QUILL

Jane had shared her quest with him once they’d become a party and so now the pair of them were headed towards their delivery destination, threading their way through the cobble- or flagstone streets.

Everywhere you looked, people were still in disarray and things hadn’t gotten any better. Some players walked around in a daze, others wept in the streets. Most were alone in the crowd, but groups were forming. There were fights.

It wasn’t bad enough that they’d been locked in here and threatened with death. Broken or unfinished classes, and a stupidly random stat generator had really cut into people, killing a huge degree of hope.

Quill himself was still in turmoil over his attributes. STR 1, DEX 3, HEA 7, INT 2. Sure, wisdom had rolled nicely, but these were all basement level. Already his mind was tumbling over possible classes, but what could he achieve with any of them? He had no power to fight with and no accuracy, and he’d probably get one-hit and die half the time anything took a swipe at him. Even if he did kill anything, he’d get so little XP that it was going to take him literal years to level up.

The one saving grace of the afternoon was Jane. She seemed pretty tough and resourcesful, not wasting any time before finding her first quest and setting out on it. She’d been supportive during the attribute rolls. Without her, he might have given up right there. As it was, he’d been awfully close to really losing his temper at his stat rolls and making an ass out of himself. He was moved that she’d been willing to party up with him despite all of that. Not that you were forced to stay together with those you partied with or anything. You could disband and move on at any time, but still. He had to find a way to contribute though, or he was only going to hold her back.

They found Yelsin Greer, the target of the delivery quest, in a vegetable and meat shop near the edge of town. The storefront was about three meters wide, with stands of vegetables on either side of the proprieter and various sausages and cured meats hanging from the awning. Behind Greer, a middle-aged woman butchered very fresh meat inside the building, her apron covered in blood. A young boy brought a crate of carrots outside and refilled a display.

“Hello,” Jane greeted the NPC. “I have a package for you.” She held it out.

“Ah! I was waiting for this.” Yeslin accepted the box with a smile. “Thank you kindly. Please let Mirren know I got it safely. No, wait. Better, I’ll write you a receipt. Here ya go!” He handed her a piece of paper.

They headed all the way back through town to return to Mirren, the woman who’d given Jane the quest. They found her in her house, two boys running circles around her, and the woman tiredly stirring a pot over the fire, her eyes unfocused. The door was open, so they both entered.

“Boys, please!” Mirren moaned. “Settle down or there’ll be no dinner for the both you.”

The boys completely ignored her.

Jane held the receipt out. “We delivered the box.”

Mirren turned, forcing a bit of brightness into her features. “Oh, thank you, dear. That’s so very kind of you. Here, as promised, your payment.” She ladled out two bowls of soup and handed one each to Jane and Quill.

The two looked at each other.

“No coin?” Quill wondered.

Jane glanced at the woman, who had gone back to cooking. “Guess not.”

Quill sat down at the table. “I suppose that’s fine. I mean, we were just going to use it to buy food anyway.” Had to be practical about it, right? Look on the bright side and all that. Even if he was inclined to be impatient. Realistically, it was going to take time to make money.

Jane joined him at the table and picked up a wooden spoon. She stared at the food. “Do you think we have to eat in the game world?”

“I am feeling hungry,” Quill admitted. “Some games do have food meters. If you don’t eat or drink on a regular basis, you start losing health.”

“I hope that’s not the case here, but I’m betting it is.” Jane ate a spoonful of the stew. She looked down in surprise at the bowl. “Wow, it’s pretty good.”

Quill ate some as well and nodded in agreement. “Yeah. Man, I still can’t get over this place. So real.”

“First full dive?”

He grinned. “Yeah. I played computer games when I was younger, but kind of got out of gaming for a long time. And virtual reality stuff was terrible back then so I never bothered. You?”

“I played Elder Dungeons for a few months. It was almost as good as this. Not quite as realistic though. No pain, no hunger.”

“If I wasn’t trapped in here, I’d really be enjoying it.”

They finished their meal and left the house, happy to get away from the bratty boys. Wandering around, they found a small city park with a single, large apple tree. Below it stood a meek woman in a dress and a head scarf. She had a quest symbol over her head.

“Nice!” Quill grinned.

They approached the woman.

She raised her head as they neared. “Oh, hello. Are you a traveller?”

“Uh, yes?” Jane answered.

“That’s nice. I’m looking for apples. Can you find me 1 apples?”

Quill cocked his head at her. The woman was literally standing under an apple tree. What lazy writing by the developers. He shook his head and then climbed the tree and picked an apple. He brought it down and handed it over.

The woman smiled. “Thank you! You’re so kind. Here, take this for your troubles.” She handed them a single copper coin.

Jane stared at the coin in her hand. “That..doesn’t seem like a lot of money.”

“It’s one of our first quests, though. No surprise there.”

“What’s the exchange ratio?” she asked. “Because there’s probably silver and gold, too, right?”

“Probably. I’m guessing it’s ten copper to a silver, ten silver to a gold. Or a hundred copper to a gold.”

“Let’s hope so. Because if it’s one hundred to each, we’re never going to get rich.”

Quill smiled. He liked this girl. Despite the situation they were in, she was handling it well. Maybe better than he was. He’d really lucked out meeting her.

The next quest involved taking someone across town a dish of food. Then they found another quest where they had to go buy some chicken legs and return, from across town. As night fell, they located yet another quest, carrying a message to someone — across town.

Jane sighed as they accepted the last quest. She sat down on the flagstone street and rubbed her bare feet. “Let me guess: all of these quests are going to be across town, aren’t they?”

Quill sat down across from her, legs crossed and took her other foot and started massaging it. “Probably. Fetch quests. They suck in every game.”

Jane looked at his hands holding her foot, brows raised. She tried to pull away. “Oh, you don’t have to do that!”

He shook his head and held onto her. “It’s fine. Happy to help.”

“No,” she protested. “They’re filthy from walking around all day.”

“I don’t mind, really.” He continued to massage, but a thought occured to him. Did she think he was flirting. Because he was genuinely doing it just to be helpful. He chided himself and hoped he wasn’t coming off as creepy.

She looked down and continued to rub her other foot, not saying anything.

Quill thought aloud. “I’m betting the fetch quests are purposely designed to waste time. Like in mobile games. It’s cheaper. Instead of going to all the effort of making well-written quests, they just use time fillers. As long as people get a reward at the end and a hit of dopamine, they’ll put up with the shitty development.”

Jane nodded. “We should try to pick up as many quests on one side of town as we can, and then head over to the other. Might be more efficient.”

“Agreed.” He put her foot down and took the other from her, ignoring her renewed objection which, he noticed, was weaker this time. He took that as a positive sign. “Sucks so many of the NPCs are hostile to you though.”

She made a laughing groan. “I know! I guess charisma does matter. I hope it’s not affecting the size of the rewards we’re getting.” Despite her words, she looked a bit down.

“Don’t mind them. They’re just NPCs, not real people. They’re reacting to an arbitrary stat; they don’t know the real you.”

She perked up a bit at that, as if she’d forgotten. The NPCs were very lifelike, after all.

Quill sat up straight as her earlier words finally clicked. “Whoa. I didn’t think of that. That charisma might affect reward size.”

She waved the idea away. “I was joking.”

“No, you might be onto something. In some games, charisma can affect things like the prices of goods in stores. That might be the same here.”

She turned serious. “So we should leave you to do the shopping and talking.”

“While we leave the fighting to you, apparently.”

She looked sympathetic. “Quill, I’m so sorry about those rolls.”

“Don’t be. You didn’t cause them.” He despondently shook his head. “This is why role playing games implemented alternate systems for initial attributes. You can take the gamble, or you can accept an average number across the board—“

“Or distribute your own points.”

“Ah, you know, of course.”

“Yeah, I’ve role played table top games. It’s fun.”

“Before this, I would have said it’s a lot more social and appealing than video games. But I guess full dive offers the best of both worlds: the visual aspects of the RPG as well as actually talking to real people, face to face.”

Jane nodded. “The face to face is a really nice change.”

“It is! I missed this.” And he had. The general circumstances of the death game might suck, but hanging out with her was a lot more enjoyable than fake smiling through yet another business meeting or dinner with clients he didn’t actually care about.

She looked up at the darkening sky, then opened the little cloth sack they’d been rewarded with from one of their quests. In it was a wedge of cheese and a few coins. “Hmm. I don’t think we have enough to rent a room for the night. And this cheese isn’t going to fill up both of us.”

“Finish that last quest and then look for a place to crash for the night?” he suggested.

She nodded and stood with a groan, obviously sore from the day’s efforts. “Ok, they didn’t have to make the game this realistic.” She chuckled. “Thanks for the massage, by the way.”

“Anytime.”