I woke up to find two of Geraldine's cats had snuggled into my body. I was tempted to doze off again with hope that this was a dream and I would wake up back in my bed at home, but someone lit a candle and the room glowed with light.

"Suze?"

"No dear. It's me. Susana fell asleep sitting up. I've tucked her in. Let's speak quietly so not to disturb her." Geraldine had her black cat on her lap and sat cross-legged watching me. "At first I thought I was dead and this was the afterlife."

I nodded because the thought had crossed my mind.

"Then I thought it was a test by the devil or I am dying of carbon monoxide poisoning."

I again nodded in agreement with her.

"Whatever it is, I am going with the two of you and we are taking my cats."

I smiled at her and before I could say anything she held up her hand as if to stop me.

"And I am going to find a way to defend myself. I don't want to fight, but if it comes to that, then I will."

"I promise you that we'll do everything we can to protect you."

"It'd be nice to know what it is you'll be protecting me from."

"I can't tell you what we'll face, but I can tell you what we think about this. We think it's a game."

"A game? I play #Candy Crush and #June's Journey."

I hemmed and hawwed, "No. It's not like that. It's more like shows like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings. Have you heard of Realms of Ifaneli?"

She furrowed her brow. "Is that the game with blocks my nephew's kid plays?"

"Not that one specifically. It's a MMORPG -- multiplayer online uhh. Massive multiplayer online roleplay game. Though the lore of this game seems kinda celtic? Or maybe Shakespeare." I said it with the hard 'k' sound in the c. "It's the same idea. In Realms there are two factions."

Suze mumbled from her pile of blankets. "We play the dark side."

"What Suze means is that we play as Dark Blight. It's kind of full of darker monster races."

"Kaylee chose it only because they have the hot elves. I wanted to play undead."

"I did not choose it for the elves."

"You switched sides when the hot elves expansion happened. All your characters are hot elves."

I got hot in the face. I switched sides because I met Matt on the server Discord and we'd hit it off. It'd been two years of voice chat flirting and PvP murdering one another before that. The expansion had just coincided with me switching over and so we started low level characters together. "I only have two Pirates of the Consort." I don't know why I felt peevish about this and so I switched tracks. "It doesn't matter about Realms. It's just an example of the kind of game I think this is. It seems like we have to decide between factions run by two big leaders. I don't know who would be the equivalent Dark Blight here and I don't know if that'd be a good choice right off the bat."

"Obermoron is Dark Blight. Titanic is Sun Paragon."

"Let's wait to pick if we run into some of our guildmates. Or at least get more information first."

I realised that Geraldine had not said anything for a bit and so I looked over at her. She had this blank look on her face as she sat now with her three cats in her lap. She just pet them.

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"Have I lost you?" I asked.

"Yes, dear. I felt like I was listening to the adults in Charlie Brown."

I had no idea what she meant by that, but I tried to explain it in the way that I had explained it to my mother when I moved across the country to move in with a guy I met online in a video game. "Essentially it's collaborative puzzle solving and combat. You work with others to achieve goals and it's like a community. Like group chess."

"With more blood."

"Go back to sleep Suze." I tossed a stuffed bolster pillow at her. "Geraldine, I think that this Funnel or whatever they're calling it, is the same thing, but instead of playing as imaginary characters, we are the characters. We learn the skills. We have to physically attack things. We can learn magic." I cast the balls of light spell to emphasize my point. "It's some kind of simulator thing and I can't tell how they're doing it. Or why we're in it. We even have chat and a minimap and windows that pop up in our vision."

"Is that why I have all these things blocking my sight?"

"Oh! Let's help you with that. It may take some explanation."

"Then while you explain I'm going to make us breakfast. Pancakes, bacon and eggs?"

"Geraldine, te amo. I will be marrying you." Suze stretched.

"Well dear, could you please cough up my kitchen table and cooking supplies first?"

Suze saluted Geraldine and then grunted as she stood up. Instead of folding the blankets, she bent down, picked them up and they disappeared in her inventory. She dispersed most of the things she had looted from the kitchen. Including the fridge. When Geraldine was satisfied with the supplies she had, Suze said. "If you need to use the toilet, I've got ours and Kaylee's toilet paper. But that little man is in the toilet so I am going to set it up in your room." Then Suze went off to set up a temporary toilet for us in Geraldine's now empty room.

Cooking pancakes, bacon, and eggs made the whole place smell heavenly. I explained about the UI and while helping Geraldine, I actually was able to do some minor modifications to my own. I talked her through the basics and then stumbled upon adjusting colours and transparency. With tweaking, I could get my screen to almost look like my heavily modded Realms one. I still could not find my abilities, character sheet, or skill list. There also wasn't a hot bar to set up with the spells.

When she was done cooking, she loaded up some plates and just as she was about to pass them to me she jumped up and nearly dropped the plates. "Oh!"

I reached to catch the plates, but she had a solid grip on them so I didn't want to rip them out of her hands. "What? What!"

"'You have received a cooking skill called 'Gourmeth.'"

That didn't sound good. "Oh. Uhm. Can I set the table?"

"Oh. Yes." She seemed very distracted and had a look on her face like she was staring at her UI.

I took the plates of food and then inspected them.

Each one said, Plate of magical pancakes, eggs, and bacon - Cooked by Geraldine Tier 0 Bed & Breakfast Innkeeper.

"It told me you are an ASMR Content Creator. What is that?"

From the other room Suze came in, wiping her hands with the baby wipes. "She gets paid to blow on microphones."

The look on Geraldine's face made me quickly cover for myself. "No. I don't do that. I have a job doing overnight IT helpdesk and sometimes when we're playing Realms of Ifaneli I livestream it. But there's nothing wrong with being any kind of content creator."

Before I could warn her to wait, Suze took one of the plates and just began shovelling the food in her face. Between mouthfuls she said, "Mmm. This is really, really good."

"Kaylee doesn't have an OnlyFans account, but it's just a matter of time."

I took a deep breath hoping that my Calming Breath skill would trigger, but it did not. "Please don't listen to her."

Geraldine waved her hand. "Eat up. Eat up. Anyway, the two of you speak in tongues. Half the time I don't have a clue what you are saying, anyhow. I'm sure I'll pick up on it as we go."

I watched Suze carefully to see if the food triggered anything. Since I couldn't see the properties in the item itself, I hope I could at least see if it caused a buff or debuff with her. Suze's health bar was in the green and then it had a little symbol of a steaming dish on it. She seemed to be fine so I sat at the table and began eating the food on my plate. After a moment, I felt a surge of warmth.

You have been blessed with the Gourmeth buff.

Other than the alert, nothing popped up for me to able to inspect it. So frustrating. At least I felt a bit better.

Once Suze finished shovelling most of the plate down and had swallowed. She slowed right down on eating. Geraldine served us cups of orange juice and brought her own plate to the table.

"I know it's a lot. It's a lot for me too. All I think you need to know right now is you're a Bed & Breakfast Innkeeper. It's some kind of class or something. A job that you are and I think it'll offer some abilities like this Gourmeth buff -- uhm -- it's like a boon or a gift you give us through the food. It seems to be positive." Even though the name really gave me concern. Meth?

We ate in silence for a bit, but I couldn't stop thinking about the door and what could be outside.

"We need to know more about this place before we go out that door. I think we should talk to the little man in the bathroom."