After her fit of rage, she took in her vow to take down the system, Arlyth sat down at the table in the room. She had a vortex of emotions flowing through her mind. There had been many moments she spent thinking to herself about when she’d finally die and how she came to be resolute in her fate that she was not long for the world. She felt robbed, she knew it was coming, her family and friends knew it was coming and for them to think she’s dead with no idea she’s trapped in this damn game.

She held on to some hope that maybe she’d find a gaming friend within EXO but knew the possibility was slim. The game world was huge, after all. She had played the game for over 1000 hours in Earth time, which roughly translated to about 5000 hours spent in EXO. The game had a 5:1 ratio of time to Earth’s, so one minute spent on earth was five in EXO. That time she had spent she was able to make it to the top three on the player leaderboards, she immediately was infatuated with the game and its mechanics; learning everything about it quickly.

She had started the day the game went live but with her job and illness didn’t get to really dive into EXO like she would have wanted to. Despite her real-life struggles, Arlyth took to the game quite quickly. She outpaced her friends in leveling speed and got a good grasp of the mechanics quickly. Her friend Isabella, who went by Bella, was always by her side to delve into games had always told her that her real-life flexibility and movements she picked up from gymnastics was the reason for the latter.

Thinking of Bella made Arlyth’s face take on a crestfallen expression. She knew Bella in real life, having met her in college. Bella was her closest friend, and she probably wasn’t aware of her current predicament. Arlyth sat at the table for a few moments while trying to remember what her and Bella were doing the night before so that she may find a way to get to her in-game. Although Arlyth’s options were limited in this city as she is basically an enemy of the state without even knowing the full reason as to why.

During her brooding, Arlyth wasn’t paying much attention to her surroundings but after a short respite from the continuous stream of thoughts in her head, she heard something coming from near the cells. She peaked around the doorway to look down the hall to see the guard she had left dead, standing up. She forcibly held in a groan and at the same time, analyzed the zombie all while the thoughts came bursting out of the small wall that she managed to put them behind.

[Zombified City Guard Milo]

Level 10

Health: 300

Mana: 0

Highest Skill Group: Physical

She took a deep breath as quietly as she could, this was the second zombie she had seen since respawning. Milo’s health had increased by 50 and his mana bottomed out to 0. She couldn’t help herself stop thinking about how weird it was for the guard just to come back out of the blue. Was there perhaps a curse or something in Newgarde? Zombies weren’t terribly common in the world of EXO, when they were around there was always a reason.

After thinking to herself about the possibility of there being something more going on Kye chimed in and said, “Hey Kid, I got something for ya.” And a prompt appeared.

[New Quest Gained!]

After experiencing two zombies in one day, you began to wonder if there could possibly be something deeper to what was happening in Newgarde.

Objective: Investigate the cause for the zombies appearing and find out why or what’s causing their appearance in the city.

Reward: 1000 XP & 50 Gold.

After reading the quest, Arlyth asked Kye, “Can you give me quests?”

“Not technically, as you may know already EXO likes when players ponder occurrences and what not. I can’t just go out giving you free XP and gold through quests but when you started to wonder about the appearance of the zombies, I was allowed to push the quest to you.” Kye stated.

“Hmph” was all Arlyth gave in response to Kye. She had to figure out what to do about this Zombie. She had a weapon now, so that was good at the very least.

Remembering the first zombie, Arlyth asked Kye another question, “Are all zombies sentient? Or was that one after my ‘resurrection’ a freak occurrence?”

Kye took a moment to respond, as if they were thinking. “Most zombies you find during quests and what not are just normal grunts, your basic mindless creatures without sentience. The higher up the totem pole of zombies you go the more sentient they get. In this case however, zombies in a city are extremely uncommon. Especially one that reanimates so shortly after being killed. I don’t know if you’re planning on speaking to it, but if there was a time to say it’s not a terrible idea, this would be that time.”

Arlyth took Kye’s words as agreement to her idea, she thought that at the very least she might be able to speak to this thing to maybe learn some more about what was going on. She assumed that the feelings of the guard would still be present regardless of him being reanimated or not. She wasn’t really sure on the intricate details of the process of reanimation. Did they lose their memories? Or did they keep everything from life while becoming reborn?

Arlyth decided that she would try and speak to the guard, there wasn’t much she could do in terms of a stealth attack, and she hadn’t looked around the corridor enough to find a different entrance to the cells. She didn’t unsheathe her dagger because she didn’t want to come out of the room in a threatening manner, instead she took a deep breath and stepped out of the room.

As soon as she passed the threshold of the door, the zombified Milo stood there, staring at her with an overwhelming sinister grin plastered on his decaying face. Arlyth reacted quickly and jumped back a few feet. She kept to her plan and spoke to Milo and said “What do you want? I know I killed you and revenge would be a likely answer, but what caused you to turn into a zombie?”

Milo stared at Arlyth while keeping the sinister grin. A guttural gurgle came from his throat, not words, just a deep and wet sounding noise. After a few moments of this unintelligible gurgling, Milo spoke but the voice was only slightly better than the gurgling from before. “Youuuu areee nottt welcomeeee hereeeeeee.” Were the only words that came out of his mouth before he erupted into an attack. Lunging with his right fist right at Arlyth’s nose.

Arlyth didn’t have time to react to the blow and took it full force on her nose. A red damage number popped up in front of her, [-75]. Without realizing, Arlyth had never taken a moment to glance at how much health she had, through the pain of a broken nose she noticed in horror that her health was only at 100, the standard for a level 1. She mentally kicked herself for not even thinking about it, let alone looking at her bars. She was knocked on the ground and at a quarter of her total HP. She had to do something to prevent this from going south fast. She had died once today, but maybe dying another time wouldn’t be so bad as she’d get out of the cells.

With the last little bit of concentration she had left as her vision was blurring and she was getting woozy from the massive hit she took, she gambled on the newest ability she had just as Milo was winding up another blow. She wondered if it’d still have an effect as he was now undead, but she figured now was as good as time as any to find out.

She thought “Blood Manipulation!” - at the same moment she felt a weird tug on her mind, as if she could feel a different body waiting for her to invade it. As Milo’s blow descended on her head, she closed her eyes in anticipation for the pain while focusing on the weird sensation in her mind and willed the ability to slightly alter the course of Milo’s strike. She felt the gauntleted fist brush by her ear as Milo stood above with his fist just behind her back in the ground, he stared at Arlyth in stunned silence.

Seeing the opportunity, she had been granted due to her blood manipulation, she acted quickly. In one swift movement, she unsheathed the dagger and plunged it into Milo’s groin. She saw a red [-30] pop up above Milo. Arlyth was fairly certain zombies weren’t as concerned about their family jewels but knew from experience it still caused a good amount of pain, no matter the type of creature.

Milo grunted, and let out a gurgling cry as the blade pierced his member. It went right through the tip and the scrotum. He knew the pain wasn’t as bad as it would’ve been before his reanimation but his humanity that he still clung onto screamed in pain. He fell back onto his ass, clutching his dismembered manhood.

Arlyth was still slightly dazed as she got to her feet, having mostly shaken off the blow, she looked down at the zombie in the sad state she put him in. Part of her felt guilty at what she had done to this man since coming down here, but she vowed to get vengeance on the AI and that included its creations. Pushing away the feelings of guilt, she embraced her resolve and stomped a boot on Milo’s neck, pinning him to the ground. Poising the dagger to strike, she asked Milo, “So, you wanna talk now or do I need to finish the job?”