I smiled as I came up to the city gates, this meant safety. The inner limits of the city were a zone categorized as friendly, meaning no form of combat was permitted. Well, when this was a game and all your abilities were merely grayed out, but now it felt more like a weight that made the thoughts of combat seem heavy, and if tried, the guardians will without a doubt catch up to you before any real damage could be done. Even with the small possibility of combat happening, which don't get me wrong, if there is a chance it can happen, it will most definitely will, eventually. A marker popped up overhead, marking that I had entered a friendly zone, the light joyful bing, everything to do with it, had made me feel relieved.
I had made it back in one piece.
City Major was one of the 5 main cities that housed everything that could be ever needed in an MMO. A full marketplace that not only supplied items sold by NPC’s, well now they were more like average people before it was quite obvious to distinguish a real player from a computer, but not so much anymore. And as well it housed the auction house, a place for players to sell off items at whatever the secondary market valued them at. This being a city with an auction house meant that its population was through the roof compared to ones that didn’t. Trading and Selling items found off drops was a fun aspect of the game that made you feel like you were accomplishing something while having fun playing the game. Well now the climate around the auction house has changed quite a bit, but that is a topic for another time. The city held housing for all its occupants, restaurants, and theaters for those who had once diverged in the roleplay aspect of things, guess they were the ones most excited about this change. Casino’s, Guild Halls, everything you could ever imagine needing in a fantasy world setting was here, it should have been paradise.
At first, it was.
We felt like kids thrown into a world without consequences, everything was new and everything sparkled. The combat was a bit scary at first, but once death was revealed to just be an extended nap, well it all didn’t seem too bad. The bigger guilds continued to do what big guilds did, competing for dungeon clears and expanding as much as possible. But as the weeks went by, as did the sudden realization that we didn’t know when we would be able to return home to family, friends, and obligations, everything began to rush in as if they had been corralled in the back of everyone’s head.
I stopped by the back before heading over to my apartment. I dropped off all the items that I didn’t need on me, and my equipment for the night. I wouldn’t be needing it until I left out of town, and in the world of LKO, if you die you drop a random piece of gear, so it had become a habit that when not using your gear you leave it in the hands of the trusty goblin bankers. This coupled with my OCD meant whenever I was going out to either grind an area or attempt a quest, I would have to plan out everything I needed and then pick it all up in the bank. My apartment did house a couple of chests full of backup gear, potions, and whatnot, but the bank is where everything of real value was. At first, the goblins had given me the creeps, their long fingers and noses to match, paired with their sharp eyes that always seemed disappointed in you, didn’t help either. But now old Marty knew me on a first-named basis. The NPCs were different now, they felt real as if this wasn’t a new world made for us, but rather one that had already been established, we just sort of crashed the party.
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“Awfully late to be stopping by the bank,” spoke Marty as he typed away on a typewriter that fit would have stood out back in the real world, well as would a goblin, but I digress.
“Night shift again, Marty, who’d you piss off.”
He chuckled and smiled as he removed his glasses, wiping away tears of tiredness from the corners of his eyes. Without his glasses, he didn’t seem as menacing anymore. The lines in his skin and the picture frame with what I presumed must be his grandchildren actually made me forget that he was a goblin in a “fake world”. Right now he seemed like just another person, well an NPC, but what did that really mean anymore?
“Age did this to me,” He laughed, “Ohh and the fact that I can’t seem to keep up with the morning or afternoon shifts any longer, not since your kind arrived, they come in hordes and always move and deposit items that kingdoms would be proud to house.” He started rubbing his forehead with his fingers gently as if even remembering it all had caused him enormous stress.
“It’s strange isn’t it, we just kind of fell from the sky and just seemed to screw everything up,” I told him as I began laying out what I was going to deposit on the tray that had been pushed in by another night shift worker, this one I didn’t know too well, but I still smiled and tipped him for his troubles.
“Yes, it is a bit strange, but it was not to be unexpected. Do you know of our world's past? The history of how this all came to be?” I flushed with embarrassment. I should have known this world in and out, but like most players, I skipped past the lore frantically as I chased loot and XP.
“Sorry, I don’t.”
He laughed, easing my embarrassment, “Don’t feel sorry, boy. Your kind did just appear here some moons ago. Well, it’s not very detailed, but this world of ours has always been pieces in the making. From time to time, new creatures, animals, and locations would appear out of thin air, as if someone was toying with this world. Well that someone, is the creator, if you choose to believe in that sect of belief at least.
“It’s hard to argue that this world doesn’t have some all-seeing, tampering creator if civilizations and buildings appear out of thin air,” I replied knowing that this must be a product of the world being a video game after all.
“Well yes, and that is why many believe in this rationale, but you could also argue that this is simply how our world is.” He scrunched with eyebrows as he handed me the tallied receipt of everything I had deposited today.
I took the receipt from his hands and asked what he believed in.
He smiled a grin that said he was hoping for his shift to end sooner than later, “I believe we live in a strange world with strange people and it is in my best interest to stay as far removed as I can.”
“Is anything troubling you Marty?”
He grinned, “Nothing, nothing lad, Just be safe out there. Some of your kind aren’t as nice as you.”
With that, I left the bank on a grimmer note than I would have liked. What exactly is going on and if the rules are no longer applying the protection to NPCs as they once had, what is going unpunished? I needed answers. And there was one guy I knew who could give me them, but It was going to cost me. I sighed and open my messaging system.