“So then I thought ‘what would my character do?’ and I realized that Conrad wouldn’t back down,” Tobungus enthused. “So I told the GM I was going to attack anyway and started thinking about what my next character would be like. So then I rolled the dice, and wouldn’t you believe it, it was a crit!”

“Nice,” Kyle said, with a tone of voice that intentionally straddled the line between politeness and extreme disinterest. He examined the rock face studiously, even though he had already decided how he was going to try and scale it. He wasn’t sure how else to subtly signal that he wasn’t interested in Tobungus role-playing war stories.

But Tobungus wasn’t getting the hint. “I know, right? So I’m blown away, and I start to roll for damage, but then the GM remembers the Black Knight was wearing some sort of armor that had a chance of negating crits…”

Kyle sighed quietly and stuck his hands in his armpits to ward against the cold. He had brought Tobungus as his partner in this scouting expedition for the same reason he brought Braden to Wight’s Hold; he wanted to learn more about him. Tobungus was always quietly hanging around Aubrey, and Kyle was hoping that getting him on his own would make him a little more talkative.

At first, it didn’t work. Tobungus was just not interested in talking. He wasn’t rude or shy, he just answered questions politely, didn’t elaborate, and didn’t initiate conversation on his own.

…until he learned Kyle had done tabletop roleplaying.

“…so it didn’t crit, but I figured I might as well roll for damage, right? And remember that class feature that let tens explode? Well I got four tens on three dice! So it was like I had crit anyway…”

“Uh-huh?” Kyle grunted, Ignoring Tobungus. Hands warmed as much as possible, Kyle started climbing up the rock face. Even with two ranks in resilience, the cold was bitter, and Kyle’s fingers hurt where his hands touched the freezing rock face. He wished he had brought gloves. Or hell, even a jacket. But most video games just ignored the effects of cold in their mountain zones, so he didn’t even stop to think about it before leaving.

“…so the Black Knight was hurt but still up; the GM told me he had like five health left. So it was close. But anyway, he starts charging some sort of super attack…”

Kyle spared a look down to see if Tobungus was managing the climb with his digitigrade legs. It looked like he was doing fine. He didn’t even seem cold. Must be the Jakarna fur. Kyle spitefully hoped that one day they’d go to a desert themed location. Kyle kept climbing.

“…but then Jane interrupted and mentioned that her bard song was still going. So we start counting off squares…”

Luckily, the cliff face wasn’t exactly vertical; it was slanted slightly in their favor. This made it easier to climb because Kyle could put his center of mass past the footholds. Despite Kyle’s inexperience at rock climbing, they made rapid progress.

Kyle’s head poked over the edge of the cliff wall, and he could see the transcendence crystal, covered in snow, beam poking through its tip and disappearing into the clouds. It took them far longer than they had planned to get here, because Kyle hadn’t counted on the snow getting so deep as they climbed the mountain. At least it wasn’t actively snowing, or climbing the cliff would have been treacherous indeed.

Kyle wasn’t planning on touching it. He was nervous that even approaching the crystal might trigger something. They were just here to look around and go back with a plan of action. Kyle had already decided any such plan would involve warmer clothing. Kyle finished clamoring over the edge and rose to his feet. The wind was faster here. It was biting cold.

“…and it turns out that I was still within her area of effect! So that meant that each of my dice would have had a plus one, and I rolled at least one nine…”

Kyle took stock of the area. There was certainly enough room here for a combat of some kind. Maybe a yeti or something. They might be able to cheese the fight by throwing two dozen people at once at it, but it would take some time to get them all up the cliff face. Kyle wasn’t sure how well dwarves would do scaling cliffs, either. At least there was no snow here; the wind must be strong enough to blow it all off.

“…so anyway it’s well over five damage, so the black knight should be dead, right?” Tobungus nattered as he pulled himself over the ledge. “But the GM gets all flustered and starts saying some nonsense about some precast contingent spell and it’s obvious this was supposed to be a recurring villain…”

Kyle was having a hard time thinking his own thoughts over Tobungus’ banal narrative. He tried to focus. There were two smaller plateaus overlooking the crystal, each about ten feet high. There was plenty of room at the bottom for tanks to kite monsters around. Kyle figured maybe they could put archers or casters up on the plateaus to deal damage safely. Actually; not archers. Unpredictable winds like this could blow arrows off course. Kyle circled the crystal, trying to get to the other side of it without activating whatever was guarding it.

…and saw a set of handholds going down the other side.

“…and I’m typically fine letting a story be a story, but Jane started putting the thumbscrews on the GM, because it was really unlikely the Black Knight had access to contingent spells at our level…”

Kyle walked over to the far ledge. The set of handholds was carved into the rock face directly opposite the one they came up from. It lead down to a trail that wound down the mountain on the other side.

Kyle was flabbergasted. It had taken them nearly ten hours to get here. He was sure this mountain chain represented the boundary of the world. That’s how you limit the map size in an RPG. An ocean on one side, an impassable mountain range on the other, and the game world was in between. And now, inexplicably, there was more world on the other side!

Worse, Kyle saw pillars of light in the distance. More transcendence crystals. The game world was huge.

“So I’m trying to smooth things over between Jane and the GM, right? I mean, I don’t want the campaign to stop just because I rolled some lucky-”

“Would you just shut up?” Kyle shouted, whirling around to face Tobungus.

“I, uh… what?”

Kyle couldn’t express it clearly. He was frustrated. And it wasn’t Tobungus fault. But Kyle just couldn’t handle it right now. The world was nearly twice as large as Kyle thought it was. At least. There were mountains south of Crystopia too, well past Wight’s hold. What if they had a whole other wilderness past them? Kyle was sure they were going to find the other transcendence crystals if they went through the forests with a fine-toothed comb looking for dungeons. But if the world was really this big…

This game going to take a long time.

“I just… Sorry. I was just overwhelmed when I saw… well…” Kyle swept his hand over the far side of the mountain.

Tobungus stepped forward to take a closer look. “Oh hey! More crystal beacons! That’s great! I was wondering, because we’ve scouted most of the map already and haven’t found many dungeons.”

Kyle sighed.

“So, we’re not going there, right?” Tobungus asked. “At least, not today?”

“Not now, no. We’re here to scout the crystal. And I’m glad we did. I’ve got a pretty good idea what sort of plan we can use to beat whatever’s guarding it. But we’re done here. Let’s go home.”

“Yeah.” Tobungus looked at the crystal with a longing expression. “It’s sad to come all this way and leave it here. But I get it. If we go and touch it, we might trigger a whole bunch of ice scorpions unburrowing from the ground to attack us or whatever.

Ice scorpions? “Yeah,” Kyle said, nodding in agreement. He walked back towards the cliff face they climbed up from.

“Not going to touch it, eh?” A voice shouted over the wind. Kyle turned his head towards the sound, and saw a group of four people standing up on one of the plateaus overlooking the crystal. They must have been lying down so as not to be seen from below. An ambush. Kyle looked to his right, at the other plateau. He saw another four people getting to their feet. A decent mix of races. All eight wore clothing much more suited to the cold environment. Kyle was jealous. The thick furs and fabrics made it impossible to tell how the attackers were armored.

“That’s too bad, mate” the man continued. “I’ve heard it doesn’t hurt if you die while leveling up,” The man had a British accent, which struck Kyle as out of place.

“We’ve got no issue with you,” Kyle said, turning to try and keep both plateaus in his view at once. “Whatever you want, we don’t have it.”

“We’ll be the judge of that!” He raised his hand and signaled, and a Lagotherre next to him fired a lighting bolt at Kyle.