Emmy started looking into her scroll quest the very next day. Cermillion had held sway over a vast continent and had deployed an array of slaves to serve his empire. One of the peoples that were enslaved were a group of bear people called the Urser. The Urser had been freed upon the destruction of their former master Cermillion and had returned to their forests to rebuild their once ravaged communities. Emmy’s first quest was to travel to the Mongrath Mountains, home of the Urser and meet with their town elder and help them begin rebuilding.

Taking her new fast Elemental mount she flew over Asgar, the major continent of this current expansion. She loved the way that the ground passed beneath her and she could see amazing details of the lands below. The areas directly surrounding Stone Keep had been controlled by Cermillion and were blackened by his fiery minions. But further south, valleys stretched into nearly endless grasslands and by the time she reached the Mongrath Mountains, forest pines and crystal blue lakes and rivers spread out beneath her gaze.

She flew to a small village that was still under construction at the base of the mountains. Emmy saw the Urser hard at work rebuilding. Champions didn’t have the same canned approach as other MMOs. There were no question marks hanging over the people of Urser; however, based on the description of the scroll and seeing that there were very few older looking Urser it wasn’t difficult to discern who the village elder was. After talking with him she completed some preliminary quests of helping them rebuild: things like gathering more supplies and helping to construct new homes and a new City Hall.

Emmy lost herself in the game this way for several hours. At the moment she was the only Misfit logged in and while she usually enjoyed the company of her guild mates she appreciated the rare opportunity to enjoy the game fully immersed and without any human interruptions. She was a bit of a loner by nature and generally distrustful – a typical INTJ personality. She loved analyzing things in the game without social pressures or strange rituals that other humans seemed tied to. There was something pure about interfacing directly with the computer and she could get lost this way grinding odd quests or just crafting in game for hours and hours without interacting with actual humans.

Humans were messed up anyway. Ever since her run in with that bastard Ryan, she kept to herself and only interfaced with humans in VR. He had been a former college classmate and she had thought he was her friend at first. Emmy took computer programming classes since she was interested in how MMOs worked. Ryan seemed like a great guy at first since they were both gamer geeks. Breaking one of her cardinal rules, she accepted his invitation one evening to attend a LAN party at a mutual friend’s house. It turned out that the party had a lot of alcohol and Emmy and Ryan had a bit more than they knew how to handle. They danced and hung out and everything seemed fine to Emmy. She woke up after passing out in a random bedroom at the house. There was blood all over the sheets and her pants. Emmy freaked out not knowing what to do or who she could turn to. Ryan had been the last person she had seen before blacking out. The thought about reporting the incident to the college but who would believe her and was it even Ryan that had assaulted her.

After the fact she came to believe it was him. He started stalking her at school and making innuendos that suggested that they had slept together. She finally mustered up the courage to report the assault, but the college HR staff covered things up while they told her there wasn’t much they could do. Eventually the stalking and harassment became so bad that she transferred colleges to get away from him. Needless to say, trusting other 3D people wasn’t something she did lightly. She didn’t even completely trust her guildmates who didn’t know who she really was but she’d grudgingly allowed herself to befriend them.

While she loved gaming by herself, even she needed company sometimes and she appreciated that the Misfits had become the closest thing she had to family. She was an only child and her parents rarely spoke with her anymore now that she’d graduated college. Emmy had never had a ‘real job’ and had been on UBI for all of her short adulthood. Since she hadn’t ever had a chance in the so called real world she dedicated herself to becoming a top MMO gamer. With their latest World First achievement, she had finally accomplished the goal she’d set out to accomplish when she had first logged into Champions about a year ago.

Emmy saw Kevin’s character, Krok log in. Despite Emmy’s distaste for people and especially for men who treated her poorly, Kevin had a unique humor and charm that was disarming. Perhaps it was because they were like opposites: he was the gregarious salesman who could convince penguins to buy ice and she was the hermit who didn’t go outside. Six months ago he’d asked her out over voice chat at the end of a raid when they’d killed the first boss in Cermillion’s Keep. She didn’t know if that was the most romantic thing ever or the craziest thing ever but she had accepted with the caveat that she was only interested in a virtual relationship. That way she figured he couldn’t hurt her too badly. Since then they’d had a great time adventuring together and Emmy really appreciated the way that he gave her space when she needed it but at the same time she loved having someone who she could share certain things with. She still didn’t trust him completely, she doubted she’d ever trust anyone completely, but it was refreshing to have a confidant.

“I thought you were going to spend all your in-game time with me now that you got laid off,” Emmy teased.

Kevin replied with a laugh, “Unlike some people, I do occasionally have to go outside. I was talking with my parents. I don’t think they understand why I can’t get a new job. They grew up in a different day and age.”

Emmy could relate to that. Her parents still weren’t sure why she hadn’t even applied for any computer programming jobs. Well duh, the computers programmed themselves these days. “I totally get it. My parents still don’t understand that AI do all the programming these days. Are you interested in starting those scroll quests? I’m here in the Mongrath Mountains and I’m just getting started.”

“Sounds good, I’ll be there in a second. I forgot to resupply after the last raid before I logged out,” he replied.

A few minutes later Krok arrived. His character was a Mystic Assassin and was dressed in greys and blacks. Krok was pretty skinny for an orc. Emmy figured that he probably didn’t need to be burly since assassins typically were built for stealth and magical attacks. Emmy’s own character, Thag, was a Demon Born. She had horns and red skin and a devil’s tail. Her character could breathe fire too which was totally awesome. Demons had inherent built-in strength and the ability to self-heal themselves with blood rituals. Nobody messed with the Demon clans in game because they were some of the strongest around. That type of reputation suited Emmy just fine and she wished she had the same type of built-in self-defense that Thag did.

“Did you know our elementals can send out mini elementals to boost our attacks? I’ve never seen a mount that allows you additional ability boosts,” Emmy said.

“Too bad that fire will probably break my stealth when I’m attacking,” Kevin replied morosely.

It wasn’t lost on Emmy that Kevin had been pretty tense in game these last couple of weeks. It seemed like even when they were just hanging out together the game just wasn’t as fun for him. She could see the tension that was building between Kevin and Sean, but she couldn’t figure out exactly what was causing it or if she should say anything. Hopefully, the two of them would figure it out since they were both friends. For now, she just let little comments like this slide and tried not to add fuel to the fire.

Emmy showed Kevin the first couple of quests and waited while he completed them. They were all the catch and fetch quests that were pretty standard for MMOs. The next set of quests that involved combat looked much more interesting.

The first of these quests was to kill some of the Lupus clan who were natural enemies of the Ursers. With their new elemental mounts they flew over to the next mountain and found an encampment of the Lupus. Champions was extremely realistic in that creatures on the ground could easily see you coming if you flew in, so they made sure to fly past the encampment and circle back. From the sky they could see that the Lupus clan had high powered ballista that were used to hit flying creatures such as themselves. Emmy and Kevin knew, from experience, that those ballistae hurt like heck.

Sneaking back on the ground to the encampment, Emmy let Kevin take point. He was the stealthy guy after all. He snuck past their sentry line and used one of his special explosives to create a distraction. After a few seconds Emmy heard the blast. The camp was immediately put into panic as the wolf-like Lupus ran around in circles trying to figure out where the enemy was. Emmy could make out Krok’s outline only because they were allied but she could see him stabbing guards in the back.

While it was fun to admire her friend’s stealthy antics, the gig was up now the camp was on fire. She charged past a set of pines and with a loud thunder clap her massive two-handed sword firesinger immediately drew the rest of the group’s attention. The first of the Lupus swung at her with his ax and she parried his clumsy attack easily. Bringing her sword around in a blaze of flame she sliced right into his shoulder and through his chest like a hot knife through butter:

-401 slashing

-128 fire

Instant kill.

More Lupus joined the fight and soon she was surrounded by a small pack of them. Perfect. Firesinger morphed in her hands into a one-handed version and she pulled out her shield. Taunting the wolf pack she charged in and smashed her sword into the closest enemy:

-153 slashing

-25 fire

Unfortunately, in tank mode she didn’t do nearly as much damage. However, she could take on this entire pack quite easily, although it would take forever to kill them all. Fortunately, she wasn’t alone and with Krok here to assassinate them from the darkness, the pack was killed in short order.

By the time they logged off they’d completed all the kill and gather quests in the area and decided to leave the dungeon quests for when there were a few more guildies on who could go with them.