“Good Afternoon, Miss Jacobs. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” the receptionist greeted me as I stepped into the gym. I hadn’t been here in person for a couple of weeks, almost exclusively spending my time in Road to Purgatory and doing my training at home, when I logged out, mostly to be present if my party needed me. It was a problem I thought I should address with the developers, the impact it had on someone with a social life. I was a rare breed, someone who hardly cared about spending most of my time in a game, someone who had been able to clear the schedule for the Beta but when the game went live, I would have to either make money by streaming or making videos, which both might be possible, or reduce the amount of time I played and getting back to work.

“Good Afternoon, Mrs. Wu.” I greeted back, focusing on the present and the conversation I was having. Mrs. Wu, the receptionist and wife of the Wing-Chun trainer of the gym, was a kindly old lady, at least most of the time. She had a different side, one that I had only seen once when she needed to physically restrain someone during a dispute. She was one of the few people that I was seeing eye to eye, being about as small as I, and her head of white hair, kind smile and crow-feet from laughing made her look like everyone’s favourite grandmother, but on that day, she had taken the guy, easily forty centimeters taller and three times her weight, in hand, bringing him to his knees when he tried to press the issue. For me, it had been a defining moment, seeing her so in control, a quiet and calm strength, I wanted to gain it. Afterwards, I had asked her to train me, only to be gently rebuffed and told to master what her husband was teaching me, before asking again.

“I have been a little busy, my schedule rather irregular, so I was unable to find the time to come here.” I explained, giving her my pattern polite smile, something my mother had trained me to do a long ago.

“Such is life, sometimes. I hope you kept up with your training, if not Shifu might be disappointed..” she smiled back, before gesturing to the changing rooms.

“I tried. We’ll have to see how much I forgot.” I admitted, moving past her. It was only a small gym, operated by two older, married couples, the Wus and the Satoshis a japanese couple teaching a form of aikido. Just from looking at the amount of people coming and going, I was reasonably sure that it was more a hobby of those two couples than a profitable business, but I didn’t know. They took a modest, monthly fee, that I was happy to pay and if you wanted dedicated training, they would offer but the amount of people coming and going were just too few to make me think it was making a real profit.

After changing into a comfortable pair of soft pants and a top, I went out to the main floor, stopping for a moment to take in the atmosphere, it was a strangely comforting smell, sweat, mixed with leather and incense, that made me relax. Before going to the dummies, I walked over to the various machines, starting slow to warm up before seriously working out for some time, a slight pain reminding me that I had slacked off too much. It wasn’t as bad as I had feared, the exercises I had been doing whenever I logged out seemed to have helped but it was worse than I had hoped. But there was nothing to be done about the past, I would have to take care of it in the future.

As I worked on the different machines, I thought of the people waiting for me in Mundus. It was strange, outside the capsule, I felt a small distance to the me while playing. Part of me was curious if it was because I was so much more ‘invested’ in the role I was playing in Mundus that I was trying to see things from a perspective I would have had if I had been born in Mundus, as Morgana or why the character seemed to be so much more alive than previous characters I had played. Somehow, Morgana felt more real, more alive, than other characters, not just because of the much more realistic world of Mundus but also in an innate way. Maybe it was because Morgana was something I had projected myself into, not just a character I had created. It was weird, for lack of better word, but at the same time, it was a feeling I now craved. Not just because of her relationship with Sigmir, even if that was a big part of it.

I felt a wry smile twist my mouth, as I considered the insanity of being slightly jealous of the relationship a fictional character played by me had to a non-player character in a computer-game. A highly sophisticated one, sure, but still, I wondered if that was the way people who believed that they had a personal relationship with a manga- or anime-character felt. Only that my Sigmir was able to answer me, to talk to me.

As I stood up from the machine I had been working on, I shook the thought off, knowing that nothing good would come from dwelling on it. What I felt for Sigmir was something I had never experienced before and if I managed to rationalize away those feelings, I would regret it, of that I was certain. I enjoyed the time I spent in Mundus, I enjoyed the time I spent with her and that had to be enough for me. Someone else might see it as some sort of high-tech sex-toy or a fetish or something else, I didn’t care, couldn’t care. Didn’t want to care.

Feeling my muscles tingle, I decided to go over to the area with the dummies and bags, letting my mind slip into the fight-mode I had cultivated in Mundus, where my weapons and my body were often on the line. While I hardly used pure martial arts when fighting there, they were, in a way, my last line of defense, the footwork Shifu had taught me the easiest way to keep some beastie from gnawing at me or to keep some centaur from sticking me with the pointy end of their spear.

Starting slowly, I gave the bag a few soft strikes before speeding up, letting my mind go back to fights I had been in, imagining an enemy striking back, while dodging away. At first, I felt myself move a little jerky and I realised that there was a bit of a disconnect between my training and my body, that spending so much time as Morgana had made me a little unused to my actual body, but after a minute or two, that disconnect vanished and my movement smoothed out. It helped that the two bodies had the same shape and while Morgana’s body was stronger and faster, that only went so far.

I kept beating on the bag, flowing from circling it with defensive footwork, giving only the occasional jab, to fiercely assaulting it with my hands, elbows, knees and feet, speeding up as I went. It was a curious, trance-like state, my focus widening but the awareness narrowing as my mind kept an eye on the room around me, but only scanned for threats, discarding anything else as unnecessary. In that state, I failed to notice that Shifu Wu had moved into the area I was in, until he took a combat stance. When he did, all of a sudden, my mind registered him as a threat and I whirled sideways, keeping the bag I had been beating up in sight while getting him into view. At the same time, I got a bit of a mental jolt, shaking me out of my trance-like state back to full awareness.

“Greetings, Shifu Wu.” I greeted with a polite bow after a second to get my breath under control.

“Greetings, Miss Jacobs. I see you learned more of the art, even if it seems that your form suffered a little.” he greeted, a mischievous smile on his face. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but when I mentally played back the movements I had used to beat the bag, I had to admit that he was right. My style had changed a little, becoming more practical or maybe more savage.

“I apologise, Shifu.” I bowed again, before explaining, “I only had time to train by myself over the last few months, without correction. It seems that a few changes have snuck into my forms.”

“It happens. But I think that you might be ready to learn from my dear wife.” he grinned, causing me to blink in surprise. It was certainly not what I had expected but, after he gave me a signal to continue, he moved away while I returned to my training, slightly bewildered.