Transportation around larger cities was as easy in-game as in real life, and cost notably less. The quest marker that lightly overlaid Deyana’s vision drew her to a bus stop, hovering in place for the minute-and-a-half that it took for a bus to arrive. One step onto the bus charged her inventory directly, taking the small fare out of the starter cash.

Deyana found it very easy to tell the Players from the NPCs from her time as Novsha. The NPCs were clustered in small groups, talking and messing with electronics as in reality. Unlike them, Players had the brilliant wherewithal to… stare into space, messing around with displays nobody else could see. Deyana snickered at the blank-eyed zombies, opting instead to sit near a group of NPCs and listen to their conversation.

“I heard that Greased Wheels has been doing some work a bit north of here, in Combedale.”

“Greased Wheels? Aren’t they that group that’s always running around like chickens with their heads cut off?”

“Probably thinking of Arrow Keys to Turn.” The older woman who had spoken first scoffed. “Those idiots only manage to hit the damn monsters by accident, I half-guess. Wheels are the ones who are nice till they buy your house out from under you.”

Deyana snickered again, drawing attention now that she was closer. She blushed as the woman and teenaged boy who were having a conversation looked at her. “I think you’re pretty accurate, there. Though they might stab you and buy the house off your children.” She spoke, hesitantly.

The older woman hooted with laughter and the teen looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Yes, yes, they might. I’ve been disappointed with all those Rezzers since the new wave came out. Used to be we fought those damn monsters ourselves, kept ‘em off our stuff, but now we all run around like hapless idiots waiting to be killed. I keep a rune sheet in my purse, and I’m not going to sit by if some monster tries to get its teeth in me.”

Deyana blinked in surprise. “Wouldn’t you rather have someone who comes back dying instead of yourself?”

“Dying, sure. But even this old lady could throw a fireball or two.”

The teen decided to speak up, then. “Grandma, I don’t think you should-“

He was cut off quickly. “I don’t want to rely on a bunch of people with funky names to protect my home!”

“We just don’t have-“

He was cut off again by more ranting. Deyana, deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, excused herself from her accidental entry to the conversation by being very interested in the scenery as it went by. Highly used to the user interface of the game, she turned off everything except the notification for when her stop arrived to watch the scenery of alternate-LA go by without having to move her hands.

Los Angeles was already a melting pot of a city, blending styles often with no regard for clashes even as often as on the same building. Its alternate was no better… and perhaps even worse. Perfectly mundane shops that clashed now had to contend with a third, additional vector, in competition with flashy magical displays, where a person stood in a window displaying some features of whatever weapon/armor/tool/toy that the shop was pushing that particular week.

She laughed internally. Midrange fighters of literal monsters, and the world they were in used them as the equivalent of a highly-paid electrical socket. The thought that the developers had obviously put into the game was incredible. She didn’t think that everything was designed, but programming had its limits. That grandmother would be very two-dimensional, and might repeat the same dialogue if she spoke the same way as she had this time.

Regardless, it was nice to be in a larger city and blending in, a stark contrast to the last time she had been there in the game. Recognition wasn’t particularly bad, per se, but weird fanboys and girls weren’t her style, and the imitators…

Deyana shook her head before she could get caught in a recursive loop of disdain, instead clearing her mind and watching pointlessly out the window.

So caught in her reverie was she that when the notification light for her stop blinked across her vision, she actually jumped in her seat. Noticing a few others starting to move as the bus rolled to a stop, Deyana nodded to the woman, who was extolling the virtues of defending oneself from monsters to the exasperated teen sitting next to her. Entertaining though it was, Deyana had higher priorities. Stepping off the bus was a short-lived experience as she jostled with the best of them down the just-barely-too-small hallway in the middle of the public transport.

Stepping onto the train platform, however, was an entirely seperate experience, and as she did so, the distinction that the developers had made between realism and entertainment reared it's head. Her consciousness seemed to disconnect from her body as she walked on with her destination set, and she was glad to see as a minigame window popped up. The minigames didn't have the time dilation of normal play, but an hour of minigames didn't always appeal to those who had three-hour train rides to their destination, usually one where they hadn't yet triggered the teleport circle in each town hall.

Knowing what she did about the game's combat, she decided that the "Rune Puzzle" would be her best bet- set on Hard difficulty, the tasks it posed were almost exactly equivalent to the task of creating a real runic item.

As the tests flashed by, Deyana started to see why the number of crafters stayed as low as it did. Her first attempts went completely fine, but it was when the rate began to pick up and the runes required started to react before the piece was done that her brain started to hurt. Internal magical "wiring" started to draw itself in her head even as she watched the technically-seperate runes react on the trial work. Finally, during the middle of a massively complicated work involving the slotting of elemental runes into a partially complete piece, the notification that she had arrived at her destination asked her if she wanted to continue or save it for later.

It was an easy decision- she might be planning on crafting, but she wasn't quite ready to watch arcane symbols dance behind her eyes as she slept. The autopilot released her body to the platform, and Deyana made a snap decision as to where she would go.

Turning left, she walked to the city's main street, then walked two blocks north to the City Hall. A tall monument stood behind a glowing circle, and Deyana was glad to walk to the edge of that circle, touching the outside to set her respawn point. While a tutorial dialog popped up again, she ignored what would have been an explanation of one of the most-used features in the game. Instead, she opened her quest window.

[Goblins on the Fringes.]

[Every once in a while, the Builder's Guild has to renew the protections on a city. To do this, they must use {Constructed Soul}s of the type of monster they want to keep out. {Constructed Soul}s are made of twenty {Soul Shard}s, which are made of ten {Soul Fragment}s. You have been contracted to return a {Constructed Soul: Goblin} to the Builder's Guild by the City Hall in Dunlap.

Current Incursions- Large, {Northeast}

Huge, {North}

Small, {West}]

Mentally selecting Northeast, her mental navigator once again stepped in like a map-reading-eye-dog, placing another marker in her vision. Now that she was in a smaller city, however, the bus stop allowed her to select a destination and teleport rather than making her wait though a drive. While starting cities had that feature disabled for realism, as one got further from newbie-friendly zones, gaming expectations and convenience became the design style. Or at least, Deyana preferred to think of it that way. It was entirely possible that the designers had just gotten lazy.

Regardless, she was glad for the faster movement as she walked away from the stop near a shopping center that she had landed in. The short walk let her practice swinging the weapon, getting the feel for the more stereotypical weapon than her previous character had wielded. Confidently, she walked forward into the construction site populated with the groups of the green buggers that she was being sent to remove from existence until they yielded control of their sweet, sweet loot.

When the first of the Goblins aggro'd on to her, Deyana took a step back and prepared to receive the small idiot's charge. It's health bar faded into existence as it got within ten feet of her, yelling it's little heart out. Stepping forward, she parried the blow out of the way, kicking the goblin to the side in the process, then funneled power into her sword.

A grin appeared on her face for all of a quarter second before she fell to the ground, coughing and choking. Her stomach felt like it was trying to rip itself down her arm, preventing her from doing so much as thinking. Blonde hair falling down about her face, she almost didn't notice as the Goblin swung again, easily removing a third of her health in a single swing. As the second hit, Deyana laughed in her head, even in thoughts choked by the pain. Dying like a chump- at least the first combat experience on this character matched the one from her previous.

The yell seemed to come from a mile away, and the window that popped up in front of her face was disregarded in favor of rolling over to her back. As the out-of-combat regen kicked in, however, Deyana turned to face the music.

Still lying in the construction site, she looked around for her savior, who turned out to be a guy holding on to what was obviously a basic bow.

"Are you alright?" he asked, extending an arm as he drew close.

Not one to ignore an obvious attempt at aid, but still quite annoyed, Deyana took the hand for a very short boost onto her feet, grabbing up the sword that had fallen on the ground. "Fine, thanks," she said, the dry tone of her internal monologue creeping into speech. She winced. "Got overconfident's all."

The guy's eyes drifted up to above her head, then back down to her. "I'll say. These are level ten goblins. How do you expect to beat them solo at level two?"

Deyana found it difficult to contain the self-deprecating smirk that climbed onto her face. "I dinged from that. But level... isn't exactly my issue. Well, it's part of it." She held her sword out, linking the item description to it in her head, allowing him to see that statistics on it, specifically the one she hadn't paid any attention to on her other character for almost a year.

"That thing drains twenty mana per second!" the player said, incredulously. "You must be creating a new character." he said, rationalizing quickly.

Deyana nodded to confirm. "You knowing that means I’d bet you are too. Got a name?" She asked, pointing above her own to the publicly visible copy of her own, as opposed to the level alone floating above his.

"Oh. Don." He replied, the name filling itself out above his head (replete with an underscore and assorted numbers following it- specifically Don_1242) as the player extended a hand. "You know, if you're going to go into a level grind, we may as well team up. I’m planning on staying here till twelve or so.”

“I’m less level-grinding, more just grinding. Picked up a Constructed-soul Quest.”

“Nice. I’m going to be here for a while regardless, so do you want to party up?” Don asked, his question corresponding with the ding of a confirmation menu popping up in her vision.

Deyana accepted the party invitation easily- she couldn’t see a disadvantage in having the beginnings of a safety net if she screwed up again. Once Don’s face appeared in the upper left-hand corner of her vision, along with red, green and blue bars to match the three arranged on the outside of her vision– Red at the top, green and blue on the right-hand side, she nodded at her new ally.

“I figure you want me to go out and aggro a couple so you can shoot them down?” she said, referencing his ranged weaponry and her distinct lack thereof.

“Safest option,” Don answered amicably, “If I shoot them first we might get more than one or two and have attack aggro rather than proximity.”

Nodding again, Deyana began walking into the abandoned construction site of relatively flat dirt strewn with rocks and head-high mounds. Watching carefully, she edged around the range of a pack of four goblins to her right and turned left around one of the rocky cones to get closer to a group of three that wasn’t looking her way. Pausing in her tracks, she sent a message off to Don through Party Chat.

“What’s the World Melee-Kill Refund formula again?”

“Half the mob’s level but not exceeding a third of your max. Why?”

“Some ninety percent of my combat was raids. Thinking about drawing with an assassination.”

“Make sure to get back around that pillar quick if you do, I’m blocked out of LOS.”

Deyana refocused in front of her, mapping out a path to the goblins that would stay on dirt and avoid being seen too early. Three steps forward… her internal monologue began, as she carried out the motions. Jump a little bit diagonally to the left, step-step–

She swung her sword down, a horrifying crackle marking it turning on even as it encountered her target’s neck and went through it like a lightsaber through wet toilet paper.

The two nearby goblins turned immediately, a couple of health bars flashing into existence. Technically, three of them, but while the two above the angry faces were green, the one above their unfortunate companion was a rapidly-depleting red.

Sword completely through the first of the monsters, the crackling ceased while Deyana jumped backwards, staying on the balls of her feet and avoiding tripping on the rocks behind her, then she slightly bent the right leg that she had landed on, using the compression to jump to her left and bringing her fully around the mound, into Don’s line of sight. A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed the layout behind her, and she quickly stepped there while turning to face the pursuers, giving Don a clear shot to the one who had taken the inner track around the mound.

Her ranged support was obviously experienced, since the arrow that took the goblin’s head must have been fired while she was still technically in the way.

Instead of taking the safe option and waiting for the higher-leveled player to reload while distracting the relatively short green one, Deyana stepped in to the suicidal charge and blocked the swing of the rusty blade with the flat of her own.

Cringing internally when she was thrown off balance and dealt non-negligible damage by the magically-enhanced swing, she let the glancing blow drop her into a crouch, then swept her leg through the mob’s badly positioned ones. It fell down, and Deyana stood back up to deliver a brutal finisher to the Goblin’s neck with the reignited runic blade she held. The internal tearing feeling started and stopped almost simultaneously, running out of mana and having it partially refilled in under a quarter of a second as she removed her final opponent from the confrontation.

Wincing as she turned slowly to face her party member as she heard the distinctive ding of another level, announcing the increases in her base stats to almost useable levels. He stared back at her, one eyebrow raised and a mocking grin on his face.

“I’m impressed. You’ve managed to not die once more.”