Chương 150: Chapter 148: Ruminating on Earth

You have defeated Dire Lynxith x13. You gain (585, 000/4) 146, 250 experience. That brings me to 146, 740 experience out of the 308, 000 I need for next level. So almost halfway. Not bad for a single battle. I immediately start harvesting the dire lynxiths. We need ten sets of claws, so I put those in a separate pouch for the castle guard. I don't think he expected us to return at all, let alone successful, and so quickly, too.

The claws of the dire lynxiths are much bigger than the ones I already have in my spatial bag. No way they would have convinced the guard that we'd killed the dire variety. These claws are a good eight inches long, almost good enough to be daggers on their own. You could probably just wrap a handle around the base of the claw and use it as a dagger if you really wanted to. I take their fur, too. My animal harvesting goes up to 23, and now we have more furs that I can cure into leather or just into hides.

They'll make the floor of the tent that much more comfortable, I guess.

"I bet you can make more of those bracers with these claws," El says as I pack them away.

"Probably way more powerful than that first set."

"You really think I can?" I ask.

"That set was kind of spur of the moment and janky as hell. I didn't know what I was doing."

"You know what you're doing now, though. Don't you?" I think about it. If I pushed the claws through a strap of leather, then put another piece of leather underneath so that the base of the claws wasn't digging into the forearm all the time, I might be able to. I'll make a set for El if I can figure it out. But I'm not replacing my own bracers. Those things are badass. They give me a +5 to my strength. I'm never replacing those unless I get something better.

And I really don't think that this kind of bracer that El's talking about could possibly be better.

"Let's take some time here," Ash says.

"Set up camp for the night. I don't want to go back to the gate guards too quickly."

"What?" I say.

"Why not?" She shrugs.

"They might not believe that we accomplished the task so quickly. They might think we cheated. Also, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with tipping our hands like this. I don't know if we want them to know how strong we are just yet." I suppose that's a good enough reason. We move a little distance away from all the bodies and set up camp. Ash harvests some steaks from the dire lynxiths. I'm not overly fond of lynxith meat. It's kind of sweet, sort of like pork, but it's a bit stringier than I like.

Gigi, I notice, doesn't eat at all. She gnaws on some of the jerky from the goar, and that's enough for her. I can't say I blame her. Once everything is set up, I take out my tools and start trying to make El her bracers. The dire lynxith claws are so long that I can only use a few of them, and have to have them run down the ridge that will be her forearm. But I do have some of the greater lynxith claws too, and those are only about half as long.

So I intersperse those among the rest of the bracer, all of the claws facing the same way. When someone tries to grab her arm, or when she slashes with her arm, these claws will tear them to ribbons. I make sure that there is padding between the two layers of leather, then I sew them together with some sinew from the dire lynxiths. You have crafted Assault Bracer. Rare wrist armor. 3/20. +3 armor. Deals 50-100 damage to those attacking with claws or fangs. You gain 10, 000 experience. That's pretty good.

Brings me just past the halfway point for my level. And it's a pretty massive upgrade from the last set of these things that I made. And I increased my armorer skill up to 22. El straps it onto her forearm and smiles at me. Then she gives me a hug that cracks my back in three places. I take a deep breath, but nothing seems broken.

"Thanks," she says, looking slightly embarrassed as she steps back.

"I love these things."

"Any time," I say.

"I'm glad you like it." She slashes back and forth a few times at the air, feeling the way the claws cut through the air and smiling to herself.

"Oh, these will do nicely," she says.

"You really do fill in any role we need," Ash says.

"Now you're our armorer, too. You made our shields, you made her bracer. Is there anything you can't do?"

"I can't play football," I say, smiling.

"I think you may have picked the better path, all things considered," Ash says.

"Seriously, now. You really did the jack of all trades kind of thing." I shrug.

"I don't like doing any one thing too much," I say.

"Unless I end up hyperfocusing on it. I prefer to do a bunch of different things."

"And you seem to be catching up to the rest of us in terms of strength and all that. I'm pretty sure we still have you beat, at least by a little, but the gap isn't so big anymore."

"I keep putting points into my combat stats, because we keep getting into combat."

"That makes sense," Gigi says.

"But you're also all charismatic and magically capable." I shrug.

"I spread out my points as I was leveling up. And I've leveled up a lot." Ash nods.

"I keep forgetting that you've been through the death cycle several times more than the rest of us," she says.

"Do you notice any difficulties from it? Like the kind of problems that Amanda was talking about?"

"I don't really know," I say.

"It's something I think about a lot, but it's hard to put my finger on it. I mean, how can I know that my way of thinking has changed? I think about things differently than I used to, sure, but that's almost always true. Your way of thinking changes as time passes, as circumstances change. And there has never been as big of a circumstance change as coming to this world."

"Do you guys miss Earth?" Gigi asks.

"I do, sometimes."

"I don't," El says.

"I like it here. This feels more like home than Earth ever did. All the time there, I felt like I didn't belong. Like was an alien or something. All my life, I didn't quite fit in. It was like I saw the world a little bit differently, a little bit skewed, from everyone else." I know exactly the feeling she's talking about. There was a long period of time in my childhood when I thought there was something wrong with me.

When I thought that no one else lived the same life that I lived, even if they were right there with me. My sister lived in a different world than I did, even when we played together. I thought I was an alien, or a robot, or one of the fae when I found out about them. I wasn't sure what was going on, but I knew I wasn't like anyone else around me.

"I don't feel that way here," El says.

"I mean, I still feel different, but I have an explanation for my difference. I'm a player. I'm bear blooded. I'm a blood rager. All three of those things set me apart from other people, but in a way that makes sense. A way that I understand." If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"I miss it sometimes," Ash says.

"Usually when I'm trying to sleep. I think back to the way the world used to be. I wasn't happy, but I was content a lot of the time."

"Are you unhappy here?" Gigi asks. Ash pauses for a moment, then shakes her head.

"No, I'm pretty happy. I'm traveling with my friends, I'm seeing the world. I'm doing something important. At least, most of the time it feels that way. I don't know if we're going to become gods or if we're going to kill them or what we're going to do, but I feel like we're doing something that matters. And I like being a part of that." I can understand that, too.

"I don't like my teeth, though," Ash says. She gives a smile that's more of a baring of those shark teeth than anything else.

"I bite my lip sometimes, or the inside of my cheek. I know, everyone does that, but my teeth are fucking sharp. It hurts, and it's totally unacceptable."

"Does the skin color bother you?" Gigi asks. Ash shakes her head.

"I mean, it's basically a photo negative of what my skin used to be like. But I don't mind it. I don't really see it all that often, though. There aren't many mirrors in this world – which I think is a good thing – and my arms are usually covered by armor. So I sometimes forget that I have black skin. But when I do remember, it doesn't really bother me. It's just skin color, you know?"

"It's weird that this world is less racist than our old one," El says.

"I mean, considering how many different species are all living in this world. You'd think there would be a lot more supremacists of one stripe or another. I kept expecting the elves to be supremacists."

"Why?" Gigi asks. El shrugs.

"Because elves are always the haughty racist pricks who think they're better than everyone," she says.

"In fantasy, I mean. They've always got this superiority complex. And usually it's well earned. I mean, think about dungeons and dragons. Elves can see in the dark. They're immune to sleep spells. They can find secret doors. They only sleep four hours a night."

"I don't think they can find secret doors anymore," Ash says.

"I think that's a second edition thing."

"Also, we can see in the dark and only sleep four hours a night," I point out.

"Speak for yourself," El says.

"I get six hours or I'm rubbish." I smile.

"Still, we can do all the things that the elves do."

"But not because of racial abilities," El says.

"Not just fresh out of the box. We had to learn talents to get as awesome as we are. We had to level up and do stuff to earn it."

"I didn't think that the elves in Elmspire were racist," Gigi says.

"No, they weren't," El says.

"Except maybe when it came to Ash. But they weren't elven supremacists. I don't think. Maybe behind closed doors."

"What's really going on?" I ask Gigi, putting my hand on her leg.

"What do you mean?"

"You brought up Earth and whether or not we missed it. Are you missing it?" She shrugs.

"I miss my family," she says. I can understand that. I mean, I don't feel it myself, but I don't really have any family left. Both of my parents are dead, all of my grandparents are dead, and I don't talk to any of my aunts or uncles. Hadn't for years even before the world ended. I'm in touch with my sister, or I was, but even that was sporadic, and mostly centered around birthdays, death anniversaries, and that kind of thing.

"Were you close with your family?" I ask her. She nods, then sniffles a bit.

"I used to talk to my mom every night," she says.

"I'd dropped off a bit, but I was still talking to her at least once a week. And now, nothing. Not for months. How long have we been here?"

"About three months, I think," El says.

"Wild that so much can happen in so little time."

"I wasn't talking to my parents anymore," Ash says.

"I'd had to go no contact because my mom was a narcissist. It was really hard. It felt like I had to mourn them as if they were dead, only they weren't dead, and I knew they weren't dead. I just didn't want to go through what I would have to go through to be in their lives."

"My mom was great," Gigi says. Her eyes are sparkling a bit in the firelight.

"I didn't really have a dad, but my mom was one of my best friends. I miss her so much."

"It's hard," Ash agrees.

"Do you think she's still out there, somewhere?"

"Like did the world keep going after the tutorial?" Gigi asks. She seems confused. I'm confused too. I thought it was pretty clear that the appearance of monsters and status screens meant that the world was over. That everyone was dead. I mean, a few thousand of us survived and ended up in this world, but how many? Fifteen thousand? Thirty? Not enough to make any difference.

"I don't know," Ash says.

"Maybe it did. I mean, maybe something kept going. Not everyone was given the chance to come to this world. Maybe they went other places."

"Like other worlds?" I muse. Maybe there are other worlds than this. I mean, there's definitely more worlds than I thought there were six months ago. My presence here pretty much proves that. There is more out there than is dreamed of in our philosophy. Who's to say that there aren't other gameified worlds out there, other games that are running that have other portions of the population in them? Maybe we made it through our tutorial, but there were other tutorials as well.

Maybe there are hundreds of different game worlds that we could have ended up in.

"Yeah," Ash says.

"Maybe. I don't know. I just wonder if the people we left behind, the ones we love, might still be out there somewhere."

"They could be," El says, shrugging.

"For all we know, I mean. I'm not saying that this has all been a dream or anything like that, but we don't know what's gone on with Earth. We don't know what happened to the other people." I nod.

"We know less than others, in fact," I say.

"Remember, tutorials had been happening for at least a year before ours started. People have been coming to this world for more than a year. Maybe there are a lot of our people in this world. Maybe we'll find players on this continent."

"That would be crazy," El says.

"I mean, wouldn't they have to be really badass to survive, like, at all? And they couldn't just level up."

"Maybe through crafting," Gigi says. She seems eager to let the subject change. I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not. She might really need to talk about this. It might be good for her. Then again, it might be just as good for her to let it go right now. We can always come back to this topic another time, when she feels a bit stronger, when she's processed a bit more.

"Oh, yeah, that could work," El says.

"That would mean all the players here would have to be really good crafters."

"Or really good fighters," Ash says.

"So that they never died in the first place."

"They could also be really sneaky," I point out.

"I've gotten a fair amount of experience just sneaking around places and not fighting." Of course, I usually go back and fight, eventually, and get even more experience. You can't just ignore all the opportunities that sneak attack affords you.

"So there might be players here who are from this continent?" Gigi asks.

"Maybe your mom is here!" El says. Gigi's face immediately darkens. I guess she really did want to change the subject. She gets all quiet and kind of pulls into herself. She shakes her head.

"No, I don't think so. I doubt anyone that generation got pulled across."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Haven't you noticed?" Gigi asks me.

"Everyone who got pulled across is about the same age. We haven't seen any teenagers, young children, or old people. Not older than us, anyway."

"Maybe they got new bodies when they came across," Ash points out.

"I did."

"You just got different skin and teeth," Gigi says.

"You still look like you." I briefly wonder if I could have changed my body. Could I have adjusted my settings a little bit? Maybe I could have come over as a woman, if I'd thought to do it. Would the world have let me do that? Would I want to? I'm pretty used to being a man. I've spent decades this way, after all. But I might have opted for the change, if I'd known it was an option. If it was as easy to do as selecting a different box while leaving the tutorial, would I have done it?

Maybe that's something else that not having a tutorial god robbed us of, another opportunity that we missed because of Amanda's actions. That's not a good way to think. Amanda didn't do us any harm, at least not on purpose. And as far as we can tell, we might never have even been in the tutorial if the tutorial god hadn't been killed. We might have just shared the same fate as the rest of the world. Which could be anything.

Maybe fifty or sixty thousand people all across the world disappeared over the course of about a year, and the world just moved on. Maybe no one even noticed. Maybe we all just kept destroying ourselves and the world around us. If not for Amanda, the five of us, Vincent included, might have just gone on with our everyday lives, never knowing that this world of adventure even existed.

"We're really lucky, you know," I say. Gigi's eyes are gleaming again, and she looks at me with hope shining in them.

"What do you mean?" she asks.

"I mean the five of us specifically," I say.

"We're lucky that we ended up in the tutorial when we did. We might never have come to this world otherwise. And whatever happened to the rest of the world might have happened to us as well. Instead, we all got to come to this world of magic and mayhem, and to experience a whole new life. I feel like we've done more in these last three months than I've done since college."

"I know the feeling," El says.

"I was working a job I hated. Life was plodding along, and the only reprieve was gaming. Now I live in a game." Gigi nods and wipes at her cheek.

"Yeah, this is so much better," she says.

"So much better than what could have been."