At the top of the steps was another plaza. It connected to part of the nearest spire with a covered bridge walkway.

A screaming horde bumped into Krow, unexpectedly.

“Hey!”

“Sorry!” called a few preteen voices.

“Be careful,” Krow called back. The edge of the cliff wasn’t far after all.

“Really sorry,” murmured a passing older teen, her high ponytail showing off scales on her nape, glimmering healthy in the afternoon sunlight.

She trotted after the children, steps almost dancing. A vargvir of similar age followed her, growling something unintelligible, feet dragging.

He nodded at them, silent. Sirens and vargvir running wild in a draculkar village?

That was what just happened, right?

Krow looked around carefully and was even more surprised.

A group of dwarvir huddled in loud conference under the shadow of a stone pillar, laughing and drinking.

Humans and the odd trollkin strode among the caravans, loading and unloading goods.

On the roof of one wagon were two vargvir comparing knives and waving their arms excitedly while their feet dangled in air.

Scare only had a single draculkar friend, who had several acquaintances that dropped by from time to time. His impression of the draculkar race was they were insular and racist. It was known that access to their inner towns and cities were cut off from any who was not draculkar.

And yet, here, an inner village of the draculkar nation, there were other races interacting rather happily with the very tolerant locals.

The company that bought Redlands was a corporate giant, and it was known that the Artificial Intelligences used in Redlands were some of the best.

The NPC AIs would have been programmed to act according to racial, personal, and community biases, for the greatest continuity of action and response to players, and that meant this mingling of races was normal.

At this time.

Did something happen between now and the Quake?

Likely.

It would be 2.5 years of in-game time between now and then. The wars involved all the races. Many things could happen.

Krow walked through the market at a good clip, lips lifting in a smile almost unconscious.

He was back in Zushkenar, even if it was a facsimile of the world, and for the first time since he woke up after dying his shoulders didn’t feel like they were shrinking into each other, and the hard stone burbling acid in his gut was slowly dissipating.

He passed through the market quickly.

Well, ‘market’ wasn’t precisely the word. It was just people stopping near the village to rest, and then exchanging commodities with others who just happened to be stopping there as well.

The smell of mixed spices in the air was familiar, painting the atmosphere stongly, and giving rise to faint hunger.

At the far end of the gathering space, Krow stopped by a wagon that was unloading some baskets of cuji pears. He flicked a silver coin into the air, then held five fingers up.

The siren lounging atop a pile of sacks in such a manner to show his iridescent scales to the fullest, grinned down at him charmingly. Krow rather thought it would work more if the sacks the siren was basking on weren’t full of unprocessed rockshrooms, which could charitably be said to smell profoundly-earthy.

Then again, sirens were weird.

Said siren held up two fingers.

Krow snorted, took three of the yellow and orange fruits, each bigger than his fist, tossed a silver serpens upward.

A pale hand caught the coin lazily and the siren winked.

“Would you like some rockshrooms with that? Fresh from Gojgan, south of the lake, now that Batjarge stopped trading.” The siren snapped fingers in irritation at the last part of the statement.

Another quest prompt.

“No thanks, just this is fine.”

He pressed one of the pears to his nose as he walked, putting the others into his inventory. The deep fruity fragrance was exactly as he remembered. It crunched loudly as he bit into it, the strong tart-stweetness immediately bursting over virtual tastebuds.

He’d had cuji pears only a few times, they were rarely traded from the highlands. Three for one serpens was cheap.

The real pears tasted stronger, Krow thought meditatively as he chewed.

He went to the railing on the cliff lip, leaned on the balustrade. He was higher up than earlier, and the mountainous horizons no longer hid themselves behind the cliff.

The Grandshield Forest spread below, hemmed into widening valley by canyon walls that were kilometres apart.

On the opposite cliff of the canyon, to the north-east, many prettily rainbowed waterfalls sparkled through mist and flowed into rivers shining like silver ropes threaded through the valley.

Something in Krow that was afraid of heights, echoes of ancient human ancestors, quailed at the distance between where he was standing and the ground far far below.

In his years in the Hallagon mountain area, he’d never visited an inner draculkar village.

The outer villages in lower altitudes were less harrowing.

If their preferred geography was like this, didn’t that mean the draculkar liked living on the edge?

Krow laughed lightly.

Gojo had given him the impression that the draculkar were a severe and dreary people.

The glass bells that tinkled in the breeze of this high altitude, the stained-glass windows throwing colors at the cliff and the ground and the stones, the crystal spires and floating bridges, the mischievous laughter that Verinel met him with, the passionate but awkward young blade that was Derad, the strongly flavored and scented foodstuffs – which of these spoke of severe and dreary life?

Krow closed his eyes, relaxed into the cold breeze that touched his skin with soothing caresses.

The noise of the barter-place rest-stop he left behind was distant, with the winds on the edge washing away most the sound before his ears could be touched.

He opened his eyes and peered around for landmarks.

To the far left horizon, the Moonpillars rose, distantly hazy against the sky.

Krow brightened at the familiar sight.

Twenty or so gigantic pillars of pale limestone rising to the heavens, they could be seen from any vantage point west of the Guins River.

He oriented himself using the six tallest of the pillars, as he’d been taught by the locals.

He was south of the Guinsant Alliance territories; seeing the Forest already told him that. The Pillars added that he was further within the Hallagon mountain range than he’d ever been before.

From the angle of the Pillars, the swamps were likely due north from where he was.

If so, the place where he died wouldn’t be so far from here. Maybe within thirty kilometres even. Horizontally, of course.

Vertically, Krow eyed the valley far below, was another matter.

He breathed deeply, reminded himself of the reasons he chose this area to operate.

One, he knew this area best.

Two, it was full of monsters.

Three, not very many warbands came here because the Sirens of the Guinsant Alliance had no compunctions about wiping armies out using poison and this was their homeground.

That wasn’t to say there was no conflict. Raids were as common in Alliance territory as others. Bandits and rebels were everywhere in Redlands and that was more pronounced in Zushkenar even after the ceasefires and treaties.

Four, it had reasonable infrastructure, at least compared to certain areas of the game map that didn’t have developed trade institutions.

Five, most players who chose Siren, Vargvir, or Draculkar races, as well as the Humans whose starting villages were near didn’t stay long in the inner territories of the Guinsant Alliance, preferring to move to the coastal areas where there were better battle quests.

It meant fewer players to contend with.

It meant more resources.

He tapped the center of his sunburst mark and his game character summary was brought forward.

*

Name: Ilas Krow

Race: Draculkar

Location: Gremut Village

HP: 30 (100%)

MP: 77 (100%)

Str: 5

Dex: 5 (+2)

Mnd: 7

Vit: 3

Magic Aptitude: 11

Element: Shadow

Battleclass: Sharpshooter [~Skills~]

Crafterclass: Enchanter

Subclass: Scout

Butcher

Tinkerer ::|Expand|::

Equipped Main Weapon: Starfall Revolver

Equipped Shoulders: Darkfall Hooded Cape

*

Krow studied the data while crunching through the cuji pear.

Only his battleclass was active.

Active craft and subclasses mostly influenced side-quests, at this time. Storyline quests at the moment were more geared toward battle.

Krow only had a fetch quest because he ignored most of the other prompts and he was a new player – beginner quests were mostly geared toward upping Rep and Exp, plus teaching players how to find a questgiver in the crowds.

Technically, any NPC could give a quest.

A quest relevant to the skills the player wanted to level? That needed a little digging.

Krow activated all the rest of his classes.

The Enchanter’s Grimoire appeared before him. He could equip it technically. But he wouldn’t be using it for a while yet. He placed it and the accompanying bookbelt in the Inventory.

Nothing else appeared.

Unfortunately, he had to buy the gear for his subclasses.

The Inventory held a carved revolver chest. He opened it to see thirty rounds of non-enchanted ammunition, ten rounds of stunbullets, ten rounds of flameburst bullets, a cleaning kit, and two extra cylinders.

Not bad for a starting set, he supposed, looking at it dubiously.

He took out the revolver. Despite the decoration, it was a low-level weapon, would only survive until Lvl 15 at most. Advice urged most players to change their starting weapons at Lvl 12 or earlier.

Semi-enchanted, the revolver had no hammer – the cylinder would rotate automatically until empty in battle and apparently the propellant was magic. It wasn’t self-loading however, which was a shame.

He checked the chamber.

It was a five-round chamber, and fully loaded.

The bullets were all non-enchanted.

Did he need to use the mage-bullets?

Probably not.

But better prepared than sorry.

He tossed the last of the peach into his mouth, wiped his hands on the grass, then exchanged the three of the bullets with stun-rounds and two with flameburst.

Without the hammer, there was no way to have a misfiring incident the way he’d been warned so many times so Krow just holstered the gun with a full loadout.

The extra cylinders, he loaded with ordinary bullets and dropped into his pockets – they appeared in two of the seven docked inventory slots. He could see them under the Status bars at the corner of his eye.

Considering the shortcuts in the mage-revolver design, it looked like he could just swap out an empty cylinder with a loaded one in battle without breaking anything.

Haah, magic was sure convenient.

Finishing, he cleaned up and stowed the chest in the Inventory.

It was really too bad the Inventory would disappear after the Quake, it was so useful.

*

Ringbell flowers had a tubular copper-colored corolla, and within the petals was a collection of pink stamens fused into a singular circular yellow anther.

Krow managed to harvest two that were growing on the vine-walkways by sawing at their stems with a sharp rock.

Regret.

He’d forgotten to buy a knife in the village.

Fortunately, breaking common rock crystal – he recommended doing so by hurling it at a hardier rock below and far enough that the shattered shards weren’t a maiming hazard – yielded a number of sharp slivers.

He had to chip the sharp points off one end and wrap the blunted part with vines to create a safe enough handle, and he had several knives that worked well enough.

Fortunately, the Butcher subclass allowed him to wield a knife in his dominant hand. If he didn’t have Butcher, then the knife would only be allowed as an off-hand weapon.

The flower stems were tough enough that the thought of harvesting 20 of the things using his left hand gave him phantom pains.

“If you’re harvesting ringbells, there’s more on the other side of the gardens.”

The speaker passed carrying a large bouquet, absently rearranging them as she walked.

Krow looked up from contemplating the ringbell flower he was holding in his hand, stared at the speaker suspiciously, who hadn’t waited for an answer and had already left him behind.

The flowers would’ve obscured most of her face even if he saw her from the front, but her coffee-colored hair was arranged in long waist-length tails held together by silver clips.

Human, a glaive on her back, not wearing starting garments.

A glimmer caught his eye.

An amethyst-crystal earring dangled from her ear.

A cryscomm, the only way players could communicate between large distances. This early in the wars, it was only available to high-status NPCs and players with backing.

Probably a player.

Krow turned away, already forgetting the interaction, to look at the tangle of color-carrying vines that separated him and ‘the other side of the gardens’.

The Vine Ladder Gardens were worth the recognition.

Krow thought they were only vine walkways, but no.

They were layers of vine-braided walkways, connected to each other with woven vine ladders. Some enterprising soul had sown flower seeds on the vines successfully, very successfully.

The Gardens were blooming very well.

In autumn.

A sweet scent hung around the air, not cloying or overly redolent but delicately rich and refreshing.

On some vines, roots of flowering plants poked out of the vines upon which they were planted. How did the roots not weaken the vines and send the whole thing crashing down?

Krow had no idea and was leery of testing the walkways by jumping up and down.

He jogged through a shaded vine corridor, then had to climb a vine ladder to the next walkway that would take him closer to the other side of the massive crack in the mountainside that the Gardens spanned.

A sudden chittering sound stopped him. He looked up.

There was this golden rodent, with long waving antennae and butterfly-like wings folded on its back. It was gnawing on the flower-growing vines that held his ladder to the walkway.

Of course it was.

[Mothmarmot Lvl 2]

The abilities of the Scout subclass triggered and added:

[Poison Dust][Physical Attacks]

[Eats nectar and rootcrops]

Of course it does.

Krow lunged upward.