[https://www.tanyarochester.com/uploads/5/4/5/5/54553809/lore3_orig.png]

Mia worried about how much money she’d spend if we stayed at the hotel longer than necessary so, instead of sleeping, we logged out together. This time, when I opened my eyes to my new world I found her lying next to me. I spent a little too much time studying her alien features. While they weren’t that different from Elven, the differences were still there, especially in the proportions.

Since I didn’t want to gracelessly stare at her for too long I focused on the ceiling and breathed in. Was it just me or did the environment seem to have more magic in it than last time? I couldn’t exactly get up right away, what with the side effects of exiting the PPVS, so I took some time to just feel the mana around me.

Yes, there was definitely more here than there had been before.

My strength returned a couple of minutes later and both of us sat up.

Mia bit her lip and looked at me then the door. She stepped to the desk, opened her black box to show me a screen with various smaller menus within it. She moved some round thing on the side that appeared to be invisibly attached to the box.

“Here, I’ve loaded a bunch of my favorite songs onto here. You can listen to them while I go grab you some clothes real fast… it might take me an hour.”

She ran her hand nervously through her hair. Then she continued to over-explain how it worked as if I hadn’t been living in the PPVS with its various screens, heads up displays, and menus for the past 6 years.

“Mia, I’m fine. I can see how much you care about this thing. I’ll be careful.”

“M-my name is Grace, while we’re in real life.”

Right, she’d mentioned that before but I’d been too busy dealing with my own things to fully remember. I’d remember now. “Alright, Grace.”

She nodded, pressed play, grabbed a few things, and left.

As I listened to Grace’s favorite songs I couldn’t help but be inspired. Reflexively I reached up as if to grab my Lutzithen. It took me a second to remember that I didn’t have access to my inventory in reality. My hand shook. I clenched it into a fist.

Would I really be okay, leaving this room and fully experiencing another world? After all, the first time I came here I had a slight mental breakdown.

Well, it didn’t matter if I could or couldn’t because I had to be okay with it. Slowly, I calmed down and continued to listen to her catchy foreign music.

***

Grace returned with a few large bags which she threw on the bed.

“So, you’re humanoid but your proportions are a little different from human. I bought you clothes that should be a bit baggy on you and will hide your...” Her face blushed a little. “Differences.”

I nodded.

With her face, bright red, she explained each item of clothing from ins to outs. This was very simple clothing and I really wondered at her financial situation. Just how poor was she? I mean, I was new to this world so I’d try this first before complaining. But this quality really seemed lacking.

I moved into the restroom and changed into the clothes she’d purchased for me. When I came out I was dressed in loose-fitting jeans, a white cotton shirt, and a very baggy zip-up sweatshirt in a deep blue. I even wore the sandals she handed me.

I held my old clothes in my arms and walked up to her. “Is this fine?”

She stared at me with a blank face. A few seconds later, she walked up to me. As her hands reached past my shoulders I froze, my heart sped up just a bit, and then she pulled the hood over my head, covering my hair and ears. Then she stepped back and nodded.

“There, all good… How do the clothes feel?”

I rubbed the fabric of my sweatshirt and grimaced. “It’s not very soft is it?”

“What? Not soft? But this is... Well. What do you consider soft?”

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I held out my old folded clothes for her to touch. She ran her finger down the side of it. Her eyes widened.

“Oh my god! This is so soft! What is this? How does this even exist?”

I explained or tried to explain the very complex magic intensive process that we used to create the cloth. She shook her head.

“Yeah, we don’t have anything like that here.” She hadn’t stopped petting my old clothes. It was starting to get awkward.

“Grace. Do you have somewhere I can store these? The items I had on me when I died are the last things I have of my world and I’d like to keep them safe.”

“Oh! Yes!” She opened her suitcase with a pull and then opened up an inner pocket lined with a translucent material that I knew was called plastic. It was similar to this other material that we had where I lived but it seemed to be a very strange blend of things. She emptied the contents of the pocket into her main bag and took my clothes from me.

Then she proceeded to continue to pet my clothes again.

I waited. She was still mesmerized.

“Grace.”

She jumped and gently placed my clothes into the pocket. Then she stared at it, as if she were about to cry. I thought I heard her murmur. “How could something be that soft?”

I rolled my eyes. “We need to get back into the PPVS to sleep, but we need to store this first since you can only go into the simulator with the clothes you’re wearing and items in your pockets.”

“Right, right. Just let me pack up and we’ll get out of here.” She stared longingly at her open luggage then gathered the few loose items strewn around the room, including her screen creation device.

After she’d finally collected everything, she grabbed her wheeled suitcase, opened the hotel room door, and held it open for me. I paused for a second then stepped into a long hallway filled with rectangular patterns. Once again I noticed how this world was filled with squares instead of the organic structures my people tended to build. So foreign.

Grace left with her belongings rolling behind her conveniently. Then she used her free hand to hold onto mine and pulled me past shiny metal doors. We reached a large room with fake marble floors and a poorly made desk. The people of this world seemed to really like their fake natural materials.

She spoke to the lady at the desk, turning in her small white card, then she once again grabbed my hand and brought me outside. Boxy vehicles on wheels that smelled horrible flew past our location every now and then while Grace took out a small box with rounded corners and began to tap at it. I leaned over to see what it was and noticed more menus similar to the PPVS appearing on the device.

A few minutes later one of those smelly vehicles rolled up to us and a muffled pop sounded from it. I nearly jumped.

Grace moved to the back of it and I cautiously followed. She pulled the back part open revealing a cloth-lined space where she dumped her belongings then she moved to the side and opened the door for me once again. I sat down.

This thing stank of smoke and chemicals. It was obviously not safe at all but I supposed it was the only mode of convenient transport on this world?

“Grace?” The person in front left seat asked.

“That’s my partner’s name.”

They nodded.

Grace opened up the other door and sat inside. She grabbed the straps hanging down and pulled it across her then clicked it into a black device made from a sturdier version of that material she stored my clothes in and a weak non-magical metal.

Then she looked at me. I raised a brow at her.

She sighed, leaned over to grab the strap near me, and pulled it across me.

“...”

She could have just said something.

The machine started moving forward. I grabbed Grace’s hand and held it tight. I did not feel safe at all.

The car sped up, then slowed down at various points, either the red octagon with the word for “stop” written on it or at red lights. It was easy enough to figure out.

It took me a while but I realized that the straps were the analog version of a carriage’s hold spell that protected the users inside.

It still felt like a fucking easy way to get myself killed and I promised myself to use this mode of transportation as little as possible.

Eventually, we reached another square building and exited the death trap. I finally figured out, thanks to the language download, that it was called a car. That was the issue with having a new language implanted directly, since I wasn’t used to the new items of this world, I would need to search out their names jumbled around in my brain and connect them to the actual objects over time.

She grabbed her luggage from the back.

“I think I’ll wait out here,” I said.

She flashed me a concerned look then nodded. Maybe I looked as off as I felt.

“I’ll be right back.”

While rolling her suitcase, she dashed into the cubic building with a large “Self-Storage” sign.

A stone bench rested between the building and the road so I sat down there and just breathed. The hint of salty ocean air wafted by and I let the stress slowly fade.

We were near the ocean? That must be nice. I’d like to see what this world’s oceans looked like someday soon.

***

It took her a good half hour but eventually Grace returned, empty-handed, and sat down next to me. She had a wide grin on her face.

“It’s all good and stored. They even gave me the fantastically cheap price of $34 for the first month and $68 for the following months. This will be way better than renting an apartment I would barely use.” She paused for a second and then practically fell off the bench. “Holy shit!”

“What?”

“I just realized that I am now, essentially, a murder hobo.”

I understood the word murder and technically knew what a hobo was, but the combination of the two were a bit confusing.

“So in games, you’ll often play as a person with no home. Someone who also goes about murdering people at will. So, since they’re a murderer and a hobo...”

“But you’re not going around murdering people.”

“Well, not yet but I am playing an assassin class so I assume I’ll be murdering people in the PPVS soon.” She flashed me a sly smile and I couldn’t help but think that even in her alien form, she was beautiful, like beams of sunlight on an overcast day.

She leaned against the stone backrest as if testing out if it could really let us rest here. “You think this bench is good enough?”

With the PPVS around, it wasn’t as if anyone could harm us. Though those cars did give me pause. But, entering while outside would prevent us from getting trapped in the sim so I nodded. We moved our arms in time together, opening the system menu, and selecting the login option.