Rosa seemed a bit out of sorts when I went to find her.

“What do you want?”

She’d snapped at me as I summoned her to the top of the Great Oak, her expression stormy.

“Umm… Story quest? Please?” I raised my eyebrows and took a step back. She seemed angry, and I didn’t know why. I wasn’t about to push my luck by asking her, though.

“There’s a Kelpie in the Lakes,” she said in a monotone. “Go kill it.”

And as fast as she came, she was gone again.

No flirting. No riddles. Just the quest objective.

That was… out of character. For both flirty Rosa and game Rosa.

I ended up waiting around for a few more minutes to see if she was coming back, but that didn’t seem to be the case. So, shrugging, I began to make my way to the Lakes of Luna.

Traversing the Forest, I marvelled at the sheer difference one added sense could make. Just from the additional sensation of the wind buffeting through my hair and my clothes, the run to the Lakes of Luna felt even more exhilarating than it had been the first time. I actually felt the speed I was going at, and it was amazing.

Now if only the server maintenance had added the sense of smell too.

As I reached the Lakes of Luna, I was met with a break in the line of trees. Like opening a curtain, what was unveiled before me was a beautiful sight.

In the dip of a valley, surrounded on all sides by trees, was a huge lake. The lake was a beautiful sky blue, sparkling in the morning light like a gemstone. Like a mirror, its still surface reflected the greens of the trees and the wavering figures of the Mounds in the distance.

Interspersed amongst the waters were little, rocky islets, complete with rushing waterfalls and swirling tide pools. The arrangement of the islets segregated the big lake into a multitude of smaller regions, forming the characteristic striped pattern of the Lakes of Luna.

I slid down the slope and into the valley basin, the solid dirt turning to coarse sand beneath my feet. Walking closer to the water’s edges, I remarked at how incredibly clear it looked. Unlike the sad, rubbish choked pond near my home in the other world, these waters were clear, so clear that you could see the tiny water fairies swimming around near the bottom.

The nixies.

But I wasn’t here for the nixies today. I turned away from the little fairies somewhat regretfully, and began treading along the shore.

The Kelpie was a world boss that was supposed to spawn somewhere along the shores of the Lakes of Luna. According to the lore, it was a dangerous shapeshifter that supposedly dragged people off to their doom after pretending to be a horse and offering rides.

But gameplay wise, you didn’t really get the benefit of that excitement. It was a pretty straightforward, B level boss. You hit it enough times, it dies.

The only special thing of note was…

“HELP!”

A voice came ringing out from my left. Turning, I spotted someone splashing around in the water.

Ahem.

The only special thing of note was that, on rare occasions, it disguised itself as a drowning NPC.

I drew Sorrow and hurried over to where the splashes were largest. There, I saw the Kelpie.

Its disguise was that of a little girl wearing a bright red frock. I couldn’t see her face clearly due to all the splashing, but I could tell that it was one of the randomised NPC faces.

Struggling to keep her head above the surface of the water, the little girl floundered around in the lake. Occasionally, her head would submerge below the waters, only to come bursting back up, gasping for air.

“HELP!” Her eyes were wide and terrified as she gulped down another mouthful of lake water. “HELP!”

“Old tricks, Kelpie!” I pointed Sorrow at it. “Come on. Let’s fight.”

The Kelpie didn’t seem to take the bait, still remaining in its little girl form, sputtering out pleas for help.

“HELP! HELP!”

“Stop pretending!” I shouted back. “I know it’s you!”

The more the little girl flailed around and cried out, the less confident I was about my assessment of the situation. Surely if it were an actual Kelpie, it’d have shown itself by now, right?

Marge’s words came echoing back to me.

“You’re not dreaming. This is real.”

What if I was wrong, like I’d been wrong with the hitbox in the Crimson Hall? What if this was actually an NPC who’d wandered into the wrong part of Briarwood and was about to drown? In that case, wouldn’t I be coldly standing by and watching someone die?

“HELP!”

That last, painstaking cry broke my resolve, and I ran towards the lake.

“HELP HELP!”

“Hold on!” I called, snapping my fingers. Short Range Teleport activated, sending me out over the water, half the distance to where the kid was. I landed with a splash, my drop sending waves cresting up across the surface of the lake.

Being close to the shore, the water wasn’t too deep, coming up to around my chest. Not deep for me, but definitely deeper than what was safe for a child.

I waded further in, and grabbed the child by the scruff of her coat. With all her clothes bogged down by the water, she weighed quite a lot. Heaving, I pulled her head free of the water. Almost immediately, she stopped struggling.

“Sorry, kid, I thought you were a…”

Slowly, her head swivelled around to face me, revealing two pitch black pits where her eyes were supposed to be.

“Kelpie…”

Fell for the oldest trick in the book. Damn empathy.

“Got you!” she sang.

The still water around us began to churn and bubble. Waves rushed at me wildly, the stinging spray splattering all over my glasses and obscuring my vision. An icy wave hit me head on, followed by another, and another. I found myself pushed back further into the deep end, the Kelpie still dangling from my grip.

As this was happening, the little burden in my hand began to double in weight, then triple. I tried to let go and throw her further out, but my fingers were glued to the back of her coat. The arm holding her dropped as her head disappeared under the waves, nearly taking the rest of me with it.

She was trying to force me under.

“This is real.”

I braced my head down against the waves and began to wade back towards land, towing the Kelpie along behind me.

“Let’s fight!” the Kelpie burbled mockingly. “Come on. Let’s fight!”

I was about halfway there when my foot caught a rock.

Falling forwards, I hit the water with a splash. For a moment, the little girl’s weight disappeared from my hand.

Where did—

Something hard slammed into my back, sending me crashing down onto the lakebed. Spikes of pain rattled down my spine from the impact.

Somehow, during my fall, the arm that held the kid had twisted behind me into a posture that I was pretty sure my elbow was not designed for. The joints involved felt like they were on fire, even worse than when the feeling had burnt my forehead.

That hard, hoof like pressure slammed down on my back again, and again, churning up the water around me even more than before.

At that moment, I decided that I hated the pain feature.

***

It took ten more spine breaking kicks before I got over the shock enough to activate Short-Range Teleport. Once to escape out from under the Kelpie’s hooves, and again to return to shore. Lucky for me, it looked like the “injuries” feature had not been implemented alongside the pain.

A good thing. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d actually broken my arm and a couple ribs at the bottom of a lake.

I hastily reached into my Inventory and pulled out an HP potion.

Seeing my gesture, the Kelpie shook its head and charged towards me. With each step, its legs grew longer and greener in colour. Its tail began to sprout scales and flap from side to side, while its mouth elongated, jutting slightly ajar to reveal razor sharp teeth. Its mane wavered and solidified, forming a fin-like organ along its back.

I teleported out of the way of the charge. The Seelie slowed and whirled around, before beginning to canter towards me again.

Hurriedly backing away, I gulped down the HP potion. It tasted like air, but luckily it had a pretty good effect, allowing me to recover half of the HP I’d lost from the beating.

I reached out and equipped Sorrow, keeping my Inventory open just in case I needed another emergency heal. Thanks to the potion, I was no longer dangerously low on HP, but it was still lower than what I was comfortable with.

My head was a bit slow from the newfound sense of pain, but now that we were on land, I had a fair bit more confidence in beating the boss.

Lowering its head, the Kelpie charged again, and I jumped out of the way, making use of Invisibility and In the Dead of Night to get a crit hit off as it passed. Its health bar went down by a small chunk, but it was far from enough.

Reaching into my Inventory again, I pulled out an MP potion and downed that too. Using Short Range Teleport four times in such short succession was straining my MP reserves. Even with the additional MP from Stain of Autumn Gold, if I wanted to end this fight more quickly, I’d need access to my other MP skills.

“Attack. Speed. Burning Passion.”

I activated three skills in quick succession and pushed off, ricocheting towards the Kelpie at high speed. Sorrow burned a bright blue-green in my hand, trailing brilliant sparks behind it as I went.

The Kelpie whinnied, and activated a spell of its own, sending giant waves arcing across the land towards me.

“Invisibility.”

With the speed boost from In the Dead of Night, I managed to dodge the waves, and landed three hits on the Kelpie. Sorrow left an arc of flame through the air with each slash. The Kelpie whinnied and kicked at me, which I dodged and continued my onslaught.

Atop the sand, the Kelpie and I ducked and dodged around each other, firing off attack after attack. Though I was still woozy from the beating I’d taken, my practice with other bosses had paid off, allowing me to just barely dodge most attacks in the nick of time.

A few times I was kicked in the stomach, a shearing pain tearing through my abdomen and sending me stumbling. But by now I was getting used to the feeling of getting beaten up, and the shock paralysed me a lot less severely than the first time.

I managed to grit my teeth and keep on attacking through the gut punches, the Kelpie’s HP bar dropping off at a higher rate than my own.

Eventually, the victor was decided.

The Kelpie collapsed to the ground, its health bar depleted. It glared at me as it began to disintegrate into dust, as if it hadn’t tried to bury me alive just a few minutes ago.

I glared right back.

It was a bit self centered, but I wasn’t about to feel bad about killing a boss that just tried to do the same to me.

I sat down on the shore as the drops appeared, taking a moment to gather my thoughts before I went on to inspect them.

If there was one thing I learned from this experience, it was that I was much better off thinking it was all a dream.

If I thought it was all a dream, I wouldn’t have to care about the consequences of my actions, or lack thereof. Without the looming fear of consequences, I would not have cared enough to save the kid. If I hadn’t tried to save the kid, I would not have landed in this position with the word gullible written on my face.

…

That thought… scared me. Was I really getting so selfish that I cared more about my own wellbeing over a young child’s? Yeah, I’d been pranked pretty hard, but what if that had been an actual kid? If I just stood by the water yelling taunts, a kid might have drowned. In that case, my inaction would have killed a kid. One little life snuffed out, just because I didn’t want to get hurt.

Did I regret trying to save the Kelpie? Yes.

Would I do it again?

…

Yes, I told myself firmly.

I would, no, should, do it again.