My stomach ached from all the laughter. I couldn´t take it anymore so I forcefully calmed myself down. The future promised to be interesting with this guy around.

"Stop ..haha.. stop looking so embarrassed Sky! Remember, I made that body. I have already seen it all. Oh come on, don´t give me that look."

"Pervert!"

I facepalmed. If I had bothered taking my hand away from my face after the last facepalm I would have put it there again.

"Dude, I´m a man." I said matter of factly.

"No way. You are obviously a girl! Don´t try to mess with me."

"I´m a man."

"Nope"

"I am!"

"Impossible!"

"Stop denying my gender!"

"I´m not denying your anything! You are a girl!"

"Gahh just believe me already!"

"I don´t believe that. I can´t believe that! Have you looked into a mirror recently?"

"It´s my belief and I´m entitled to it!" I joked.

"Gender is not a matter of belief especially in game! Plus, you are obviously a girl."

"Suit yourself. Not that it matters." I grumbled and pouted.

"Aha! So you really are a girl!" BlueSky excitedly pointed at me, his nudity all but forgotten.

"What gave you the idea?"

"Men don´t pout! Men hit things when they are discontent! And no self-respecting man would pout when his gender is questioned!"

"I am a pacifist! Don´t you think you have a twisted view of men? Are you sure you are ok being a man? Maybe we should get you a sex change and a therapy after all." I said mostly to annoy him.

"Whether I am a man or a woman is none of your business! You will just have to get over it." I was done with this topic and turned back to the runes. BlueSky thankfully got the hint and turned to the runes I was inspecting.

"So this might be a bit late but... what´s your name? And where are we? I thought you were just a character creation NPC or some sort of guide but now you seem more like a Stray to me." BlueSky

Strays were simply players in this game. The language software which also translated all kinds of languages exchanged the word "player" with "Stray Soul" whenever it got the chance so the players got used to calling themselves "Strays" on their own. For a player to say "Stray" instead of "Stray Soul" meant he initially called himself as such and the software didn´t kick in. More experienced players used this to recognize noobs.

I remembered the previously icy tone, when I asked him about his past. Thus I shrugged it off.

"Oh, you finally noticed? I thought you would never ask. Anyways I don´t really know where we are. I was just walking through a desert minding my own business, building sandcastles along the way when the sand ate me and I ended up in this underground maze. After looking around for a bit I was for some reason teleported to the sanctum with you. And yes I´m a Stray. The name is Murphy."

I gave a ridiculously large bow for the sake of roll playing with his majesty, the crown wearing demonlord. He played along, got into a formal posture and gave me gracious nod. The entire situation was absurd as he was still naked but he must have gotten used to it by now.

Both of us being Strays means he is also a player, not that I didn´t suspect that. That didn´t make the situation less strange though.

The notion was absurd.

"Well I guess we are stuck with each other for a while so let´s explore! This place is interesting~. There are moving runes and pictures and epic large scale fights! Oh but I didn´t see a single monster ever since I came here!"

"Where did you come from?"

"Oh that tunnel over the-..." I pointed at the tunnel I had followed to the big hall...just that there was no tunnel. After a quick sprint I stood before the place where the tunnel should have been. I touched the wall but to no avail. There was no tunnel. Runes covered the wall and formed a stop sign.

"Strange~, I guess there is no going back." I faked nonchalance and turned to Sky.

BlueSky had caught up with me and stared at me inquisitively.

"What is it?" I felt uncomfortable under his gaze and began to fidget.

"I don´t see any other exit."

"Thanks Sherlock, I didn´t notice."

"Sorry... I didn´t mean to snap at you Blue...I simply hate confined spaces like this." I pointed at the room in general. Although it was by no means small I felt increasingly uncomfortable. Even the small tunnel was a better alternative as in there I could just counter my fears with the hope of finding the exit. The character creation stage also didn´t scare me because I could just jump through the window even if there were no doors...and nothing but clouds beneath the window. I chided myself but there was nothing to be done about it. Blue gave me a skeptical look.

"Are you... claustrophobic?" He somewhat tilted his head.

"Of course not! Are you?"

Despite myself my body language gave me away as I started to restlessly pace back and forth then along the walls in search of an exit, a window, an air vent or maybe a pin sized hole that would give me at least a bit of hope.

BlueSky just watched me with increasing worry. He had obviously seen through the facade but figured talking to me about it would only worsen the situation. Even if he wanted to help me there was nothing he could do, well except for finding an exit. Thus he took the opposite side of the room and looked at the runes.

In my increasing fear I had all but forgotten BlueSky was even with me. I panted heavily, frantically pulled on torch holders and pushed any suspicious parts of the obsidian wall in hopes of finding some kind of mechanism to open a secret door. It worked as I had already found two secret compartments this way. Sadly none of them were an exit but they still encouraged me. One contained an antidote the other a lavashard that would unleash a fireball on my foes if I activated it. Especially the lavashard was a rare treasure I would usually have been overjoyed to find. Now it just came as a disappointment.

"I found something!" BlueSky excitedly exclaimed.

With a dash I was by his side and searched for the cause of his excitement. I didn´t find anything. Where was the exit? My eyes met his and he pointed at the obvious runic painting in front of us. Thus I inspected it. There was actually a text instead of a picture. My adventurous spirit flared up as I wanted to dramatically read it aloud again but the fear won out and I just skimmed the text.

"So we have to sing this?" I laughed despite myself.

"So it would seem..."

"Are you a good singer?" My fear was already subsiding with the emergence of hope. "I bet you could solo that!"

"Even if I wanted to, how am I supposed to sing two different texts at the same time?"

"I´m sure you will find a way~"

I took a moment to marvel at my own creativity then tuned the ranting BlueSky back on. He had been cursing me for a bit all the while grinning. He was visibly relieved and annoyed by my recovery.

"Alright let´s do this! On three ok? One, Two" I was pumped and sang the first line but BlueSky who had tried to sing his own line suddenly exploded in laughter, so I stopped as we already failed this first attempt. I stared at him in pouting contempt. I already knew why he had laughed after all.

"Haha... Murphy what´s up with your voice?"

"Got a problem?" I gave him a grin that promised eternal hell if he didn´t stop laughing this instant.

"Hehe.. will it even work if you sing like that? Haha"

"Of course! The text told us to sing. There was no mention of being good! Not like it´s my fault after all. It´s a side effect of my race."

"Ahh your race huh? Good excuse, girl." I glared at him for more than one reason.

"Yep my race~. I´m a pseudo mermaid. The backstory is something about a part of the merfolk that wanted to live on land and developed legs. But our sirens singing became a bother to the other inhabitants of the land as their males were drawn to our beautiful voices. They were a bother to us too so after the jealous landfolk females almost drove us to extinction a pact was formed. All pseudo mermaids would be forced to scream for an hour every day in their youth until they reached adulthood. By then all the screaming would have destroyed our mesmerizing singing voices. This pact made coexistence possible for my kin. Even the body of a Stray like me can´t sing properly because of this. I guess my race would be the worst race to choose if you wanted to start as a bard." I mused.

Suddenly self-conscious I looked at my webbed blue hands then at the fins on my arms. I had a lizardish tail and gills on my neck. My face was the only part of my body that wasn´t covered in scales. I had also short wavy green hair and matching swamp green eyes.

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By the way, BlueSky wasn´t even that wrong when he called me a girl. Pseudo mermaids had the neutral gender by default. In a way we were like fish. There was nothing visible to tell apart male from female and with my petite build and height of only 150cm I didn´t look manly at all.

No matter how reasonable Blues arguments, I would not concede here.

BlueSky thought about this revelation with a tilted head.

"Well Smurfy we should just try again. Just sing the best you can and I will try not to interrupt the song again." He smiled. That somehow crept me out.

"Ok let´s... WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME???"

"Chill, I figured Murphy is just too hard to pronounce so I just..hahaha" he laughed. Now he was rolling on the floor.

"Hahaha don´t be a bore it´s just a nickname haha... hey what do you plan to do with that shard haha? Smurfy? No! Stupid that will kill me! STOP! I´m sorry so please stop chanting!!!" As I was activating the lavashard the soon to be crispy BlueSky was now apologizing on his knees.

I stopped chanting in favor of laughing until my side hurt. BlueSky was still sitting on the floor though he was no longer apologizing. I wanted to snap a picture of this guy and put it next to the word "confusion" in a dictionary. Nothing could ever incorporate that word more than BlueSky at this moment. However the notion of having a naked demon in a dictionary was kind of strange so I didn´t screenshot him.

"Hahahaa~ have you been mentally calling me that all this time?"

"No, only after you told me your name."

"Genius~!" I smiled at him, sincerely this time. I had already forgiven him in face of his creativity.

"So, will you roast me the next time I call you that?"

"Oh well, I probably won´t as I need you to get out of here but I´m sure you might be cold by the time we leave this place so a nice little fire would surely warm you up, no? I´m sure you taste good, all crispy~"

"You like burnt meat? I would have judged you to be the bloody type."

"It´s fine once in a while~ Plus only the outside would be crispy so there should be more than enough bloody meat left." I licked my lips for good measure and revealed a toothy grin.

He blushed for some reason. I chose to ignore the blush.

"Cannibal!"

"We are not of the same race so it´s not cannibalism." I stated matter of factly.

I was in relatively high spirits so I jumped to my feet and urged BlueSky to do the same.

"Are you ready to rock~? Are you ready to roll~? And especially not to laugh~?" I psyched us up with exaggerated movements, then started the countdown.

____________________________________________________

An embarrassing song, which I secretly recorded for laughs sake, later we had completed the task and the text changed. I wanted to immediately read it out but stopped when I noticed my depleted stamina.

"Are you hungry?"

"Yep, my stamina is in the red."

So Sky was also exhausted from all the singing. I gave him some bread as well as a cup of muddy water. I still had 8 rations so it was fine.

"Eww.."

"Don´t complain. Remember what I told you about our location?"

"A maze?"

"Yeah but it´s a maze beneath the SandMirror. I thought I was a goner before I stepped into that quicksand. Luckily underneath I found this water. So even if it´s disgusting, we can´t be picky."

I was actually testing him. If he really was a noob he was bound to ask what the SandMirror was. However, BlueSky just nodded and forced the water down his throat. The flicker of recognition in his eyes when I mentioned the SandMirror told me all I needed to know.

"So what´s a pseudo Mermaid doing in a desert?"

I froze. That question... I didn´t have a decent excuse for that either.

"Building sandcastles?"

"The real reason please."

"Fine... I wanted to cross the desert and go to SplashCastle. And before you ask, yes, I am obviously a member of the water faction. You too, by the way." I laughed as he paled.

The choice of faction was undoubtedly the most important choice to be made during the character creation. There were a total of 7 factions that were fighting each other for supremacy as the goal of the game was to kill all the opposing faction gods. Once a faction god died his faction would be disqualified and its members would only be able to spectate through the eyes of various observer NPCs. People of different factions generally have a hard time getting along as later on in the game missions would be issued by the faction leaders or the faction god himself. These missions with the goal of killing your friend´s leader, as a matter of course, lead to conflict among friends who have different factions.

By the way, the faction god was an NPC stationed in the factions capital while the faction leader was an elected leader who could either be an NPC or a Stray. The god of the water faction was in SplashCastle, the water factions capital, thus it was obvious that other factions members could not enter SplashCastle freely.

With this kind of game setup the faction members closely bonded and tended to choose the same faction in the next game again because this way they would be able to play with their friends again.

The game itself had a defined goal. As such it would come to an end after several months of play and restart. This particular game was the first official game after the beta and still in the beginning stage as the faction leaders had not even been elected yet. Players would be able to join until the limit of 500 players per faction was hit.

"I AM WHAT? YOU, you can´t just decide my faction!"

"Oh, of course I can! Factions are decided in the character creation and as you were unmotivated to the max I took the liberty of adding you to my faction. You never specified which faction you wanted, you know? Hey, don´t be so gloomy! We will have lots of fun together~."

"But .... gaahh how am I supposed to explain to my friends that I can´t play with them now?"

"You don´t." I shrugged. As long as they didn´t know his faction there was no problem.

"They are my friends. I definitely won´t lie to them about this."

"Suit yourself. You can´t change your faction unless you delete your character and start over. Well I guess it was nice knowing you BlueSky. It´s a damn shame about my masterpiece though..." I looked at BlueSky ruefully. However, this was still better than having my masterpiece on the enemies side. I regretted losing my newfound friend more than the character though so I sighed.

BlueSky also looked at himself. He moved his body, spread the translucent wings and touched the crown. I could see that he didn´t want to part with it. I decided to offer him a way out of his dilemma, at least for a while.

"Oh but before you reroll could you do me a favor and help me get out of here?"

"Sure I guess."

I approached the obsidian wall again and read the text. As a matter of course I read it in a loud and dramatic way.

"Doomsday brings light,

trust will prevail, arrogance fail,

save the fools as they will be your tools."

"So, what do we do?" BlueSky

"Save some fools? Which fools?"Me

I took a walk around the room. The answer had to be hidden in here somewhere. BlueSky watched me and followed me in my circle around the room. His depression seemed genuine.

BlueSkys periodical sighs started to get on my nerves.

"Blue! I know it´s hard to kill your character, but let´s try to enjoy this last adventure together. You are making me feel guilty here!"

"You can feel guilty? Poor Smurfy~" He didn´t seem sarcastic but genuinely surprised which made me angry.

"I wonder what you really think about me, haaa~" I rolled my eyes and he mirrored me. Not wanting to be outdone I rolled my eyes again and so did Sky. The situation escalated quickly and soon we were just standing there eyerolling until both of us got dizzy and called for a truce.

Our search continued when our heads cleared up again. Skys mood seemed to be better for some reason. But he still sent me the occasional angry, sad, irritated or annoyed look. How I knew about all that? Well I was kind of, sort of, staring at him while lost in thought.

With my thoughts in turmoil I almost missed the runic painting of the mage and archer that went to fight in the midst of the enemies ranks. Almost.

"I think we have to save these two." I said pointing at the painting.

Without even looking at Blues reaction I started looking for a way to save them. Thus I touched the painting.