Non Player Character

Chapter 10 - Level Up

"John, wake up."

I stirred at the words, mumbled incoherently, and fell right back to sleep.

"John, wake your fleshy butt up now! Someone approaches."

As I processed her words, a surge of adrenaline pumped through me, waking me in a rush of anxiety. I opened my eyes and tried to look around without moving my head. I saw nothing.

"What's happening, Val?"

"Someone is approaching the camp from the west, approximately two hundred yards away."

"What do we do?" I whispered.

"Eliminate them before they eliminate you," she said.

"You want me to fight? How? I don't have any abilities yet." I was beginning to panic. I wasn't remotely prepared for a real fight.

"It's not a Player," Val said, sensing my distress. "It's an NPC. You have a sword. Use it."

I let out a breath and thanked the stars they weren't a Player.

The fire was long dead, but the hot coals still cast a dim light, and I didn't want to risk being spotted, so I quietly rose from my meager bedding and scampered into the dark trees.

I desperately wished I had more of that potion that Hesta had given me, but I had drunk the entire flask before my fight with Val's Dalari host. Then I remembered I did have something that could help. I didn't know how effective it would be, but something was better than nothing.

With a thought, I pulled the small bag of valera root powder from my inventory. I remembered that big doses reduced pain and small doses boosted your energy. Not wanting to take too much, I licked my finger and stuck it in the bag. When I pulled it out, it was coated with the fine, brown powder. It tasted like chalk, but I kept my finger in my mouth until I was sure I had licked it clean.

I didn't feel any different, but I assumed it wasn't as fast-acting as an actual potion. Regardless, I didn't have time to wait around for the effects to kick in.

I stalked west a good distance away from camp, staying low and quiet the whole way.

"Val, do you know who is coming? Are they someone you can identify?"

"It is a bandit, but I cannot discern their identity. He is heading directly for your camp."

"Damn. What do you think he wants?"

"To kill you and steal everything you have, obviously. Why else would a bandit be stalking you in the middle of the night?"

That was my assumption as well. I wondered if I was ready for this. A few weeks of training was all I had before the Kurskins forced me into that first battle. I had carried myself well on that chaotic field of bodies, but a one-on-one fight was a different story.

Fear and self-doubt weren't the only reason I didn't want to fight. Now that I knew the truth, the idea of killing another human made my stomach turn.

"I can't just kill him Val. The Master Control may have made him a bandit, but he could have been an innocent person before it changed him."

"No," Val said. "He wasn't."

I frowned in the dark. "You said you didn't know who NPCs were in the past." If Val had been lying to me about what she knew, I was going to lose it. If she knew who NPCs were before the change, it meant I could have been looking for my wife this whole time instead of escorting an ill-tempered teenager.

"I do not know who NPCs were before the creation, but we can infer what type of person they were. A basic NPC's identity reflects their real personality and characteristics. If someone was good on Earth, they're good on Erda. If they were bad there, they are bad here."