Jim's PoV

Jim was now looking curiously at the men who circled him. He seemed to be the center of attention for everyone around. Royal Guard, regular guard and all the citizens were just looking at him in silence. But he couldn't see the King and his family, where did they go?

Once he had taken the shimmering red potion all those who had been attacking him backed off. That was rather interesting. Normally enemies rarely retreated from combat. But this wasn't exactly a normal scripted combat event. Jim took a long look at one of the smaller guards and he seemed to be shaking really bad.

Was he glitching out? Looking at the other Royal Guards, a few others seemed to have the same glitch. Maybe killing the final boss this early was a bit much and it broke the game? Something else he would have to look into. There seemed to be an ever increasing pile of stuff to work on.

Beyond the guards there was utter silence. A few seconds passed until a young boy who was riding on top of a man's shoulders started shouting, "The fellow ain't dead! The entire Royal Guard was hitting him with swords and stuff and he didn't even move the entire time!"

One of the regular guards broke off and headed towards the pair. The boy looked anxiously at the approaching guard, then quickly leapt down from the larger man's shoulders and the two commoners started running away from the scene. Interesting. Very dynamic interactions. Maybe the commoner NPCs were programmed better than the shopkeeper and the guards?

Another man started shouting "That man just took an Elixir! I'm a Potion Maker and I'd know that glimmering red liquid anywhere!"

And instantly his hypothesis died. Looking at the shopkeeper more closely, he could actually see how the aging bald and pudgy man with glasses had a resemblance to the 2D Potion Maker he remembered. He looked like one of those kindly grandfathers.

As he started eyeing the crowd, everyone seemed to pull back. Jim found the whole interaction very interesting, it was very rare for non-player characters or NPCs to interact with the main player first. On the other hand, he did just get finished playing human bowling ball. Jim refocused on the smaller guard that was in front of him.

On a whim he decided to grab the smaller guard he identified earlier. His right hand was still on his massive sword, which was now resting over his shoulder. Reaching out he quickly grabbed the man near the back of his neck with his left hand.

There was a really good handle on the back of the Royal Guard's armor, so it made bringing him up to his eye level a lot easier. Surprisingly the man was light as a feather. Glancing at his huge sword in his other hand, he reconsidered. Maybe the whole having over one thousand strength was a bit overpowered.

'Wow he was an ugly bastard' was his first thought. Jim turned the guy to the left and right and examined the man. The program really did some detailed work. Too bad this guy's character model seemed to have been beaten with every ugly stick from the ugly tree. Looking at the guard's squashed nose, it was only making matters worse.

It was obviously trying to mimic a nose that was broken before. Maybe the algorithm was wonky. The broken nose feature seemed to be showing up too often. Also interestingly he had a large old scar on the corner of his lip, as well as a number of smaller scars. The random number generator really worked over this poor NPC.

The man stopped shaking. Maybe the glitch fixed itself? The other Royal Guards started inching forward when the small man put a hand up to seemingly stop his comrades. Very interesting indeed. Man the program did some amazing work.

Even with him inches away, he seemed like a normal person. How well could they hold a conversation? Would he bug out like the weapons shop NPC if he asked him questions?

Jim asked the man curiously, "What's your name?"

***

Royal Guard's PoV

Sargent Bilgar was not having a good day. His first day as a Royal Guard was turning into a nightmare! It was supposed to be his day, dammit! And now his friends, family and the whole town saw him get pushed out of the way like a child.

How could this be happening? Not only did he fail to stop the assassin, but the guy took sword strikes from the finest warriors in the kingdom like they weren't even there. He was like an anvil, unmoving and unbothered by the constant strikes of metal around him.

Hell, one guy tried to climb on top of the mountain in black armor so he could try to jab a dagger into the seams of his helmet. Unfortunately the armor was so slick that the man lost his footing. His flailing and falling would have been masterful acting had this all been a play. However this was not a play, and the man fell badly on his right arm and an audible crack could be heard on his impact with the ground.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

After that Bilgar could only watch in a daze as the man staggered to his feet and began moving away. After a couple minutes the first guards were breathing heavily and they fell back to make way for fresh arms. This act continued for the next few minutes.

But the anvil remained still and unaffected. Royal Guards kept hacking at the man as if he were an immovable rock, but finally something changed. In a flash the man had a red vial in his hand and he was pouring the liquid through the grill of his helmet. Bilgar had no idea what potion it was, but he had a feeling that things were about to get a lot worse.

The next few seconds Bilgar was in a daze. Stupidly Bilgar had gotten winded so he took his helmet off and hung it at his belt. A couple of the other Royal Guards had done the same, but he was the only one in arms distance. Then the giant grabbed him by the back of his armor and pulled him up to where he was only inches away from the man's face.

The image on the black helmet made him seem like a demon. Then the man started turning him left and right while inspecting him, making it seem like he was some sort of curiosity. The towering man then finally spoke. In a deep and booming voice he asked Bilgar his name.

Bilgar took a shaky breath and in a squeaky voice said "My name is Sergeant Bilgar of the Royal Guard."

Bilgar took a deep breath to try to regain the conversation, but before he could, the booming voice said irritably, "Why the hell does everyone always have that voice synthesizer bug when first speaking? Oh well, let's try this again. What is your name?"

What? Why was he asking again? It might have been shaky but he had already said it. However it was hard to appear affronted when your feet were dangling two feet from the ground and the only thing holding yourself up is one massive immovable arm. Bilgar took a deep breath and again stated "My name is Sergeant Bilgar of the Royal Guard."

Steeling himself he quickly stated "Why have you murdered our beloved First Minister?"

With a nonchalant shrug the man said indifferently, "Nah. He was a bad guy. Y'all should thank me."

The crowd let out an audible gasp after he said that. Bilgar was furious! How could this man just walk in so casually and kill not just a High Noble, but the First Minister himself? A few seconds passed and the crowd started murmuring in the background.

Bilgar grabbed his helmet from his belt and was about to do something stupid. He was a second away from trying to ineffectively bash the evil man with his helmet, but instead turned the motion into putting it back on his head. Then someone stepped up to confront the man.

It was none other than the Captain of the Royal Guard himself. The Captain bowed to the hulk in black armor and said "You are truly a worthy hero to have defeated such an evil foe. Perhaps one such as yourself could go on a quest to defeat the evil presence to the north in the caves? For one such as yourself it would be but a simple task."

Thank goodness Bilgar had his helmet back on because everyone else would have seen his mouth hanging open with a stupid look of shock. The First Minister an evil presence? What the hell was the Captain thinking? But then after a second, he got it.

His display had already shown that even the whole of the kingdom could not defeat this man. And he was clearly nuts. Which meant the best way to get rid of him was to point him somewhere else, and the ingenious Captain pointed him towards the evil caves that had housed a creature of nightmare for centuries. Either he would go there and win, which would prove a huge boon to the Kingdom of Alextria, or he would die and nothing would change.

As these thoughts were crossing his mind he saw the black armored man sigh and then say, "Seriously? I killed the final boss and I still get the first quest in the game anyway? This game should have been more flexible than this. Maybe I forgot to add one of the databases?"

The man started mumbling to himself while still holding Bilgar dangling in the air. Why were the crazy ones always the guys who were strongest? But still the Captain was right. They had to convince this psycho to leave or the whole city would be at risk.

Taking a deep breath Bilgar said politely "Surely you who are the mightiest of heroes can rid us of the greatest evil of the land? Please, I implore you to take up this quest!"

The black armored man sighed and said "Well at least the dialogue got changed up some. Might as well do some more exploring."

As the man let him go and turned to walk away, everyone could only watch in a stilled silence. Once he was out of sight the Captain clapped him on his shoulder and said "Good job Bilgar. That crazy monster could have been the end of us all."

But the thrill of excitement from getting praised quickly died as he looked where his Captain had been gazing. That was right. The First Minister was dead. A heavy weight seemed to push him down. He had not known the man but most people talked well of the noble. There were a couple weird rumors going around about him, but that happened to all men of power, right?

As the trance of silence was broken, men started clearing the wreckage. There was work to do, and there was a funeral to prepare for. Turning back where the monster left he could only hope that both evils died in that tunnel. It would be a fit end for both of them.

***

Jim's PoV

Jim was trying to figure out what he had missed for the NPCs to be so buggy. Other than a couple outbursts, most of the dialog was either badly synthesized or a barely changed wording to do the first quest in the game. He wanted his NPCs to be more life-like, so he added several psychology databases.

Did he forget to add them in the final version somehow? Or did he overestimate how much processing power the human brain had? He could have sworn it would be more than enough to fill in the gaps of this world. And even if it didn't, the NPCs should have at least been able to say the dialogue given to them in the original game correctly.

The other thing that annoyed him was how dirty everyone was! Just glancing at the commoners you could see dirt all over them. Or at least he hoped it was dirt. As he was contemplating that question a window opened above him and a bucket was being sloshed out of the window.

The yellow and brown liquid splashing down a few feet in front of him made him reconsider that maybe all that wasn't dirt. After this realization, he couldn't get out of the city fast enough. In the 2.0 version he was definitely going to delete all of the biology databases. Absolutely disgusting.