“Uggghh….” Vaile grumbled as his eyes opened. He had finally woken up, only to find himself face down on the floor. He almost got to his feet when the memory of that lucid dream hit him and warned him not to look at what was still in front of him. He quickly shut his eyes and got up. Turning around, he cracked the door open a bit and counted a few seconds in his head before opening his eyes and looking around.

The eldritch ‘dog’ that was formerly in his room was gone, and he was now alone once again. While he had not really wrapped his head around the elder speak that the dog-like thing’s astral projection had spat his way, he at least knew that while he did still get the heebie-jeebies whenever those things were nearby (which was all the time) they really meant no harm. In fact, if what little he was able to glean from the astral projection was correct, he would not have felt that way if the enigmatic limiter that kept everything in check here was off.

He still had a lot of this city to explore, though, and that took priority. This was especially true now that he knew that this ‘limiter’ was somewhere in the city, and that disabling it was his one and only chance at escape. Looking outside, Vaile reckoned that he had another ten or so hours of daylight in which to do things, and so it was off to the waterfront through that well-hidden door to another part of the city.

He almost left the room before he noticed that something lay just where the eldritch dog-thing once stood. It was a simple ring, but Vaile quickly realized what the ring was and the implications of it. This was a ring that only had minimal use in the MMO, and it had essentially acted as a teleportation device but only in a singular dungeon. Once worn and used, it would give the wearer the ability to exploit a certain type of movement that only a singular type of mob had.

It was then that the realization of what kind of horror setting he had found himself in hit him like a Mack Truck. The specific monster that used a similar mode of near-instant transit was a ‘Hound of Tindalos’. And, if that was what the dog-thing was, then it meant that Vaile was in a place filled with other unspeakable elder things and Lovecraftian aberrations. It suddenly made a lot more sense as to how the dog-things kept following him and staying just out of sight, along with why he always felt eyes on him when he was out and about.

It also explained why the astral doggy warned him that it was in his best interest to stay locked up during the two hours that the natives here were free of their ‘chains’. Given that a great many people here that he had seen were tall, gaunt, and pale, Vaile figured that if he didn’t want a tadpole latching onto his brain then he was definitely going to have to stay out of the way during those two hours of madness. He had no idea what else was here, but if the MMO’s diversity of eldritch creatures was anything to go by, then he was in for a lot of trouble.

…

Having made his way back to the other section of the city, Vaile began to explore once again. He had managed to use the Ring Of Tindalos just as he had been able to back during that one dungeon, although it did come with a few caveats. First off, the Ring would only transport him to certain places, those being the rooms that he had set up with the fortifications ahead of time, and only if the door to the room was open.

Of course, he knew that if he left the doors open then someone would come and muck up his defenses, and so he made a few modifications to the defenses which allowed for only a single cubic millimeter of space inside the rooms to be unprotected. The odds of something getting through that gap and out into the rest of the room was minimal at best, but he did set up some ‘surprises’ just in case.

Now he essentially had a limited Fast-Travel system, and it also allowed him to bail from one room to another in the event of a security breach. With that out of the way, it was time to tour the waterfront and see if there were any other routes to different sections of the city.

…

Vaile stared out towards the water that lapped up against the docks. All around him there were people who smelled an awful lot like sea-life doing random tasks around him. Most of these people showed up on his minimap, but others did not, and Vaile had begun to put together a hypothesis as to what determined whether someone would show up there or not. It was something he was in no hurry to test, as to do so he would have to risk life and limb by staying out during those two crazy hours at night, and he was very much inclined towards not doing that anytime soon.

He did notice something else that intrigued him, though. Along the docks stood a man who seemingly had nothing pressing to do. The man was standing there with his arms crossed and seemingly not a single care in the world, but while he looked like he was doing nothing all this did was set off a response from Vaile. He could practically see the exclamation mark over the man’s head, even though there wasn’t one, and so Vaile approached him.

“Hye, there! Fancy a boat? She’s as sturdy as they come and perfect for a man like yourself! Only 50,000 Gilt for the thing! She’s a steal at that price!”

Vaile looked over the prospective purchase and came to a rather different conclusion. It was plain to see that the vessel had seen better days and was practically just a few rainy days away from capsizing where she was. Vaile did not want to buy the boat, but he did want the space that the boat was anchored at.

“Counteroffer,” Vaile replied. “Here is 10k Gilt, now get that near-dead ship out of that spot and let me put my own ship there instead.”

The man looked at him and said nothing. However, Vaile could almost see the gears turning inside the man’s head. Vaile checked his minimap and it confirmed one of his theories as to why the man was even there, let alone why he had offered anything for a price when so many others had just given him things for free.

“No deal. You buy the boat and the spot together, or neither. Now pay up or get lost.”

Vaile looked at the now irritated man and cracked a smile under his mask, hoping that the man couldn’t see or detect him doing so. He then held out a single object that he had withdrawn from his item box to the man.

“I see. Then we’ll have to go our separate ways for now. On another note, I have a gift for you that could change the value of that tub a bit. Just plant it on the boat and it’ll do a whole millennium’s worth of work to the thing in a matter of seconds! Since you’re such a nice guy, you can take it for free!”

The man was obviously taken aback for a few moments before taking Vaile’s box and putting it on the deck of the horribly mangled ship. When nothing happened, he looked at Vaile askew.

“Oh, it won’t start working until a few hours later.” Vaile said while he checked his clock. “Just wait until tomorrow morning, and you’ll see that this ship will have had at least a thousand years of work done to it! I swear you’ll never recognize her come tomorrow morning.”

“Well… thanks?”

“No problem! See you tomorrow!”

Vaile walked away, and on his face was a shit-eating grin the likes of which few had ever seen. Once he was far enough away, he muttered to himself but a single sentence before making his way back to the nearest room that he had fortified.

“Should’ve taken my offer, idiot.”