Chương 4: The Important Questions

An hour's travel out of the city had taken Bella and Gemma far enough to ensure privacy amongst the forest. A quiet breeze stirred the branches above their heads as they lounged against the rough trunk of a massive tree. Back in the Pacific Northwest, where Bella lived, these sorts of trees were a rarity, as they had been logged for nearly two hundred years. And yet in every direction stood an army of these giants that clearly made up the bulk of the construction material for Elkstone.

The trees stood at staggered distances and let through dappled sunlight between boughs and branches with needles so green they were nearly blue. Birdsong and the scent of earth carried on the breeze, and if Bella closed her eyes and let her focus lapse, all of it was familiar enough that she could be enjoying a morning rest in the park after a graveyard shift as a security guard at the port. Yet, everything was slightly wrong.

The birds were different, the air lacked the tang of saltwater, and there was a distinct gap where the soundscape would normally be filled with cars and planes. More than that, underneath everything there was a strange sensation - an energy suffusing the world that she just couldn't identify. She spent several minutes letting her thoughts meander, tugging at that energetic feeling around her.

"I can't believe we actually wound up in the game. I know I said this earlier, but it's really just like your silly animes." The words brought Bella back into focus, eyes creeping open and focusing upon the distant canopy of tree limbs.

"They aren't silly. They were practically training considering it happened to us." Not that every show she'd watched or book she'd read had been the same, but "They always start by addressing a bunch of questions. Questions we probably want answers to." The same questions she was too excited to voice this morning, Bella got to dig into now.

"How did we get here? What happened to us back on Earth? How much of us are us, and how much of us are our characters? How much of our skills and spells did we retain? What sort of game mechanics carried over? Are we expected to act like our characters? What do we do next?" As the list grew longer, Bella's brow furrowed. This was too much to track. With a flick of her wrist she summoned a sheet of smooth blank parchment and a quill already glistening with black ink.

Upon it she summarized the questions she'd started to ask in a short list, with meticulously practiced handwriting, leaving space for answers between each one. A snort tore her away from her task and her gaze flicked over to Gemma, finding the elf watching with an amused glimmer in her eyes and a soft smile on her lips.

"I think we answered part of two questions," the elf murmured with obvious amusement. Bella just stared blankly, quill gripped daintily between her fingers, clearly lost.

"You're still you, with that adorable habit of losing yourself in problem solving and forgetting the world around you," laughed the elf." And you still are absolutely the most fun to tease," she added on as she watched Bella turn red and squirm in place under the observations.

"But more seriously – you just grabbed that parchment out of thin air. Was that from your inventory?" Oh. All embarrassment was forgotten immediately as understanding snapped into place; Bella's brows tightened in and she flicked her wrist once more. With the motion and a faint surge in that same tingling energy surrounding them, the parchment and quill disappeared into the void.

"It's a spell," came the catkin's response, short and enthusiastic. Somehow, she knew exactly how the spell worked and that the surge in energy was the usage of ambient mana.

"extradimensional storage. That's so cool! It's just like in my shows!" Her fingers danced as she quickly brought forth a series of items at random from what she'd hoarded during their rather long playthrough. Mismatched clothing with stat buffs that could turn a villager into a hero, steaming plates of intricate meals she'd collected for the buffs they provided, materials worth more than what the population of the entire town of Elkstone earned in a decade. And enough coin to overflow a dragon hoard.

Gemma watched with quiet amusement, one hand idly playing with the end of her golden braid as it rested in her lap. The other mirrored Bella's gesture as she instinctively summoned a small hard-skinned fruit, bright purple and about the size of a baseball, from her own storage. The game called it an eaguaro, and she had collected them to use as props for their guildhall back in the capitol city of Doslande. She bit in with a loud crunch and promptly grimaced when she found it was as sour as an unripe lime.

Thankfully she had the wherewithal to pull a waterskin from her storage and wash down the pucker worthy fruit. The rest of the eaguaro was promptly thrown as hard as she could manage into the forest. It turned out a max level paladin can throw things really far. The movement drew Bella's attention, enough to break her from a display of extradimensional spellcraft that would make a lesser mage weep with jealousy.

Together they watched the bitten purple ball sail through the woods over several hundred yards before hitting a tree trunk with an echoing smack.

"I think our stats carried over too. I don't think anyone on Earth can throw that far. And I could see it the whole way," Gemma finally said after a long, quiet moment of staring. By the time she tore her gaze from the splatter running down the tree, Bella had already tucked away all her loot and was frantically scribbling notes on her parchment. When Bella finally looked back up, Gemma was standing a short distance away.

The paladin turned over an arming sword in her hands, one handed and just over three feet in total length. It was easily recognized by the archmage as her friend's primary weapon in the game, a gorgeously filigreed silver colored sword made of pure mithril, aggressively enchanted with nearly every buff available. Their third player, Cameron, had crafted it as his halfling rogue, Robin. Robin eagerly held the party's status as their master rogue and master craftsperson.

Cameron was basically an honorary little brother to Bella and Holly, and Robin filled the same role as their little sibling. Gemma tossed it between her hands to get a feel for the weight before she tightened her grip and swung. The blade sliced through the air with a sharp whistle, stirring up a cloud of dust in its wake. She grinned brightly, grabbing a shield from her storage with her left hand.

It was crafted to match the sword, a tower shield nearly as tall as the elf herself, with similar ornate trimming around the edges and a relief of a pair of cupped hands etched into the center - the symbol of the Order of the Uplifting Spirit. Sword and shield in hand, Gemma practiced a handful of swings and bashes. The movements started with the slightest bit of awkwardness and a face tight with intense focus. But soon they looked natural, and her face slipped into a meditative, neutral expression.

After a bit more practice, she glanced at Bella with a furious grin, setting her sword and shield back into her storage.

"Definitely felt myself getting better as I stopped overthinking it. It's like my body knows what to do, but I was getting in the way of it. I want to try doing some movements with my armor on next." She started pulling armor pieces from her storage one after another, laying them out before herself, drawing Bella over to watch with amusement at the growing pile.

Each was an intricate masterpiece of various metals: mithril for its resistances and light weight, adamantine for its durability and strength, and alloys of other precious metals and minerals blended into the decorations to provide pathways for enchantments. Alongside the plate armor was a padded doublet made of wool spun from the fleece of a golden goat monster that Bella couldn't remember the name of.

All she knew was it had taken them three whole gaming sessions of farming the notoriously difficult to find creatures to get the item to drop. Cameron had claimed that getting the perfect crafting material was worth it. Thankfully the mithril chainmail accompanying it didn't require any extra material grinding, since they had been swimming in ingots of the metal by that point in the game. Gemma paused after she finished buttoning up the arming doublet and shrugging into the chainmail.

Lips pursed in thought, she stared at the collection of armor.

"I think I need your help putting this on. I could probably manage most of it, but…" she gestured at the complicated system of buckles and straps that held the pieces together, "it would make this a lot easier." Bella laughed softly as she stood and padded over to her friend.

"I see I've been demoted from archmage to squire," she joked, leaning down to pick up one of the pieces of plate. When she leaned in with the armor her memory flooded with images of going through these same steps, of tightening dragon-leather straps and running fingers under seams to smooth out pinch points, of kissing Gemma's cheek before sliding the helmet onto her head. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

The catkin immediately started glowing at the mental image and attempted to blank her mind to prevent more. Steps were completed in rote and mechanical fashion, and before she noticed, the process was complete. She stepped back to admire Gemma's armor as it glinted in the sun so brightly she nearly had to shield her eyes. Armed, armored, and dangerous, the elf stepped through a series of increasingly difficult sword forms as if she'd trained the skill every day of her entire life.

By the end, she was twirling and leaping, stabbing and dancing around imaginary foes with the grace of a deadly ballerina. And she didn't stop. One minute became two, became five, became ten - a constant blur of motion. When Gemma finally slowed, sheathed her sword, and dismissed her shield and helmet into her storage, only barely panting and with not a drop of sweat in sight, Bella realized she had been rooted to the spot, wide eyed, the entire time. If she could do that much without wearing out…

She turned her gaze away with a cough.

"Impressive you could move around that easily in full armor. Even moreso that you're not winded after all that. That'll be handy if we run into any tough enemies. I'll be counting on you, oh great High Paladin." Gemma rolled her eyes but couldn't suppress a wide grin at the comment.

"I will be your sword and shield, Lady Archmage," she shot back as she began to store the other pieces of her armor.

"Handy I don't have to have you take this all off of me. Wish it was easier to put on though. I know there's a paladin spell for summoning magical armor, but it wasn't nearly as good as this set Cameron made for me." She finished stowing away her gear and dropped back against the tree, crossing her legs and leaning back.

"Your turn. Show me what you got." With a snort, the archmage pulled her own weapon from her storage. It was a staff taller than her, which wasn't saying much considering her height. Its long handle shone with bright gold, although it was not made from the soft metal itself. Rather, Cameron had crafted its form from an alloy of metals similar to the one used to enchant Gemma's armor. The spellcasting tool held a fist-sized crystal at its apex, clear until used to channel any particular magical element.

This time, Bella paid closer attention to the process of spellcasting itself. She reached within herself and found a titanic ocean of that same energy she noticed suffusing the air around them. Mana, the game had called it. She pulled slowly, an imperceptibly small amount in comparison to the reserves held within her, and drew it into her hand. The mana in her hand in turn drew from the ambient mana in her surroundings, fueling itself. As this happened she pictured what she wanted – fire.

Just like earlier that morning, she held the image in her mind, coerced the mana to burn, to convince itself to become fire. Somehow she knew that spellcasting was the imposition of willpower upon this mystical energy, making it act as desired. And as desired, fire sprung to life above her staff. It was a bright orange, steady, softball sized flame that radiated strong heat despite its small size.

She tossed the ball from her staff to her free hand, then back, before letting the mana dissipate and the spell disappear.

"Don't wanna start a forest fire," she commented as she saw Gemma's eyebrow raise.

"Couldn't resist it though. Who doesn't love throwing a fireball?" Her staff came back up, the spellcasting practically immediate this time. Instead of flame, a ball of water appeared from thin air and rotated lazily above the now dark blue crystal. She knew beneath the sudden appearance was a more practical explanation: the collection and compression of water in the nearby air into one place.

Similarly, her fireball had been the process of using mana as the fuel source of the flame, generating heat through air friction to ignite it. The water ball rippled slowly as she experimented with rotating it, slowly at first, and then spinning so fast it blurred. Without any gesture she stopped it in place and started something different – using mana to leech heat energy from the sphere until it solidified into ice. Then she compressed it into a dart and threw it as hard as she could.

Like it was second nature, Bella burst forth another surge of mana to provide rotation to the spike and give it more forward momentum. The end result was a frozen rocket that launched forward at blistering speeds. It impacted a tree as wide as a car and left a crater the size of a basketball. Bella just laughed incredulously.

"That was just a beginner spell. That." She shook her head as the reality of her destructive power settled in. The archmage had distinct knowledge of an incredible number of spells ranging from cataclysmically earth shattering and spatially warping to the mundane act of creating water or starting a fire.

"I know I always used elemental spells in the game, but… I'm going to try one more thing before I'm tempted to destroy the entire forest." Her staff lifted lazily, pointed at the same tree she'd just shot the ice at. The only sign she cast a spell was the weapon's crystal turning a void black. Gemma watched for a few seconds, then cocked her head in confusion at the lack of projectile and turned her gaze towards the tree. What she saw instead was the tree being swallowed into a horrifying nothingness.

The entire tree was gone, along with a half-sphere of dirt around its base.

"What the heck was that?"

"I banished it to the shadow realm." Her voice was quiet, almost reverential.

"Never got to use that spell in game. Took too much time to cast. It was the top spell of the space-and-time tree." She flicked her wrist and dropped her staff into her storage, then reached up to scratch the back of her neck.

"That was uncomfortable to see. It's one thing to summon the void in a game, but looking into that was… wrong. I don't think I'm going use that spell much." The two of them spent another few hours testing other various game mechanics. There were no menus, no grand System with blue boxes hovering in their face, no numbered stats or levels that they could find.

Instead, each had a general sense of their own capabilities and wellness, how much energy was left as they cast spells or lashed out with a weapon, and how healthy they were. They both knew instinctively how to use the many skills they'd learned throughout the game, and that they, and presumably others, could exert their power as a sort of aura that showcased their strength. Between the two of them, they could slay a god. And they had. At least, with Cameron's help they had.

"Do you think it had anything to do with us coming here?" Bella asked hesitantly, twirling an orb of pure golden light in her hand like a top.

"Like – we destroyed the avatar of Irien. She was a goddess. The Exiled Moon, the whole point of the game, right? And the last thing I remember was us roleplaying about beating her in the inn, then I woke up." Next to you, she didn't add.

"How can we know?" Gemma answered after a moment of thought.

"Do you think Cameron came over too? He didn't seem to be at the inn with us. At least, no one mentioned Robin." They both knew that Robin, Cameron's halfling rogue character, was just as mischievous and as likely to leave an impression as the player himself. Bella managed a choked laugh somewhere between amused and concerned.

"That's true. We should make a point of asking back at the inn. And maybe when we go see the Lord." On one hand, she loved Cameron like a little brother; but on the other, something she'd never say: she wouldn't complain too hard about being stuck in her favorite fantasy world with just Holly.

"Good call. Someone might have some info on Robin. The townsfolk… don't feel like NPCs. These are real people that know things." Nodding, Bella agreed, "Yeah. A common trope in the books I read is people not realizing that. But we should go into everything with that assumption. These aren't scripts or code. These are real people, with real lives and feelings and histories and futures."

"So no murder hobos?" Gemma teased. She knew Bella would never, but couldn't help but get a dig in on some of their least favorite types of players. The catkin might min-max her stats, but she loved good roleplay as much as Gemma did. She'd just never admit it. Bella just stuck her tongue out in response. The elf rolled her eyes and laughed, leaning in to peek at the list of remaining questions they'd hoped to cover.

"I think that just leaves us two more questions. Do we act like ourselves or our characters? Not that it matters for you." The corners of her eyes took on that teasing crinkle once more, "You were always a good girl in game and out."" Mrrrp!" A critical hit! Bella's hands came up to provide a protective barrier for the fire raging in her cheeks, but the lashing of her tail and the quiver in the tips of her ears gave her away easily.

"And it seems playing my character has made our encounters go smoothly," Gemma continued, as if she hadn't just lit her best friend aflame with embarrassment.

"So I will continue to do so when we're out in public, at least. Which leaves us with one more thing to answer - what do we do next?" It took the catkin several moments of recovery before she could furnish a response. Eventually the shield of her hands fell and tucked into her lap, curling into her azure dress.

"Whatever we want? No one's given us a goal. There's no System to tell us what to do. I think we should take our time. Finish up some of the quests…" At the word quest, she gestured and summoned a thick series of notes in her own handwriting about tasks and rumors Bellasora had collected during their adventures "that we left behind. See if we can find Cameron." It only occurred to her after the fact that she had grabbed a book of quest notes that she knew existed. Something more to ponder on.

As she glanced over the list of quests, Gemma responded, "We should head back to Doslande at some point too. Cameron might be there. We can collect anything we need from our guild at the same time." A pause, a sniff at her shirt.

"And we should probably stop for a bath before heading to the lord's manor tonight." With a rough plan in place, the two gathered their belongings back into their extradimensional storages and began their return to town.