The presence entered the room. All eyes gazed in its direction.
Silence, except for his steps.
The lights in the hall illuminated a tall, muscular man in an incredibly tight shirt that looked as though it was on the verge of tearing apart. On top of it, an ill-fitting overcoat was lazily worn. The man had short, messy hair and large spectacles. He held a weighty textbook in his hand which he kept pressed against his person. His face wore a skeptical and almost offended expression as he paused in the middle of the dining hall to survey the night's guests. Though his physical presence was imposing, the sound of his steps was akin to that of a giant’s - they sounded too loud to come from him.
The man’s name was Murphy Cook.
Rosalind wore a grin from ear to ear. She held up a finger to her mouth just as she saw Jasper scrambling to whisper something to her. Just let this play out, she almost wanted to beam to him telepathically. He seemed to get the transmission, and quieted down.
One of the dining hall guests stood up from his table to address the stranger. “Dr. Cook, is everything alright?” he asked.
Murphy cleared his throat and began to speak, his words coming through as gruff, raspy, and low-pitched. “It begins, comrades. A prophecy foretold centuries ago. A warning that we all ignored. A stranger wielding a scythe, knocking on our front door. One knock. Followed by another. Then another. A double knock, a triple knock - it didn’t matter. We couldn’t hear it. The sound was drowned out by our parties, our balls, our frivolous pursuits.”
Murphy, clutching the book in an almost paranoid fashion, sauntered around the hall, the loud echo of his seemingly soft footsteps pounding the room like an earthquake, reverberating even louder in Jasper and Rosalind’s heads.
“Knock. But we were too busy chasing the belle of the ball, the apple of our eye…,” Murphy said as he walked past the loving couple whose hands were nervously intertwined.
“Knock knock. But we were too busy chasing pride. That damned cardinal sin that mankind can’t seem to shake. Each and every one of us wants to be the big man, the sigma male,” Murphy continued, straddling past the two knights who were previously arguing, now standing up straight as if being addressed by a drill sergeant.
“What’s a sigma male?” Jasper asked in a whisper but Rosalind ‘shushed’ him again.
“Knock. Knock. Knock. But we were lost in liquid jubilation. How can one hear when one can barely stand up, let alone remember where he is?” Murphy ruminated as he walked past the inebriated patrons at the bar, now all solemnly staring at their drinks. Murphy’s judgment was near-biblical, and the response of the onlooking NPCs to his stroll suggested the air of respect he carried in the town of Alexandria.
“All of these distractions, but the one with the scythe remained. One knock, two knocks, three, four, FIVE KNOCKS!” Murphy violently slammed his textbook on an empty table in the center of the room. His words had already commanded attention, but now they were magnified. The party in the corner of the room, who had previously returned Rosalind's glance with lurid stares, were transfixed by the presentation.
“Can you hear it now you fools?! Is this loud enough for you?!” Murphy shouted.
Jasper’s mouth hung agape. He shifted his gaze from Murphy for a brief moment, glancing across the table to Rosalind who was beaming. Unbeknownst to him, she’d been mouthing Dr. Cook’s monologue alongside his speech the entire time. It was one that she was very, very familiar with.
Dr. Cook opened up the large textbook and rifled through the pages. “This book that I’ve brought with me here today was a parting gift given to me by a now deceased friend.”
Jasper did a double take as he heard this.
Murphy continued. “While he gave me no context, somehow, he trusted that I’d know exactly what to do with this extraordinary gift. This glimpse into the unknown. This… book of the ancients.”
A unified gasp from the NPCs in the room came in response to this proclamation, followed by hushed, tense conversations. Rosalind feigned an exaggerated ‘shock’’ reaction of her own, which then folded into a quiet laugh.
Jasper was puzzled. “Is this supposed to be a big deal?” he mouthed, to which Rosalind nodded affirmatively.
“It’s true,” Murphy said, straightening his glasses. “But that’s not the important part. You see, I spent months translating this text. Months discerning where the red herrings were, and months digging into every promising passage. It was painstaking. But finally, I was able to decode the central mystery within this book. This book, harboring secrets about our world and the future awaiting us, has now confirmed what many in Alexandria have been suspecting for years.”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
This town only started existing earlier today, Jasper groaned internally.
“There is a group among us, trying to revive the crooked knight, the world consumer, the devourer of souls…,” Murphy continued.
Dread permeated the room. Even the non-NPCs who were lodging here for a respite from the enemies that the XPeriential Points game had unleashed on the world, were getting sucked in.
“Valentria.”
A piercing silence, and then, a slow roll of worried whispers, chatter, rumors, anger, confusion, fear, resentment, all erupting as the room ignited with emotion.
Ehhhh, kind of a dumb name, Jasper thought.
A concerned NPC from one of the tables stood up, acting as the embodiment of the boiling point that had been reached. “What should we do?!”
Murphy turned to leave. “I have a plan,” he said, as he approached the stairs. “When the time is right, you’ll all be called to action.” Rosalind mouthed the line to Jasper as Murphy said it, striving for an epic delivery.
“We will meet in the place where there is no darkness,” Murphy pronounced.
Jasper’s eyes widened.
“Wait! And, uh, where is this place with no darkness exactly?” another patron inquired.
Murphy looked back at everyone in the hall, his eyes filled with intensity.
“If you know, you know.”
And with that, Murphy proceeded down the stairs, and Rosalind clapped. She was met with confused glances from both NPCs and real-life guests. “I wrote that last line,” she said to Jasper, enthused. “Pretty epic, right?!”
“Oh wow! Yes, it was… great,” said Jasper.
–
HP has been fully restored!
Jasper frustratingly tried to ‘x’ out the notification obscuring his field of view, eventually succeeding before falling back onto his bed. Dinner had wrapped up, and he and Rosalind had retreated to their respective inn rooms for the night. He was grateful for the peace and the solitude.
Beside his bed lay the suit of armor that his deceased ‘acquaintance’ had gifted him. Thanks to the party inventory that he and Rosalind shared in XPeriential Points, storing and lugging any large items was now a breeze - just add it to the inventory!
Jasper stared up at the ceiling and ruminated on Murphy’s speech. He and the intense doctor shared a few similarities: they both had received final gifts from their respective deceased friends with little to no context, and they both (Jasper liked to believe) were in peak physical condition. But most importantly to Jasper, both were familiar with the line: “In the place where there’s no darkness.”
“That’s from 1984…,” Murphy mused to himself.
He heard a rapping on the door. Before he had time to ponder on what the source of it was, a voice accompanied the knocking.
“Alright Jasper!” Rosalind called from the other side of the door, “It’s time for us to get to the bottom of this thing.”
Jasper got up from his bed. “Are we going to team up with that doctor and take out the villains who are trying to revive… Valbasaur? Is that the ‘big bad’s’ name?”
“No to both,” she said as Jasper opened the door, revealing a very awake Rosalind standing in the hallway with a confident swagger. “We’re going to figure out who sabotaged the launch.”
—
Jasper stood awkwardly at the bedside of Rosalind's inn room, his eyes drawn to a large bulletin board leaning against the window wall. It was populated with various names, pictures, and connecting lines.
“When did you even find time to do this?”
“Oh I started right after dinner,” Rosalind replied with a casual shrug. Jasper walked up the board and examined its contents. Though the faces were all unfamiliar to him, they shared similarities in age and the style of headshot.
“My old coworkers,” Rosalind explained, her voice tinged with nostalgia. She navigated to the 'BGM' section of her XPeriential Points menu and selected a mysterious 'forest theme' option. The room filled with the haunting sounds of harpsichords, strings, chimes, and keyboards.
"Just setting the mood," she said, flashing a mischievous smile. Jasper nodded, his gaze drifting to the open window as he wondered if a fall from the fourth floor would be enough to kill him.
“I have a strong belief that the launch sabotage came from the inside,” Rosalind continued.
“Not only did I receive a call before the game went live more or less spelling this out, but it would’ve been impossible for someone outside of XPeriential’s system to hack into it and cause this much chaos. The fact that the company hasn't been able to reverse the launch means it was someone knowledgeable enough to program a precise disruption."
“Very, very interesting,” Murphy responded. “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out. Maybe it’s best that I go back to my room -”
“Wait! Just wait. You’re a literature buff, aren’t you? Like, fiction and all that jazz?”
“Sure… why?” said Jasper.
Rosalind looked back at faces on her board, her face determined.
“I need to figure out who did this. Sure, I have some sense of who these people are, and maybe even the motivations of some of them. But, I’m just one person. I need another brain to challenge my theories. Someone who has a different, more narrative perspective, I suppose.”
Jasper contemplated. “Can you try to kick me out of the party again?” he asked. “Just one more time for posterity?”
Rosalind sighed, maneuvered hastily through the menu options - clearly a well-practiced routine for her at this point - and selected ‘REMOVE JASPER WHITMORE FROM YOUR PARTY’. Immediately, a terrible buzzer sound played in their ears, making them recoil. Following that, a prompt appeared, confirming that this action couldn't be taken until the game was beaten, as they both gathered themselves.
“Fine, I’ll help,” Jasper caved.