Ignoring the odd looks that we were receiving from the villagers as we passed, I dragged my drunk AI companion down the street towards the marketplace, muttering to myself as I did so. Already I was regretting doing this, we were creating way too much attention for my liking which was admittedly becoming something of a recurring theme in this game.

“Jeez Katy, you’ve really done it this time,” I told the AI as she stumbled down the street behind me giggling slightly when she nearly tripped over her own feet. “Do you really want to meet the girls like this?”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Katy slurred. “Why wouldn’t they like you?”

Oh dear.

“Katy,” I said slowly as I stopped and turned towards her. “You do realise that I’m the one who’s going introduce you right?”

“Hmm, what were we talking about?” Katy asked blinking at me blearily. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

Yeah this wasn’t good. How do you get this freaking drunk off of one beer? Wait isn’t alcohol technically poison?

Taking an antidote from my Inventory I wondered whether giving her this would help a bit but unfortunately for me the only person who could answer that question was drunk. But then again there was a possibility that her abilities as my companion AI weren’t actually affected by things that were happening in-game.

“Hey, Katy how do these Antidotes work?” I asked her cautiously causing her to cock her head to one side.

“Those particular Antidotes just remove the effects of one weak poison,” she replied in a voice that was much closer to her normal one. It would seem that my suspicions had been correct and there was a part of Katy that was unaffected by the system making her drunk which made sense. It would be a pretty dumb idea for your companion AI to not be able to answer questions if their avatar was being affected by something, there were probably limitations to this but apparently being drunk wasn’t one of them.

“And that includes alcohol, right?” I pressed. I didn’t really want to use one of the Antidotes that the girls had bought on something like this, but I also knew that showing up with a drunk Katy really wasn’t going to work out well for me.

“It does,” Katy agreed as she swayed from side to side slightly and I quickly removed the cork before holding the small vial of liquid out to her.

“Katy drink this,” I said in the most commanding tone that I could muster. “It’ll make you feel better.”

“Are you sure?” she slurred blinking at the vial blearily. “I feel pretty good right now”

‘Yes, I’m sure can you please drink it Katy?” I asked her this time using a much calmer tone because the commanding one didn’t seem to be working.

“Okaaay,” she sighed taking the vial from my hand and eying it suspiciously before drinking it down in a single gulp.

I blinked in surprise as Katy immediately bent over and clutched her skull groaning as though she was in pain.

“Oh god,” she moaned. “My head is killing me. What’s going on?”

Pausing momentarily to wonder why an AI would reference god I reached out a hand which Katy took and pulled her upright.

“You got drunk and I gave you an Antidote so that you would be coherent when we get to the market,” I explained quickly.

“Well that explains why my head hurts,” Katy groaned. I could see that her face had turned a family shade of greenish grey and grimaced in sympathy as I realised what was wrong with her “I guess this is what it’s like having a hangover. I’m not a fan.”

“Neither am I,” I agreed apologetically. “But then again, I don’t get drunk off a single beer, so…”

“Don’t remind me,” Katy snapped then grimaced in pain. “I’m definitely not drinking again any time soon.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” I agreed. “However, I would only like to point out that you’re only going to get better at holding your alcohol by drinking more alcohol.”

“That’s fine by me,” Katy grumbled. To my surprise her face was already looking better than she had been a few seconds ago. “Alright let’s go meet your friends.”

“You’re not gonna puke right?” I asked as she slung an arm around my shoulder to steady herself, it was obvious that while she was improving quickly, she still wasn’t feeling quite right, so I didn’t begrudge her using my shoulder to help steady herself.

“No promises,” Katy groaned as we started down the street once more.

By the time we made it to the market Katy was walking normally and only slightly pale-faced. Deciding to head towards the clothing and armour stalls that we had been told about by Catherine in the hopes of finding the girls. Luckily the marketplace was quite orderly with all of the stores catering to certain types of goods all being fairly close by so finding the girls was actually quite easy.

“Hey guys!” I said as we approached and upon hearing my voice the girls turned towards me with smiles on their faces that quickly turned into confused expressions upon spotting Katy who was standing next to me.

“Who is this?” Fern asked raising her one visible eyebrow at us. I wasn’t sure whether her other eyebrow was raised or not as it was hidden under her hair, but one eyebrow was enough to give me an idea about what she was thinking.

“Ah, this is Katy, she’s my companion AI,” I explained gesturing to Katy who nodded her head in greeting. “She just finished the tutorial a little while ago.”

“Oh, that makes sense,” Evie exclaimed clapping her hands together excitedly. “I didn’t know that AI Companions had to go through the tutorial though, that’s really interesting!”

Once she finished saying this her eyes glazed over slightly and she started nodding like she was listening to a voice that only she could hear which led me to assume that she was communicating with her own AI companion. I was suddenly even more glad that Katy could join me in-game now because it honestly made Evie look like she had lost her mind, and Fern and I exchanged a look that told me that she felt the same. Needless to say, I was pretty sure that both Evie and Fern would be working hard to earn enough money so that their own companions join us in-game as soon as possible.

“Well anyway, it’s nice to meet you Katy, I’m Fern,” Fern said holding out a hand which Katy shook firmly with a wide smile on her face. “I look forward to working with you.”

“Me too,” Katy replied as Evie blinked a few times and turned to look at her excitedly.

“Wow, there’re a lot of things that you AI’s can do that I didn’t know about Katy!” Evie gushed happily. “I’m Evie by the way. It’s really nice to meet you!”

“It’s nice to meet you too,” Katy laughed. “Thank you for looking after Zeke for me you two. He really enjoys spending time with you.”

“Is that so,” Fern asked in an amused tone as she glanced at me through her fringe.

“Alright that’s enough you,” I told Katy as my face turned hot from embarrassment. “Maybe you need another Antidote?”

“No, I think I’m good,” Katy giggled as the other two watched this exchange with amused expression on their faces. “But thanks for asking.”

“Okay then,” Fern laughed. “You two get along really well. “If I didn’t know better, I would’ve said that you had known each other for years.”

“Technically I have known Zeke for years,” Katy pointed out, reminding the other two that she wasn’t actually human despite the way that she acted and upon being reminded of this both Fern and Evie gave her appraising looks for a few seconds before shrugging.

“That’s a good point,” Evie agreed. “You must know him really well then?”

“Yes, but I can’t give away any personal information without Zeke’s permission,” Katy replied glancing at me curiously.

“I mean, I guess you can tell them some stuff if you really want to,” I grumbled noticing that the two girls were looking at me pleadingly. “Just keep it to things like my favourite shows and foods or check in with me before answering.”

“Wait really?” Katy asked giving me a confused look that told me that she truly hadn’t expected me to say something like this and truthfully I hadn’t expected to do so either, but I honestly couldn’t see any harm that the level of basic information that I had told her was okay to talk about. Besides it wasn’t like Katy had that much that she could talk about other than me.

“Sure, why not?” I shrugged. “But more importantly how do we want to split the money I got for the meat?”

“Well is there anything in particular that you want?” Fern asked. “Because you’re the strongest in the party and if you hadn’t been there earlier, we would’ve both been killed by those Player Killers.”

“Oh please, if any one of us hadn’t been there that fight would’ve turned out very differently,” I disagreed shaking my head.

“Yes, it would’ve but you probably still would’ve survived,” Evie replied. “So please, is there anything that you want?”

“They aren’t going to take no for an answer Zeke,” Katy said turning towards me. “So why don’t you just tell them?”

“Fine,” I sighed shaking my head in exasperation. “The first new piece of gear that I was planning on buying was a Magic Core for my spellglove, specifically a Lightning Magic Core.”

“Lightning magic, a spellglove and a naginata?” Fern mused. “That actually sounds like an interesting combination.”

“I thought so, lightning magic would give me some ranged attacks that can affect a lot of enemies and from what I understand quite a few have a stun as the secondary effect which would make it really easy for you to finish them off.”

“Sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this,” Evie noted.

“Well yeah,” I shrugged. “I’ve been playing games for a while, so I have some idea about what I’m doing.”

“Alright should we at least go and have a look at how much a Magic Core would cost?” Fern asked. “I’m not sure that we have enough money for something like that but at least then we’d know for sure right?”

“You’re right, we probably don’t,” I agreed. “But yeah, let’s go and have a look I guess.”

I still didn’t really like the idea of using the money that we had all earned to buy me something, but I knew that if we had put it to a vote I would be outvoted, and I wasn’t going to even try to veto that. Doing something like that would only backfire besides there was a certain amount of logic to what they were saying.

Soon enough we found ourselves outside a small grubby looking shop in one corner of the marketplace. It seems like this Kerr character was a bit more well off than a lot of the merchants around here which didn’t bode well for being able to afford a Soul Core because the state of the shop also told me that he didn’t really care about appearances which meant that his merchandise was expensive which made a lot of sense. After all Soul Cores could give literally anyone supernatural abilities so why wouldn’t they cost a lot of money. Well, the ones that give you new skills and magic at least, I didn’t know how much the Soul Core that increased my HP cost, but I was guessing it was one of the cheaper types of Soul Core.

Inside of the shop looked even shabbier than the outside with spiderwebs covering some of the cabinets and shelves that only had a few dusty Soul Cores placed on top of them. The girls looked around with slight expressions of disgust as my footsteps sent small clouds of dust dancing into the air.

“Excuse me!” I said loudly as I walked in. “Mr. Kerr are you here?”

As I spoke a crashing sound came from a small door behind the grimy looking counter followed by the hoarse sounds of an old man cursing loudly followed by someone crashing through the door and glaring at us.

“What!?” the old man snapped, and he was old. He wasn’t bent over or anything like that but the lines on his face were deep enough that he would’ve looked like he was scowling even when he wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, I was just hoping that you could help me find some Soul Cores,” I said apologetically. Catherine had mentioned that he was a grumpy old man but that he was also very good at what he did which meant that he was also probably the best person to teach me how to make Soul Cores when I reached Level 5 so being polite would actually be the best thing for me to do in this situation even though it irritated me. I worked in a shop myself so someone treating their customers like this was incredibly irritating to me even though I dealt with customers as little as I possibly could.

“So have a look around!” Kerr grumbled. “I knew that someone had entered so all you would’ve had to do was walk up to the counter when you had found what you were looking for not shout at me.”

Well that was interesting, it suggested that he had some form of security system in place which did make sense when one considered that this world had a lot of magic that none of us really knew anything about.

“Again, sorry about that,” I repeated. “I just wanted to find the particular Soul Core that I was looking for so that I could get out of your hair as fast as possible.”

Kerr squinted at me for a few seconds like he was trying to decide whether that was a dig at his slowly disappearing hair line or not. It wasn’t by the way, for a man who looked like he was rapidly approaching 70 he actually had a decent amount of hair, it was as grey as you would expect given his age though.

“Look kid, I have things that I need to get done so look for the Soul Core yourself and let me know when you want to pay,” Kerr said before turning around to walk back through the door.

“Alright then, I guess I’ll tell Catherine you weren’t very helpful,” I said sighing theatrically. I felt a bit guilty name dropping like this, but I also didn’t really want to spend half an hour digging through this dirty shop looking for a Soul Core that I wasn’t even sure that I could afford when I was pretty sure that despite the disordered state his shop was in Kerr knew exactly where everything was.

The old man froze in the doorway for a few seconds and started mumbling to himself before slamming his palms into the doorframe and spinning back around. It was pretty clear from his reaction that Catherine had done a pretty big favour for him at some point and I made a mental note to thank her the next time I saw her.

“Fine, what do you want?”

“A Basic Lightning Magic Core,” I replied calmly and immediately Kerr walked over to the most cluttered area of the shop picked up a Core and walked back.

“5 Gold for the Core kid,” he snapped making me blanch as I realised that we didn’t have anywhere close to the amount of money that he was asking for the core which in turn made his own expression darken further in anger. “So, you made me get this thing for you and now you can’t afford it? Maybe I should be the one complaining to Catherine for sending you to me.”

This actually made me stop and think. Despite how realistic everything was this world was still a game, a game that was both incredibly complex and constantly evolving. Catherine would’ve known that I didn’t have much money and even when I had walked in I had noticed that a lot of the Cores were quite expensive (not as expensive as the Lightning Core though) so there was a good chance that there was another method for me to obtain the thing that I wanted.

“Mr. Kerr, is there anything that I can do to help you that would be a fair exchange for this Soul Core?” I asked making Evie looked at me in surprise and Katy and Fern nodding thoughtfully as they realised what I was talking about.

“Bold of you to assume that there is something that you can do that I couldn’t just hire someone to do, or do myself for that matter considering how weak you are,” Kerr snapped as he snatched the Core back up and started walking back over to where he had retrieved it from.

“I’d be perfectly happy to help you out more than once and I’d like to point out that I’m an outsider and therefore I can come back to life,” I told him making him freeze in place for a few seconds before sighing and turning around.

“Tell you what kid, if you promise to do no less than five jobs for me, four of which are extremely dangerous and will require you to get considerably stronger than you are right now and one that I just need done quickly, I will only charge you 2 Silver as collateral, I know you don’t have much more than that,” he explained to me with a long suffering sigh.

“But,” he continued before I could thank him. “I also expect you to tell Catherine that I don’t owe her anything anymore.”

“Sure,” I agreed readily. This would probably mean that I owed Catherine as well but that was fine, it would be worth it if I was able to get this Core… hopefully. “What is the urgent thing that you want me to do and when ado you need it done by?”

“Hmph,” the old man grunted before walking back over and placing the Core on the counter in front of me. “I half expected you to try bargaining again. If you had I would’ve just told you to leave and never come back. The first job that I want you to do is go to a nearby swamp and collect some Soul Shards from the Javelin Toads that you find there. I need 5 of them before the end of the week to fill an order.”

Once he finished saying this a blue screen appeared in front of me with more details than what Kerr had told me on it.

New Quest!

Kerr’s helper- Part 1

(Uncommon Ranked Chain Quest)

Kerr has requested that you help him out with several jobs as partial payment for a Soul Core. The first request is to obtain 5 Core Shards from the Javelin Toads that live in Drellin’s Swamp before the end of the week.

Success Conditions

Obtain 5 Javelin Toad Core Shards and give them to Kerr before the end of the week. (Bear in mind if you fail to do so you will have to pay the full price, or he will report you to the guards).

Rewards

150 Experience. Basic Lightning Magic Soul Core. Unknown. Access to next part of the Quest.

I nodded once I had finished reading the Notification. The information in it made sense and it seemed like a fair deal to me. It was also fairly open ended as it didn’t specify that I had to kill the toads to obtain the Core Shards which was something a bit different. I wasn’t sure how many other methods there were to obtain the Core Shards, but it was a pretty good bet that there would be someone that I could buy them from if I tried.

“Sounds fair to me,” I said before turning to the others. “Is it alright if I accept this offer?”

“Sure,” Fern said with a nod and the other two nodded their agreement as well. “We’ll still have 4 Silver and some copper coins left right?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “And you three can split that any way that you want.”

“Well then go ahead,” Fern said. “That’s why we’re here.”

“Okay,” I said turning back to Kerr who still had the same irritated look on his face. “I agree to your terms.”

“That’s great kid now hand over the money and get put of my shop, unless any of you want to buy something I suppose,” Kerr grumbled holding out his hand for the money which I passed over to him before picking up the Core.

“Is there anything else that you want here guys?” I asked turning back towards the girls.

“How much would a Core that gives you some sort of stealth skill cost?” Fern asked.

“Anywhere between 8 Silver and 4 Gold depending on the specific Core,” Kerr replied with a shrug. “You’d have to be a bit clearer about what you’re looking for if you want me to narrow it down any further.”

“Alright, maybe next time,” Fern said. “We can’t really afford that right now. Evie?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Evie replied shaking her head. “From the sounds of things, we’d be better off buying armour if we’re going to be hunting things called ‘Javelin Toads.”

“And you’d be correct young lady,” Kerr agreed. “Even the weakest toads are Level 4 and they travel in family groups so it would definitely be wise to get more armour than what you four currently have.”

“Thanks for the advice,” I said to Kerr as we turned and walked towards the door. “I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

Kerr grumbled a goodbye and stomped back into his backroom as we walked out of his shop, but I noticed that he didn’t slam the door after he had walked through. This and the fact that he had offered some advice told me that he might be a grumpy old man, but he wasn’t a bad person.

“So,” said Katy looking sideways at me. “Are you going to equip that Soul Core?”

Grinning at my AI for a moment I placed the Soul Core up against my spellglove and watched as the orb which appeared have a small cloud in the very centre that crackled with electricity slid inside the glove.

Images flooded into my mind telling me that I could now use one short-ranged spell that fired a small jolt of electricity at a target much like the information that my other Soul Cores had given me making me smile happily as I brought up the information for the Lightning Magic Core now that it was Linked to me.

Basic Lightning Magic Core

Level: 1/10

Soul Points 0/10

Spells

Jolt: 200% Magic Power as Lightning Damage. Cost: 20 Spirit. Range 5m. Cooldown: 3 Seconds.

Additional Stats

+1 Intelligence.

Huh, it was even called Jolt. I was really looking forwards to seeing what other spells I could learn once I started Levelling the Soul Core up but for now this gave me another method of attacking which would be very useful going forwards as it gave me more reach than I had with my naginata but meant that I could attack two enemies at the same time of I needed to which opened up my tactics quite a bit.

Noticing that the girls were watching me impatiently I quickly explained what was going on.

“Alright then, now that that’s sorted shall we go and get some new stuff for you three?” I asked once I was done.

“Yeah and then I guess we’re probably done for the day,” Evie agreed glancing upwards at the sun which was already starting to dip low in the sky.

“Yeah the monsters that come out after dark are considerably more powerful than the rabbits that you were fighting earlier,” Katy agreed. “So, while I was actually looking forwards to going hunting with you it looks like that will have to wait until tomorrow.”

“So am I Katy,” Fern agreed. “It’s really starting to feel like we’ve got a full party now which is pretty cool.”

“Oh, by the way,” I piped up realising that this would be a good time to bring this up. “A couple of my friends might be joining us soon. I’ve known them for quite a while and they actually taught me everything that I know so even if we get a few Levels ahead of them they should be able to keep up.”

“Really?” Fern asked interestedly. “I can’t wait to meet them. Any idea about how they’re going to play?”

“Hmm, well Sarah usually plays as a mage-type but with Julian it’s a bit harder to say,” I mused. “I’ve seen him play as all sorts of things, but he does have a tendency to enjoy playing as tanks more than anything else.”

“Well they sound like a good fit,” Fern said happily.

“Of course, he could also go for some sort of weird weapon that none of us have ever seen before,” I continued. “If he doesn’t go for a tank, he usually picks something that he finds interesting. It usually still works out for him to which can be a little frustrating.”

“Oh, okay,” Fern said in a slightly more subdued tone. “But they’re good players, right?”

“Yeah they might be a little out of practice at first though,” I replied as we walked back through the market to where Katy and I had met up with the girls. “They’ve been taking a bit of a break from gaming lately.”

“I see,” Fern sighed. “Well they sound like interesting people at least.”

We continued our conversation for a while as we walked back through the market with me talking about some of the other games I had played with Julia and Sarah and the other three asking a few questions about the things that we had gotten up to. It didn’t take long for us to find ourselves standing in front of the clothing and armour stall once again.

“Well if you want to buy something, I suggest you get on with it,” I told the girls. “It looks like they’re starting to pack up for the day.”