We didn’t run, not quite. We hurried, but secrecy was still paramount and our naked feet would have made unmistakable sounds on the stone floor. So, we moved as fast as we could, without causing excessive noise.

And, it seemed luck, or maybe the game-developer’s intended scenario, were on our side, we managed to get through the hallways and to the office where I had left the two chalk-circles indicating corpses without the grizzly, visual effect of having them lying around. I had banked that they had yet to be discovered, given that their discovery would likely have caused an quite audible alarm and hunt for their killer.

Now, the dwarf and I were in the office, listening at the door for the commotion that would allow us to escape. Sadly, I had no real idea how long the improvised fuse I had made from my former starting gear would need to set the oil inside the barrel on fire or how exactly such a fire would progress. I hoped that there would be a lot of smoke, some heat and a lot of screaming, but I just didn’t know, so the time-line was a little iffy.

So, to distract myself, I decided to test the game’s AI, to see how well made and realistic the other characters were, starting with the dwarf next to me.

“Say, Friend, I never learned your name. You can call me Chrystal.” I told him, speaking softly to not attract attention from outside.

He looked a little startled, the implied question apparently catching him by surprise.

“Roknar, my name is Roknar. And there was little time to talk, we were in a bit of a hurry.” he introduced himself and while there was no smile on his face, he sounded amused.

“Well, right now, we just have to wait until our distraction attracts their attention. I hope it will cause enough of one to allow us to get away. Otherwise, things might get a little dicey. How did they catch you, anyway?” I asked, curious how much backstory they had given him. It might tell me if he was an important NPC or just a throwaway for the starting area.

“How much do you know about dwarves, Orc?” he asked, answering my question with one of his own.

“Not a lot, I have to admit. I was called into this world by the Irminsul, so I know little, merely that you appeared on the surface some hundred-fifty years back and allied with the trolls.” I answered, hoping that he would answer and elaborate.

“You are one of the Called, then? Curious. And yes, we left the depths some hundred-fifty years ago and the trolls took us in, teaching us and helping us to get settled. We have a natural affinity for earth, stone and metal, which makes us great stoneworkers, smiths and such, but we knew little about the surface world. It was then that we worked with the humans, before they started their Council and allied themselves with the Gnomes.” he explained, his voice sounding even more grim than before when talking about the gnomes, even spitting on the floor in disgust.

“As to how I was caught, while we dwarves have that natural affinity with the earth, some of us were taught to harness all four elements by the trolls, they have their own affinities so they could teach us quite easily. My master taught me the lore of mountains but to understand the other elements, I had to travel out, to experience them. I was on my way west, travelling to the windswept plains your people call home, hoping to learn more about the wind there, when I was ambushed by those damned slavers.” he continued, making me realise that he was a sorcerer or maybe an elementalist, in game-class terms. If those applied to NPCs, I wasn’t quite sure.

“I guess you can’t just use your magic to break open the earth, digging us an escape-tunnel?” I asked, mostly in jest.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“No more than you can take your sword and split open the arena, allowing us to stroll out. Such feats might be possible for those who are powerful enough to undertake the challenges posed by the World Pillar, but not for us.” he answered, sounding amused again. It was the first time I heard that there were challenges posed by the world pillar, but it might be a simple expression, or maybe it was some sort of end-game dungeon. Trying to ascend the world pillar would certainly make for a cool setting for one.

“Once we are out of here, how do we best proceed?”I pulled my mind back to the immediate future, hoping to have a plan by the time the distraction went off.

“As I said, the city was partially build by dwarves, especially the sewer-system. We are good with those, you know?” he sounded quite proud of that. I wondered if there were two dwarven brothers, one clad in red and the other in green, maybe fighting Kobolds or something. Or rescuing princesses who got caught again and again.

“So, we should look for an entrance into those sewers, got it. Will they allow us to escape the city?” I pushed on, ignoring the amusing ideas springing to my mind.

“We might be able to use them to get out, yes. But what I truly hope is to find an old way-stone, that way, I could use it to teleport both of us to Cold Quarry, the dwarven town where my master lives. That is, if you want to come with me, we might find some of your people down there, I think they use the tunnels to scout for their raids.” he explained, making me consider things, not from a realistic point, but from a gaming-developer point, not that I had a lot of direct knowledge about the process but I had played a few games and there were common threads.

Essentially, I was in a tutorial, so I hopefully would be able to complete it and get into a starting area, I doubted the devs would put someone who paid extra to pre-order their game into a situation where the only recourse was to re-roll, not if they wanted to make money. While that didn’t give me an excuse to go full retard, I was quite sure that, as long as I avoided that, I would be just fine.

So far, I had seen three possible win-conditions, the first was to get fame in the arena, the second to escape with the dwarf, the third to escape with the thief. Sure, escaping by myself would work as well, but it would essentially leave me stranded in an unfamiliar city, without contacts or information. Not a good spot.

But I doubted that those three were the only win-conditions, so I might find something good if I kept my eyes open.

While pondering possible ways to gain advantage in the opening scenario, I realised something else, something I had missed before. Maybe, I had missed it because I wasn’t a big fan of the various shooter-genres, but, to my shame, I had missed the obvious. What did a red barrel mean to almost every gamer, past, present and future?

“If you hit this, you get an explosion.”

And I had put a burning rag into a red barrel. Fudge.

Just as I wondered if I was imagining things, a massive blast rocked the arena, strong enough to deafen me and cause the floor to shake, answering my question.

For a moment, the dwarf and I looked at each other with a slightly disturbed look, until we both started laughing like loons. We had wanted a distraction and I was rather sure they were distracted.

A few moments later, I even heard the dwarf’s laughter over the ringing in my ears and, when putting my ear against the door, heard the commotion outside, Screams, shouts and footsteps.

“It is time for us to go.” I told Roknar, while deciding that some camouflage might be prudent, I hadn’t expected such a… big distraction. So, I grabbed a two of the wall-tapestries, taking the least garish ones, and wrapped one around my shoulder, using my dagger to cut it a little to create something resembling a hooded cloak, if viewed from far away. It might hide the fact that I was rather furry, but only to the most distracted and casual observer. Roknar took the second one from me and did something similar.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted there to be video of our escape or if I wanted it to be something never talked about again, a dwarf, wrapped in a golden-pink wall-tapestry and a black-furred orc, also wrapped in a wall-tapestry, this one baby-blue with gold-tassels, escaping a burning building. The only way it could be more ridiculous was to have actual women's clothing to disguise ourselves with, but I had to work with what I had.

But, now more or less disguised, I opened the door and we started running down the smoke-filled hallway, towards the blue sky in the distance.