Chapter 6: Banana Skip

“It’s moments like these that I remember I’m not really inside the game. I can actually dig, and modify the terrain!”

Still next to the blue barrier and the huge orange Man-Eater Banana, Diegi’s currently crouching down and scraping away with his bare hands at the dirt beneath his feet. He’s not sure if this will work— in fact, he was a little disheartened when we first arrived and didn’t see “it” right away. But then, he reasoned, it might be underground. If he’s in a simulation-world of MYTH and not the game itself, he feels that certain details would be tweaked to make things more realistic. And then, after a little bit of digging— he finds it.

What is “it”? Lying in front of Diegi, pale purplish-orange in color, is a root. To be more specific, the root of the giant Man-Eater Banana monster plant that lies across the barrier. Because yes, as well as vines, this giant Banana has roots. Go figure.

No tree, no problem, I guess. Well, maybe if you’re a demonic monster fruit. But more importantly—

“There we go! Yeah, baby!”

Upon finding the root, Diegi gives a small cheer. No one’s around to hear it, of course, but might as well get excited anyways.

“Okay, now all I need is the stick from the tutorial and I can really start cooking.”

The first stick that the game instructs the player to pick up can be used as a weapon. It’s ridiculously weak, but still serves to teach the player how to access the weapons portion of their inventory and check a weapon’s stats.

“When I picked it up before, it just disappeared in my hands… it had to have gone to my inventory. So…”

Diegi’s confident expression falters slightly.

“Wait… how do I open my menus again!?”

He had completely forgotten. Despite being placed in a world closely resembling the MMORPG MYTH Infinite Fantasy, he had no access to one of the fundamental features of the game— the menu, that he needed to even start performing his glitch in the first place! Or, you know, do more normal things like check his status and inventory.

“Hey! Automod, you stupid overpowered bot, are you there? You said you’d keep an eye on me! Just this once, come back!”

The wind runs through the high grass, making a pleasant rushing noise. But still. no disembodied voice.

Of course the AI will bother me all day when uninvited, but when I actually want it to show up and talk— not a single peep.

“Teach me how to open the menu! MENU! MENU! MENU!”

Diegi, with no other options (or maybe just a lack of critical thought), begins to loudly chant, hoping to summon the presence of the AI overlord with nothing but his slightly hoarse voice. Not even he really expects it to work, but he really needs to find out how to open the menu in order to keep working through this time-saving skip. And so he continues, on and on.

“MENU! MENU! MENU! ME-”

Interrupting him mid-chant, a somewhat robotic voice once again invades Diegi’s mind. But still…

“MENU! MENU!”

“MENU!”

“MEN— oh, you’re here? That actually worked!?”

“No, it’s just my way of… you know what, nevermind. No matter why you’re here, the point is that I need to figure out how to open the menu!”

“What? You’re still changing things even as I stand here, in YOUR world, under YOUR rules? Shouldn’t you have done that BEFORE dropping me in this world? Wait, no, let’s stay on track. Just tell me how to open the menu now and I promise I’ll get to Paxdom in less than ten minutes! Then I’ll finish the whole damn tutorial as fast as greased molasses!”

<...>

“What? Oh, shit, I got the expression wrong, didn’t I? I mean, greased lightning! As fast as greased lightning!”

A few more moments of silence. Tired of waiting, Diegi’s face twists into a somewhat mocking expression.

“Or, what? You want me to be stuck dying forever in these fields, and you being stuck unable to permanently erase me? You like my company that much?”

“Oooh, so it’s a series of hand motions. That’s pretty neat, actually. Thanks!”

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Flicking his wrist a few times, Diegi manages to open the menu. It takes a few attempts, and he notes that he has to draw a rectangle of a specific size. Then, the main menu opens.

“Let’s see what we have here. Overall, Stats, Attributes— hey, Inventory!”

A panorama of small blue rectangle-screens appear in front of Diegi, forcing him to make vague swiping motions with his fingers to scroll and find what he wants. When he sees a screen marked Inventory, he taps it and it promptly expands.

The layout of the now-larger Inventory panel is reminiscent of MYTH’s inventory, but not exactly the same. For once thing, each individual item appears much smaller and doesn’t show a name. It would be easy to confuse similar-looking items for each other. A lot of the descriptive information was missing too, like the flavortext and certain item stats. At least the object type still showed up when he hovered his finger over the item icons.

“Here it is, the first item I stored— the wooden stick! And it’s, just like it should be, listed as both a weapon and sword-type item. So, I’m guessing I just have to tap it to take it out, huh?”

Diegi stops and looks a little closer at the menu before doing so, wanting to see how much information he can glean from the little screen alone.

[ Inventory: ]

[ Wooden Stick ]

[ Weapon ]

[ Sword Item ]

[ Level: 0 ]

Information gleaned: Not much. Well, seeing item levels was pretty useful, but he wouldn’t be able to know what differentiated items from each other in terms of abilities, stats, attributes, or even lore.

Moving his finger with a sigh, Diegi “presses” the small icon of the stick and watches as a familiar wooden sensation appears in his hand. The stick hadn’t popped into the air or fallen out of the menu or something, it had simply just… materialized in a small flash of light.

That voice seems awfully smug for an AI. Figures that the first one to develop emotions uses them exclusively to rag on me and ruin my life. Well, I’ll show it!

After a brief pause, that he uses to observe the still-stationary form of the nearby Man-Eater Banana, Diegi responds to Automoderator’s words.

“Just watch. You see this root right here? If I attack it, the Man-Eater Banana on the other side of the barrier’ll switch to aggressive mode. But since it can’t attack me through the barrier, it’ll switch right back to being passive. All within the span of a few seconds.”

Lifting up a portion of the freshly unearthed monster-plant root and angling his head vaguely upwards, Diegi begins to grin more and more as he holds his conversation with Automod. He’s going to enjoy what comes next.

“Well, then, tell me this: what would happen if I fully started a fight with the monster anyways? If I managed to fight the Man-Eater through the barrier?”

<...As you just said, that can’t happen. And if it did, unforeseen circumstances— no, it can’t happen.>

“Yup, as I’ve showed before, I can’t get past the barrier no matter what I do. So normally, you would be right— if this Man-Eater here didn’t have one of the jankiest attacks in the game. Watch closely— if I don’t mess this up, you’re about to see something really cool.”

“Come on, don’t knock it til you’ve seen it! Now let’s go!”

And, after dropping the root, Diegi lifts his foot and stomps on it.

After a slight moment of tension— on the other side of the barrier, the Man-Eater gives a massive twitch and rolls onto its side, with its bottom half approaching the transparent blue wall. Where the bottom end of the Banana would normally be is a mouth resembling a bird’s beak, but full of bloodied razor-sharp teeth. At the appearance of a new threat, even more of the giant Banana’s speckled orange skin peels away to reveal more of its grotesque beak and also some rotten innards. At the same time, vines lying around the fruit begin to rise into the air and undulate menacingly, preparing to respond to their sudden attacker.

As he watches the display, even though it’s a clear show of aggression, Diegi’s eyes light up. He’s seen it a million times before while playing on his computer, but seeing video phenomena play out in ‘real life’ is just surreal. It would be even better if he had a stronger body or couldn’t feel pain, but— well, as long as he didn’t get hit, he would be fine, right?

Yeah, right. Let’s just focus on not being cut by vines to death, or slammed to death, or squashed against the barrier to death— actually, let’s just not think about death at all. I’m freaking myself out here.

Since the monster is not a player but an in-game mob, its vines can cross the barrier just fine. Just as the vines begin to grow towards Diegi— he dashes forwards, dodging their slow attempts to grab him. He gives a woop as he continues to evade the ridiculously inaccurate vines, quickly approaching the Banana’s body.

“Whoo! I guess luck is smiling on me today, ‘cause the Man-Eater led with its ridiculously ineffective binding attack instead of the flailing one! This saves us some time…”

Paying no mind to the nagging unbeliever, Diegi readies the stick in his hand in an impromptu wind-up position, evidently preparing for a thrust. Though his speed and strength are both abysmal, his form is passable, and he seems to accelerate slightly as he drives his stick forwards. A small glint appears in the air, similar to the shine of a fencer’s metal rapier in the sun, but of course the stick has no such reflective surface.

“Only a few more seconds before it reverts to passive mode… come on, come on, where are you?”

Diegi swivels his head back and forth as he runs, looking for something. He’s been doing a great job dodging the vines so far— although given his absurdly low Agility attribute, it’s more like the binding vines have been doing a terrible job ensnaring him. Everything’s going well, but now that he’s this close to the plant, he’s still on the lookout for any more vines. And throughout it all, he continues holding his stick as a sword, ready to thrust it forwards at any moment towards the monster.

Still, even as Diegi approaches the body of the Man-Eater, the barrier looms in front of him, unavoidably separating him from the monster plant.

Diegi ignores the voice, instead continuing to look around him. And then, it happens.

“There! There’s one!”

A slow moving vine, easily dodgeable, swooshes down towards him. If he makes it around this one last vine of defense, he’ll easily be able to attack the Man-Eater— or, more accurately, crash into the blue barrier that separates him from it.

However, Diegi does not dodge.

The vine ensnares him in a thorny binding, and the “glint” of Diegi’s stick-sword fades. Diegi’s eyes widen, and he gives a small grunt of pain. Then, the Man-Eater Banana’s beak mouth full of teeth gives a mighty twitch, anticipating its prey, and opens itself wide. Struggling to stay focused while he’s being painfully squeezed, Diegi mutters to himself.

“Wait for it… wait for it…”

Unfortunately for the monster, however, it cannot eat the ensnared Diegi unless he somehow crosses the barrier. Just as it is protected from Diegi, the opposite is also true.

A stalemate, then. Both sides are unable to attack or be attacked— in a few moments, the Man-Eater will return to its passive state and the battle will be over. But before that happens, the vines holding Diegi continue to pull him closer towards the Man-Eater Banana’s open mouth, thinking that he can still be eaten. Diegi grows closer and closer to the barrier, until he’s almost close enough to reach out and touch it. But at the same time, the mouth of the Man-Eater begins to close, signalling the end of its aggressive state.

“NOW!!”

The stick-sword regains its glint, positively gleaming in the sunlight, and Diegi shoves it forwards. As he’d hoped, the game-world recognized the basic sword attack he’s so often used while playing MYTH— Lunge— and so it aids him slightly in the motion, adding visual effects and pushing him further forwards. That small assist is enough to close the distance between him and the barrier. In an outstretched hand, his stick sword makes contact with the barrier for a moment, as if preparing to rebound.

*tink*

But in the next moment, instead of bouncing off, it passes through. And, letting go of the stick, so does the loosely bound Diegi. Instead of colliding with the solid blue wall, his arm thickly phases through it like it’s water. The Man-Eater’s closing mouth, dripping with some sort of viscous green saliva, twitches and suddenly opens ever wider, instinctually reawakened to its aggressive state by Diegi’s apparent barrier crossing despite not being able to perceive why. The vines binding Diegi pull themselves into the Man-Eater’s putrid mouth, and the monster, ready for its fleshy meal, clamps down hard—

< I… WHAT DID YOU DO!? >

—clamps down hard, on nothing but empty air.

Automoderator’s robotic voice suddenly screams out, with an uncanny likeness to something like a cry of pain. An incessant buzzing begins to fill the air. Reality overturns itself, Diegi feels with his arm both open air and a cloying solid thickness, his vision blurs, and at the very last moment—

“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the oh-so-efficient Human Tutorial Skip-Warp. We will now be transported.”

—after uttering those words, his reserved smirk turns into a wide teeth-baring smile. In the space between this second and the next, a final long low *BUZZ* can be heard, and he simply vanishes without a trace.

…

In Diegi’s abrupt absence, three curious events take place one after the other.

First: certain bits of the blue barrier begin to shift in a visually odd manner, distorting and pixelating, but none of that would be visible to anyone but Diegi or Automoderator anyways.

Second: The confused Man-Eater Banana, suddenly finding its binding vines and shut-tight mouth with exactly nothing caught inside them, quickly reverts to passive mode and buries its beak underground. Meanwhile, Diegi’s abandoned sword-stick falls to the ground in his absence with a clatter, or at least it should have done so. But instead, it hangs suspended, half stuck inside of the barrier and half not.

Third: A rabbit-like creature, not a monster but instead a part of MYTH’s immersive natural scenery, scurries up through the thick grass and inspects the floating stick. As a natural part of the world, it cannot see the barrier, nor can the barrier interact with it. So, it leaps up and attempts to bite the stick— only to fall to the ground, confused, with an identical stick in its mouth. It looks up again: the original stick is still there, floating suspended in the air. Instinctually sensing that it shouldn’t continue messing with such an unnatural occurrence, it quickly drops the cloned stick and scampers away.