Petal Dew was in her usual place in the village circle, flitting around like an insectile drone with human features. Luminescent globes flickered, drifting around the small collection of homes and workshops, giving off a warm, candlelit glow. I’d calmed down on the meandering paths back to the village and wasn’t inclined to beat the NPC to death anymore. It’s not like she’d stay dead, and all of this wasn’t her design. She was a slave to the System, like the rest of us.

  “I’ve completed all the tasks,” I said, hooking a thumb in my belt.

  Behind me, Akilah, Jake, and Elora had their heads together, whispering about something. Probably me, but I was too worn out to care. My energy level was low, and I thought of Alga’s potatoes with a strange fondness.

  I spared a glance at Urstana’s workshop, where there was a light in the window. I assumed they’d made up. Either way, the job was done. Their problem was out of my hands.

  “Yay! You’ve made your mark here in our little town of Verdance and Heartland Park! Let me reward you for your help!” Petal spun in place, clapping her hands.

  Dragonfly wings buzzed her close to me, and my inventory got heavier. I looked at my item slots and found myself overweighted. It had been a while since I ditched my junk.

  I sat down on the circle f flagstones and waved everyone over. Unceremoniously, I dumped all my stuff. Suddenly, I was sitting in a pile of random items. A suspiciously clean sock—why’d I keep that? An old boot, flowers in varying states of decay, my trusty rusty axe, my new hunting knife, scraps of glass, metal scrap, wood scrap, torn rags, a coil of rope, and a random metal bar I must have looted somewhere and forgot about.

  I separated the things Petal gave me from the rest. A respectable pile of quartz sat in front of me, along with a few diamond chips. I dumped out a coin purse and found another diamond and a few more quartz.

  “We did these together, so let’s split the loot,” I said, looking up as they surrounded me and sat in a little circle around the rewards.

  All three of them crouched down and picked through items to see what they did.

  I equipped a pair of [Brawler’s Handwraps: +10 Bonus to attack, 10% bonus to terrain traversal. +2 Manual Dexterity bonus to climbing].

  Naturally, they showed up after I needed them. A belt lay on the ground, passed over by the others. I picked it up.

  [Belt of Stamina. Smells faintly of old sweat. If not washed, the belt becomes stronger. For every 7 days it goes unwashed +1 to Pain Tolerance. Cap (5) Some lesser creatures are repelled by the stench]. Ugh. Of course it would be something useful to me.

  Elora picked up a seed and a little owl statue, smiling. “Oh, these are nice.”

  “This can socket to my staff.” Akilah held up a small ashwood chip with a pleased expression.

  Good. Maybe she wouldn’t be mad at me anymore.

  Jake turned something over in his hands. It looked like a diode of some kind, but with a faint blue glow to its core. A weathered palm-sized journal also disappeared into his inventory.

  Three vials were left. They were all low-level, but they were healing potions. My health pool had been knocked down by the day and the lack of food. I had half my HP left.

  Food and rest could fix me up. I could wait. I swept them up, glancing at all of them. “We should save these.”

  They all nodded. I was still clammy from my swim, pants clinging like an uncomfortable second skin. The quartz and diamond chips were divvied up. Jake picked up the diamond and held it out to me.

  “You did the heavy lifting on this one, brother,” he said, giving me a fanged grin.

  “Well, I thought about just taking it, but I don’t know. You all stuck with me instead of giving up. I didn’t want to be cheap and hoard anything away,” I admitted with a shrug.

  Relief streamed through me. I could finally afford to train in weapons combat. Too bad I didn’t have a sword. I’d figure that part out.

  I looked at Elora, holding the two items she’d picked in her hands, examining them.

  “So, Elora,” I said, glancing at the other two. No one gave an indication to stop me, so I kept talking, “Whadya say we make this more of a thing?”

  I winced at my words. Why did I put it like that? I floundered to find a better way to express what I meant.

  She fluttered a look of surprise my way, then at Jake as he waved his hands.

  “He means, let’s team up,” Jake clarified.

  “Oh!” Elora said, giggling. “I see. Sure. Yeah. That would be nice.”

  A smile crossed Akilah’s face, and she scooted closer to Elora. “Let me show you some stuff about your aspect screen…”

  I pushed up from sitting on the ground and waved at them. “See ya tomorrow, same place, same time. I’m going to sleep for about twenty hours, now.”

  “What about getting a drink?” Jake asked, clip-clopping after me on cloven hooves.

  Akilah snorted, “Beer for breakfast? Boy…”

  I paused and looked down at myself. “Bud, I just want to scrub the dead lady water off me, eat some potatoes in mystery gravy, and pass out.”

  Jake looked disappointed. He nodded reluctantly. “If you’re sure.”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “One hundred percent.”

  “You’ll get home okay?” He asked, glancing at the girls.

  I raised a weary arm and shrugged. “Who knows. As long as I don’t get mugged or a giant hawk comes after me again, I should be fine.”

  I strolled off. Heartland was done. No more quests, no more weirdness. I’d never have to go back there again.

  Yeah. That’s what I thought.

  I went home, ate well, washed up, and did extra chores for Alga before passing out to make up for not having been there earlier. I slept through the afternoon and the night.

  The next morning, I woke to the buzz of dragonfly wings. My eyes snapped open to see some asshole sprite hovering beside my bunk, in the act of flinging an envelope at me. He darted out the open window before I could sit up and chuck him out myself.

  I stared after him, then mumbled irritably, “I hope the hawk gets you.”

  I felt a little bad after I realized he probably did me a favor by waking me up. The party would be waiting for me as it was. Daily grind chores with Alga would keep me from being on time, as usual. It wasn’t an official party yet, by game status terms, but maybe Akilah and Jake would make progress on figuring that out soon.

  The envelope was textured like handmade paper made with flowers. I tapped it and tore the edge off to pull out the contents. A small, thin prism fell out, along with a letter. I felt my empty stomach churn before I unfolded it. The scent of pure mist wafted, leaving the taste of floral essence on my tongue.

  I knew who it was from before I saw the name. The lettering was large and spikey, both elegant and sinister.

  Dathai Orc-kin, you are cordially invited to Gleamholt, the seat of the Lord of Heartland, Ashwynn, King of… blah, blah, blah. I skipped down past the titles and stuff to where the important information was.

  …to receive high honors from His Majesty. Please come at high sun.

  My arms dropped to my lap.

  “Come on!” I shouted, throwing a fist in the direction of the park. That wasn’t in the plan. I was going to pick up some junk sword, and go get some training, so I didn’t have to rely on my raw talent. Plus, swords were cool. If I had to be stuck in an RPG game, I was going to get armor and weapons. No more detours. Dead stop.

  I flung the letter aside. The prism in my hand must have been some sort of entrance token to the Lord’s estate or something, so that went into inventory. I tossed my blanket to the foot of the bed and yanked my pants on.

  I stomped down the stairs, tackled the giant basket of potatoes with fewer cuts than usual, and carried my egg on the walk. Morning rays perked my mood. The sun triggered my photosynthesis, putting some extra spring in my step.

  Now there were three sitting on the bench, eating churros. I could smell the cinnamon and chocolate as I closed the gap. I caught sight of the paper cups of chocolate and raised a brow. Jake showed me, dipping his churro into the cup and snacking on it.

  “Hi,” I said, not jealous at all that they were enjoying something delicious without me. Where did they find this stuff? Last time they found cotton candy somewhere.

  “You’re late,” Elora said.

  Akilah leaned toward her and shot me a look. “He’s always late.”

  “Am not,” I said defensively.

  “Once you weren’t late,” Jake offered, trying to make peace.

  I waved it off and explained the morning and the letter. Akilah’s expression turned to concern while Elora nibbled at her churro with unfazed pleasure. Jake got excited, in typical Jake fashion.

  “Are you gonna be a fairy knight?” He sat up eagerly.

  “Kill me first,” I muttered. Then, louder, “I don’t know, but Aran said the Lord would be watching me. I don’t know what this means, but I have to go find out. If I disappear, you know they did something to me.”

  “Ah, and we can’t even go to the sheriff!” Jake grumbled, then grinned at Elora, “Because we escaped from the jail in Thorn Ridge.”

  “Wha? No way,” she said. “What’s Thorn Ridge?”

  I held up a hand to stop Jake from launching into that terrible anecdote I’d rather forget. “It doesn’t matter right now. You guys figured out how to update our status with my Rep?”

  Akilah waved her churro like a wand, pointing it at me. “Go into the space behind the aspect screen.”

  “Okay.” I swiped the GUI aside and looked into the darkness of the System. The code writhed in tangled knots and branches.

  “Find Unit Management. You should have a unit now that Heartland has accepted you.”

  I closed my eyes to concentrate, hearing her voice and seeing the crawling dark. I found it. Heartland Unit Status. Unit Management. As I searched the threads, Akilah kept explaining what could be there.

  “You probably won’t be able to manage anything in the hierarchy, but you should be able to find Create Sub-Unit. Do you see it?”

  “Yes,” I murmured, “Got it. Creating.”

  “What’s it say?” Akilah asked, her eagerness clear.

  “I have to enter a sub-unit name.”

  “Fantastic Four,” Jake said.

  It sounded like a joke, but just in case, I said, “No.”

  “We’re not naming it something dumb.” Akilah shot back, followed by the sound of a slap.

  “How about… Outliers?” Elora suggested.

  “Why Outliers?” I asked. It didn’t have an amazing ring to it, but at least it wasn’t something like Sap N Tap.

  “Well, it’s what we are, isn’t it?” she said, shifting on the stone bench, scraping churro in her cup of chocolate. “You beat unbeatable quests. Akilah figured out how to hack the System. Jake knows far too much random information to be normal. You guys are the definition of Outliers.”

  “Heartland Outliers. It tags us as fae,” I said apologetically.

  “Technically, I am one—of the elf variety,” Elora said, not put out in the least.

  I watched the code flow, coalescing into new command options. I felt a burst of achievement when the Party Member option came up. Akilah Moonshadow, Kaelen Belial, and Elora were added as soon as I concentrated on the connections.

  “I got an invite!” Jake squealed.

  “Dathai has invited you to a party,” Elora said aloud.

  Akilah said nothing. She was the first one to accept. Enabling Party Chat, I thought at them:

  Hi.

  Instantly, I had a prompt pop up. Audio. A text box appeared as well, redundantly showing her words in text across the bottom of my HUD.

  I opened my eyes as the accepts rolled in. Party Established: Outliers.

  A stupid grin tugged at my lips as I heard them start jabbering away at me. We could hear each other, read the backlog, and there was an option to Send Item directly to one of them. No more dropping the rope fifty feet and letting hope do the rest.

  My HUD was flaring, which made me sigh. “Okay, guys, we have to leave the Party Chat for important things and talk like regular people.”

  “Fair,” Jake said. Even with just the three of them talking over each other, it was a lot. Their voices overlapping, the text scrolling by so rapidly I couldn’t read all of it before it dropped off. We were right in front of each other.

  I looked at the sun’s position. “I have to get going. If I get into trouble, I’ll let you know.”

  “Not that we can do much about it,” Akilah said, scowling.

  “We can, maybe,” Jake said, digging at the edge of a flagstone with his hoof.

  I waved at them and turned down the street toward the park.

  It might not be that bad. Maybe the Lord would just pat me on the back for a job well done and let me go about my business.

  I’d hold onto hope, but it was better to keep what wits I had on standby.

  -ARCHIVE-