Chapter 2: Dragon

A far less bloody story, our family went up the mountain to collect crystals to sell as trinkets. On the path upwards we saw many strange species of plants and animals. In each and every encounter grandma Romana knew what to do, to avoid a patch of grass, to say a prayer before picking a strange berry.

Picking up beautiful crystals of all shapes and sizes littered on the mountain, a younger brother of mine picked up a wet rock.

While it clearly wasn’t a crystal he was nonetheless praised for his finding. As I asked an adult next to me if that really was a crystal, announcing my doubts out loud, he grew red-faced.

Looking back down into his hands at the rock, he violently threw it into the trees. The stone landed in water making a splash and causing the adults to exclaim that we arrived.

Walking off of the paved road with a sulking brother, it was the second event of the trip, a swimming lesson in a calmer part of the river that fed to a small waterfall.

Cleaning the dirt off of the crystals, I noticed a stone strangely spinning in the water. After informing an adult of it, a woman bent down and grabbed the strange stone.

As soon as the stone rose above the water, it began leaking water almost like a sponge without pores.

The woman was surprised and ecstatic while I was confused. The rock looked quite similar, if larger than the one my brother had thrown away.

The trip immediately ended after that, and with the item behind sealed doors, I always wondered… what would’ve happened if my brother had taken it if I had taken it? Just like the knife, a treasure had been robbed from my childhood.

The snake. I hadn’t seen the snake in person until now. I’m sure it was a grand story, one of my uncles sticking his hand down a snake’s throat before decapitating it… But I hadn’t been allowed to listen. The corpse was never shown to me, the story pieced together after overhearing the amazed voices.

Now that I finally saw it, I felt that it didn’t belong here. As a trophy, it was inferior to either the knife or rock, both of which I saw first.

The rock was too heavy, so it was reluctance that Lily instead took the machete that nailed the snake to the wall. Bones clattered onto the stone floor.

They had been in a jungle of some sort, killing the snake. A few testing swings showed how the explorers would’ve cut through the foliage.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

But all of this confirmed her theory, the rock especially. Lily knew that the rock shouldn’t have been able to produce this much water in reality, meaning it held a sort of magical property in this digital world.

Childhood fantasies coming to life, she recalled an even better story that she would have to “verify” before she went into multiplayer, whatever that meant.

The water fountain in the park was a decorated large rock with small plants and a small opening at the front.

The opening was tempting, and she knew that more than once her brothers would stick firecrackers into the hole. But she had known it was something more. A water dragon was in there, a cavern with an exit covered underwater. The rock was instead a mountain, the plants, trees, and vines.

The dragon, small as it was, guarded its treasure fiercely if it came down to it. She had once believed that with all her heart.

The sun was warm as she left her family home, the one they moved out of to a more private building, the private building she left once more to go to another country.

More clouds gathered in the skies now. Lily remembered the weather here, it was always sunny and hot, unlike the pleasant warmness now.

A large number of inaccessible, forgotten buildings later, Lily arrived at the park.

If it was a fight, she would be fine. With a weapon in hand and a dulled sense of pain, she would make a decent effort. This was almost like a boss in a game, perhaps dying once or twice was expected.

But at the first sight of the large rock fountain, her phone buzzed.

Curious, Lily checked it out.

Added-Adaptive Mob Behavior by AI, enemies respond authentically

Added-Auto Censorship by Robert, do not serve as a waste of resources

Added-Group Help by Will, ask for help as a group to receive quicker responses.

The updates seemed to be sporadic, but important information was just introduced. This was a boss and there was a seemingly harsh penalty for death. It was time to get into multiplayer.

A bit of finagling later Lily finally found the settings page, attempting to turn on multiplayer. There wasn’t a logout button she could find, but that was fine (she was terminally ill after all). If she had asked, she would’ve put all her worries behind her, finding out that her actual body had already died.

Not informing her parents of her digital upload would mean she was left out of funeral arrangements for herself.

Instead of a larger world popping into existence around her, lists and lists of warnings appeared, terms and conditions that Lily attempted to read. Full of legal jargon, she gave up after the first page, checking the box and moving on to further forms.

After a few minutes of just checking boxes, Lily grew frustrated, sitting down in the park on the ground before continuing.

It was only after sighting a pattern in the words that Lily noticed the terms and conditions were repeating themselves. Skimming through the text a tad slower revealed additional boxes within the text itself instead of all of them being at the end.

‘Fucking…’

But she would deal with it…

Floundering around a bit, Lily found that she needed to ask for help once again through the somewhat disturbing mental process. The mess of options, settings, and menus were a migraine inducer if there ever was one.

But she came across a rather odd message.