Chapter 3

Last time!

"WE HAVE TO BEAT THIS GAME!" I yell as the wolves burst into crystals behind us, we are still sprinting as fast as we can.

This time!

After an hour of straight sprinting and grinding through monsters, we make it to the next town, sheathing our weapons and surprised to see only one guy there, equally out of breath as us so he must have gotten there at the same time as us.

"Erin, we should go find the inn and get some food and rest." I give the idea and she nods.

"Good idea… I could really use that to think about what just happened…" she says in a bit of a quiet voice.

I sigh then grab her hand and start leading her to the inn near the center of town. Her anxiety was already bad in the real world. I can only imagine how bad it must be here.

"Hey, it's going to be okay. I promise. We will get out of here one way or another." I smile at her and she smiles back slightly, giving a small nod.

We enter the inn and are greeted by a very happy NPC innkeeper. "Hi! Welcome to Counting Sheep inn!"

The NPC somehow makes me a feel a bit happier, but at the same time kind of annoyed because it doesn't have to worry about death. It isn't programmed to. I then walk up to the NPC, "Hello, I'd like to rent a room here and get some food."

"That will be 10 col for the room, sir." The male NPC gives a warming smile and I pay the col, surprised of how cheap it was but it will surely add up. It would be wise to buy a player home later. It then gives me a key.

I nod to Erin, "Here's the key. I will meet you up in the room." I give her the key and she gives me hug before heading up.

I buy some food and then join her up there.

I notice her sitting on the bed with her face in her hands and I go to her side to comfort her, consoling her for a couple minutes and reassuring her that it will be okay before giving her a piece of bread.

We then fall asleep, both equally tired from everything what's happened that day.

The next morning

I wake up at around 10 in the morning, Erin does as well. Though, we would have been asleep for longer if it hadn't been for the light passing through window.

We sit up lazily, both equally disappointed after realizing that yesterday wasn't just a dream.

"I guess if we really are going to be stuck in here for a while, we should make the best of it. Let's have fun today. We can go do a quest together." I say and smile at her, after a while of silence.

She nods and smiles, agreeing with what I say. "Let's kick some ass!"

I chuckle and hop out of bed, leading us both downstairs and outside to search for an easy quest. After about 20 minutes, we find one and the quest giver appears to be an old woman.

"Hello. Please help me. My son wandered into the forest a couple days ago and hasn't returned." The old woman says and a quest box appears in front of me.

I click the blue circle button and the quest objective appears in the top right hand corner of the HUD.

Quest: Missing Son

Objective: Find the old woman's son in the forest.

Reward: 2,000 Exp, 1,000 Col, a healing crystal, a teleport crystal, and some materials for cooking and crafting.

"Alright! - Oh wait, I almost forgot. I need to send you a party invite so we can do the quest together." I chuckle and open up the menu and send her an invite.

She laughs, "Stupid." Then accepts the invite. Erin eyes the quest that just popped up in the right hand corner of her screen, and my character name that just showed up under hers along with my health bar. "This seems easy enough."

I nod, "Mm hum, come on." I smile and start leading us towards the forest, unsheathing my sword to prepare for fighting. Also, I just look like a bad ass when I hold it!

Erin does the same, also looking like an awesome rouge with her hood up.

After only a couple minutes of walking through the forest, we are already attacked by a pack of 8 wolves. They get the jump on us though and manage to get a few bites into us, bringing our health down into the orange.

"Gah!" We yell at the same time and put our swords up to guard us.

We charge up our sword skills at the same time and swing our swords horizontally, slicing through some of the wolves and bringing their health down quite a bit.

I get in an offensive stance and jump forward and quickly slash my longsword at the wolves, moving in all types of acrobatic ways.

Erin moves even more elegantly thanks to her having the lighter weapon. But what her dagger doesn't have in strength, it sure makes up in speed as she stabs, shanks, and slices through wolves with particular ease.

We only get nipped once or twice before killing off the last wolf together. We grabbed around 200 Col from the fight and the same amount of ExP, only one more monster away from leveling up for both of us.

"That was awesome, but let's be more careful from now on. Keep your ears peeled and your eyes open, you know?" I say.

"I'm pretty sure it's the other way around, doofus…" she chuckles.

"G-gah! Well! Whatever!" I growl and continue walking. Erin just silently mocks me and chuckles.

30 minutes later, after searching for quite a long time and fighting through wave after wave of wolf packs with impressive skill.

Erin is the one that spots the kid this quest was required to find. "Look! There he is!"

My eyes immediately dart over to the kid that was for some reason curled up under a tree with his head in between his legs and playing with the grass, humming silently. "Great eye!"

We rush over to the kid at the same time and Erin leans down next to him. "Hey, we're here to help you get back to your mom."

I'm standing behind her and the kid with my sword resting on my shoulder, just observing.

The kid stops playing in the grass after that comment and stops humming as well.

"Hey, uh, you okay?" she asks, stuttering a little.

The boy slowly lifts his head up and his face becomes visible. Where there would usually be eyes, there were black holes, his mouth was more of a tiny cut out circle with tiny sharp teeth lining around it, and to top it off, his face was dark grey and splattered with blood.

Erin jumps back to my side when suddenly four health bars appear next to kid's head. The quest objective also gets updated.

Quest objective: Kill the demon child and retrieve the necklace around its neck.

I gulp as it floats in the air a little and its eyes start glowing red. A scythe suddenly appears in its right hand and screeches at us. A name also appears above the four health bars, Vincent Demonshire.

"Crap… right when I thought this wasn't going to be a horror game." I get in an offensive stance with my sword held almost like I am going to thrust it forward.

Erin gets into a little bit of a mix between a boxer stance and a karate stance. "Not the best time to be joking around!"

I nod, "Right. Same fighting style as always. We switch in and out." She nods in agreement.

The demon kid charges at us with its scythe at the ready to attack. We charge right back at it, me going ahead a little more so it attacks me. When the demon starts to swing at me, I swing back at the same time. Our weapons clash and we parry each other back.

"SWITCH!" I yell and Erin dashes forward and lands 4 very quick slices into its chest with a sword skill, bringing its first health bar down half way. The monster then changes its target and swings at Erin. Erin parries the attack like I did and I charge forward with my sword skill ready, and I slice at the thing's chest, making a large X shape.

"Excellent! Continue like this until it gets down to its last health bar!" she says and that is exactly what we do, bringing more and more of its health down each time and rather quickly until it is on its last health bar.

Once it gets on its last health bar it shrieks in rage and its eyes burst with a red aura. It charges at us again, but this time a lot quicker and it slashes at both of us at the same time.

"WATCH OUT!" I yell and we both put up our weapons in a defensive way before it hits and instead of parrying we just get into a clash.

I growl and use all of my strength to end the clash and stun the beast for a moment.

"Come on! This is our only chance! Let's finish this together!" I yell and she yells back "Alright!"

We then both charge forward, both charging up our sword skills and yelling at the top of our lungs, and we stab our weapons all the way through the demon's chest and then slicing them out from both sides. Its health then reaches 0 and gives one last shriek of agony before bursting into colorful crystals and a Congratulations! window appears above where it got killed.

We both breathe heavily, both exhausted from the tough fight. We both get enough ExP to level up twice and enough Col to buy brand new sets of armor and weapons, but I got the final hit bonus item. I accept it and smile.

"Good job, lovely." I smile and kiss her.

"Yeah, you did great too. Your plan did a great job in keeping us alive." She chuckles.

"It's because I am a genius," I say with a smug look.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever." She playfully punches me.

I spot the necklace that we were supposed to retrieve and I pick it up off the ground. It enters my inventory and I smile. "Let's finish this quest and go back to the inn to have some late lunch." I chuckle and start walking out of the forest.

"Good idea." She says with a smirk and starts following me. Both of our weapons have already been sheathed.

After a couple minutes, we get out of the forest and we go back to the lady that gave us the quest and we turn it in and receive our reward, though the lady did seem very upset at the news.

We go back to the inn and sit at a table near the window and we look at the level up menu. I put a lot of my skill points into agility, and a few into strength, defense, and health. Erin does something just as equal that I did with my points.

Later that day after late lunch

We are still sitting at the table near the window, a lot more people are there now.

"Oh! I almost forgot that I got the last bonus item!" I chuckle and open my inventory.

"Let's see it," she smiles at my enthusiasm. For some reason she seems happier here. That's good though!

I look at the item and see it is a longsword; Demon's blade. I equip it and pull the blade from its sheath and we both look at it in awe. It's blade is long, dark, and elegant and the center of the hilt has a skull head on it.

"Woah…."

A/N: Woah, that was long! haha. See ya guys in the next chapter!