“What’s your deal?” Angelica demanded.

I shrugged. Our day had been… a day. The fight with the Wendigo had left me blood-soaked. This resulted in me being attacked by a snow lion about every six minutes. Which resulted in an alpha spawning about every forty-five minutes and two snow lion packs just to make things spicy. We had killed so much stuff my inventory was close to full. I had taken so much damage the lingering phantom pain felt like a full body charley-horse. My immunity to conditions was also proving to be bullshit, and not in a good way. Exhaustion would not make me collapse or apply penalties to my stats; it was still uncomfortable. My body felt heavy from literally spiking adrenaline hundreds of times in a day. I had also developed a starving condition and the hollow feeling in my stomach was getting a sharp edge to it. I must have ignored it before by focusing on the constant fear of death by snow lions. Then there was the frozen condition. Apparently, this killed everything below demigod Scale. It just made me wish I was dead because I felt like I should be shivering, but due to my ‘immunity,’ I couldn’t. So the cold just sank into my bones and stung like fire. The Mental Resistance perk didn’t seem to be doing much. Had Aella tricked me into taking a lemon perk?

“You are acting different,” Angelica pressed. “Is the cold getting to you?”

“Sure,” I said, not wanting to talk about my old life’s drama.

“Celeste wants to ride you like a pony,” Angelica said offhandedly.

“That's nice,” I replied, looting the lions’ bodies, “wait what?”

“Gotcha!” Angelica exclaimed. She pointed at me, “You are in a funk. What’s bugging you?”

I nearly said ‘nothing’. Instead, I said, “after the Wendigo fight some things…. Things about my goal came into focus. I don’t want to get into details, but… I need to pursue it, but I have nowhere to start from. I basically can’t stop seeing everything we are doing as a waste of time, but I have no better option for my goal.”

Angelica gave me a complicated look. After a moment she said, “That explains why we can’t find the path forward.”

I stared at her, “Are we lost?”

Before she could answer a snow lion tackled me. Almost casually I rolled back to my feet and used the momentum to smash the snow lion head-first into a chunk of ice.

Attack successful! Snow lion takes 38 points of damage.

Snow lion slain. 1 point of experience earned!

7682 experience to next level

Unarmed skill leveled to expert

Cosmic martial has advanced

The second stage of this martial art is an ablative shell

Glaciers endure constant assaults. Pieces may chip away but the whole endures. Once per minute, you may stack a shell of ice with Face attribute hit points of structural armor. This shell may stack up to 3 times. Note: This is an elemental ability and can be empowered or weakened based on environment.

Huh, that was a word salad.

“What?” I asked.

“Narrative conflict and opposing storylines can result in a sort of pause state. The most common way that happens from our perspective is losing paths and wandering.” She explained. “This can get worse if the conflict lasts too long.”

“Are we lost?” I asked again a bit of desperation creeping into my voice.

“I think so,” Angelica acknowledged. She looked around in the swirling storm. “I think we may have gone too far west.”

“How can we tell?” I asked.

“We hit the Missouri river,” she closed her eyes and shook her head. “There is no landmark other than that for eighty miles.”

“Could we backtrack?” I asked. Ten hours of fighting most of it at night would be bad but I worried about fighting whatever Heroic Scale cluster fuck that was no doubt imminent if we just kept grinding. Plus, I don’t think Angelica could stay awake indefinitely.

“No,” Angelica started rubbing her temples.

“Fuck,” I said eyeing the wastes around us.

“Yeah,” Angelica agreed.

“Should we call… you know?” I asked.

“I am a little afraid to. Something glitched during arbitration,” Angelica said.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

I could see how my ‘empowered critical’ abilities short-circuiting a narrator’s everything was probably quite the mind fuck to her. Sort of like seeing the sunrise in the west and set in the east. Who knows, maybe my intervention might have caused some sort of conflict between Wilson and Paul. Maybe they killed each other. Here’s hoping.

“Don’t worry Angel, Daddy Wilson is A-okay,” Wilson said. From directly behind me. Almost like he was trying to whisper in my ear.

I jumped away from the noise and turned to face him. This cause me to collide with the table that was suddenly behind me. I went up and over the hardwood, and then face-planted on the cold frozen ground.

“Get up, kid, we have things to talk about,” Wilson said

I pulled myself to my feet and then sat down. “What’s up?”

“A lot,” Wilson sighed. I just realized he looked a bit disheveled. His greased hair was slightly out of place, the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, his tie was loose, and his shark-like grin had the faintest hint of sag to it.

“Oh?” I asked.

Wilson’s eyes sharpened. “I recently ‘inherited’ some of Paul’s storylines. You would not believe the number of divine tier mobs just sitting around in the cooler doing nothing. That and a bunch of other stories went off the rails all at once. For a minute there I thought someone canceled the whole show. That would have been bad.” He drummed his fingers on the table, “What am I doing? You two don’t care about behind the curtain nonsense. Let’s talk about you two and the arc you are building.”

He paused for a moment looking at us. Finally, I asked, “What about our arc, Wilson?”

“I am glad you asked.” The narrator beamed at us, “so far, your numbers have been climbing almost exponentially. Your GRP is almost 800. That is just unbelievable.”

“GRP?” I asked.

“Gross rating points. The total number of members of the audience that have watched you. What’s more most members of the audience only fixate on any one player for about an hour or so, or just the 20-minute highlight we put together for the day. You two are getting about eighty minutes at a time.” Wilson grinned at us. He gave us a moment to let the news sink in.

Upon seeing this meant nothing to us Wilson’s smile faltered, “artist never appreciate the business end of things. Anyways, while I am super happy with the progress you two are making there are notes.” He pulled some note cards out of his shirt pocket. “First, people love the snow lions. There is an unbelievable buzz about the heroic and demigod Scale boss spawns. Plan on seeing more of those coming.”

“Wilson, no!” I said, letting my head drop to the table.

“Wilson, yes,” the narrator answered happily, “Second, the audience likes it when you ask questions, kid. Keep up doing that. Third, the audience likes it when you answer questions, Angel.”

“Angelica” she corrected, “and I answered every question he’s asked.”

“That’s why you’re the chosen one,” Wilson said.

I sat up, “you’re the chosen one?”

“Save that for the audience,” Wilson chided, “Fourth, the romance plot is a fan favorite. I want all of you to keep things friendly.”

“Listen, Wilson, I get you are trying to help, in your own way, but I am not going to pursue Angelica without her consent. It seems that your pushing to get us together is preventing that.”

“You misunderstand me, kid,” the Narrator said. As he spoke his smile and eyes sharpened further, and his voice became monotone. “I do not care about you two getting together. I do not care if you two do not get together. I only care that what you do is entertaining for the audience. If you having a loving relationship with someone, pleases them, I will arrange that, flowers and all. If having you kill your true love with your bare hands is what they want, there is nothing I will not do to engineer that scenario.”

“Okay, message received,” I said.

His appearance went back to normal, “Glad to hear it! Anyways, if you two are going to keep playing coy expect more visits from Adora. Maybe Aella, that one is flakey. Also, Five, the audience is loving the guest star appearances. I am working to arrange visits from a few other big names. Don’t worry they will be short arc visits rather than recurring characters. The last bit is I must tend to a few other things. Like I said, things are crazy at the moment. So, you two either have to go into a safe space for a few days and maybe…” he waggled his eyebrows, “or I can put you into a linear dungeon.”

Angelica sighed and shook her head. “I just want to stab the demon of frost to death. This trip was supposed to be fifteen days. How long is this gonna take.”

“Like a week, two tops,” Wilson said he thought for a moment, “maybe three.”

The idea of three weeks under Adora’s “supervision” was concerning. The main issue is the potential consequences. Currently, Angelica and Celeste were my only allies in the world, and Adora seems like the type of person that is not afraid to ruin friendships. Possibly even hurt feelings.

“All things being equal I would rather deal with the dungeon than play Adora’s games,” I said.

Angelica kicked me under the table, hard. It inflicted 10 points of damage. “Shut up!” she hissed.

“I mean the Adora resort sounds fun,” I piped up, failing to follow basic instructions.

Angelica put her head on the table. “Stop talking.”

“Sorry,” I said.

Wilson smiled at us, “Oh relax angel, he’s new. So, I will split the fish on this one. I am going to drop you into a thematically appropriate dungeon that will have loot. Both of you are a little under-equipped, anyways, and we can handle those damn crossover obligations. After that, some R&R for you all to recuperate. Then we can quit with the fucking filler. Don’t worry, I’ll keep this interesting for everyone.”

“Wait!” I shouted.

To my surprise, he stopped smiling and looked at me.

Realizing he was actually waiting for me to talk, I said, “Don’t do this.”

Wilson shook his head and tutted, “No one likes a prima donna, kid. You are lucky I take the time to talk to you. Most players don’t even know Narrators exist. Like I said, follow the story, and I will be good to you. Get out of the dungeon and you will like what you find.”

With that, he was gone, and Angelica and I were standing in the snow.

A split second later, a thunderous “Crack!” shook the ground and we were falling into a dark void. We crashed into the ground and the following prompt made me realize I should have never spoken.

You have entered a dungeon, Lair of the Snow Lions. Fight well. the only way forward is through.