Public Release: March 7th, 2019 - 5:00 pm EST
My roster for the Power-Leveling trip was finalized. Sell and Lily would travel with me to The Forgotten Lands where we’d pick up James. I felt a pain in my chest when I thought about what leveling them would do to their souls, but I didn’t have any other choice. I could only do my best to alleviate the problems by choosing monsters with weak egos or matching affinities.
Just as I had a powerful Chaos affinity, so much so that I literally needed to eat a God to learn to use [Healing Magic], the others would have their own affinities too.
Contrary to his last name, Evergreen, James’s soul resonated with a strong Fire affinity.
Lily’s soul worked well with two affinities: Water and Metal. For such a delicate girl to have a Metal affinity… What a weird world.
The Water affinity made sense, though. If I remembered right, Lily’s sister Emerlia used Ice-based skills back when they fought to enter the Academy.
I didn’t know what Sell’s affinity was, though.
[Sal: BLUE’s affinity is Water.]
Blue?
[Sal: BLUE.]
I sighed. I didn’t want to even ask. I had a good idea. RED probably…
[Sal: Call me SAL!]
…
[Sal: I swear if you say ‘Call me Ishmael’ again I’m unplugging you from the Matrix.]
Call. Me. Ishmael.
-
After my spat with RED, I started moving south. The day was young and I had a mission. Barbory needed to pay for their sins, and it was high time the Devil dropped by.
[Solution: Demon.]
On my travels I let Sandy and Huggs out from the storage. Both seemed happy to stretch their legs, though Huggs kept trying to stretch his as far away from me as possible.
That was illegal, so I tied a strong leash to him using my Heaven’s Demon Garb. He was just so adorable as he spit venom and made scrizzly, throaty noises in his tantrum.
Sandy just seemed happy to run. Her soft fur caused memories from one of my past lives to surface, memories about a childhood dog. I hugged Sandy’s side as I relived those moments lost to the eons of time and reincarnation cycles.
We reached a long stretch of green and brown fallows south of the Capital. The smell of earth and loam filled the air.
Sandy’s paws kicked up buckets of dirt and weeds behind her as she zoomed over the barrens. The sun started nearing the center of the sky, its azimuth almost at 90 degrees. The warm air carried no hint that autumn was swinging in, and the colds of winter felt far off and distant.
The further south we traveled the warmer the temperature became. Sandy started to pant and parts of her fur even changed color, with tufts of it turning from gold to white. On a whim I grabbed one of the white tufts and it pulled out. It felt like I was unsheathing a sword. The bundle of fur, bigger than a basketball, floated on the wind behind us after I let it go.
Sany was shedding.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
I decided to help Sandy with her shedding problem. I stopped by a small farming town and, after handing an old man a rather large gold piece, I was given a metal rake.
It wasn’t a proper brush or comb, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. My poor girl was overheating, and I wasn’t about to let that stand!
What ensued after i bought the rake could only be described as a world-ending storm of fluff, fur, and whimpers.
She shed at least two additional Omega Hounds in weight. I hadn’t ever seen anything like it in all my lives.
Huggs watched on in abject horror as it happened. He would definitely be scarred for life...
[Solution: Huggs will molt and shed his scales in the Spring.]
RED was getting a bit more liberal in his quips. Perhaps, without fearing a reprisal from Nox, he felt more comfortable letting his true personality shine?
[Solution: Data not found.]
There it was, the RED I knew and loved.
-
With the one small pit-stop out of the way, Sandy and I continued our southbound jaunt. Huggs followed us, walking his own personal Trail of Tears. For such a little dragon, he sure had a lot of 'drama-queen' in him.
I could see the mountains rising up on the horizon, their peaks touching the clouds above. On those mountains were the giant trees; among them I could see a familiar one standing just a bit taller than the rest.
As we neared Fort Clyfton, I stored Sandy and Huggs again. I didn’t want to risk causing trouble if other people saw them.
The Labyrinth City felt lively. Adventurers were jumping about and merchants were full of gusto. The air smelled like a lightning storm and grilled monster meats.
I purchased a few water flasks alongside some fruit wine. I didn’t drink much, but I wanted some alcohol to go with me on this trip. What I was going to do required more of me than I initially thought.
There was a difference, I guess, between killing in self defense and assassinating someone in revenge, but when I thought about what could have happened, about the worst case scenarios, I found myself clenching my fists tight enough to shatter iron. I was determined, even if I didn't like what I had to do.
Justice needed to be served. There was no room for compromise.
So many of the escort knights died; their ends were pathetic and without reason or purpose.
RED threw himself to the dogs to keep Lily alive. I couldn’t let his sacrifice be in vain, I couldn’t let him be forgotten…
[Solution: …]
I even thought I could still hear his voice at times.
[Solution: Data not found.]
Alas! Things were not meant to be.
-
When I finished my stupid one-demon act (with the occasional help from RED), I started moving again. I reached The Pass fast but, this time, I didn’t enter. I wasn’t escorting a carriage and other people with it. I was moving alone, and I was moving with a dark but righteous purpose. I didn't want to see the inside of The Pass, eitther.
I climbed the mountainsides, jumping from tree to tree like a monkey. I knew the paths there well and I followed where they led. The mountain became my guide and it showed me the way.
I reached the mountaintop and found the sun just past its apex, starting its descent into the afternoon sky.
My Heaven’s Demon Garb transformed again, this time covering me in a typical peasant’s riding uniform, something that would blend in while traveling a religious country.
I was wary of the Garb. It had a strong connection to Nox and, I was sure, he could watch me through it. I didn’t have much else in terms of convenient clothing, though, that could withstand my movements or fights.
Besides, who cared if Nox wanted to watch. He probably just wanted to see my body and nothing else.
I could confirm it with Argyle’s memories, but my current body was identical in appearance to the Eighth Fae. Perhaps it was some twisted perversion of his that made him design my body this way.
I thought back to my time playing Saga Heroes Online and the avatar Calliope17. Did Nox influence that person to make their character look like me?
The answer dawned on me, of course, when I really started to think about things. The avatar Calliope17 didn’t have these skills, wasn’t level 900-whatever, and it didn’t look like this. Sal's 'Matrix Joke' earlier seemed a lot more on the nose...
Nox didn’t recreate a game avatar or go through all that trouble. He altered my own memories to just make it seem that way.
If he could erase a person from my mind, conveniently making me think the last video-game character I used looked different was easy…
This wasn’t a particularly impactful revelation, since I’d undergone so many things in recent days, but it still hit me in a weird way.
It was like finding out the Easter Bunny wasn’t real as a child.
Perhaps Saga Heroes Online wasn’t anything like I remembered, either. Who was to say Nox didn’t alter those memories either to make this world fit?
In Argyle’s memories, there were a few methods to restore and fix a manipulated mind. Most required a lot of effort and time, but I took note of them. None of them were perfect and, depending on the level of corruption, they could potentially do nothing too... But it didn't matter. I needed to try them out eventually.
After I leveled my friends enough for them to go out on their own, I would take back my own mind.