“Well, that’s a disappointnt,” John sighed, looking at the window. Part of him had hoped he would luck out and directly roll into an Adventure that had the things he needed to save Delicia. Even though his powers were bullshit, he did not possess such a level of cosmic luck. ‘Running into as many attractive won as I do should be all I can ask for.’
They had spawned in so kind of highland city, as loosely as that term applied. The number of houses scattered between the rocks, craggy hills and mountains that penetrated the wavy erald landscape was too high to be described as a village. With all of the gaps between the houses and the lengths of the streets that connected the clusters that stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, city wasn’t right either. It was a major population centre, but a very sprawling one.
Perhaps because they were entirely artificial, the people walking around did not care whatsoever about the duo that had just spawned in the middle of their city. It couldn’t be said that they were overlooked because they fit in either. The primarily presented garb had that rough, dieval linen look, with the occasional rich person in silk drapery walking around.
More importantly, none of them had a halberd the size of a person, glimring with the iridescent power of all elents, resting over their shoulder. Most common around were the kind of knives people used to cut at with. In dieval tis, before the advent of manufactured cutlery, people tended to have their personal eating utensils on them when they went sowhere.
“This is all entirely made up by Gaia, right?” tra asked, gesturing with her free left at their surroundings. She stopped while pointing at the nearest house. Like most of the others, it was primarily made from cobblestone and two stories tall.
“Technically speaking, all of reality might be,” the Gar responded. “If the whole dream thing is true anyway.”
tra gave his chest a backhanded slap. One of her ears flicked in irritation. “You know what I an, you wordsmithing bastard,” she chastised him. “These people aren’t real, right?”
“That is correct,” John told her.
“Mind if I start murdering them?” the First of Wrath asked.
This was a question that did succeed in making John hesitate. “Well, de-facto they all die the mont we leave anyway… and they are essentially NPCs…” he voiced his thoughts. “But I’m not sure how comfortable I am with seeing humans murdered in front of .” One of the people that walked past them, a man with large mouse ears, caused him to and that statent, “Humanoids getting murdered in front of . I know it has no consequences, but seeing it done in person rather than through a screen strikes as sothing that could train my brain in bad ways.”
“Hmm,” tra humd, thoughtfully tapping her shoulder with the handle of her weapon. “Depends on how sapient these puppets feel, right?”
“That’s definitely true,” John agreed. “If they only have the appearance, it doesn’t matter much. Let’s test that. Hey!” The mont he called out, one of the people who had previously just moved around uncaringly suddenly turned towards them.
“Hello, citizen!” the person, a man in his forties, responded with the cheeriness of a ‘sound happy’ voice line by a B-list voice actor. “It is a wonderful day today!”
John looked up. It looked like it was about to rain. “Debatable,” he responded.
“I DON’T KNOW YOU AND I DON’T CARE TO KNOW YOU!” the man suddenly and angrily asserted, practically shouted, before turning away.
Amused to a tail-wagging degree, tra looked to John. “Murder ti?”
“Behave,” John chuckled and scratched the wolf berserker behind her new ears. Predictably, it was quite effective and tra let out a high-pitched sound from deep within her throat. It was difficult to say whether she was pleased or pleading for more. “I could get used to you being so well trained.”
“Throw a bone every now and again and I’ll play nice, Master.”
“I thought we didn’t want to do the dog puns.”
“No, I didn’t want you to do dog puns,” tra corrected. “Anyway, what more do you need?”
“They could have had a bad day,” John said. “Let’s talk to two more people, then I’ll be sure. Hey you.” The random person he talked whipped their head around with so much force, it looked like it dislocated for a mont. Then the rest of their body followed suit.
“BEEP!” they said.
“Uhm, what?”
“BEEEEEEEP!”
With that, they turned away and kept on walking. Forehead in wrinkles, tra smugly looked at John. “One more,” he insisted and tried to pick out soone who looked at least sowhat normal. Once he had spotted a man in his thirties who looked, dressed, and walked normally, he addressed them. “Hello.”
“How can I help?” he asked.
“How can I help?” soone else asked tra in the exact sa voice.
That was enough for John to make the call, “…Alright, go ahead.”
The third word was barely out of his mouth when the plasma burst propelled Rex Magnar out of its resting state and into a guided, wide swing. With imnse brutality, the drumming and riffing weapon cleaved apart the person in front of him, turning the man from a human into scorched halves on the dirt road. Cracks spread out among tremors, strong enough to rattle the wooden roofs of the nearby houses.
The person that had addressed tra first did their best to regain their balance. All around people wobbled, sowhat over-exaggeratingly got on one leg. Only after the enchantnt-caused earthquake was over and everyone stood completely still again, did they all, uniformly, react to the corpse.
““AAAAAAAAAAAH!”” they all scread in one of four voices. The vast majority of people scattered into random directions, with a select few coming closer, hands raised.
“You will pay for that!” one of the people closing in, a woman that couldn’t have been older than nineteen, declared boldly. She was of average muscle mass and easily a head shorter than tra. Despite that she hurled her fist at the barely clothed wolf girl. The knuckles connected with the toned midriff and the latter did not yield. In another act of NPC defiance, the woman punched again and again.
tra just stood there. “This is almost too funny to get angry,” she said, only for her smile to slowly sour. “Too bad I’m really good at getting angry.” Grabbing the woman by the throat, the First of Wrath had snapped her neck in an instant. The body turned into a ragdoll when she dropped it, twisting and folding more like a pretzel than a corpse.
“Is this…” John started to get a hunch what Gaia was referencing with this entire place. “No… she wouldn’t… no, actually, she definitely would.”
While he monologued and tra slaughtered the other NPCs uselessly throwing their non-lives away, a man approached John. “Hello there,” he greeted the Gar.
“General Kenobi,” the Gar responded in absent-minded reflex. Then he shook his head. “Sorry, shouldn’t you be in a state of fear?”
Putting a hand on his stomach, the man laughed badly, “Ha Ha Ha. You are very funny traveller.” Suddenly his expression got very serious and his entire voice changed to a deeper, brooding one. “Have you heard about the slaughter at rl Plaza? A woman with blonde hair is supposed to have killed twe- thirte- fou- fifteen people.” He got to finish his sentence when tra took a pause to scan the surroundings. “Truly a grave day for Teilgir.”
“When did that happen?” John asked drily.
“I hear it was zero seconds ago.”
“Not a particularly smart AI, this one,” John just said it to the man’s face, before tapping the side of his face two tis. There was no reaction to that. When the Gar averted his gaze, the man started to move. When he quickly returned the focus back to the NPC, they froze again, waiting for the conversation to continue. “What if I told you I’m with her?” he asked and pointed over his shoulder.
“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” the man suddenly shouted in an already familiar voice and ran away.
John looked after him for a little while, then his gaze jumped on the man in full steel armour that ran towards them. The design was plain and adequate, an armour a knight or city guard should wear on duty. The front of the pointy helt was open, revealing a mildly chubby face.
With the conviction of the just, he declared, “Stop right there, criminal scum! Nobody breaks the law on my watch!” As this was being said to John, tra was occupied with killing the last few assailants. “I’m confiscating your stolen goods. Now pay your fine or it’s off to jail.”
‘This entire Adventure is an Oblivion reference,’ John thought and prevented himself from sighing. ‘tra, could you co over here?’
‘Why are we changing to ntal communication?’ the First of Wrath asked.
‘Because the NPCs here can only react and they only react poorly. As long as I stay silent and don’t avert my eyes, this guard won’t do anything. He’ll wait for an answer.’
As if to test that hypothesis, tra did a couple of swings in the general direction of the guard’s head. She looked like a baseball player testing the weight of their bat while preparing for a horun. ‘True enough,’ she said when the guard continued to stand there, frozen except for the rhythmic pattern of angry breathing. ‘What now?’
‘Well, I thought I’d leave that up to you,’ the Gar responded. ‘This is your Adventure. General power levels seem to be too low to properly fight sothing, but murdering them all could be cathartic. Alternatively, we could try breaking out of prison. Your call.’
tra thought and John had a hard ti keeping up the eye contact. Staring at the pasty-faced guard was incredibly dull and even if they had a spark of life to his eyes, the Gar wouldn’t have found it in him to get lost in them. What made it even harder was the crowd of NPCs that walked to the plaza and engaged both in the stock photo equivalent of conversation and overexaggerated lantations of the corpses lying about. Individually, one had to add, causing John to hear the sa badly acted line several tis in succession. Sohow it got funnier each ti.
‘Goddammit, my brain is absolutely conditioned by Oblivion s,’ he realized, the corners of his lips trembling. ‘I watched one compilation too many with Lee recently.’
‘Alright, let’s go to jail,’ tra finally declared.
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