.

“Sorry,” I said as I opened my inventory. Although, when I thought about it, I wasn’t sure why I was the one apologizing. I moved my real world clothes and the leather armor from inventory to the in-use page and closed the screen. Now dressed I went to the pounding door.

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When I opened it, a large brute of a man stared down at me, “Companions of the Slayer?”

“Slayer?”

“Slade the Slayer.”

Oh, lovely, Slade was collecting nicknames and titles. His ego would be out of control now. Then again, it was already before any of this, so really kind of a wash.

“Um, yeah,” I stammered.

“Break your fast. The mayor wants an assembly in half an hour.”

I intended to give the guy an earful, to let him know I wasn’t a pawn or lackey of the mayor, but he walked off immediately after his announcement. Turning back to the room I saw that Max and Emma were up and looking refreshed.

“Wow, Victoria, did you get your bath?” Emma asked.

“Huh? No. I wish.”

She continued, “You look great. Ready to conquer the day.”

I had to admit, I did feel much better after than I did the day before. Missing a full night's sleep had me dragging. “The mayor wants us to depart in a half hour. The only good news is that there is breakfast.”

The three of us went downstairs to find Slade shoveling eggs and bacon down his throat. Seeing us, he waved us over to his table. The Inn was mostly deserted, with just us at one table and the mayor's goons at another.

“Sleep well?” I asked Slade.

“Oh, yeah, well I was pretty hammered. But yeah, I guess so.” He was completely unabashed about his activities last night.

Max wasted no time in sitting down and grabbing a plate. He piled eggs and bacon on and began devouring with gusto. I glanced at Emma, and she shrugged while sitting down. She took a plate, but only nibbled. When in Rome, I thought. I took the last plate and piled a modest amount of food on it. It was tasty and filling, but I still wasn’t really hungry. Even after two days without food.

Buff: Well Fed

Max must have noticed the face I made at the message, he leaned to me and said, “You’ll have more energy throughout the day. It also increases your health bar.”

There was no conversation as everyone ate. Finally, the goons came over and explained, “It’s time.”

Slade continued shoving food in his face even as we got up to leave. I noticed that Emma, like me, had barely eaten. Enough to get the buff I hoped.

The goons got us to the town stables, where our horses were waiting. Stablehands escorted our rides out one at a time. When I got Princess, messages flashed by.

Gained: Saddlebag x2

Water skin x2

Rations x7

Rope, 30 ft

Bedroll

Tinderbox

Potion, Healing, Lesser x2

Shelter, half-person

Blanket

“Well, well.” I said, checking out the inventory. “Looks like the mayor isn’t such a prig after all.”

“Who would think that?” Slade asked. “He offered us a thousand dollars to get this goblin dude.”

“Silver,” Max said. “And we have to kill the goblin king.”

“He offered us a sure-fire death,” I added.

“Victoria!” Emma said, “Don’t say things like that. We’re even more prepared now than ever.”

I was in a mood. Nobody seemed to think this was a bad idea. And just like that, we were riding south back along the road we’d come into town on. But now we were on a side quest, looking for a goblin horde. I rode up to Max.

“Can you guide my horse for a bit?” I asked. “I want to check the maps.”

And there was nothing worth checking. No matter how much I zoomed in or scrolled the place we were headed was just empty. The only help entry on the subject was laughably short.

Frontier: The unexplored periphery of the known world. Creatures ancient and vile live in these dark places.

I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t more cheery like Emma wanted after reading help entries like that.

When I bopped out of the map I remembered the brief conversation I’d had with Max last night about skills. “Hey Max, what boon did you take?”

“Arcane Knowledge,” he said.

“Okay, that’s good. I think”

“Why, what did you take?”

“World Knowledge.”

“Good choice,” he said. “I was considering that one.

“What made you go with Arcane?”

“Are you kidding?” Max was excited. “Knowledge of the secrets that run this place? It’s like a manual for computers. All sorts of hidden tricks and triggers to help me master it.”

He was right, that actually was a good set of knowledge to have. It just seemed weird that Max would take that knowledge when Emma was our only spell caster.

“Emma,” I called out. “What boon did you take?”

“Divine Inspiration.” She said.

“Why? What’s it do?”

“Didn’t you read about the boons when leveling up?” Max asked.

“Well, yeah,” I said. But there were a lot, so I only read the ones I was interested in.”

“Divine Inspiration gives me a boost to my healing abilities,” Emma said. That actually did sound pretty good, especially in light of us marching into a goblin army. She continued, “It also provides unique insights into the world.”

“Good choice. So how does it provide unique insights?”

“It didn’t really say.” Emma said, “I guess we’ll find out?”

“Slade,” I yelled, “What boon did you pick?”

“Enhanced Constitution. You may have noticed it in use last night.”

“Ewww,” I said. I didn’t want to be reminded of the vile things I’d heard last night. Emma looked a little pouty at the mention of last night, and that worried me. She and Slade would never work out. And we needed this little team to function at one hundred percent if we wanted to get home and get our pay. I would have to work on making sure they never tried romance out. It would only lead to breakup and drama.

We rode for several hours. At some point, Slade decided to grace us with stories of his high school football team. Emma seemed to be the only one interested. I was tempted to intervene but decided not to. Explaining exactly how I felt about sportsball would only make me look jealous. Emma would have to follow her own path to absolute boredom with Slade's stories.

“What do you think?” Slade announced as the sun began its climb down the sky. “Are we in goblin territory yet?”

“Seems like there should be one more human settlement,” I said.

“No way. We’re way off the edge of the map.” Slade said.

“We’re on a road.”

“Yeah? So?” critical thinking was definitely not his strong suit.

“Who would make a road to goblins?” I said, hoping to lead Slade to the point.

“It’s a game, the developers probably made roads everywhere.”

“This game, however, has a consistent logic to it,” Max said before I could explain. “Think of it as a puzzle. A really big puzzle. We’re here to see if players can solve it. A road from a human town to a goblin town is inconsistent with what we know about the world. Goblins raid humans; ergo, humans would not make roads to help the goblins.”

“Dude, it’s a game. Game designers make all sorts of dumb crap. I think you two are overthinking it.” Slade said, then added, “You two seem pretty sympatico. Did something happen last night? Did you Sladinate her?”

“Eww! Slade!” I yelped. I couldn’t help but catch a peek of Max looking a little hurt out of the corner of my eye. “Some of us use our actual brains to do the thinking.”

“Tell you lovebirds the what what. If we run into a human town I’ll owe you an apology.”

Blissful silence descended on us after that. I tried to ask Max if he still felt the game was an AI creation, but he shrugged and ignored me.

As we continued riding south, rocky foothills appeared on the horizon. After another hour, the grasses faded away into prickly shrubs, and the ground became rockier. I squinted to get a look at the foothills and spotted a settlement. It was even smaller than Springfeild, and it had a completed palisade.

Pointing, I yelled, “I think you’ll be owing us an apology. That’s a human town up ahead.”

“Maybe not,” Slade barked back. “Goblins on the road coming hard at us.”

Cursing, I shifted my view. He was right. About a dozen goblins were riding their lizard beasts toward us.