by I. Felix
“It can’t be that dangerous. If I die, what will happen?” he thought again and closed all the boxes. He started walking, strolling around the field.
It was much colder than any other places he had been so far. He couldn’t see the sun, as it was totally cloudy, looking like it was going to rain at any minute. Also, there were the shadows. He started trying to get close to one, near one of the dead trees, but each time he tried, the shadow disappeared. It was like it had never been there before. He thought he was imagining things, but he was sure it was one of the shadow’s tricks. After all, they were shadows for a reason.
Blake decided that he would try to hide behind the tree and look if he could see the shadow again. However, the tree had a very thin trunk and he didn’t think he would hide very well there. So, he looked up at the branches. Even though the tree was dead, the branches looked like they could hold well.
“I’ll get a better look of the purgatory too,” he thought again, while he put one foot on the trunk and held the closest branch to try to get up. It didn’t break and so he was able to pull his body with ease, now climbing the tree. He got to the highest point he could and smiled, looking around. He could see many shadows from up there, and the dead field extended for a very big length, so wide he couldn’t see where it ended.
He sat there for a while. He felt like calling Arche but he stopped moving, for he suddenly saw with the corner of his eye something moving down below. It was one of the shadows! He was right to hide, the shadow appeared once again. And it was looking much more solid than before, almost like Blake could touch it if he was fast enough.
“I have nothing to lose,” he shrugged and prepared himself for what he was about to do. When the shadow got close enough to the trunk, Blake jumped, not afraid of how much it could hurt to fall on the ground from the branches. He felt the shadow for a second but it disappeared with a shrill. Blake fell face on the ground, his HP got to 94% from the fall, and he felt a little pain, not too bad. He sat up, laughing. The shadow was long gone but it had been a cool adventure. He felt how cold the shadow was, almost like if he had put his hand in a waterfall for a second. It was powerful, it felt like if his hand was receiving a massage, a very cold one.
He got up, ready to go call Arche when he looked at his hands.
They were entirely black.
Now, it was Blake’s time to scream. It echoed through the whole field. He could hear some crows flying, scared away.
“What the hell!” he said, touching his hands. It was completely black and it didn’t seem like it could be easily washed off.. Blake remembered his childhood, a particular day in preschool when he had stolen the teacher’s marker and painted his whole hands with it. Everything was black and when it didn’t want to come out, he started crying. The teacher laughed at him and told him he deserved it, and then he was sent to the bathroom on his own to wash it off. The teacher told him not to bother come back if he couldn’t, he could go to the principal’s office and have a talk. His hands looked like it was entirely covered in black marker ink.
He stopped panicking and thought about his options and the most obvious one was to go away. So, he got the Bird Wing from his inventory.
“Go to a random spot/Go to your last save point,”
He chose the second option and everything went white. One second later, he was in the Novice’s Castle.
He looked at his hands, nothing had changed. He looked around, and Arche was nowhere to be seen. So, he ran to his room, trying to reach for the bathroom. There was no toilet there, as they didn’t need to use it, but there was the bathtub. He opened the tab, got the soap, and started trying to rub it off, just like 4 years-old Blake from the past. It wouldn’t come out.
“Man?” he heard Arche approaching.
“Arche!” Blake exclaimed, in panic, and showed him his hands.
“First of all, where were you? Secondly, what the hell is that? And third, look at what I got!” Arche exclaimed and showed him what he was holding.
It was an egg, the size of an ostrich’s egg, blue, but with some sort of transparency to it, so they could see a small embryo inside.
All of Blake’s panic vanished. He got up and went to inspect the egg closer. “You did it! Is that for a pureng?!” he exclaimed, extremely excited. That was their passport to getting stronger.
“Yep! I got it earlier today. But it was pretty hard. It took me ten mushrooms till one of the purengs finally accepted to be my homunculus. I have no more mushrooms left. Did you get the lettuce? And what happened to your hand?”
Blake told Arche the whole story, from the wolf with the farmer’s head, to which the Arche twisted his nose, to the stupid robot, to which Arche said he would guess something like beta-carotene, the thing that the carrots have that is full of vitamins, and then to the story of jumping on a shadow.
“This must be some kind of shadow property,” Arche said, analyzing Blake’s hands. “It doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere. Do you feel sick?”
“Nop. I don’t feel anything,” Blake said.
“It’s probably not a big deal. If it was some type of skill, it should have disappeared already. If it was some poison, you would have felt it already. Let’s ask the Novice Master, he must know, or somebody here must know. I’ll look at the tutorial later.”
“The Master won’t talk to us because of the stupid quest. Let’s just finish it already. I can’t stand being level 1 anymore.”
“Yeah, but let’s go find the jackalope. And I need to hatch my egg. I heard there’s a type of market in Pruntire that sells things that help hatch eggs. We should go there. Are you tired though?”
“No way! If I went to sleep now, I don’t know what I’d do, I’m so awake that I could jump.”
“Okay, got it. So, let’s go to Pruntire to buy the thing that hatches the egg, then, let’s figure out where we can go to tame a jackalope, and, finally, we figure out this hand problem.”
“Yeah, I don’t know if I like this sequence but whatever. If my hands fall down, I’ll blame it on you.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure we would be able to find some kind of robotic hands to put in place. And they won’t fall, don’t worry.”
They left the castle once again, crossed the whole town, got to the surrounding map 1, and started heading to Pruntire, this time aiming at entering the city.
6- Pruntire
Blake and Arche were absolutely speechless when they stepped on the city for the first time. The streets were all made from white parallelepiped. There were countless people there, from NPCs to humans, to other races, mounts, monsters, and everything in between. The majority of the people on the streets had small carts with every kind of item. There weren’t as many novices as the castle and the Ozladi city. Some people looked really strong, high-level, almost end game-like. People that had auras shining around them, enormous crowns on their heads, every type of magical staff, and swords. It left them mesmerized. The buildings all had an old medieval style, but the kind of medieval style that was really, really fancy, with doors made of pure wood, adorned in gold. It was also very noisy, as the sellers were all screaming about their items, talking to possible sellers, and things like that.
“How many players are there in this game, for God’s sake?” Blake asked. Arche shrugged.
“There are so many broadcasting channels. I’d say there are as many people here as there are Youtubers creating content for Youtube.”
“Oh, well,” Blake said, shrinking his shoulders. “Where can we buy the thing that you want? It seems like it will take a whole life to look at all these stores here.”
“No, it’s from an NPC. I’ll put the navigation on for it to take us there,” he said and the yellow line appeared on the ground, showing where they should head. The place was so crowded and full that it even became hard to spot the line in the middle of all those people.
They followed it, trying to dodge the crowd. It wasn’t an easy task and it seemed like it took forever till
they got to the middle of the town. There was a giant fountain there, and the main NPC stores around it, forming a type of plaza.
They went to one of these stores, which was made of white stone, with a magnificent wooden roof. The inside was much calmer and more comfortable than the city. The floor was made of wood and there were some leather sofas, a fireplace with a crackling fire, even though they had a blue sky outside, and some NPCs behind a counter. Blake and Arche got closer and the NPC smiled. It was a beautiful girl, who had brown hair, brown eyes, and she also wore a corset, medieval style. There were some other people there, sitting, enjoying the peace that the store provided in comparison with how crazy it was on the outside.
“How can I help you today, adventurers?” she asked, kind, smiling.
“I want to hatch this egg,” Arche said. “You’re the Egg Tamer of the town, I guess.”
“Yes, I am, sir,” she said and looked closer at the egg. “I see you have a pureng egg there! That’s amazing. I can hatch it for you,” she said and got the egg.
The egg shone in purple and one second later, a pureng appeared on top of the counter.
It was much smaller than the purengs they were fighting back at the Pureng Island, and he was entirely pink.
“Hah! You adopted a pink pureng!” Blake exclaimed, like a child. Arche rolled his eyes.
“It was black when I adopted it. And it wasn’t this size.”
“When they are adopted, it’s like if you reincarnate. They come back to level 1 and to its primary form. So, only after it evolves that it will grow and become black,” the tamer said.
“Hello, little guy,” Arche said, putting his finger close to the pureng’s mouth. It tried to bit him and Arche exclaimed, getting his finger away. But the monster was just playing, it got so happy it jumped in place and, then, in Arche’s direction. Arche grabbed it and hugged it.
“Purengs are very friendly creatures,” the tamer said. “It was a good choice for a homunculus.”
“Hey, you seem to know a lot about monsters,” Blake said, out of nowhere.
“I’m the biggest specialist in town, boy!” she exclaimed, almost offended.
“Do you know where I can find a jackalope to tame?”
“A jackalope is common in the field of Rachel but it’s very far from these lands. You’d have to catch an airplane, travel to Janu, change airplanes, and keep going to Rachel. I must warn you that it’s a very strong region, you should try to level up a little before adventuring there.”
“Oh, no,” Blake said, facepalming. “All of that for nothing!”
“What? Did you get one rainbow lettuce?” they heard someone ask. They turned around to see who was talking to them.
It was a girl that looked much more powerful than they both. She was wearing shiny golden armor, a giant sword that hung from her belt, and she had a mount by her side. It was one giant bird-mount, that looked like an ostrich, with a wider beak, and a saddle on its back, perfect for someone to mount.
“It’s super hard to get that! I’ve tried to convince that farmer to hand it to me a bunch of times and it never worked!” she kept saying, now getting up from the couch. She had blond hair, big blue eyes, and a child-like expression. On her head, she wore a weird type of hat, a laying doll. “Can I buy it from you?”
“Well… I don’t know, I need a homunculus,” Blake said, taken aback by the information. “I don’t want to go back to finding taming items, it’s super hard. I had to steal the vegetable garden, and it wasn’t cool. I died, and all.”
“Oh, so you stole it! I could never do that,” the girl said. “My name is May, by the way.”
“Blake, and Arche,” Blake said, nodding to Arche with his head. Arche smiled.
“Aww, you have a pureng. Cute. They were my first homunculus too. I collect them, I find it to be the best part of this whole world. And my fans love it too! But I never got the jackalope because I couldn’t steal from the old farmer guy. Hey, Blake,” she said, all very fast. “What if we did a deal? I give you one of my repeated homunculus eggs and you give me the rainbow lettuce, so I can try to get a jackalope.”
“Sounds like a deal,” he said and reached out for her. They shook hands and she giggled, happy. “I have a bunch of rainbow vegetables too,” he said. “Can we go with you to tame the jackalope? Maybe I’ll be able to get one too!”
“She’s obviously in a much higher level than us, Blake,” Arche said. May giggled again but smiled.
“I can help you guys level up. This is actually my second class already, so I know a bit of this game. Then, when you guys are strong enough, we can go get the jackalope!”
“Amazing! But… second class? There are so many things you say that I don’t understand but I’m living for it!” Blake exclaimed.
They walked in the city through the crowd and May chuckled when she saw the newbies' faces. “It’s always like this, except when there’s some kind of event that makes monsters allowed inside the cities, and then you’ll see a bunch of corpses or people will have fled.”
Arche and Blake also looked at each other, once again confused but they didn’t ask anything because they had arrived next to the gates of the city, where May went to one of the NPCs there. It was a girl with purple braided hair, and another one of those aprons on top of a long purple dress, that seemed to be the fashion of that game. Her name was Kefri, and May asked her:
“Could you open my storage?”
Kefri smiled and in a blink of an eye, a handcart appeared in front of May. It was made of wood, extremely full, almost spilling its content, and it had everything imaginable inside but in miniature form. Miniature potions, miniature swords, miniature gear, and, especially, miniature eggs. They were as small as the tip of a finger. May smiled and pointed to it.
“Here, I’ll get the ones that I have double, and then you can choose one,” she said, friendly, and started rummaging through the mess. “Oh, my, why is it so messy?” she asked herself. Blake and Arche were speechless and just kept looking at each other, confused.
May selected three eggs in one hand and four eggs in the other. They were all different colors and some looked just like the pureng’s egg, transparent, blue, with an embryo in the middle of it.
As May put all the items on the ground, the eggs started growing, all becoming the size of an ostrich's egg, the same size as the pureng’s egg. Blake was impressed and got to the ground, to analyze it. There were a bunch of other people close but May didn’t seem to mind.
“If those were mine, I wouldn’t put in the ground like that, what if some thief come and steal it in front of us?” Blake asked. May just smiled, kindly. She reminded Blake of an anime character and, suddenly, he wasn’t so sure if she was a real player or another NPC. He frowned, that thought didn’t make sense, but, even so, she didn’t look real.
Another thought appeared in his head: she’s been playing this forever. Maybe that’s what happens with people that are here for too long… one day it will be me.
He shrugged that thought away again.
“Don’t worry, they wouldn’t mess with me,” May said, kind. Blake looked impressed and opened up a huge smile.
“Okay…” he said, not wanting to ask what that meant. So, he focused on the eggs and realized that Arche was also sitting on the ground, analyzing them, with his pureng by his side.
“Wow, you have some good stuff here! Don’t you have a displacer cat? It’s my dream pet,” Arche asked her. May gave another one of those kind smiles.
“In a matter of fact, I do have it. They aren’t that hard to catch after you reach a certain level. It’s this one here,” she said and pointed to the yellow egg. It was completely yellow and it was impossible to see the center of it.
“Nice! Choose this one, bro!” Arche exclaimed, truly excited. Blake rarely saw him like that.
“Why, well, okay,” Blake said, confused.
“Great choice. The displacer cats are great. They have very cool abilities,” May said,
“I actually have a few of them.”
“What kind of abilities do they have?” Blake asked.
“They can trick the enemy's mind to think that they are in a place, when they are actually in another place very distant, just lurking, getting ready to attack,” May answered. Blake held the egg in his hands.
“Thank you so much, May,” he said.
“No problem. But let’s not forget our deal. We’ll go hunt some jackalopes, right?”
“Oh, you bet,” Blake said.
“By the way…” May added. “What happened to your hands? I have an idea but I want to hear the story first before guessing.”
Blake noticed his hands for the first time in a while. He was starting to get used to them being black.
“It isn’t any kind of poison, is it? Will I lose my hands?!” he exclaimed, feeling panicky now. May laughed.
“No, no, nothing like that,” she said and Blake sighed.
“Told ya, bro,” Arche said. Blake smiled and told her the story of Purgatory.
When he finished, May started laughing.
“So you were able to touch a Purgatory Shadow, even though you’re only level 1. That’s quite an accomplishment.”
“What happens when you do that?” Blake asked, frowning.
“You are enchanted with the Shadows now. A bunch of adventures wants that but they can never touch any shadows. There are a bunch of elements and you can get enchanted by them in different ways. But Shadow is pretty good!” May exclaimed. “Once I was enchanted with fire but I got sick of it, so I removed the enchanting.”
“Well, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. It’s just black, looking like black ink.”
“It’s because you’re a novice still. You can’t do basically anything as a novice.”
“Please, I can’t stand this anymore, let’s level up.” ..
“Yeah, let’s do it. Gimme the egg,” May said and Blake handed her the egg, getting up. May touched the egg and it started glowing yellow. In a minute, there wasn’t an egg there anymore, but a small kitten.