Tsurei

Rei looked around at everyone and back in the corner of his HUD, if this was a real quest, he sure couldn’t see it, he turned his head down and inwardly wondered how to explain this, this was a game so it only made sense that it would be a quest, but at the same time, he really couldn’t see this as anymore than a random errand that Rossa pushed on them to get them out of the inn.

Still, he considered the list some more, whilst some of the ingredients were normal, what the hell were these things about monster drops? He’s never heard of these monsters before and they sounded rare, more people would definitely help, but… wasn’t this just their dinner? He felt a little bad about that,

Also, Oi! What’s this about a garbage boring fetch quest, this is their literal dinner! He had no idea what the end product was going to be, but at the very least, they’ve never had anything less than delicious at the inn!

Well, things being what they were, Rei sometimes forgot that this whole world was just a game, something that Takuma was keen to remind him of at every turn,

“Well… er…” Rei struggled to come with a response as he glanced down the list, trying to separate them into categories, “Apart from the things we can fetch from the market, there’s also things like food drops from a King Boar, a Winged Pig and some kind of assortment of wild vegetables,”

“They sound pretty normal, don’t they?” Takuma commented off-handedly, looking over to Rei and Yuta in confusion since they seemed to be overly conflicted,

“Yeah, but as normal as they are, I’ve never heard of them,” Yuta explained, “King Boar sounds like a mini-boss of some kind and this Winged Pig sounds like one of those things with a 1% spawn rate, as for the vegetable basket, I have no bloody clue,”

“I don’t suppose we can just gather some random vegetables in the forest?” Kenji suggested, hoping that a obvious solution would be the one,

“It’s a named item though, it can’t be that easy,” Rei mumbled, frowning and rubbing his chin,

“It’s like, there’s no way a random quest or errand is going to take us to other floors, so this has to all be on the 1^st floor,” Yuta reasoned, “The largest floor… and we can’t really say we’ve gone everywhere in it,”

Takuma and Kenji looked at each other and shrugged, they weren’t keen on getting chewed out by the npc later, but at the same time, this was game, did they need to take this errand so seriously?

“Since you guys have been at this longer than we have, do you guys know where we can find these things?” Rei looked over at the others and held out the list for them to read, did he mention how weird it was to ask for help gathering ingredients for dinner?

@Lilik  @Life @Baldur

With a sword art that encompassed her leg like a glowing blade of fire, she swept out leaving arcs of flame, aimed down low to take out Rei’s lower body. When at first every strike was aimed for the upper body, this change stopped the music of steel. The focus, concentration and deep trance he was in lost, Rei hurried jumped back to avoid it, that lapse of action allowed the girl to leap through the air with a second sword art, martial arts had good chain potential since most of their attacks were quick one hit sequences, that near useless, or too late informative trivia floated in Rei’s mind even as he watched the girl let out a war cry and throw a fullpowered punch to his face.

There was nothing he could do as the blow landed, throwing him spinning and flying through the air several feet away, it was all he could do to land on his feet, but then due to his posture, his knee hit the floor and scrapped along painfully on the cobble stone, he looked up just to see that Yuta had taken his place, desperately distracting the red haired girl who just seemed more motivated now that there were 2 of them.

 He was sure it was a visual effect like the water from his sword, but the heat felt very real. As the fire touched the sprays of water causing steam to sizzle into the air, it felt like a battle between fire and water, two opposites.

Rei eventually worked up the tempo to the woman’s blow, parrying her blow for blow, the parries were a perfect blend of defense and offense, not just aligning his blade to absorb the impact, he was actively swinging his sword to strike at her own blows, the added force allowing him to knock the attacks aside.

There was a rhythm to combat, like music of steel and heartbeats and in this moment of a few seconds that were drawn out like minutes, Rei could clearly feel that connection, like entering a trance he nearly stopped thinking entirely, moving his body according to the flow, originally on the back feet, he was striking blow for blow now, if she didn’t hurry and change things up, she knew she would be pushed back.

There’s no way Yuta would do anything to warrant a girl wanting revenge on him to the point of murder, something was wrong here,

“Why do you want to kill him?” Rei decided to ask  the woman directly, they would get nowhere taking guesses in the dark,

“You know why.” The woman snarled, rushing forward towards Rei at alarming speeds, giving him barely enough time to raise his weapon to parry the next attack, with a loud, crunching clang of steel, Rei felt his entire body shudder from the thundering impact, if he wasn’t careful, that one strike could’ve blown him off his feet, he quickly discarded his sheath, he would need both hands on his katana if he didn’t want to lose it.

A sequence of blows followed with Rei on the backfoot, each step backward was accentuated by booming strikes as the girl’s golden fiery gauntlets, emitting a crimson flame from a deep red ruby socketed into the backhand of the gauntlets slammed into his blade with every strike, each time he would use his katana carefully, it was a game item, but even that still had durability, even if it was more than reality, it was still lower than other weapons, he had be careful to not overwork his weapon.

“W-what do we do now?” Yuta glanced worriedly over at Rei and back to the girl,

“I can only hope there’s a way to cancel a duel,” Rei groaned as he looked over to the girl, lowering his sword and walking over casually with his arms spread, hoping she could take it as a sign of peace, but even though the girl didn’t seem to budge an inch, Rei hoped this would work, “Look, this is all just a big accident, can you cancel the duel? We don’t want to kill you.”

“Tch, says you,” the girl spat back at him, with clear hostility, glaring at them with an intense stare, it was alarmingly clear that even 2v1, this girl had no intention of backing down,

“Oi, what the hell did you do!?” Rei looked over his shoulder at Yuta, his voice full of burning accusation,

“Nothing!” Yuta cried out, throwing his arms up in a desperate protest, his eyes were wide and truly full of confusion, the emotion spread over to Rei as he watched,

“You what?” Rei couldn’t help but lower his katana, looking over at Yuta incredulously,

“I… I know! I know! Don’t look at me like that!” Yuta stammered out, turning his reddening face to the sided, using his hand to hide himself, “My hand slipped and I pressed a button at random too quickly! I didn’t read it properly,”

“Ugh… what’s the rule?” Rei groaned, staring down the girl and looking through the crowd for Takuma and Kenji,

“…To the death…” Yuta’s voice came out in a near whisper, but Rei picked it up,

“What!? … Are you serious?” Rei cried out in shock, he marched over to Yuta and lowered his body slightly by leaning forward, to invade Yuta’s personal space a bit and to look at his downward facing expression, emphasising his annoyance with those last words,

“Y-yeah…”

“Bloody hell…” Rei sighed deeply, slapping his own face hard in a facepalm,

“So? What the hell’s going on here?” Rei’s serious expression dissipated as he glanced over to his friend with a exasperated look, “Did you make a move on her or something?” he made a joke in combat to hopefully dull the nerves, he already knew it wasn’t the case. He hoped.

“Of course not!” Yuta cried out, his composure nearly breaking as he seemed to stumble physically as if hit by the sudden question, he looked over to his best friend in a near pleading look to not take it the wrong way, “This girl suddenly started a fight with me!”

“In a safe zone? It was a duel or something right? Why did you accept?” Rei looked over at him in confusion, glancing back at the girl and being at least thankful that she was still sizing the situation up instead of attacking,

“It was but I pressed the wrong button!” Yuta cried out, he gave Rei and expression that really showed his guilt and sheepishness,

She didn’t try to receive Rei’s strike head on with just her gauntlets, even she felt that it would be a bad idea to take a chunk of damage unnecessarily, and even if she blocked it, the man behind her would hit her in the back.

Throwing herself to the side, Rei’s blade swooped through thin air, reaching the time limit of his Art, Rei gasped as he felt the energy drain from his body, the penalty for missing a sword art meant he would be momentarily paralysed and vulnerable, this situation made him curse opening up with his strongest and longest attack sequence yet, the stronger the art, the bigger the vulnerability window, as he feared the counter attack, Yuta covered him, using his dagger and martial arts to keep the girl at bay, letting him recover.

Jumping away to create distance, the fight stood still as she sized her two opponents up, Rei and Yuta shared a glance as they moved to stand beside each other, their weapons pointed towards the woman,

Running forward,  Rei tried out one of his newer Sword Arts, first was Haku Senpu, his now strongest art from attaining Level 4 Katana, translating to White Whirlwind, the attack allowed him to draw his blade through the air in rotational movements, this of course meant he had to be nimble on his feet even as he ran forward to keep mobility, the entire art’s purpose seemed to be focused on applying a constantly moving strike that flowed in elegant waves and strokes, akin to an artist’s pen strokes, combining with his katana, it manifested as drawing beautifully clear arcs of water through the air, swirling behind him before he arrived at the scene.

The red haired girl seemed to hear the new set of footsteps coming, along with the rising wind from the art, turning around to see Rei, she felt shocked that anyone would even try to interrupt a duel between two people, this was a game with concrete rules, but as time went on, these rules started to fade, npcs that seemed like people, murders within safe zones, it was no longer safe to rely on preconceived motions.

Even more human interaction, he should’ve expected something like this on the first day off that they had the opportunity to take, despite his casual demeanour, Rei was a natural shut in, so with more and more moving pieces or people in the situation, it was like piling up code on a poor overworked computer, he was beginning to run out of energy in trying to stay composed at this point.

“Hey, join the party,” Rei looked up and shrugged, giving Life a small smile, his words were tinged with humour and rather than mockery and was filled with a strange sense of welcoming, like, hey, this is totally normal, why don’t you come on over and join in, sort of deal.

Yuta very quickly grabbed him around the shoulders and neck and pulled him back into the huddle, his gold coloured eyes glanced over at the now three people and he couldn’t help but wonder if their encounter here was attracting all sorts of attention, something he dearly liked to avoid,

“There’s more of them! What do we do now!?” His voice came out surprisingly unsteady, his old social anxieties from back in school awakening after 2 years of near isolation with nothing but best friends and npcs made him entirely unsure of what to do in this situation with real people, naturally the same could be said of the others, but whilst Rei weathers this situations with honesty, Takuma was naturally apathetic,

“Don’t we have an errand to do? We can just use that as an excuse,” Takuma cooly pointed out to the white paper slip that Rei was still holding onto,

“Right, right,” Rei nodded, surprised he forget all about it in the panic, his arm around Yuta, he turned his hand to get a better look at the list, Rossa sent them on some kind of errand, so it couldn’t have been anything too bad, but…

“What the hell is this!?” he couldn’t help but cry out at the ridiculous list of items, at the very least, most of these things were not purchasable at the market down the road! King Wild Boar Meat? Heavenly Winged Bacon? Shuram's Wild Vegetable Basket? Oh, and some high quality red wine and tomatoes. Okay... Weren't some of these rare mob's rare drops? How does she know about them? Also, when did she have the time to draw a pitcutre of herself at the bottom? Despite it's simplistic nature, it was a very clear image of Rossa giving them a childish expression of mockery, sticking her tongue out at them with the words; - Hurry back with the items or no dinner for you!

This is... their dinner?

Second thing to note, was that the both of them had green cursors, meaning neither one had attacked the other unjustly, moreover, a real fight with dropping health in a safe zone could only mean a duel in the first place.

But a duel needed to be consented to by both parties for it to go through, what was going on here? Yuta would never randomly accept a duel and then ask for help through an brief, emergency message that he probably made during the combat.

So he was surprised enough that he was forced to make a message in the middle of combat and before, meaning he didn’t have time to prepare.

How was this happening?

When Yuta’s eyes made contact with Rei’s, he knew this was no time to wait. Holding his waist, in the form of glittering blue, digital diamonds, his katana materialised in it’s place, allowing him to draw the blade with a raspy drawn steel, adding a new sound to the symphony of chaotic battle as he resolved to barrel in and see how this would go.

His eyes drifted around as he watched Yuta parry one of her punches with his forearm, delivering a stab with his dagger into the girl’s stomach which didn’t connect as the girl smacked the arm aside. An exchange of parries, feints and strikes followed, each one sounded different, the whish of the wind for feints without contact, a loud slap of skin and flesh for the parries as they usually aimed to strike the arm to the side, and the booming thuds of impacts or bladed tearing of flesh whenever a punch of a weapon landed.

Looking over, Rei could barely see that their health bars were definitely dropping from each attack, this was a full on fight and not just the bounce back from attacks made in safe zones, whilst those dealt no damage, it still felt like a numbed pain, it was something they realised after messing around with each other playfully the other day.

When he got there, he found the most ridiculous sight he’s ever seen. Right in the middle of the street, were two people engaged in frantic combat, on one side was a vibrant girl with crimson hair, cut in a short bob and with a wide grin on her face, she was the very definition of boundless energy and cheer, that is, if she wasn’t currently pummelling his friend into the ground and into the various carts and stalls along the street, causing fruit and other produce to fly into the air in the chaos.

The girl had fair skin and wore minimal armour, if anything, it more resembled a martial robe or outfit with only a few bits of armour, he couldn’t tell if it was just for show or actual armour but either would be a normal conclusion. By all means, she looked like an attractive girl, who probably perfectly fit the idea of the star of the track club at school, which only made it all the more jarring with the situation in front of him.

Yeah, this was a game where combat was the main focus, and with death fully realised, every fight was to the death.

His feet thumped and cracked steadily like drums upon the cobblestone and dirt under him, kicking up small stones and dust in his wake, the npcs in his path moved out of the way, staring after him and whispering to each other wondering what was going on.

In Rei’s ears, all he could hear was his own breathing and the pounding of his heart, something inside him felt squeezed in tension, worried about this friend and the cloud of uncertainty whirling around his stomach.

Just what was going on here? Is he alright? Is it a killer?

Whatever the case, he could only hope everything was alright and would hold together until he got there.

As he sprinted through the block, he suddenly looked up towards the sky, towards the direction of the clashing of steel and combat, coupled by the surprised cry of npcs, the fighting was close. He increased his pace and swerved through the tighter, narrow alleyways to get to his destination faster.

Rei felt himself relax speaking to Baldur, at least he seemed friendly but most of all was that they were currently in a safe zone, as well equipped as he was, there was no chance of being suddenly killed here at least.

“Well, we don’t exactly stand out,” Rei smiled, scratching the back of his head in answer, he glanced over at his friends, whilst their demeanour was incredibly casual, at a glance they certainly had a strange mix of colours, Rei himself had black hair, Yuta who was eyeing the newcomer cautiously with narrowed eyes had bleached silver hair, Kenji who looked on confused and absent-mindedly, half staring at the sky and birds rather than pay attention to the conversation had chestnut coloured hair and Takuma who seemed like he was struggling to even stay awake on his feet with dark bags under his eyes had flame coloured red hair, all of them were wearing similarly casual clothing that made them comfortable and reminded them slightly of home. If they were to be dressed like this in the real world, they would only be slightly out of place.

It was probably just how they acted seemed so normal that they weren’t exactly outstanding. When Baldur half bowed to them, he quickly found himself a bit flustered, normal habits and custom sort of flew in the face of 2 years of moping around in a video game world with little to no interaction other than with Rossa at the bar and his best friends,

"A-ah, I'm Rei, this is Yuta, Takuma and Kenji," It would be quickly noticeable that the names that they introduced themselves as were different from their displayed user names to a varying degree. [Tsu-Rei] turned out to be Rei, [Riyu] was somehow Yuta, [Kasuta] was apparently Takuma and the strangely named [Jikken] written as experiment turned out to be called Kenji. It was quite possible that they were introducing themselves using real names.

“We’ve nearly finished clearing the second floor right now after clearing everything on the first floor,” Rei explained, “We’re just going to complete every quest we can as we move upwards,”

Takuma nudged Rei painfully in the ribs causing him to rub them with a wince before whispering to each other, “Hey… I know I’m not one to say, but should we really be telling them this?”  Meanwhile, Yuta who would normally be the one to dispense caution as frowning deeply, rubbing his chin in thought.

As they watched the new woman come up, Rei’s internal commentary went on automatic, `Oh great, more new people,` the situation was getting stranger by the second if only because contact with other players was something they haven’t run into just yet.

“You want him to be even taller?” he couldn't but give out a slightly higher pitch commentary from the side, tinged with disbelief and a bit of humour, he flashed a small uncertain grin and breathed out a slight chuckle,

“Oh! He’s Baldur! That Baldur!” Yuta’s eyes suddenly widened and pulled Rei and Takuma out of the way, letting the two newcomers confront each other. As their newly appointed and fledging information broker of their very own, Yuta has managed to catch some snippets of some famous news,

“Am I… er… supposed to know who he is?” Rei grumbled confusedly, hoping he wasn’t making a fool of himself in his ignorance,

“He’s a famous player on the higher floors!” Yuta shout whispered in his ear, causing Rei to raise a brow,

“Seriously? Someone like that is just chilling down here?”

“Overwork kills heroes, so they say,” Takuma shrugged between them, his expression having not really changed even after the information. Kenji having now only focused on the scene in front of him began to glance left and right confusedly, from the tall intimidating woman, to the friendly, flashy man and to his three best friends huddled away from the pair of new people, facing him and having a not all that discreet emergency meeting.

[G3-52. Fight. Help]

It took Rei a moment of puzzlement before he figured out it’s meaning, it was Yuta’s coordinates, the situation and problem, it was short, concise and very much like him, he imagined if he was in a fight, he wouldn’t have the time to write out a full message, he was currently engaged in combat with someone at those locations and were warning them so they could come help him.

A fight in the city? Was that even possible? And would it kill him to explain the situation just a little bit more? … Yeah, it probably actually would.

Whatever, think about it later!

With that in mind, grabbed the blue katana on his waist to make sure it was there before sprinting back out into the streets and through them, the digital 2d map open in the corner of his vision with his beeping icon, showing him where he was, he couldn’t see any accurate information of his friends or his party members, only showing what floor they were on. But if they were on screen, he imagine the three of them were converging on Yuta’s location as fast as they could, as averse to fighting Takuma and Kenji were, they would never let a friend be in trouble alone.

Despite her dainty appearance, Rei had no disillusion that she wasn’t perfectly capable of defending herself. With that in mind, the best thing to do is to get away and avoid dangerous things, as such, he continued to move his gaze around the room, until his eyes fell upon a man sitting at a corner, a merchant looking man who had a large,        lazy build, with brownish skin and a thick beard, he wore a loose fitting purple outerwear with a bright orange tunic and a red furred cap.

As it was, he had his face half buried in his hands with a look of despair and worry, he seemed like the target, but just as he was about to approach to make sure he suddenly received a message.

Halting in his steps caused him to waver for a moment as he flicked through the menu to take a look, it was from Yuta;

She soon closed her eyes back to concentrate on playing the guitar, strumming the strings and playing a strangely melancholy tune, which was no doubt the source and cause of the remarkable sombre and solemn mood in the tavern.

Rei’s gaze lingered on her for a little longer, in no small part due to her beauty, but also because he found it strange, why was a player taking their time to perform in a normal npc’s tavern? As far as he could tell, there wasn’t even a tip cup, she was playing simply for music’s sake.

As his brow furrowed and he studied her a little further, he took note of her clothing, a simple one piece dress with the bare minimum of frills to make her look dressed up, coloured a dark blue and  black, the colour of midnight with small white dots to resemble the stars of the night sky. She looked absolutely stunning but at the same time she gave off a chilling air that made it impossible to even think of approaching her, she didn’t care about any of them and her aura was like a chilled shard of ice or a taut, tense wire. Ready to draw blood at any interference.

A corner of the Inn would have some kind of bard or musician, playing an instrument to give the whole inn some remnant of vitality and vibrancy with their old school and jaunty tune, often times a simple wooden cup would be on the floor in front of them to serve as a tip box.

Rei went through a number of these pubs until he finally came across one that was rather different, firstly, the bar here was a player, an attractive young girl with fair, nearly verging on pale flawless skin, she had long, straight cut, black hair that reached down to her waist, despite it’s lack of accessories or perhaps because of it’s plainness, it looked strangely doll like in their perfection, her eyes on the other hand matched it to an eerie degree, a pair of icy pale blue eyes that seemed to only momentarily glance over to his entrance with utmost disinterest.

His eyes casually glanced upwards before widening in surprise, this guy… was a player, with an orange cursor. Something which only happens if the player has committed a crime, and the most common crime out here was in fact, murder.

This realisation caused Rei to stop in his tracks, staring seriously down the alleyway for only a moment before the figure already disappeared around the next corner.

“… I guess that has nothing to do with me,” he murmured to himself, faintly hoping that nothing would come of this as he continued to search for pubs.

Considering that the theme in this city was a European medieval look, all the taverns were similar to the Silver Horned Inn that they stayed at on the first floor, a rarity there, but rather common place over here, ale stained, creaky wooden floorboards, wooden furnishings with tables and stools, a number of rugged looking npcs hanging around in groups loudly ordering food and drink causing the simple bar maid to run around the place actively, a few shady looking npcs sipping drinks in the corners whilst giving everyone that comes in the narrowed stare.

“Hm…?” Rei gave a small unenthusiastic sound as he and his friends looked over, now noticing the somewhat flashy looking person in a bright blue and white haori and with two katanas, there were several things going through his mind, but first, dang was he tall and second, he really went all out for the samurai look huh?

As he wondered on how to explain himself, he found that all his friends turned to look at him to answer, he almost wanted to ask why they were giving him that accusing expression, it wasn’t his fault! Though he supposed it kinda was...

“Ah… We didn’t exactly offend her or anything, it’s just that she sent us on an errand,” Rei shrugged with a small half grin, waving the small paper slip in his hand,

As he spoke, his mind went ahead to comprehend what was going on after an automatic well natured response, a little late, but he just realised that this person was a player, which he found strange, considering this first city is half full of people in despair unwilling to step outside the walls and were waiting out for a miracle. People usually kept to themselves as far as they experienced. Granted, they did only spend the last near month starting to get out there.

Rei appeared to be a young adult in his early twenties, with olive skin, short black hair and average build, he didn’t look that remarkable except for his vibrant blue eyes, wearing rather simple and casual clothes, a sand coloured v-necked tunic tied with string and dark grey trousers, quite possibly the exact clothes he spawned into the game world with, but over that was a black sweat jacket with a pair of white stripes down the sides, pinned on his chest was a little golden crown with the words [KING] written onto the bottom, which, whilst something he clearly custom bought, didn’t seem to have any remarkable effects except for resembling modern world clothing.

He didn’t seem to be wearing any gear at all at this moment in time, except for the slightly tattered blue flowing scarf he had wrapped around his neck, a brilliant gradient shade reminiscent of the ocean on a summer’s day, the quality of the item quickly set it apart from the rest of his shabby appearances as proper equipment.

Turning around, he continued on his way, giving the pair a wave of his hand, when he looked away, he let the smile on his face drop off like taking off a mask, it’s less that the smile wasn’t genuine, but it was more that Rei couldn’t smile for long periods of time without being tired or feeling like an idiot.

As he walked down the street, his eyes casually scanned the pair, honing on any sort of wooden sign for a tavern that protruded from the few establishments in the area, he only noticed the people around enough to dodge around the crowds, but as he moved he noticed a few players here and there and he also caught sight of a figure scurrying in the alleyways, clad in a black cloak and in a hurry.

His eyes narrowed only slightly at the strange sight, but he didn’t stop nor did he really think too much about it until he walked past the opening and looked in, seeing the cloaked figure’s black running away into the distance, a strange emblem of a coffin on their back.

“It’s uh… par for the course, we’ll be fine against just wolves,” Rei quickly found himself reassuring the woman to not worry about him and his friends, there was Rossa and her family and now these two, just how advance was the AI? It was getting a little ridiculous…

“hm! Mister is really strong, probably,” Marta cheerfully supported him but gave a uncertain ending,

“What do you mean probably?” Rei pouted, crouching down to narrow his eyes at Marta in a playful accusation,

“Well, I mean… I couldn’t see anything in the cave when you saved me,” she pouted right back, more so than he could attempt and glanced away, giving her excuse,

“I suppose you’re right,” Rei shrugged and relented, “Well, it was nice to meet you two again, I hope you two stay well and out of trouble,” he flashed a small smile and intended to say his farewells here,

“Oh my, it really is you!” the mother gasped, pulling a hand to cover her open mouth before the pair walked on over to greet him properly,

“Hello mister!” the girl waved cheerfully,

“Good morning sir,” the mother gave a small polite bow on the other hand, “I’m sorry, we never introduced ourselves, I’m Irena, and this is Marta,”

“Hello!”

“Ah, right, I don’t think we introduced ourselves either, I’m Rei,” he introduced himself back in reflexive response, quickly drawing up a small smile as best as he could, still, he was confused and impressed, did the system really store memories like that for simple npcs like this? It couldn’t be…

“Rei-san… are you going somewhere today as well?” Irena smiled, tilting her head gently, engaging in pleasant conversation,

“Y-yeah, we’re planning on hunting some wolves and venomous wargs out in the forest later today,” he nodded back, explaining his purpose here,

“My, that sounds dangerous,”

“Anyway, enough errant thoughts, let’s get searching,” Rei shook his head to try and gather his thoughts and focus on the task at hand, as he began to walk down the streets he noticed a pair of npcs he supposed he shouldn’t be too surprised to see, it was the mother and child from the dark cave quest on the second floor, the mother and daughter appeared to be on a outing shopping for groceries,

He didn’t think to say anything to them as he walked past them, after all, it wasn’t uncommon for a game system to use identical npcs to fill in the crowd, but at the same time, he can’t really say he’s seen the same person all that many times…

So consider him shocked when the daughter pointed at him,

“It’s you! The nice mister Adventurer that saved me!”

“Huh?” Rei stopped in his tracks, looking left and right for the source in disbelief,

“Mom, mom! It’s him!” the daughter tugged at her mother’s hand, pulling her attention over,