Leaving his horse tied up outside, he finally stepped into the tavern, which was crowded and bustling, all sorts of chatter happening, conversations that actually sounded authentic to casual listening.
He brushed off the barmaid who approached him, and then the scantily clad young man who tried to catch his attention, mouth twitching with amusement.Casting his eyes around, he finally settled on a woman sitting in the corner crying.She wore a particular shade of green for her apron, indicating an easy quest.Probably too easy, but he'd learned the hard way with Monmouth's previous games not to bite off more than he could chew.
Approaching the woman, he waited until she looked up before bowing slightly."You seem troubled, Mistress.Is there some way this humble knight could serve you?"
He could just speak normally, there was no requirement in this game to speak a certain way like some did for the immersion factor, but what was the point in playing a game like this if you weren't going to throw yourself into it wholeheartedly?
The woman sniffled."You're most kind, sir knight.A bandit attacked me on Highmore Road, and while I don't care that he took my food and money, he also stole my kitten, and I should very much like to have her back."
He had to rescue a kitten?That was fucking adorable."It would be my honor to retrieve your kitten, and all else I can, mistress."
"Thank you so much," the woman said, and offered her right hand.Lance took it in both of his, and the quest blinked into existence on his master list.Leaving the woman, he headed back outside, swung into the saddle, and turned his horse to the crossroads.
Thankfully, there was a legible sign, not something that would be present for more difficult quests.Taking the road marked Highmore, he rode at an easy pace the horse could maintain for hours, even though it was only at level five.
It didn't take him long to find the faint, worn footpath that led into the woods.He turned his horse that way and rode onward into the trees.He pulled his bow off his back and nocked an arrow, eyes peeled for easy pickings to start his collection of supplies for bartering and creating.
After he'd managed to bag three rabbits and one fox, he found another footpath with a bit of ribbon snagged on a thorny branch.As he stood there, the barest, faintest crying of an unhappy kitten reached his ears.
Grinning, he left his horse in the little clearing by the brook to enjoy some water and grass, and forged on alone, swapping his bow for his stupid, albeit powerful, katana.He crept through the grass, moving carefully, as stealthily as his level five stats would allow.The sound of the crying kitten grew louder, closer, until he came up to a convenient cluster of hedges and peered over the top of them to see…
That something wasn't right.
There was a kitten, sort of, but the thief he was intended to vanquish or at least run off was nowhere to be seen, and the kitten was…glitching.Black.White.Calico.Gray.Shorthair.Longhair.
Annoyance washed over him.A bug, seriously?His first quest, an obvious baby-steps starter quest, and it was bugging?Standing to his full height, Lance snapped his fingers twice to bring up chatter.
His annoyance turned into confusion when he could find no mention anywhere of the glitch.Just eager, excited praise for how awesome and surprising the game was right from the jump.Huffing, he dismissed chatter and stepped around the hedges before approaching the magical changing kitten.
It was sitting in lush green grass right by the edge of a beautiful little pond, where all colors of goldfish swam and ridiculously pretty water lilies floated along the top.They'd always been his favorite flower.
Flower of the Divine, Crown of the Queen, Crest of the White Knight.
Lance shook his head.Where had that come from?Was it the game?But he'd never heard of a game that got in your head that way.Hell, it took expensive add-ons to be able to get the full immersion experience, and while he had some good ones, nothing he had wasthatgood.He was pretty sure only the militarymighthave technology like that.
Pushing the weird, random thought away, he crouched down by the weird, glitching kitten to scoop it up—and suddenly everything was black.Cold.Reallycold, like he was outside in the snow and not in an expensive video game with decent immersions.
Then everything snapped back into place.The whole weird incident couldn't have lasted more than a second, two at most.
In his hands, the kitten was gone, and his gleaming silver gauntlet was instead smeared with red liquid.His heart seized in his chest before his brain caught up and realized it wasn't blood.Not the right shade of red, more like apples or strawberries, and it had glitter or something in it that made it sparkle and shine.
The strange red liquid started moving—spreading.Lance's heart sped up as panic seized him.A virus?Was the weird kitten glitch spreading to him?What the fuck was going on?
It was hot.Burning.
Then the pain hit him like a brick to the face.Lance screamed, jerked and flailed, trying to get the substance off."Computer, pain sensors off!"
Nothing.No chirp, no chime, not even the annoying voice he usually muted because he hadn't gotten around to buying a voice pack he liked.The liquid kept spreading, the pain kept increasing.
Liquid fire of the King of No Return.
Before he could process that thought, the strangeness of it, some instinct kicked in, and Lance threw himself into the pond.He swam down, down, down, to the very bottom of the pond, where the water was so cold that very little could grow or decay.Waters of the Queen, of the Lady, of the child she claimed as her own.
He stood on the bottom and took deep, heaving breaths as the liquid fire slowly sputtered, died, and sloughed off in harmless flakes.
What in thefuckwas going on.He was standing at the bottom of a pond, but this far down, it looked more like an enormous lake.Far too vast for a little pond in a small forest clearing.Was this for a later quest, something he hadn't been meant to find so soon?
He pulled up his stats, but there was nothing there that would allow him to just stand and breathe water like this.That sort of thing was always in the late stages of a game, especially open world games like this that never really ended.
