We arrived in town just as the sun was setting. The chill in the air had returned, and I suspected it was here to stay. I pushed the wheel-barrow, naturally. Less naturally, my new employer was riding in it, giggling like a loon all the way. All the scrap-iron I had managed to collect was in there with him. Digby was a hard man to read. He seemed to slip between moods far too easily. Maybe he was manic-depressive.

  Speaking of depressive things, Rocky Shore was a dump full of assholes. When we arrived at the gates of the town, the guard at the front gate barely gave us any notice. He was a doughy man armed with a simple pike and seemed to take little interest in his job in general. As Digby navigated us through the cobblestone streets, passers-by gave us wide berth. A few children threw small rocks and bits of trash at us, which Digby advised me to ignore. Most of the shops that lined the streets had simple pictographs in place of signs, although a few did have actual writing on them. Given Oestekommen's resemblance to German, I wouldn't have guessed that the written equivalent would look like the bastard offspring of Korean and Sanskrit. None the less, I found the unfamiliar letters perfectly legible.

  I could tell right away that the people of Rocky Shore varied widely in their economic situation. Some walked the streets in colorful and elaborate robes, dresses, overcoats, and scarves, often accompanied by jewelry. Most wore simple work clothes of rougher fabrics, often undyed or colored in dark earth tones. Armaments such as short swords and daggers were not too uncommon, especially among the wealthy. The architecture of the town reminded me of early Renaissance-era Eastern Europe, so much so that I started to wonder if I should be on the look-out for vampires and werewolves. One surprising feature was the ethnic diversity among the inhabitants. No one seemed to be of any particular earthly ethnic group, but I saw plenty of faces that wouldn't have been too out of place in Singapore or Cameroon. This wasn't a European-style setting, but rather it was simply a town of humans. The Rocky Shore look consisted only of an unfriendly, suspicious scowl. And I was about to take my place among the lowest rungs of their society.

  For his part, Digby seemed utterly delighted. He had clearly been anticipating a day of sorting through garbage in search of something valuable, and what he had found was me. He insisted on showing me the layout of the town so that he would be able to send me on errands later. There was a modestly-sized church or chapel near the town center, which I hoped I could use to upgrade myself once I accumulated some experience. The warehouse district was in the northern quarter near the docks, and it seemed a lot more heavily guarded than the rest of the town. I saw armed constables dotting the streets in the upscale commercial part of town near the church, but the warehouses seemed to be off-limits to the public entirely.

  Then we looped down through the poorer southern quarter, where narrow houses were packed together to form plenty of dark alleyways. The poorer folk were certainly not unemployed, however. We passed dozens of small business, including canteens, cafes, laundry services, bakeries, money changers, even a fortune teller. I would have preferred the kind of town that had a weapons shop and maybe a potion dealer, but at least I could find the necessities of life here. At the very bottom of the town (both geographically and financially) was Digby's shop, two little wooden shacks which used the town's southern wall as their rear wall. Similar shanties in varying states of disrepair lined the wall to the left and right, as well as the opposite side of the street. Smaller shacks, booths, and a few animal pens dotted the lane in between, making walking down the street in anything resembling a straight line impossible. The crowd was so thick I might easily have gotten disoriented and lost if not for my height.

  This was Dogberry Lane. It was smelly, noisy, crowded, and chaotic, but at least no one threw anything at me, and everyone dressed only a little better than me.

  Digby's inventory was just as he had described it, unfortunately. One of the two shacks was used almost entirely for storage, and mostly full of tattered rags, as well as a barrel full of drying dogshit, a large tub of rotting animal fat, and plenty of scrap metal. The other side consisted of Digby's workshop, which was no better organized. We spent of the remainder of the evening processing the scrap metal, which consisted of thoroughly removing the rust with a wire brush, prying off the non-metallic bits, and sorting it all into piles by type of metal. Once we had finished, I was rewarded with the right to sort through his piles of clothing for something suitable that I could wear. After boiling said clothing to destroy the lice that inevitably infested his stock, I hung my new (heh heh) outfit out to dry overnight. It was then that Digby informed me that my new duties would include sleeping in the storeroom to discourage thieves. I agreed, without pointing out that the lice could handle this job on their own. Having spent the previous two nights on a moving cart and in a blackberry bush respectively, I was thrilled just to be indoors. I bedded on a pile of filthy rags next to a barrel of dog droppings and hoped that tomorrow would be a better day.

  Over the week that followed, I began to get a grip on the business model by which Digby sustained himself. In his messy workshop, Digby proved himself over and over to be a true trash wizard. With needle and thread he could transform worthless scraps of cloth into clothing that any person of taste would describe as...clothing. Tallow candles made from meat drippings were also a popular item. Digby informed me that the scrap metal was being held in reserve. The numerous blacksmiths of the town would pay well for it if other sources suddenly dried up. If it could rot, It became part of one of the compost piles. If it could burn, it was tucked away for heating when winter came. Nothing went to waste in Dogberry Lane.

  It seemed that most of the people who walked Dogberry Lane during the day were visitors from the slightly nicer neighborhoods nearby, who came for the lower prices. To my surprise, Digby maintained a diverse range of contacts who delivered his raw materials and purchased his products, such as they were. Customers often paid by exchange, with no more than a few tiny copper coins changing hands in any given transaction. Digby's shop produced little in the way of monetary profit, but enough customers paid in beans and sacks of grain to ensure that we wouldn't starve. For a man as unpleasant-looking as Digby, he certainly had no trouble making friends. On the fourth day, he showed me his personal notebook, in which he had carefully listed out all his customers and potential customers, where they lived, what they might be interested in, how they might be able to pay, and so on. At least, he said that was what was written in it. Evidently, the program that gave me the ability to read Oestekommen did not extend to translating Digby's abhorrent hand-writing.

  It struck me that a man of Digby's obvious intellect and connections could probably do better than being a junk merchant, but it also became increasingly obvious that the shop was not all it appeared to be. On more than one occasion, I had been at work organizing the day's acquisitions, when a customer I had not seen before approached the stall. Sometimes it was an older woman, or a middle-aged man, but suddenly Digby would decide that I urgently needed to get some work done in the storage shed, or make a run to the dump to see if any new loads had come in, or on one occasion he had simply told me to take the rest of the evening off. This led me to the conclusion that Digby was performing some kind of illicit service, although of what kind I had no idea.

  The weather got colder and colder as the days went by. I had little time to myself, and I mostly used it to explore the town. I liked Digby, in an odd sort of way, but I certainly didn't want to spend the rest of my days peddling garbage. The most obvious source of funds I possessed was the silver coin I had found in the tutorial dungeon. I tried bringing it to one of the boutiques in the nicer part of town to see what I could get for it, but I was asked to leave as soon as I walked in the door. I was no longer naked, but that was still the kindest way to describe my attire. The wealthier citizens of Rocky Shore perceived me as riff-raff, and that was unlikely to change unless I could get my hands on some funds.

  I tried selling the coin in Dogberry Lane as well, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. The largest shop in that area belonged to an elderly widow named Matilda. She was one of Digby's key business contacts, and owned a two-story shop a short distance from his. Her stock mostly consisted of refurbished furniture and random knick-knacks, which made her practically an aristocrat by local standards I knew that she would gladly take the coin off my hands for a reasonable fraction of its actual value, but standing in front of her shop, I couldn't shake the feeling that I would be parting with the only thing of value I possessed in exchange for maybe a few weeks worth of funds.

  I searched around for more lucrative employment. Guard work seemed the most reasonable for a fellow of my skills, but my inquiries turned up nothing. Thanks to my wardrobe (likely helped along by my garbage Charisma score) I was immediately rebuffed whenever I asked about getting a job in security. Sometimes they simply told me that they preferred to hire local lads for that sort of work, and at one point I was simply accused of being a thief and turned out of the guardhouse. There was a lumbermill on a little stream near the town, but they were already shut down for the winter. Even my attempts to enter the church to see if I could access the interface from there were answered with suspicious glares and a request to kindly fuck off.

  I was really beginning to wonder just who or what these people worshiped. I never saw anyone enter the church in groups of more than two or three. I shared my frustrations with Digby, who explained a bit about the culture and politics of Rocky Shore. Apparently, the town had been founded as a trading post by a joint-stock company called the Garth-Morhead Shipping Association. The town had grown to the point that it now had a local magistrate who acted as the official governor on behalf of the city-state of Ganth, to which Rocky Shore officially belonged. In truth, however, Garth-Morhead owned more than half of the town's businesses, and Ganth was far way and rarely communicated with the small town. Trade on the road had slowed to a trickle thanks to the threat of banditry, so Garth-Morhead essentially owned the town. This meant that if you had no connections with the local company directors, you had little chance of finding work here. As for religion, the local church was little more than a chapel that Garth-Morhead used for weddings, funerals, and any gathering that required a lot of seating. The church, in other words, had been constructed more to present an image of religious observance than to reflect any reality thereof. Digby also warned me that making inquiries of this sort was unlikely to endear me to the locals. Just as Brit had told me, this town was not eager to make new friends.

  Every day I spent in Rocky Shore made me more certain that there was some sinister secret lurking in the background, always just out of sight. I was also becoming increasingly bored and restless. Digby's shop provided me little in the way of sustenance and nothing at all in the way of entertainment. The work was frustratingly fiddly, and I would certainly have to spend years here to absorb everything Digby knows about converting worthless garbage into things a sane person might consider spending money on. But I still felt restless after my day's work was completed, my stamina was simply surplus to requirements. For this reason, I wasn't particularly annoyed when I heard a frantic knock on the storeroom's simple wooden door.

  I opened the door only a crack, remembering Digby's warning about potential thieves. It was Digby himself, looking more agitated than I had ever seen him before.

  “Get dressed quickly! We're doing overtime tonight.” he hissed at me through the door. I was curious, since nothing I had been asked to do so far had been very time-sensitive. I put on an old but usable coat and a pair of refurbished boots and joined Digby outside. He was ready with a heavy walking stick and a dim lantern. He motioned for me to follow him and we headed down Dogberry Lane.

  Digby stopped behind a refuse barrel and motioned me to conceal myself beside him. I could hear a muffled sound of whispering and banging coming from a nearby shack, as though several people were frantically looking for the light switch and not having much luck. I could see several other figures crouching behind shacks and other impediments just out of sight. Half the neighborhood seemed to be gathering around to observe whatever was going on. In the street, I could just make out the figure of a man in chain mail laying sprawled out as though stunned. He looked a little younger than me and had scraggly tuft of orange beard. His helmet rested beside him and his pike seemed to be missing its head.

  “What's going on?” I whispered to Digby.

  “Someone broke into Matilda's shop. They're ransacking the place!”

  “Where are the rest of the guards?”

  “They aren't coming. Gerald's the only guard assigned to this neighborhood. The others'll drag their feet until its over. We have to look after each other 'round here.”

  This made sense to me. Dogberry Lane and its nearby cousins were practically unpoliced compared to the rest of the town. It was only natural that people who depended on each other so much for their daily bread would make informal arrangements for their common defense as well. Only in this case, what I was looking at bore more resemblance to rubbernecking than a common defense.

  “Well? Let's get in there and stop them then.” I hissed.

  “Easy does it friend. Those fellows in there took down Gerald without hardly trying, and he was wearing armor and everything. If we can see their faces, we might be able to haul them before the magistrates. Its a long-shot I'll grant, but at least no one will die.”

  Digby's words had a pragmatic logic to them. I knew that weapons (decent ones at least) were outside of the means of most people in this area, so even a few intruders were a real threat. Still, I wasn't about to pretend that I had no better options. I was a player character, after all. I was most likely the strongest and most competent person in this situation, and it would be cowardly to pretend otherwise. I decided to take the action that made the most sense to me. I darted quickly into the street, picked up the guard that I had recently learned was named Gerald, and hauled him back behind the barrel as quickly as I could. He didn't feel very heavy, but most things didn't these days. Digby and I examined him by lantern light. He was breathing and his pulse was steady, and the only sign of trauma I could see was a scorched patch in middle of his mail shirt. Curious, I went out to retrieve his helmet and pike as well. Judging by the sounds coming from the shop, whoever was in there would be too busy to notice me. As I had suspected, the tip of the staff was burnt as well, as though the head had simply overheated and exploded.

  “I'm going in.” I whispered to Digby. He didn't respond. I took the headless staff and the heavy helmet and stepped toward the shop, moving as quietly as I could. The door hung open, the simple wooden latch having been kicked in. There was no movement around me, so I moved away from the doorway and waited for my eyes to adjust. The first floor was mostly a sales desk and an disorganized mass of random furniture. I could just make out the silhouette of an empty birdcage and a stack of unmatched chairs. Once I could see well enough, I crept along the narrow pathway between the piles to the ladder-like stairs that led to the upper story, where the action appeared to be happening. I could hear intense whispering from up above, punctuated by the squeaks of drawers and the sound of objects being dragged around or tossed aside. Maybe the Three Stooges were robbing the place. Placing the helmet atop the pike, I slowly made my way up the stairs, lifting the helmet into view ahead of me.

  There was a bright flash that nearly blinded me, and a distinct smell of ozone in the air. The helmet at the end of the pike was now glowing faintly; it had been heated close to red hot. My suspicion that I was dealing with a mage of some kind were confirmed. I readied the staff, and addressed the figures in the room above.

  “You're going to start a fire if you keep that up.” I spoke loudly and clearly in Oestekommen.

  A figure rushed into view above me, and I saw a flash of metal in their hand. The instant the motion registered, I launched the helmet upward with a jab of the staff, nailing the intruder square in the face, eliciting a cry of pain. The voice was young and male. The next instant, I launched myself upward from the stairs and thrust the blunt tip of the staff into his chest. I heard a choking exhalation as he fell backward into the darkness.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  All was stillness for a moment. I knew there was more than one intruder, and whoever was up there was hoping that I didn't. I concealed myself behind the stairs for cover and listened intently. There were two sets of breaths, one male and one female. The man was on the floor nursing the fat bruises I had just given him. The woman was the one throwing lightning bolts around, and she was waiting for me to make a mistake.

  I wasn't altogether surprised to meet someone who could project electrical arcs at will. That option had, after all, potentially been on the table when I had spent my points, just behind the alluring Gates of Destiny. I was in no hurry to catch a thunderbolt to the chest, but odds were it was a survivable event. Poor Gerald. A chain mail shirt can save you from a lot of things, but a powerful electrical shock isn't one of them.

  This meant that I was probably dealing with one of my own kind, a player. Her companion might well be one of us as well, which meant it was probably too soon to count him out. I didn't intend to kill them, obviously, but I also couldn't allow them to rob an elderly lady who sold second-hand furniture.

  Both of them were trying not to breathe, as I was, but they weren't doing too well. One was in too much pain and the other was near exhaustion. I'm not sure what a lightning bolt takes out of you, but this woman had already thrown at least two, possibly three of them. I hadn't had the opportunity to learn about the magic system that this game utilized, but magic had to have some kind of limiting factor. Given her labored breathing, it was reasonable to guess that this woman was using her own physical stamina to power her spells. If I could get her to waste another few shots, she might be too wiped out to continue. The trick was not to get fried alive in the process.

  Without the helmet, I would need something else to absorb the lightning. As quickly and quietly as I could, I grabbed the empty birdcage I had spotted earlier. It wasn't a perfect shield, but a lot better than nothing. I crept up the ladder, listening for sounds from above. They were almost completely quiet now, which made me think they must be lying in wait. After that trick with the helmet, I doubted another fake-out was going to work.

  As before, I noticed a blur of motion in the darkness above, and a long dagger lodged itself between the bars of the birdcage. I might have caught between my ribs if I hadn't been holding that. Sensing my opening, I charged up the stairs, brandishing my crappy make-do weapons. The male intruder gave me a swift kick to the shoulder as I came up, which was painful, but did not prevent me from slapping the tip of my make-shift staff into his forehead. Thank you, Stunning Blow.

  Another flash of white light filled my vision, and the birdcage fell involuntarily from my left hand. My entire forearm felt numb, but I noted that this last shock did not seem as powerful as the one that had struck the helmet earlier. The man lay on the floor at my feet, seemingly down for the count. With no other option, I charged the vague outline of the woman.

  Another flash, and this time the pain struck every part of my body at once. It hurt more than I had expected, but evidently spending a skill talent on Endurance had been a sound investment, because I steamed forward regardless. Blinded by the flash, I didn't so much attack her as collide with her. I heard a cry of pain as the impact sent her slamming against a set of drawers.

  I recovered from the impact first. I grabbed both her arms at the wrist and pointed them both away from me.

  “That's enough. Surrender!” I hissed. The words didn't have the force in them that I had hoped for. Stupid Charisma.

  “What? Who are you?” she spoke Oestekommen, with an accent I didn't recognize.

  “Are you going to zap me again?” I asked. I had to say “zap” in English, since there is no Oestekommen equivalent.

  “Whaa...” she seemed to be having difficulty coming to grips with the situation.

  “Are you going to shoot more lightning at me? Yes or no?”

  “...No, no, I...I surrender.” she whispered.

  “Good. Now, explain to me what you think you're doing here.”

  “Let her go!” came a voice from behind me. I guess he wasn't staying down after all.

  “I strongly advise you to stay on the ground.” I said.

  “You can't just attack us like this! You're supposed to to arrest us, not just beat us up!” he replied. I was starting to wonder if there was a script I was supposed to read before I came in.

  “Do I look like a guard to you? I'm just here to make sure Matilda doesn't lose her business cuz' of you assholes. Now, are you going to hold still, or do I have to break your arms?”

  “We're just here for the book. Let us have that, and we'll be on our way.”

  “What book?” I demanded.

  “Matilda's spellbook.” said the man.

  “Shut up, Kaapo. He's not going to understand.”

  “No, no. Let him speak. What makes you think Matilda has a spellbook? I asked.

  “She's a witch. She has to have one.” said Kaapo.

  “She's a witch. What exactly led you to that conclusion?”

  “A guy at the inn said so.”

  “Shut up, Kaapo! You're just making it worse.”

  I took a breath. “Alright, let's start at the beginning. Do you two speak English?”

  I spoke the last sentence in English, which provoked the two to goggle at me in surprise.

  “Yes, we speak English.” said Kappo, in English.

  “My name is Jamil. My English is...okay.”

  Now that my eyes had recovered from the bright lightning flashes, I could make out the features of the two. Kaapo was a tall, lanky caucasian man with very neatly combed blonde hair. He looked to be in his early twenties. Jamil had a coffee complexion, straight black hair in a pony-tail, and striking brown eyes. Most noticeably though, they were both dressed in modern clothing. Kaapo was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a gray hoodie, while Jamil was wearing a green t-shirt and slacks.

  “We can speak Oestekommen if it will make it easier for you.” I offered in Oestekommen. Jamila agreed that this would be best.

  “How long have you two been here?” I asked.

  “I got out of the starter dungeon two days ago.” said Kaapo. “I ran into Jamil a few kilometers down the main road from here. We decided to form a party.”

  “I see. Let me guess. You went straight to the nearest bar, and asked around for any rumors you could follow up on. A quest of some sort, mayhap.”

  “Well, I need a spellbook to develop my magic skills.” replied Jamila. “Kaapo here is going for a rogue build, so when we heard that Matilda was a witch...”

  “So you decided to conduct the most inept burglary of all time.” I interrupted.

  “Give us a break. We're just starting out here.” she replied.

  “Where are you two from, anyway?” I asked.

  “I'm from Giza. Kaapo is Finnish. You?”

  “Idaho.”

  Kaapo rolled his eyes. “Of course. Even in a made-up country, there's no getting away from American tourists.”

  “There's still the question of how to proceed from here.” I told them. “I don't really want to turn you two in, considering I have no real idea of what they'll do to you. But I can't just let you stay in town.”  

  Kaapo scoffed. “Why the hell not? You're a real person, you don't have to obey the laws here.”

  “You two nearly killed someone tonight. If I hadn't have been here, you might have. You think those little lightning bolts of yours can't kill?”

  “Look, I wouldn't have struck you if I'd known you were real.” said Jamil.

  “I can't believe this!” said Kaapo. “You're siding with a bunch NPCs over us? Do you understand how insane that is? We have actual lives that could actually end here. Didn't you read the intro?”

  “You tried to rob a poor, defenseless old lady because some twerp in a bar told you she was a witch. Do you understand how insane that is?” I countered.

  “She...is not...real.” said Kaapo firmly.

  I took a deep breath. The issue of how real or unreal the people I was surrounded by actually were had been in my thoughts ever since I had met Brit and Reuben. Everything I had been mulling over finally crystallized in my mind.

  “Listen. I don't really know whether these simulations constitute actual people in terms of moral value. I don't really know what I would do if I had to choose between their lives and ours. But I do know that back in the old world, every single one of us had the option of either treating other human beings as human beings, or to treat them as disposable resources, to be used as needed. There's no definitive way to prove who is and isn't a real person, so I choose to treat everything that seems like a person as a person. Does that make sense to you?”

  My little speech seemed to have an impact on Jamil, who cast her eyes downward. Kaapo let out an audible groan. I suppose I sounded like either a crazy person or a bleeding-heart hippy, but I accept that.

  “Well, in any case, I offer you two the following options. You can leave this town permanently and find somewhere else to play Grand Theft Auto, or I can take you downstairs to apologize to Matilda and face whatever justice the mob down there have in store for you.”

  There was silence. The two intruders grimly contemplated their possible futures. I could hardly blame them. They were just treated this world as a game, which is what it had been presented to them as. Maybe I was the weirdo for working and trying to eke a living by honest means when I could just take advantage of my superior abilities to have a good time. Hell, if the three of us joined forces and played our cards right, we could probably own this town in a few weeks. We could set right all this society's obvious injustices, make ourselves filthy stinking rich, or just murder anyone who gave us any lip. Why was I being the party-pooper here?

  Kaapo was eyeing the bird cage on the ground, where his dagger was still trapped. I could practically see the anger and frustration churning in his pale blue eyes, despite his best efforts to present a neutral facade.

  “Why are those our only options? You could join our party. You don't have to live in this rat trap. You could be our tank. We could have all kinds of adventures together. We could have everything this world has to offer.” Kaapo did his best infuse the words with honey, and I knew that the offer would instantly become genuine if I accepted. But it was a distraction. He was easing himself, with a series of motions that could easily be mistaken for incidental shifts in weight or gestures of capitulation, toward his weapon. I was in a bad position, I knew. Jamil was behind me. She had had a chance to recover, and she probably had at least one good shock in her. Kaapo was a rogue (even if his Stealth was clearly not up to par), which probably meant he could manage a good turn of speed. If Jamil decided to back her friend, which seemed likely, they could still turn this situation around. I should have just broken both their necks when I had the chance, much safer that way.

  “No. You're welcome to try again somewhere else, but I'm not going to be part of it.” I answered.

  Kappo lunged forward. Too late, I realized that his sidelong glances toward the dagger had been an elaborate hoax. He struck me twice with his bare fist before I could bring my arms up in defense. I was surprised that Jamil didn't zap me. Maybe it had happened too quickly, or maybe my most optimistic assessment of her had been correct. Maybe Kaapo really had persuaded her to give this housebreaking idea a try in spite of her misgivings, and now that it was going badly she was reconsidering her position.

  Kaapo was definitely quicker than me, but that in no way made him a match for me in a fistfight, especially after the blows I had already landed on him. Within seconds I had laid him out flat, with the start of a black eye. Now thoroughly done with his propensity to get back up and make more of a nuisance of himself, I reached down and calmly broke his right thumb for good measure. The bone broke easily in my hand . Then I turned to Jamil.

  “Well, he's made his choice. How about you?” I asked.

  She stared at me. I could tell she was frightened.

  “Your mouth is bleeding.” Her voice sounded distant.

  “I'm okay. I'm going to take him downstairs and tell the others that I caught the intruder. You can wait until everyone goes home, then slip away. I suggest hopping over the wall if you can.”

  “What's going to happen to him?” she asked, gesturing toward the groaning form on the floor.

  “I wish I knew. The local government doesn't take much interest in this part of town, so it'll probably be up to the locals what becomes of him. If I had to guess, they'll probably just beat him up and toss him out of town. There's nowhere to lock him up, and too many questions if they kill him.”

  Jamil flinched at the last words. I felt bad for her. Without him, she would be alone in this strange world again. Just like I was. For a moment, I wanted to relent, to invite her to join with me. But it would be wrong. This hadn't been her idea, and Kaapo was persuasive enough to talk her into it, but she had to take responsibility for her own choices none the less. People could have died because of her poor judgment, and likely would have if I hadn't intervened. She had to face some kind of consequence to prevent her from doing something like this again.

  “I want to go with him. I can explain what happened. Maybe they will let him off easy.” She was crying now.

  “You don't have to.” I told her. “The fact that you stunned a town guard makes the situation dicey. I'll tell them that I found him and that he attacked me. I won't bring you into it.”

  “They saw me when I stunned that guy. If I leave now, they'll be out searching for a dangerous witch. No, I have to just face the music. Let's go.”

  In the end, I tossed Kaapo over my shoulder and carried him downstairs and out to the small crowd that had gathered to watch all the excitement. I pocketed Kaapo's dagger, figuring that he might get a lighter sentence if he were unarmed. Besides, it was a nice dagger, and if he wanted to keep it, he shouldn't have thrown it at me.

  Jamil followed behind me, making it clear that she was surrendering voluntarily. Gerald had recovered, and was rather grim as I gave him back his damaged pike and helmet. Jamil did indeed apologized for her role in the break-in, and she seemed to convince the crowd that the whole thing had been an idiotic mistake on her part. I suspect that she had slipped a point or two into Charisma. I discussed the situation with Matilda, Digby, and Gerald, and they agreed that since no-one had been killed and nothing had been stolen, the two would merely be required to pay for damages, the largest item being Gerald's pike. I had no idea if the pair had any money, but Digby assured me that they would just be tossed out of town until they could pay. With their powers and skills, I guessed that they would be okay.

  “Nice work, Raymond!” said Digby, playfully punching me in the arm, which was more painful than I had expected. “You handled that very well. I'll know who to turn to next time there's trouble. I'll even replace that shirt for you, gratis!”

  I glanced down. I hadn't even noticed the scorch mark where Jamil's lightning had hit me square in the chest. I realized that I was lucky it hadn't stopped my heart. Or perhaps it was my hitpoints that were responsible.

  Digby rubbed his hands together and did a funny little caper as he walked alongside me. I was unable to share his enthusiasm. The fact that Kaapo and Jamil had arrived in this world in the same way that I had but at a later date suggested that there were still more people from Earth in the pipeline waiting to be thrown into this merry little meat-grinder. I wondered how many more would come, and how far apart. Maybe the players would eventually outnumber the locals, as is the case in most MMO servers. What would that look like? Thousands of ordinary human beings, given fantastic new powers, being sprinkled over an unsuspecting world which they were told was a mere simulation. Depending on how many were coming, that would either be a major adjustment, or a major catastrophe.