Chương 17: Emma's Story

"We—Sam and I—we landed in the same place." Emma looked around at the roses, a puzzled expression on her face.

"Not like this. Just forest." I didn't want to interrupt her by explaining my ability, so I just nodded.

"I was freaking out. I'd been hiking and—" She shook her head.

"Sam was so kind. He talked me down from total panic. We looked at our messages together and then figured out our status sheets, talked about what classes we should take. Then this little green thing came charging in. I still had my bear spray on me, and after I'd sprayed it, Sam, he picked it up and just smashed it against a tree. Maybe I should have…" She stopped talking and took a shaky breath.

"I guess I should have seen that he had a ruthless streak right then, but I didn't. Right then, what I saw was that he'd killed the thing trying to kill us, and I was grateful." Her tears had stopped, but her voice was bleak.

"He took a Rogue class, said he wanted stealth, and I took Ranger, 'cause I wanted to stay the hell away from things trying to kill me. And then we set off exploring. We got the quest pretty quick, but—""Quest?" I interrupted. I'd intended to listen patiently until she talked out her trauma—supposedly that's good for reducing PTSD—but if she had insight into what we were supposed to be doing here, I wanted to hear it. Preferably before something new attacked us.

"Yeah, when you get to that big goblin camp?" She looked at me like, of course, I knew what she was talking about. Wasn't it obvious? But I gestured at the dome.

"We haven't gotten too far." Emma frowned.

"There's no way these flowers kept you safe from that lizard creature, though."

"Lizard creature?" I asked. She gave a half-hearted chuckle.

"It's like… like a Komodo dragon on steroids. Not crazy fast, but it just keeps coming. Nothing we could do to it even made a dent." I remembered the broken branches I'd seen with the Tracking skill while making my way back to the clearing.

"I think I saw its tracks. Sort of low to the ground?"

"Yeah, it's not tall. But it spits some kind of acid and if you get hit… well, you don't want to get hit." She shuddered. Got it. Avoid getting hit by the acid-spitting lizard. I wanted to ask her how she knew, but the haunted look on her face kept me quiet. Her PTSD was looking inevitable. She sighed. Picking up a stick, she poked at the fire. It was settling into a low burn, the flames dying down. She gestured toward one of the bigger pieces of wood Jack had hauled over and glanced at me.

"May I?"

"Fine by me, but it's really Jack's fire." I glanced toward the pit. Looting that goblin was taking him a while.

"Everything okay, Jack?"

"Yep," he called back.

"Just wondering if, ah, Emma, wants, ah, a little privacy? To, you know, get dressed?" Emma glanced down at her perfectly presentable and completely reasonable sports bra, which covered a fair amount more than your average bikini, and smiled. A genuine smile. A nice smile.

"Thanks, Jack," she called out as she reached for her t-shirt. She wrinkled her nose at the blood, but pulled it on anyway. She picked up the sweater, but held it knotted in her hands.

"If this was a real forest, it'd be so cold by now."

"Yeah, the temperature controls are a little weird. No bugs, either, which I am not complaining about."

"The fire's still nice, though." Emma set her sweater down and added a log to the fire, the sparks crackling up into the sky. Jack returned to the sanctuary. He held up a protein bar with a grimace.

"Chocolate peanut butter, so… could be worse."

"Coulda been a shower wipe, too," I said with a sigh. I waved at the roses and they wove themselves together again, sealing the sanctuary around us. Okay, that just didn't get old.

"So about that quest," I prompted Emma.

"Oh, right." Her eyes narrowed, moving back and forth as if she were reading invisible text. Ding Participant Emma Chen is attempting to share a quest with you. Will you accept? I didn't quite jump, but I definitely startled. With the exception of the perky mascot videos, the System hadn't spoken to me since that very first message. It was strange to hear a voice in my head. Well, and even stranger to hear a voice in my head and believe that I should respond to it, instead of ignoring it. For a second, I wavered.

Did I really want Creepy Santa Claus giving me orders? But did I really have a choice?

"Um, yes, please," I said aloud. Words appeared before my eyes. Congratulations, Olivia! You have joined an active quest linked to the primary objective of Challenge Scenario #004328. Quest Briefing: To prevent catastrophic ecosystem failure, emergency atmospheric enhancement protocols have been implemented. These protocols will rapidly increase your planet's mana density via controlled dimensional rifts that allow free-flow mana transfer from higher-density environments, accelerating planetary stabilization.

These rifts are essential for planetary survival. They are also unstable, dangerous, and prone to incursions by hostile entities native to mana-rich zones. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. This challenge scenario simulates a Tier 1 Rift Event. You and your fellow participants have already shown you have what it takes to protect your world—that's why you're here!

This scenario will help courageous individuals like you develop essential rift management skills in a controlled environment. Courageous individuals? I looked at Jack, clearly also reading his messages, and Emma, currently staring into the fire, and Zelda, curled up in a ball and napping next to me. Out of the four of us, I thought maybe Zelda qualified. Jack was playing a game, and Emma and I were just trying not to die. Objective: Defeat the goblin faction currently occupying the stronghold.

Breach the Rift Control Chamber. Locate and secure the rift core. Restore the rift to stable, controlled status. While this challenge scenario is a training simulation, the skills and experience you gain here will directly transfer to real-world rift management and survival scenarios. Your world needs capable defenders who can handle exactly these types of dimensional incursions! Rewards: Performance metrics will determine post-scenario resource allocation.

However, rewards may include: • Enhanced personal capabilities and expanded skill development • Priority access to advanced equipment and resource allocation • Accelerated progression opportunities in system integration • Qualification for specialized scenario participation • Improved baseline statistics and ability selection options Performance metrics. I really wanted to know what those were. Was this graded like a test? Did we have goals? Targets? Were they quantitative or qualitative?

Did we get points for speed, efficiency, creativity? What good were metrics if we didn't get the rubric to go with them? Important: All equipment and items acquired during scenario participation are demonstration models only and will not transfer to primary reality. Actual reward allocation will be determined upon scenario completion based on individual performance metrics. I let out a pained groan. My shovel. My water bottle. My K9 Companion Pouch. My sunglasses. My duct tape. Zelda's squeaky ball. My gumdrops!

None of them would come back to the real world with me. Note: Individual reward packages will be customized based on demonstrated competencies and scenario performance. Exceptional participants may receive rare enhancement opportunities. With my luck, the System was going to give me a package of seeds and a gardening skill. Not that the gardening hadn't come in handy, but still.

"Okay, so we have a goal." Jack sounded enthusiastic.

"Take out the goblin camp."

"The goblin stronghold," I corrected him. I did not feel enthusiastic. Maybe it was the exclamation points. This quest was like Uncle Sam pointing at me, a grim expression on his face, saying, "I want you…" I couldn't help remembering that the first wave on D-day had the highest casualty rate. By a lot. Beside me, Zelda gave a soft huff. She put her muzzle on my leg and looked up at me. No words, but I felt the invitation, the offer of comfort, so I rubbed her ears while I considered the quest language.

Camp sounded feasible. Stronghold… did not.

"How many goblins were in this stronghold?" I asked.

"A lot," Emma replied.

"Is that ten? Twenty? A hundred?" Jack asked.

"Closer to the last, I'm sure." Emma poked the fire again.

"We didn't stick around long enough to count. We retreated pretty quick. We went back to our drop spot to figure out a plan, and ran into the big lizard thing. It's not fast. You can outrun it pretty easily. But you can't fight it." Her voice was a little less even as she continued, "Sam thought it was probably designed to force us out of our comfort zones. As if the little goblins weren't enough. But if you wanted to just hide out… well, it'd be tough.

While we were trying to get away from it, we stumbled across an older guy. That… he was already pretty badly injured, I think." She looked at me, just a quick fleeting glance, and then looked back at the fire. I got the subtext. They'd led the lizard straight to an injured old man, and the injured old man was how she knew about the acid. The details might keep her up at night, but they were irrelevant.

Jack got the subtext, too, because while I was trying to figure out the right words to say or maybe the right thing to do—should I offer a hug? —he sat down on the opposite side of the fire, cross-legged, and said, "Not your fault." She blinked, pressed her lips together, and swallowed hard, clearly fighting back tears. I clicked my tongue. Zelda immediately woke up and looked at me. I patted the ground between Emma and me, then gave Zelda a little chin tilt to say I needed her over there, next to the stranger.

Zelda stood, stretched, then hopped over my legs. She nudged Emma's hand with her head, sticking her ears right where they could be properly scratched. Emma choked back the sob and scooped up Zelda in her arms, burying her face in the soft white fur. Zelda gave me a tiny sideways glance that said, You owe me for this, and began licking Emma's face.

For the next several minutes we sat in silence, Jack and I both staring into the fire, thinking our own thoughts, while Zelda comforted Emma and Emma released the tiniest little bit of the trauma she was carrying around. Finally, Emma heaved a sigh. She looked at me and said, "Thank you," with the depth of gratitude you give the doctors who tell you your loved one will live.

"She accepts payment in cheese or—oh!" I remembered the beef jerky in the middle of my sentence and pulled the bag out of my pouch. I took a nice big piece out and handed it to Zelda, who plopped down between Emma and me to work on it.

"Beef jerky?" I offered the bag to Emma.

"Save it for her," Emma said, shaking her head. Her eyes were bright. I held the bag out to Jack, and he shook his head, too, holding up his latest protein bar in explanation, so I set the jerky down next to my shovel.

"Can you tell us anything more about…" Jack started, keeping his voice gentle. Emma gave a sharp nod.

"I know a lot, actually. There's a Ranger skill that gave me a map." She flicked a finger toward her temple, as if making sure we knew she didn't mean a piece of paper that was impossible to fold properly, but a System-generated map. She took a moment to orient herself in our clearing, then pointed across the fire.

"You go that way, and you hit a, like a pretend wall. You can walk and walk and walk, but you don't get anywhere. Map never changes, you're not really moving. It's the hamster wheel of forests." She pointed in the opposite direction.

"That way, you reach the goblin camp and you get a quest." Another ninety-degree turn and she was pointing toward the pit.

"That way, that's where the monsters come from." A one-eighty and she was pointing in the last cardinal direction.

"Walk far enough that way and you'll find more goblins, but they're not coming for you. They're headed for the next drop spot over. Twelve drop spots, all around the circle, like numbers on a clock." She shrugged and said, "I'm making a few assumptions. We didn't hit all twelve drops. Obviously, or we would have met you before. But after the lizard, we kept going, looking for allies. The next drop spot was empty, and the one after that is where we met Matt and Ari."

"Matt had picked Warrior and Ari was a Mage, so we almost had the full set of classes." She sort of half-smiled, as if the memory didn't hurt as much as some of the others. As if there'd been a moment when it felt like this might actually be fun.

"Matt wanted to go fight the goblins at the stronghold, but Sam wanted to look for more people to team up with. We found some, but—" She made a face.

"I don't know who attacked who first, I really don't, but they were psyched to kill us. After that, though, Matt convinced Sam—convinced all of us—that it was just a simulation. A controlled environment. That death wasn't real here and that those two guys hadn't really just died. And that if we wanted to win big, we should do it on our own." In a voice so soft I could barely hear her, Emma said, "I guess Sam decided he wanted to win big. Maybe it was all Matt's fault, in the end."

She wrapped her arms around herself for a moment, as if she were cold, before bunching up the sweater in her lap. I hesitated, not sure what to say. Maybe some more Zelda therapy would help? But Jack said briskly, "You'll have to find them back in the real world and give them shit for their lousy choices."