Gooblefly

Brave New World [Gooble 'n' MidnightRose]

"First thing in the morning." West nodded in agreement "I'll be waiting right here." He patted the table with an open palm. There was an awkward moment of silence, before West turned away and disappeared deeper into the inn. He found a set of locked rooms in the back and tapped one with his hand which opened a menu, asking him how many nights he intended to stay. He opted for a single night and watched as a handful of his money vanished into the air. With that, the door clicked and unlocked. West stepped inside, shutting it behind him and making sure it was locked. The thought had crossed his mind that there were probably thief class players looking to take what they could from sleeping players. He decided it was probably a decent idea to set up some sort of defense, so West put a small bucket next to the door before removing his armor and collapsing onto the bed.

Part of him felt like if he were to fall asleep now, he would wake up in his bed at home and this all would have been some sort of weird fever dream. His mother would still be there, still disappointed in him and he would go back to his boring life. He looked at his sword, propped up against the desk beside his bed and a small smile crept onto his face. Despite the fact that everything in this world was a lie, today had been the greatest day of West's life. There was some guilt in this fact, given that so many had lost their lives in the game, but West was still here and so was Brielle, the closest thing West had ever had to a friend. He couldn't concentrate much more as fatigue took over, forcing him to close his eyes, still mostly dressed and still smiling.

Brave New World [Gooble 'n' MidnightRose]

West laughed at how enthusiastically Brielle dove into her meager meal, before a loud grumble erupted from his stomach. He dove into his plate, filling his belly with the bread and meat before leaning back in his chair totally exhausted. Today, he had probably done more than he had ever done in his life, and none of it was real. He had saved a life, risked his own and butchered boars, but his real body hadn't moved a muscle. Lutwin flexed his hand in front of him. He was tired, so tired he could barely keep his eyes open, but in reality he wasn't anything. He was lying on his bed, plugged into a helmet that was tricking his brain into thinking he was tired. The concept both fascinated and scared him. For now, he told himself to forget about the real world and focus on this one, his new reality. It would only hold him back if he thought about the real world.

He looked over to Brielle who was still eating. She probably had a life back in the real world and West would do everything he could to get her there. She probably had family that cared, friends who wanted to see her and a whole load of other things going for her. West would do what he could to return her to all of that, she seemed like a nice person and it was the least he could do given she was risking her life to help him.
"It's getting late." West said, forcing himself to stand up "We should get a good nights sleep, tomorrow is going to be tough and we need to have all our wits about us."

Brave New World [Gooble 'n' MidnightRose]

West looked at the book carefully, taking in every detail in the cover, every little scratch or tear before running through every conceivable circumstance in his mind.
"I... Don't think its fake." He finally spoke, slowly and still deep in thought "I could be wrong, but there are easier ways to get rid of us and if she truly wanted us dead, she would have tried to come with us, to make sure that we're offed. My guess is that she's either a beta tester or one of the developers of the game." He looked over his shoulder, double checking that she wasn't lingering around, still eavesdropping on them. Although West couldn't see her, he had the unsettling notion that they were being watched. He leaned across the table slightly and spoke in a hushed voice
"I don't think we can trust her, but I think we can trust the book. There's no logical reason to give us this if it were fake, we'd take a step into the dungeon and know it was false and turn around." He kept taking nervous glances over his shoulder, still evidently confused about the woman's presence here, trying his hardest to be constantly vigilant "For now, I say we proceed as planned. We find the dungeon entrance, take a look around and figure out what we need to do in order to beat it."

With that, he leaned back in his chair, trying to re-adopt the casual position he was once in. It was pretty obvious that he was still uncomfortable about the situation though, his motions were overly exaggerated, almost comically so. His poker face was atrocious and his attempts to appear casual made him look more out of place than before. People weren't to be trusted, West had always believed that and he was already breaking his rules on trust by trusting in Brielle. It seemed the further he plunged out of his safe zone, the more untrustworthy people became. The book itself would prove to be useful, but the lady who gave it to them knew a lot about the game, too much for West to be comfortable with it. If a book like this existed for the upcoming dungeon, he wondered how many of the other dungeons had similar guides. Regardless, West and Brielle would need to be cautious of the other players, keeping their distance for now and staying ahead of the curve in terms of levels.

Brave New World [Gooble 'n' MidnightRose]

West's face slowly cracked into a smile, as he took Brielle's hand in his and shook on it, sealing the foundations of their new deal. The pair of them would clear every dungeon in this world, West knew they could do it. She didn't need to do this, but West had seen the way she played and was convinced that she was as good a partner as any. In fact, West probably wouldn't have picked anyone else. She knew what she was doing and she seemed nice enough, that was all West really needed. Together, the two of them would do this together. West knew that they could do this.

"Excuse me." A voice came from behind West, he turned in his chair to find a woman clad in black robes standing there "Did I hear something about you attempting to clear this floor's dungeon?" She was tall and West couldn't see her face through her clothes, but there was something eerily familiar about her. West turned away, looking down at the table. He didn't want anyone getting in his way, not yet.
"I'm afraid you're mistaken." He growled. Ultimately, he was surprised anyone else had made it to this inn already, he was expecting it to take another few hours before any other players reached here "I don't mean to sound rude, but I'd appreciate if you left now."

West couldn't quite see her eyes, but he could feel her staring at him, like she was trying to see straight through him.
"I've read some of your work Lutwin. I know that you'll want to play this game." The woman reached into her robes and pulled out a tattered, leather bound book "You'll want this. Trust me. We'll meet again kid." She placed the book on the table before turning around and walking out the inn. West hesitated for a moment, before turning the book around, but not quite picking it up. It was old, or at least it was designed to look old. Of course, in reality, it wasn't really anything, it was just a bunch of pixels designed to look a certain way. He flipped the book open and froze, a look of combined interest and confusion on his face.
"Dungeon journal." He read the first two words out loud, before looking up at Brielle and sliding the book across the table "It's tactics for the first three dungeons." He explained "Why did that woman have this? How could she have this?"

Brave New World [Gooble 'n' MidnightRose]

"Spending the night here sounds like a good idea, we don't want to go out there too tired" West spoke, sliding into a wooden chair by a table located in the corner of the inn. Another thought flashed through his head, about the number of players who would push themselves too far tonight and die as a consequence. This time tomorrow, the number of names on the wall would have practically doubled. He shook his head, shaking the thoughts from his mind. He couldn't think about those things. Life and death were a concept most alien to him, he had never known anyone who had died or even came close. Now he had seen someone die, right before him. He had seen a memorial for people who had died around him and it made his stomach knot. He wanted to be sick, thinking that so many of the people in this world were already gone.

"I think..." West pondered what he was saying for a moment "I think... I'm going to try beat this game." He looked up, trying to gauge Brielle's reaction to this news. He barely knew her, but she was the only other person in this game that West knew and he needed to say it to someone, to make sure he wasn't mad. "I play a lot of games, I write guides online. I'm kinda good at it." He blushed slightly, not meaning to sound arrogant "I used to fight all these bosses by myself on those games, I can probably manage it here too. This is still a game and all games have exploits. I just need to find them."

He didn't expect Brielle to join him or anything, he just wanted to say the words out loud, it made the idea real. He wasn't sure what he was doing, this was the first time he ever decided to do... Anything really. All it took was other people dying to make him realize that he needed to do something. This was his only real skill, the ability to play games well and there was a chance that it would save lives, he had to try.
"I'm starting tomorrow. I'm going to find the first dungeon in the morning, figure out what I'll need to do to clear it."

Brave New World [Gooble 'n' MidnightRose]

Sorry for the delay, I've been a little under the weather over the past two days and anything I wrote turned out garbage, I'm working on a response now!

Brave New World [Gooble 'n' MidnightRose]

West nodded and turned away from the wall and into the middle of town. A lot of people his age thought about death, about the inevitability of everything, but it was never something that West thought about until now. All of those people, they would never do anything again. They were gone and he was still here. He glanced at Brielle over his shoulder. The boy in the forest died in a wasp attack, she very well could have suffered a similar fate if he hadn't been lucky and seen her running in. It was such a phenomenally low chance that everything that had happened to him could have happened, and it was because of all these things that he was here and they were both alive. For the first time in his life, West wanted to have direction. This was a miracle, standing here on the cobbled street of the town walking towards an inn with a bag full of slaughtered boar. For once, he needed to be grateful for something.

"Hi there! Welcome to The Glory Arms inn! How may I help you?" West was ripped from his thoughts by a middle aged girl standing in the doorway of a building. Deep in thought, West had managed to wander straight though the center of town. Absent minded, West had managed to walk through the town and to the place where he needed to hand in the quest.
"Uh, I'm Lutwin, this is my Partner Brielle." West mumbled "We've collected twenty five boar meat." He took out a bundle of meat and handed it over to the lady in the doorway. There was a brief pause while the lady looked at the bundle of meat before it disappeared with a slight static shimmer.
"Thank you, brave adventurers! Please, food, drink and shelter are free tonight!" She beamed, waving them inside.

"Huh." West turned to Brielle "I guess this is an inn for people who complete that set quest. Pretty lucky that we stumbled on it, right?" He hesitated for a moment, wanting to walk inside but not wanting to do anything without knowing what Brielle wanted to do. "Uh, I don't know about you, but I'm starving..." He looked down at his feet "I might stop here and... You know... Get... Food?" His voice raised at the end, as if what he was saying were a question.

Brave New World [Gooble 'n' MidnightRose]

West shrugged. He had already come to accept that the security of travelling with Brielle was going to involve the occasional polite conversation. Of course, he would still have preferred if they had walked from place to place in total silence, but he sighed and answered her question anyway.
"It's, uh, pretty much all I do." He admitted with a slight shrug "I guess its all I'm going to be doing for a while." Even though it wasn't really a joke, he laughed "I uh, played a lot of MMOs, I was so hyped for this one. I like the numbers." That was possibly the first time he had mentioned his fascination with the numerical side of video gaming to anyone, even though it was particularly evident from the way he played, he still assumed people would think differently of him for it. The way he crunched numbers in his head, it wasn't normal. He could understand that. He also vaguely understood that in regular society, abnormalities were shunned and so he kept it to himself. Part of him hoped that in this world, things would be different.

"I also wrote stuff." He added, after a slight awkward silence "Nothing much, on forums and things. I write down ideas for how to beat bosses and I challenge myself to take out bosses by myself." Something clicked inside his mind and a small concerned look appeared on his face "I doubt that'll be plausible in this game..." He admitted "To fight a boss by myself I need to see what it does first, and I can't really achieve that without dying first. And, of course, no respawns." As they turned a corner in the path, all of a sudden the walls of a town came into view. From where they stood, the town appeared to be deserted, excluding a couple of obviously NPC guards either side of the entrance. West assumed that he was right, that they were to be the first people to set foot inside the second town, which probably meant they were the highest leveled players in the game so far.

A small smirk played on West's lips but it soon vanished as they got closer to the town walls. All along the walls were what appeared to be small scratch marks, but as they got closer, West began to see that they were words. More importantly they were names. It didn't take a genius to realize what the names were, players who had already fallen in the game. West wasn't surprised that people had died, but the sheer number of names on the wall were astounding. As he stood, gawking at the wall, we wondered which name belonged to the boy in the woods.
"L-let's go." He mumbled, realizing he was staring. He didn't have time to get caught up on people he didn't know. It was his own life that mattered, above all else.

Brave New World [Gooble 'n' MidnightRose]

One by one, the boars fell and after a handful more, West felt the surge again. He culled through the boars one at a time, starting to perfect the art of killing pigs so he didn't take any damage. West's prediction about this field proved to be correct, the creatures were easy enough to handle and because they were technically a higher level than them, they received more experience points as a reward for slaying them than they would most other mobs. It wasn't long before they had reached level four, with just a little more experience before they hit level five. By this point, West was beginning to tire. He had more stamina in this world, but they had been killing boars for around an hour, non stop and it was growing late. More importantly, West was growing hungry.
"I think that's enough boars." West called out to Brielle.

West sheathed his sword and collected his things, double checking that the had enough meat to hand in the quest. With the amount of time the pair had been grinding here, there was plenty. The sight of it made his mouth water slightly. And, then, reality came crashing down. For the past few hours, he had forgotten he was inside a video game, trapped. He had been thinking about logging out, ordering a pizza, but that would never happen. While other people were wondering if they would ever see their families again, West was wondering about his own body. How would it survive? It would need sustenance, to be cared for. Suddenly, he was slightly scared.

He swallowed and shook it off. Lutwin wouldn't be scared by such trivial things, so neither should he. He hoisted a cloth sack over his shoulder with everything he had collected from the boars, planning to sell it on at the next town and wandered over to Brielle.
"Here's your share of the quest stuff." He said, handing her a small package wrapped in cloth "I'm going to go straight to the next town and hand in this quest, you're welcome to join me. If you want to go your own way now, that's fine too."

Brave New World [Gooble 'n' MidnightRose]

Unless you have any ideas for something to happen in this pretty ordinary field, do you want to maybe fast forwards to finishing off the quest? These sorts of RPs can often be bogged down by over excessive 'and we killed this enemy, then we fought this' and jumping to the next village will give us more options on where to progress.