4 - Road Rage

  Eventually, Joe drove himself back to the shore with strong, sure strokes and flopped down on the grassy bank. After four years of hospital gowns, assisted bathing, and constant exams, the thought of someone coming along and seeing him naked barely registered. He lay back in the sun, letting its warmth dry him, before putting back on his new simplistic garb. The items were better than hospital pajamas, but not by much. He had a pair of tan canvas pants, an off-white linen shirt, a pair of simple leather shoes, and a belt. That was it; not one coin or real piece of gear to his name.

  Without even the most basic of equipment, Joe had a momentary worry about Hawking having dropped him in a dangerous zone but then dismissed the idea a second later. What would have been the point of saving his soul only to have him get eaten in the first hour he was here?

  Still, finding civilization before nightfall would probably be a good idea. The sun had moved across the sky while he was in the water, so he assumed there would be a sundown. Having some sturdy walls around him seemed like an excellent idea before creepers started popping into existence around him.

  Thankfully, the pond was on a hillside. Looking off the side where the ridge had trapped the water, Joe could see down the hill. At its base, a simple road meandered through the scattered trees. He had hoped for a map screen, but either that was not an option or just not available to him, given his current dearth of skills.

  Other than his character sheet, all Joe was able to open was a Quest screen.

  Since one way was as good as the other, as far as he could tell, Joe turned right and started hiking down the wheel-rutted road, looking for whatever the world had to offer him next.

  As he passed through the first stand of trees, he spotted a dead sapling, still standing with all its bark intact. Joe couldn’t help but smile. Before cancer had canceled his ability to go for walks in the woods, every time he stepped into a forest, the perfect walking stick always seemed to be right there waiting for him. His best friend would always joke about Joe's ability to immediately find an outstanding walking stick, seemingly by magic.

  He rocked the sapling as close to the ground as possible, listening to the cracking sounds. It was amazing how easy it was to get his new muscles to respond correctly. The thin trunk snapped off just above the roots, and then it was only a matter of a swift strike to his knee to snap the pole to the perfect height. The wood was a little drier than he would have preferred but still strong enough. This staff wouldn’t last too long, but it would suit him just fine for the trek along the wagon road.

  ‘Road’ might be a generous term for the path he was on. It was not much more than a set of tracks over roughly level terrain. Joe was grateful for the extra point of contact the walking stick gave him. There were plenty of ruts and rocks which could easily snag a foot.

  As he walked, Joe tried to imagine what he wanted from this new chance at life. He had been cooped up and curtailed for years. What he now wanted most was some sort of adventure. He had never had a chance to see what his life could have been.

  He had just gotten his four-year college degree when his family’s world began to fall apart. Joe had not planned on coming home that summer, vacillating between traveling cross-country or heading overseas. He wanted to see more of the world.

  Out of the blue, Keith, Joe’s youngest brother, fell ill. Very ill. So, instead of traveling, Joe returned home to help his family. Within a year, Keith was gone; his parents and Jan, the middle of the three brothers, were showing signs of the same illness.

  The cause was identified as an industrial leak that had infected the groundwater. The whole neighborhood was moved, and a class action was filed, but it was too late, even for Joe. His years at college had lessened his exposure, but his return home had just put him on a slower path to the same inevitable end.

  Yet now, he had been offered a second chance, a do-over. Even better, it was a do-over in a world where he could pick who he wanted to be.

  Joe thought through his favorite characters from the various games he’d played. The ones that most appealed to him were his explorer-type characters. He liked playing the scouts, who ranged ahead of the party, or skillful tomb raiders, with their bags of tricks to draw on.

  He was unsure how the class system worked, but when his chance to choose a class came up, Joe planned to pick something that would allow him to roam around on his own, seeking new places and solving quests. Magic would be awesome, as long as it didn’t make him a glass-cannon. Joe smiled as he pictured creeping through lost temples, plumbing their depths for treasure and adventure.

  Still lost in thought, Joe crested a particularly large hill and saw people for the first time. Surprisingly, they were in both directions, in front of him and coming over the hill behind him that he had just walked a few minutes ago.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Ahead of him, he could see a small farming town maybe half a mile off. It looked like a typical old-world town, with small, quaint houses covered by slate or thatched roofs. Surrounding the homes and barns were fields of grains and grazing pastures.

  Behind him, Joe turned to see a rider heading towards him and the town. Sunlight glinted off brightly polished plate mail armor. A gold and white pennant fluttered in the breeze atop a long spear, which the rider was holding vertically.

  “Hey Hawking, is everyone here from Earth like me, or are there NPCs here too?”

  “So those farmers down there. They are people, right? Not monsters?”

  Joe stumbled to a stop, trying to wrap his head around that information. This was a complete shift from thinking this was a game. If everyone was really a person, then this was an actual world. There would be no automaton-like sprites, mindlessly performing the same actions over and over. Each being he met would have its own goals and growth.

  He looked back at the knight, speculating on what type of quest the warrior might be on. The mounted cavalier was closer than he expected. Joe wondered how long he had been standing in the road as he worked out this new huge shift in his current reality.

  Watching the horse's gait, Joe guessed the rider would pass him before he reached the closest farm. He wasn’t overly thrilled about encountering an armed rider before having the security of witnesses around him. When the knight was just some wandering NPC, he wasn’t worried. But now that Joe knew no one was following some master script, it meant he could get killed in his very first interaction.

  That would be terrible game design, but since this seemed less and less like a game, it could happen. If everyone he met had agency, then he had to wipe the idea of this being a standard computer game from his thinking.

  Joe took a breath to calm himself. Good manners should carry him through, he hoped. Joe kept glancing backward, yet the closer the rider got, the more on edge Joe found himself.

  Suddenly, a notification flashed in the corner of his eye. It was rapidly followed by two more. Each one felt more demanding than the one before it.

  He threw a look over his shoulder, spotting the knight, who was now about fifty yards away and closing. Joe could clearly see the man’s face bore a thunderous scowl as he stared at Joe. The armored warrior had lean, angular features and a close-cropped beard. If not for the disdainful sneer, he would have been supermodel-level handsome.

  Breaking out in a nervous sweat, Joe tried to stop looking back and concentrate on the closest villagers. The first farmhouse had chickens ranging around a fair-sized barn. A teen girl was dropping hay from the loft into a small cart her father was manning on the ground below her. Clothes hung on a line, fluttering in the light breeze.

  Between the farmhouse and Joe, a boy was picking berries from a large bramble patch by the side of the road while his dog lay belly up in the sun a few steps away.

  It was such a classic pastoral scene that Joe felt his tension ease. That was until the thumping of hooves on turf, sounding just behind his back, caused him to clench his shoulders. Joe turned and smiled up at the man, hoping to diffuse whatever was causing the nobleman to look so annoyed.

  Which didn’t work at all. If anything, the rider’s face grew grimmer.

  “Your name, vagrant?” the knight demanded, stopping his warhorse at Joe’s side.

  While the common-sense part of his brain bellowed for Joe’s attention, an instinctual flare of anger surged through Joe. He had grown up in rural, small-town America. He knew all five of the local police officers personally. Heck, he had helped Sherrif Noonan paint his garage one summer for comic book money. None of those men and women would have ever spoken to someone with such hostility without any cause.

  Before he could stop himself, Joe scowled right back at the pretentious prick.

  ‘NOBLEMAN!’ Joe mentally shouted at himself, quickly smoothing his features.

  It was too late; the damage was done. Joe could hear the knight’s gauntlets and reins creaking and grinding in his grip. The man’s face reddened darkly, and his glare reached epic proportions.

  “Good afternoon, sir. My name is Joe. Joseph Morris,” he replied as politely as he could.

  “Where do you hail from, and do not lie. I will know,” the armored warrior snarled.

  Between the impossible question and the man’s inexplicable hostility, Joe stammered for a second. “I … I … I just got here,” he finally settled on.

  “Newcomer,” the warrior hissed as if the word hurt him to utter. “Very well. I shall not gainsay One Above, but know that his protection is not eternal. Your kind are not welcome under the sight of Phealti, the Lawhammer. Begone and be quick about it, outlander.”

  With a thump of his heels to the charger’s ribs, the knight cantered away as if trying to distance himself from Joe as quickly as possible.

  ‘What the hell was that!’ Joe fumed, feeling himself glaring at the steel-clad back of the rider. “You didn’t mention that I would be hated for coming here, Hawking. That would have been nice to know.”

  “So you’re saying that was a fluke.”

  “Okay, Hawking. But just so you know, that took a lot of the shine off your new glossy Illuminaria.”