“H—Hey!”
The sound of Harrington’s panicked cry causes Scott to whip his head towards the man.
What he sees next makes his eyes go wide and his heart pump in both apprehensiveness and excitement.
Two large spiders are starting to get closer to Harrington, and Scott spots one prancing over his way.
They’re becoming surrounded already.
Suddenly, the creatures stop in their tracks. Harrington and Scott both see the large hologram box at the same time.
-
BEGINNER AND NPC TEAM
OUTMATCHED
Flee the battle?
YES || NO
-
Scott stares. Harrington’s finger dives into the direction of the YES button.
“Wait,” Scott says, causing Harrington to pause in his action. “Do we really have to run away?”
Harrington almost chokes on his saliva. “What are you talking about, lad?! Of course we’re gonna run! We’re outmatched! The game says so!”
Scott becomes thoughtful for a moment. I see… so this is how the game gives the amateur players and helpless NPCs a chance to survive because of battle difficulties…
“But they’re just Level 1 spiders, aren’t they?” he asks Harrington who’s starting to look more agitated and frightened by the minute. “Why are they a bit hard to kill?”
“That’s because they give you lots of EXP compared to the other Level 1 fodder!” Harrington explains a little forcefully. “Can we flee now?”
“What about my training?”
“You can train here again once you at least reach Level 3,” Harrington offers immediately. “That way, I won’t be coming with you. And you can gain a lot of EXP by fighting them all alone since the forests spawn tons of monsters each day.”
Scott nods. “Fair enough, then.”
Harrington breathes a sigh of relief, then hurriedly taps the YES button.
The moment he does, their bodies disappear from where they’re standing.

***

The first thing Scott sees when he opens his eyes is the entrance sign of the forest.
“We’re out now,” he tells Harrington, who grabs his knees with his hands as he takes in shallow mouthfuls of air.
A pang of guilt blossoms in Scott’s chest. Maybe he had been a bit too uncaring of Harrington’s arachnophobia.
Even the strongest warriors have their own little fears too, he muses as he pats the man’s back. Why people call them silly is beyond my comprehension.
He remembers his friend back in the real world being called a sissy just because he was afraid of roaches. He even recalls the stoic class president of his class sometimes being teased for having a ‘silly’ fear of ants.
They make fun of them, yet they’re the ignorant ones, Scott thinks absently, because they don’t understand how it feels.
“They make fun of them, yet they’re the ignorant ones,” Jon Rushton tells him, “because they don’t understand how it feels.”
“Does it really hurt when people call their fears ‘silly’?” __n_e_ asks. “Class President doesn’t even flinch when they tease her mercilessly.”
Jon stares at him. “There you go again, __n_e_. Of course it does! Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”
In this case, Scott thinks, I can see it… clearly.
“Are you all right?” he asks Harrington, who is now standing up and dusting off the dirt from his pants.
Harrington turns to him with a grin. “Yeah! We’re out now, so I’m relieved. Come on.” He slings an arm around Scott’s shoulder and drags him towards the direction of their house. “Let’s spar for the rest of the afternoon. That encounter really wore me out! We’ll go find some land creatures tomorrow, all right?”
Scott goes silent, allowing the man to lead him along.
Harrington notices and frowns a little. “Something the matter?” He then emits a nervous chuckle. “You ain’t sulking ‘cause I made us flee the battle, are you?”
Scott shakes his head. “No.”
“Oh? Then what is it?” Harrington pauses in his tracks, eyeing him closely. “You seem to have something you want to say to me.”
Scott snakes out of the man’s hold and continues walking, placing his hands inside his pockets. “It’s nothing. I’m just glad you’re all right.”
Harrington blinks. Then it dawns on him the next second.
A mischievous grin curves his lips and he catches up to Scott, grasping his shoulder and leading him again.
“So you were worried about me, huh? You feel bad about teasing me so much? So you’re human, after all!”
“That’s because I am a human.”
“Oh! You didn’t deny it!”
“Why should I? It’s not a lie.”
“O—Oh… Damn, you’re hard to crack, huh?”
“I will take that as a compliment.”

***

As the weeks come to pass, Scott’s questions just keep coming, and Harrington tries his best to answer them patiently.
“I’ve been meaning to ask this, but do you NPCs really have hunger tendencies?” Scott queries bluntly as he watches Harrington stuff some pork chops into his mouth. “Aren’t you all just virtual bodies? Why would you feel hunger? Isn’t that weird?”
Harrington replies with a huff, “We were created to have hunger tendencies, lad. We need food to survive. It’s like one of those real-life simulation games, you know?”
When Scott looks at him with more confusion on his face, Harrington sighs internally. I can tell that this guy doesn’t play any games at all…
“I told you, didn’t I?” Harrington continues on. “This world was created to match reality as close as possible. The food here is only edible to us NPCs. You players don’t need to eat.”
Scott frowns at that. “That’s both boring and unfair for us players.”
“If you care about eating so much, you can email a suggestion to the developers themselves,” Harrington tells him with a smirk. “However, if they do implement that in this game, players would never log off.”
Scott nods, seeming thoughtful for a moment as he peers closely at Harrington. “Hey, do you guys ever die?” he asks candidly.
Harrington chokes a bit at the casual inquiry, then nods eventually. “NPCs can definitely die and disappear from this world. We can either be killed or die from old age. But the thing is, due to the time difference between your world and ours, NPCs have a considerably slower aging rate. It’s why, even if you players log off for a long time due to emergencies, we’re all still here looking pretty much the same age,” he explains.