Ronald was too eager. When Celine left, there was still over seven hours left until he could log back in. Since he had nothing to do, and he thought he had slept enough, he decided to restock his fridge, clean his home, and pay a little more attention to his personal grooming. While at it, wave a hand or two to the neighbors that were trimming their hedge. Some of the more nosy ones asked about the pretty young lady that had walked out of his door after lunch. Usually, he would tell them that it was none of their business. But this particular day, he felt more generous.
“It’s my hot date.” With that remark, he left them guessing whether he was joking or not.
Celine might have a lot of interesting things to say to his nosy neighbors, the next time she dropped by. Chuckling, Ronald walked the next two blocks to the grocery store.
“Okay. That’s done. What next?” No one answered him, of course. He was talking to himself.
He spied the length of stick he had bought on impulse when he had passed the hardware store. He was deciding whether he, an adult past 40, should be swinging a stick around. But, while he was disconnected from Royal Road, he missed the comfortable feeling of a weapon attached to him. His first swing was rather clumsy, since he did not account for the balance of the stick. His bodily movement also felt a little more awkward in real life, than in-game. He corrected both after a few more swings.
Ronald was delighted. When he was much younger, he, like all children, swung plastic swords, sometimes wooden ones. Like what he was doing now. The stick, round and edgeless as it was, parted the air smoothly. It was not quite the feel he had while swinging the roughly- shaped wooden training sword in-game. It would do for the moment, though.
He tried a few of the moves he experimented with in Royal Road. The repetition was slower, since he had no target to hit. He had already nearly slipped from swinging at the maximum speed. At some point, he decided that he had done enough. The grandfather clock showed that he had been swinging the pole around his living room for over one hour. The soft tick-tock sound of the pendulum felt more pronounced in his current state. He was drenched in sweat. The carpet felt warm under his feet. Or not.
His feet were chaffed from moving rapidly without proper footwear. He would pay for the rest of the exertion too, later. Already soft aches had begun to form all around his body, especially the joints.
Ronald had his first shower of the day, ate another meal,a light one, not accompanied by coffee this time. He set the alarm clock beside his bed to 3 hours 20 minutes. Twenty minutes or so before he could log back in. He rolled back in his blanket and had the dream of happily cutting monsters and blasting them with magic.
Logging back in, Ronald observed his surroundings. He had probably respawned at the exact spot where he had fallen. His memory was not accurate, since he had been busy fending off biting rabbits while running blindly for the exit. There were players around the gorge. They gave the center a wide berth. From the distance, he could see a player warning another one that ventured too close to the center.
‘I guess something good came out of it after all,’thought Ronald.
He checked his status window, skill window, and inventory, next.
If he had lost something, he did not know what it was. Probably some random bits of items. His single digit items were still inside. The beginner armor, the staff from Minalan. Most importantly, the magic scroll. His level had obviously decreased by one after the death. He had been warned about that.
He already knew what he would see when he opened his skill window. He groaned, anyway. All of his proficiencies had dropped by about probably five percent. It was impossible to tell, since he did not check them frequently. He used the cooking skill as the benchmark, since he had checked it last time when his sword mastery leveled up to 6. Now it had dropped back to 97%. He did not want to think about Mana Bolt, Fireball and Earthspike, that had dropped back to 0% proficiency. He hated to think that there was no silver lining that he could think of for that one.
All the equipment he was wearing were safe, though the copper sword he had repaired so many times came close to breaking. It was left with 1/10 durability. He repaired every single piece of equipment he was wearing. It did not take long for him to repair the equipment. It was rather weird for him to shout “Repair” and wait a few seconds, then the equipment returned to its pristine condition, with reduced durability after each repair (after being enveloped by blue light).
He did a final check. No durability decrease for all equipment this time. Ronald thought it was nigh time for him to move to bigger game. Like foxes or wolves.
Winter was done hunting for the day. The foxes were fine for him to kill at night. It was not too challenging or too easy. The wolves though, sometimes he stumbled on by accident in the dark, or there was one that leaped at him from out of nowhere. Hell. He even had to run away once from a pack of them. The frequency of that happening as the night fell, was too high for him to keep risking one full day of lockout. He was not interested to hit the rabbits again. He thought that he might as well go to the city and check if Adria was still awake. Minalan definitely would be. It had been a while since he last saw them (close to a week in-game time).
The moon was pretty high in the sky when he reached the shop. The window of Minalan’s room had been shuttered. He was already asleep.
‘Oh well. Another time,’ thought Winter.
He had nothing else to do for the moment.
‘Might as well spend some time cooking all the meat I have. I already have quite a lot saved.’
Nodding to himself, Winter did not see a silhouette hiding behind one corner of a building nearby. The shadow had its bow drawn fully. Winter had a spine-tingling moment, like when Adria played some prank on him, but much much stronger.
“Reflex!” He shouted. Time slowed down around him. He managed to shift his head away from its original position. Judging from the *swish* passing by roughly where his head was, it was probably an arrow. Many thoughts ran through his head at the same time, while the skill ran its course.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
*slam*
You have taken critical damage. HP -150.
Something hit his head when he thought he had dodged the arrow. As a bonus, he was spun around a few times to land on the rough ground.
“Ouch. Sorry there!” A voice called from a distance.
‘Which idiot shot an arrow at my head then said sorry! I nearly died too!’
Winter stood up quickly. His eyes moved around the source of the voice. He was alert for more incoming arrows. There was none. The sound of footsteps, from the direction the arrow was shot, approached closer. Soon, it was close enough for Winter to see his assailant.
“Summer? Is that you?” The figure had moved close enough for Winter to see under the moonlight.
It was definitely him. The body was a lot leaner than how he looked in real life. But the face remained the same, minus the jowl he had. It was a face with a broad forehead, thick bushy eyebrows, a thin hooked nose, with slightly curly brunette hair.His broad jawline completed the ensemble, and made his head look like a square, when looked at from certain angles. The crooked grin with the eye crinkle he sported though, had a good hint of apologetic humor. I wondered how much effort he had to put in to modify the character to sport the exact same moustache he had in real life. (Author: This shows how ignorant Winter is about RR since the basic template mimics how you looks like in exact details. Also may have something to do with him not sporting any facial hair.)
“Sorry about that, Winter. I did not think you could move that fast.” The bow was strapped to his back, with his hands raised in front of him.
“Well, I can. And you nearly shot my head off!” Winter pointed at the subtle pressure he felt. His finger touched the arrow that was still sticking out of his melon. Winter had no idea that a character here could still live with an arrow sticking out of their head. But he would not complaint.
“Again, sorry, Winter. I thought I might as well show off my skill. It is called <
“Never mind this,”said Winter, while touching the arrow. He was contemplating to pull it out.
“Leave that alone. It will disappear after a bit.” Winter’s hand left the arrow shaft.
“How did you find me? Wait. Nevermind. I can guess.”
“It’s Celine. She gave me a little hint.” Summer finished for him.
‘And I told her to say nothing!’
“Don’t blame her. She cannot say ‘no’ to me,” answered Summer as if reading his mind.
Ronald could not blame her. He was the one that ingrained the family value to her. One of them was to be ready to do anything for the good of your family. Promise be damned. Lie, cheat, steal, anything. Since Daniel was her godfather, and she was not doing any harm to him, she likely found no reason to not tell.
“Please tell me she held out real long.”
“Oh, yes. The young lady held for ten minutes. I had to use every trick I have to get this much out of her.”
Summer, of course,had lied through his teeth. Celine probably spilled her guts quick enough. The two collaborating, had been the stuff of nightmares for Ronald. Imagine for your birthday you found your adopted daughter inside an oversized gift box wearing nothing but ribbons. That was the year she finished acting school, too. Daniel, the traitor of the year, was not around to receive my wrath. I got back my little revenge some other way, later. Oh. In surprise, I threw the birthday cake I held in my hand at her. Sure to teach her a lesson to never surprise a man.
“And the first thing you do when you see me was to shot my head off?”
I was adopting the ‘wronged man stance’. Summer, Daniel’s in-game character, adopted the ‘very emotionally hurt man stance’. Damn the man. He always knew how to rile me up, then put me to ground!
“Hey, I said it was an accident. But you deserve it either way. I waited for three weeks for you to turn up. Eventually, I got tired of it. So now, I come visiting,” he finished with a shrug, to denote his indifference to my current circumstance. Somewhere along the conversation, the arrow sticking out of my head had disappeared. It was dubious whether he had really shot me by accident or not. But I let it go.
“And the purpose of the visit is?”
“I heard of the whole circumstance from Celine. I am here to help you.”
“No thank you,” I answered automatically.
“Come now, Ronald. Must you be this stubborn? Allow me to at least repay a little debt,” he just had to use my real name and dig up the debt he had. It was a debt that by any normal person’s standards, made me his ‘savior’. I made him promise to never treat me that way. He never let on if he did.
I checked the counter for the curse. It now said 12561/100000.Long way to go. I contemplated a bit, but eventually relented. He had offered, too.
“Okay. What is the plan?”
Summer grinned his trademark grin and began filling me in.
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Author's Note:
1. Credit to -The Slacker- for the diligent PR
2. Credit to several people that helped with bouncing ideas, being good listener, and random talk that leads to some creative process. No idea if they wanted to be credited for now. But I will leave it open.
3. Special Credit to Veresliosi, Vim1inc, Saxenas1 for bouncing stuff around
4. Do let me know of mistakes you find. Try as me and my PR to spot them, we might miss some.
5. Enjoy, peeps!
6. Sorry folks. You only get to see serious combat at chapter. Look forward to it!