“I can see why your username is like that,” Trix’ voice came ringing out through the chat menu that floated at the corner of my eye. I crouched down among the tall, waving grass of the Hallowed Moors, the Ethereal Cape flinging out annoyingly around me. “Finding St John’s Wort is not supposed to be that difficult.”

“Ugh. You’re just as bad as Marge,” I grumbled as I pulled up another plant with small yellow flowers. “Appraisal.”

[Name Flowering Weed (N)

Effects Nil

Crafting N/A

Description

A common weed found in the Hallowed Moors. Can be modified to obtain crafting item Crushed Petals (N).]

“Fucking,” I threw the useless plant as hard as I could, watching it get swallowed up by the waving heads of grass.

“Language.”

“Language my ass, you’re not being very helpful,” I grumbled at the chat screen as muffled chuckling sounds echoed out across the sea of grass and heather.

“I don’t understand how you’ve only found two so far. Back when I did the tutorial, I managed to find five spawning right next to each other,” Trix mused. “Isn’t your Ethereal Cape supposed to increase the drop rate?”

“Well, I mean at least I found two. Who knows, maybe without it I’d have found nothing.”

“True, true. Always good to be optimistic.”

When Jilly gave me the quest to find St John’s Wort, I didn’t expect to have to spend twenty minutes in Hallowed Moors pulling up every yellow flower I could find. It wasn’t as if the yellow was that elusive, after all, the Hallowed Moors was just a wide rolling plain of waving grass that came up to your knees, yellow and purple blossoms as far as the eye could see. Walk a few steps and I’d come face to face with another dainty yellow flower nestled among the greens and purples. The issue that I was having, was that just about none of the flowers I had pulled up were St John’s Wort. Funny thing, they were only of the Uncommon rarity, and while you probably wouldn’t be able to hoard a stash of a fifty on your first run, three should have been no problem. After coming up with nothing after five minutes, I’d called Marge through the chat and asked whether I was in the right place. Then, after confirming that yes, this is the Hallowed Moors, St John’s Wort does spawn here, and that I’m just getting incredibly unlucky with the drops (as usual), I resulted in chatting with her while I weeded out the place.

It had been all fine and dandy at first, mostly talk about how she’d accepted my application to the Chosen Ones Alliance and briefings on how I was expected to contribute to resources, and dungeon raids, and searching areas for clues on how to get out, until I asked this one particular question.

“Say, did Rue ever tell you guys how he’s getting all those Ethereal Capes? They seem pretty valuable from all the stat boosts they give you.” I’d asked.

There had been silence.

“Who’s Rue?” Marge’s voice had come crackling through, half concerned and half skeptical.

“You know, the guy at the beginning? Who gives you the badge and the cape and stuff?”

“Oh,” she’d fallen silent again. “You mean The Decay, don’t you?”

“What? He’s The Decay?”

“You didn’t know?”

“He’s such a nice guy-”

“How could you not know!”

“I mean, nobody ever told me.”

“Are you dense? He’s infected with Ruin and lives in The Decay’s boss room, who else could he be? He even looks like Rosa, and Rosa only has one infected relative. Who is The Decay.”

“W-well, it didn’t come to me at the time.”

“What?”

“I’m not very perceptive, you see.”

“Look. You said his name was Rue, right? That means you asked. If my source is right, you get an achievement if you ask, and it literally says right there, in plain text, that you asked THE DECAY for their name.”

“...”

“Luck…?”

“Oh. It does. Well shit. I… I didn’t notice.”

“Fucking, oh my gosh, I am…” dramatic sighing noises. “I’ll get back to you later.”

“Oi, Marge. Marge?”

And then she hung up.

I felt that she was just short of saying something along the lines of “why are you so fucking stupid”, and I don’t blame her. And hence, upon pondering over Rue’s not actually hidden and in fact quite obvious secret identity, I called Trix instead.

He responded a bit slower than Marge. When he finally connected to chat, the audio was a bit janky, and there was a lot of background noise coming through the screen. Heavy footsteps, dripping water, and the sound of someone breathing down your ear. It was a tad unsettling, but Trix’ calm and friendly tone assured me that everything was under control. Probably. From the heavy breathing in the background, I assumed that he was going dungeon diving in the Underground, since all the mobs there wheezed like elderly smokers. He seemed a bit busy, but assured me that he was willing to talk for a while while I tried to find the blasted St John’s Wort.

“You know, why don’t you come over here and help me with your magic five-in-one-go lucky touch? Maybe I’ll suddenly get a sprig of half a dozen.”

Trix laughed again, but this time, his laughter sounded a bit strained.

“I’d love to, pal, but sadly I have a bit of business to attend to over here.”

“Mind entertaining me?”

“Nothing big, just a little maggot that needs to be put in place.”

“Guild member acting up?” In that case, the heavy breathing might be a Chosen One getting their ass handed to them. Poor guy. “Sounds rough.”

“Well… More or less, you could say.”

I bent down and plucked another yellow flower from the ground as Trix continued to talk in the slow, thoughtful way that he did, about what, I wasn’t quite paying too much attention to. This one seemed to be a bit different from the other fifty or so flowers I’d ripped from the ground. Could it be? Was my search finally over? I stared down at its stupid, frail, little petals as I activated Appraisal again.

St John’s Wort St John’s Wort St John’s Wort St John’s Wort...

[Name St John’s Wort-]

Booyah!

I was about to let loose a victory cry when Trix beat me to the punch.

“NOT A WORD FROM YOU!” I could almost feel my eardrums pop as Trix’s shout exploded from invisible speakers, the anger in his voice making me unconsciously take a step back in surprise. For such a chill guy, he sounded very scary when he was angry. Heck, had I even experienced Trix being this angry before?

“Me?” I questioned tentatively.

“No. No, of course not, I was talking to someone else,” Trix’s tone lowered to a less ear shattering volume, his voice sounding strained. The intensity in his voice was mostly gone, but the underlying anger remained, bubbling like lava under a seemingly calm facade. “I’m a bit occupied at the moment, Luck, I’m afraid we’ll have to continue this conversation later. Hopefully you’ll find your St John’s Wort soon.”

[Voice chat with Trixnoct ended.]

Man, whoever pissed off someone as chill as Trix must have done something really bad. What did they do? Scamming? Killsteal? PK? I shrugged and opened up the Map, marking my next destination for Jilly’s fetch quests with a pin. Whatever it was, it sounded like they were having a bad time. Note to self, don’t fuck with Trix unless you can’t help it.

Before unintentionally convincing Marge that I was a complete moron, I’d manage to get the details of the next two fetch quests that she’d send me on. One to the Singing Brook for a Crystal Drop and another to any random town in the Outer City to buy a Tier 1 Elixir of Life. The end goal looked like it was pointing towards enhancing HP potions, but I wasn’t too sure about the details. What can I say? I usually mass buy my potions from the travelling merchants.

I made a stop at the town the munchkin lived in before heading on to the Singing Brook to buy an Elixir of Life. 30G deducted from my grand total of 50, in order to buy a pretty useless HP potion, that only returned 200HP. My heart stings. Of course, with the current level of HP my character had, 200 was more than enough to return me to full health during a fight. But looking at how my measly fortune got cut by half, and then seeing what I got in return… feels bad.

You see, when you originally had a pretty much bottomless pool of wealth on a maxed out account, you get used to frivolously using up Tier 10 Elixirs of Life like drinking water. 2500HP per bottle. 2500. Just looking at that 200 description on my newly bought Tier 1 Elixir hurt.

But wealth comes with grinding, and all pros start out poor. I’ll get back my hundred thousand G someday, you’ll see.

On my way out of town, I saw the munchkin again. She was lying on the cobbled tiles of the market with a look of concentration plastered on her face, in an oddly familiar position that reminded me shamefully of my four days of denial.

It would probably have been a better idea to just be on my way, after all, I still had to check on Richard to see if my Copper Knife was done yet, but a sudden mischievous urge came over me and I headed over to the munchkin.

“What’re you doing, Emmie?” I crouched down next to her head. “Yoga?”

“Shhh,” the munchkin scrunched up her face in the sort of endearing way that kids do when they’re trying to be serious. “I’m concentrating.”

“Concentrating?” I feigned surprise. “For what?”

She giggled.

“I need to think of grown up stuff so that I can grow up faster. Like weapons, and money, and pai… pay…”

“Paychecks?”

“Yes,” she nodded seriously. “Paychecks.”

I might have instilled a few strange ideas into her head while I was still moping.

“And why would a little lady want to do that?”

“So that I can grow up faster,” her small hands curled into fists and she made punching gestures up at me. “Because Mama said that I can join the Wild Hunt if I grow up.”

Did the level based aging system apply to NPCs too? If that was the case, then the munchkin probably didn’t have a big chance of growing up. Or becoming any sort of warrior, in fact.

“Sounds like a big dream.”

“Yesss,” she beamed. “Big dream for big people.”

I messed around with Emmie for a bit more before heading over to her house, feeling a lot more refreshed. There was just something about kids that raised your spirits. Of course, when you weren’t feeling up for it, they could be annoying, and when you were in a bad mood, they could be really annoying, but most of the other times, they were fun. Simple, honest, naive trains of thought that you didn’t have to read too much into to be able to understand. I found them more relaxing to have a simple chat with than the rest of the people I’d had to deal with back in the other world. There weren't any underlying motives, no double meanings, no trying to gain the upper hand in a conversation. Just pure and simple talk that didn’t mean anything important.

Then again, I thought back to that very short period in high school when I babysat grade schoolers for pocket money, when it came down to trying to get things done, kids were most definitely the most frustrating type of person to deal with.

When I reached the familiar building on the side of the street, it wasn’t Richard that greeted me at the door, but Lydia, her homely face smiling up at me as she regarded me through kindly eyes.

“If it isn’t Bad_Luck,” she beamed and ushered me into the house. “You’re here for your Copper Knife aren’t you? I’ve got it sanded and tidied up for you on the table.”

“Ooh, thanks,” I stepped in through the doorway. I’d never told her my name, did she secretly use Appraisal on me too? Then again, maybe not. The glowing name label above my head clearly spells it out, after all. “By the way, where’s Richard? I would have thought he’d be the one to give it to me since he was the one I made the transaction with.”

“He’s in the market selling his wares,” Livia shook her head. “Hoping to reel in the newer batch of Champions. He was concerned that you wouldn’t know where to find him amongst all the other smiths, so he left it with me in case you were to pop by.”

She walked over to the table in the centre of the room to retrieve what was presumably the Copper Dagger wrapped in a napkin, and handed the hilt to me. Removing it carefully from the confines of the napkin, I held it up and studied it. It wasn’t anything special really, just your classic, old fantasy world dagger, with a sort of reddish brown tint to the blade and a simple leather handle. No decorations, no precious gems, no special carvings, none of the fancy, glowy stuff that I was used to stashing in my inventory. Wasn’t even all that shiny, either, and only carried a dull lustre. Just a plain old knife made out of copper. I used Appraisal on it.

[Copper Dagger N

Lv 10

-ATK +100]

Hngh… That was pitifully low… But it should still be enough for handling any Tier 1 dungeons that should come my way.

Might be a bit of a stretch if I said that I could solo the whole powered down Fortress of Ruin after I got my Class Change, but at least with an increase in attack power, I could probably grind the lower levels on my own without a party member carrying me.

“Looks good. I’d stay to chat but I’m afraid I’ve got a quest to finish.” I waved as I headed back out the door. “Tell Richard I said thanks.”

“Of course,” I could hear her calling from behind me as I moved towards my next destination. “Feel free to stop by any time.”

My thoughts began wandering once I was on the road again. Richard and Livia. Despite the guaranteed benevolence of most randomly generated town NPCs, they seemed to carry a sort of authenticity that I hadn’t really noticed from said type of NPCs back when I still had a maxed out character. From my general impression, all they had said back then were the same old things, the same old “hello, do you need anything?”s and “fine day, isn’t it?”s, as well as maybe the occasional scripted whisper about the entrance to the Underground. I’d always just hurried on my way past them, only heading over to talk when I’d finished all the quests the Guild Hall had to offer, and still needed a bit more cash from randomly generated side quests . I hadn’t even been able to go into any of the houses before, let alone had one of them tell me to “stop by any time”. Since when had they gotten complex to the point that they sounded and acted almost exactly like real people? A feature limited only for Chosen Ones perhaps? To keep us busy while we were stuck here? Or maybe something more?

If they all seemed to be complex, what was stopping this world from being just as complex? Despite how unpolished everything seemed to be at the moment, who was to say that it would stay that way? Would I end up coming face to face with whatever the fuck Ruin actually was? Would even the randomly generated NPCs suddenly start getting infected by Ruin outside of special events and story mode? Was there even anyone pulling the strings here? Or did this world just pop into existence all on its own? If that was the case, how did this become a game in my world?

Too many questions, and a generous lack of answers. I could go around ignorantly like I would if I were playing the game regularly, but then if I ran into a situation where my game sense wasn’t enough to save me, I would be in pretty deep shit. So far, it more or less seemed to be the same as the RPG I knew and loved, but the NPCs? And the seemingly half finished world? Those were new, new things that I didn’t know could happen. Who was to say that the world wouldn’t pull out the rug from under me and suddenly tell me that jokes on you, you can’t respawn anymore because of this thing you missed? Messing around and playing the game like usual sounded very appealing, but now that I come to think of it, I most definitely shouldn’t be completely in the dark about whatever was happening. After all, dumb shits are the first to die in movies. I would probably have to go ask Marge about what she knew of this world, and maybe any leads they might have on what the fuck was going on. Or Trix. They both seemed to be the veterans in this whole dilemma. Maybe I could establish some connections with the other Chosen Ones through the guild and not be laughed at for being a complete buffoon anymore.

And then there was the other type of weird NPC, Rosa. Rosa had gone from “perfect best girl” on my waifu list, to “scary no touchy” in the short time I’d been here. Not even Rue, who I finally noticed was Mr Oh-I’m-so-damn-evil Decay, had felt that menacing (Honestly, even a friendly guy like Richard was more menacing than he was. What went wrong there?). From our fortunately brief and few encounters, I had finally been able to draw a summary on why she felt so off. It was because she felt like she was acting all the time. Everything she did screamed fake, and the only time it didn’t was when she started monologuing about Chosen Ones and NPCs- actually, hold that thought, how did she even know that she and her peers were NPCs in the first place? That was something I hadn’t even heard Richard and Livia say, and I had spent hours talking to them about their strangely Chess centred life. Townspeople? I’d heard. Faeries? Definitely. NPC? Not a peep. And yet Rosa had just confronted me for what was less than five minutes, and she’d already spilled that she knew exactly what us Chosen Ones were, and what she herself was.

Well fuck, more questions that I know very well I don’t have the capability to find the answers to on my own.

Before I knew it, my feet had taken me to where I needed to be while my brain was engaged in the strenuous mental activity of asking questions I should have asked the moment I got here. The Singing Brook was exactly what the name entailed. A river that sang. Well, not literally singing, but more of the sort of “singing” sound that water makes when it plunges itself through swaying rushes and over small pebbles lying around at the bottom of the riverbed. That, and then picture fine spray hanging over the brook, with lots of fancy arched rainbows visible through the mist. Poetic, I might have said if I were sitting at my keyboard and screen. Wet, would be the more accurate opinion I had right now. For a world that left out the factor of sun rays being hot, they definitely didn’t leave out the completely soaked when near splashing water factor.

You know what, I think it was enhanced, actually. It wasn’t just damp, like how you’d expect it to be normally, it was wet. As if I had spent the past few minutes running unshielded through a downpour. As if I had jumped headfirst into a swimming pool with a very much not waterproof shirt on. As if I had fallen into the sewers and floundered around in people’s shit for a bit.

And it felt gross.

Thoroughly soaked, I unequipped my shoes and tossed them into my Inventory before wading into the centre of the Singing Brook, the water coming up a little ways past my knees. Doing that probably didn’t help at all, but at the very least it gave me a sort of false solace that I wouldn’t have to experience the sensation of walking around in portable puddles.

Now where were they, the pesky little Water Spirits…

The small flash of movement at the corner of my eye was all it took. I lunged, though I wouldn’t say gracefully, at it, the small, blobby thing with a sad face permanently plastered on its translucent surface. The Copper Dagger seemed decent enough once equipped, allowing me to kill a water spirit in two hits. Then again, the Spirit type mobs weren’t exactly incredibly strong. They were everywhere in the wilderness, easy pickings for your grinding purposes. In grasslands you’d find the Plant Spirits, in woody areas you’d find Tree Spirits, and near water, you guessed it, you’d find Water Spirits. According to the lore, they were born from nature itself, guardians of the forest that housed Briarwood, given will to think and life granted by Gaia, yet sadly, along with the forest, were corrupted by Ruin due to being weak in mind and will and now they were hostile.

Honestly, whether they were blessed by Gaia or corrupted by Ruin or not, I didn’t really care. What mattered was that they would occasionally drop the Crystal Drop as an Rare drop item.

And from fact that it had taken me over 20 minutes to get an Uncommon spawn item didn’t spell well for me getting my hands on a Rare one.

Usually, the easiest way to grind Spirit drops was to activate an aggro skill near a good amount of them and then use an AOE attack to kill them all in one go. But then, since I hadn’t reached Level 15 for the Class Change quest yet, my skill tree was locked, so I couldn’t exactly do that, could I?

The old way then. Murder them until one of them drops the item.

Huff…

You see, when it comes to video games, I have this stupid track record of getting unlucky whenever it comes to rng, and, as Trix had guessed, was the reason for my username. You want to fight a hidden boss? Guess what, it’s not going to spawn. You want this ingredient so that you can enhance your weapon? Jokes on you, it won’t drop until your umpteenth try. You want this rare event item to add to your collection? Work for it. Now, don’t get me wrong. For weapon and armour drops I was fine with having it unlucky. In fact, it feels even more fulfilling when I finally do get it. It’s valuable, it’s got that rare item lustre to it, and it looks really damn good when equipped, so at the very least, it makes you feel that all the grinding was worth it. The problem is when drop items refuse to spawn. Say you want to enhance a sword and you need a Rare drop item to get it. But then let’s say you end up having to grind just as long to get the enhancement drop as you did to get the sword itself. Just to be able to level up your sword by a few measly levels. It doesn’t even make it look any different. Feels bad, right? That’s how I feel with grinding drop items with this sort of shitty luck of mine. RNG hates my guts, and it sucks. Which is why I usually buy all my upgrade materials from the shop or other players. Unlike drop materials, money is guaranteed, and all the grinding ensures that you get a lot of it.

Reminded me of the old days when Johan would party up with me and a couple other friends to grind dungeons together. We’d set up our accounts at the same time, and made sure to get similar sounding usernames as a sort of team thing. Johan’s one, Bad Karma, was particularly funny, because his situation was the exact opposite of mine. It wasn’t that he got extremely lucky with drop items and stuff, but more of the fact that he got “lucky” with hidden boss spawn rates. It’d be the sort of thing where we’d venture into a new dungeon for the first time, and then the hidden boss would spring upon us, several levels higher than ours. And it would almost always aggro on Johan.

Those were fun times, but then the rest of the team either lost interest or had more important things to do after a couple years and stopped playing.

Well, back to the present. Just as I had feared, getting a Rare drop with shit luck is tedious as heck, regardless of how easy it was to kill the mobs that dropped them.

What’s more, I had gained a little stalker.

I’d noticed it lurking around near the rushes while I was slaughtering my twentieth Water Spirit, a small blobby thing that perhaps wasn’t as transparent and blobby as the ones I was after. It had been hiding in the shadows of the waving rushes for a while, watching from a reasonably safe distance as I murdered its kin. It kinda blended in with the rushes, being a sort of dull, muddy colour itself, and if not for the glaring spotlights it had for eyes, I might not even have seen it. At that distance, I couldn’t really see what it was, but it seemed to be another Spirit, just, not a water one. At first, I wondered if it was bugged, since it wasn’t attacking me, or running away, it was just sitting there hiding, not very discreetly, along the riverbank. But then, when I began moving after clearing out all the nearby Water Spirits, it followed.

Not very quickly, mind you, it kinda waded into the deeper waters past the rushes so that its blobby tip barely emerged over the surface of the water, and then slowly snorkeled after me when I began changing locations. Slowly, out of the corner of my eye, I could see the small island move closer at a cautious rate, stopping when I turned to look directly at it, and continuing when I went back to my work. How it approached reminded me greatly of nature documentaries. Following slowly behind the observed animal at a far enough distance so as not to disturb it, a calming British accent slowly narrating, “and then, in search for more prey, the human moved upstream.”

At that point, I started to question whether, like the randomly generated NPCs, the mobs had somehow gained sentience as well. Or whether it was just this one behaving weirdly.

Now, I don’t really give two shits about bugged out hostile mobs being docile. Yet the feeling of being constantly watched was uncanny, especially when you knew that the thing doing the watching could very well be considered the weakest mob in the game.

And so, feeling like an idiot talking to himself, I told it.

“Can you stop that.”

I don’t know what I was expecting to get from that, maybe no response, maybe for it to reveal itself as the river god and grant me three wishes, or maybe to start twirling in circles like how bugged out things usually do.

What I didn’t expect, was for it to take my words as a fucking invitation to… come closer, and climb onto my back.