Haru: Novice, Level 2/20
EcruEmu: Novice, Level 2/20
Haru hovered over the strange player in astonishment. She couldn’t believe he was alive. In fact, she was a bit suspicious. The demon had hit him so hard that the portal out of the corrupted beach was destroyed entirely. Cocking an eyebrow, she sized the starving player up. His blonde hair was in stark contrast to the highly saturated colors of the grass and trees beyond, near the mountains in the distance.
“Wait a minute. How did you get out of there?” Haru folded her arms.
Emu pivoted in place, looking at each of the two. “Do you know him?”
Haru nodded. “We’ve met before, when—” She stopped herself, remembering the circumstances. “…uh, we uh… p—played a different game together.”
Emu stayed silent for a while. “Oh, that makes sense.” He turned to the stranger and performed the poke emote. “Why’s he dying like that?”
Haru looked to see the stranger’s health slowly ticking away. She gasped, pulled up her inventory, and found some food to eat. It was pure luck that one of the boars dropped a pork chop. With a few clicks, she dropped it on the ground in front of the player and stepped back.
In the blink of an eye, the player scarfed down the pork chop. His health began to increase bit by bit. He let out a sigh of relief. “Phew. Once again, you saved my life.”
Haru cocked her head, baffled. “You recognize me?”
The stranger looked at Emu for a moment, then back to Haru, then his eyes opened wide. “Well…” He cleared his throat. “H—how could I not? We’ve played games together before, right?”
Haru squinted. She wasn’t entirely sure if he was just playing along because she saved him, or if he really did recognize her. “Well, we’d better get back to our quest.” She started to walk off.
“W—wait, let me join you.” The stranger followed her.
“I’m not sure—” Haru started.
“Sure!” Emu piped up as he sent a join request.
In the menu, the stranger’s name appeared along with his HP and mana: Optifex.
“Alright!” Emu nodded. “Let’s get this quest finished for everyone.”
Optifex looked at each of them. “Quest?”
Despite now realizing they had to start over, it didn’t seem to deter Emu one bit. They escorted Optifex over to the NPC and had him accept the first quest. Then they went back to the field and got ready to start defeating all the needed quest mobs. But this time, instead of a field full of boars, there was a horde of players. It had been some time since the servers came up, and now all the other new characters were starting the first quest too.
“Well,” Emu started. “This will take a while.”
“Sorry.” Opti muttered. “You can go on if you want.”
Emu played the laughter emote. “Don’t worry about it. We just need to get through the first few quests and then things will be less busy.”
“Have you played this game before?” Haru looked at Emu. “You sure do know a lot.”
Opti smiled at Emu. “Yes, it’s nice to have someone around that knows the game well.”
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Emu nodded. “Yeah, I was on a different instance, but a friend wanted to play. This game doesn’t allow transfers yet, so I just made a new character.”
With disappointment on his face, Opti’s eyebrows dipped. “They haven’t added that in yet?” He scoffed.
Emu shrugged.
Haru began to wonder what his name was before joining this instance. She didn’t recognize it when she first joined the party and didn’t remember seeing him in her encounter when she was a boss.
“Something wrong?” Emu played the wave emote. “You got quiet.”
Haru startled. “Oh, no. Just excited to get to the next quest after this.”
Emu laughed. “Yes, this is a bit tedious, isn’t it?”
Opti started to wander around. “I’ll see if I can pull one.”
Then a boar faded into existence between Haru and Emu. Both of them drew their swords at the same time. Emu struck first.
As Haru landed the follow up attack, a hum rang out. Her sword skill increased by one. While there wasn’t fanfare like when leveling up proper, skill increases made her nearly as satisfied.
The boar fell dead before Opti could get within melee range. The level up tune rang out and text flew up and over his head.
“Ding, congrats!” Emu cheered.
Opti looked surprised at the words hovering near his chest. “Huh, that changes things, doesn’t it?”
The three returned to the farmer NPC to complete the quest. In unison, both Haru and Emu leveled up.
“Ding!” Emu smiled and led them to the next quest giver near a tree on the road out of the hamlet.
“Adventurer, I’m glad you’ve come.” The NPC, Harod the Wayward Weaver, spoke to Haru. “I have dire news from Egria, not far down the road. Whelplings have taken over the town and chased all of the villagers away. No one has been able to get near since those terrible beasts arrived. Isn’t there anything you can do?”
Harod’s quest dialog wrapped up. “Oh, and if you find my wagon, can you bring back my footlocker? It has priceless items in there. I couldn’t live with myself if I lost it for good.”
The experience and dobluens reward was significantly higher for this quest. Haru accepted it.
“Wow, that’s much better.” Opti called out as he took the quest.
Emu shook his head. “This is another tough one. I’d say even harder than the last.” He smiled. “Though it’s one of the reasons I like this game. It wants to keep you on your toes the whole way.”
Haru grew nervous. They’d just leveled up and if she de-leveled, it would be ruinous for her mission. “Ma—maybe we could go kill a few more boars before we go?”
With a cocked head, Opti looked at Haru. “Why? This seems like fun.”
Emu nodded. “I’m sure it will be fine, let’s go.”
Reluctantly, Haru trailed the other two, who followed the dirt road that gently bent around the mountains to their right. On their left, a vast wheat field with a slight slope downwards. In the far distance beyond the growing grain were yet even taller mountains with peaks that poked through the puffy clouds. Haru spotted a small tower upon the range afar. That must have been Gunther’s encounter, the Sacred Sanctum. She wouldn’t need to go that far as he was level 30, but the thought still crossed her mind, wondering what it would be like there.
Distracted, she bumped into Emu and Opti’s broad shoulders at the same time as they came to a stop on the road shoulder-to-shoulder.
“Hey, what’s the big de—” Haru piped up but stopped herself as she figured out why they weren’t moving.
Not too far down the road was the town they were looking for, Egria. It had roads paved with stone and gas lamp streetlights. There were about ten houses, most of them torn to shreds, with doors ripped off and shattered, windows missing, and many belongings scattered around the small alleys and walkways.
The culprits hadn’t gone far. Dozens upon dozens of whelplings, tiny dragonkin, wandered. They were dragonlings of various colors—red, blue, black, and green.
“Phew, dragons as the second quest mob is rough, isn’t it?” Emu turned to look at Haru.
She nodded, nervously. This was part of her own story. The Sisters of the Shattered Star were allies of the dragons. While she was only a tutorial boss, her story was the first segment of the human’s main quest. The way players would unlock the last raid was by completing the story. And part of the hardest raid was to fight through a dragon roost and defeat one of the primal dragons before they could even get to the three main sisters at the end.
Haru’s train of thought was broken as a player burst from a side alley, sprinting away. Before she could react, a dragonling darted around the corner and blew a bolt of fire. The firebolt rocketed toward the retreating player and slammed into them from behind. Suddenly falling to the ground, the player died.
“Res plx” The player messaged in the area-wide chat.
Emu and Opti walked over to the dead player, and both spammed the poke emote. Haru was frozen in place, mortified of their next target.
“I don’t think there are any priests out this way, friend. You’re going to have to respawn.” Emu kept prodding the deceased.
The player released from his corpse, and a harsh tone rang out. He had de-leveled.
Emu and Opti stopped poking and looked at Haru.
“Well, losing a level isn’t the end of the world, right?” Emu laughed and turned to walk into the town. Opti followed.
Haru was at 5 of 750 experience points. Death resulted in a 10% penalty, 75 points at her level. She swallowed her fear and pressed forward to catch up with the two.