“Easy, Gromi…”

I'm still trying to swing my board-with-nail-hammered-through-it at the rabid squirrel, when I regain consciousness (if that's what you call it) in my bed, in my bedroom, on the second floor of my parents’ house, and they're both sitting beside me, and I don't actually have the board-with-nail-hammered-through-it in my hands anymore. In fact, my hands are nearly empty, as is my inventory.

Its claws! Its sharp, merciless rodent fangs!

“It's OK. Everything's fine. You're safe. You're home. Take some deep breaths—come on, do it with me.”

Inhale. Exhale.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Breathe in…

And breathe out…

“What happened?” I ask, still adjusting to the surreality of being in my own comfy bed. Have I died? Is this the afterlife?

“You were defeated in battle,” my dad says.

“Which resulted in you restarting at your latest save point, which in this case is your bed," says my mom.

“Am I hurt?”

I don't feel hurt, just massively disoriented.

“No, you’re perfectly unscathed. You restart with full health. What you did lose is your inventory. But don't worry, that's sitting in a neat pile at the spot you entered battle. You can go back and pick it up in a little while. Given that you left here less than an hour ago, I don't think it'll be much of a trek.”

“Can anyone take it?”

“They can. In your case, I don't think anyone will,” says my dad.

Missing inventory. I feel a sudden wave of hope! Alas, it crashes down: Randy is still very much equipped and on my finger. That would have been rather simple, Suckleslav, I think (in Randy's voice.) My parents are here so, of course, Randy's not actually talking.

But my parents are right. I get up, then out of bed and I feel fine. Rested, even.

“It's time for the talk,” my mom says.

“You… knew I'd be defeated.”

“We did, son. Everyone gets defeated early on—repeatedly.” (Except Manhilde of Korath, who, according to his autobiography, which I read three times, went an entire adventuring career without a single defeat. Still, my dad's point generally stands.) “We also didn't want to warn you or give you any preconceived notions about defeat because it's a very personal, unique experience. You need to feel it yourself.”

“But now that you have felt it, we need to talk to you about it,” says my mom.

“So you'll practise safe adventuring,” my dad says.

“As they say, the plague birds and the killer bees,” my mom adds. “A short conversation about death, defeat and mortality.”

“Really, it's more like a presentation.”

“So listen,” says my mom.

“The main points are thus,” my dad begins: “One, you cannot die in battle. You can only be defeated. That means you also cannot kill anyone in battle. In that sense, battles are safer than real life. If you're alone in battle (or are the last standing member of a party) and you fall, you restart, like your mom already said, at your nearest save point. Restarts are automatic unless you don't want to restart, at which point you materialize in the place you were defeated and your adventuring career is over. You can never take another quest. Never. No matter how much you crave to taste again the brilliant, adrenaline-laced fruit of discovery and triumph, no matter how boring and rote your daily life has become…”

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

My mom nudges him with her elbow.

“Sorry,” he mutters; and I take advantage of the resulting pause to ask: “How do you know you don't want to adventure anymore?”

“You'll know. It won't make sense to you now, because you're very young,” my mom says, “but one day, when you're much, much older, you'll realize you've found someone, or something, more important than adventuring to devote yourself to.”

“Plus your body starts to ache,” my dad says.

“I can't accidentally not restart, right? Like, if I'm thinking about something else when I'm defeated and I forget to want to restart.”

“No, Grom.”

“OK. And, just because I'm really only now starting to remember what it was that happened to me, let's say the squirrel that attacked me, it did it without triggering a battle, and I couldn't defend myself, and it scratched and bit me—could that be… fatal?”

“Yes,” my mom says. “Real life can be fatal. You can be attacked by wolves in the woods. Or bears. Or snakes and scorpions in the desert. Evil-eyed eagles in the mountains. Sea creatures. Certain types of frogs, lizards and insects. Even plants, carnivorous or just plainly malicious. You can also fall down a cliff, catch a disease, expire from hunger, drown, freeze to death, overheat, dry out from unquenched thirst, be poisoned, be venom’d. You can die from—”

“I think he gets it,” my dad says.

“So the same animal could, in theory, attack me or engage me in battle?”

“Yes.”

“The same person too,” my dad says. “There are, in the more civilised places at least, laws against violence and murder, but the laws don't stop these things from happening—which brings me back to my presentation.“ He clears his throat. “Two, you can die in real life. If that happens, you're gone from this world. No restart possible. Likewise, if you kill: you kill permanently. Battles are a fundamental part of questing, but they happen within real life. Real life is where you have to be the most vigilant and the most sensible. Losing your hard-earned equipment can be painful—if, for example, you spent several long, difficult months hunting down a one-of-a-kind dragon-feathered artisanal war helmet, and then decide to get into a drinking contest with some rowdy dwarf who called you a stinkin' nobody, and who clearly cheats, and you accuse him, maybe a little too loudly and publicly, of cheating, and you proceed to lose your war helmet after being defeated in an ill-advised tavern battle-brawl in which you engage so inebriated you can't even properly draw your sword! Gods, how I loved that helmet! But, as painful as that was, you get over it and it wasn't death. So keep your head and wits about you, Grom.”

“Oh, be careful, Gromi. It's a dangerous world out there!”

“What else?” my dad asks.

“There's the party stuff, reviving. But I think that's probably for later," my mom answers.

“I figure you'll be adventuring on your own for now,” my dad tells me. I wonder if he thinks that because I don't have any friends. If so, that isn't my fault. They all got quests and left. If, however, it's because my stats are what they are and I wouldn't be of benefit to anyone except as a very weak damage sponge, I concede his point. “Be careful who you trust, that's all I'm saying. Like me and those pirates.”

“So this ‘conversation’ only had two things to teach me?” I ask.

“It is called a ‘short conversation.’”

[TL;DR You can't die or kill in battle. If you're defeated, you lose your stuff. You can die and kill in real life, so watch out.]

“On the bright side, it's still early in the day. How about second breakfast and then you set off on your adventure again?” my mom asks.

How can I say No?

I eat, and, after eating, I walk out the front door, full and ready to begin my quest in earnest for the second time. (“Third time's the charm, so let's get this over with,” says Randy, and in some bizarre way I'm happy that he's speaking to me again.)

As I leave, I hear the fading out of my parents' conversation:

“Was he really defeated by a squirrel?”

“Right? I heard that too.”

“Did I ever tell you I was once defeated by a ball of seafoam?”

“No! How?”

“I was on the beach, completely unequipped, and it caught…”

I walk.

(“Wrong way, Suckleslav.”)

And he's right. My sense of direction isn't quite back yet after restarting. “That was helpful,” I tell Randy, genuinely surprised at his comment.

“I know. I assure you it sounded meaner in my head before I said it.” He pauses. “I'm a little ashamed of myself.”

“Well, nobody's perfect,” I say.

For whatever reason that sounds like a very good closing line—except by telling you that, I've now made it not the closing line, so let me end instead by telling you that as I walked I decided to open the overworld map for the first time. And I found it disappointing. I had expected it to be this giant tapestry of continents, physical features and places, but it's really just a blankness. It shows only the places I've been, so most of it is dark. I can see generally why it's useful. For example, it does show my location and the location of the equipment I dropped after being defeated in battle. And I will hopefully uncover more of it as I travel. Presently, I close it and look at the real world instead. I mean, who wants to walk around and explore with their head stuck in their overworld map all day?

“I've been meaning to ask,” says Randy.

“Ask what?”

“What are you gonna do if you see another squirrel?”

“Rabid squirrel,” I say.

“Sure.”

“The reasonable thing: Run away.”

“Well, nobody's perfect.”