EV B2 Chapter 4:

The prompt soon faded away from my vision, and I looked around, seeing that nothing had changed. I was still standing in the middle of the forest. The bodies were still there. I looked around, trying to see where the next quest giver was. I wasn’t even sure how to exit the scenario.

After a few minutes of nothing happening, I made my way back to the little farmstead and eventually to the village, where people were rebuilding. There were a few burned huts that were being picked through, and several of the older boys were dragging corpses through the streets. There were clearly two different burials going on—one a pile of bodies being dumped on fire, and another section where groups of families lovingly stacked rocks over their fallen kin.

I wandered into the village and generally tried to help. There wasn’t much I could do. I helped lift a fallen beam that had trapped a dog, who scrambled out as soon as he could. I helped a widow salvage some cooking equipment from the remains of her kitchen. No one spoke much, and everyone just moved with purpose, though a wistful purpose. Something in their eyes spoke of far-off thoughts, but their bodies moved in practiced rhythms.

I spent several hours helping, but nothing changed. Eventually, I found myself on the beach, staring out over where there were two burned ships. Apparently, they had managed to save one of them and retreat, losing two-thirds of the attacking force, presumably.

“Is this a victory?” I wondered, finishing at only 1%, though it was hard to say what was really happening. How much of this was scripted? Was there a right answer? This challenge was much more confusing than I had expected. I guessed from the little I knew about the gods that it kind of made sense. Thor was relatively straightforward—crafty, known for a surprising love of blacksmithing besides just bashing things with a hammer—but straightforward nonetheless. I didn’t know much about Baldur, just that he was Odin’s favorite son and that he was… well, and I didn’t even really know that.

Still, it seemed like this challenge was much more complicated. And the lack of a loot table outside of the challenge hall started to make sense. There weren’t really monsters to kill or anything like that. There were no immediate rewards, though the medallion that tracked my progress did have a loot option. Perhaps there would be loot awarded at the end of the run.

I found that there was also a rune signaling an exit. But I wasn’t even close to willing to take that. Not yet. But what if nothing changed? What if there was no obvious continuation? I wasn’t sure. There was no more fighting. Was I supposed to be helping the village? Was I supposed to be saving the family? Some sort of combination? If I had a team, would it be the same scenario or something different?

These thoughts plagued me as I walked along the beach. It was a short, rocky thing, and there really was nowhere to go. The whole cove was surrounded by rocky mountains that would have been difficult to pass through. Really, the only way to this little alcove of fertile soil that was no more than a couple dozen acres was by boat.

So, presumably, the scenario was all taking place here, but the attacker should be done, and I had helped the village some more. No one spoke to me, but everyone was grateful for help, occasionally giving me strange smiles. I received a bowl of stew around lunchtime; it seemed whoever was in charge of the village had set apart some sort of communal lunchtime break.

By the time the sun was setting, things had mostly been put to right. The houses hadn’t been rebuilt, but everyone had found temporary housing. There was no danger of fires, and everything that could be salvaged had been.

I found myself in a small room with a few furs. There were a few other people huddled in the corners of the room, but no one spoke, and everyone soon drifted off to sleep. I found myself unable to sleep. I didn’t really feel the need for it at all. With my vastly improved stats, I might not need to sleep for a while. Or maybe the challenge didn’t require it. I hadn’t done anything particularly taxing to my body, and with my new prowess, simply staying awake didn’t induce the same fatigue it used to.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

So I got up and left the room, wandering out to the village center. I sat outside the Great Hall and looked out over the water, waiting to see if there were any lights or movements coming for a follow-up raid.

Improbably, a young boy came and sat next to me. He couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, but when he spoke, he sounded much older.

“I’ve never seen you around before, mister,” he said with the guileless curiosity of youth.

I shrugged. “I’m a traveler. Got here recently.”

“Oh, a traveler,” he said. “So have you been to far-off lands, like Goranovic?”

I shrugged again. “I’ve been to many places,” I said, never having heard of Goranovic. I assumed it was someplace that didn’t actually exist.

“Oh yeah? Tell me about some.”

So I did. I told him about my most recent visit out of Valhalla. It was not in any detail, but I mentioned the stuff. He clearly didn’t believe me when I talked about massive castles of stone and endless fields of green down south, of thousands of men in armor and pitched battles. He believed in the pitched battles but not in wearing a full suit of armor.

“I suppose that’s possible, but that’d be too heavy. You couldn’t move. Not like my father could,” he said, growing sad.

I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I just told some more tales, describing a long-distant memory of a village on a Greek island, a vacation I had taken with my wife. Thinking back on her, I realized I hadn’t given up hope, but I was starting to lose it. The same hopeful pang that had been sitting in my chest ever since I learned there was an afterlife was vanishing.

It was still technically possible to see her. Still, if what I had learned about the other options for afterlives was true, well, she likely wasn’t exactly real anymore. She definitely wasn’t in Valhalla, and… well. I realized I had been silent for some time, and the boy got up and left with a wave.

As dawn broke, I muttered under my breath, “That wasn’t real, was it?” There had to be some sort of scenario here, something I needed to do.

I sighed in frustration. I really didn’t want to have to embed myself in the politics of this small town to try to figure out what I was supposed to help with. But I couldn’t think of anything else to do besides actually get to know the people. That just sounded so exhausting.

My true nature as an introvert won out, and I decided I would leave in the morning. I’d first see if there was any obvious trail, or I’d get some sort of canoe and paddle out to the end of the fjord, seeing if there was anything else around. If I didn’t find anything, I’d leave the challenge and talk to someone who knew what the heck was going on because I wasn’t about to get emotionally involved in another struggle in a world that was even less real than the last one.

I think my emotional wounds were still too raw after the betrayal and Alana’s death.

So after seeing dawn break and no attack come, I just shook my head. I was half expecting the attack to happen right before dawn. Apparently, that was when a lot of modern militaries took action when sentries were least alert, and people could be most caught unprepared. But there was nothing.

So I slowly made my way through the town before breaking into a jog—one faster than most sprinters—and steadily covering the backside of the fjord. I found a trail up the cliffside. When I got to the top, I made my way along the high mountains until I was standing over a cliff, hundreds of feet above the sea. I looked around, seeing nothing but the endless blue of water and sky and the gray of the mountains.

Then I turned around to see where I’d come from, and I saw dark smoke rising again from the shores of the beach. I closed my eyes and found the amulet around my neck, pressing the rune for the exit.

This wasn’t worth my time. I really just needed to see if there was any sort of guide on this challenge run or information I could purchase because I could spend days stumbling in the dark, and I only had a month to get to 20%. Besides, I still had a team to find.