By the time Tina lets me log back into the dungeon several more minutes have passed. The final boss has already been slain and they’re collecting the loot. Shamefully, with an invisible tail tucked between my legs, I figure I’ll at least finish my quest, and go to where young Lord Edge has locked himself inside a skeletal cage for protection.

“Y-You actually killed them.”

“Not me, kid,” I say, but the NPC doesn’t acknowledge me.

“Incredible! I can’t believe you actually did it. I mean, I could have done it. But my left hand was holding me back. Do you see this left hand of mine? It has a demon inside. It takes all my power just to hold it back from destroying the whole world. If I weren’t so busy fighting off my inner demons, I could have taken those guys—did you hear that?!” he cries at the slightest rattle in the distance. “It sounded like another skeleton! You have to protect me! Get me out of here before I pee my pants! Mommy!!” 

So much for the Edge Lord. And so much for my dreams of joining the guild... 

“Man, I wouldn’t recommend you if you paid me!” says Jimmy. “No, no don’t apologize. Not everyone is cut out for dungeons. It takes a good character build and a cool head to properly execute your skills. You’ve either got it or you don’t. No, don’t ask me for another shot. I’ve seen enough.”

Meanwhile the others talk about me behind my back. Some louder than others.

“Ugh, can you believe that guy Revelator?” Cherry1 makes no secret of her disgust. “I died four times because of him! He totally screwed up my damage in this dungeon—if not for him, I’d have been number one!”

“That motherf*cker—” Dario, the usually cool and patient elf, breaks into a stream of curses so profound they’re almost too much for my comprehension.

I feel awful. Not only did I screw up my own chances of joining the White Striders, my blunder may have screwed things up for my own party members as well, and messed up everyone’s chances of joining.

I just want to disappear from here. Just want to die. How do I leave this instance? Looks like there’s a door over there…

On my way out, I hear other players eagerly discussing the loot.

“Woah, check out these drops. The Edge of Glory!” A player holds up an ornate looking sword, which I view without interest. “And look at this! Shield of Unbroken Faith!” This time he hauls up a shield which puts a pang of regret in my breast.

I know better than to examine it. I’ll only make myself miserable if I do. But I can’t resist.

[Shield of Unbroken Faith level 14, legendary shield bearing the Edge family crest.

+1 Constitution

+1 Intelligence

Shield durability: 3000/3000]

I cough, wheezing a bit as though I’ve just taken a blow to the gut. Damn. These dungeon drops are no joke. Too bad I won’t be getting invited to a dungeon raid party any time soon. Heck, after today’s fiasco, I’ll be lucky if my character name isn’t blacklisted and shunned from parties server-wide.

“Nice loot!” Jimmy remarks, running over to examine the items. “I’ve never seen drops this good before, not in all my times running this dungeon. Boss’ll be glad to see these deposited in the guild vault,” he says, chuckling to himself. “Maybe I’ll get a promotion…”  

I finger my rabbit paw, giving the shield one last wistful look before I leave the instance behind, and break from the dark crypt back into the bright town of Dustry, just behind the temple.

Lord Edge is reunited with his edgelord grandson in an awkward scene, and the priest is pleased to hear I’ve cleared all the undeads. Though in reality I didn’t kill a single one. Oh well. Free exp.

As I leave I consider my next move. As much as I’d like to run the dungeon again for better gear, I already know there’s no point in trying another raid. Even if I do manage to find a party willing to work with me, with this character build, I will be ineffectual facing undead, that’s just the painful truth. There’s nothing I can do in this dungeon. Not as I am now. 

I turn from the temple to wander the streets in a daze for I don’t know how long. I’m too shocked to be depressed, or to feel much of anything. I don’t know where I am or where I’m going. In fact, it’s hours before I’m aware of anything at all.

I’m in the market at sunset, and vendors are closing up their stalls. One in particular, a young woman working the pumpkin stand, is being harassed by a persistent young man. She’s beginning to look desperate, and even calls out for help, but the other NPCs ignore her. I watch with a feeling of dissociation for a minute, with a sense that I’m somewhere else, and not in this body. A spectator in a theater, watching another person’s nightmare unfold without any real emotion or thought to intervene.

Then in a moment as the young man yanks her to him, she locks eyes with me, her teardrops glistening in the sunset as they fly from her face. Time seems to slow. Her pleading expression, the desperation in her eyes, all of it is stamped in my mind, branded into the very fabric of my being, and suddenly she is no longer an NPC with sophisticated AI, but a real, flesh and blood woman, being assaulted right in front of me.

“Hey,” I step forward, not with my usual nervousness, but still with a kind of dissociation as I face down her harasser. “She’s not into you. Get lost.”

The man isn’t too tall or powerful looking. He scoffs at me first, then looks me up and down with less confidence. Seeing my gear I think makes him a bit nervous.

“Stay out of this,” he says as the girl wrenches her hand from his grasp and rushes to hide herself behind me. Evidently, it’s a bit much for his ego to take, and the man hauls back with a haymaker to hit me square in the jaw.

[-10 HP]

I don’t flinch beneath his blow. Don’t even move. I only stare him down as his eyes widen slowly with realization.

“Was that supposed to hurt?”

The man gulps.

“That punch took down barely one percent of my health, and it’s already regenerated. You’ll have to do better than that. Here,” I pick up a piece of two by four and thrust it into his hands. “Try this. You might have more luck.”

He drops the board with a clatter, and turns to run. I watch him go, feeling nothing, not even contempt. He lost without a fight, just like me. We’re the same, I think, kicking the two by four out of the way.

Then I feel something against my back. Something soft and boingy. 

P-pumpkins?

“You saved me!”

I turn to find the young woman clinging to my arm. She is pretty, with hair the color of wheat and eyes of faded denim blue. More importantly, her pumpkins are…prize winning.

“That guy just wouldn’t take no for an answer, and recently he’s been getting violent. Thank goodness you came along—who knows what would have happened!”

“Yes, well,” I clear my throat sharply, trying and failing to disentangle myself from her grip, and to tear my eyes away from her remarkable produce, “it was no trouble.”

“My name’s Penelope, traveler. What’s yours?”

“Ahem!” I somehow force my gaze upwards to meet her eyes. “It’s Revelator,” I say, my voice impressively dropped an entire octave from its usual tenor.

“Revelator!” she gasps. “You travelers all have such interesting names.”

“Yes, well. If that’s all…”

“Oh, don’t go. Please. After what happened, I really don’t want to walk home alone. What if he stalks me—it wouldn’t be the first time. He’s so persistent, says he won’t give up until I agree to marry him. But I know he doesn’t love me. He only wants me for my father’s pumpkin farm…”

“That’s probably not all he’s after…”

“Sorry?”

“Ahem! Well, yes. I suppose I could walk you home,” I say, feeling the strangest tickle in the back of my throat. “Ahem!”

Penelope’s face brightens. “Oh, thank you! Hang on, let me finish closing my stall. I’ll only be a minute.”

I watch a minute as she busies herself loading the produce in a wheel barrel, lugging pumpkins back and forth.

“I, uh, don’t suppose you need a hand with those, ahem, pumpkins.”

“Oh, yes please! Lugging them around makes my shoulders so stiff, you have no idea.”

“I can imagine…”

I give Penelope a hand in closing up her stall. She pockets her earnings for the day in her gown, and noting it gives me a sense of purpose. That’s right, I’m not only protecting an innocent girl from potential molesters, I’m her bodyguard, keeping her from being robbed! I have no ulterior motives for escorting her home. None whatsoever!

We begin the walk to her house, her at my side, me wheeling a barrel full of pumpkins, for some reason incredibly giddy as we talk to one another. Penelope tells me of her trouble with the persistent suitor, and I share a little of my failure in the dungeon. I don’t know why, but all of my usual anxiety and reservedness is forgotten in her presence. It’s a little incredible, actually, I think as I continue to walk with her side by side in the orange sunset.

She’s so easy to talk to!

“And then Dario said he’d kick my ass—”

“Oh, my!”

“He was totally pissed! But it’s not my fault. Why’d he run out of mana so quickly, anyway? I’ll bet anything he was buffing his girlfriend when he was supposed to be buffing me. Not that it would have made any difference in the end. But it’s the principal of the thing that matters, the principal.”

“I agree!”

She’s so—so easy to talk to!

Before l know it, we’ve reached Penelope’s farm. In the distance behind her there are pumpkins as far as the eye can see, bathed in the glow of an ever deepening orange sunset. And when she smiles up at me, I feel like I’m floating on pumpkin colored clouds.

We stay like this and talk for a long while. Penelope is so agreeable, no matter what I say she takes my side. And she’s pretty, I think, taking a moment to steal another glance at her pumpkins. So pretty…

“What are you staring at?”

“Huh?” I choke. Cough a minute. “Nothing,” I assure her when I finally find my breath. “Nothing at all. That is—” I feel my face is flaming with embarrassment as the sun finally dips below the horizon, plunging the warm sky into shades of cool.

I don’t know what comes over me then, don’t know where I get the guts or the gall. Maybe it’s just because she’s so easy to talk to, or maybe I really have gone crazy. But suddenly, I can’t stop myself.

“I’m sorry for staring, Penelope. It’s just, you’re so pretty and I…I guess I just got lost…”

“Oh,” she says, lowering her eyes shyly as a slight but definite blush creeps into her cheeks. “Thank you. You’re…not so bad to look at yourself, you know?”

Gulp!

“You know,” she says, ignorant of the inner turmoil she’s just plunged my poor virgin heart into as she pulls the damp hair away from her neck and lays it over her shoulder, “there was this traveling merchant in town today. He had the most beautiful ring with him. When I saw it, I thought, if only a man would give me that ring with a sincere proposal for marriage, there’s no way I could ever refuse him…”

“Not even if that man were…me?”

“Especially not you, Revelator.”

I cringe slightly at her use of my in game name, but I can’t ignore her words.

“Penelope, you’re saying if I bring you that ring, you’ll marry me?”

[You have gained Penelope’s favor.]

Her blush deepens adorably. “If you’ll have me.”

[Hidden quest unlocked.

Would you like to accept quest: Put a ring on it?

Reward: Life partner]