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Chapter 6

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RE:QUEST

Seiko huffed out panted, tired breaths. She wiped her sweat from her forehead.

[1000 EXP Earned]

A quiet, subtle fistpump. Zark smiled over to her. Rié smiled from inside of the cockpit. Finally, they'd returned to the tribe. There were fireworks overhead, a sure sign that they'd managed to level up the location to the next stage. The Medieval Stage would take their tribe from the very earliest period of medieval time all the way through to the late medieval, into the periods of thought and science. Rié jumped out of the ship. Some of the villagers had already begun to disassemble it, turning it into scrap pieces that they could trade and craft with.

Then Seiko turned to Zark. She asked, "I'm hoping, then, then you have another way for us to get off this planet?"

"I've got a few crafting recipes. Alternatively, we can radio in for a pick-up. Only, she won't be too happy about that."

"Who?"

Rié interrupted, "Thank you both for helping my people. I am sorry if I got in the way of your leaving the planet–"

Zark waved away her concern. "Nonsense. That's what we do."

"We?" asked Seiko.

Zark was already walking away, he'd already placed his hand against the hatch on the side of his halfway scrapped ship.

Suddenly, a whole, very large bundle of goods fell onto the ground in one wrapped up lump. Seiko's HUD scanned it.

Zark put a hand against it, shut his eyes as he searched the inventory. "Ah, got it."

A small red radio materialized in his off hand. He shook it at Seiko, which prompted her to bounce and clap excitedly for a very short moment. Just as he held it to his mouth, he paused for a moment. His finger never pressed into the button; he instead glanced all around, his face twisting from some casual joy to a calm suspicion.

"Is... everything okay?"

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"They're all... NPCs..." he muttered.

"Huh?"

"They're..." He looked to her. "You don't know what an NPC is?

Seiko shook her head.

"The mighty Palindrome has never heard of an NPC!?"

Her face completely flushed. "How did...? I'm not..."

Bingo.

Zark couldn't control his grin, it was almost turning sinister by the time she looked away, began immediately to walk away. His grin faded at that. "Hey, Seiko—"

But it was Rié who stepped before Seiko, stopping her march away. The tribeswoman darted her eyes between the two of them. "What's all this about NPCs?"

Then Zark's face became grim. He hadn't considered that she might overhear, even as close as she was. He had no penchant for thinking ahead, that much was true.

"Ah, it stands for..." He tried to think of a lie. "Non... People... Contact...?"

Rié's eyes narrowed.

[Failed]

Fuuuuuuuuck!

"I won't fall for your bullshit. Tell me the truth, and tell it fast."

Seiko's hand was hidden from Rié behind her back, right beside where her holster was.

Don't do it, Palindrome!

"They're Non-Player Characters!" he blurted out. His own face went slightly flush, slightly pale.

Seiko and Rié both turned to him with surprised expressions.

"People that aren't... people! They act on timers, on sequence, on automations! They're put here by the designers of the game, they're not real besides the bits and bytes that make them all up!"

Seiko turned to Rié, "Are you understanding any of this?"

Rié enthusiastically shook her head.

"Look..." Zark muttered. He stepped over to one of the milling villagers, pulled him over. He was a man with tannish skin, short black hair, slightly shorter than Zark in height, and mostly nondescript. "Hi, how are you?"

The man smiled. "I'm good, and you?"

Then Zark looked between Seiko and Rié. He turned to the man again. "Hi, how are you?"

The man, unflinching, replied in exactly the same manner: "I'm good, and you?"

Zark held a hand at him like demonstrating a prize he'd won at a faire.

Rié spat, "Jith has ever been a weird one, that proves nothing."

Zark's face grew hard. "Then take me to your leader. Er, your elder."

Her eyes could narrow no more after that remark. She opened her mouth to say something...

And then they were all hit with a fierce gust of wind, wind that did not stop. And the wind came with a very loud, very constant whirring.

A large ship manifested from a shifting gradient of sky-camouflaged voxels into plain existence. A white, silvery spaceship with blue lights, blue windows, and a dark grey accent color. A ship of the Paladins. A ship carrying more than one squad of highly trained soldiers.

"Oh, no!" Seiko looked up in despair.

Rié summoned her staff forward from her inventory, held it aloft as a melee weapon.

Seiko drew her pistol, but did not bother to aim it at the ship. She knew there was no getting away, no escaping the pursuit by these types of people, and certainly no killing any of them. It was over for her. And they had in store a fate far worse than respawning.

"Avalacia..." Zark said into his radio with a shuddered breath, "We're going to need some backup!"