Chapter 7: A Wrinkle in Space

“U- ugh… I think that I’m… almost there…”

Near the end of a certain path in the Paxdom Fields, what we would know thus far as the “tutorial path,” a certain girl is limping along and dragging a cart behind her. The wooden apparatus is missing a wheel, so it’s slowing her down, but the baked goods lying on it are still somehow still in pristine condition. The girl, as she takes her uneven steps, glances fearfully behind her.

“It’s not… still there… is it?”

It goes without saying that this is not our (debatably) illustrious protagonist, Diegi. No, it’s the young woman he’s previously met, Gloria— and the presence she’s looking for is the tutorial monster. Though, she isn’t aware of the beast’s true identity as a part of Diegi’s tutorial’s progression.

Regardless, she can still remember it in all its disgusting glory: vaguely humanoid with long limbs, but perpetually hunched and dripping with blackish goo. It could have been a trick of her imagination, but she swore its eyes were glowing red as well. All things considered, it was not the kind of monster one would expect to find in the peaceful plant-themed Paxdom Fields.

Unfortunately, thinking of the monster also makes Gloria think of the adventurer she’d seen during the same timeframe.

“Ulp—”

Leaning over, Gloria retches on the side of the path. Thankfully, she doesn’t actually throw up, but her discomfort is evident to see. The memory of the stranger’s head… and questionable parts… being separated from his body and the resulting mess is almost too much for her to bear. Thankfully— due to how weak he was, most likely— it hadn’t taken long for what was left of him to dissolve into red light, marking his permanent death.

After the adventurer boy died, it hadn’t taken long for the monster to turn on her. Gloria had run away, desperately tripping and injuring herself multiple times. In fact, the monster hadn’t touched her even once— her only source of injury was her accidentally self-inflicted scrapes and tumbles born of her overwhelming fear. After a little while of this panicked flight, she’d turned around to see if the monster had increased its pace or gotten any closer to her— but it was gone. Like it had never been there in the first place, not even leaving any traces of its dark oozing goo on the path.

So, she had gone back to retrieve her cart. Now, Gloria walks alone, periodically sighing and shaking her head.

“I’m sorry… sir…”

Whispering to only the gently blowing breeze, Gloria expresses her regret over her ineptitude. If only she’d fought— if only she’d had the courage to fight— if only she’d mustered up the willpower to cast a single minor spell from the sidelines— would the strange, boastful adventurer still be alive? Though he’d been utterly baffling and rather coarse in terms of personality, she believes that all human life has value; doesn’t that mean she’s a sinner for letting him die?

And so her thoughts continue to swirl, an endless cycle of self-torment, until the giant gates and imposing stone walls of the city of Paxdom slowly come into view in the distance. It’s an impressive sight, as always, especially with the large river and countless runoffs that flow into the city on one side and out of the city on the other. Initially, she’d been travelling away from Paxdom, but after being attacked she’d decided to quickly head towards the closest large human settlement for safety.

“Oh— you were travelling here, weren’t you?”

She remembers that the adventurer had originally been walking in this direction, and— no, that’s enough. If she dwells too much on the subject, she’ll never stop. For now, she has to focus on reaching the city. Her sin is written in stone— she’ll never see the now-dead adventurer again, and she has to focus on safety— and as she approaches the wide open gates of the First Human City visible on the horizon, throbbing with throngs of people going in and out, she takes measured steps, regaining her balance. Soon, she’ll be close enough to the city that there’ll be enough people around to protect her and fight any threats that might appear around her. Oh, and guards! Can’t forget the guards. She won’t end up like he did— like he did—

*BUZZ*

An indescribable sound travels through the air. It’s loud, but not too loud. It’s not brash like the clashing of a cymbal, or reserved like the clicking of metal, or resounding like the beating of a drum. If she had to describe it, Gloria would say it sounds like infinite layers of a single, low musical note. It’s… unnatural, unlike any instrument she’s ever heard— starting, sounding, and stopping, with no echoes whatsoever. In all honesty, however, the sound isn’t what’s important.

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Unbeknownst to Gloria, a spatial distortion of sorts occurs a couple of meters to her left and above. The area distorts and warps, details becoming blurry and portrayed as a series of floating blocks instead of a smooth scene. It becomes, in a word: pixelated. The distortion is not a spatial magic spell, nor is it some sort of skill; it’s completely foreign to the natural order of the world. And as a result of this abrupt appearance, or more accurately as a result of the mass of bare flailing limbs being ejected from this oddity:

Gloria feels, from out of the blue, a massive impact on her left side— she’s completely bowled over, letting go of the handle of her cart and being flung off of the path. She was blinking when she was hit, so she can’t make heads nor tails of the situation— or even scream— before roughly slamming into a fruit tree in the tall grass.

“Ugh… what?”

She’s ever so dazed by the impact, but still retains control by her basic functions. Rubbing her hair of brown-and-blond curls, she slowly and groggily opens her eyes. And then… she can’t believe what she sees.

“Ow! Ow ow ow! Shit, that hurt— I mean, ha HA! Take that, Automod! Look, there’s Paxdom! There’s the Paxdom River, the Paxdom gates— I’m here! And it only took like 6 minutes if you count the current run! Yeah, DIEGI WINS AGAIN!!”

Sprawled onto the ground only a few feet away from her— covered in dirt and ooze and still only wearing that odd black underwear— is the adventurer that she was sure she’d just witnessed the death of. Even as she watches, he continues to babble on for quite a while, completely oblivious of his surroundings. In fact, the world babble might not even cover the length of his speech. Instead of ‘babble’ it’s more like ‘rant.’ Observe:

“Ha ha! Well, Automod? You wanna learn how to do the skip? I’ll take that as a yes! The principle behind it is really quite simple… That blue tutorial wall is supposed to be entirely impossible to pass through! Thanks to the extension of my collision frame granted by holding a sword-type object, the slight positionary displacement wrought by the Man-Eater Banana’s poorly-coded binding vine attacks, and the in-game Attack Assist system recognizing my stick-sword thrust as a proper Lunge, I managed to tweak my avatar’s placement just enough to be in-range of the Man-Eater’s mouth even from the other side of the barrier.”

He pauses to take a breath.

“Of course, when you get hit by this attack in-game, an animation plays where the monster uses its vines to stuff you in its mouth for a bit. But since the Man-Eater is on the other side of the barrier, a problem arises… in order to be properly chewed on by the monster, I have to be placed on the inaccessible side of the tutorial barrier. At this point, the game totally freaks out because it has no idea what to do. If I was simply inside the barrier, it would push me back out like for the Rocket-Rat Glitch— but due to the very slight bug-induced displacement in this case, it’s like I’m both inside the barrier and outside the barrier at the same time.”

He coughs slightly and continues speaking, despite the faint look of discomfort that settles over his features.

“So, it starts randomly assigning my position and velocity until I’m totally back inside of the barrier, probably using some variable overflow from other parts of the game. As a result, I get ping-ponged around until I’m back into what the game considers an “acceptable zone” for me to be in. Where you end up inside of the barrier is kind of random though… It took me a couple of tries to get this close to Paxdom. And a few of the crash-landings killed me.”

He seriously begins hacking, pounding on his own chest a couple times before resuming in a raspier voice.

“But! Ignoring all the failed attempts and counting only from my last death, it took less than 10 minutes to get here, so it still counts! Besides, you know what they say, use glitches at your own risk. Some of the more intensive ones can even corrupt some server data and do stuff like clone game objects or slow down performance. Eh, whatever— this time, nothing went wrong and more importantly I WON!”

And finally, he finishes in a voice that’s barely a whisper.

“Take that, you stupid… hey, are you even listening? Oh, come on!”

With that, the boy flops flat on his back and starts wheezing. How he managed to get through that entire spiel without a sip of water or even a real break is beyond Gloria’s comprehension. After launching into another coughing fit that marks the end of his incomprehensible speech, the adventurer tilts his head slightly, as if listening to someone, before making a shocked expression and swivelling his gaze to focus on Gloria.

“Oh! Hey, hey, Gloria! Remember me! That guy you met before, who fought against that scary gooey monster for you! I know I never told you my name, but it’s Diegi.”

“...!?”

Gloria, lulled into a kind of trance by the boy’s rapid-fire speech, is awakened by the direct address and gasps in what can only be described as abject shock and horror. Her breathing speeds up and she shakily gets to her feet after being knocked into the tree.

“Hey, so— the timing might be kind of bad right now, but I’m really hungry and I noticed you still have that bread cart from earlier.”

It’s. Impossible. It can’t. Be possible. What she’s seeing, what she’s seen, what she was seeing, has to be has to be has to be—

“So, could I have another bit of bread? I’ll pay you back eventually. Probably.”

—has to be what she hates, no, what she fears, more than anything else in the world.

“Monster… y— you’re just taking the poor dead adventurer’s form… p— P— PHANTOM!!”

Screaming, Gloria bolts upright and begins running blindly away from the path. She doesn’t care about getting to Paxdom anymore— she doesn’t care about her carefully maintained grains and baked goods— she just needs to get away as fast as possible, from this obviously accursed dirt path that’s rife with rare monsters like strange humanoids and appearance-stealing phantoms—

*THOCK*

Or, at least, those are the thoughts that go through her mind before she runs smack-dab into another fruit tree after making it only a few meters away from the first.

#

“Eh? Gloria? Hello?”

Crouching and waving his hand over her face, Diegi attempts to rouse the knocked-unconscious NPC girl. No luck.

“Automod? Ya there?”

He then speaks to the voice in his head, who’d been strangely unintelligible for the past few minutes.