The "Best" RPG Ever-44

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Zack woke up face down on a couch, his head turned to the right, facing the back. "Mngh..?" He pushed himself up onto his knees and looked around., in the brief moment of confusion from waking up somewhere unusual, before getting a sense of what had happened. This was the library, and he'd fallen asleep again. Nora and Mira were on the couch opposite him.
"Morning, sleeping beauty~," said the witch, waving.
"Rrrrgh..why didn't you wake me up?!" he jumped to his feet, blushing in embarrassment with his ears folded down over his cheeks.

"I-I-I, thought you n-n-needed the sleep, a-after, last night," said the elf nervously; she was, suspiciously, blushing almost as much as it felt like he was.

"By the way, I was saying 'sleeping beauty' as a gender-neutral cliche, just for the record," Mira added. "Even though I do think the haircut looks really cu—nice. Good." She gave a thumbs up.

"Whatever. How long was I asleep?" He felt hungry; it had to at least be lunchtime.
"Um, ab-about two or three hours, I think?"

"You just waited around for me to wake up," he said, crossing his arms in annoyance.

"Noooo, I got here like half an hour ago and we were just talking," said the witch. "Quietly. 'Cause it's a library. I figured Katherine would track us down eventually and then she could wake you up with psychic whatsits so nobody had to get near you to poke you."

"I'm not a bear."

"You are part wolf, though~," the witch winked. Zack realized he'd put his hands on his hips and quickly dropped them to his sides again. Nora was giving her a look he didn't fully understand, but turned back toward him before he could process it.

"Somebody say my name?" Katherine walked out from behind a nearby shelf. "What up, nerds?"

"Hi..!" Rose skittered along behind her, looking around nervously as if she was afraid of knocking over the shelves or something. To be fair, she was more than strong enough to do that.

"Zack here was just taking a little nap," said Mira, "Nora was telling me about a book. Once I was here we agreed it'd probably be easier to wait for you to come to us." The elf nodded in agreement with this. "Anyway, it's like..past lunch, right? I'm getting really hungry." Hearing that, Zack realized he was also famished, as if breakfast hadn't even happened.
"Yeah, yeah." The catgirl nodded. "The Captain asked me to bring everyone else to talk about another job, but I think there's time to eat before then."

---

Lynn asked, "So, did a crystal thing appear in your inventory? Did you notice anything like that before?"

"I..wait. Waaiiit." Aria paused for a second, closing her eyes, and then opened them again to a deeply frustrated expression. "Rrrgh! I am so stupid!"
"Whaa?" The human across the table headtilted a little bit.

"I never checked! I didn't check once before now! I just assumed it was empty to begin with and kept track of what added to it in my head. Of course there might be some items you start out with! Look!" She produced and half-slammed onto the table first a small, glowing blue crystal, then a seemingly blank piece of paper, then a metal charm shaped like an ankh with two circular parts side by side instead of one. They were in the patio of a restaurant, and this made for a small scene and a few stares at first. "And there's a sword in there. Like, a normal sword, a..falchion thing. Rrrgh." Rayna gave a calm, smiling wave to the more persistent onlookers and they understood immediately that everything was fine and they could go back to whatever they'd been doing before.

"Well, at least you checked it now?" Clera said.
"Yeah, but now is after seeing something in my dream. I have no idea if this stuff was really always there or if it was somehow 'added' after I saw something related to it. I'm missing what might be a really important clue to the story!"
"Wait, which story?" said Rayna.
"Mine," she gestured emphatically to herself for a second before dropping her hand. "My character's. Whatever. I don't know for sure if what I saw was a 'real' memory," (she gave air quotes around "real"). "Maybe someone stuck it in my head somehow, and gave me things that matched with it along the way. Did you get item identification yet?"

For a second nobody was sure what that meant, until the fox-girl remembered an obscure branch of her skill tree. "Um, not yet."
"Well, if you have any points can you take it now? See if it tells us anything useful about this stuff?"

"Sure, I guess," she shrugged. After buying it, she turned on the HUD filter to look at the things on the table. "Hm..non-magical," she said, pointing to the charm. "I guess it's supposed to go on a necklace or something but there's not anywhere to attach it except through one of the hoops. Maybe handmade?"
Lynn said, "Wait, is the skill telling you all of that, or are you..?"

"That's just stuff I would say from looking at it, except that it's not magical. My vision just says 'Charm', nothing helpful. The paper is 'Blank Paper' and there's some kind of magic involved but I can't see what without a way higher level in the skill. Maybe it's a moon-letter kind of thing?" She turned her head slightly. "And..the crystal. Immediately I get the label 'Beacon' and that it's magical, but nothing else. I would guess your dream is at least telling the truth about it being able to help someone find you..."

"But it doesn't tell you how I turn it on, huh?" Aria put the other items in her inventory and picked the crystal up to turn over in her hand. "I'm guessing it's something really simple but I just don't 'remember' the instructions."

"Why would you want to turn it on?" asked Clera. "You just expressed fear that what you know about it may have been falsified."

"Not fear, just annoyance at not having evidence that I could've had if I'd acted like I had half a brain," said Aria. "But, if I can activate this and get whoever 'gave it to me' to show up and talk, that'll give me loads of evidence. I have to sit around doing no fighting for two or three days anyway, so I might as well occupy my mind with working this stuff out instead of being bored and/or driven insane by the slow building of my sword's hunger for blood. This should be a fighting-free activity, after all."

Rayna looked up at something behind Aria's side of the table, so she carefully turned around to look. "Um, hello." It was Rast again.

"Hi Rast," Lynn piped up right away, "What's up?"
"Errr, the Captain wanted me to check how you all were. I hear those goblins did a number on ya?"
"Just me, mostly," said Aria. "Clera burned her magic out fixing the problem. But we're still alive and walking..sorta."
"Good, good," he nodded. "She also wanted any of you who're in fightin' condition to meet up with her an hour from now. Long as Rayna's one of 'em."
"Well, my arm was a little sore earlier," said the fox-girl. "But why me specifically?"
He shrugged. "The Captain don't tell us why she wants things. We're lucky ta even know what message she's havin' us deliver." He scratched his head, thinking. "If I had to guess, though, maybe somethin' about your magic bein' able to track things? Anyway, should I tell her you can come or not?"

Rayna and Lynn shared a look briefly. "Yeah, the two of us will go," said Lynn right after. "On another subject, when's the next time you're free, hmm?"

Aria (facing forward again, away from Rast, by now) rolled her eyes before looking back at the crystal still in her hand, turning it over for a moment. The first step was..probably to find some kind of magic item shop or something. A professional identifier kind of shopkeep. If the paper was instructions, making it readable could be unnecessary if somebody in this town already knew exactly how to use this beacon thing.

---

A little later, they were on their way. "You're just shameless, huh? Flirting and setting up a date right in front of the rest of us?" The fox-girl gave Lynn a small elbowing.

"Whatever. You'd just all spy on anything I tried to do privately anyway. At least you know when I'll be busy and why without me repeating myself."
"True, I guess."

The archer thought for a moment, and had an idea. "...Hey, so, you can see people's classes, right?"

"Yeah."
"Have you ever..done that with just random people on the street we're passing by? I mean, is it only players that have classes or everyone?"
"I guess I haven't. Let's see..." Rayna had a quick look around with HUD-vision on at various people on the street. "..I guess regular people do have classes. I see some 'classless' out there, but the town guard people have classes like 'swordsman' or 'guard'...some of those street vendors have concerning classes like 'rogue' or 'trickster'...hmm. I wonder what the Captain's class is."

"Well, it's not hard to check. It just seems weird we haven't before." They reached the guardhouse, and went inside.

When Rayna knocked on the Captain's door, she heard her say, "Can you get that?" and then an unfamiliar voice say "Sure." A girl with white hair and wolf ears opened it in a second.

While she got out of the way, the Captain waved at the two of them. "Come in, if you can find room. You know, this office seemed too big when I first had it built.."

She still had the vision on to see what people's classes were, among a few other things, so the person right in front of her briefly stuck out. After they had walked inside, Rayna's brain fully processed what she had seen: The first row said "Zack –" and then "Canis", but the symbol between there that normally indicated sex was fuzzing weirdly between "M" and "F", like it was glitched; the next line identified her as a "Knight". The broken symbol was weird, but also the name sounded familiar...

"Hi!" Rose was here too, and three more people. Rayna and Lynn, and Zack behind them, only found room to stand awkwardly in between where all the chairs were and the Captain's big desk. The chairs were occupied and the empty corner that didn't have a chair on it had a giant white wolf sitting there instead.

She didn't wait to start introducing people. "This is Rayna and Lynn. You two've met Rose before. The rest are Zack, Katherine, Mika, Nora."

"Umm, Mira," the third one corrected hesitantly. She was dressed very much like a witch, which the HUD confirmed. Right, Katherine, who Aria had met—that was it. And they were also Rose's other friends, it would seem. Interesting..coincidence. None of the rest of them had glitchy letters, either, so it couldn't be a common thing.

"Mira," the Captain echoed dispassionately. "I should get to the point so you don't have to be crammed in here any longer than necessary."

"Our city's supply of livestock is in danger." The fox-girl had almost forgotten the reason she had the extra vision on in here, and looked at the Captain with it, listening to her at the same time of course.

Lynn said, "Wait, we..have one of those?" The Captain's name was apparently Ezra; she was identified as a female human with the class "Bard".

"Of course. I hope you don't think we've been importing meat from the homeland this whole time." A bard, eh? That was...not what she would've expected at all. "They're out in the pastureland with the rest of the farms. Anyway, there have been some reports from the farmers of them disappearing in large numbers. The pens they were in are typically torn apart, and the ground typically looks like an explosive spell was set off just under it. Those are good signs that we're dealing with at least one giant worm." Okay, no..bards were supposed to know a lot of lore. Just immediately knowing what species of monster they were dealing with made perfect sense. And that kind of knowledge would be perfect for someone assigning monster-slaying jobs, huh. She hadn't really thought of it that way before.

"So, you want us to kill that," said Zack. Katherine looked distracted, but he was determined not to be.

"Right. The reason these two are here is that those worms are notoriously difficult to find. They tend to keep a den deep underground, through an ever-changing maze of a tunnel system. Rayna is an illusionist; her powers allow her to track monsters. The extra support in general won't hurt here, either. If you'll all take the job, that is."

He tried getting Katherine's attention with a brief look, but she didn't seem too interested. The others were nodding, at least; Rose a bit like a bobblehead. "...Yeah. We didn't have any other plans anyway."

The fox-girl shared a brief look with Lynn only briefly before agreeing also. "Sure, we'll take it."

"Good," Captain Ezra nodded. "The sooner you get to work the better. We'll see a price hike for a lot of food if this isn't dealt with quickly. Worse still, if it runs out of animals to eat it'll come deeper into the city and start taking people."

They were on their way out after that. Zack paused, kneeling in front of the wolf. "Look, you should just stay with the Captain for a while," he said. It growled some displeasure at the idea. "I don't think you'll be much help against a giant worm. We'll be back." The wolf responded with a low bark that indicated it still didn't like it, but would obey anyway.

Katherine was still here. She still looked just as distracted as before. What are you doing? He tried to communicate mentally.

She seemed to snap out of it and finally realize most everyone was gone. She stood up. Looking at our new friends. Two minds at once. Sorry.
Well stop. They're probably fine. He caught up with them outside, with the catgirl not far behind.

Mira asked, "Sooo, what do illusions have to do with tracking monsters?"
"The world is an illusion," said Rayna in a mock 'mystic person' tone. "Or..my powers just extend farther than they seem to."

"I liked the first answer better."

"Then believe that one. Anyway, I already tracked down a bunch of goblins earlier, so we have proof it works."

"You two are Aria's friends, right?" said Katherine.
"Yep." Rayna nodded. "She got herself hurt while we were fighting those goblins, so she isn't in fighting shape right now. But she'll be fine later."
"That's good..."

"Interesting to finally meet you," said Mira. "I, um, hope you don't mind working with a witch."

"Why would I mind that? Do you smell or something?"

"I eat demons for power. Actually, I don't know if that affects my breath or not."
"We already work with someone using a demon for power. Sooo..." Rayna gave an arms-up shrug.

"Is Clera hurt too?" Rose didn't want to interrupted a conversation that had already moved on, so she turned this question to Lynn.
"Not exactly. She burned out her magic and fainted a little bit, and needs to rest."

"Ohhh." The dragon-girl didn't really know what burning out magic meant, but burning sounded bad, and needing to rest made sense enough.

Katherine moved back until she was next to Nora, letting Zack continue to be in the lead. I hate to ask, but..what are we doing again?

The elf 'thought' toward Katherine her memory of the entire conversation in the Captain's office.

Thanks, sorry.

You weren't paying attention? Don't you have a heightened attention span or something?

Yes, but, um, I was looking at the minds of those two...both at once at first. Did you know the Captain's name is Ezra?

She never really introduced herself. How do you know that?

Rayna can 'see' people's names and classes..as part of illusionist powers or something?

You're reading minds all the time. Two more doesn't really seem like enough to distract you. I mean, you juggle three or four knives at the same time without any trouble.

Well, that's not really why I was distracted. See, she also saw she was a Bard, and was reasoning about how much sense it made for a Bard to be the guard captain...thought something about knowing lore and that meaning it made sense she would know what monster we were dealing with just from a few signs. I thought something about that thought was..suspicious, I don't know how to describe it, so I was actually digging deeper and looking for the thought pathways related to it...

I can tell you have a point. Nora meant for her to get to it.

I'm not sure if I should say right now. With Rose here...just don't react aloud, I'll bring it up later or something.

I can stay quiet. The elf looked around at the group all chatting with each other, and Zack busy leading the way out to the last place the worm took animals from; they probably wouldn't notice her ever-so-surprised reaction to whatever it was anyway.

Okay. Look, I realized what was suspicious about the thought about a Bard as I was going. It's kind of a DND description of what a Bard is, you know, to know lore and stuff. Inside a fantasy world, or like, midieval Europe, you'd expect a "bard" to just be a lazy useless person who plays music sometimes. So I traced it back and that's exactly what the thought was about!

They have something like DND here?

Katherine's expression out in the real world was neutral, but she mentally made the annoyed face one makes when the other party seems to be intentionally missing the point. Wha—no! Maybe? That's not the point! The thought was about DND. OURS.

So you think they're more players, from Earth.

Yes!

The elf looked over at the two of them briefly. And if they are, it's likely the others in their party are, too.

Right. Maybe? It wouldn't be hard for me to get that information out of them if we brought it up, it'd just be right there in their surface thoughts.

Or we could just ask them as soon as Rose isn't with us, Nora mentally deadpanned. I don't know of any reason they'd want to hide it.

How are you being so calm about this? It's a big deal! Two—maybe four more people from where we're from! Who knows how many more there are?

You told me not to react, so I'm not reacting.

The catgirl sent over a mental expression like throwing one's arms up in incoherent confusion, so Nora elaborated. It's probably good news, but it hardly seems shocking. We already each met three other people from Earth, so the existence of many, many more who we haven't met seems extremely likely.

...Oh. Katherine mentally blushed a bit. You're right, I guess. I was just, thinking of it differently. Like: In a game, the DM would always put the party near each other and arrange things so circumstances push them into meeting up. But this world is real, so..there's no DM to do that, and it's a coincidence we met, which with this many coincidences would make people from Earth weirdly common here.

...Wait. That doesn't make any sense either; we would've either heard of massive disappearances or large numbers of people remembering playing a game that sent them here, or...something like that. Right?

Unless we were just the first, thought Nora back. That was a bit of a chilling thought to both of them.