There was a small, hushed debate about what to do with the man’s body. The stern lady tried advocating for us to bury him, but the dark-eyed girl (she later introduced herself as Jenna) disagreed. If there were more clay monsters, then we couldn’t risk sticking around without more information, people or tools.
I stole a moment to examine the monster’s remains. Scooping through the remaining goop, I found some crystalline slivers, which I evenly distributed among the three of us.
“What are they?” The stern woman, Ola, asked. I noticed her expression had softened considerably, but the lines on her face remained. Her hair was thin and light, like straw, and she was even taller than me.
When I picked an item up in other games, they could be identified in my menu. I tried opening it.
Player: Levi Denton
Lv. 2
Jing: 11/11
Qi: 0/0
Shen: 1/1
Star Sign: Monoceros
Inbox
Skills: 2 SP Pending
Inventory
“I leveled up,” I said. I dismissed the menu. “Let’s move somewhere less…” I tried not to look at the corpse filling the doorway.
Jenna nodded seriously, but still hesitated to actually step over the body. Once she had, I followed. Ola waited longer than both of us, but marched to the front of our trio after passing him.
I’d hoped to avoid the gore of the clay monster, but the dirt roads were littered with the bodies of its other victims. We hadn’t seen the massacre, but they’d all been gored through the chest.
“Did you know his name?” I asked Ola.
“I’d never met him before today,” she answered. Jenna and I followed her through the town and towards the wider section of the small city. Her chin kept level with the ground. I couldn’t help rubbernecking at all those corpses. I didn’t want to see any faces from the inn. I didn’t stop looking for them.
We had to walk a while until we found somewhere along our path that didn’t completely resemble a graveyard. The closest we came was a house halfway between the store and the gray stone buildings we approached. As they came closer, more and more of the buildings resembled individual houses. I tried to understand why it was built in reverse of most cities. The central hub wasn’t based around shops or community spaces, but was almost entirely made up of wide, open-planned homes.
These too seemed to grow out of the ground, with identical upturned corners. Glass windows had been inserted into round hollows around the houses. The only distinguishing features were what kinds of branches seemed to grow off of the roofs of each house. We settled on entering one with five-pointed leaves blooming off of several rogue branches, offering random pockets of shade around the house.
Inside, the place had been scarcely furnished. An iron cauldron was besieged by five squat wooden stools, also carved from the red wood of the houses. Two narrow beds were separated from the rest of the house by a thick green curtain hanging from the tall ceiling. When I stepped closer, I noticed they were more five-pointed leaves, growing downwards from flexible green branches.
Ola wordlessly moved the cauldron in front of the entrance, blocking the door from any sudden intruders. I wasn’t sure how effective it would be, but didn’t push the issue.
“My Jing went up,” Jenna reported. She was sitting on a stool, staring blankly into the distance. I pulled up my menu too, but moved into the “Skills” menu. From there, the only available option was another menu, “Celestial Skills.”
A hexagonal chart opened, displaying dozens of blank, gray nodes all growing from a central point. At the heart of the chart was a white, unmarked node. In the same way I navigated the other menus, I stared at the point, hoping more information would come from it.
Qi Awakening - Open your body to the power of Qi!
“Are you guys able to see this Skill menu?” I asked the others.
“Wait, I’m still trying to figure this out,” Ola said. It seemed she had some trouble maintaining the focus needed to navigate her menus, but Jenna didn’t.
She commented, “Not much of a choice, is it?”
I focused on the point, and the black node filled with a white color, quickly turning. Ten gray nodes, branching off of the now white central point, opened themselves. I browsed my new options.
First Ignition - The beginning of the divine creation of Flame!
Extinguish - To quiet the roar of mighty Flame!
Rain Forward - The beginning of the divine creation of Water!
Dehydration - To drain the essence of pure Water!
Living Forge - The beginning of the divine creation of Metal!
Corrosion - To undo the integrity of strong Metal!
Minor Hill - The beginning of the divine creation of Earth!
Erosion - The break apart sturdy Earth!
Servant Branch - The beginning of the divine creation of Wood!
Wither - To poison regal Wood!
Brimming Cauldron - The beginning of the divine creation of Life!
Necrosis - To destroy Life.
I was frustrated with how little these explanations really told me and dismissed the menu. Instead, I reexamined the crystal from that clay monster.
I only recognized it as something out of a museum gift shop. The crystal was thin and translucent, with a silvery, gray hue. Even on our march through town, I felt it was too delicate to be in my pocket for fear of breaking the thing. In games, when I picked up an item and investigated it in my menu, it would come with some kind of description.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Even though my inventory was now available, I had no idea how to deposit the crystal into it. I opened my menu and navigated to the inventory.
(Empty)
I looked at my hand to see if any description would appear, but the crystal disappeared from my hand instead.
“No!” I exclaimed.
Materia (54)
“Oh,” I tried to laugh off my cry to the two women. “Does Materia mean anything to you two?” They told me it didn’t, of course, and I explained how I had transferred the crystal into my inventory.
“You’re jumping ahead of me, I’m still trying to figure out what any of this means!” Ola argued. Her voice was panicky, but she kept it low. Everyone had learnt their lesson to not attract more monsters.
I pitied her. Even as someone who played video games I hardly understood the systems that might decide my survival. For someone older than me, it was all even further out of reach. Jenna didn’t seem to be upset, but was still studying something in the menu.
“Well, these numbers are probably our stats,” I guessed. “Our level is how much we’ve grown.” I paused to find the right words and pulled up my menu.
Player: Levi Denton
Lv. 2
Jing: 11/11
Qi: 5/5
Shen: 1/1
Star Sign: Monoceros
Inbox
Skills - 1 SP Pending
Inventory
That central node must have unlocked my Qi resource.
“Typically, a character will have stats like ‘health’ or ‘mana’ or ‘stamina.’ If we ever had zero health, then we’d be…” I tried to think of a word other than “dead,” but it seemed Ola got the picture anyway. “So Jing or Shen is probably our health. And Qi was described as a power, so maybe that’s our mana or stamina.”
“And that Qi might be what lets us use special skills. I’m still browsing the options, but it looks like we can cast spells, like throwing fireballs and making weapons.” My words were meant to empower Ola. I wanted to burn away the mystery for her, for all of us, as much as I could.
Ola wasn’t satisfied with my guesswork. “And why do we need our star sign? I’m a Pisces anyways, this thing is wrong.”
“What does it say you are now?” Jenna asked.
“Hydrus. That’s not even a zodiac sign!” Jenna seemed to file away the information.
“What do you think of this, then?” I asked Jenna, trying to prompt more than silence and questions from her. She was a quick thinker. Really, our entire survival against the clay monster was due to her.
Jenna only shrugged. “I… don’t know. I’ve got a lot of questions.” That was probably true, but I got the impression she was hiding a good deal. Even I wasn’t as calm as she looked. Jenna seemed resolved and impatient. For what, I wasn’t sure.
“Then, what power do you think you’ll choose?” I pried into her deeper. “Maybe we should plan our powers to work with one another.”
Jenna shook her head. She may have already made her selection. “That’s hard to say.”
I oscillated between shame and earnest curiosity. I wanted to read Jenna and pry open her thoughts and feelings about everything we’d done. Every instinct to do so evaporated before I could act on it. I reminded myself of the horror show we escaped. She didn’t want to be interviewed or talked to or read. I pretended to browse my menu but just absorbed the silence between the three of us. I felt tense and stupid and horribly out of place. How would that man struggle with this setting? Would he have struggled at all?
“There’s something out there,” Ola hissed. I dropped low and waddled towards the front window. Just peeking through the glass, I caught a few other people wandering the neighborhood. “We should see what they know!”
“How do you know they’re not monsters?” Jenna asked. It was a dangerous question. The clay monster had been able to imitate human speech, and vaguely resembled our appearance. It was likely that some monsters could more perfectly copy what we looked like.
“Either way, I’m not spending the rest of the game in here,” I finally said. Ola nodded and Jenna sighed. I rolled the cauldron from the door and we cautiously approached the gathering crowd.
It couldn’t have been a dozen people, less than the crowd from the inn. They turned to our group and were unsettled that we stopped a couple of meters away from us.
It had been her idea, but now that we were close, Ola’s nerves got the better of her. She seemed to want to jump back into the house and hide again for all the good it would do if these people were monsters.
There was a pause between both cohorts. If they had seen the same thing we’d survived, then we were all suspecting the other of the same thing. I tried to find imperfections in their appearance, something that might betray their humanity or monstrosity. But, there was nothing. I counted ten people, all adults, all in those identical starting outfits, all with their own color of tunic.
“You!” There was a face I recognized. The cop from the inn, Elena. “Great idea, there, having everyone run off on their own.” Her voice condemned me clearly. The other players seemed to listen close. Had she made herself chief of another tribe?
Ola whispered to me, “You know her?”
I didn’t get a chance to explain. The cop continued, “If you two walk away from that boy right now, you can join with us. He’s responsible for killing children.”
My mind couldn’t help but recall the scared girl, unwilling to even leave her room until I started talking.
“I didn’t kill anybody,” I said. My voice choked on the last words and I knew it sounded unconvincing because I didn’t believe it. “Did anyone make it? Besides us?”
“I wouldn’t tell you the time of day if I knew it,” she fired back. “Last chance, you two. I consider him a murderer. Are you with him or us?” This woman had a habit of drawing lines. I tried not to look too upset.
Ola moved quickly to the larger group.
“Sorry, Levi, but-” she was so scared.
“It’s fine,” I assured her.
“And you?” the cop asked.
“I’m not with him, but I’m not with you either,” Jenna said. I enjoyed her evasive answers getting on someone else’s nerves.
“If you’re not with us, then you’re against us,” the cop said.
“Then I’m out of here,” Jenna said. She walked off towards the stone buildings, now only a short walk away.
The cop’s crowd still watched me with suspicion. The wear on their different outfits indicated some kind of scuffle. Maybe that clay monster hadn’t been the only danger unleashed on the town.
“I’ll be on my way too,” I followed after Jenna, but didn’t get far.
“You should leave this town, immediately.” Elena ordered.
“And that’s your decision to make?” I asked. “You are not a cop. You’re the same as us.”
The woman was prepared for that answer. “Nobody wants you here. You made a very bad decision and got a lot of people killed.”
“You just hate when someone doesn’t listen to you!” I said. “Everybody at the inn made their own choice.”
“And now we’re making one,” she continued. “Get out, or we’ll force you out.”
I underestimated how scared her followers were. She knew how to ratchet their anxiety up and up, until I might as well have been another monster. Already a few of them were walking towards me.
They came to a sudden stop at my fingertips.
“Don’t move!” I ordered them. “I’ll leave, but don’t follow. I’ll go and end this game. So stay here, scared and subordinate.”
“You’re bluffing!” Elena accused me again. “He’s dangerous, but he’s just a kid.”
“He’s not!” Ola warned the group. “I saw it. He can create fire from thin air.” The group’s enforcers took a careful step back. “We earned powers from fighting the monsters. I don’t really understand it, but they’re real.”
She looked pleadingly at me. But, I understood. This was her way of helping us both, even if it would permanently ostracize me from the people of this town. She wouldn’t be suspected of being a traitor if she revealed information about my abilities, and I would be let go if I seemed too dangerous to control. It didn’t matter if what she said was true, just that it fed perfectly into Elena’s narrative.
“Then, I’m not surprised you’d turn them against other people!” The cop announced. “Anyone here would share that power with everyone else. We wouldn’t use it to bully our way through life. Just go!”
I scrambled for an argument. I’d hoped to explore the stone towers and exhaust the village of any clues and treasures. Doing that while looking over my shoulder just wasn’t possible. No game only had a small village. I tried to make peace with the fact that I’d find something else, but it was harder than I’d imagined. Not even half a day had passed, and I’d already found a place that rejected me.