The following days go by monotonously. During the day I pound the metal piece in the forge and attend to the players. Marcel continues his routine of doing the firewood mission, over and over again.

Lance, the level 93 paladin, visits me twice a day. In the morning he comes to bring me the crescent medallion and to claim his reward. He usually sells me the items he got from exterminating the bandits: some breastplate, two or three rusty swords, and the captain's leather bracelets. In the afternoon he visits me again to ask me to reassign him the same mission. We talk just enough: I limit myself to reciting my scripts, and he presses the acceptance button on his holo-bracelet when appropriate.

Marcel usually comes every evening when the temple bell rings. We walk to the square and talk. I like to play jokes on him and mess with his red mustache. He laughs and calls me an idiot. We talk about cats, and he tells me about his father. We fantasize about going on a real mission someday. He's obsessed with fire scrolls: fireball, firewall … he hardly talks about anything else. He is the least clerical cleric I've ever met. I have yet to see him cast a healing spell. He says that praying doesn't go with him, that he leaves it to his father, who prays more than enough for both of them. Marcel would have liked to be an elemental mage, but that's the way it is. Anyway.

“On the forums they say the scroll store in Citadel sells one with an Infernal Apocalypse spell,” he tells me when we get back. His green eyes glow when he talks about fire spells. I can't help but think that his obsession may be related to the accident he suffered in which he lost his legs and his mother, but I don't dare ask.

“They say it's a level 500 spell, that there's never been a mage capable of casting it. The scroll costs five thousand gold coins. Imagine the power of destruction!”

We walk to the forge. Marcel tells me that tomorrow morning he won't be able to do the mission with the logs. A physiotherapist will come to his house to help him exercise his muscles. Marcel spends too many hours a day inside the Game while his body remains in a connection capsule, and his father forces him to do rehabilitation exercises once a week.

When we arrive, I see that there is a group of players by the door of the forge. Their faces look familiar. They are three of the players who witnessed when I confronted Lance in front of the forge. One of them is the level 39 barbarian who looted Marcel's corpse, the one wearing an oversized helmet.

“Look, the sad dwarf is so lonely that he has an NPC for a friend,” the barbarian sneers. His two comrades laugh. One of them is missing a tooth, and the other has half-burned hair. They must have just returned from some dungeon. I ignore them and walk past them toward the forge.

“Idiot,” I hear Marcel whisper behind me as he passes between them.

“Did you say something, midget?” The barbarian steps in front of Marcel and cuts him off. The dwarf's head barely reaches his navel.

Marcel stops and says nothing. After a while the barbarian steps aside and lets him pass.

“Fucking midget,” says the barbarian, and his two friends laugh.

Marcel's green eyes light up. He turns to the three brutes.

“I said you're an idiot,” he blurts out to the barbarian in the big helmet. “Idiot and coward, that it's not enough for you to quadruple my level, you still need two friends to be brave enough to mess with me.”

The laughter stops. The barbarian and his two friends draw their weapons.

This kid does nothing but get me into trouble.

“Hey!” I yell at them. “Why don't you three leave him alone and find yourselves an opponent who's on your level?”

“What's the matter, blacksmith, are you going to offer to take a beating instead of him? What are you, his mother?”

The barbarian goes on the attack. I see him coming. Compared to Lance, his movements are clumsy. I step back and trip him. He rolls on the ground.

“When I was referring to someone who's on your height, I meant more like a slug,” I say, trying to get their attention to focus on me. Marcel with level 9 wouldn't survive a hit from them.

The attacks from his cronies are not long in coming. I dodge them with ease. The sword of one of them passes within a centimeter of my nose, while the other doesn't touch my arm.

They stop perplexed.

“Now I'm confused,” I say. “A slug would be too much for you - maybe a worm?”

The three of them lunge forward, one on each side. I calculate the trajectories of their weapons and I anticipate each and every one of their swings. Even though there are three of them, I have no problem preventing them from reaching me. Their movements are totally predictable. I jump on one of the swords and duck, making the other pass over me.

I do not attack them. They are much higher level than me, so my blows would barely hurt them. I just dodge their attacks, one after another.

“You'll get tired, dancer,” says the barbarian in the oversized helmet as he tries to reach me.

I look at my energy bar. I barely have a third left. I keep moving. I lift one leg to dodge one, move my head to dodge the other. I hear them gasp, but I know I'll be exhausted before they are: they're almost twice my level and their energy bars are therefore much larger.

I roll on the ground and stand to the side. My energy bar is completely empty. I stand up, look at them, and stop. The three brutes advance towards me, while I smile.

“Smile now, when we're done with you, you won't have teeth left to laugh,” the barbarian says as he stalks towards me.

Behind them, Marcel's orange bar completes. My energy is not enough to defeat them, but it is enough to give Marcel time to prepare his favorite spell. He raises his palm towards us. I see the three brutes disintegrate by surprise in the middle of the flames, just before the fireball reaches me.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

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A tabby cat sleeps curled up on a white velvet bed. A hand caresses him. The cat purrs and rolls into his stomach. The hand scratches his belly and the cat emits little meows of pleasure.

Whose cat is this, and whose hand is stroking him? I have three cats? I don't understand a thing.

Well, at least it was worth it, to teach those three jerks a lesson. I haven't been in the waiting room for days. It's still the same as last time, with its white walls and fluorescent lights. I settle into the chair and get ready to pass the boring time.

Gabriel is not there, and like the last time, I hear gasps on the other side of the faulty mandala door. He must be with the dark elf with the white braids. I approach and get curious. I try to restrain myself, but I can't help it. I open a crack in the door.

On the floor of the other room, I see Gabriel's coat, and next to it a pile of woman's clothes. Above I see some leather bracelets that look familiar. I could swear they are identical to the ones the paladin Lance sold me so many times. Gabriel's friend turns out to be the bandit captain from the crescent medallion mission.

I open the door a centimeter wider and see them, making love on the bed in the other room. Gabriel is on his back and can't see me. He gasps and moves his pale body energetically. Beneath him, the dark elf accompanies his movements.

I see her face for the first time and her expression surprises me. Despite her gasps of enjoyment, her dark eyes say something very different. I feel the anger through her eyes. She turns her head and looks at me. She says nothing. She doesn't even flinch when she sees me. It's as if her eyes see me, but her body can't react.

The situation is very violent. I close the door of the defective mandala and walk away. I sit in the chair and wait for Gabriel to finish. I can't get the dark elf's eyes out of my head. I need to talk to her, find out if she's a lifeless NPC like the rest that I've encountered, or if she's like me, a person who handles an NPC. I have to find her within the Game. At least now I know who she is: the bandit captain from the medallion mission.

After a few minutes Gabriel enters the room. He seems to be in a good mood today.

“Wow,” he says, “I guess it's about time you came to pay me a visit. What happened this time?”

“It was an accident. Collateral damage, they say.”

Gabriel smiles and pulls out his tablet. After a while he tells me.

“It's the same dwarf from last time, isn't it?”

“Yes. His name is Marcel. Coming back from the square, we ran into some bullies who needed a lesson in education.”

“Isaac, I already warned you to try to minimize contact with the players. You're going to get mi in trouble in the end.”

“I'm sorry. You know I can't stand bullies. I've had to suffer them many times in my life, I know what I'm talking about.”

Gabriel raises his head from the tablet and looks at me. He seems to hesitate.

“Isaac, do you remember being bullied when you were a little boy?”

“Of course.” Hundreds of memories flash through my head. In them, children and young men are hitting me and calling me names. For some reason my face appears blurry in all the images of my memories.

“Are you sure you were the one being abused? Try to remember.”

I close my eyes and try to concentrate on my memories. I select one of the images at random in my memory and try to concentrate on it. Several boys are kicking someone lying on the ground on the street in front of a school. I focus on the person getting hit. Is it me? I can't see his face, but he has long hair. I don't remember ever having long hair - or have I?

“I'm not sure,” I say doubtfully. I start to feel dizzy. I realize that in each of the thousands of images that I have in my memory the person on the receiving end of the blows is slightly different each time. The aggressors are different. The place is different. It can't be me, can it? What is happening to me?

My breathing quickens. I'm a little dizzy. I grip the armrests of the chair. Why am I able to remember everything related to the Game perfectly, but none of my memories of the real world are clear? I am hyperventilating.

“Easy, take a breath. I'm here with you,” Gabriel says as he takes my hand.

I try to relax. I close my eyes and focus on my breathing. Air goes in through my nose and out through my mouth. I inhale, exhale. I remember the words of my yoga instructors. Thoughts come and go. I don't hold on to them. I do not analyze them. Little by little I feel myself calming down. Without thought the mind does not exist, there is nothing. Only emptiness. Only peace, the calm of non-existence.

I open my eyes and see Gabriel.

“Don't worry. It's normal to feel this way. Be patient, a few more days and you'll see how little by little it will pass.”

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Hit the piece of metal with the hammer. Hit it. Concentrate. Count the blows. There is nothing else. No, don't think about the cats. I know I'm only going on a cliff that way. The cats are mine and I love them, two, three or however many. Go back to the hammer. Hit the piece of metal. Hit it a thousand times, no matter how hard you hit it, it will remain stable. Always the same.

In the morning Lance comes to bring me the captain's medallion and bracelets. When I see them, I think of the dark elf, lying in bed, making love to Gabriel. I need to talk to her, to know if she is like me.

Marcel comes later, in the afternoon, in search of the mission of the logs. He's now level 12, I am happy for him. He tells me he's finished with the rehab exercises. We chat for a few minutes, and he describes to me with amusement the faces of the thugs when he hit them with the fireball. We laugh for a while. He tells me he will come to see me in the evening, as always.

Late in the afternoon Lance returns with his medium blonde hair to ask me for the medallion mission. I assign it to him, and he turns to heads off into the forest without exchanging a word. I can't help myself and ask:

“Wait, can I ask you a question?”

The paladin turns and looks at me quizzically.

“I was wondering,” I say, scratching my beard, “if the leather bracelets you sold me in the morning weren't from a dark elf with two white braids. I'm just curious.”

“They're from the bandit captain who has the medallion,” he nods. “I see you know her.”

“Only by sight.”

“Her name is Hara, she's a level 40 dark elf. She's the best NPC fighter I've ever met. I haven't seen anyone move like that, with that grace, with that agility to dodge all my blows. No NPC moves like this, just you and her. When I faced you the other day, I realized that you had the same ability to anticipate my blows that I feel when I fight her, but in her it's different. In your case, you fight like it's a game. Without will. No passion. When Hara fights, she fights with all her soul. As if her life depended on it.”

So, she's an NPC like me! I can't wait to ask her if she's like me, if all her memories before she started working on the Game are blurry like mine. And maybe she knows what exactly that ‘contract’ that Gabriel talks about consists of. Is it true that I have signed up to work on the Game as an NPC for months and I don't remember it?

“If you ever have a chance to talk to her,” he says, “tell her that Lance sends his best regards.”

The paladin turns and walks away into the forest.

I wish I could meet with her. Maybe if I could find a way to get myself killed, I could see her in the waiting room. No, I don't think Gabriel would be amused. And, on the other hand, he doesn't seem to find it easy to let us start a conversation, much less alone. I get the feeling that when she is there, he wants her just for himself.

On the other hand, it doesn't seem to happen to her like it does to me, that I'm tired of work, and I can't stop thinking about when all this is going to end. If it were up to me, I'd let myself get killed constantly. I'd rather prefer a thousand times the boredom of the waiting room with its fluorescent lights than put up with how the players treat me like I'm part of the Game's decoration. Hara doesn't. According to Lance, when she fights, she fights like her life depends on it.

Like her life depends on it.

Wait a minute. I recall the image of her face on the bed in the waiting room, after lying down with Gabriel, and I focus on her dark eyes. I see them as if I had them here, and I remember thinking about the anger they conveyed. They are not the eyes of someone who has just made love for pleasure.

Shit, how did I not notice before? I must be an idiot.

Without a second thought, I burst through the door and run into the woods.