“YOU LEVELED UP!” An alert flashed across the peripheral of Isaac’s vision. “LEVEL 0-1, ALL STATS INCREASED, AND GAIN ONE POINT FOR YOUR SKILL TREE (1 TOTAL).”
“Now that’s more like it!” Isaac grinned to himself. “I’d better invest it later. For now,” Isaac raised his voice. “Thanks for helping us with that, Charles, was it? You really saved us there. I think I misjudged you.”
He turned around to see Charles on one knee before Tenshi, clasping her hands in his.
“The life of a Hero is a hard one, no reward asked, and none given,” he professed, looking up at her devoutly and combing his hair tuft with one hand. “But a kiss from you would render it all worthwhile, fair maiden.”
“I take it back, he still a creep,” Isaac grimaced, limping over to intervene.
Tenshi looked down at him, her blank expression betraying no response.
“I see our future when I look in your eyes,” Charles continued, reaching into his waist pouch and pulling out a small box, popping it open to reveal a thin gold ring. “Me, waking you up with breakfast in bed on a Monday morning, getting the kids ready for school while you prepare for a day at work. I’d make us matching lunches, and eat mine whenever you take your lunch break, so we’d be eating it together, even when we’re apart. Then, you’d come home from a long day, and I’d have supper and a bath ready. We’d eat together, then after that, in bed…”
“Let me cut you off right there,” Isaac butted in. “Let her go, man. She’s clearly not interested.”
“Bro, we’re having a moment here!” Charles complained indignantly. “You don’t just cut in when your bro’s proposing!”
“I am not your bro, dude,” Isaac pulled at Charles’ shoulder.
“What do I do?” Tenshi turned to look at Isaac. “I have never been proposed to before.”
“I think you can safely ignore him,” Isaac advised her.
“That hurts, bro.” Charles sighed, returning the ring box to his pouch and rising to his feet. “Well, how about this then.”
With a deft flourish, he produced a white, lace-edged handkerchief with a stylized "CW" stitched into the corner. Without any explanation, he planted a gentle kiss on the fabric, then tied the corners off, turning it into a little white bundle. With a grin, he carefully placed the handkerchief in Tenshi's hand. “There you go lady, one kiss for the road! Now that I've given you a kiss, if you ever feel like returning it, well, I’ll be around.” He winked outrageously.
“Understood.” Tenshi nodded blankly, pocketing the bundle.
“If you’re quite finished over there, we ought to loot the bodies,” Isaac called out. “Also, I don’t suppose you have any more of those potions?” He gestured down at his injured left leg.
“Be my guest!” Charles laughed, his good humor undiminished as he strode over to Isaac, handing him the medicine.
“What exactly are we searching for?” Tenshi called out, kicking a Muggmite over onto its face.
“When you look at a dead Muggmite, a menu option should pop up to loot it,” Isaac called back, swigging the potion gingerly. To his surprise, its taste wasn’t unpleasant like medicine, but rather tasted strongly of mint and honey. However, the sensation of his wound healing was anything but pleasant. It felt like his skin was alive and wriggling as it sewed itself back together, his muscles burning like they were on fire as torn ligaments reconnected.
“I see it,” Tenshi affirmed, tapping the air above the corpse in front of her. With a barely discernable flicker, the cadaver proceeded to slowly slip through the ground as if it were quicksand, vanishing from their view. A small window popped up in response, listing the items she had received from her search.
“It’s kind of a roundabout way of getting treasure.” Charles shrugged, tapping corpse after corpse. “You end up with an inventory filled with useless trash like “Torn Garment” and “Stone Axe”, which you then have to sell to the NPCs to get your money.”
“It makes it more immersive, anyway.” Isaac smiled. “I was always questioning games where killing an animal somehow makes them drop gold. How exactly would a bear hold a bag of money?”
“I honestly never really thought that much about it.” Charles shrugged. “If the game’s fun, why worry about the little details?”
“What would happen were we to leave the bodies as they are?” Tenshi questioned. “Will they disappear by themselves, leaving their items behind?”
“Actually, if the items aren’t claimed within a span of time, the bodies vanish with all the items they had equipped,” Isaac returned nonchalantly. “Bosses are the exception, if the item they drop isn’t taken with them, the boss reforms itself.”
“You’ve encountered a boss?” Charles asked, skeptically. “I mean, I assumed they existed, but I hadn’t heard anything about players meeting them yet."
“Oh, really?” Isaac responded awkwardly. “Oh, hey, here’s the Aberrant!” he interjected, changing the subject.
“Oooh, does he still have that cool sword?” Charles asked, rising and hurrying over to look.
“A short sword with a Level 6 Duplicator Periapt,” Isaac clarified, reading his inventory. “It’s too high a level for me to equip”.
“I don’t need it either, a short sword would cramp my style.” Charles shrugged. “Besides, my trusty sword and I are lifelong partners now. What about Tenshi?”
“I have my gun already,” Tenshi returned.
“Well, I can transfer the abilities onto your gun if you’d like,” Isaac offered.
“You can do that?” Charles asked in surprise. “What class are you, anyway?”
“It’s not a matter of class abilities, anyone can do it.” Isaac waved the question away. “Here, you just pop this stone out here…” Isaac smacked the pommel of the sword, knocking the glowing gemstone out. “This here is a Periapt, something like solidified magic” he explained, holding it out to the other two. “It’s the real power behind any kind of enchanted equipment.”
“Well, that’s fine and all, but how are you gonna stick that on Tenshi’s gun?” Charles questioned. “Did you bring some magic glue stick or something?”
“I’ll show you” Isaac smirked, turning to Tenshi. “May I see your gun?”
The girl grudgingly passed the weapon over to him, brushing her fingers over it as it left her grasp.
Looking the weapon over from top to bottom, Isaac finally found what he was looking for. “See these little indentations in the stock?” Isaac showed the other two. “All you have to do is insert the Periapt here…” He placed the glowing stone against the weapon, then smacked it in with the heel of his palm. In response, the gem pulsed once, sending an iridescent glow across the entire length of the gun, before receding to its original dull glimmer.
“Installation complete!” Isaac grinned, mock wiping his forehead. “Still that’s some high-level weaponry you’ve got there!” He noted out loud, handing it back to her. “With that many indents, you could put at least five more Periapts in that thing. It must’ve been custom made.”
“A good friend gave it to me,” she returned with a faintly lonely expression on her face.
“So…now that gun’s magic, right?” Charles removed his helmet and looked quizzically at the weapon. “How can you tell?”
“She would have to activate it, I guess,” Isaac reasoned. “Give it a go, Tenshi.”
“How?” she questioned monosyllabically, gently tracing her finger across the milky grey prism.
“How indeed…” Isaac scratched his head. “It’s hard to explain. Would you understand me if I said you need to “will for it with the forefront of your mind”?”
“Wilco,” she returned unblinkingly, and as if in response, her gun shimmered softly, ejecting a perfect replica.
“Woah, it works!” Charles gasped in awe, catching the rifle and hefting it experimentally. Turning around, he brought the firearm to his shoulder, aiming at the distant forest and tentatively pulling the trigger. With a sharp report, a stream of bullets erupted from the barrel of the gun, tearing through the foliage in the distance. Charles grinned from ear to ear in response, holding the rifle in front of him with both hands.
“Screw swords, from now on this is my weapon!” He laughed.
“The hero just turned his back on his lifelong-partner!” Isaac exclaimed. “What an un-knightly response!”
“This is the modern era,” Charles smirked, posing with his new weapon. “A hero’s gotta keep up with the times. This is my NEW partner!”
At that moment, Charles’s gun fizzled and vanished from his hand.
“Nooo! Partner!” Charles cried, falling to his knees and searching the grass.
Isaac looked over to see Tenshi standing behind them with a spread of rifles littering the ground around her. As an additional one dropped off her master copy, one of the guns next to her ankle likewise flickered out of existence.
“It looks like she can only have around ten copies at one time before they start to vanish,” Isaac reasoned, patting Charles on the shoulder. “I think you’d better stick with a sword, it’s more faithful.”
“I’ll never betray it again!” Charles declared, wiping away a mock tear and gripping the hilt of his longsword resolutely.
“So, should we start heading to the next town?” Isaac asked, looking up at the sun in the sky. “It’s probably about 2:30 now, I want to make sure we’ve at least reached it by suppertime.”
“Before that, I think we have a couple of questions for you,” Charles cut in with a suddenly serious tone, rising to his feet and glancing at Tenshi.
“Correct,” Tenshi affirmed, walking over to Isaac.
“You…” Charles started gravely. “You’re not an ordinary player, are you?”
“Um, what do you mean by that exactly?” Isaac edged nervously away from him. “What definition of “ordinary” are you going by, anyway?”
“Discrepancy One,” Tenshi stated from directly behind him, causing Isaac to whirl around in surprise. “You were unusually calm regarding the changes to BRYZ, up until I mentioned that the entirety of BRYZ had been altered, at which point you were beyond shocked. Would not an ordinary person assume from the start that all BRYZ had been altered?”
“Well, that’s…” Isaac started.
“Discrepancy Two,” Tenshi butted in, stepping even closer. “You were able to flawlessly identify everything regarding the monsters we faced from their equipment to their weaknesses, even warning me that we would likely encounter foes.”
“Any RPG playing geek could have told you that!” Isaac retorted, taking a step back
“Discrepancy Three,” Tenshi continued, closing the gap. “You knew things no first-time visitor to this edited BRYZ should know, such as the existence of “bosses”, how to loot bodies despite this being your first fight, and how a “Periapt” works and how to transfer it.”
“Again, I got a bit lucky with my guessing,” Isaac defended himself sullenly. “I don’t get what you’re so worked up about.”
“Discrepancy Four,” Tenshi stated definitively. “A moment ago, you looked up at the in-game sun to tell the time, even though the BRYZ clock is set to AST, and does not change to match individuals and their time zones. This would only make sense if your time zone is already identical to the time zone imposed on BRYZ after the change took place.”
Isaac groaned and placed his hand over his face.
“Conclusion: There is an upwards of 95% chance that you are directly connected to the situation currently affecting BRYZ,” Tenshi finished, planting herself directly in front of Isaac and leveling an unblinking gaze at him.
“Oh wow, I was just talking about the Periapt thing, but yeah, you go girl!” Charles gave her a thumbs-up.
“Well, I guess there’s not really any way I can talk my way out of this one, is there?” Isaac replied with a pained expression. “You win, I’ll tell you everything I know but…for now, you’re kind of violating my personal space.”
“Define personal space,” Tenshi questioned, not stepping back in the slightest.
“Oh…forget it.” Isaac smirked, stepping back and dropping to the ground, sitting himself comfortably on the lush grass. “I guess I’d better start at the beginning.”
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