Down the cobblestone highway several hundred yards, a few 1940s-era black Lincoln Continentals screeched and skidded into view as they cut a hard turn onto the street, then they sped down toward us.

  “Oh, give me a break! It’s the Godfeathers again.”

  Sync turned toward me. “Use your rickshaw, and let’s get outta here!”

  “It busted when they shot it before we dove off the bridge, and it has bad debuffs. We need to get it repaired!” I yelled through Silas’s slaps.

  “Alright, follow me.” Sync darted off the highway through the smaller stone paths and back alleys. She called back, “I think there’s a blacksmith this way. He might be able to fix the rickshaw, and their cars are too wide to follow.”

  “In the middle of the night?” I asked.

  “Service NPCs work nonstop. During beta testing, Players complained about adding an NPC sleep cycle, so we compromised by making them always available.” Sync eyed me. “Do you really not know this stuff about your own game world?”

  “Of course I don’t. I pay nerds like you so I don’t have to.”

  Silas finished healing me to full health while we ran through the fantasy city of dressed stonework. Eventually, the sound of a hammer on an anvil graced our ears.

  Ahead, a dwarven NPC with a ginger beard, an eye patch, long red braids on his head, and nothing covering his steroid-level muscles but a blacksmith apron, walloped a piece of metal with a shining platinum hammer atop his anvil. Racks of weapons surrounded him and his shop, and an icy-blue flame—not red or yellow like normal fire—raged in the forge behind him.

  Oddly, instead of the place being overly warm or even hot, the whole area was unnaturally cold. I noticed frost collecting on the edges of the table, his anvil, and on the metal of the weapons hanging around him.

  But “beggars can’t be choosers” was becoming my catchphrase, so I ran up to the blacksmith and gave him a quick scan.

  | Hephrostus – Level 50 NPC |

  | Game/Class: Fantasy Blacksmith Simulator |

  “Hey, can you repair my rickshaw?” I asked him.

  “Aye, lad. I can repair anythin’ ye bring me! Me forge is legendary, a gift from Fjorst, the God of Ice himself, who bestowed it upon me when—”

  “Skip, skip, skip!” I hurried through the repair menu. My rickshaw and ballistic vest appeared as the two items eligible for repairs. It would cost $500 AllCash to repair the rickshaw and $100 for the vest.

  I turned back to Sync. “I need you to spot me some AllCash.”

  “No need, mate. You just gotta haggle with them a bit. Watch and learn.” Silas straightened up and faced the dwarf. “My fine, fire-haired gentleman, we could use AllCash to settle this matter, or we could do this ‘off the books.’ What would you say to doing our repairs for—” He thrust his front tentacles out, somehow producing two shiny golden sand dollars from nowhere. “—two golden sand dollars?”

  Hephrostus blinked. “Not on yer life, lad.”

  Sync kept watch for the Godfeathers while the conversation continued. “Hurry it up, guys.”

  I realized the growling of their engines had stopped. Did that mean they were searching for us on foot now?

  Silas nodded and whispered to me, “That’s natural, always lowball it first go-around.” He cleared his throat and extended another two tentacles, each holding a matching golden sand dollar, just as dramatically. “What say we double that offer? Would that shiver your timbers?”

  Hephrostus seemed less impressed than the first time. “Does it look like I’m runnin’ a charity here? No.”

  Silas cackled. “Oh, ho, you drive a hard bargain, chum. Fine, how about—”

  “Somethin’ tells me you’re prepared to offer eight,” Hephrostus interrupted, “but the answer is still no.”

  Silas deflated, then he narrowed his eyes. “You’re shrewder than I gave you credit for. Well, eight sand dollars is the extent of my finances.”

  Hephrostus folded his gargantuan arms. “Only AllCash, otherwise go on an’ get!”

  Typically, I wouldn’t have suffered that little spectacle, but a small sad part of me hoped it would work. “Desperate” didn’t seem like a strong enough adjective to describe my situation.

  Sync rolled her eyes. “I expect to be paid back. Here.”

  She typed on her WHIM, and a notification popped up.

  | $500 AllCash Loan offered from: Player Sync |

  | Accept? |

  “You mean, pay you back by using my rickshaw to save your asp?” I said. “Deal.”

  I hit “Accept” and immediately recruited Hephrostus to repair the rickshaw. The entire thing materialized onto his anvil, somehow improbably balanced, and he began to wail on it with his platinum hammer. Icy blue sparks soared into the night air with each strike, and a countdown timer for two minutes appeared.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Silas exhaled. “I must be losing my edge. I’ve always been good at haggling.”

  Sync suppressed a chuckle. “You did an excellent job. Fantasy dwarves are just notoriously stubborn, so don’t take it to heart… or hearts in your case.”

  He perked up and nodded. “You make a good point. Never met a dwarf before.”

  A notification popped up in my interface.

  | Silas has befriended Player Sync. |

  “Ugh, don’t encourage him.” Then I realized what the notification had said. “Wait, you can make friends?”

  Silas furrowed his brow. “Indeed, I realize the skill may seem alien and unnatural to you, but trust me, it’s quite common. All it takes is a bit of courtesy.”

  “That reminds me.” I sent a friend request to Sync. “Help us keep in contact.”

  She shrugged, ignored it, and kept watching for hostiles.

  That shouldn’t bother me… it doesn’t. I rationalized. Leave it unread. See if I care.

  “Seems like you stole a decent class, finally?”

  “Yeah, he was a mid-powered mage with some great spells. I’ve got fireball, shield, force blast, and a special spell called Mercurian Blessing.” She narrowed her eyes at the description. “Whoa, okay… I can imbue anyone with the ability to run on the air for a limited time, but at the cost of traction and their equipment.”

  Vague Italian-New Jersey-accented voices rang out in the distance. The Godfeathers were close.

  “C’mon, man,” I hissed at the dwarf. “Hurry up!

  “Ye can’t rush a masterwork,” Hephrostus said between hammer blows.

  One minute remained on the timer.

  Fire ignited in Sync’s hand, and she darted out of view, taking cover. I swung around behind the blacksmith to hide and instantly regretted it. He wore only boots and his apron, no pants, and a censor bar covered his hairy cheeks. I noted it was far bigger than mine, despite him being a dwarf.

  “What the forge?” I hissed. “Why?”

  Hephrostus chuckled. “Can’t smith in baggy clothes, laddy. Gotta feel the icy chill on me skin while I’m shapin’ the metal. Any smith worth his weight in ice-forged steel will tell ye the same.”

  “Oh, for Frank’s sake, this isn’t gonna be like a tower defense game, is it?” I muttered. The cover around us was plentiful, yet several paths converged at the plaza where Hephrostus worked. We could quickly become surrounded.

  As if I’d manifested him with my concerns, the first Godfeather approached from one of the paths. He was a Red-Tailed Hawk, and when he saw me, he raised a .38 revolver.

  Silas yelped, and I tried to duck, but he’d caught us off-guard.

  Fortunately, Sync popped out from her cover and flung a fireball at him. He shrieked like any hawk would while being consumed by magical flames. Once the conflagration cleared, a cooked Thanksgiving turkey lay on the ground where he’d stood.

  A chime sounded, and then Lucretia declared:

  [Dinner is served!]

  I held off a smirk. “Oh, this place.”

  Sync gave a short laugh. “I got an achievement for that.”

  Several more Godfeathers funneled down the brick pathways with .38s and Tommy guns. I didn’t know what the recharge time on Sync’s fireball was, but she wouldn’t be able to take them all out in time.

  Our goose is cooked…

  A final pronounced hammer blow fixed the rickshaw, ending the timer, and left a golden imprint of Hephrostus’s mighty hammer on the side.

  “There ye be! And it’s better’an new condition,” Hephrostus bellowed. “As only a master smith can accomplish!”

  “Yeah, yeah, great!” I quickly gripped the bars. “Get on!”

  “As a thank-ye for trustin’ me with your repairs, I’ve included a little extra-special somethin’ for ye,” Hephrostus said. “Have a look.”

  Sync hurled a force blast, knocking several of the Godfeathers over, eliciting a series of bird calls and squawks, but not killing any of them.

  “I don’t have time for this,” I growled, but I scanned the rickshaw anyway.

  Sure enough, it was back to 100% working order, with no debuffs. Instead, it displayed the following:

  | Fjorst’s Fidelity: +25% damage resistance for two hours |

  It was a buff—a pretty great one, too.

  “Thank you,” I said, realizing I was thanking an NPC only after I’d said it. Then again, I’d already thanked Silas several times for healing me… hadn’t I? “Get on already, Sync!”

  Sync flung a second fireball, this time at the ground in front of the blacksmith shop. It exploded and set the ground on fire, creating a distraction as she climbed aboard.

  “Toodle-oo!” Hephrostus called as we sprinted down a brick path barely wide enough to fit the rickshaw.

  NPCs parted like the Red Sea around my frantic charge. I clipped some of them and sent them tumbling into the buildings. With my current stats and Air Hortons, I could peak at about 25 MPH, which felt pretty cool—not gonna lie.

  As such, the Godfeathers couldn’t follow on foot. I was too fast. “Which way are we going, Sync?”

  “Just keep heading east. We need to reach the canyons. Beyond them we’ll find the city where the code is.”

  After about twenty minutes of hauling asp through the center of Evervale, we once again reached its folksy suburbs, mingled with gargantuan pine trees. The path turned to cobblestone, then dirt.

  Eventually, we entered the idyllic countryside of the AllVerse’s farm simulators of any era, medieval or modern, and thick forests. Even at night, tractors plowed fields alongside oxen or stupid fantasy equivalents.

  It felt like we were way off the game map in the boonies, or, Todd forbid, some miserable flyover state like Wisconsin or Iowa and all the hooligans living there.

  I shook my head. “Do these morons know they can farm in real life and produce actual food and resources?”

  Sync scoffed. “Did it ever occur to you that people just want to enjoy a little escapism for an hour or two a day? Not everyone can actually farm for a living, but some still like to—”

  “Are we really gonna argue about this right now?” I shot back. “It’s not real farming, but the bird men chasing us sure as spell are.”

  She didn’t press it further.

  I slowed my pace to a jog as we entered a thick canopy of forest. Fireflies lit up the magical woodland, mostly making up for the diminished moonlight and starlight hidden by the trees overhead, and crickets chirped all around us.

  “Uh, Sync, I realize there’s a clear road here, but it feels like we’re off the map. No one’s out here.”

  “Factually incorrect. We’re out here, and so is he.” Silas jabbed a tentacle at the tree line.

  I almost didn’t want to look, half-expecting some fantasy forest-monster to leap out and attack us, but instead, I saw an elf NPC stuck in some bushes.

  “Hail, traveler!” he called.

  He tried to walk out of the bushes, but instead, he jittered and went still. After that, he picked and ate a couple of berries from the bush, then rinse and repeat. I don’t know why, but the berries appeared to be some sort of colorful hard candy instead of actual berries.

  I scanned him, just for the quell of it, and found yet another dumb crossover:

  | Julian – Level 25 NPC |

  | Game/Class: Skittlers of Cajan |

  “Bug report,” I muttered.

  “Taste the rainbow,” Silas said in awe. “It all makes sense now…”

  “Just keep going,” Sync instructed. “This is a quest area for fantasy RPGs and farming sims. Areas to gather ingredients and resources. We’re getting closer.”

  “Oh, of course. When you say it like that, it sounds less stupid,” I quipped.

  The roar of classic car engines arose in the distance behind us, along with headlights.

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  break--Royal Road. They call us the Critical Hitters.

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  Dungeon Crawler Carl Audio Immersion Tunnel for Soundbooth Theater, and he's the lead writer for the Dungeon Crawler Carl Role Playing Game.