Three of the Marauders who survived are being held captive right now. They are surrounded by several villagers. They are also wounded, the villagers did treat their injuries slightly, but no attempt has been made yet to decide whether to heal them anymore or not. From the looks of it, this Overworld isn’t entirely cruel, but you cannot expect mercy to be guaranteed after battle. At least as a native inhabitant of this Overworld. But for me and Amulet Pond, we don’t have to worry about that because we aren’t natives!

I’ve approached all three of them, and my dialogue window showed up. I’ll now begin a conversation with them. I will hopefully learn more about Elesi and who these Marauders are exactly if they aren’t simply bandits.

MC: “Would any of you three, care to talk to me? I’d like to ask some questions.”

All three of the Marauders look at each other. The one in the middle looked silently at both of his comrades who are currently sitting right beside him. Both the other two Marauder shake their heads, either as a way of saying “no I don’t want to talk” or “you shouldn’t talk to him!”. Anyways, at least the one in the middle gave me a nod of “go ahead”.

MC: “What do you know about this Snowmel? She calls herself Elesi.”

Marauder: “Elesi huh? Not much. Don’t know nothin about her.”

MC: “She was one of your prisoners?”

Marauder: “Yeah, was. That Snowshit was brought by Bofa, looks like you’ve already caught up to him since I see he’s dead over there. Bofa said that he found her by the side of the dirt path where we came from. I heard him explainin to the Boss that she was napping sweetly by a tree. Boss got interested and said she’s important, valuable to be specific. This was before we arrived at this village the first time when, wanting your food’n’stuff.”

MC: “Do you know why your Boss took interest in her?”

Marauder: “Who could say. She looks like a regular cat-shit to me. Only Bofa and Boss seemed to know.”

MC: “Alright then. I’ve got some more questions.”

Marauder: “…”

MC: “Why didn’t you all stay at the village after demanding for the food and supplies? Don’t you have an encampment somewhere nearby?”

Marauder: “You think we’re some sort of army? If we were, then we sure has hell wouldn’t have gotten pummeled by a crazy Dwelf like you.”

The two other Marauders laugh quietly. To me, it looks like these people have just been making careless decisions throughout their whole lives and are now reaching a dead end.

Marauder: “Yeah-yeah, I see your judging eyes Dwelf. You’re saying, “get to the point”. No, we don’t have any sort of proper encampment. Never have, never will. All of us lads came from the border of the Hinterlands. We travelled all the way east, arriving here like a bunch of idiots with no plan. Maybe Boss had a plan, but now he’s dead. We wanted more money and food, looked to try and take it from this village. You probably already know, since you seem like you’ve got enough brain to support your muscles, that we didn’t want to fight a full-scale battle with these earth ploughers. Even if they’re just a bunch of old bones and women. Fighting all of them would’ve been a pain. With boss, we could’ve probably have won. But we aren’t madmen to dive straight in and expect no casualties. So, we took to intimidating them, looks like it was workin a bit at first, until you took up the axe.

Another Marauder mumbled “…if we wanted to experience casualties then we’d have given up and joined them Visiwends…”

I’m starting to feel sorry for them. Looks like there was of course a cause to why they all started marauding. They are definitely foreigners from closer to the Hinterlands. They speak and sound differently compared to the rest of the villagers. Also, if I heard it right, another Marauder mentioned something about Visiwend. So, it looks like they were somewhat forced out of their home. And because they had no plans except simply to go east, they ended up trying to rob without any supplies or food of their own. They probably don’t even understand the customs here either. Well, I also don’t know much either.

There is a possibility that they’re also lying. But I doubt they are. Unless they are all great actors. All of they’re mannerisms point to ‘I’m defeated, I might as well say what I can to decrease the chances of my suffering later on”.

Technically speaking, they didn’t attempt to kill anyone before I started to attack them. And then I instantly attacked and killed they’re boss. Dammit! I now feel more like the bad guy here. I wonder if they have some respect for Amulet Pond because of his ferocity that one time.

But, robbing a whole village is still a serious crime, and that isn’t to say they couldn’t have easily killed anyone if they wished to. They still are certainly the bad guys here. I’ll keep asking some more questions for now…

…

Alright I’ve learned a bit more about this whole scenario and their world perspective… hmm, a strange final question, isn’t it simply because that’s how fantasy races usually refer to each other?

MC: “Why did you refer Elesi, a Snowmel, as a “Snowshit?”

Marauder: “Cause that’s what she is. Why’re askin me that? I can call you the same thing Dwelf. Aren’t you from this village anyways?”

MC: “What does this village have anything to do with it?”

Marauder: “Looks like you’re a hypocrite or just don’t know better. “What does this village have anything to do with it”, you ask? You should instead be asking this whole region! Everyone knows that the Snowmel are the least welcomed race in these parts. Whether they are from the Hinterlands or the east, it don’t matter. Just because I called her a Snowshit, I at least acknowledge her as a livin equal (more or less). I can’t say the people in this village can do the same. Makes me a “noble” guy in that regard, that’s the “good” word you easterners like to use often.

What?

MC: “Are you saying that the villagers here dislike the Snowmel?”

Marauder: “Do I look like I read the bookcrafts? Yeah, but they don’t just simply dislike the Snowmel. I just told you, people here don’t even want to acknowledge the existence of the Mel races. Heh, which is pretty ironic now I think about it. There’s plenty of domestic cats around here which I’ve seen ever since entering this region. In the Hinterlands, sometimes owning a pet cat could get you gutted by a wild Snowmel. If you’re not a part of this village, then I guess, I should also tell you that people down here really like their pet cats! Hah! The irony eh lads?

The Marauders chuckle loudly to themselves.

Meanwhile, I am actually a bit surprised. I know that racism is common in fantasy worlds like this one. “Ew an elf!” or “All humans should die!” But I didn’t ever realize how much it effects common behavior. This explains why Allee, the elders, and the other villagers gave such strange looks when they saw Elesi. And then, I guess because this village is rural, that you don’t often see a lot of different races all together at once like how I saw back at spawn by seeing all the different looking players.

Marauder: “Well, are we done here?”

MC: “Yes, thank you for your cooperation and sorry about your friends”

Marauders: “ye-ye-ye, go on and have fun raising that cat! Oh, and if you’re able, toss in a good word or two about us. Before they send us back to the earth!”

Well…I’m done talking with the remaining Marauders. At least they have more expressive tones than Elesi over here next to, quietly following me around.

I learned a bunch of wide-ranging stuff while talking to those NPCs. They aren’t as bad as I thought they’d be. Maybe I really could do something to lessen their punishment. I don’t know if I have a good sense of judgement or not, but it will feel wrong to me if they just ended up dying soon after this. It feels like this all happened because of unfortunate events leading up to today.

Another thing I now know, is that this village isn’t secretly a lair for some demons or necromancers. Instead, it’s a place just like the rest of the (Holy-Lander? Humanish?) culture in this region of the Overworld. Where people here apparently really dislike the Snowmel race, and probably the Sunmel too. Poor Krafty. I guess this racism kinda makes sense. Snowmel and the Sunmel are physically the most different looking races from any of the other playable race in this game. At least for example, slightly strange races such as Dwarves don’t have fur all over them. Well maybe besides that part of their body where hair covers at least half of their head.

So, in the end, the only fishy business about the villagers is actually fishy business. A fishy business related to cats…and that reminds me. It’s now Elesi’s turn to get questioned! Hooray!

Should I question her before getting her food or afterwards? Where can I even find fish or sweet stuff to eat in this game? Wait, one more thing before I do that.

I forgot to fully finish looting the enemy bodies, especially their boss. And Renes still hasn’t come back yet… So, for now, I’ll head over to the bodies again.

I’ve been searching around for good loot, but I can’t find anything of value. Their light armor is too big for me to wear. But I guess at least their boss had a pouch of money with him.

When I tap on the coin pouch, it tells me the amount of money right away, so I don’t need to count each individual coin. I’ve now got 100 silver coins; I don’t know if that is a lot or not. I think it is, since at least it’s not 100 copper coins. Well, I now finally have some money. Before I only had my robe, training axe, and-Oh right! The amulet! “The Goddess’s Amulet”, It’s the necklace which I found at the bottom of the pond at the beginning sky island. How could I forget I had this on me? I even named my character based off this necklace, “Amulet”.

When I look at my character’s information, particularly his status screen with all his attributes listed, it simply tells me “+1 luck”. Just like what the amulet’s effects description says. When I tap or hover over at each of my attributes, such as strength or stamina, it tells me in detail what each attribute exactly does. For instance, the attribute level for stamina merely increases the amount/number of actual stamina I have. Stamina is useful for everyone because it’s simply the energy used by a character for almost any type of action, such as running. However, there is still no description or anything which tells me what the use of luck is. What it does. Or even if it even works or not, is this perhaps a placebo effect?

But, after experiencing the gameplay which I’ve just played…I wonder if this amulet’s “+1 luck” influenced anything around me? Did it increase the number of silver coins I found in the Marauder Boss’s pouch from 91 to 100 silver coins? Did it increase my chances that the villager’s decided to help me out when I started a fight with the Marauders?

I still don’t know many things about this game. Whether this event against the Marauders would’ve occurred if I had or hadn’t accepted Rene’s quest. Maybe the reason why the fleeing Marauder died at the ditch, is because my lucky amulet caused him to accidentally fall in there? Maybe, the game even automatically created the AI for Elesis and added her as one of the NPCs in this event-quest, but I don’t know if I should count this is as something lucky for me.

*Yawn*

I know I’ve been playing for a while, but it shouldn’t be late enough to the point where I start yawning. Let’s see the time, yup, it’s 10 pm. About 4 hours of game time or so. Not too bad. Half the time was probably used by me grinding when I was constantly chopping wood for a while. But I guess I’m glad I was smart enough to start doing that right after starting the quest because I might’ve not had enough strength to deal enough damage when I fought the Marauder Boss.

Also, since it’s 10 pm for me, then it’s around 10 am in this Overworld…really strange! It’s felt like the longest morning ever, but it hasn’t even ended yet and it looks like it’s now afternoon.

I also like how my character’s body is also stretching their arms as I stretch my arms around in real life. It’s kinda cute.

Looks like everyone in the village has settled down. What am I still doing here? Oh right, fish or sweet food for Eselis, and waiting for Renes.

Let’s see, yeah, I’m definitely going to first talk to Eseli before I even think about spending my newly acquired silver coins on food which I can’t even eat. I’d ask around the villagers for some fish or sweet stuff, but since this village is pretty inland with no nearby rivers, I doubt there is much fish here. Nor is there sweet stuff because sugar is probably an expensive commodity in this world, right?

I’ve turned to look at Elesi and finally start talking to her again directly. Yup, her eyes are still lazily wandering somewhere else. According to the Marauders, she was sleeping when they found her. Is she under a curse or something? Why is she still sleepy?

Conversation…start!

MC: “Eseli, are you okay?”

Eseli: “…yup”

MC: “Who are you?”

Eseli: “nnn…I told you before, my name is Eseli…”

That’s not what I meant! According to me next choices, it seems like this game also recognizes that Eseli is strange. So this might actually be part of her personality and not some sort of bug.

MC: “Are you still sleepy?”

Eseli: “nnn…. mmm…I’m mostly awake right now.”

If her voice wasn’t a little high pitched as it is, then I wouldn’t be able to understand her voice lines. Since half the time she is mumbling. And she often makes some sort of “nnn” sound between the back of her mouth and throat. This cat!

Alright, no more beating around the bush. I want answers!

MC: “Eseli, did you know you were captured by Marauders?

Eseli: “nnn… yeah, I think so.”

MC: “Why didn’t you try to break free?”

Eseli: “I felt cozy…”

MC: “Did you notice that I removed those chains off you?”

Eseli: “nnn…yeah, of course”

You felt cozy with the chains on? And then when I broke you free, you didn’t even react!

MC: “What happened to the Marauder who was holding onto your chains?”

Eseli: “I don’t know, I never saw him before…nnn…the first time I saw him…was when he was sleeping on the ground”

MC: “Did you kill him?!”

Eseli: “…nnn…”

Oh my god, she’s finally moving her arms farther than just a centimeter... And she is now scratching her head! I’ve gotten already so used to the NPC’s advanced body-language animations, but when I see this lady-cat actually move around somewhat expressively or rapidly, it brings me tears of joy! Not literally.

Eseli: “…nnn…maybe I did?”

MC: “Maybe? Why do you think you might’ve killed him? You said your first time seeing him was when he was sleeping.”

Eseli: “Yes…nnn…maybe it was an accident…”

MC: “What kind of accident?”

…

…

Eseli: “…nnn…my Yawn might’ve killed him…”

HUH !?!