Chapter 13: The Unpaved Road
Lucas scratched the back of his head with a yawn as he walked down the beaten road that led south away from Hillsborough. Despite the early hour, Lucas felt refreshed and renewed from his stay at the Sakura. He had slept surprisingly well last night considering he had fallen asleep in a chair, too exhausted to reach the bed one room over. He silently thanked the system for suppressing muscle soreness, or else he'd likely have a neck like a knotted rope today. The tangled worries from the night before had cleared away to reveal a singular sense of purpose shining above all else: reach Freehold and find Ann.
Once upon a time, Ann was the general of the Vanguard forces in Savior Online, and a close personal friend of Lucas and Cara. She was the quintessential leader in all aspects; she cared deeply for those under her command, but she was ruthless when engaging the enemy. On more than one occasion she had led a small contingency of players deep into enemy territory to conquer a Waystone so that more forces could be teleported in behind enemy lines for a vicious pincer attack. Lucas, Cara, and Ben had been with her when Freehold was conquered in this manner, before it was established as the de facto player hub for the continent.
Beloved by her men and feared by the enemy, Ann stood out among even the best of the Vanguard as Savior Online's greatest human asset. Lucas had personally always counted on Ann as a confidant and expert problem-solver during his time as a high-level player, and she had not once let him down. He hoped that she would still have time for him now. Busy was the life of the head councilwoman on the Freehold Council.
Lucas considered opening his Friends List to make sure that his trip would not be made in vain. It was known throughout the player community that the Friends List was the easiest way to tell if someone was still alive. If they were Online, they were alive. Whether they were asleep, or lost in a deep hours-long meditation, or had completely lost their mind and stared at a wall until an unconnected line of dribbling saliva linked their tongue to the floor - of which Lucas had seen first-hand - their status remained Online, with a small green dot beside it. That green dot was life. Green meant opportunity; it meant potential; it meant a continuing future in which one could strive to dethrone the Demon King and escape Savior Online. Apt, considering how many other examples in the natural world in which green meant the same. Aside from the Demon King part, of course.
On the other hand, if a player was no longer alive, their status would display Offline. Accompanying the stoic status was a small gray dot. It was like a tombstone - smooth, uncaring, and drained of life. There was no future, no potential, no hope for a player whose status had become Offline. Given the events of recent years and the loss of the Vanguard, Lucas mused that perhaps everyone's dot was now gray and drained of all hope of escaping this death game.
The problem with the Friends List was that it was 100% precise. It was never wrong, and the system never lied. Once you saw that gray dot you knew beyond any doubt that your friend had passed on. Then it would stay there forever, as a stark reminder of a life once lived and now extinguished, like a stone memorial engraved with the names of hundreds of the dead. You could, of course, remove their name and ease your pain, but that too was irrevocable. The player would never again log on to accept a new request, so once you effaced their name from your memorial, it was as permanent as death. Lucas hadn't opened the Friends List in nearly five years now.
Lucas shook his head to clear it, determined not to fall into another pit of despair. Opening the Friends List would only invite depressing thoughts. He had a goal now; things would be different from here on out. Besides, he had two others accompanying him that needed his guidance. At the moment, those two were bickering behind him in hushed voices, annoying him just enough to break through his solemn thoughts. He hoped in vain that they had gotten their arguing out last night when he sent Joten to Elvira's home, but it was clear that was only a beginning.
"That pack probably weighs even more than you do. I bet you were hoping to ask Lucas to put it in his inventory and save you the trouble. So selfish," Bree teased Joten as she looked over his traveling bag from the side.
"I would never!" Joten protested with a harsh whisper, unable to make eye contact with Bree.
"Well, when you get tired don't come crying to me for a spell to make it lighter. I could do it, but I won't," Bree said with a sniff. Lucas wondered idly if such a spell really existed for the NPCs or if she was merely boasting. Weight for players was obviously not a concern, considering they could store everything in their invisible inventory in a flash of light.
"I wouldn't come to you for help if you were the last person on Alstyn," Joten spat back.
The two were walking parallel with one another, though Joten walked with his head down while Bree's head was up, smiling. They each were dressed for a long journey, equipped in breathable linen clothes and lightly padded leather armor. Bedrolls lay atop massive travel bags that they strapped to their thin frames, giving them the appearance of walking snails, moving with their homes attached to their backs. Joten had cut his dark hair short for the trip, while Bree had tied hers up in a messy blonde bun. Their fresh faces reminded Lucas of his own first days as an adventurer.
The duo stopped short as they became aware of Lucas's conspicuous staring from ahead of them. He averted his eyes upward at the purple dawn sky. A crisp spring breeze blew down from the mountains to the north and ruffled his hair elegantly as Lucas watched the last vestiges of the night's stars disappear into the creeping blue horizon to the east. A time of new beginnings enveloped them this morning, and he intended to take advantage of it.
"I'm going to explain our travel plans and lay some ground rules for our traveling," Lucas said matter-of-factly. He remembered he was dealing with teenagers, and steeled his voice to a solemn rumble, making it clear that questions were not welcome. "Firstly, there will be no bickering. If you argue like you were just now I'll have you both running laps around me as I walk." Lucas looked at Joten, expecting to see some opposition since it was often Bree who instigated their arguments, but none appeared in his blank face. Either he was incredibly naive, or he was smart enough to know that he was in better athletic shape than Bree and that the punishment would be worse on the aggressor than it was on him. He hoped it was the latter.
"Secondly, beginning tomorrow, we will begin our days with training. I will keep it general enough to apply to you both equally, considering Joten is trained as a Ranger and Bree as a Mage. Thirdly, each evening you will prepare dinner for all of us while I set up our camp's defences," Lucas explained while raising a finger as he listed each rule. These were the same rules Cara had laid out for him and Ben after their first few weeks traveling together. He hoped she wouldn't mind him borrowing them now.
Bree seemed to take offense to the third rule. "I have to cook for you every night? Great, another lazy man expecting me to be a housewife," she said with a scowl as she folded her arms. Joten opened his mouth wide in disbelief.
"I expect you and Joten to share the burden. Figure out how to share it amongst yourselves. These rules are meant to foster efficiency and camaraderie as we travel," Lucas explained.
Bree's expression didn't change. "Listen, I've known men all my life, and if there's one thing you love doing it's making 'rules' or 'laws' to hide the fact that you're actually just doing whatever you want."
Lucas took a deep breath through his nose and stared hard at the girl. Apparently she cared little for first impressions. "I am trying to be fair to the both of you -"
"Some sense of fairness you have if you won't even cook," she said snootily.
Alright, patient Lucas has left the building.
"If you want to gripe about your past experiences with men, I suggest you find a sewing circle," Lucas replied, his frustration seeping into his words. "Oh, and I almost forgot about the fourth rule. I am the party leader. If you disobey the party leader, they have the right to punish you." As Lucas finished his sentence he unsheathed [Nevermore] a few inches from its pitch black scabbard and allowed the freezing black smoke to drip to the ground until it formed a small pool. The grass beneath him froze instantly into a myriad of imposing frosted spikes. Both Joten and Bree gulped as they watched his boot crush the frozen blades of grass with a satisfying crunch. After guessing that he had gotten his point across, Lucas returned his sword to its sheath and put his hands together with a soft clap.
"Now that we're all on the same page, let's lay out our travel path. Amicably. Like adults."
Traveling with NPCs was a new and admittedly cumbersome process for Lucas. If he were instead traveling with players they could make the short trek east a few hours to Miamb and utilize the Waystone to teleport to Freehold. They could shorten it even more by summoning mounts to sprint tirelessly all the way to Miamb.
Unfortunately, NPCs couldn't use Waystones to teleport. Nor could they use mounts - and natural, non-player mounts like horses were exceedingly rare in Alstyn. The most common mounted animal for common NPCs was the Field Cow, which resembled a cross between a bull and a zebra - though it moved as slow as a dairy cow back on Earth and was mostly used by farmers to plow their fields. That meant walking was the only option available. A lot of walking. Clearly the devs had designed the continent with mounts and teleporting in mind - which in fairness, had the game not turned out as it had, would have been an excellent decision.
"The path from Hillsborough to Freehold is a three day walk if we cut through the Gerelda Desert to the south. Without mounts to run through the desert, I think it's best if we take the long road around it. It will increase our walking time to seven days, but it's safer, and we don't risk dying of dehydration or sun stroke," Lucas explained plainly.
"Plus, Garuda controls the desert," Joten added like an astute student.
"Garuda is just a myth," Bree chided him. "But of course you're afraid of a rumor," she added for good measure. Joten wrinkled his brow again.
"Garuda has returned?" Lucas asked with clear surprise in his voice. Typically the Vanguard would farm the World Bosses like Garuda every few days when they respawned for the chance at rare drop rolls. What had begun as a dangerous task requiring no fewer than twenty high-level players had become almost routine as the boss attack patterns and spawn schedule were memorized and catalogued. Also, clearing the World Bosses had the unexpected benefit of increasing everyone's reputation with the NPCs of some areas as well, as they were apparently tormented constantly by the giant mythical beasts.
Bree raised an eyebrow at his question, but couldn't get any snark in edgewise before Joten replied. "I saw it the morning I left to find you. Its golden feathers reflected the sun brilliantly as it flew over the desert."
Lucas scratched his chin. It didn't bode well that the remnants of the Vanguard from Freehold had given up on clearing the World Bosses. It did, however, make the decision regarding their traveling itinerary easier. Lucas wouldn't stand a chance in a solo fight against a World Boss - even one he knew as well as Garuda - so they would definitely need to avoid the desert.
"It's settled then. We take the long road around the desert, through the Yellow Steppe." With a flick of his wrist, a few taps, and a flash, Lucas unfurled a map of Alstyn for the other two to examine. Another inconvenience of traveling with NPCs - they didn't have access to the system menu, an inventory, or even the world map. Their only way of seeing a map was a physical one, like the large parchment map Lucas had laid out before them on the grass. It was sheer luck that he had this one; he had purchased it years ago with the intent of hanging it in his quarters in Freehold. Instead it sat in his inventory accumulating dust from the moment it had been purchased. Figurative dust, of course. It was a digital inventory after all.
Lucas used his finger to trace a path along the Alstyn highway system from their approximate location all the way down to Freehold, narrating as he went. "Hillsborough is too small to be labeled on this map, but we're around here, just at the edge of the forests at the base of the Primordial mountains. If we follow this beaten path we will eventually meet the Northern Gerelda Road. After following the edge of the desert to the west, we turn south again and take the Steppe Road until it splits in two. We'll take the left fork on the Freehold Turnpike," Lucas explained. He listed the towns of interest nearby and the places they should meet if they were split up as well as the dangers of the regions. As he described the areas to the two before him, his mind couldn't help but ascribe his own names to the places on the map.
It wasn't the Yellow Steppe to him, it was the place where Cara had pointed out a wild horse on the horizon, and for six hours Ben and Lucas chased it down before finally giving up and passing out in the wildgrass. Evsedia wasn't the city at the western edge of the desert, but the city that held the oasis where he spent an entire day building a sand castle to impress Cara, only to have it knocked down by a roving sand spirit. Completely unrelated, it was also the place where Lucas killed his first sand spirit. The Freehold Turnpike was the first time he ran from an NPC constable - not because he didn't have the money, but because he disagreed with how the local lord allocated his taxes. Freehold was where he and Cara had lived together for three wonderful months before the assault on the stronghold…
Lucas swept his eyes across the entirety of the map of Alstyn. Each location seemed to engender a familiar memory in him. Good and bad times flashed through his mind like a rapid and unstoppable slideshow. A rare crossbow in a gilded chest, fantasies of golden fountains flitting through his mind. A stolen kiss beneath a cherry blossom, petals falling with the gentle breeze as he held his love close. A sweeping view of a forested valley from atop a crumbling precipice. A massive spider boss chasing their party from a dark cave as they all screamed in unison. It seemed there wasn't a single place left on the continent to be experienced. No new cities to conquer, dungeons to explore, villages to free. Every location on the map laid out before him was familiar. Everything was too well-known. The claustrophobic feeling of being trapped began to creep into Lucas's throat as his eyes flitted back and forth across the parchment. All the roads were known to him, yet he still grasped desperately for a destination that never came. How could this be it?
He looked up to find Joten and Bree staring at him expectantly. Their young eyes reflected an unmolded naivete filled with hope and potential, like a block of granite awaiting the chisel's first touch. Though they were born of this world, these lands were foreign to them - new and unexplored and bursting with unclaimed treasures and memories.
Lucas cleared his throat dramatically and rolled the map back up before awkwardly realizing he didn't need to and sending it back to his inventory with a few taps and a flash.
"Let's get going," Lucas announced in his gruffest voice, hoping to mask the welling emotions that simmered just below the surface.
For Bree and Joten, this world was an unpaved road, and today their shovel would break first ground.
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Casual_ Thanks for keeping up! Enjoy the first day of summer!
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