"Well, uh, yeah, dude. Did you not-, how do you not know this??" Todd (I'll try to remember his name this time) asks, waving his hands erratically. I cross my borrowed arms.

"As I stated earlier, I came to this world not through some goggle-box with fancy lights, but instead, I simply... appeared here. And, if I so must reiterate, I did it as a lowly worm," I reply, hoping it might go in his head this time.

He smiles, much in the same way Antonio had before, but in a more disbelieving manner, if that was possible.

"Look, uh, Johnny, this is-,, I'm not sure if I should believe you, yeah? I'm not sure if you've noticed, what with the-," he gestures to his lacklustre armour, "-my choice of clothing, but I'm not new at this game. I've been playing less than a week, for all I know, you could be some sort of cheating scam-artist, ready to-,"

"If I was a scam-artist, I would have escaped this hellhole without fuss, damn you! If I could return to my life, I would, but I cannot!" I explode at him, pouring out my miseries at him.

"-Have you tried logging out-?" he asked, simply enough. I shake my head. "Right, uh, you don't sound much like a gamer, so if you just use the commando 'open menu'... oh, and, don't worry, NPC's can't understand any sentence that has any player commando in it, to them it could just as well be Yiddish."

Well, alright. If this doesn't work, I'm burning you.

...Open menu!

...

...

"Uh, out loud, dude. It's not like the system can read your thoughts, heh."

"-It has so far. I don't actually have a mouth in my real form, what with the lips and all, so I've been viewing my status screen by willing it."

"I... huh. I didn't think that was... Well, anyhoo! Try saying it out loud!" he says, a twinge of excitement growing in his voice for some odd reason.

"-Open menu."

...

"It doesn't show anything," I murmur, and he picks up on it. What he doesn't pick up on, however, is the fireball I've got baking in the over. 

"Hey, hey, don't take it out on me! I don't know what's going on either!" he said, raising his hands in defence.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

I sigh, and sit down with my back to the house. 

"-I've had an eventful couple of days. Weeks? I don't know. I just want to go home. But, I have to tell you. Whatever you think, I don't think this place - this world - is some artificial game world. The people I've seen here... it's too real to be a gam world."

The hero-, sorry, Todd stares at me, his eyes wide. Slowly, he sits down next to me. 

"Yeah, heh, when I first joined, I couldn't believe it either! All the NPC's are super lifelike, and the graphics-,"

"I don't mean like that! I don't think this is some game world at all. I don't know what your interactive tellies are capable of nowadays, but nothing is capable of the things I've seen, the people I've talked to," I say, thinking back to the hunters, the goblin-girl... "Actually, the only person who has acted completely inhuman is, well..."

I flex my hand, moving it in front of my face to take a good look at it.

"-This guy I'm inhabiting. If you told me he was a robot android guy, I would believe you."

"-What? Wait, okay, this guy you're controlling is... Well, according to the system, he's this Quest-giver guy. They give quests and shit. Are... Are you trying to say that, like, all quest givers are NPC's, and no others? Bro that's-, that's just not believable. I call bullshit right here," Todd said, frowning slightly. 

"Yeah? Well I hardly believe that these people - the ones in this village - can be inhuman. You know, call it a conspiracy theory if you'd like, but I'll bet you fifteen pigs that this is an actual world, with actual people and actual magic in it."

"...Okay, you know what? Sure, I'll believe you," he says, nodding deeply. 

"Really?"

"Yeah, sure. I haven't played for long, I'm not in it to win it. If you're a monster in disguise or a cheater, let that be it. Whatever, y'know?" 

"..." A little idea popped into my head. A strange, unusual, improbable idea. "...Could I come along with you?"

"Well, yeah bro! Duh! I'll send you a-, oh, sorry, I forgot you can't... well, still!" Todd grinned broadly and hopped up to stand, and I followed along. He looked me up and down, his grin turning to a slight frown. 

"...You still haven't explained how exactly you're doing that. Kinda weird, y'know?"

"Of course. I've become a Will 'o Wisp after two evolutions, and this last evolution gave me a skill called 'Hijack'. It let's me take over someone's body and mind, and temporarily use their skills. It's quite useful, but it has always felt somewhat unethical..."

"Right, right, get their skills... Get their... Wait. So, right now, you have all the skills this guy had??"

"Well, not all of them, but a fair few. The remarkable ones would be, let's see... Advanced Water Magic, some skill that lets me grow big, and one that I don't understand called... 'System (Quest) Interference'. I have no idea what it does though," I say, hoping he might understand one or two of them. 

"Holy shit, advanced water magic?? Dude, that's the second strongest kind of magic!! Totally unfair dude, give that over! Seriously, with that, you could put a city under water! Not recommended though, people would totally hate you," Todd says, shaking his head.

"...And the other ones?"

"Oh! Yeah, uh, I've never heard of nothing that can make you big, and the quest one... Wait. Waitwaitwait. Quest-givers give quests. They probably need a skill. And that skill would be..."

"-I don't get what you're going for. To be fair, I don't even know what a quest is," I admit. 

"You don't-, unimportant! This means that you now have the skill that can assign players with quests!! You could-,,, you could literally give me a quest about picking grass that gave me a million experience points!"

"...What?"

"Okay, okay, just. Just try using it. Say 'use skill 'System (Quest) Interference'' or whatever, just get it done, okay? My username is Tobiath, okay, so, not Todd. Todd wasn't taken or anything, but... Tobiath sounds cooler, right?"

"Uh, right, right. Um. Use skill System... System (Quest) Interference-?"

You are not allowed to use this skill.

Please cease.

"So, what'd it say??"

"...I'm not allowed to use it-?"

"Awh, shoot. Well, still. It was worth a shot, right?"

"...Right."

Todd claps his hands together. 

"Well! We should probably get back to the NP-, the rest, so I really recommend you, well, remove yourself from that guy, okay?"

"See, that's the thing, if I undock, he'll attack me on sight. And, sure, I defeated him once, but that was pretty much by sheer luck," I admit, my already hunched back hunching a bit more.

"Hrmm, well, that's a problem. But good on you for defeating this buff ass Quest-giver! That must have been hard. I can't imagine, geez. Guess I'll have to explain that once we get there, right? Yes! Let's goo!"

I murr at the thought but go along him anyways. I'm not in a game. These people aren't robots, and neither am I. 

Only the good lord knows how to explain this one...