Ewtain sat there stunned by the abrupt termination of his meeting. He had expected this to go much longer, and much differently, for that matter. He had been waiting for several hours for his turn to be interviewed, so either his meeting was unusually short or there had been long breaks between the meetings.

He left the room, and the same Anuran who had led him there was waiting for him. Ewtain followed him back to the storehouse that he and his party had stayed at the previous night. When they arrived, he saw Vanya and Vultressant outside. They appeared to have been shooting arrows at some makeshift archery targets set against a few trees, but currently they were just talking. Vanya had a hand on Vult’s shoulder, and they were looking at something in his hand; Ewtain was too far away to see what it was. Not wanting to bother them and not really wanting to talk to anyone at the moment, Ewtain entered the building, but instead of going up to the second floor where the others were likely to be, he went into a small store-room on the first floor to sit and have a think.

An hour later, he heard Vanya and Vultressant talking as they walked up the stairs; they had presumably finished their archery practice. Ewtain was no closer to determining the reason for his strange meeting, but he had spent much of his secluded time meditating, and he felt that he was ready to interact with others again.

When he entered the room, the others were involved in a conversation about their interviews. “She said that the two cities to the south seem to be our best chance to find any training that we might need,” Vultressant was saying, “but apparently it would be both quicker and easier if we headed northwest first and went to a place called Ildul. There’s a river there where we can buy passage on a boat to take us south, and it apparently flows right to Jestilla.”

“What cost?” Maroftis asked. “Is it cost a good amount?” Ewtain noted that Maroftis had made some progress with the language.

“Likely more than we have, so we’ll have to grind out some coin,” Vultressant answered. “If this is a game, most of them have a money system that is tight in the early levels, but after playing a game for a long time, you inevitably have more money that you can spend.”

“Except to other players.” Isla countered. “Buying high-end raid gear can cost a ton.”

Vultressant nodded. “Fair point. I think that until we get some evidence to the contrary, I’m going to treat the others in this world as NPCs. Svelta claims to have no memories of a previous existence prior to this world, and the others certainly act as if that were the case for them as well. I doubt that we’re the only player-characters in the world, though, since there were a bunch of people at the convention that were scheduled to test the game as well. The problem is that it may be difficult to identify the others.” He gestured to himself and Maroftis. “It can make us look like anything.”

“Why did you leave me out, Vult?” Vanya asked.

Vultressant looked at her with a bit of an incredulous look on his face. “You got cool ears. I lost two feet of height, and Maroftis is a big gecko.” Vanya raised an eyebrow but smiled at the reply.

“Two feet?” Taloc asked with a smirk. “You weren’t very tall to begin with, and you look like you only lost about a foot and a half.”

Vultressant rolled his eyes and shook his head, but he smirked back. “Ass.”

“Except for Maroftis, we all look similar to what we did before,” Isla said. “We may be able to tell the difference.”

“I only know a couple of the others who were going to be playing after us, and I would probably only recognize a few others who were at the convention. I was pretty focused on testing the game, and since we were first, there wasn’t much time waiting in line or anything,” Vultressant said. “Also, the likelihood of us running into any of them is slim.”

“I don’t know about that,” Taloc said. “They were probably all gamers, so if there’s a quest system, they’ll likely gravitate to some of the same places that we will. The good ones will at any rate.”

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“The maps that I saw showed a lot of land in the forest and hill area west of the forest,” Vultressant countered. “It could take weeks to get to this Ildul, and months if we were to just head south to go to one of those cities. People could have been dropped anywhere at all, and there’s more than just one continent. I believe that others will gravitate to the towns and cities, but how long will it take to find anyone?”

Ewtain thought of his earlier discovery of the quest log and said, “We got quests when we were in that crypt. Maybe other dungeons are the way to go.”

They turned to look at him. “What quests?” Vultressant and Isla asked in unison. Ewtain projected his display and showed them how to get to their quest logs.

“If you just focus on the pentagon at the bottom and think ‘quest log’, it will open up as well,” Vanya said.

“Really?” Maroftis asked, and he appeared to focus on his own display. From the wide grin on his face, it looked like he was successful.

“Maybe we should go and kill that level boss when we get a bit stronger,” Vanya suggested.

“We may want to be careful with the dungeons,” Taloc said. “When I met with Svelta, I asked about them specifically. She wasn’t a font of knowledge on the subject, but she shared what she knew about them. Many of them will respawn in either a fixed or variable timeframe; some won’t respawn until fully cleared, and there are some that have dried up, meaning they no longer produce monsters. There are also more complex dungeons that don’t let you out where you entered; instead, there are paths out. There are even some that will hold many different groups of people in individual versions of the dungeon; these sound like what we would call instances.

Some rooms lock down when entered or possibly when the occupants are engaged. These are apparently rare, but they could pose a problem if we’re unable to run away.

Now, having said all that, I want to go back and check it out as well. Maybe not real soon, but Vult can get us back there when we feel like we’re ready. For now, I think that outdoor adventures might be best for us.”

“What would be great is if we could find a bunch of newbie quests,” Isla said in an annoyed tone. “I miss the days of arriving at a new area with a dozen or so townspeople who want us to go talk to their cousin, or fetch them some berries, or kill five beavers for them. All the games came equipped with discovery bonuses and easy crap for the early levels. Here we got jack! And, instead of a good tutorial, we have a help function that updates the information as we learn things instead of actually helping.” She raised her hands as if she had had enough of this world and shook her head in disgust.

There was a pause after Isla’s outburst; no one else appeared to want to respond to her complaints, so Ewtain smiled and said, “I may have some good news for you, miss pouty. We get bonus experience for the first kill of a monster type, and we did get discovery bonuses for being in our first dungeon. I know that you’re a city girl, so hopefully we can find more quests when we get to a city. This little village seems to be pretty remote.”

“We all want to level fast, Isla,” Vanya said. “And I agree that the problems that we face are not ideal, but I’m excited, and I really want to explore more and see the rest of this world. Now, I am kind of scared of it, too but it’s also pretty exciting.”

“Maybe village for newbie?” Maroftis said in a questioning tone.

“Maroftis has a good point,” Vultressant said. “We may very well have been put into an area with low-level stuff; we were able to do very well in that dungeon.” He held up a hand to forestall objections. “I know that the rest of it might have been terrible, but it’s possible that this area is lower level. The Anuran are a pretty wimpy race, and they’re able to thrive here. Now, they must be higher level than we are, but the race info seems to indicate that they don’t have much of a fighting presence.”

“Why didn’t we just get dropped here to begin with then?” Isla asked.

“And have you miss out on getting stung in the ass?” Ewtain asked. “How’s it feeling, by the way? Want me to take a look at it?”

“Pass,” Isla said flatly.

Ewtain shrugged. “Hmm, suit yourself. I’ve got the brew poison skill. It may help me see if there is any lingering poison there.”

“I’ll risk it.”

“Anyway,” Vultressant said when it appeared they were done, “I’m not saying that this is a newbie area, only that it might be. Maybe our placement was completely random, or maybe it was by design. Games often seem to have players start in the area based on their race, and we have a few diverse elements in our group, so if they wanted us kept together, it might have taken us out of what would have been our normal starting areas if we were separated. Look, we have all played or are aware of games that are basically set up for you to learn as you die. They give you limited information as to how to proceed, and a world boss might be stationed right next to the starting spot. So far, we haven’t seen any Dragons or Giants, so this hopefully follows the standard progression of zone difficulty that we are more used to.”