Chapter 47
Living and Surviving
The line in front of the Adventure Center was still there, long and winding, and Asher patiently stood in the rear, hands in pockets, waiting. He couldn’t quite grasp yet why it wasn’t the way it was with the Upgrade and Furniture Shops where people could go in whenever and end up in the same dark room with a screen prompt that allowed them to make selections, but he was too disinterested to question deeply anyway.
Spying on the conversations of his 'neighbors' yielded little as it was mostly just pointless chatter, but it was still better than being trapped in his head for the duration. It was a jumbo mix of things ranging from what kind of booze they managed to buy to whoever was the latest death--and there were many, from the sounds of it. Supposedly, there was another batch of newbies after Zane and he made up of six people, though three had already died due to a self-imposed rush of tossing themselves into the harder Stages.
He wondered just how easy the tutorial Stages were for anyone to even comprehend this world as a game designed for a hero story, but he did so in silence. Some thirty minutes later, it was finally his turn to enter. Darkness swelled and overwhelmed him before the lights of the windows lit it up ever so slightly.
Stages were mostly similar with a few changes--namely, Daily Stages were different, as were the Weekly Ones. Instead of Cindered Desert I, its sequel--Cindered Desert II-- was listed. And, lastly, Castle Hold was nowhere to be found, replaced by the Stage called Evillion’s Plea.
A quick glance at the difficulty--87/100--prompted him to whistle in disbelief. However, a moment later, he reached into his pocket and put on a ring, wanting to see whether the world ‘registered’ the ring as equipped. And, sure enough, the difficulty plummeted right after, all the way down to... 74/100. Still harder than the original Castle Hold that he survived only because the difficulty was halved, he started with a Legendary Weapon, and the Stage’s boss decided to spare him and let him live.
More and more, he began to recognize the insanity of the so-called Shepherds. Bit by bit, he’d picked up on the whispered accounts of separation--what were the clear distinctions between a Bandit and a Shepherd.
It largely began with Daily and Weekly Stages--Bandits, from the sounds of it, never attempted those as they were usually much, much harder than the average curve of strength... but never outright impossible, even if their difficulty rating indicated so. Furthermore, the rewards from them, supposedly, weren’t actually tangible enough to excuse the difficulty, but what they did was open up extra avenues of acquiring strength.
Asher, once again, scrolled over to the tab listing Daily Stages--there were four altogether, the easiest being called Deathly Ice Sheet with a difficulty rating of 38/100 with the ring on. That meant that it was more difficult than the version of Castle Hold that he barely beat.
However, he suspected that 'Alice' wasn't actually calculated within the rating of the difficulty, for one reason or another. It was entirely possible that had he played out that Stage normally, they would have never killed all the invading monsters within the time limit of 6 hours needed for the reinforcements to arrive. The difficulty, most likely, was calculated within that time frame.
“Haah,” he sighed audibly, shaking his head. It was just speculation, at the end of the day--taking a stab in the dark and claiming he’d hit a vital point. It was scary, how swiftly and wildly his mind was working on concocting a tale of rationalization. Compared to the 87/100 rating of Evillion’s Plea, after all, 38/100 seemed like a walk in the park. And he'd already beaten a 33/100 rated Stage with much worse stats and without the ring to help him along.
The mind wove tales like a loom wove tapestry, thread by thread, until it all seemed to make sense, if ever so slightly. Looked at from a distance, it was a beautiful thing--perfectly purled. However, closer inspection left a lot to be desired, and those little details would mark a difference between living and dying.
He left the center without making a choice--he still had a few days and he was in no rush. Though half-determined still to become a Shepherd, he wondered deeply whether he even had the 'ability' to. However, that was, in its baseline, a pointless question; he'd never even met a 'Shepherd', so he had no frame of reference, to begin with.
Once again, he went to the tavern and switched it up a bit, ordering a tankard of ale instead of mead, and, instead of sitting at the bar, he found one of the empty seats in the corner with a rough window looking out into the plaza. Though he could use the Souls to upgrade his stats, he let himself be spoiled for a little while.
He sipped away in silence, deaf to the chatter around him, lost in thought. More and more, he felt himself loosening out a shell he’d constructed in the shape of armor. In life, he had turned himself into a dullard in more ways than one because he found it sobering. In turn, he became invisible, meandering about life without the world impeding him. It was a strange realization, and one that hurt; but, for better or for worse, he was beginning to undo it here, in this world.
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“Wow, you managed to convince her already?” the table jumped slightly as Rae sat opposite of him, taking off a pair of armguards and setting them down.
“Hm? Oh, no. Not yet.”
“Damn. And here I got hopeful.”
“What kind are you?” Asher asked abruptly. “I mean, of the three. Unless the guy who explained it to me was just fucking with me.”
“Aah, the ol’ Bandits and Shepherds and the Losers.”
“He didn’t call them Loser.”
“’cause he is one,” she grinned. “Where do you think I belong?”
“Annoying assholes?”
“Oof. Cuts deep. And, yes, of course. But whether you want to believe me or not, I’m one of the nicest pieces of shit you will meet in this place. So, I wouldn’t be in a hurry to piss me off.”
“In my experience,” Asher said, taking a sip. “The nicest pieces of shit are usually the most terrifying.”
“...” she fell silent for a moment, her eyes tingling with light. “You never answered. Who do you think I am? A Shepherd, a Bandit, or a Loser?”
“... a Bandit?” he tossed out a guess without much thought.
"Really? Right, I guess you gotta play the odds."
“You’re not?”
"Well, I just came back from a daily run," she said as a goblet of ale was delivered to her. "Where I watched my leg be cut off, used as a club to beat me, and where I almost became an orc's sex slave."
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Sounds like a really bad fic.”
“Oh, it was,” she chuckled. “The orc wasn’t even a hunk, y’know? Just an ugly piece of shit.”
“But you’re here, now.”
“Yeah. I beat it,” she said. “Just barely, but those are the margins at which we exist.”
“I was told Shepherds are the creepy, crazy bunch that never interacts with others.”
“... we don’t,” she said, taking a swig of her drink. “Because people call us Shepherds. And they spread tales like we’re prophets walking on water, or battle maniac masochists, or adrenaline junkies.”
“And you’re not?”
“Oh, we are,” she smiled. “But, just like everyone else here, we’re just... survivors.”
“Hm. Hard to tell if you’re telling the truth,” Asher said, taking a sip. “Now that you don’t think of me as air... you’ve tightened up.” her lips curled up into a grin as she shook her head.
“You’re a fucking strange newbie, I gotta say.”
“Really? Is every other newbie a dumbass, then?”
"Ha ha, yeah, yeah, kind of. We, uh, we get a lot of heroes here, you know? They luck into an easy tutorial and think they're the shit, so they jump into one of the first real Stages and get absolutely fucking nuked out of existence. Then, uh, we get a lot of bitchy cowards. They only replay tutorial Stages once a week and know only how to bitch, moan, and complain. I'm surprised there hasn't been a protest this week, yet. Usually, they gather in the plaza and shout shit like 'Free us!' and 'We are equal to you!' and 'This is injustice!', real lame shit. Like that'll change anything."
“Maybe they just want to feel like they’re in control, however little, and however falsely?” Asher said.
“They’re just self-important,” she replied. “My biggest advice to you is to just accept it. And do so fast. The longer you resist and reject that this place is now your home, the more fucked you will be. So, yeah, we get a lot of dumbasses.”
“... I’m thinking of challenging a Daily Stage,” Asher said, expecting a snide remark. However, she remained silent, her gaze lingering on him for a while.
“Which one?” she quizzed.
“Deathly Ice Sheet, that’s what it’s called I think,” he replied. “Said, uh, that difficulty rating is like 38/100.”
“... that just leverages the number of monsters within the framework of a task,” she said. “It’s a good general indicator, but the onus is on you to understand the difficulty outside of it.”
“Hm?”
“Stages aren’t isolated dungeon rooms,” she said. “Whether they are places that exist in reality or not is up for debate, but they feel like real places. Especially if the info is limited. Take for example that Stage--what if it turns out to be one of the long-term or even mid-term Stages that can last for days and weeks?”
“--hm? What? Those exist?” Asher exclaimed.
“You’ll have to eat, drink, piss, and shit. You’ll have to keep yourself warm, find shelter, and survive by any means necessary. Most Stages are about just killing as many monsters as possible, which makes them both the easiest and the hardest. But the most brutal Stages are the ones where it’s less about monsters and more about surviving. If you truly, unquestionably want to try your hand at, huh, ‘shepherding’,” she smiled almost mockingly as she uttered the word. “Keep in mind that you will most likely die.”
“Wow,” he exclaimed, taking a sip. “Great sales pitch.”
"It wasn't supposed to be one," she said. "Though I call 'em losers, there's nothing wrong with curling up and just living your life here. It's a shit place--there's no TV, no music, no phones, no vibrators, no nothing really. But, if you save up your Souls, you can make a good living, in time. So, it's a choice that people make," she added. "Between the shitty living and the shitty surviving."
“I’ve already both lived the shitty living and survived the shitty surviving,” Asher replied as his expression twisted strangely right after, as did hers. “Jesus...”
“You really thought you were onto something clever there, huh?”
“Yeah. I thought I was gonna blow both our minds off.”
“Well, in a way.”
“So, don’t guide the sheep is your advice?” he asked as the laughter quieted down.
"... Jason would kill me for saying this, but, yeah," she said, chuckling. "Clever wit and paranoia ain't what makes someone a lunatic enough to challenge this place."
“What is?”
“Levels of self-loathing approaching toxic.” She said as she tapped out the tankard and stood up. “At least, don’t go dying before you fix my fuck-up, eh?” she winked.
“I’ll try not to.”
“Right. Well, time to go to my room and cry. Been a while. See ya’.”
“Yeah.” Asher remained sitting in silence, watching her back fade through the window before she disappeared into thin air, likely returning to her cabin.
Whether he believed that she was a ‘Shepherd’ or not was still in the air. In a way, though, it didn’t really matter; she did remind him of something he noticed himself. The Stage itself could be as much of a hazard as whatever inhabited it. And Deathly Ice Sheet hardly sounded like a vacation resort, so he held back on it, waiting for whatever they rolled out tomorrow. Perhaps, his luck would be better. If not, he’d become one of the ‘losers’ and run through one of the Tutorial Stages. Living, even the shitty kind, might just be better than desperate surviving... if one had the mind for it.