“You owe me-- the city, money,” the blond man said as he slowly strolled toward the front of our wagon. He wore a green sash over his chainmail, and I saw that it had a shield with a strand of wheat embroidered over the shoulder area.

“Kimmel, I register my taxes when I get my license. I pay all my--”

“Shut up. I’m not going to let you wriggle out of this one, you dirty fenia.”

“I don’t want any trouble,” Artus said with a slight whine.

“What are you delivering? Spices? What else you got in there? How many coins do you have?” the man asked as he stepped near the donkey. His three minions walked behind him, and their mouths were all upturned into self-satisfied smirks.

Fuck. I hated bullies.

But then again, these were four armed and armored bullies. Had this been Astafar Unlimited, I could have taken them out easily, even with generic player versus player gear, but I didn’t really even know what level I was in this game, or what level Kimmel and his goons were.

“Is there some way we can work this out?” I leaned over the front of the wagon so that Kimmel could see me better.

“What? Did you bring a guard with you this time, Artus? If there is anything I hate worse than fenias, it is fenia lovers. Disgusting.”

“I’m his assistant,” I offered with a shrug of my shoulders. “Do you have any sort of documentation that allows you to claim his property?” I thought about what Sal would have said if he was in this situation.

“No, I don’t need documentation. I’m captain of the guard. He hasn’t paid his taxes.”

“Is the captain of the guard responsible for collecting taxes?” I asked Artus.

“No, it is actually the license and commerce representatives.”

“I am serving as a license and commerce representative today,” Kimmel snarled.

“But you have the documentation? If you don’t, it would seem like you’d just be taking property that wasn’t yours. That sounds like theft to me.”

“Shhhh,” Artus hissed at me.

“Are you calling me a thief?” The three men standing behind Kimmel opened their eyes in surprise.

“No, I’m just trying to understand the situation,” I said.

“Here is all you need to understand, fenia lover: he owes money, and I’m here to collect. So unless you want to bleed out on the street here, you’ll shut your mouth hole, and go back to licking your friend’s fur.”

“It’s okay Leo. I’ll just give him my money,” Artus sighed.

“No, fuck that. You traveled all this way to--”

“It’s fine. I don’t want you to get hurt, Leo. Grrr,” Artus whined.

“Damn it. Fuck. She told me not to fight.” I felt frustration build in my stomach. This was not a good game mechanic. I didn’t see how a new player would be expected to let their friend get robbed without fighting, and I guessed that these guards were all higher level than me. They did have nice looking swords and polished chain armor. Most of these games had newbie quests along the lines of killing ten rats or bunnies. Not fighting four armed men without a weapon.

“Go look inside the wagon,” Kimmel ordered his minions. He seemed to have realized that I had decided not to fight.

“I just have some more spices, and some pans to trade back at--”

“We’ll take a look, and take what we want. How much money do you have?” Kimmel snarled.

“Uggggh,” I seethed. This was just a game, and I knew I’d been a bit tongue in cheek earlier when I kept talking to Artus as if he was an NPC, but the shakedown was really bugging me. The AI had done a good job of making me like the character, and I didn’t want to stand around while he got robbed.

I knew Zarra didn’t want me to fight, but what was the worst that could happen? She said that the game was just a little unbalanced, and I would probably lose. Whatever, I didn’t care if I had to respawn. I didn’t want to sit here like an asshole and let my friend get strong armed.

“Nope, you aren’t taking anything.” I stood from the bench and felt my heart begin to race. I had no idea how the combat worked in this game, and I was probably committing virtual suicide.

“Are you daft? We’ll kill you.” Kimmel looked a bit confused.

“I don’t care--”

“No! We are sorry! Leo, sit down.” Artus pulled on the sleeve of my starter tunic, but I just ignored him.

“No.” I pointed down at Kimmel “Fuck off asshole. Leave my friend alone.”

“Did you just call me an asshole?” the blond man’s eyes widened and his jaw set.

“Fuck you. I sure did. Asshole.” I emphasized the last word.

“Kill him,” the man ordered his three goons, and they pulled their long swords from their scabbards.

The three swordsmen were positioned on the sides of the wagon. There were two on my right side and one on the left. Kimmel was still standing by the donkey, and he hadn’t bothered to draw his blade. It was a usual boss scene, and I guessed the bully was going to let his minions do all the work.

I jumped from the bench and moved to stand on top of the crates at the back of the wagon. The two on the right approached first, and they made half-assed poking motions at my feet with the points of their swords. It seemed as if they really didn’t want to kill me, and they might have figured that I would surrender if they stabbed me in the legs a few times.

They were wrong.

I sidestepped the first set of thrusts, and tiptoed across the crates as if I was playing the hot lava game. The one on the left stepped a bit too close to the side of the wagon, and I swung my leg out to kick him in the face.

I’d kicked him at probably about a quarter of my strength. It was more of a quick side stomp, and I expected him to fall back from the edge of the wagon. Instead, his head twisted around at a disgustingly wrong angle, and it sounded like someone had just snapped a wooden broomstick in half. He dropped to the ground, and his smashed-in head twisted around his neck so that his dead eyes were facing the sky.

Whoops.

The two swordsmen on the other side couldn’t see their friend, but Kimmel could, and he let out a shriek that reminded me of the shower scene in the classic “Psycho” movie. The blond man pulled out his sword as he screamed, but it looked as if he considered fleeing.

For half a second, I wondered how the looting system in Ohlavar Quest worked. Would I be able to take the guard’s sword? Would I be able to take his armor? Would it take me a long time? In Astafar Unlimited a player had to kind of kneel next to the corpse, and then a three-second timer would pass before a ‘loot’ window opened. I could move items into my inventory by clicking on them in the opened window, but I couldn’t equip new items or weapons during combat. It just took too long.

I decided not to risk jumping off of the wagon. The game had felt beyond real up to this point, but the last thing I needed was to make a grab for the dead fucker’s sword and then have a progress bar suddenly spring up while Kimmel walked toward me with his own blade at the ready.

Instead, I decided to keep my favorable position on top of the wagon and grab the top of the crate I had carried from Jerjay’s shop. The wood ripped away in my hands as if I was tearing open a potato chip bag, and I threw the lid at the two men on the right side of the wagon. They both ducked with a surprised yelp, and the wood fragmented into a hundred pieces when it smashed into a brick wall behind them.

The inside of the crate was filled with various pots and pans. Some were made of ornate copper, but most were the old fashioned cast iron that my parents had cooked with while I was growing up. I wrapped my fingers around the handle of one just as Kimmel shoved his blade at me from the side of the wagon. His angle wasn’t perfect because he was three or so feet below me, and I managed to whack the point of his weapon away with a smack of the cooking instrument.

Hey. There wasn’t any progress bar when I opened non-corpse containers. Good to know. The two men on the other side of the wagon circled around to the rear hatch. They each made sword thrusts, but their effort wasn’t coordinated, and I smacked them both out of the way with half shield-half baseball bat movements.

“Leo!” Artus yelled, and I spun to catch Kimmel’s upward thrust. The swing of my pan made a dull ringing sound when it connected with his sword, and the weapon spun free of his hand. It flew to the side of us and skipped down the street a good thirty feet.

“Ahhh!” the man’s screech almost hurt my ears. I’d have to talk to Zarra about making the first ‘boss’ a little less whiny.

I jumped away from the other sword thrusts and landed next to Kimmel on his side of the wagon. The man reached for a dagger on his belt, but I dabbed his hand with the cast iron pan, and he yelped again.

“Call off your men,” I said as I pressed the pot to the man’s throat. I figured that I’d be able to end this battle really quick if I snagged the lord’s fifth son, and his wide-eyed expression made me think that my plan was probably going to work.

“Stop!” he shouted as he backed up hastily. He didn’t move as fast as me, though, and I just walked forward with the pan at his throat until his back was pressed against the stone frontage of one of the houses lining the street.

“Tell them to drop their swords,” I commanded as the guards rounded the wagon.

“Drop your swords!” Kimmel screeched, and I heard the two pieces of steel land on the cobblestones.

“You’re such a little shit. Fucking bully,” I seethed at him.

“Please, don’t hurt me.”

“Leave my friend alone. He’s not bothering you. He said he paid his taxes. Stop harassing him.”

“Yes! I’ll leave him alone. Please don’t hurt me,” he gasped as I put a little more pressure on his throat.

I could actually feel where the pan in my hand pressed against his Adam’s apple. The tactile feedback was amazing. I couldn’t fucking believe it. Kimmel’s facial expression was also incredibly realistic. I could even see beads of nervous sweat running down his forehead.

“Okay, get the hell out of here. All three of you,” I said as I pulled the pan away from his neck

“You killed my man!” Kimmel pointed at the guard I had kicked.

“You want me to kill you? Get out of here.” I swatted his butt with the flat bottom part of the pan, and he yelped in pain as if he was a dog that just got his tail stepped on.

The blond man backed away from me, and the other two guards moved to pick up their swords. They pointed the tips of their blades at me as they stepped around their dead friend, then they flanked their boss. The three of them moved to where Kimmel’s sword lay in the street, and then he picked it up as he glared at me.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Leo. Kimmel will just get more men and then com--” Artus’ growl caught in his throat.

A group of almost twenty guards ran around the corner and turned onto the street.

They were forty feet beyond Kimmel, and the blond man turned to them with a cry of relief.

“He murdered my man! Arrest him!” he shrieked as he pointed at me.

I threw my pan at him.

Maybe it was a dumb move, but I figured that one of two things were about to happen: I’d either be able to pick up the sword at my feet, and then run away with the chance that I could maybe fight some of the guards once the “mob train” lost interest, or I wouldn’t be able to pick up the sword, and I’d probably get smashed by the wave of armed NPCs. Either way, Zarra’s programmers had done a great job of making Kimmel Halafast a hateable villain, and I wanted to get one last dig at him before I tried to leave the scene.

The skillet flew out of my hand like a vertical spinning Frisbee. I kind of thought I would miss the man since he was thirty or so feet away, and I was throwing a god damn frying pan, but the piece of cast iron connected with his face as if I’d chucked an asshole-seeking missile. There was a cymbal like clang, his blond head snapped back, his face exploded into a burst of brain-blood-skull bits, and the pan bounced high into the air like a tennis ball hitting a wall.

Okay. They’d definitely made me way too powerful to start out.

There was a sudden silence on the street; as the guards, Artus, Kimmel’s two goons, and a few observers stared at the cast iron skillet bouncing on the cobblestone streets for a few seconds. The pan finally came to rest near one of the sidewalks, and once it’s ringing had stopped the entire street exploded into movement.

“Run Leo!” Artus yelled as the twenty city guards drew their swords.

I bent over to grab the long blade on the cobblestones next to me and prayed that there wouldn’t be a loading time. There wasn’t one, and I picked up the sword as quickly as I would have picked up a weapon in real life.

“Run, Leo!” my friend yelled again.

I followed his advice, and sprinted down the nearest alleyway. There were a few citizens of Cutno lurking there, and they shouted with surprise when I dashed past them. The path here was narrow, and I figured that I would stand the best chance of evading them if I made a quick turn to deny them line of sight. I saw a break in the alley some fifty feet ahead, and I grunted as I commanded my muscular legs to power me there.

It was somewhat difficult to run with the sword in my hand, and I wondered if there was a command I could use to make it drop into my inventory. I actually didn’t know if I even had an inventory system past the pockets on my starter pants, so I figured trying to shove the blade in my pockets, or doing the drop kind of movement that I would use in Astafar Unlimited wouldn’t work.

I made the corner and ran between stone walls that were only a few feet apart. I saw that the path I was on continued for maybe fifty yards, and I guessed that I could make it there before these guards got to me, but then I looked up and noticed that the roofs of the two buildings were only twenty feet or so high. I got an idea that seemed kind of crazy, but it would also let me test out the game environment in a way that I thought would be interesting.

I ran forward, but instead of putting my next step on the ground, I pushed the side part of my foot against the right wall, then I did the same with the left. I had done plenty of parkour stuff during my training, and while I couldn’t compete at a world class level in that sport, I was talented enough to perform a parallel wall run.

I rose in the air with each step and then made a final leap to the roof of the left building. This one had clay made tiles, and I rolled past the stonework gutter. I had half expected the run to require a bit more effort on my legs, especially with the sword in my hand, but I didn’t even feel winded by the movement. I still took a deep breath to steady my nerves and waited for a few moments before I got to my feet.

“He went this way!” I heard a guard’s voice yell from down below. I crept away from the side of the roof and then carefully stepped across an alley break to another home with a thatched roof. This one was a little bit trickier to navigate, but I was able to climb to the top, and then step into a third home with stone shingles.

The sounds of the guard’s shouts grew fainter as I moved across the rooftops, and soon I was a good distance away from the street where I’d killed Kimmel. As I walked carefully on the roofs, I thought about the game design of the escort quest. The whole thing hadn’t been planned out that well. The concept had been fine, and Artus was a great NPC, but it had really gone sour once Kimmel showed up. There didn’t seem to be a clear dialogue tree that would enable me to convince the man not to extort my friend. I knew I’d made a mistake engaging them in combat, but I didn’t know how to prevent the shakedown. I’d been playing VR games for most of my life, and there was no question that I was the best in the world, so if I couldn’t guess at how to accomplish a goal, the average player would really be stumped.

Zarra had told me that the game was only at the sandbox level of development, so it was likely that this was just the basic outline of a quest that would become well-polished upon release. It still bugged me that I couldn’t help Artus out, but maybe that was the point. He was a great NPC, and I’d really made a wonderful connection with him. He had been designed as super friendly, and he’d offered to help me first with a quest. I could see new players getting attached to him easily since I felt a lot of fondness for him.

Thinking about the fenia made me consider what my actions should be for the rest of the escort mission. Had I actually failed the quest? Or had Artus slipped away from the guards and continued on his merry way? I didn’t really have another destination in mind for my rooftop travels, so I decided to alter my course a bit and check to make sure that my friend had made it to his third destination. Maybe the AI would have made the NPCs forget about me, and I could jump back into the quest as if I hadn’t abandoned him.

I picked my way carefully across the small city's rooftops, and then made it back to the street where I had killed Kimmel within a handful of minutes. The blond man’s body was still in the street, as was the other goon whose face I’d kicked in. Both corpses were surrounded by a few guards, and it looked like they were deciding what to do. Artus’ wagon was there as well, but a city guardsman was in the process of climbing into the bench, and I watched him flip the reins to make the horned donkey walk forward. I didn’t see my friend anywhere, but then I noticed a group of guards about a hundred yards ahead of where the wagon was heading.

I backed up from the spot on the roof where I peered down on the street and then ran as carefully as I could toward the group of guards. It took me half a minute to catch up to them, and I saw that they had captured my friend.

“Please. I didn’t do anything. I’m just a spice trader,” Artus said to the guards in a voice that made my heart ache.

“You were aiding a murderer. But not just any murderer. We all saw him kill Lord Halafast’s son,” one of the guards said.

“Leo was attacked; he was just trying to defend himself. Please. I had nothing to do with this.”

“I saw it differently, as did the twenty-three other guards. We saw this ‘Leo’ kill Kimmel, and then you warned him about us. Party to murder. You will stand trial in front of Lord Halafast.”

“No, wait, please. I’ve been doing business with Cutno’s shops for over ten years. I’ve never caused any trouble. I didn’t want Kimmel to die, but he was attacking my friend for--”

“So this Leo is your friend?” The man asking questions appeared to have a nicer uniform than the other four guards, so I guessed he was the leader.

“He was helping me unload some goods. Grrrr. Yes, he was my friend, but I just met him a few hours ago.”

“This doesn’t look any better for you fenia. You’ve gone from helping a murder to saying he is a friend, or that he worked for you. Did you both conspire to murder the Lord’s fifth son?”

“Grrr. No, I didn’t! Please!” Artus started to pull away from the guards, but one of them grabbed him by the face and pulled him back into their clutches.

Artus’ hat fell off from the movement, and the bandages that covered his face tore loose in the armored grip of the guard. I let out a gasp when I saw that he looked like a humanoid cat. His fur reminded me of a dark orange and gray tabby, and his face looked fully feline. One of the guards punched him in the stomach as soon as the hat fell off, and my friend let out a growl of pain as he fell to the cobblestone.

“Fucking fenia!” another guard yelled as he kicked a thick leather boot into my friend’s stomach.

Artus let out another terrified growl, and he curled up into a ball when a second guard kicked him in the back. Anger ripped through my stomach, and I thought about jumping down on the street to fight the men that beat my friend, but I knew I’d probably get killed by the four guards, and then have to respawn back at the grove of trees. Then I would miss where they took the fenia.

I waited on the roof and tried to keep my rage in check. Maybe this was all part of the planned quest?

The guards finally pulled my friend up to his feet, and I could see blood dripping from his cat nose. He wasn’t moving, and each guard grabbed an arm so that they could drag him down the street. The guards seemed to think that what they had done to Artus was funny, and they laughed as they took him through the city.

I followed them from the rooftops for almost a half an hour. Finally, they reached a squat brick building that sat next to a large city fountain. I guessed that the building was a garrison because of the bars on all of the windows. The men pulled Artus inside, and they parked his wagon near the alley behind the building.

I quickly made my way around the city roofs until I could get on top of the garrison. I made sure to walk on the thicker edge parts of the tiles, so as to not disturb the guards inside, and I soon found a window where I could lean down and try to eavesdrop.

“I’ll file the report. Did you send a runner to Lord Halafast?” I heard a voice say inside.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m sure the lord’s private guard will come pick up the prisoner in the next few hours. Go out and find this Leo. If we can’t catch him, Halafast is going to have my head. Go now!”

“Yes, sir!” a bunch of voices shouted, and the door to the garrison opened beneath me.

Four guards ran out and back toward the area of the city where I had killed Kimmel. I wondered if there were anymore guards in there beside the captain NPC, but I really didn’t have a way to look inside without jumping to the ground. This roof wasn’t really that high, and I realized that a few of the citizens were looking in my direction with puzzled expressions on their faces. If the guards that ran out of the building had bothered to turn around, they would have seen me.

I pondered what to do for a few moments. It was probably a good time to logout. I had dinner plans with Zarra and her parents. I wanted to talk to them more about the game, their graphics engine, and the AI. There were a zillion things I wanted to ask them about, but most of all, I wanted to apologize to the beautiful woman for not taking her seriously. From what I had experienced so far, this game was fantastic. It needed some tweaks, and there needed to be more of a video game user interface, but I loved every other part of it, and I knew that they had a winner on their hands.

Would Arnacript’s game usurp Astafar Unlimited and become the most popular game in the world? I would bet my money on it, as long as they could get their VRIU low in cost, and could fix some of the stuff I would tell them about.

I jumped from the garrison building and climbed to a higher roof. This looked like a church, and I found easy handholds on the uneven stone of its walls. Once I made it to the roof, I found a flat spot to lie down. Zarra had asked me to go back to the grove of trees to logout, but she had also said I could just lie down and close my eyes for twenty seconds.

I lay on the stone tiles, closed my eyes, and slowly counted to twenty.