The cloaked warrior pulled his rusty sword out of the last goblin. He’d slaughtered them ruthlessly, the blood staining his shoes and pooling underneath the broken wood and metal that littered the room. It was hard to believe he did all this with a coroded blade. Two other cloaked figures stood watching him: a Saber and a Druid. The Druid chuckled.

  “I like this one,” she told the Saber. “He’s got spirit.”

  “This isn’t what I’d call spirit,” he replied. “Goblins are intelligent creatures, and we could work to introduce them in our society. Fighting isn’t the only option here, you know?”

  “They’ve had their chance, and they failed,” the man with the sword said, standing up. His voice sounded vaguely familiar to James. “Continuing with peace is pointless. If you could talk your way out of every situation, would you need me?”

  “Terrific, we’ve been lumped with a psychopath,” the other man growled. “It was only a matter of time. C’mon, Delarius is waiting for us.”

  James woke up in one of the Vagrant Company tents, his wounds fully healed.

  Dream Bonus

  Dream of the Precursor

  You have already reached the maximum Dream Bonuses for today. Would you like to buy a Dreamcatcher item?

  “Nah, I’m good,” James said, getting out from under his bed clothes and changing back into his armour. “Wish there was an item to stop them, to be honest.”

  He left the tent to find the rest of the party standing around, waiting for him to turn up. He noticed Grey had a new cloak, with ornate red circles patterning the white material. He quickly checked Grey’s stats.

  Skibabylon

  Guardian Cloak

  +50 HP

  “Considering I have a habit of leaping in front of attacks, I thought some extra health would be helpful,” they explained.

  “Was there not any better items?” Amelia asked.

  “For a trading company, their stock was minimal and their prices were exorbitant. Dying did a number on my gold.”

  “You’re telling me,” Patrick growled, “I just lost a good chunk of my XP too because I died in the dungeon. I knew going into a higher level dungeon was a bad idea.”

  “Enough chatter, let’s get rolling,” James said as the party resumed their travels to Haelshire.

  The Heartily Fields continued to roll on forever, and after thirty minutes of the party thinking they were stuck in an endlessly looping area, they climbed a hill to see the city of Haelshire appear on the horizon. Unlike the spires of the capital they could still see, it looked more like a classic mediaeval fortress, with cobbled spires and a thick stone wall, although the plumes of steam hinted it might be more than that.

  The grass started to get less and less green, being replaced with corn and other crops. Delarius led the party forward, seemingly being a lot more familiar with this area than Heartily. A few farmers looked at Delarius and waved.

  “How is the new airship coming on, Deli?” One of them asked.

  “It successfully flew!” Delarius shouted back, which wasn’t technically a lie.

  Amelia chortled, “They really call you Deli round here?”

  “I worked in Haelshire for quite a long time. They enjoy the advances of technology as much as I do. I have fond memories of the locals. I am not sure they have very fond memories of me.”

  “Crashes?”

  Delarius nodded.

  “Oh, well. Maybe you’ll make it up to them when you help us save the world, eh?”

  At that moment, an old man collapsed from out of the cornfield in front of the party members behind Delarius. He was wearing a thick purple cloak and a wooden walking stick taller than he was. Grey and James helped him up, and saw the name above his head, indicating he was a player.

  SoulArmoury

  Saber Level 6

  400/400 HP

  “I apologise profusely,” he said through a thick, unkempt beard. “I was in a rush, and I got lost through this great, unkempt wilderness. These bizarre plants surrounded me on all sides, I felt like they would devour me whole.”

  “It’s...it’s a cornfield,” Grey told him.

  “Is that what they call them?” the old man looked over his head and shivered before turning back. “Ghastly. I shall walk with you a little before I reenter this...yellow jungle of nightmares.”

  James turned to Grey and shrugged, figuring he was a player who just really enjoyed getting in character, and they walked together, keeping a few paces behind Delarius and Amelia. The aeronaut was reeling off some of his exploits in the local area to her, and she was doing her best to look like she understood the technological jargon that fell out of his mouth. The old man smiled as he watched them talk.

  “I’m assuming she is talking to Delarius?” he asked. Players couldn’t see NPCs from quests they’d already completed.

  Patrick nodded. “Spewing technobabble like nobody’s business.”

  “It has been quite a long time since I saw Delarius,” he said “It is good to hear that he is in high spirits. I just wish I could…see and talk to him again.”

  “Do we really not see him again three levels from now?” James asked.

  “I-I think I have inadvertently spoiled something,” the old man stuttered. “Sorry. Who is the girl next to him?”

  Amelia glanced back as she heard the conversation, raised an eyebrow, and turned back to Delarius.

  “Her player handle is GlassAngel,” James explained, pointing at the words floating above her head. “She’s our resident Saber.”

  “Ah, yes. A good, dependable class if ever I’ve seen one. Tell me...how is that sword attached to her back? It seems to just be floating in the vague vicinity.”

  “I don’t know. I thought it was just a Saber thing. Happens all the time in other video games. It doesn’t seem to be relevant to how she fights, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “Of course not. Maybe it is just a cosmetic thing...maybe…” He seemed lost in thought for a second before returning to his bombastic self. “I think I should be going now. Once more into the breach!”

  The man turned around and sprinted into the cornfield, screaming at the crops. Grey raised an eyebrow.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “This game is full of surprises,” they said.

  “Wasn’t that guy a Saber?” James pointed out. “Did you guys see a sword anywhere on him?”

  “Maybe it was under his cloak?”

  “Look at Amelia’s sword, you think he can hide that under a cape?”

  “Hey, Delarius,” Patrick shouted, “did you hear that cornfield guy?”

  “I cannot say I did,” Delarius said. He turned back to Amelia almost immediately.

  “Can Quest NPCs interact with people that can’t see them?” James asked the system.

  Yes. To provide greater realism for the players currently in the quest, Quest NPCs can see and interact with people who cannot see the NPC due to finishing or not starting the questline.

  “Was Delarius really just so stuck in his own world he heard nothing?” Patrick wondered.

  “Possibly,” James replied, looking at the cornfield he’d fled through. “Regardless of whether he could or not...something seems suspicious about that guy.”

  They left the farming region and entered barren land, with a few barricades providing cover for guards in the event of a large monster attack. The stone walls of Haelshire towered over them, and they could smell the smoke of furnaces within, even on the other side of a moat full of muddy water. Delarius waved to some guard hidden in a tower, and the drawbridge slowly began to come down, revealing the city within.

  Heavy cogs spun as the party made their way across the drawbridge and the portcullis began to lift. What greeted them on the other side was a massive crowd of people going about their day, not even fazed by the massive rising metal and churning gears. As the party walked into the crowd, they soon discovered this sound was a constant in the city. While the buildings were mostly mediaeval, consistent with Heartily stylistically, they were a lot more weathered. A lot of them clearly had rotting wood, and some of the more fortunate were patched up with metal and spinning gears. The smoke they saw from a distance was now choking the sky, and they could feel the heat from the furnaces even here. This was ground zero for Sable’s industrial revolution, even if it hadn’t reached the rest of the idyllic country of Corinth yet, a snapshot of things to come frozen by the time the game took place.

  “It’s the industrial centre of the region,” Delarius said, smiling as he waved the fog away. “No magic here, just glorious technology!”

  The party glanced at each other as Delarius started coughing from the thick air.

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, air pollution sucks where we come from too,” Patrick told him.

  They struggled through the crowd as best they could, a few shopkeepers waving things in their faces that they declined to purchase. Amelia felt someone try to pickpocket her and promptly punched him in the gut. The man tried to lash out, but Amelia had already moved through the crowd and he whacked another NPC. It didn’t take long for the fight to escalate and for guards to wade through the sea of people to break it up.

  “You never learnt how not to start fights, did you?” Grey asked her.

  “Ok, this one clearly wasn’t my fault,” Amelia replied incredulously.

  “That’s what you said every time the bullies back in high school ended up with black eyes. I and James always had to bail you out when the teachers never took your side.”

  “They were assholes, you expected me to stay down and just take it?”

  “Of course not, it just…kept happening.”

  Amelia shrugged. “Then they should have stopped.”

  The group advanced down the main thoroughfare into a much more open main square. It was a large circle surrounded by slightly better-looking buildings than the patchwork houses they’d seen near the entrance. Most of them were entirely made of brick and mortar instead of wood, with pipes jutting out and descending into the ground. This was also the place where most of the players who visited Haelshire congregated, although most of them were just talking and posing in fancy gear rather than chatting with NPCs.

  In the centre was a gold statue of a long-haired man raising his sword aloft. Unfortunately, the gleaming metal was gone, lost under mounds of dirt and grime, and slowly beginning to corode. It felt less like a triumphant reminder of the city’s wealth and more like a reminder of past strength that it no longer had. There was a plaque covered in dirt, and Grey cleaned it away to get a better look.

  To the great hero who defeated the Dark Lord.

  We are forever grateful.

  “Weird,” Grey said as he examined the beaten up brass plate. “The space between the two lines…it’s hard to tell through the dirt, but it almost looks like there was another line here that got scratched out. Maybe this hero’s name?”

  “Must have been an unpopular guy,” Patrick commented.

  “Also, the Dark Lord is still around, right?” James asked Delarius. “When was he ever defeated?”

  “He was sealed away by a group of heroes around 100 years ago,” Delarius explained. “I assume that is what it is referring to. We all thought the sealing was perminent. He only escaped recently.”

  “A group?” Grey repeated, “Then why is there only one hero mentioned here?”

  “Classic historical favouritism,” Patrick responded. “People only ever remember the leader, not the countless people who actually fought and died for them. I doubt it’s anything important. If we get one of these at the end of the game, you better be sure we’re all there.”

  James ignored Patrick and continued his line of questioning. “They didn’t even have a name, it was just...the hero?”

  Delarius answered, “They came out of nowhere and vanished back where they came. We do not know who they were, I just hope they survived. The same is true of all of you, actually. I’d like you to live.”

  “Same here,” Patrick replied, bitterly.

  The characters kept walking, eventually reaching a collection of large stone buildings surrounded by a high wall laced with barbed wire. None of these were embedded with tech, a reminder of what the city used to look like before the revolution. Several guards were walking around inside the walls, and two greeted Delarius as they reached the ornate gates. They were detailed with the kingdom’s crest, a shield depicting a dragon facing down a massive serpent, flanked by a sword and a bow.

  “Welcome back, Delarius,” The guards said. “Are these the heroes from another world?”

  “Indeed they are,” He replied, “but we crash landed after leaving Shaderidge. We would like to obtain a form of transport.”

  The guard opened the gates and let them in.

  “They seemed pretty chill about us being from another world,” Amelia pointed out as they walked past the groups of soldiers standing to attention.

  “We have known about other worlds for a long time, it is nothing new,” Delarius said. He then quickly added, “Of course, this is the first time we’ve ever needed help from them or been able to call on them at all.”

  “So that other hero didn’t come from Earth? ‘Cause you made it sound like he did.”

  “I suppose that would make sense, but…I doubt it somehow.”

  Amelia shrugged and just went with it. Delarius showed them to one of the barracks. They entered a weirdly empty wood lined hall. They walked down it, turned a corner, and the stench of rot hit them like a bus.

  The next corridor was covered in bodies. The guards within had been massacred, blood coating the floor as their empty eyes stared outwards. Their weapons and a decent chunk of their armour were gone, leaving the cloth garments they wore beneath. As they saw this, the nature of the building revealed itself to them.

  Entering Dungeon

  Haelshire Garrison

  Level 3

  James Stats: Level: 3 HP: 300/300 STR: 10 DEF: 15 DEX: 5 SPL: 15 INT: 1

  Grey stats: Level: 3 HP: 150/150 STR: 5 DEF: 15 DEX: 5 SPL: 10 INT: 0 Healing Pool:200/200

  Amelia Stats: Level: 3 HP: 150/150 STR: 25 DEF: 5 DEX: 10 SPL: 5 INT: 0

  Patrick stats: Level: 3 HP: 100/100 STR: 20 DEF: 5 DEX: 15 SPL: 15 INT: 0 Mana: 150/150