Level 1 Fallen

Chapter 218: Getting Personal

Once everything was taken care of, we got in the car and began to drive off to the north-east, over the ocean. As our navigator, Marron was sitting in the front passenger seat while the other two sat in the back. “By the way,” Bella spoke up shortly after we left the city. “How did you get to Fallcry in the first place? If you were able to travel around that easily, you shouldn’t have needed us, right?”

Marron chuckled slightly at this, dipping her head. “I only sent the request to Diane after I respawned. It had been a few weeks since the last time that I was in a city, so my respawn point was still back in the main server. If I just left things like that, it would take me weeks just to get back to where I was again, and even then I’d probably end up dying and restarting.”

“So, I started looking for help. I sent out a few different requests, but nobody wanted to carry me. Or, those that did wanted unreasonable payments, like my real-world contact info or a date. I don’t want to get involved with people like that, so I blocked them and moved on. Out of the people capable of helping me left, Drake seemed like the most reasonable.”

“Since my quest doesn’t have a deadline, I decided that I’d come to Fallcry first and try to make a name for myself. If I helped out in some way, maybe I’d be able to get an audience with the king and plead my case. I never thought that you would have accepted my request the same day that I arrived in the city.”

I looked over at Marron in surprise when I heard this. She must have placed a lot of importance on this quest if she was willing to undergo such a long-term plan. “I get that you like exploring ruins and want the new skill, but couldn’t you find other areas to explore instead of waiting to be noticed like that?”

Marron hesitated briefly, leaning over against the window as she spoke. “I mean, the skill is more than just a way to explore dungeons peacefully, you know? If the skill works how it is described, it will let me see a part of this world that nobody else has ever seen. I’ll be able to look at new content that’s practically unique just for me, and share it with the world. It might not make much sense for you as a Fallen, but there are people in the real world that build their entire careers around digging into ancient secrets like that.”

“Even if this is a game, it’s the most comprehensive world that I’ve ever seen. The only way you can get a world to this point is if you simulate its entire history. That alone makes the skill incredibly valuable, as we can use it to see how different cultures evolved in these fantastical settings.”

“Normally, you’d just ask the company to release their game engine, but the devs have been really insistent about keeping their tech to themselves. Whether there’s some big secret to it, or they just don’t want their competitors to have the same technology, nobody knows. Still, that means that the only way to witness this virtual history is by getting knee-deep in it.”

“So, you are an archaeologist or something? In the real world, I mean,” Diane asked curiously, to which Marron chuckled.

“I wish. I always wanted to get into the field, but I’ve got horrible asthma. Me, going to an old dig site filled with dust? I wouldn’t last a day. Instead, I just do virtual digs to simulate ongoing research, or play games related to it. My last game before this was a space empire game. I was hoping that you would be able to drop down into the colonized worlds and explore their history, but all of the colonies were just cookie-cutter AIs responding to basic prompts.”

Marron huffed at the memory of her former game. “In most of the colony worlds, you couldn’t even leave the cities because of ‘unavoidable hazards’. Those that did let you leave were just for short-term quests.”

Diane blinked at the description. “That was… Starway, right? I played that game for a few months. And yeah, they focused their simulation power on getting futuristic tech to be believable.”

Marron looked over at Diane in surprise. “Really? I didn’t think you’d go for a game like that. Were you a space pirate or something?”

“Hardly,” Diane rolled her eyes with a chuckle. “I don’t always go rogue in games. I just pick a role when I get into the game and stick to it. For Starway, I was an engineer. When I started the game, my whole goal was to custom-design my own ship and build it from the ground up. Even roped some of my friends in to help me.”

“I nearly maxed out the tech tree in that game before realizing that it just wasn’t going to let me do what I wanted. You couldn’t invent anything new, and had to just stick with mixing and matching different parts. When I realized that my character’s dreams were completely impossible, I left the game.”

I listened to their conversation, though there were certainly some terms that I was unfamiliar with. It was inevitable that Bella and I wouldn’t really be able to get involved with this talk of past games.

Still, Diane leaned back in her seat with a sigh. “That’s why I love this game so much. With its full immersion and in-depth simulation, you can invent anything you want, whether it’s a skill or an item. This car itself is proof of that, having been created by incorporating the game’s skill logic into mechanical engineering. The more I see of this game, the more confident I am that I could play any role I wanted.”

Marron blinked in surprise at that. “I didn’t take you for a hardcore roleplayer like that.”

“Oh, I’m not. I love to roleplay, but my friends are way more hardcore about it,” Diane shook her head.

Marron smiled, before looking at Bella. “What about you? What type of games did you play before this?”

Bella froze, unsure how to answer now that the topic had suddenly shifted to her. Thankfully, Diane came in with a hasty rescue. “Bella’s a new gamer. Friend of a friend I met a while after starting CFO. Apparently, she’s only ever done console games before this, so I had her join us after we met up in game.”

Marron’s interest seemed to wane at that. Knowing that she wouldn’t be able to find any common ground with Bella, she focused her attention on Diane, the two discussing games that they had played in the past.

Given Diane’s living situation, I was not surprised to find out that she had at least tried most of the games that Marron mentioned. Meanwhile, she even suggested other games with rich backstories that Marron might enjoy.

As they were talking, we passed through a sudden blizzard over a frozen landmass. To be safe, I created a barrier around the car to protect against the weather. The sound of ice hitting the barrier seemed to get Marron’s attention, causing her to blink. “Right, we need to turn and head straight east from here, until we pass over a molten zone. Once we get there, we’ll be close to the first of the dungeons.”

I perked a brow, but still turned the car to head straight east. Thankfully, we still had our dungeon radar, so even if she didn’t know the exact location of the dungeon we were going to, it wouldn’t be too hard for us to find.

“How did you find this dungeon, anyways?” Diane asked, causing Marron to perk up.

“Well, at first I was in this village on the southeastern portion of the next continent we’ll hit. That area is a grassland biome, so it’s fairly habitable. I heard a legend about an ancient temple from there, so I started my trek towards the center of the continent. From what I know, this is one of the weirder continents in Chimeris.”

“After leaving the grassland, I reached the tundra zone that occupies most of its landmass. I had plenty of food, so I kept going, and eventually found the lake at the heart of the tundra, and the volcanic island at its center. The first ruin was on this island, and it is also where I got the quest.”

“The first of the three dungeons it wants me to investigate is in a volcanic region on the southwest of the continent. So, I packed my things and made my way there, hunting what little I could along the way.”

“Unfortunately, the volcanic dungeon was protected by the ancestral clan that I mentioned before, and they killed me when I tried to sneak my way in. After that, well… you know the rest.”

In other words, this girl either drove or hiked alone across an entire continent, most of it in freezing weather. And if she was obsessed over ruins as she claimed, she wouldn’t have left that job to her Chosen, just in case her Chosen decided to veer off course.

I had to admit, her dedication was impressive. Also, a volcanic island at the heart of a lake, which itself was in the center of a frozen landmass… yeah, Chimeris was weird.

I drove the car for several more hours after that, until we finally spotted the volcanic region that Marron had mentioned. The entire area was covered in flowing lava, which emptied out into the sea to create a blackened island. Mountains rose up from the lava, with frequent spikes forming small regions where one could safely walk, as long as they could prevent their feet from burning.

“Let’s stop here for today,” Diane said with a nod, directing me to land on the blackened landmass. She looked over at Marron. “Usually, we camp out, but this area isn’t really hospitable. Why don’t we teleport back to Fallcry, and then pick up from here tomorrow? Bella and I are about to run out of online time for today.”

Marron’s eyes widened at that. “Oh, yes, right! I’m sorry, I had completely overlooked that we could just teleport back overnight. I was just thinking that your teleportation would be more useful for exploring hazardous terrain. Now I feel silly for packing so much…”

Bella simply chuckled at that. “It’s always better to be overprepared, right? But Diane’s right. I don’t want to camp somewhere that looks like it might bury me in molten rock before I wake up. Same time tomorrow?”

Diane shook her head quietly. “Didn’t you have something going on this week?” she asked pointedly, typing out a message behind Marron’s seat to prevent her from seeing.

Bella looked confused for a moment, before her eyes flicked to the message. A look of realization dawned on her face. “Right. I have an archery tournament this week, so I probably won’t be able to log on for a few days. You don’t mind if you take my Chosen along with you on this adventure, right?”

Marron blinked for a moment, before shaking her head. “No, I suppose that it doesn’t matter. I apologize for the poor timing of my request, though. Hopefully, your Chosen will be able to share any exciting developments while you are offline.”

I watched the exchange, briefly taken aback before realizing what Diane was doing. Given Marron’s interest in talking about circumstances from their world, she must have decided that it was easier for Bella to pretend that she was logging off for a while, so that Marron would only have to interact with the ‘Chosen’ that had no knowledge of such things to begin with.