“Are you going to find a husband?” She shook her tail in displeasure, and, seeing that I was not quick to refute her assumption, uttered such a familiar and annoying statement, “Don’t you remember our clan motto? ‘Never fall in love. Go hard. Survive!’ You still haven’t divorced him?”

I shrugged vaguely. This conversation came up every time I found myself in the head’s office. Having learned from bitter experience, I decided to remain silent.

‘Never fall in love. Go hard. Survive!’ Grida could repeat this phrase sixty times a day. I’ve always had vague doubts, a hunch that the developer in charge of our beloved head was a man-hater. Who knows?

This theory was also confirmed by the fact that only unmarried female players could join our guild. I was one of the exceptions. I didn’t want to get divorced, but I also wanted to join the guild, so I cheated a little, yeah.

Although in Virtul almost everyone was equipped with cheats, cheating has always been in use, the players could never live without it. But the System made concessions in this matter. If the cheats did not interfere with the main course of the game and did not cause inconvenience to other players, the penalties for their use were charged, of course, but the cheats themselves were not confiscated.

So I killed two birds with one stone: I’m married with a child, and the deputy head of one of the most prestigious guilds in Virtul.

“So, will you give me the crystal?”

She gave me a long, searching look.

“All right,” the head finally came to her verdict. “But if you win me at rock-paper-scissors.”

I raised my eyes to the ceiling.

Oh, Great Developers! What was in your minds when you were setting up the System? RPS? Seriously?

With a heavy sigh, I folded my arms across my chest. I needed that crystal badly, or I wouldn’t be able to find Krile in three days. He was hunting in the Uncharted Lands, and the teleports didn’t work there. Only the Syracillus Stone could help, a very rare artifact item that allows you to find any creature in the game, be it a real player, an NPC, or an exceptional mob. No place in the game world has yet been discovered where it could not deliver its keeper.

Reluctantly, I nodded. You never know the result unless you play the game.

We threw our hands out in sync.

“Scissors!”

“Scissors.” Grida’s voice sounded calmer, but the gleam in her eyes spoke volumes.

“Scissors!”

“Paper.”

We shouted the words at the same time, and I froze, afraid to breathe, my heart rejoiced. Uh-huh, I beat my guild head! Grida shrugged in frustration and I was afraid she was going to demand a rematch, but no, the NPC pulled open the top drawer of the desk and placed a crystal that shone with the colors of the seven rainbows in front of me.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I murmured, bowing and retreating towards the exit.

“Remember,” she called out to me, “never fall in love, always go straight ahead and don’t look back, don’t make your heart suffer...”

But I cared little for her advice, I broke the crystal with the inscription ‘home, sweet home’, closed my eyes and immediately smiled, inhaling the smell of pine and wild lemon, feeling the cold wind that blew from the mountain peaks.

Ahead were the high arches of the aqueduct, casting a shadow over the valley. Near the woods, on the edge of the forest, there were a couple of cabins nestled together. My husband and I had deliberately chosen the furthest refuge from civilization, in a remote location, so that no one would interfere with our happiness.

The birds were singing, the flowers were blooming, the bees were buzzing, and the butterflies were dancing over the field (perfectly harmless insects, if you don’t touch them). Now, with my high level, they weren’t scary to me, but they used to attack in swarms, and I’d have to swing my sword and cast fire spells for five minutes to get them off my back. Di and Krile were lucky, they were NPCs, and no creature could ever take them. Not like me, real flesh and blood.

“Mommy!”

I turned sharply at the sound, looking at my running daughter with a smile and tears in my eyes. She’s only a couple of years old, yet she’s already grown so much, I hadn’t even noticed. Time flew by so quickly. It seemed like only recently she’d been sick with a very old disease for her race, and Krile and I had walked all over the world to get her medicine. But two and a half years have passed since those sleepless nights I spent in the game...

I knelt down, my knees resting on the soft ground strewn with flowers. Di squealed and threw herself into my arms, nearly knocking me down on the dark creamy grass. There were days when we could spend the whole day in that field, drowning in the scents of the wild meadow, basking in the gentle weeds that tickled our exposed skin.

“I missed you. You were gone for a long time,” the girl whispered, nuzzling my neck with her nose.

“Me too, Di, me too,” I hugged her warm, living body tighter. And closed my eyes, breathing in the scent of her hair. How delicious she smelled.

Her heart was thumping hard after running fast, the heat of her breath was scorching my collarbones. To me, she was more alive than anyone else in the world. I didn’t accept, and probably would never understand, the president’s decision. His decree, his selfish choice deprived me of the most precious thing of all – my family.

“Are you crying?” Adisi asked breathlessly, raising her head. Her ears drooped, as if she blamed herself for my tears.

Yes, the system was always very sensitive to the state of the players and reacted accordingly. Most of the time it pleased me, but now it was cutting my heart. If my NPC-daughter were more apathetic, I wouldn’t feel so bad.

“I’m so happy that I can see you again,” I wiped the tears from my cheeks and kissed my little child on the forehead, soothing her. “I have a present for you.”

“What kind of present?” At once the fires of curiosity lit up in her incredibly beautiful eyes.

I picked up a gift box from the ground with a recent purchase, tossed it into the air under Di’s mesmerized gaze. A flash, a pop, and a huge dravosaurus landed on four paws in front of us. Yea, the seller didn’t cheat, the price was not inflated.

“O-o-oh,” my Adisi groaned admiringly and pressed her hands to her mouth. “Mommy, thank you, thank you, thank you,” she babbled, running around her new pet in a circle.

The dravosaurus squinted warily at the little girl who was peeking under his right front paw, but so far it showed no signs of aggression, so I calmed down.

“What will you call it?”

Di froze for a moment, then walked over to the monster’s face and fearlessly tugged at its fang.

“Your name will be Butt,” she said seriously and uncompromisingly to the beast, looking directly into his big serpent eye.

The dravosaurs squinted again, growled faintly, accepting the new name.

“Why Butt?”

“Michaelir has Fore, that’s what he called his dravosaurus. He’s going to have Fore and I’m going to have Butt. And then we’ll marry them, they’ll have a cub, and we’ll name it Side.”

I snickered and shrugged my shoulders

“Well, Butt, nice to meet you,” I nodded to the monster, which from this day would become my dearest daughter’s personal cutie pet.

Ugh, that System with the random names and unsurpassed logic, it really freaked me out sometimes.

“Mom, can I ride my dravosaurus?” Di pulled away from her new live toy, making pleading eyes.

How could I say no to her? I nodded benignly, realizing with a growing cold wave of panic that this might be the last time she would ever ask my permission.

Adisi climbed up the beast’s back through its tail, sat on its neck, and, grasping the horns, kicked the mount on the shoulder. He perked up, stretched out before our eyes, leaned against the ground, inhaled the air predatorily, and took off – dust surged upwards.

I stood still for a long time, staring at the valley and the fast-flying dot across the sea of grass. I exhaled and was able to breathe calmly only when Di and Butt disappeared into the woods. I clenched my fingers into fists, trying to keep my mind sober and far from those terrifying thoughts whispering that the melting in the distance figure of my daughter in a bright summer dress would long haunt me in nightmares of a faded past.

I bent down to pick a bouquet of forget-me-nots. In this world, the inflorescences were slightly larger than their real prototypes, one petal was the size of two of my pinky fingernails. For some reason, in Virtul, I didn’t feel sorry for plucking plants and taking their lives.

As my father often said, I got my love of flowers from my mother. But I didn’t dare to kill them in reality; the price for my whim to possess plants for a few days was too high. They had short lives as it was.

I slid the soft, smooth, light blue petal with the pad of my index finger, brought it to my face, and inhaled the fragrant scent of summer, the meadow, and the game itself.

A wave rolled over the grassy sea, a cloud covered the sun for a moment, and it darkened sharply. But in a few heartbeats, the airy clusters of ‘white cotton wool’, as Di often called the clouds, floated forth, to the west, toward the cities and the villages. I tossed the buds, and a gust of wind picked up the blossoms, whirled them, and carried on.

“Fly, I hope you find a new home.”

I watched as the last flower drifted away behind a thicket of hazel trees, where wild hummies (small mole-like animals) usually nested, their hides well sold to the craftsmen. The padded leather was used to make medium-weight armor. I would definitely thin out the family of these critters right now, if not for the latest presidential decree. What’s the point of making money in the game anymore?

With a heavy heart, I turned reluctantly in the direction of the settlement. Somewhere out there, I couldn’t tell for sure, the tiled roof of our house shone in the sun. Numbness came over me, a storm was raging at the deepest levels of my emotions, but outwardly I was surprisingly calm. It was as if the tempest had not yet reached the surface of the ocean, as if my mind needed a little more time to fully comprehend.

The house was the one place that was exactly mine. Krile and I had decorated it to our liking, gathering trophies, furnishing and adorning every available nook and cranny. And now it seemed that if I stepped over the threshold, I wouldn’t be able to contain myself, I’d drown myself in a swamp of hysteria. Something inside me, so intangible and obscure that apparently was called the soul, nagged with a dull ache at the thought of never seeing home again.

But saying goodbye to my dearest refuge in the whole world was something I couldn’t bear. It was hard. It was so hard to see the dark tiled roofs of the settlement below, the river flowing down the hill, the strip of aqueduct fleeing into the distance, so, not wanting to suffer any longer at the sight, I pulled out another portal crystal.

“The regional city Viron, a peaceful territory. 12:49. There will be light precipitation in the area for the next hour,” the System informed as I stepped onto the cobblestone street of my favorite city.

In the old days, when I had just reached the seventy-fifth level and could finally get into the heart of the Khwarthian province, I used to wander for hours through the quarters of one of the most beautiful places in Virtul. Viron was popularly nicknamed ‘the Belle of Khwarth’ of the kingdom of Khwarth, where wars occurred five times a month. But despite the incessant hostilities in the area, the capital of the region remained invariably beautiful and crowded. I rather liked the name the NPCs used, ‘Pearl City’.

There was indeed a lot of pearl color here: the paint of the buildings, monuments, even the trees – they also cast a kind of pearly glow. And the proximity of Viron to the seashore, where several oyster farms have long worked, also added a special meaning to the title.

I needed a distraction from my depressing thinking, my body demanded action, new experiences, just to avoid standing in one place, allowing my thoughts to shake my already fragile mental balance today. I turned into the first alley in sight, letting my feet free.

I liked running from quiet streets to busy ones, and vice versa. The sleeping quarters, deserted and inhabited only by feral cats, sparrows, and the occasional NPC, were quickly interspersed with lively avenues that were rife with all kinds of races. And where the mounts and other, already unliving, means of transportation flaunted their multicolored skins. Carriages were followed by streetcar wagons, intergalactic miniliners raced on the roadway with sports cars and the fastest trotters in the game, the mirans.

I walked for hours through the seemingly endless city, descended into the underground levels, climbed onto the rooftops, passed through the shopping malls, admired the sea and the approaching sunset at the observation decks, and felt terribly exhausted, even my legs ached. Such pain was called phantom game pain.

At times, wounds from firearms or edged weapons hurt, too. My brain perceived Virtul as so realistic that it gave out such ‘surprises’ with my body. Although the pain threshold in the game was almost minimal.

They said that if you died, the pain felt like hitting your pinky toe on the sharp corner of a chair. Not too high a price to pay for the opportunity to go beyond the edge of Virtul’s life. Some players made a new avatar every day and sought to escape beyond the ‘verge’, into the netherworld, there too was an established society of its own. The ghosts of the game world were allowed a lot, they were given abilities that even at the last levels with legendary items were difficult to obtain. But at the same time, nearly all interaction with live players was limited to a minimum for them.

As the first star lit up over Marie Bay and a cold wind blew sharply from the north, bringing a thin crust of ice to the chilled ground after the recent rain, I decided that it was time.

I brought the Syracillus crystal to my lips and whispered faintly, holding back the tears that had been tearing me up all day.

“Find Krile.”