I can say that I’ve grown from this whole experience and if I had to share my immediate thoughts, one of the strongest lessons I’ve learned from this experience is…

SIDE QUESTS SUCK.

For real though, holy hell; WHY did I make so many fetch quests? Killian and I will be travelling through a one horse town (literally) and come across some chicken farmer who needs some purple mountain flower. Low and behold, it’s guarded by a skeleton! So we do our thing (or sometimes avoid the combat altogether) and return the flower for a pittance of gold. Man this is lazy writing and I’m the culprit.

I guess you’re wondering what happened after the clearing incident, sure, I hear ya okay, well Killian and I hugged; he was uncomfortable, I was not. Then we hiked south along the river a little bit until we came across town and grabbed my horse Asta. We didn’t have enough gold for Killian’s horse so we’ve been doing a bit of team riding as I like to call it. He loves it, it makes me uncomfortable. We travelled the river south and when the rain got really bad we camped in an abandoned fishing hut that had some rats in it. There was also a cellar and I got a flame sword, so that’s cool. I think I’m just about to level up and Killian has surprisingly been a good companion. He’s definitely mellowed out a whole lot.

Anyways we spent the night in the fishing hut - yes there was only one bed; I was uncomfortable, he was not. In the morning kept heading south and ran across a few small towns. This is when my frustration on my own lazy writing really took hold. Our plan was to swing back around and head north but I wanted to get to the starting town of Verham to the south of us so we could crack out a few early game missions. They tended to reward the highest and frankly, have some great starting loot. Tuesday afternoon, so far as Jessica’s calendar predicted, meant that we had a day before having to head north to Redmarsh and as we came upon the outskirts of town we were attacked by a few skeletons.

Killian is a remarkably good fighter and as I managed a lucky strike killing the last one, I levelled up.

“Hey!” I said to Killian, “What should I level up?” I asked eagerly. Killian looked at me the same way he did when we woke up in the same bed face to face; excited and confused.

“I dunnit know laddie but these bones need to be rifled through!” He turned excitedly and began kicking through the piles before him.

I knew what Jessica had been talking about all at once; the feeling of daydreaming and looking at an image of yourself. I had only a few points that I could allocate but as I began reading my eyes hovered over the words “re-stat.” I had forgotten that I had allowed characters to re-stat once per save file and for a moment I considered my choices. Raydor was great but in this world, in the reality that is now Dunn he wasn’t what I wanted to play. I’d much rather have a character that was able to talk with people, be more charismatic and I’d much rather had been able to pick that lock.

Without over-thinking I selected re-stat and all at once my perspective changed. I was looking at the ground from about 5 inches below where I had been and I realized that my appearance reset too. Excitedly I ran to the nearby pond and looked at my reflection; looking back at me was Lester. My gangly features; my pimpled forehead, my dark skin, my thick glasses and a smile wider than I had ever seen plastered on my face. I felt whole again and for the first time since leaving the clearing I felt happy. Mind you that happiness only last a second before a swift kick to my back sent me flying into the muddy river.

“Lester! Come quick, there be a fight!” Killian said with axe drawn standing on the bank of the pond, he looked at me with anger ready to kill me and as I sat up sputtering.

“Killian you idiot it is me!” He immediately recognized my voice and began walking into the water trying to help me up. Mud and water mixed as we moved around in the water and I stood up with Killian hugging my legs.

A short while later, as I dried myself by an afternoon fire that Killian cooked large hunks of mushroom over; I looked over my stat options. There were the usual intellect driven stats; Intelligence, Wisdom, Knowledge however since arriving here they hadn’t been much use. Yes, knowing information about the world and surrounding area would be useful but I already had Meta knowledge, so the stats weren’t all that useful to me. Additionally, a lot of these were modifiers for magic users and I didn’t plan on using magic. Magic was an amazing option that required a lot of skill but the more I had thought about it, the less it appealed to me. You needed to find physical books in the game to learn spells and most of them were in late-game.

I also knew that it drained from a pool of mana that you had as a character and I was nervous about how that would work in this new real life version of Dunn. Stamina seemed to work the same; swinging an axe tired you out but how would a stat that didn’t exist in real life work here? In fact, the more I thought about it, it began to dawn on me how truly terrifying magic would be to use and to see. The ability to resurrect undead, cast lightning from your finger tips and create a shield made entirely of flame were all high level abilities that mages held and there was no doubt in my mind that Millicent had all these abilities and more but that was a problem for later. I shook my head and scrolled down to the more combat oriented stats.

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Here there were things like Dexterity, Strength and Constitution; how fast you were, how strong you were and how much you could take. Though being a strong character hadn’t been a bad way to go about it I was definitely feeling less inclined to wield a shield and sword again. Not only was being face to face with something absolutely terrifying, it was difficult; most of what we had encountered so far was well beyond my fighting ability. These creatures had programmed fighting skills and while my lock pick and other relevant skills carried over, I never wrote in the ability to have “fighting moves” so all of my swings were completely random or mimicking fighting I’ve seen in movies and games. Needless to say it was not great. I stopped for a second and turned to Killian who was humming to himself and testing the cook on the mushrooms, “What’s actually going to be useful to us here; being strong or being sneaky?”

To my surprise Killian sat down with a thump and actually pondered what I had said. Just like Kappa he had come more alive since we met; picking up small mannerisms of mine being an altogether more human creature. That being said, he was still Killian and after a beat he shouted, “Dwarves are both laddie so it’s tough to choose only one!” he winked at me with a grin and I turned back to my stat screen. I thought for a moment on what I wanted to do and how I would make my way moving forward. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I really, really didn’t want to kill anyone and the easiest way to make that happen was to have a great Charisma score. After all, I didn’t have to kill anyone if I could just talk them down like Jessica had, so I put a great deal of points there.

That being said, if combat did happen, I really didn’t want to get hit so staying as far away from the action as possible. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I wanted to aim for a glass cannon. A glass cannon; for the uninitiated, is a high damage dealer ranged fighter most often a mage but in this case a bow user. Yes, I knew Jessica already had a high Charisma and that Kappa was an excellent archer; but neither of them were with me now and additionally, I couldn’t count on them coming around.

As I levelled up and completed my new build I felt a renewed sense of excitement. Not only was I much more equipped to handle the challenges of Dunn now; I also looked like myself again, something that I had not realized how desperate I was for. I closed my mind to the stat screen and turned to Killian who seemed to have been telling me a story of some sort,

“…but the wolf was nah match fer me and with a great swiping of my axe…”

“Great story Killian, that mushroom about done?” I interjected,

“Eh?” he said and turned to me as if surprised I was listening, “oh yes, rrrrrrrroast mushroom for me and the lad, almost up!” He barked and I laughed.

Feeling better than I had in days I smiled at him and asked, “Killian, aren’t you curious as to what we’re all talking about, what we’re planning on doing?”

He plucked a steaming mushroom off the fire with delicate hands and took a few steps to me so that he could drop it on my wooden plate before returning to the fire. He chewed his lower lip a little as he thought and watched the flames lick the second mushroom and after a long pause said, “When I was alone, after me clan had abandoned me,” he yelled that second part towards the woods before speaking softly again towards me, “I thought on what I’d do if I was alone.” He sighed long and slow, “I dunnit think I would have gone on lad,” he said and turned towards me. For a moment I didn’t understand and as I studied his face I realized that what he meant,

“You wanted to kill yourself?” I said in a tone that was alarmed than I had intended,

“Aye,” he said with a nod, “being a part of somethin’, a clan like I had, it’s all I’ve ever known.” This part was true, Killian didn’t have much of a backstory and it all started with that clan and as I watched him pluck the mushroom from the fire I felt for him, “Findin’ you all, it was what saved me life.” He blew on the mushroom as flecks of spittle landed on it and after a second took a big mouthful. He chewed for a long time and finally, after swallowing it he said, “It’s why I came with ya lad, I know how it feels to be alone and no matter what ye did, no one deserves that.”

I beamed with such absolute respect that I couldn’t help but stand up and hug him. I hadn’t bothered to thank him for that and as I had my arms around him I finally did, “Thank you Killian, I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t come with me.”

He allowed me to hug him as he continued to munch on the large mushroom in his hands and after a beat shouted through a mouthful, “You’d be dead!”

I stood up laughing and sat back down where I had been previously to eat my own meal, “All this is to say laddie that I don’t mind much of what ye all are doing, I’m just happy to be with ya.” I nodded and decided in that moment it was best to save the bigger picture until later. Who knows, he may never need to know. When we finished eating we broke camp and continued down the river. The day was warm and sunny and it was only a short while until we’d reached the edge of Verham. We approached in good spirits and full bellies, completely unaware of who had been patiently waiting for us in town.