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  “Of course now, even with the corrections from Mother, there’re still too many rug rats being rolled out. Kill ‘em all, let us sort them out!” In whirled the Jester. This time it was dancing with a brunette clad in shimmering crimson liquid. I tried not to put too much thought into it.

  “Lust does that. The ladies say it’s worth the effort.” The Temptress was not one to let a simple Jester detract from her presence.

  “Enough, he is my charge.” James’s deep voice cut across my brain.

  “But he’s entertaining.” Which Voice was that? Not one I recognized.

  “And deliciously depressing. His mood swings are more fickle than Selena’s.” That voice was something itchier. Whatever it was felt like mice crawling across my skin.

  The Voice on the pedestal, Selena, didn’t make an appearance. Instead, she graced us with a clap of thunder and a rush of raindrops pelting into the dark room.

  “Someone is going to have a bad day fishing.” The Jester’s words, clacking and ever amused, came in.

  James scowled.

  “Mister Grant Legate is only trying to complete the tasks assigned.” A tiny set of words came through. They belonged to the younger Voice, a small girl who had been sitting in a library corner, reading. Even now she hid behind a book as she faded in and out of existence.

  “Then he should ask about those instead,” James said.

  “I don’t want to cheat,” I said.

  “Admirable. A true hero paves his own way!” The giant beefy man with a sword popped into existence. He seemed to be fighting some scale-ridden monster. He huffed and swung, dodged and stepped in again. The enemy wasn’t completely clear.

  “Is that guy Carver’s Voice?” I asked.

  “We all had a hand, but ultimately Leeroy there was closest to William Carver.”

  “Leeroy?”

  The Temptress was on her chair again, this time filing her nails while her tail wagged. “Ask him about his shoulder pads, if you want to be bored to death. His idea of a joke that’s far too old and tired.” As soon as she was done talking, she faded out.

  “They’re fantastic. Plate chafes like you wouldn’t believe. Cloth armor is the way of the future.” Leeroy, or whatever throwback to shirtless sword-wielding cavemen he might be, seemed upset as he came into being. He manifested enough to flip off the absent Temptress.

  “That’s confusing,” I said.

  “Remember where you are.”

  I nodded. James had explained earlier that here, in this room, I was like the only fish in the sea. So the Voices were all too present. Eventually, perhaps, I might learn all their names and roles. For giggles, I tried to use Identification on James but still came up with an excessive amount of question marks.

  Using it on the space previously occupied by the Temptress gave me a completely different feeling. A wave of lust set my body to attention and a pass of pleasure nibbled along the neckline. Teasing sensations lingered and swelled. Unceasingly, they drove my mental coherency down a few notches.

  A quest popped up, and I needed to regain my senses before pressing the deny button. That wasn’t the reason I played this game, despite Old Man Carver’s tendencies. Contemplating exactly how far spread the Temptress had been was kind of a buzzkill.

  Quest: Instant Gratification

  Difficulty: Extremely Easy (But just for you)

  Details: All you need to do is accept. What more details do you need? She promises to be gentle, at least until you beg her not to be.

  Denial: This offer never truly goes away.

  Acceptance: Instantly gratifying.

  I made up my mind. Never again would [Identification] be used on that Temptress. Some things were better left to the imagination, and Continue had very intense feedback. Even the pain from before, when being chased by spiders or acting as Old Man Carver, didn’t compare to her heady rush. Perhaps because feeling good, especially that good, was a better motivator than pain.

  “You’re mumbling.” The Jester’s words clacked around me.

  “Uh huh.” Plus an undetermined amount of drool was dripping down my face. Being old and single was not healthy in the face of that… that whatever.

  “Grant Legate. Did you have any other questions?”

  “Uhhh…”

  “He’ll need a moment to recover.” Yet another Voice popped in.

  I clenched both eyes shut and refused to use [Identification] on this one too. She went on to talk about health levels, elevated fancy words, some chemical, and Chakra points. All gobbledygook.

  “It’s…” Words were also hard.

  “Yes?”

  “Your turn for a question,” I finally said to James. Thinking about baseball was helping. God help me if I logged out to find an awkward mess in the ARC.

  “Are you enjoying yourself, Grant Legate?”

  “I think so. Yes,” I said.

  “Would you like to do it again?” James asked.

  “Helping new players, a mystery, and one great adventure. What more could anyone ask for?” That actually wasn’t sarcasm, even though it might have sounded like it to the uninitiated.

  “Many things, but your words are well put.” James half turned and almost faded away. Then it seemed as if something had occurred to the black man.

  “Are you sure? Do you enjoy pretending to be someone else, enough to do it again?”

  “Honestly?”

  James nodded.

  “We’ll see how this one shakes out, James. I still haven’t forgiven you for what happened with my dance program.”

  “You have twelve days left. Make the most of them, and I believe we can deliver satisfaction.”

  That silly pop-up box from the Temptress displayed again. This time, it was titled “Instant Satisfaction.” I shuddered and pressed decline again. For a video game, it was insanely interactive, but that was the attraction. Then I got a favorable increase myself. An Event titled “Willpower Demonstration.”

  Score one for me! Or un-score, I guess.

  Thankfully, Old Man Carver was waking up, so the world about me faded away and was replaced with my daily life as someone else. I read through an event log for my time offline. Apparently Carver had had another meeting with the High Priestess of Selena. There was no change in his alignment, according to the text. Not that alignment made a lot of sense to me yet. I had briefly read something about it in the guidebook from Beth, but that section hadn’t been super interesting.

  The [Messenger’s Pet] hadn’t shown up for the day I was offline; eight hours out of the game was twenty-four in-game. No one had taken notice. There had been a [Coo-Coo Rill] raid on the front door yesterday that had caused Old Man Carver to fall on those acorn things. As a result, I was walking with a limp. This old man hadn’t invested much in the way of self-healing skills or magic. There was a section for bandaging, but that only worked on external wounds. My simulated pain was all internal.

  I went about my morning, picked up a piece of paper and an enchanted pen that didn’t require ink, and slowly Carver’d a path to my bench. Carvering things was another clever series of thoughts that had crossed my mind while sitting on this bench.

  Now though, I would peruse the map for any hint of a dungeon. WWCD? Would Carver sit on his rear all day? No, Carver would stomp right through all the red tape straight toward adventure. Once it became obvious enough to find.

  “There’s got to be something on here,” I muttered unintentionally.

  “Whatcha looking at, geezer?”

  “None of your business, brat.” I turned the map upside-down again.

  I looked up and saw Phil munching a cookie he had probably stolen. Behind him were two of the younger kids. They invaded my bench rather violently, jostling around until the three of them had a solid spot to sit. Phil, the oldest, started trying to entice the [Messenger’s Pet] from my hood.

  “Can I have one of those?” The middle child seemed able to articulate correctly.

  The youngest had slur
red together most of his words last night.

  “Only if you help me figure something out.” Even these annoyingly cute tykes couldn’t escape Old Man Carver’s demands.

  “Whatcha figuring out?”

  “Huh?” I felt lost.

  The youngest giggled at me.

  “Where an old man would have to go to have an adventure.” I tried to regain control of the conversation.

  “Them dames on Haggle’s Corner ain’t good enough?” Looked as though Phil was kind of foul-minded.

  I gave him a halfhearted scowl but kept both eyes on the map in front of me, scanning all the sections. “A different sort. I’m looking for one last adventure.”

  “An adventure? Like in your stories?” the youngest said.

  “Like those, yes,” I answered and tried not to smile too much.

  “Those adventures are dangerous!” Phil shouted loudly enough to draw random stares from those nearby.

  “Is Grandpa gonna die?” The youngest, a little girl, slurred.

  I felt disturbed that a child who might be only three understood the concept of death enough to be worried.

  It shook me. Parents had to answer this question. Had Carver ever been a father? He certainly had been around enough blocks. He clearly adored the children or he would never have started telling them stories. That was an established pattern of his long before I came along.

  “Eventually.” If she was old enough to ask then Carver wouldn’t lie. Sure enough, I got a percentage increase to prove my actions were right.

  “Are you gonna die soon?”

  That sad tone broke me away from my study, and I turned my head on an aching neck to look at the youngest. She had half-crawled over the middle child and was giving me an adorable pouting face.

  “Only the Voices know for sure.” I patted her head.

  After all, those Voices may choose to keep the NPC version of Carver running for however long they desired. My time, however, expired soon. I had better not get this body killed or else these annoyingly cute children might become depressed. I knew how that felt.

  “Why do you need an adventure, geezer?” Phil asked.

  “Part of an old man’s last gasp.” Clever Carver! Well, me anyway. Throwing in the quest name there had been irresistible.

  “What’s a gasp?” the youngest tried to say.

  “A sudden breath of air.” I gave a sample gasp trying to be playful. Nowhere on this map could I find any sort of dungeon. There went my clever idea of heroically leading a cadre of new players down to the depths and defeating some obscure boss. Shame—it had been pretty good all things considered.

  “You can’t die, Grandpa Carver,” the middle boy said. He was still concerned. “Who’d help out the new Travelers?”

  I thought about it for a moment, then went with my WWCD instincts.

  “These are big shoes to fill. Would you like to try?” I gave him my best adult glare, my face tilted in challenge.

  “Sure!”

  “How come you asked him?” Phil had completely forgotten about asking me why I needed an adventure.

  “Yoo can’t die, Grandpa,” the littlest said.

  I gave her my best old man dismissive grunt. What other options were there? Shatter her little world and send the tyke home crying?

  “Bah. I need a dungeon,” I said after a few awkward seconds of pretending the youngest hadn’t been heard. Hopefully we would move past this entire subject.

  “That’s where Travelers go to stop the bad monsters and get rich.”

  “There’re Locals who go too.” Phil said.

  “Locals, eh?”

  “Like us, you, all Local types. Come on, geezer, is your memory going too?” Phil said and grinned. He was busy eyeing other people over the back of my bench.

  NPCs were called Locals to Locals. How had I missed that tidbit of information over the last two weeks? Clearly this map and the new players had occupied too much of my time.

  Bad hearing coupled with fuzzy vision. Distraction by a dozen random players and personalities, the standard problems. All excuses.

  “You kids going to help or insult me?”

  “What’s an insult?” the little girl asked.

  “Ask Mylia.”

  “Auntie Mylia knows what an insult is?” She practically drooled the words. It was enough to make me smile.

  “I’m sure she does,” I said.

  “Come on, Phil, we’ve got to go.” The middle boy was awkwardly pulling away the tiny girl and already partway down the road.

  Mylia, in the distance, was beckoning to the kids.

  “Some help,” I muttered.

  “You’re an old geezer. You’d die in a dungeon!” Phil shouted while running after the other orphans. His tone was full of abrupt rudeness only children could pull off and still seem friendly.

  “Hey! I killed a dragon!”

  Mylia must have heard my shout because she blanched for a moment. I raised a quizzical eyebrow in her direction. The orphanage caretaker carefully schooled her face, then guided the other children away.

  Secondary Goal (Progress Event): Mylia appears upset from your shouting earlier. Information regarding Old Man Carver’s past as a [Dragon Slayer] may be the key to learning about her. Use this knowledge to figure out what links these two people together.

  “Huh.” Why had shouting about being a [Dragon Slayer] bothered Mylia? The pop-up box had been pretty clear on the results. In fact, this was the first thing to push my progress bar past the seventy-five percent marker.

  Oh. More stuff came up.

  Reward: Reaching above 75% completion grants additional access to William Carver’s skills. Over the course of his life, he has gained a large number of abilities and secret bits of knowledge.

  Unlocked: William (Old Man) Carver’s Rank four skills are all displayed and can be actively used.

  Unlocked: William (Old Man) Carver’s map now includes details about the area surrounding [Haven Valley].

  A map upgrade? Had screaming across the distance really been worth crossing my previous roadblock? Better yet, was there a dungeon to crawl into and have some giant adventure? My niece had been right about one thing at least—not having fought anything in a game for almost two weeks was a little bit odd.

  WWCD? Swing a giant blade in the direction of the nearest legendary monster. Find a willing body attached to a set of legs. All the standard sexist stuff. Men like Carver had practically built the male stereotype from a hundred years ago. There was a certain attraction to the “smash monsters and get laid” mentality though.

  I looked at the enlarged map and tried to see if anything stood out. Now it went to a square area maybe ten miles on each side. The items identified seemed fairly standard. More places to learn objects and things. A local bandit scouting base was on the outer edge. There, players who were in trouble with the law could hide or choose to burn the place down as a lawman.

  No dungeons. Nothing thrilling or heroic. I could wander into every dark alley in the town and still it wouldn’t be enough. Walking to that bandit outpost would take me days and cost me an unknown amount of progress. Nothing was intense enough to compare to the Dragon slaying. Maybe that was the problem—I was trying to find something to top William Carver’s past experiences.

  “You’re Old Man Carver?” a voice asked, signaling the start of my day. Solving the problem myself was getting me nowhere, so it was time to use all the manpower available from new players.

  “Before I help you, you have to do something for me.”

  “All right. That was quick.”

  “Take this to the town square, post it on the notice board and get as many as you can to read it.”

  “How do I get there?”

  I pointed at the tiny dragon busy standing at the base of a tree. He was hissing up toward the [Coo-Coo Rill]s. I’d bet the [Messenger’s Pet] had a quest to aggravate every single squirrel monster thing in the city. So far I would say he was about seventy percent comp
lete.

  “Follow the black dragon, Neo.” Yes, the new player’s name was Neo, and I couldn’t keep myself from making a dumb joke. Though it was more likely he’d named himself after the latest Matrix remake and not the original.

  “Cool.” He even sounded like the actor.

  I rolled my eyes and waved the two onward. The small dragon hissed at me, too caught up in his crusade against other creatures his size.

  “If you want more cookies, you’d better get going!”

  “You like cookies?” Neo said. He had a black shirt, black pants, brown hair, white skin—one step away from an actual Neo.

  “I’m sure he’ll drag you near the bakery. Feel free to try to wheedle a cookie out of Ladette or Pie Master.” Knowing those two, they’d add it to my tab.

  “Lead the way, little guy!”

  “Hm.” Barely twenty feet away and they were already fuzzy. Even if this latest plan resulted in progress, how would Old Man Carver actually get anywhere? Being half blind, deaf, and arthritic was a hindrance.

  “Bah.”

  And up came the next player already, their arrival heralded by a quiet beam of light. No, there were three of them in rapid succession. Today was going to be busy.

  “Bah.”

  I lifted the cane and shook it upward toward Selena’s statue.

  None of the other Voices had representations nearby or I would have done the same to them. I guessed in a way I was lucky. I knew who to blame for my situation. Normal players had to muddle through while cursing at unspecific figures.

  The flier, which was penned in my terribly sloppy old man handwriting, asked for any clues regarding an adventure worthy of Old Man Carver.

  Attention Travelers and Locals

  I need an adventure. This adventure must be local and within my skills.

  I will not promise myself to any Voice.

  I will provide a reward equal to the adventure’s worth.

  Contact me with suggestions. Serious replies only.

  William (Old Man) Carver

  I had rewritten that stupid notice at least a dozen times. Every attempt impacted my progression bar, which was useful and annoying. Wadding them into a paper ball and asking the [Messenger’s Pet] to throw them out reset my progress. The final notice being posted was one that didn’t cause me to go down.