After a few seconds, Will shrugged and went over to the bar. The lure of food and possibly some ale taking precedence over the dislike he felt for the other guy.

“Hey, Will,” the dwarf greeted him. “I see you’re using the proper entrance this time.”

Evening, Fili. Got any pickles for me today? I’ve been craving nachos lately, and it just isn’t the same without some jalapeños.

“I’m afraid I’m out. Some sort of weirdo went through my root cellar and smashed them.”

Pity. I guess I’ll have to make them myself then.

“Hold on there, Will. There is a such a thing as taking a joke too far, you know!”

Don’t worry. I’m not going to go all “armies of the pickled” on you here.

“Glad to hear that, Will. You don’t want to start with that. Acetomancy will pickle your soul.”

“What the hell are you two even talking about?” The kangaroo, which was looking more and more bewildered interrupted.

“We’re talking about pickles! The vilest beings in all the worlds!”

“What. The. Hell?”

The hordes of the Preserved, man! Will had been determined to ignore the kangaroo, but just couldn’t help but poke at his confused rival. Steeped in brine and acid, and ravenous for the flesh of the fresh!

“Can one of you please actually explain this?”

Probably. Not sure why I’d want to though, considering our last meeting.

“The hell are you talking about?”

I’m talking about you just hopping off to wherever, leaving me behind to deal with the increased difficulty after you finished that damn quest!

“Oh, you mean when you stole my kills and almost stopped me from even finishing the quest?”

“Enough, you two. No fighting in my inn!”

Sorry, Kili.

“Sorry, Kili.”

“Not until you’ve had at least three ales each!”

What?

“What?”

“You can’t have a tavern brawl if you aren’t drunk. What kind of barbarians are you?”

Will chose to ignore that particular weird turn.

You know what, whatever. You can just go hopping off whenever you feel like it. I just want some dinner.

“Go dig a hole or something. Innkeeper, I want the key to my room.”

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“Here you go,” Kili handed the kangaroo a large iron key. “It’s on the second floor. Just go up the stairs and it’s the first room to your right.”

The kangaroo, whose name Will still hadn’t learned, walked awkwardly to the stairs, dragging his hind legs behind him. Will shrugged and turned back to Kili.

Hey, I’ve got an ear of something called a Cloud Corn that your brother said is too low quality to sell to the alchemists. Any chance you can use it to make a pot of chili for me? Non-carne, of course.

“No problem. It’ll take too long to make it tonight, but I can have it ready for you on your next cycle, assuming you land here.”

That works for me. There’s been a change in how things work here, so it’ll be easier for me to get here on future cycles.

“That happens on these kinds of world. The Students often make mistakes, and have to fix them after the world is already active.”

I’ve been meaning to ask about that, actually. What’s the actual purpose here?

“I can’t be certain about these, since they don’t actually talk to us, you know, but I’m assuming that the Students are in some sort of world creating school, and these worlds are sort of learning projects.”

Yeah, I think I get that. But why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? I mean, this world can’t possibly be stable, in the long run. With the Spaces getting more difficult the more quests we do, it must either have some sort of end point, or it’ll spiral out of control and we won’t be able to keep up, eventually.

And that’s on top of the fact that as far as I can tell, there are only four ‘real’ people in here!

“It’s not supposed to be stable in the long run. All of these mini worlds have people like you and people like me in them. The people like you have a task to finish, and the people like me support them. And when the task is done, the world’s run is finished. I’m assuming the Student graduates and goes wherever it is they go to.”

So what’s my task then?

“No idea. Some of the worlds give you a task when you start them. Something like ‘slay the demon lord’, or ‘rescue the kidnapped princess’, or whatever. Others, you have to discover it for yourself.”

And how do I do that?

“Beats me,” the dwarf shrugged. “You mentioned something about the Spaces getting harder when you finish quests. I can only assume that once you reach a certain threshold things will happen.”

Wonderful. And what happens when we finish the task?

“You get to choose where and how you go next. They can get you to a bigger, more ‘real’ world, or you can do like Fili and I did, and become a merchant on the minis”

Wait, you got sent to a world like this one?

“Not like this one, no. But we did get sent to a mini world.”

How come you got to be a dwarf?

“I didn’t. That’s the part where you choose how you go next. I was a trout, if you can believe it. In a world that was all a big ocean.”

So if I finish this I can be human again?

“Or something better! You could choose to be a dwarf!”

Will wisely chose to let that one go.

OK, back to the task itself. How do I find out what I need to do here?

“You should be getting quests. Do the quests, and see what changes. Eventually it’ll show up.”

So just keep on doing what I’ve been doing. Thanks, Kili.

“You’re welcome. It’s nice to have a customer who actually talks to us. Not like Mr. Jumpy Grumpy there.”

Will snickered at the name.

Yeah, he actually called you “Innkeeper”. I didn’t think people actually do that!

“You’d be surprised at how many of them do it. Anyway, regarding your chili request. I’ll take the corn out of your hands now, and I’ll give you a discount on tonight’s dinner, OK?”

Yeah, that works. I guess it’s salad for dinner again?

“I’ve got some stew for you, actually. The herbivore special.”

Oooh, that sounds nice.

“Yeah, been thinking that if I only have herbivores on this Instance, there’s no point in going with the traditional inn foods.”

Makes sense to me. I’ll take the stew, then. And thanks!

The herbivore special was made out of potatoes (or maybe potantoes?), carrots, onions and some sort of lentil Will didn’t recognize. Whatever it was, it was tasty, and a very full Will even had a little trouble getting into his tunnel.

In the morning, Will was surprised to learn that the charges for his wand were restored to max, even though it hadn’t been a full cycle. Not that Will was going to complain.

Mr. Jumpy Grumpy wasn’t around when Will entered the common room. Will assumed the kangaroo had jumped on ahead already. Yet another thing he wasn’t going to complain about.

After finishing breakfast (which was salad again, of course), Will said goodbye to Kili, and went to the privy to move on to the next Space.