Chapter 5: The New Town

All in all, we ended up with three healing potions – at least, that’s what we were calling them – a few days of pemmican and salted meat, though I worried what animal it was.  Hopefully not human!  I took a sword and sheathe and stuck it onto my belt but stuffed the other belt in my backpack.  Who knows?  Maybe it’d come in handy.

The woman we’d rescued was leading us to her town.  I had yet to talk to her, didn’t want to overwhelm her.  Marci and I were trailing the group.  She also had a new sword hanging off her dress.  Fred, Avery and Dylan already had their own, Bentley didn’t want one as he was going for the whole wizard thing, and Takao took the third one.

Tak was waiting for us on the path, the deep green leaves billowing out behind him.  “Hey, Marci, what did your, uh, autopsy show?”

“I think River’s right.  These guys used to be human.  It’s too bad we couldn’t talk to one of them, find out why they chose that species.  It’s an odd choice, since their brains had to be smaller and therefore they must be less intelligent than us.  Assuming their brains work like primate brains, anyway.”

“They didn’t seem interested in talking,” I said.  “But we don’t know if they had a choice in being who they were.”

Shaking his head like I’d given him useless information, he said, “We were all given the choice.”

“Yeah.  We were, but that’s all we really know.”

“Well,” Takao said, “hopefully the villagers can tell us what’s going on.”

“Did the woman know anything?”

Tak gestured open-palmed at the general area, “She seems to think this is normal.  And called those things that attacked her troglodytes.  They apparently wanted her horse and her belongings.”

“That’s all?”

“I’m going to assume among other physical violence, yes.  She said they eat the horses, sometimes people.”

“Good god.”

Voice decidedly clinical, Maric brushed away an errant blond bang, “That explains the teeth.  I wonder how she held them off for so long?”

“Serendipity, I guess.”

“That doesn’t feel right,” I said.  “If this is a game world, then she was a quest.”  They both gave me blank faces.  “We were supposed to rescue her, defeat those guys.  Or, I guess lose and lose the game or something.”

“This place doesn’t make sense,” Tak shook his head.  “We’ll see what the villagers say.”

“What was she doing out here alone?”  Marci asked.  “If it were me, and these creatures were around, at the minimum, I’d bring big dogs.  And big, scary men with spears.”

“She said mushroom gathering.”

Up ahead, the green barbarians, wizard, and fighter, and the woman with her horse, appeared brighter as they exited the tree line.  I asked, “With a horse?  Doesn’t that seem strange?”

“She did have a basket with her, River.  About half full of mushrooms.”

“Maybe,” said Marci, “she tied the horse up somewhere and searched around.  Horses might be the fastest means of transportation now.”

“I guess so.  I thought mushroom hunting was done with pigs.  Or dogs.”

“That’s truffle hunting.  Uhm, people can identify above ground varieties just fine.”

“Those mushrooms better taste good or she went through a lot of trouble for a mediocre dinner.”

***

Coming out of the forest, trails of smoke were visible off in the blue sky before we saw the village.  After cresting a hill, there it was.  Perhaps more than ten two story houses nestled around a large creek, raggedy, stomped grass growing between the buildings, two sporting a water wheel.  Another couple with smoke rising out of the chimneys.  Most of the properties had barns and chicken coups nearby.

Children of varying ages were playing by the creek, but when the dogs spotted us and began barking their alarms, the children scattered, running back to their houses.  Soon, three men came jogging toward the road, carrying spears, large, barking dogs trailing after.  More men running to catch up to them.

A dinging sound in my ears, then: RESCUING THE MUSHROOM HUNTING WOMAN COMPLETED: 200 XP.

All of us stopped, but the woman on her horse continued.  Upon reaching the spear-holding villagers, and their dogs, she began talking with them, pointing at us from time to time, and the entire group stopped.  Though the dogs barked our way from time to time, the men did not advance.

Marci took hold of my arm, “Did you . . .?”

“A voice in my head?  Yes.”  Everyone started talking to whoever they were standing beside.  “Looks like we all got it.”

“Did you get 300 XP, whatever XP are?”

“Experience points.  Like in a game.  You got 300?”

“I’m just messing with you,” the new elf winked at me, smiling.  “200.  Just 200.”

I returned her smile.  “Well, we should have gotten more, you know, since we were there first.”

“And I was stabbed.”  She stared at the ground as if deciding that was a moral wrong.  “You’d think that’d be worth something extra.”

“Right!  I guess not, though.  Let’s see what everyone else got.”

***

We stood in a circle, facing Takao.  “So,” he looked at each one of us in turn, “we all got the same.  Thoughts?”

Bentley spoke up, “We really are living inside a game.  I guess 200 XP wasn’t enough to level up.”

“Right,” Tak gave a slight shake of his head.  “And that’s not our mission.  We have to find our ship and Jadon.”

“And if we can’t?” asked Dylan.

“Well, if we’re going to go off mission, I want to level up more,” said Fred.  “Though, I don’t know why.” 

Green skinned Avery nodded.  “Me too.  In the wanting to level up area.  But the why is obvious.  We’ll get stronger as we level up.”

Dylan spread his hands out, “But that’ll just lead to bigger monsters.”

“Exactly.”  Fred and Ave said at the same time, then fist bumped.

Fred continued, “Bigger monsters, more experience points, bigger monsters to fight.”

Tak’s voice rose, “Guys!  If we can’t locate the ship, we need to discover the source of the nanotech.  The mainframe, whatever’s running it.  We are not here to play a game!”

“One thing that bothers me,” said Dylan, “is that we don’t know where we are in relation to our intended landing destination.”  He waved his hand at Marci and me, “If they’re right, and our bodies were remade, we could be anywhere on the planet.”

Fred and Ave both stepped back from the huddle, looking at the villagers.  The woman had continued onto the village, yet the men remained.  Still talking, they occasionally looked over at us.  After her explanation, I imagined they were waiting to say hello.

“Right.” I shifted my focus back to the group.  “And the landing ship might not even exist anymore.  I’m not sure this is something we can discover simply by searching.  It’s an entire planet, after all.”

Looking from me to Tak, Marci said, “We don’t even know if this nanotech requires centralized servers.  It could use non-localized processing units.”

“Like sharing their individual processing power across the entire world?  Wouldn’t we see swarms of them bunching up to share data sometimes then?”  Tak shifted his gaze to the village.

“Not necessarily,” said Marci.  “Look, I hate to say this, but without the lander’s sensors and computers, this isn’t something we can figure out on our own.  Maybe if we find the right equipment and can isolate and examine the nanotech.”

“So,” said Tak, “we’re back to searching for the dropship.  And it may no longer exist.  Listen, River and Marci, you are our scientists.  We need solutions.  Brainstorm some.”

“I’m a biologist, not a programmer or a computer scientist.”

“And I study bones and culture, mainly.  Yeah,” I looked down for a second, “not the most useful discipline on a world populated by human eating monsters.”

Dylan closed his eyes, “We are well and truly fucked.”

“No, we aren’t giving up.  Looks like we have no choice but to talk to these villagers, see what they know.”

“Guys,” Bentley gestured with his chin, “they’re coming this way.”

***

We shortly found ourselves sitting in their longhouse, which was a communal building for meetings and other activities, invited to lunch.  Food, the reward for rescuing one of their own.  More than twenty men and women sat with us at a long table while children served us.

“Thank you,” I said when a young girl placed a bowl of soup in front of me.  The broth was thick and full of barley and corn.

“These troglodytes have been increasing in numbers and growing bolder in their attacks on our village,” said the headman, his own bowl going untouched.  On either side of him, four men sat.  Further down, away from us on either side, sat women.

“Do they normally harass your people like this?” asked Tak.

“Usually in spring and fall, but recently their attacks have become more frequent.”

“And that,” said Dylan, “is why you’re putting up a wall.”

“As a barricade, yes.  But we’d like to go further.”

“Oh?”

Bentley leaned toward me and whispered, “Here it is.  The quest.”

“We’d like to hire you adventurers to drive them away from our village.  We can offer you some twenty gold.  And supplies, we have plenty of supplies.”

Tak blinked in surprise.  “We are actually on a mission right now.  We’re searching for our lander.”

“Lander?”

Dylan leaned over to Tak, whispering something.  I couldn’t quite make it out, but it was probably along the lines of “These people don’t know what a spaceship is!”  At least, that’s what Marci said to me.

“They do know how to make a good barley soup, though.”

“Yeah, it’s great.  Have you tried the pork?  It’s really gamey.”

“Real animal meat is like that.”

“But not always.”

Lifting another spoon to her delicate mouth, Marci said, “I don’t know.  This is a first for me.”

Tak furrowed his brows, then looked away from Fred and Ave, speaking up, “A lander is like a ship that travels through the air.  It’s like a small house with wings.”

The villagers looked at each other, whispering together, probably wondering if we were crazy.  The headman then said, “None of us have seen any airships lately.”

“Airships?  When is the last time you’ve seen one?”

“Oh, not for a good four years I suppose.  They used to ferry supplies for our general store, but I suppose we’re too far out of the way and not earning enough hard coin for them.  The best we could offer in trade was wheat and barley.”

“Can you describe what these look like?”

“Surely you’ve seen one.”

Bentley jumped in with, “We’re looking for a specific one.  It’s, uh, a three masted galley that flies a, uhm, red flag with black stripes.”

“No, I’m afraid that ship hasn’t come here at all.”

Tak stared at Bent, then asked the headman, “Also, we’re looking for a computer mainframe, or a series of them.  They’d be housed in a building with its own power source.”

Blank stares from the villagers, the headman gave a head tilt, and then some of them whispered to each other.

A younger man, perhaps in his twenties, spoke up then.  “I know where this is and I’ll take you there.”

Tak’s surprise changed to smiles, “That’d be great.  How far is it from here?”

“Perhaps three days.  I’ll only take you there if you drive the troglodytes away from our village.”

Marci leaned over to me, saying, “No way he knows what a computer is.”

“You think he’s lying?”

“Of course he is!”

She leaned over me a little, “Bent, how’d you know the airships would look like regular ships?”

“Because we’re in a fantasy world.”

“Oh.  Yeah, ok.”

I tuned back into the discussion Tak was having with the headman.  “We really aren’t adventurers and we’re already on a mission.”

“Not adventurers?  You rescued my daughter and you’re carrying the gear of adventurers.”

“Ah.  We really didn’t have a choice in our gear.”

“It’s clear that you lost some of it.”

Takao cocked his head.  “Lost some of it?  What do you mean?”

“No sleeping rolls, nor tent, nor rope.  Your backpacks are half empty.  Something drove you away from your camp.”

“That’s not how-”

“That’s exactly what happened,” said Bentley, nodding.  “Excellent observation.  If you’ll give us a moment to discuss amongst ourselves . . .”

Tak must have caught on because he said nothing.  Just stared at Bentley.  I wondered then, why Bent wasn’t sitting beside Tak.  He knew more about these kinds of games, but Dylan had taken the closest seat.

“Of course.  Please,” he waved at us.

We all stood and awkwardly walked over to the far wall, forming a huddle.

Bent started, “These people aren’t going to understand how we got here or why.  And if they think we’re missing gear, then we are missing gear.  I say we go with their plan.”

“If they don’t understand anything about us,” said Dylan, “then it’s a good bet they don’t know what a computer is.”

Marci nodded, adding, “He’s clearly lying to get us to go fight those beasts.”

“What choice do we have?” asked Bent.

Fred scratched his chin.  “I’m all for the quest.”

“Me too!” said Avery.  “Quests equal more XP, and more XP means we can level up, grow stronger and,” she shared a smile with Fred, “fight bigger monsters.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” asked Marci.

“Inside joke,” said Fred.

“Guys, focus!”  Tak held his hands up to get everyone to listen.  “Why would we accept their offer?  We have our own mission.”

“Because,” I said, “we don’t have anything without these villagers.  No food, well, no long-term food.  I suppose we have all those rations, but no shelter, no idea where we are or where to go.  If there’s a chance this guy knows where to go, we should take it.”

“Three days from here.  How much ground is that?  I wonder if we can find it ourselves.”

“Assuming ten hours of walking per day in a straight line, that’s 150 km radius, which is over 7500 square kilometers.”

“Fuck,” Tak folded his arms.

“Lots of monsters in an area that large!”  Fred looked happy.

I put my arm on his shoulder, “Are you feeling ok?  You seem oddly focused on fighting.  And you don’t look like you’re joking.”

“Well, yeah, that’s my job.  My class?  My class, my job.”

Ave said, “Yeah!” and the two fist bumped again.

I shared a worried glance with Marci.  And then it dawned on me.  The villagers didn’t bat an eye at our newly green-skinned companions.  This was normal for them.  Probably, so was their behavior, which was even more worrisome.  If this was a game, and it altered humans to be those troglodytes who’d nearly killed Marci and me, it could be altering us.  Though I did not feel like playing.  Or fighting.

“Alright.  I guess we don’t have much choice.”  Tilting his head and looking at no one in particular, Takao added, “We’ll take their quest.  At the worst, we’ll learn more about how this world operates.”

“Come on, Tak!”  Stunned, I backed up a bit.  “We aren’t mercenaries!  We can’t just go fight a bunch of those guys.”

“Who said we had to fight them?” he asked.

“You think we can just have a nice chat?”

“I’m down to fight them,” said Ave.

“We’ll figure something out.”  Takao turned to the leader.  “We’ll need supplies in advance.  As you noticed, we don’t have bedrolls, or tents.”

“Please, let us organize the excursion,” he gestured at the table.

We sat, they bargained.