CHAPTER 9

For lack of a better term, Kopius felt great. His hunger and thirst were gone. He felt full but not heavy. The residual aches and pains from his day's journey had vanished as well.

“It’s like I got the best sleep of my life,” Kopius marveled.

“The best what now?” Oh-jin said as he returned, carrying a small pouch that had a belt attached to it.

“I feel great,” Kopius replied. “What’s in that thing? That-that marshromo. Does it have concentrated electrolytes or something?”

“E-lec-tro-lytes” Oh-jin said, almost tasting the word. “I do not know of this substance. No, I do not,” he rubbed at his goatee, “but it sounds exciting!”

“Well, what did it do to me?” Kopius asked.

“To you? No, no, no. For you, it did,” Oh-jin answered. “The marshromo has several special properties. The pulp replenishes your energy, your stamina. The seeds, they replenish your mind and your mana.”

“I have mana?!” Kopius exclaimed, eyes wide open.

“Yes boy, we all do! Now, pay attention.” Oh-jin shot back, as if this was common knowledge.

I KNEW I had magic! Kopius celebrated internally.

“So the pulp and the seeds,” Oh-jin was saying, “they do great things alone, but the marshromo has one other benefit: eating the fruit will negate the need to eat or drink anything for one rotation.”

“Rotation?” Kopius asked.

“Yes, one day.” Oh-jin answered with a smile, placing the pouch on the counter. “After eating one of these when you wake, you will not feel the urge to eat or drink until the next morning.”

“That sounds very useful,” Kopius said, leaning over the counter, “but can I ask you a question?”

“Of course, of course! You must have many!” Oh-jin said, glee in his voice. He too leaned on the counter.

“Are you an NPC?” Kopius asked with a straight face.

“A what?” Oh-jin replied.

“An NPC, a non-player character,” Kopius clarified. ”Are you a part of this game?”

“I am not sure what you mean,” Oh-jin said with obvious confusion.

Kopius stared at Oh-jin as the man leaned against the counter.

Would an NPC know it's an NPC? Kopius wondered.

“It’s a… are you…” Kopius sighed and trailed off. For all that the marshromo had done to revitalize his body, his brain was stuck in neutral.

“Honestly,” Kopius conceded, ”I don’t know what the fuck is going on.”

“Fuh-k” Oh-jin repeated, mouthing the new word.

“Riiight,” Kopius said, shaking his head.

The man seemed fascinated by everything Kopius did and said. He gave Kopius a mild case of the creeps. Not like old-man-staring-at-the-park creepy but more like old-scientist-would-like-to-dissect-me-up-upon-my-death creepy. Oh-jin looked to be both paying attention and lost in thought simultaneously. The goggles Oh-jin wore made it hard to see where he was looking, but the man's head movements and facial expressions were evidence enough. Kopius willed open his user interface to look for any changes.

Nothing.

As he closed his interface the smile on Oh-jin’s face grew exponentially.

“Kopius,” The old man stated, clapping his hands together.

“Wait, what?” Kopius exclaimed.

“That is your name, yes?” Oh-jin asked kindly.

“Yes, but I didn’t-” Kopius protested.

The old man giggled.

“I still got it!” Oh-jin shouted. “Do it again!”

“Do what again?!” Kopius shouted back.

“Look at your profile again,” Oh-jin replied in a softer tone.

“My interface? You saw that?” Kopius asked.

“Yes! I have a Skill called Peek. Please, look at yourself again,” Oh-jin pleaded.

Kopius pulled up his interface, and the old man giggled some more.

“This thing must be broken.” Oh-jin complained, whacking the side of his head as if to jar something back into place. “I can only see your name and level.” Wrinkles furrowed on the old man's nose like he was squinting as Kopius closed his profile.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Kopius said with some relief. “That’s all I can see too! The whole thing was blank when I woke up. Nothing was there until I gave it my name, and then the ‘2’ didn’t show up until I had gotten out of that stupid cave. No idea where ‘1’ went.”

“It is like he was born yesterday,” Oh-jin muttered to himself, rubbing at his goatee, oblivious to Kopius’s words.

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“Yo!” Kopius hollered, snapping Oh-jin out of his wonder. “I don’t know what is going on or where I am,” Kopius continued in a calmer tone. “I am stuck in a game. Something is broken. I can’t log out, and I can’t leave.”

For once the perpetual grin on Oh-jin’s face faltered. His lips puckered slightly, and his head teetered as though having an internal debate.

“You are the first person I have seen or met-” Kopius had started to continue.

“First person!” Oh-jin spat out. “How did you receive that ring then?” He motioned to the ring on Kopius’s left hand.

“This?” Kopius asked, raising the hand in question. “I found it in a pile of bones before I climbed out of the cave. I found this one too.” He brought both hands together as if to show off a fresh manicure. “They both have symbols, but I don’t know what they mean.” Kopius rotated the ring on his right hand until the small engraving was visible. “This one healed me or something.” He then spun to the other ring’s symbol on his left hand. Oh-jin, now noticeably deflated, let out an audible sigh.

“This ring,” Oh-jin said solemnly, gesturing to the ring on Kopius’s right hand, ”is used for basic healing. ‘Young adventurers will stumble,’ Lexsore would say.” A bit of a smile returned to Oh-jin’s face.

“Lexsore?” Kopius asked softly.

“Yes, my boy, Lexsore,” Oh-jin replied. “He was… my friend.”

“If you clean that ring,” Oh-jin continued, pointing at the other ring, ”the symbol will be two triangles, the smaller offset and a straight line reaching beyond the tallest point. It is a key of sorts.”

“The symbol is a key?” Kopius replied.

“No, no, no,” Oh-jin said, waving his hands about. ”The ring is a key.”

“A key to… ?” Kopius asked.

“Well,” Oh-jin said, gesturing to his workshop, “here.”

“Here?”

“Yes, here.” Oh-jin answered, ”The door you came through could not open without it. Well it would open, but I would not be on the other side.”

Lucky for me, Kopius thought, remembering the gnashing teeth of the bush monster he had been running from.

He looked at the ring on his hand and spun it a couple times. ‘Loot everything’ had long been a motto for Cory when playing RPGs. In general, the looted items would be sold for game currency, usually copper, silver, or gold; or deconstructed for parts to craft something better. If it fit through the opening of something like a Bag of Holding (or any other storage device that folds both space and time, allowing a player to literally take everything and the kitchen sink) it went in the bag.

Rings, amulets, and other aesthetic items were no-brainers to loot. All had monetary value, some were enchanted granting low-level stat buffs or boons, and the rest, though rare, had magical properties of varying applications and degrees of power. Basic magic rings, like the healing ring on Kopius’s right hand, were crucial to surviving, especially early in a game.

Though, the difference between being ‘enchanted’ or ‘magical’ got lost in the nuance of any given game, Kopius had come to understand it like this: enchanted items grant Passive boosts to the wearer. These boosts could be as meager as a +1 to your attack stat or as grandiose to give the wearer the location of all enemies within a certain radius. Magical items had active abilities, often an extra heal or damage spell, that could be used in conjunction with a player's mana pool without using the player's mana. Active Abilities or Skills were triggered through an action or a spoken word, and Passives were always ‘on’.

“Okay, okay,” Kopius said, waving his hands around as if to stop some unheard music. It was starting to occur to Kopius that this conversation was heading in too many directions at once. “Time out,” he continued, making the universal sports gesture to pause time. ”Hold the goddamned phone.” Kopius stood back from the counter and ran both hands down the front of his face. When he reached his chin, Kopius made two quick jerks in opposite directions, popping his neck. Cory had held stress on his shoulders, and it seems the same for Kopius.

“Let's start over,” Kopius began, ”I will tell you about my day and then maybe you can fill in some blanks?”

Oh-jin nodded in agreement.

Kopius took a deep breath before regaling the old man with his plight. Starting with waking up in the cave of mirrors, Kopius took Oh-jin through the sequence of events and decisions that led him to the old man’s door. Once he had finished, the two men stood there in silence processing the information. The only time Oh-jin made any movements during the whole story was when Kopius spoke of the skeletal remains. Besides that, the old man listened patiently.

“Soooo,” Kopius said, breaking the silence, ”does any of this sound, I don’t know, normal?”

“Yes.” Oh-jin offered in a small, distant voice, slightly shaking his head in disbelief. He then stood up straight, adjusted his leather apron, and cleared his throat.

“Yes.” Oh-jin repeated with more authority. “I do not know where to begin exactly. You see, Lexsore was to inform all adventurers upon their arrival and escort them here. I give them the tools to start their journey. What I can tell you,” Oh-jin paused, “is that I am here to help. What Lexsore was to tell you, I will have to look among his notes.”

It sounded to Kopius that some man named Lexsore was supposed to give new arrivals the background story while escorting them to Oh-jin, who would then give next step instructions, possibly supplies too. While all of this was well enough to advance a storyline, Kopius still had no answers to his predicament.

It’s like the authors of the game weren’t even trying, Kopius thought.

“Your friend, Lexsore,” Kopius began, “He was supposed to bring me here?”

“Yes,” Oh-jin said.

“I’m guessing he would have told me what was going on, why I'm here, things like that?” Kopius continued.

“Well, of course. This whole business would be quite confusing otherwise.”

More broken than confusing, Kopius thought. Let’s just keep it moving along.

“Once Lexsore had escorted me here, what then? What would you have done?” Kopius asked, hoping to move the story along. His current line of thinking was that if he continued advancing the game, eventually, the system would fix itself. Also, he figured if he was going to be here for the foreseeable future, he did not want to spend it cooped up in a medieval lab.

“Well then,” Oh-jin perked up, ”First I offer the marshromo, as all are hungry after such a great journey. Next, I would document their profiles using my Peek skill. From there, they are fitted with basic gear, a weapon, and a small pack for food,” he said, gesturing at the sack he had come back with earlier.

“That’s it?” Kopius said with some surprise.

“No, boy! I have more to offer than treats for the welcoming! You will discover one shortly as I know how to fix your profile’s visibility.”

“Really?” Kopius sputtered.

“Yes,” Oh-jin answered. “It has been some time, but the ingredients are simple enough. An old midwife recipe from my people…” He turned back to look at his laboratory. The old man started to point indiscriminately around the room, murmuring to himself. “Cyanins, optical-quartz, powdered fern, and…” He was a bit puzzled now and started to rummage through a shelf just behind him. “I will need a petal from an eyebright flower.”

“Kopius,” Oh-jin said, turning back to face him, “if you would like my help, I can offer you this. Lexsore was a most studious man and kept extensive writings in his many, many notebooks. I must look through them in order to, eh, fill in the blanks,” he replied, almost as a question. Like one would using a phrase they were not totally familiar with. “In the meantime, if you accept, I will need several petals from a flower called an eyebright. This last ingredient is needed to create a remedy that will clear the absence of your full profile. Do you accept?”

For the first time in a while, a notification window with a glittering bronze border popped into Kopius’s field of vision. It was absent of any words, but when Kopius tried to mentally shut it the window did not close. He tried several times, flexing his mental smite button, but the window remained. On a whim, Kopius thought, Yes? and the window disappeared. A bit of a smile crested his face as he guessed that he had just accepted his first quest.