21

Fata Morgana

Rian tensed, realizing he’d been caught off-guard. But the person beyond the lake was just Kat, wearing a black garb and a bandanna. Trotting alongside her was a silver fox, its ears and tail tipped with white fur. A glowing outline appeared around Kat’s figure as Rian focused.

Kat

[Moonlight]

Level 16 Thief

…

Damn. She’d leveled so quickly. At least she knew what she was doing.

“How’d you get here so fast?” Rian said, almost shouting to project his voice over the lake. It had only been a few minutes, and yet she’d managed to cross from the Temple of Altir to somewhere in the Elmguard forests. He wasn’t sure how far it was, but it had to’ve been a decent trip.

“Handy little Thief skill,” she shouted. “Lemme show you.”

She stepped onto the lake and disappeared along with the fox. Where the shadows of the trees touched the water’s surface, she reappeared and flickered between them as if she were only visible while in the shade. In a matter of seconds, she and the fox had crossed the lake and were standing in front of Rian and Corvis.

Smiling, Kat threw out her arms and curtsied as if she’d landed a trick in front of an audience. She straightened up and walked over to him. The fox, which had “Visha Lv. 10” floating above it, approached Rian and sniffed the air.

Rian peered over at the other side of the lake. “So you and Maia dealt with LastWhisper already? They’re not following you still, right?”

Kat plopped down beside him, sighing contentedly. “Oh, no. They gave up a while back. Once I advanced to Thief that was pretty much it.” She nodded toward the lake. “Nobody can catch me if I’m constantly in the shadows like that.”

Rian swallowed. He hadn’t considered it until now, but he would’ve felt safer being out in the open by himself than sitting beside Kat. From what he’d seen, the target on her back was at least an order of magnitude bigger than his. Torgo might’ve had it out for him, but if it was just a personal vendetta then he doubted the entire guild of LastWhisper was going to come crashing down on him. With Kat nearby, it wasn’t just a possibility; it was practically guaranteed.

“Yeah, but—” Rian stuttered. “You’re sure they not still coming after you now?”

Sitting there, Kat had already moved into half-sync. He couldn’t see anything of her real-life surroundings, but her figure was shimmering like a hologram, and out of nowhere she was eating a sandwich. “Nah, we’re safe,” she said, chewing. “Trust me, dude. What happened at the harbor was because they knew I was coming way in advance.”

Beside Rian, Visha was sniffing at one of the meina that had wandered too close. The fox opened its jaw and gently clamped down on the creature, then let go. The meina rolled over, pretending to be dead, and Visha tilted its head in confusion. The meina righted itself, then scampered off. In no apparent hurry, Visha trotted after it.

“Is that your pet?” Rian said.

“Yeah. Had so much stuff stockpiled ahead of time for this character like you wouldn’t believe.” Kat tugged at the sleeves of her garb, then called out, “Visha’s a good girl, isn’t she?” The fox perked up, turning to look at Kat, then continued onward with its leisurely hunt.

Through the silence, the chirps of distant meina resounded, and for a moment there was nothing but the sunlight shimmering between the ripples on the lake.

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” Rian said. “The, uh, lake. I mean.”

“Lots of people go on virtual vacations here,” Kat said. “On the Altir server, thank god. Nothing like seeing a tourist to ruin your immersion.”

“After I moved to the city,” Rian said, “there weren’t any places like this nearby anymore. It always felt like something was missing. Seeing some nature is nice for a change.”

“Same, dude.” Glancing at him, Kat smirked. “We’re all a bunch of shut-ins too, you know. It’s too expensive to go traveling and sight-seeing anyway.”

Kat picked up a stone and flung it across the lake. Each time it skipped over the water, a tone played. The pitch of the tone rose with each successive skip until the stone finally sank, and a short victory melody played as the number of skips—seven—displayed on the air. A few seconds later, another stone spawned beside them, as if fading into existence on a whim.

Rian shifted around, though he wasn’t uncomfortable. He was pretty sure he couldn’t physically be uncomfortable here, but habit commanded him for a moment. “Did you really come all the way out here just to sit and chat with me?”

“Well,” Kat said, “I was going to fight you—because I’m an absolute PVP-fiend, if you couldn’t tell—and maybe give you some tips. There aren’t many PVPers in the guild, so it’s not often I get to mentor anyone.” A nearby meina padded up to them through the grass. It sniffed at Kat, and she dropped the stone she was holding to gently pet its head. The creature rose to meet her hand and blinked as she stroked its back. “It’s nice to have these quieter moments, too. It doesn’t always have to be a mad-dash to the level cap, you know? There’s more to the game than that.”

“Wait,” Rian said, “so the people in the guild aren’t PVPers but they’re playing on the PVP server?”

“Yeah, it happens. A lot of them are my IRL friends. They’re mostly just here to hang out with each other,” she said, almost disappointed. “How’d your match go, by the way?” She gestured at a window that Rian couldn’t see, more translucent glass. “So you’re officially one-and-oh in PVP? Who’d you fight?”

“Someone named Torgo. From LastWhisper, of course. Just my luck.”

“Wh—” Sitting up, Kat stared at him. “That’s… Ogrot. One of his alts.”

“Who?”

“‘Ogrot.’ It’s ‘Torgo’ spelled backwards. He was still a Beginner, right?” When Rian nodded, she said, “Damn. He’s like rank five-hundred or something on his main, last I checked. You really beat his perma-Beginner? What was your combat grade?”

“Hah, well… It was a B-. And I’m sure I would’ve lost if we weren’t both Beginners. We only have, what, two different skills at this level?”

“Dude, that’s beside the point. You still won. That means you’ve got fundamentals. Solid fundamentals.” She looked off, pumped her fist, and muttered, “I knew I was right about you.”

“I mean, he was pretty good, but I don’t think he was that good.”

Kat straight-up laughed at him. “Ogrot’s a troll. He’s always hanging out around the starting area on his alts to kill newbies.”

Rian chewed his lip for a second. “You know, I…think I’d like to focus on PVP. Like, fully.”

“Really?” Kat’s eyes lit up. “Cause I’ve been needing a sparring partner.”

“Yeah, it seems like a nice way to level.” Not that he really had a choice, he wanted to add, given the constraints he faced with combat on the overworld. But it also meant he could go all-out and play the way he wanted without worrying about dying—it was just the Y-Locator that he had to worry about losing, and that he could deal with. “There aren’t any catches, are there?”

“Nope,” Kat said. “You can level all the way to cap whichever way you like.”

Rian blinked. “But that sounds like I’d be skipping most of the game.”

Kat tilted her hand back and forth. “Eh, I’d think of it as trading one route to endgame for another. PVE’s interesting and all, but the process of getting to cap isn’t all that exciting, to be honest. It’s the endgame that everybody’s after. And trust me—if you’re level cap, it means the game’s effectively judged you to be capable of fighting anything at that level. It doesn’t matter whether it’s against monsters or other players.”

Rian sat back, resting his palms on the ground. It was a little disappointing that he was essentially restricted to one side of the game, and he’d be locked into whichever playstyle he chose when he stepped outside of PVP. But by then he’d likely be skilled enough to handle anything less than endgame content. Random encounters wouldn’t be able to touch him. As a short-term solution to the degradation problem, it was great. And it would give him time to figure out a long-term solution later.

“If I had to guess,” he said, “leveling in PVP is a lot faster, right? I got an entire three levels from my match with Torgo.”

“It works a little differently,” Kat admitted. “A lot of factors come into play.” She sat up, and Rian could see the excitement in her eyes. He couldn’t help but smile as she gestured and explained the system, delving into its nuances and intricacies. She seemed like she an entirely different person from when he’d first met her on the ship at the start of the game.

There was a feeling in his chest. A good one. He was glad the way things had turned out.

Kat really was just as much of a nerd as him.

“With mobs on the overworld,” she said, “everything gives a fixed amount of XP, because that’s the value the game assigned to that mob—it’s a judgment call on how experienced you have to be to defeat it. So if you manage to kill one, you obviously deserve that much XP.”

“It’s because they behave predictably, right?” he said.

“Right. Mobs have scripted behaviors, and that’s why they give static XP rewards. For the most part.”

“For the most part?” When he thought back to his skirmishes with the meina on Jensen’s farm, it certainly seemed like they were adapting to him—almost more than was necessary, toward the end.

“Well,” Kat said, “there are some mobs that can adapt to you, but they’re incredibly rare. It’s kind of a big red flag for the GMs if that starts happening.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “Means the AI’s getting out of hand and what not.”

Rian, smiling as he listened, tried his best not to let his smile falter. His mouth twitched as he glanced aside at Corvis, who was listening idly.

“Against players,” she continued, “it’s a little different. Nobody has set XP values that they give out to their opponents, obviously. The game judges how well you’re fighting based on all kinds of stuff like your movement, your decisions, and your ability to adapt against the other player. It can literally see your decision-making process and judge how proficient you’re becoming on the spot.”

“Damn,” Rian said, taken aback. “That’s…actually crazy.” He knew Mirage could—to a degree—read the minds of its players, but he hadn’t known it was integrated that deeply into PVP. Every little development kept taking his breath away. “So there’s no way someone could abuse the system to gain levels quickly, right? The game would know.”

“Exactly,” Kat said. “It’s as fair as it can be. You can’t just find a high level player willing to let you kill them over and over, because the game will give you nothing for it. You get back what you put in. And honestly, the skills you need at the top level of PVP come in handy for the equivalent in PVE, especially if you’re a single-target class. All you’d need then is some teamwork skills and bestiary knowledge, and you’re set.”

“Hey, whichever is easier and quicker, I’m all for it.”

“Well, I don’t know about easier,” Kat said, “but I made this alt for a pretty good reason—there’s a big tournament coming up, an annual one, the largest in the game. Lots of spectators, lots of sponsorship opportunities. I’m planning on entering it this year.”

“The Sacred Tournament?” he said, remembering that Lahir had mentioned it.

Surprised, Kat said, “You know about it already?”

“I heard about it, but…I had no idea it was that big of a deal. Kind of an odd name for a tournament.”

Kat shrugged. “It’s a lore thing. And that’s the unofficial name for it, anyway. The ‘real’ name for it is the Fata Morgana tournament. But everyone calls it the Sacred Tournament. It’s ‘sacred’ because S-rank gear and items are all fair play. You can use all the stuff that you normally can’t in ranked PVP.”

So the “S” in “S-rank” stood for sacred? He’d thought all this time that it meant “special,” but it was probably just a peculiarity of the game. Either one basically meant the same thing anyway.

“The winner of the whole thing gets a million in cash,” Kat said, “and a meeting with one of the Four—not just a wimpy memory of them, but the full-blown thing, and they can ask for basically anything they want.”

Anything? At all? Rian nearly stuttered as he said, “In-game, of course, right?”

Still smiling, Kat turned her head slightly as she squinted at him. “Yeah. Whatever they want in-game. To a degree, at least.”

If only it were that easy to get a new body in real-life, Rian thought with surreal grief. Well, maybe not easy, winning a server-wide tournament like that. But it’s possible. He tried to stay calm as he asked, “Doesn’t that mean Yindra’s actually alive, then? Someone’s had to’ve won this tournament and met with her before.”

Kat grimaced. “No one really knows. The winning player has the option for their meeting and request to be completely private. The top players can confirm that the prize is real, but the player who won the first Sacred Tournament didn’t give away anything about it afterwards.” Again she waved her hand in dismissal. “That’s stuff for the top fifty to worry about, anyway. Getting to that level is something else entirely. But it’s a dream, you know?”

“Hah, yeah.” It was nice to consider, but there was no way he could win such a thing without putting in years of hard work. The fact that there was a competitive scene around PVP meant that it was, by necessity, a balanced and healthy scene where players’ skills generally won over luck or randomness. Kat might’ve considered him talented, but there was no way he was going to show up and steamroll the competition without some serious time and effort.

Though…he did have all the time in the world, as far as he knew.

“I’m assuming there’s some requirements for entry,” he said.

“Yep. That’s the trick,” Kat said. “To even get into the tournament, you have to be ranked in the top 256 PVPers globally. And the rankings use the same judgment system as XP rewards, so it’s pretty water-tight. I managed it on my main in the early days, last year, but it’s not exactly an easy feat. I’m fairly confident I can do it again on this character, but who knows? LastWhisper’s been trying their best to keep me from getting anywhere.”

Rian’s brow shot up. “Wait, what was your PVP rank?”

Kat half-shrugged. “I peaked at 198.”

Holy shit.

That nearly bowled him over. He remembered that she’d even offhandedly said, a few minutes ago, that she was going to mentor him. Maybe he did have some kind of hidden Luck stat after all. Running into her at the start of the game was really the most fortunate thing that had happened so far.

“That’s because I was playing since day-one, of course,” Kat said, looking out over the lake again. She glanced up at something in the sky, but Rian saw nothing there. “I’ve kind of fallen off since then, but there’s always another chance. The higher you climb, the more attention you get. And then sponsors start coming to you, and then the money starts rolling in. A bit more sustainable than streaming.”

“There’s a streaming function in this game?” It didn’t surprise him, but he hadn’t known about it at all. Streaming in ElmSaga had been a huge hassle.

“Of course there is! Everybody’s always streaming nowadays. I’m streaming right now.” She waved at the sky. “I can’t really talk with them or see what they’re saying until I go to half-sync, but it’s nice to feel like someone’s always with you, in-game.”

He stopped breathing for a moment. His in-game appearance almost exactly matched his real-life appearance. Running into other people in-game was one thing, but broadcasting himself to an audience was another. If someone from his old stream ever recognized him, there was a good chance it would eventually expose his situation—that he was dead, and stuck, and not quite real inside this game. It would certainly make things more complicated, trying to snake his way around the truth as he explained it to other people.

As much as he wanted to, even telling Kat the truth would be a terrible idea—not even considering that she’d been streaming this entire time without him knowing it.

In the end, there wasn’t anything he could do. Someone would discover his real-life body eventually. Being recognized in-game was going to happen eventually, given enough time. He just wished it wouldn’t happen before he found a way out of all this. It felt like the odds were getting worse each moment.

As Kat’s figure reemerged into full-sync, she met his eyes, and he could feel the determination in her gaze. “The cutoff for the next Sacred Tournament is in a month,” she said. “I should be able to hit it no problem, but you’re gonna have to keep up with me if we’re sparring together.”

“It’s annual, right? I think…I should probably aim for the one next year.”

“Good idea.” She nodded. “Oh man, what am I saying? You haven’t even advanced yet. You’ve got a long way to go before then.” She stood up and put her hands on her hips. “So,” she said, offering her hand. “Ready for me to whip you into shape?”

He took her hand, and she pulled him up. “Kat…” He dusted himself off. “Thank you. For everything.”

Again she half-shrugged as if to deflect the compliment, though she was still smiling. “Helping out and getting to know my guildies is half the reason I play this game.”

Companionship Level Up! (Lv. 1→2)

Kat is now your Friend!

[!] The Companionship System: Friends

While partying together, companions of this level (Friend) will receive +4% EXP and +2 to all stats; stamina usage is reduced by 5%.

“There we go,” Kat said, sounding unusually proud. “That’s what I wanted to see.” She turned to him as, beside her, Visha came running up. “All right, get ready! One advancement at Elmguard, coming right up.”

Kat has invited you to her party.

Accept? (Yes / No)

As Rian nodded, Kat took his hand in her own. Before he even knew what was happening, Kat stepped onto the shadow of a tree, and everything went dark.