by I. Felix
And he almost died from a heart attack when a box popped up in front of his eyes with Arche’s face.
“You’re online again. Where the fuck are you?” Arche asked. Blake could see that he was back at the Novice Castle. There was the sound of laughter, joy, and it seemed to be very cozy and comfortable. It made Blake feel even colder. “Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
“I’m in the Purgatory,” Blake whispered, almost unable to pronounce the words. Arche’s eyes widened.
“Didn’t you answer the test? It was so easy! Only one question about purengs! Why did you choose the Purgatory, for God’s Sake?!”
But Blake didn’t answer. It was like if fear had dominated his soul and he couldn’t produce any more words.
“Use the item Bird Wing in your inventory. It transports you to your last save point. Fast!” Arche exclaimed, worried. He’d never seen his friend like that. Blake had to gather all his strength to open his inventory and look for the item. He felt weak like he was about to die again. This time, to actually die, not only be reborn in the tutorial island or anything like that.
He got the Bird Wing in his hand and it activated with a box asking:
“Teleport to a random spot on the map/Teleport to your last save point.”
Blake desperately thought about the second option and everything went white again.
When he opened his eyes, he was in the Novice Castle.
It was like getting in a hot shower after being almost frozen to death. He felt his limbs coming back to life, his soul filling with joy, the crippling fear disappearing. He could hear laughter and smell food again. Now, he could think about his goals and dreams. The world stopped crumbling under his feet and he could think straight again.
He got up and saw Arche coming in his direction. Once again, he hugged his friend.
“Your hands are freezing,” Arche said.
“I’ve never felt like that,” Blake said and, deep down, he realized that he’d never be the same again. Something had changed inside his being forever, he could feel it. “Did you die too?”
“Yeah. The purengs found me as their next victim. It wasn’t as bad as I imagined, except for the fact that I lost 5%. I chose to take the test.”
“I knew you would,” Blake said. Arche looked worried at his friend.
“Hey, why don’t we rest for the rest of the night?”
“Is it night already?!” Blake exclaimed, surprised. He looked at one of the giant windows in the great hall and could see the stars outside.
“Let’s get something to eat and sleep. There are a bunch of bedrooms here. Not that we need to sleep or eat, I don’t see any sign that we could have fatigue or hunger or things like that. But I’d like to stay as human as I can.”
“Yeah. Me too,” Blake said, still thinking about that horrible place. He never wanted to go there again.
They followed to where they could hear laughter and happiness, inside the castle. A fire was on and they got to a cafeteria type of place, with huge wooden tables, rustic decorations, and a bunch of novices, drinking, and eating. They got to the counter, where some NPCs were serving food.
“What will be today, boys?” a girl NPC asked. She had braided blond hair and a type of old-fashioned medieval outfit, with a leather corset on top of her white shirt. She was wiping a big glass of beer, or whatever drink they had in there. “Two glasses of hydromel?” she offered when she saw that the two had no idea what to order.
“Yep, sounds good, especially if it’s alcoholic,” Blake said. “I need something strong.”
The NPC made two whole bottles appear in front of the boys. They smiled and got it, without paying for it. Blake didn’t question it, if he got alcohol for free he wouldn’t complain. They followed to one of the free spaces in the wooden table and started drinking. It tasted like honey and alcohol.
“Our first day here was pretty crazy, wasn’t it?” Blake murmured. Arche nodded.
“What’s our plans for tomorrow?”
“I’ll try to adopt a jackalope. And you?”
“Interesting,” Arche said. “I’d like to adopt a displacer beast but I don’t think we’ll be able to do that.”
“Yeah? I have no idea which monster is that but it sounds very hard,” Blake said. Arche shrugged.
“Hard but worth it. It could save our skins. Let’s try to get the jackalope first. And, then, let’s finish the pureng quest.”
“And level up, cause I’m sick of being weak,” Blake said, drinking another sip of the hydromel.
Blake couldn’t handle how tired he was. Before even finishing the drink, he wanted to lay his head on the table and sleep. Arche was also feeling wrecked. They abandoned the glasses half-full on the table and went back to the great hall. They followed to the stairs and started dragging themselves up.
“They could have had any kind of crazy stuff they wanted here on the game, and they chose to have stairs instead of elevators,” Blake commented. Arche chuckled. They followed to the first floor. After the stairs, there were some halls, each full of different doors. The rooms that were occupied had a red sign on the doorknob. The vague ones had the open doors. Each room had two beds, a nightstand, a wardrobe, and a bathroom with a huge bathtub.
Blake felt dirty, even though he apparently was the same. He knew game characters couldn’t get dirty or anything, but it was the same with eating and sleeping: they needed it to stay human.
They took turns in the bathroom. Blake almost fell asleep in the hot water of the tub but was awaken by the tumping on the door. “It’s my turn! Come on!” he heard Arche screaming and smiled. Thank goodness he wasn’t here alone.
The bathroom came with fluffy towels and he opened the wardrobe door to see if he could find clean clothes. He found the same ones that he was wearing before but clean. He changed and felt much better. With his eyes heavy from sleep, he lay on the bed, and less than five seconds later, he fell asleep.
He didn’t dream, nor saw the night passing. He closed his eyes, everything went black, and some seconds later he opened his eyes and the sun was shining outside. He felt full of happiness and energy and sat up in bed. He wasn’t sure if the night had been that way because of how tired he felt or if it would always be like that in the game.
They went downstairs, got to the cafeteria, and the same NPC was there as the night before. They asked for breakfast and got a cup of hot chocolate and some waffles. They devoured it in a second. “Not bad,” Blake said, feeling like himself again. “Now, let’s find the farmer and try the quest to get the jackalope. We need a rainbow lettuce taming item. It’s in Pruntire.”
“I’ll set the navigation to there,” Arche said, opening the map. A line that only they could see appeared on the ground.
“I hope this time we can actually finish the quest to level up a bit,” Blake said. “We’ll also need some better gear and maybe even a mount. Have you thought about what class you want?”
“I think I might become a swordsman, I don’t know,” Arche said.
“You should be an archer. Got it?” Blake asked with a funny face. Arche chuckled but rolled his eyes.
“Shut up,” he said and they started following the line.
They left the Novice Castle, passed the same bridge as the day before, the weather was perfect again with the sun shining, the light breeze, and the smell of the ocean. They crossed Ozladi and got to the Ozladi Surroundings 1 map again, where they could follow to go again to the Pureng Island. This time, they kept crossing the lawns, passing through different kinds of small monsters, which they simply ignored.
They walked till they saw some huge walls coming in the distance. The walls were made of white stones and looked magnificent, like a fortress. The city’s gate was open and many people were coming and going.
“Pruntire is the capital of Sentinel,” Arche informed. Blake could imagine why. He had no idea this game had so many players. He kept imagining all of their bodies back on Earth, all in induced comas,
himself included.
They didn’t head to the town, instead, they kept walking, following the yellow line. They got to the extreme of the map and they had to step on the swirl of light to get to another map, which was called Pruntire Surroundings 1.
It was a map like a forest, but it felt colder and the forest was denser. There were many more trees and they seemed to be far from the ocean now. The breeze was colder and there were a lot of weird noises in the place like birds singing and other animals walking in the woods.
The line made them keep walking till they reached a field without many trees on the board of the forest. There was a farmhouse in the distance. They could see a vegetable garden and an NPC preparing the earth. They saw that the vegetable garden was composed of rainbow vegetables.
“That’s it!” Blake exclaimed.
“Shhh!” Arche said. The NPC stopped moving and looked around. “We don’t know if it’s a good idea to get here unannounced like that,” he whispered but it was too late. The NPC turned around to look at them and they had no choice other than to advance.
“Hello, sir,” Blake said, friendly, with a big smile on his face.
“What do you want here?” the farmer asked in a bad mood. He had a red face, dirty clothes and hair, and a big tangled white beard.
“We would like to buy one of your beautiful rainbow lettuce if that’s possible,” Blake said. The NPC spitted on the ground with a grin.
“It’s not possible and they aren’t for sale. I wouldn’t give them to you not even for a million coins!” he exclaimed. Arche and Blake exchanged looks.
“Don’t you need anything? Some kind of quest that the reward could be the rainbow lettuce?” Blake insisted. The farmer laughed again, in disdain.
“Nothing that you two novices could do. I can see here that you weren’t even able to finish the Pureng Island quest yet. Who do you think you are? Offering me your help! As if I needed the help of two noobs like you!”
Blake opened his mouth in awe and Arche held his shoulder to prevent him from punching the NPC’s.
“Okay,” Arche said and pulled Blake away.
“I want to kill that old man!” Blake exclaimed when they were back on the board of the forest.
“Obviously we aren’t allowed to get any other quest while we don’t finish the Pureng Island and get our classes. That’s why he talked to us like that,” Arche said.
“I don’t give one damn, I want that lettuce. How on Earth will we finish that damn Pureng Island quest if we are this weak? We need the homunculus, and this is the easiest one to get!”
“This and the pureng itself,” Arche reminded.
“I don’t want those little bastards as my pet!”
“I wouldn’t care about one. My other choice is too hard to get in this level, so I think I’ll settle.”
“Well, I’ll get the lettuce, no matter what,” Blake said with determination in his eyes.
“What, will you steal it?” Arche asked. Blake shrugged. “Okay, whatever. Why don’t we do like that: you stay and try to do whatever you have to do to get the stupid lettuce, and I’ll go try to drop the thing to tame the purengs. They love mushrooms and I saw a bunch of them in the forest.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Blake said. “We meet back in the Castle?”
“Okay. I’ll get some extra mushrooms just in case you fail and need to tame a pureng too.”
“You don’t need to do that. I won’t tame the stupid pureng. I’ll get this lettuce even if it’s the last thing I do on this life!”
“Yeah, you can always die and go to the Purgatory again.”
Chapter 5 – The Rainbow Lettuce
Blake was hidden behind a bush, looking at the NPC working. He couldn’t be there forever, he thought, even though he was pretty sure that NPCs never left their positions. The night was falling and he was getting pretty hungry, even though he knew it was only his human side speaking. He didn’t need to eat in that game.
He had been there observing the whole day. He spent the whole time reading about the game and discovering more about the mechanics. And the NPC didn’t leave or stop preparing the earth, not for one second. That’s why they were called NPCs after all. When he was almost giving up the idea and calling Arche, the night fell and the NPC simply disappeared. In his place, another thing appeared.
It was definitely a monster, even though Blake couldn’t figure it out. He wasn’t sure if the monster was also an NPC or not. It had a wolf shape and looked very, very evil. It had pointy teeth and started sniffing the air. Blake covered his mouth and nose with his hands. If the wolf smelled him, he’d sure be damned and go directly to the Purgatory. He would have sat there the whole day for nothing. But the wolf smelled something else, and, unlike the NPC, he started getting in that direction, leaving the lettuces behind.
“It’s my chance,” Blake didn’t think twice. He jumped off from behind the bushes, started running as fast as he could to the vegetable garden, his heart pumping at full speed, his hands sweating, and the certainty that he could be killed at any moment. He got down, grabbed two rainbow lettuces that disappeared to his inventory as soon as he touched them.
“2x Rainbow Lettuce,” the notification popped up. He ran back again to the bush, still with the adrenaline pumping from his veins.
However, nothing more happened. He waited to see if someone else would appear. The wolf didn’t come back, not even the farmer. So, he looked at the vegetable garden and decided he couldn’t afford to waste all of those items there. He was much calmer now. The night was full of stars and with a clear moon. It was a warm night.
Blake got all the vegetables he could touch.
“You got 5x Rainbow Lettuce,”
“You got 6x Rainbow Carrot,”
“You got 2x Rainbow Eggplant,”
“You got 7x Rainbow Potato,”
“You got 1x Rainbow Watermelon,”
“You got 5x Rainbow Pumpkin,”
When he was almost finishing with everything from the vegetable, he heard growling. His heart jumped to his mouth. He knew what that meant.
“Oh, fuck…” he said, turning around slowly, not wanting to face his destiny.
It was the wolf. And he almost fainted when the wolf transformed its head on the head of the farmer.
So it had a human head and a wolf body.
“You little maggot! I leave to hunt for my family and you come here to steal from me! You’ll have what you deserve!” the farmer-wolf screamed, and Blake screamed, and he heard the screams echoing through the forest when the wolf got his wolf head back and started devouring Blake. It hurt like hell and he felt tears in his eyes but it was too late to even move, everything went white and he died again.
There he was, in the tutorial, with the sphere robot floating, and the memory of the last death. It had hurt more than before but he was more worried about something else: he opened his inventory, with crippling anxiety. What if his vegetables weren’t there anymore? He would have died for nothing.
But there they were, all of the different types of rainbow vegetables he had got. He breathed in relief. At least it had been worth it. He closed the window. He wasn’t sure what the other vegetables were good for but he was sure that he would finally get a homunculus and start leveling up. He wouldn’t be useless anymore! So far he was still in level 1 and his XP was decreasing every step of the way.
He sat up to face his biggest enemy: the robot. “Okay, shoot me with your damn questions, I want to go back to the game. I have things to do!”
“Okay. Question loading,” the robot said with its mechanical voice. “What is the component of the rainbow carrot that contributes to its healing properties?”
Blake frowned. “I thought the rainbow carrot was to get jackalopes or something,” he said.
“Is that your answer?” the robot asked.
“No!” Blake exclaimed. “Let me think,” he said and then tried to open the tutorial symbol. Nothing happened. He frowned and tried aga
in. Nothing. And then a small red box appeared on the top right corner. “Tutorial disabled for the time being.”
“Oh, no,” he sighed and looked at the robot. Healing properties of the carrots? He was pretty sure Arche would know or at least would be able to guess something close. “Take me to Purgatory,” he said with a sigh.
The robot didn’t need to think twice but Blake was able to think ‘this sadistic bastard’ before everything went white again.
He was in the same place as before but somehow he didn’t feel the same amount of fear he had felt the previous time. It was a field with dead grass, dead trees, fog, and many shadows walking around. He remembered how he felt the first time he was there. It was such a shock he thought he would never be able to recover. However, that time, as he knew what to expect, he felt curious about the place.
It looked like he was on a map in the game world. When he was in the tutorial part, he didn’t have a map to access in one of the symbols and the minimap disappeared from his vision. There, he could see the minimap and could consult the map. He looked around and he was alone in the field, so he opened the map.
He was in a square on the top right part of the map, very far away from where he had been before dying. Pruntire was at the bottom of the map, almost impossible to spot from where he was. The Purgatory was surrounded by a lot of other dark-colored squares, that could only indicate that it had more than one map for it. He clicked on the information and read the box.
“The Purgatory is a place for lost souls to wander while they repent from their sins. It can be scary, so, be careful, adventurer! However, it can also be a fantastic place to learn new things.”
Learn new things. It didn’t say anything about the common monsters of the place, as it was usual.