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Quill looked worried too. “Maybe the devs didn’t plan for this eventuality? Or didn’t finish designing the quest? We didn’t get a proper quest marker before discovering the mission, remember?”
She frowned. “That’s not cool. What’s going to happen to her?”
“I’m guessing most quest givers are on loops. That’s how they’re able to give the same quest to lots of adventurers. If a character in the quest is meant to die, they’d eventually respawn so others can get the quest later. But this could be a unique quest. Or…maybe we broke it completely when she didn’t die?”
Jane grunted, frustrated. She wanted Sapphire to go back to normal. “I wonder if she’s going to reset on her own?”
Sapphire shook her head as if to clear it and frowned. She clenched her fists open and shut, still staring at her hands. “Dead? Not dead? Dead!”
Crap. “She’s getting worse.” Jane stood.
Quill spoke tentatively. “We could…kill her?”
She gave him a sharp look. “What?”
He apologetically shrugged, obviously not thrilled with the idea. “So that she resets?”
“I’m not killing her!” she snapped. “Neither are you. That would be…wrong.”
“I certainly don’t want to. We did save her, remember? But look at her.” He gestured.
Sapphire was breaking down. Something was wrong in her AI mind. She began trembling, and her voice rose in volume and pitch. “I’m dead. I’m dead. But why am I… I don’t understand! Don’t— Why—?” She turned to the villagers and grabbed them by the shoulders, violently shaking them, voice growing wild. “Not dead? Dead!” But the villagers didn’t answer.
Jane felt her heart break. She rushed over to Sapphire’s side. Grabbing the girl’s shoulders, she turned Sapphire to face her and saw the crazed look in the archer’s eyes. Jane took hold of her face with both hands, freezing it in place. “Sapphire! Listen to me!”
“Use a calm voice,” Quill told her, using one himself.
Right. People instinctively react to the emotion in our voice. She calmed herself, at least in tone, though she was worried for the other woman. “Sapphire, calm down. It’s ok. You’re ok.”
“I…am…”
“Yes?”
Her eyes widened. “Dead!”
Jane looked directly in her eyes. “Alive. You are alive.”
Sapphire hesitated. “Alive?”
Jane poured all the certainty she could into her tone. “Yes. You are. You exist. You are here.”
“But…the villagers. They said—“
“They’re wrong,” Jane told her, believing it and willing Sapphire to believe it too. “You’re here. I see you. Quill sees you.”
Sapphire trembled. “But—“
“I’m touching you right now, aren’t I? We’re talking.”
Sapphire blinked. Something came back to her eyes, a sense of intelligence. “Y-yes.”
“You’re ok, Sapphire. You’re not dead. You’re alive. Trust me.”
Sapphire shakily nodded. “I’m…alive.”
Jane smiled to reassure her. She released the other woman’s face and took her hands with her own instead, giving a reassuring squeeze. “Yes. We fought together. We beat the monster. And everyone’s alive. Well, except for the monster.”
Sapphire looked directly into Jane’s eyes, searching for something. Tears welled. But she nodded.
“Good.” Jane released her. As Sapphire wandered off, still in thought, Jane turned to Quill. “That was super weird.”
Quill watched the NPC walk off and rubbed his chin in thought. “To say the least. I don’t really know anything about programming. I’m not sure why she’d be like that. I mean, the other NPCs all seem like they’re on fixed, pre-programmed loops.”
Jane knew something about this. “They probably are. But you know how we thought she was different from other NPCs before?”
He nodded.
“I think she’s got AI on another level from them. So she can have more realistic conversations with players. And she was able to freely adapt as she fought. I don’t think a pre-programmed NPC could do that, do you?”
“No,” he agreed. “And we corrupted her AI brain? That doesn’t sound good.”
Jane glanced at Sapphire. She had an uneasy feeling. “Maybe she just needs time to adjust? For the AI to learn and adapt?”
“Maybe. Or maybe she’ll reset on her own.” He spoke hopefully, though it was a bit forced. “I guess it depends if she’s just here for this one quest or if she had other roles.”
Jane saw the other NPCs continue to ignore Sapphire. She frowned. “The villagers are jerks and I don’t want to leave her alone with them, especially with her in this state. I think we should take her with us,” she decided.
Quill’s head tilted. “Again, she is an NPC.”
“I think we’ve both established that that doesn’t matter to either of us, haven’t we? We don’t want to steal their clothes. We just risked our lives, or, our XP, to rescue one. That was you, remember? Sacrificing yourself for her and telling me to run?”
He smiled. “True. Just rationally talking it out. Ok then. Fine with me. Let’s ask her to come with us.” Then he snapped his fingers, which just sprayed bear blood everywhere, as he remembered something. “We should finish the quest, though. Turn it in and get points for the investigation. Hopefully, we didn’t break that, too.”
“Right.” Maybe she’d even level up again! She didn’t say that out loud, though.
After the moss bear had been completely butchered and loaded into a trio of carts, the villagers were happy to offer a surprisingly hefty sum for the bones and meat.
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Jane gasped as an old woman handed her a small pouch with many silver.
“And you should check with the adventurer’s guild!” a man helpfully pointed out. “Could be a bounty for this here critter.”
“Ah,” Quill noted, “the second part of this quest line. This was probably a higher-level bounty quest.”
“Adventurer’s guild?” She looked at him. “We never saw that, did we?” She tried to recall, but surely they would have spotted it during all those lame fetch and delivery quests, right?
“I guess we haven’t really looked, though, right? I didn’t even know there was one. We should do that now.”
The villagers presented them with the head. They would have to haul it back to town in order to collect the bounty. It was, however, just about as big as Jane was. They didn’t have another horse and cart they could use. And they were both weak. They couldn’t carry a head as big as they were.
She looked at Quill. “We could try rolling it?”
He snorted, amused. “Past all those hungry monsters out there?”
“Rolling it quickly?”
He chuckled. “We can try.” He sighed. “I can’t wait until we get bags of holding.” Then he stopped, horror-struck.
Jane nearly had a heart attack at the sight of his face. She whipped her head in the direction he was looking, expecting attack. “What? What is it?”
“I’m an idiot.”
She blinked. “Huh?”
He slowly looked down at her. “We forgot the second most important part of the win.”
“What’s the most important?”
“Surviving.”
“Right. Second?”
“The loot.”
Now she was horrorstruck at their thoughtlessness. “Oh my gosh! You’re right!”
They raced back to the hole where the bear had died. It was full of gore.
Quill climbed back down, waving her off. “I’m already a mess. I’ll go.”
She impatiently waited while he dug around in the mud, roots, and blood, scraps of fur and creepy crawl insects coming out of the underground to feed.
“Yes! Oh fricken sweet!” He maniacally laughed.
“What? What?” She edged so close to the hole that she nearly fell in, desperate to see what they’d found.
He held something in his hands, appraising it. His voice was breathy with excitement, “You won’t believe it.
“What?” Come on! Show me!”
“It’s a unique item.” He hooted, crazy excited.
His joy was instantly infectious and only driving her mad. “Stop teasing and show me!” If he waited another second, she was going down there herself, blood or no.
He turned, beaming, and held up the find. “Bikini armour!”
Her jaw dropped. She was too stunned to speak.
He awkwardly climbed back out of the wreckage, hands, arms, and feet freshly bloodied. “Look!” He thrust the mess in his hands at her.
Jane gingerly accepted it. She held it away from her, trying to get a good look while not getting blood on herself. “You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me.”
It was actual bikini armour. As in, a green-and-gold, fully metal two-piece swimsuit.
She was flabbergasted. “Uh…” She twisted the apparel around then rolled her eyes. “Oh for — and it’s a thong!”
Quill was ecstatic. “Isn’t it awesome?”
She thrust it at him. “Yeah. Sure. You wear it.”
“I really don’t think it’ll fit me.”
“Focus on it and read the fine print.”
He did and read aloud, “General item. Wearable by any adventurer, regardless of class.”
“Take it.”
“No, no, no. I would not look good in that.”
She smirked, picturing it. “Hmm? I beg to differ. Come on, sexy.”
He fought a smile. “Check out the stats.”
GILDED ARMOUR OF THE
NATURE GODDESS
(Unique)
* Immune to poison, corruption, and disease.
* Armour: ??? Scales with level.
* Torso
* Boosts all Druid and healing skills by 50%
* Durability: Infinite
* Requires Level 5
He was practically vibrating. “Armour scales with level. Do you realize what that means?”
“Holy sh—“ Her eyes widened. “All the other armour we saw had flat stats. It would become obsolete as soon as you found armour with higher stats.”
“This armour will never become obsolete. It grows as you do. That’s insane. For a beginner character? Broken!”
She had to sit down. Her legs were starting to wobbly. Finding a clear patch of ground, she collapsed. She held the bikini in her hands like a priceless treasure or something that might bite her. “This is nuts. This…this is worth a fortune.”
“Well, it would be if high-level players with money existed. There’s nobody around who could buy it off of us unless there’s some way to turn real money into game currency.”
“Quill, this is going to put a huge target on our back. It doesn’t even matter that it’s for druids. People are going to come for this. And stuff doesn’t bind, remember?”
That cooled his enthusiasm. “Ah. Right. Still… I think it’s an amazing find. And you mentioned you were thinking about being a druid, weren’t you?”
“Well, yeah. But I haven’t totally decided.” She was holding an incredible boon in her hands, yet it also made her anxious. She bit her lip in indecision. Then his words registered. “Hold up. You actually want me to have it?”
“Jane, I’m quite confident in my masculinity. But I’m not going around wearing a bikini for the rest of the game.”
“But this is so valuable! I can’t just take this for myself. We should sell it or something so we can split the profits.”
“We’re a team. Even if the style was more gender neutral, it should go to the person who would become strongest from it. If you become a cleric or druid, this is perfect for you. Even if you choose a mage class, it’ll probably be higher armour than anything else you’ll find.”
“Mage robes would have attributes for mages though. That would outweigh armour numbers.”
“True. But like you said, stuff doesn’t bind here. Let’s hold onto it for now. Wear it or don’t, that’s up to you. But we hold on until later in the game when people have real money or things to trade. The value of this is going to exponentially increase over time. I don’t know how far the game goes, to what level, but later on, some high-level druid is going to pay anything for this thing.”
“You’re right.” Her throat dry, she swallowed, feeling nervous just holding onto the thing. “But we need to keep it secret for now.”
“Unless you decide to wear it.”
She eyed him, some of her humour returning. “You just want to see me in bikini armour.”
With a nearly serious look, he, said, “I think I speak for a very sizeable portion of both the male and female population when I say bikini armour is one of the most brilliant inventions of the entire fantasy genre.”
She laughed. “Yeah, fine. I like sexy armour, too. On girls and guys. But that doesn’t mean I’m wearing this.”
They stood and made ready to leave. For now, they wrapped the unique item in Quill’s shirt to keep it hidden. Jane didn’t at all mind the fact that he had to go shirtless.
She also made a mental note to get him drunk and make him wear the bikini armour as soon as possible.
Quill got behind the bear head and started to push.
“Wait.” Jane approached the young woman standing off to the side, still looking confused and a bit scared. “Sapphire? You ok?” She placed a reassuring hand on the woman’s arm.
Sapphire blinked a few times and had trouble looking at Jane. “I…don’t know.”
Jane smiled in a friendly way. “We’re going back to the city. You should come with us.” Protectively, she looped her arm in Sapphire’s so the woman couldn’t escape.
Sapphire looked at Jane for a long while. Then she blinked and nodded. And a tiny, weak smile formed. “Ok.”
Male
36
QUILL KRAU
Class NONE, Level 2
STR
1
STATUS
DEX
3
Currently covered in blood. This is fine.
HEA
7
SKILLS
INT
2
WIS
17
ITEMS
STA
14
CHA
11
Female
26
JANE EULA
Class NONE, Level 4
STR
6
STATUS
DEX
11
Currently worried about Sapphire. And flipping out over this crazy awesome armour. Undecided if she hates or loves the fact that it’s a bikini.
HEA
19
SKILLS
INT
18
WIS
18
ITEMS
STA
2
Gilded Armour of the Nature Goddess (unique); knife
CHA
5