Waking with a jolt, I quickly added pounding headache to my list of injuries, as I managed to smack my head into the unsuspecting head of someone leaning over me. As we both groaned in pain, I felt someone grab my shoulders and hold me down, a calm voice accompanying it.
"Easy, you're safe now. Just relax." Shaking my head slightly, I noticed for the first time that I was in a rather spartan room, with a nearby woman rubbing her forehead while a large, burly man held me down by the shoulders. Deciding that these were friends, as I was still alive, I wondered for a moment how I had got here, before accepting that I had been saved, if not by these two, then someone who had brought me to these two strangers.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to headbutt you, I was panicked in case the goblin was still alive." I offered quietly, and feeling the mans grip on me relax, released a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. Pushing myself into a sitting position, I gingerly felt at my chest, only to notice the lack of pain from it. Turning to look at my hosts, I noticed suddenly how while the man was calmly watching me, the woman seemed nervous.
"Uh, thank you for the help, and I promise to payback your generosity. I'm a little strapped for cash at the moment, but I can work... Why are you looking at me like that?" As I had spoken the man had seemingly grown more interested in me, and even the lady had stopped being nervous, instead both were looking at me like I was an alien. After a few long moments of silence the lady eventually broke the silence.
"Are you a summoned hero? You speak like them, but I don't sense any mana from you, nor do you seem to have any of their usual skills." Her voice was soft, and after a moment, the weight of her words impacted on me. I was in a game. I couldn't log out, and had been attacked by a goblin, which had almost killed me. Instantly trying to open my menu, I felt a wave of panic rise as I couldn't even open the menu screen like I had been able to. Trying all the different phrases, motions and commands I could think of, I suddenly felt the floor drop out from beneath me as my legs went weak. The game mechanics, system, menu, all of it was gone.
"I've never seen this before, a summoned hero without the benevolence of the gods." The man had spoken this time, his calm voice an anchor for me. Taking a deep breath, I nodded at them, my throat suddenly dry. Standing up again, leaning on the bed, I steadied myself. It probably wouldn't help to speak about it like it was a video game to them, and even if I didn't have access to any of the commands of the system, didn't mean that it wasn't still censoring information from the npcs of the world.
"I don't quite understand it myself, but I am, or was, a summoned hero. Now, I'm probably weaker than most of the natives of this world." My voice was steadier than I had thought it would be, and as I spoke, I found myself calming down enough that I wasn't in risk of collapsing again. "I thank you again for the help you have given me, and would like to make an effort to pay you back." I wasn't sure how I would manage that second part, but perhaps they would give me a quest or something that would help me orient myself in this world while I try to figure out what the hell was going on.
The man looked at the lady. The lady looked at the man. They both looked at me. They looked at the door. A tiny, almost imperceptible nod was preformed by the lady. The man sighed, and looked at me.
"Lets call us helping you even. You're in the village of Tozha, which is where the Summoned usually perform their basic training before deciding on a class. You might not be like the rest of them, but that doesn't mean you can't learn like they do. Just... don't pick anything that requires magic. I'd go to the training grounds if I were you. Yarrick can be hard to impress, but you might get lucky and he might teach you enough that the next goblin you meet doesn't kill you on sight."
Without further warning, the two strangers spun and left the room, leaving me nearly no time to react. "Hey, wait a second." I followed them out of the room, but both had vanished from sight. I hadn't even learnt their names. Frowning at the sudden change in attitude they had had, I decided that the best course of action from here on out, was not acting like a player who wasn't a player anymore. It wasn't exactly received with open smiles and warmth. Stepping back inside the room, I retrieved the shortsword on the mantle, my weapon that I had failed to use previously. Muttering softly, I berated myself for only checking the commands to leave the game like I had, and traced an S in the air, my character page appearing moments later.
Cross Eagleforde
Strength 10 Agility 10 Endurance 10 Willpower 10 Intelligence 10 Magic
----------------------------------------
Skills
Active Passive
At least I still had access to this. But why was my character name Cross Eagleforde all of a sudden. Cross was right, but I had never given myself a second name. My stats were wrong too. I had minmaxed a bit in my character creation, intending to be a support class, but now they were all back at the baseline for the average humans in the game. Further, Magic wasn't even at zero, it was just devoid a value, probably meaning I couldn't raise it at all. My skills were blank, but that one I had expected, seeing as no one starts with skills in Herald.
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
Letting out a sigh, I began trudging through the village, my destination the training grounds, in hopes of somehow convincing Yarrick to teach me how to fight. A few players were present in the village, the fact that I could see their nameplates giving them away. As I was considering approaching them and asking for help in contacting a GM, an elf nearby suddenly approached me. Her nameplate was clearly visible, so it was a player, but she also had a guild tag, so she was more likely to be a recruiter than a beginner.
"Hello there. I don't think I've seen you in the village square before." Her voice was friendly and warm, and for a moment I didn't realize that she had spoken to me. Freezing up, I barely had time to wonder why she had spoken to me like I was an npc before she continued.
"I'm, sorry if its too direct, but I have been spending quite a lot of time in Tozha, and since I've never seen you before, I was just curious if you are a wanderer or merchant of sorts." Fuck. She thought I was an npc. Which meant I didn't have a nameplate, and which meant I couldn't ask for help without them thinking I was a buggy npc. What if I could be deleted now?
"Ah, no. I'm just a farm hand looking to change their lot in life. I've come here from my home to ask Instructor Yarrick to teach me how to use a sword." It wasn't the best excuse, but it was believable, if I did say so myself. It was a standard trope in fantasy novels after all, a farmboy becomes an adventurer to escape a life of dullness and dirt. She paused, looking me up and down, and for a moment I was wondering if I wasn't dusty enough to pull it off. Then, she traced an S into the air, and while I couldn't see her character screen, I knew she was looking at something on it. A moment later, she smiled prettily at me, and spoke again.
"Here, I'll walk you to the training grounds. I talk to Yarrick quite a lot, and I'm sure he'll do me a favor to help you learn." She didn't wait for me to answer, turning and slowly walking in the direction I had been going anyway. Had she checked her character screen to see if she had received a quest from that short exchange we had had? Had I somehow given her a quest, or had she done this because she was confused that she didn't get a quest and was wondering if she needed to trigger something else for it. Falling in behind her, I felt grateful for the fact that since she thought I was an npc, she wasn't trying to make small talk to fill the silence.
----------------------------------------
Diana frowned to herself, chewing lightly on her bottom lip. The npc she had just spoken to seemed too clean to be a farmboy, but that was expected if he was trying to impress Yarrick. Further, he already had a sword, which could be assumed to be a family possession passed on to him. But what was really grinding her was the way it was the first time she had ever seen, or heard, of npcs trying to change their lot in life. She knew that Herald was dynamically updated, so that it was possible this was the result of a recent addition to the game, but she also knew that Herald had hidden quests of varying ranks, and it was entirely possible this strange npc was a key to one of them.
Stealing a glance back at the npc, she noted that once again, the realism in Herald was mindblowing. If it wasn't for the fact that players had nameplates and npcs didn't she wouldn't be able to tell them apart. Right now, the npc was following her silently, and matching her speed nicely. She considered using the Inspect skill on him, but knew that some npcs were able to tell if you had used it on them, and often took offense to it. Turning her attention forward again, she brought up a clan chat, and decided to ask the rest of them if they had any advice.
----------------------------------------
From the way she had just given me the side-eye, I knew that something was wrong. Probably not, about to be stabbed wrong, but wrong enough that she wasn't helping me out of the kindness of her heart. Not that it helped to worry about it. I needed her to convince Yarrick to train me, and since I wasn't sure if the system was still treating me like a player, I was sure that meant I would need to put in hard work to even learn the basics. But then again, Yarrick was an instructor, and could potentially teach me a skill, which would make hard work worth the effort.
Silently doing the logout motion again, I wasn't surprised when nothing changed. Rounding a turn in the village, we found ourselves standing outside the training grounds. There were a lot more players here than elsewhere in the village, probably because the current meta of the game relied heavily on the easier to learn martial classes than the magical classes. A few players had looked at me with interest, but after feeling a shiver run down my spine, looked away, almost with pity on their faces. It seemed the female elf was the only one who found me truly special. At least I knew what it felt like to be Inspected by players now.
Yarrick was watching the field, occasionally making a remark based on something a player would do while training. I knew that most of these players would leave the area the moment they finished the basic training quest, eager to go an experience the world in full instead. The elf marched directly to Yarrick, and after greeting him warmly, turned and waved me over. Fuck. Why does everyone keep putting me on the spot. As I got close, she began speaking again.
"Instructor Yarrick, I found this farmboy wondering the village, and after speaking to them, found out they wanted to come and be trained by you." The way she spoke made me wonder if she was an extrovert in real life, a thought that was lost as a shiver ran down my spine again. Someone else had just inspected me, and before I could stop myself, I glanced around the yard to see if I could spot who it was. A player that had just entered the training yard was looking at me intently, and with surprise I noticed that he had the same clan tag as the elf.
Yarrick looked me up and down, his slate grey eyes making me uneasy. "Ever killed before?" His voice was gruff, and while the question surprised me, it wasn't the worst thing he could have asked me.
"Just once sir, a goblin that tried to ambush me." Again, I marveled at how calm my voice was, and almost pulled my character sheet up to see if I had some passive skill that helped me bluff. Luckily, I didn't, as Diana, the elf, raised an eyebrow at me and Yarrick spoke again.
"I was honestly expecting you to say no. Well, perhaps you have some potential then, and if you've been ambushed by a goblin while working before, I'd feel guilty if I could help change the outcome of the next ambush but don't." He nodded at Diana, and pointed at a corner of the training yard. "I'll get one of the apprentices to teach him in that corner. The Summoned Heroes unfortunately are more important to train than some farmer with dreams of glory."