Suchi.

Dan leapt back when Big Bro, who’d vanished seconds before from his perspective, reappeared, his wolf mask chipped and cracked, his robes faded.

“Where are the puppies, Big Bro?”

Henry brushed the snow off his shoulders. “The physiology of a Grey Wolf is ill-suited for a tropical savanna climate, so I took them back to their homeland."

Dan lacked the game knowledge to comprehend the absurdity of this statement. “Sweet. Hope they do well there!”

“I’m sure they will. Logging out for a minute."

Auckland, New Zealand, a seventh-storey apartment.

Henry slipped the VR helmet from his head and glanced around his room, taking in the real-world, his apartment, the city bathing in the warmth of November through the window.

He scratched the back of a hand, hard enough to draw blood. The pain level seemed accurate.

A package that had not been there when he’d left was sitting on his kitchen bench. With how long he’d been away mentally, it took a moment to remember his snacks being stolen by Alex. The package contained replacements ordered by drone delivery.

Strange...

He recalled conceptually that he'd spent months in a snowy forest, but the memories were vague, lacking most concrete details. Even the names of the two pups he'd raised were missing.

A bug? he wondered.

Hannes had many questions to answer once this quest was finished.

Suchi.

Only a minute had been spent out of the game, but due to Saana's time dilation the scenery had changed significantly by Henry's return.

The encampment was mostly deserted. The bald trainer and his friend were on their wagon, ready to go. Beside them, Caramel, atop a horse, was holding the reins of the shabby donkey.

Geri and Freki, Henry recalled, the memories flooding back to him.

“The bros have set off with Leon and Co,” said Caramel, her tiger mask shaking as she laughed. “Word on the street is that The Emperor’s been spotted not far from here.”

Henry didn't laugh, his mood too analytical and focused to fake amusement as he usually did.

By now, The Slum Empire’s forces would have noticed his guild’s workers going to harvest the corpse. In The Empire's position, he would orchestrate a fake event to prevent the invasion ending on an anticlimactic note - perhaps, summon a treant, pretend it had slain The Emperor by glueing fur to its mouth, then have the noobs 'slay the slayer'.

Moving along, Henry made Instructor Apari ride the donkey while he himself controlled the wagon, as it was the slowest of the transports and his Merchant bonus would reduce the speed deficit.

To the north end of The Horny Boar Fields was a road that ran east-to-west, parallel to all four of the Monster Killing Grounds used in the tutorial. As they travelled along this road, they passed King Leon’s noob assault force, giving a brief wave to the shirtless meatheads.

“Oh yeah,” said Henry to Caramel, “where did they find the donkey?”

“Running around the camp stealing food.”

"Ah..."

Henry, not as distracted as before, thought more seriously about her answer.

He recalled coming across the animal in a similar situation, greedily licking the contents of a...what was it...a pot...a bowl...of...Wolfblood Soup?

The shadow apple that’d been coughed up by King Torc flashed into mind.

...monster donkey? Maybe The Great Black One had fed the apple to the donkey before returning it?

Testing the theory, Henry tossed a strip of wolf-jerky to the 'animal'.

It snapped the piece up, swallowed it whole, then turned to him with a gluttonous look of anticipation.

“What the heck?" said Caramel. "Did it just eat meat?”

"It's probably too dense to know it's a herbivore," Henry lied.

Donkey and horses in Saana, as in real-life, were herbivores.

So it was a monster donkey...

Or perhaps Henry should be calling it The Donkey Tsar, or The Donkey Sultan.

A ridiculous image came to Henry's mind of the donkey boredly sucking grapes on a plush ottoman while another donkey, wearing a fez, stressed the consequences of the year’s wheat harvest failing to meet projections.

Bizarre.

Henry, testing another theory, clicked his tongue, sending a secret message. "DONKEY BRO, WATCH OUT, A WOLF!"

The donkey, seeing there was no more food on offer, turned its head and continued trotting along.

From its lack of response, Henry surmised the monster kings must have been taught the language separately by the Imbahalaala, or they were randomly programmed with it, or the donkey had a talent for acting, or it was very dumb.

Regardless, who knows, maybe a monster mount would prove valuable in the next boss fight?

He turned to Caramel, changing the topic. "Can you give the rapier back for a bit?”

“Why?”

Henry blanked out for a moment.

Why? Maybe, because, if he’d had the rapier with him, he could have stabbed the bloody Wolf Empress to death in a few hours and not spent months in a never-ending snowstorm subsisting on wolf meat while trying to sleep on branches and never knowing when the tree would collapse from under him due to the constant night raids. Maybe, because he would prefer to avoid a repeat of that hellish ordeal.

He gave a corny grin. "You know, with all these kooky events, there's a chance we'll get separated and I'll be forced to fight the last boss alone. If that doesn't happen, I'll throw you the weapon at the start of the battle."

Caramel detected the falsity in his words. "Nope. Not giving it back."

“I promise you, I'm not stealing it forever. Do you think I would stoop that low?"

"Absolutely. You've done two despicable acts already today...that I know of."

In addition to kicking her from the guild, he'd convinced her to sail a boat to him in the first place by saying he had something cool to show her.

But when one really thought about it, wasn't the improvised fire-wall system kind of cool?

Henry shrugged. "Well, I'm not swindling you this time. Trust that I have a good reason. And even if I didn't." Slipping off a glove, he twisted his ring.

-crusadingintheshadows: I'm your boss. Cough it up.

Caramel shook her head petulantly. "No, you're not. You've retired."

"That's very true," Henry twisted it back. "I have indeed retired - happily so with no regrets. But what I haven't done is purchased the pony farm yet.”

"How tyrannical," Caramel laughed, summoning the rapier and coughing it up.

While most wouldn't have taken much from the casual exchange between these two teens, beside them, riding on The Donkey Kaiser, the bald trainer had been listening intently.

When Instructor Apari heard that last sentence from The Defiant Flame, the trainer fell into a state of shock, his mouth falling ajar and his drawn-on eyebrows rocketing upwards.

The tyrannical pun...it was him! It was Him!

And so the group rode westwards, drawing ever closer to the Suchi River, the foliage nourished by its waters growing thicker and more lush. Soon, The Forest of The Grey Wolves, which seemed to have taken months to navigate, was bypassed in less than a quarter of an hour, as they arrived at the tutorial’s final stage, The Jungle of The Psychic Shadow Monkeys.

The Suchi Slum Central Market, where players and NPCs alike hunted amongst the stalls for the cheapest deal.

Elsewhere, a different piece of a different puzzle was slotting into place.

A striped gazelle had been weaving through the crowd of shoppers. As it passed a stall with a leaf painted on its roof, the animal came to a quick stop, before transforming into a young boy with antler stubs sprouting from his head.

Quinoaking38 tapped a stone tablet on the counter, bringing up a menu of the store’s goods.

"Not a single herb here, either. Damn it!" He snapped his fingers in frustration.

All he wanted was to grind out two or three Alchemist levels before heading off to school.

Behind the counter, an NPC was lounging in a hammock with a magical fan balancing on his belly, blowing wind in his face.

“Excuse me, comrade,” Quinoaking38 called out, “what's happened to the herb supply?”

The herbseller used his toe to point to a pamphlet nailed to the front of the stall. “An Earthfriend such as yourself should know.”

The boy gave the pamphlet a quick read. “Dread Curse of Sikarmilki?”

The Empire was apparently sponsoring a competition to formulate a cure for an ancient Earthfriend curse. For the team who contributed the most, generous prizes were on offer, from trips, land, mounts, rare items, to Slum Point bounties. Wanting to provide the crafting materials for free, The Empire’d purchased most of the city’s herbs. In cases of emergency, a small supply had been set aside at The Empire’s offices.

The herbseller increased the setting on his fan. “Stores within The City have been cleared out, too.”

"Awww man!" Quinoaking38 was even more frustrated now.

His village had fallen behind on The Slum Points Village Leaderboard, and most of them wouldn’t log in until after school, by which time the competition would be long over.

How tragic!

“Comrade," he asked desperately, "do you know where I can find Walrus Whisker? Fresh or dried, I only need half a basket of leaves.”

The herbseller opened his eyelids a few centimetres to study the Offworlder. “First of all, tell me who you are, boy?”

Quinoaking38 shifted around to display his Village armband. It showed a picture of a lagoon with bones sticking out of it.

“Ostrich Bone Lagoon Village, eh." The herbseller turned off his fan. "I’ve got a second cousin who works as a Cook there. You familiar with him?”

“Him?” Quinoaking38 scrunched his face in confusion. “I only know Terezia, with the long ginger curls. She makes a fine Tunnel Rat Goulash.”

A conspiratorial glint ignited in the herbseller’s eye. “That she does...that she does, comrade.”

Jumping out of his hammock, the man approached the counter and slid a folded piece of paper across.

Quinoaking38 picked it up and discreetly unfounded it, finding a scribbled man.

The herbseller whispered, “You’re familiar with the private holdings on the west bank of The Suchi? A small snake snuck into my tent last night; in the patterns it left in the sand, I happened to descry an estate over there which is as good as abandoned. A whole lot of ungathered resources, and the bare minimum security to spot a large-scale attack. No one's gonna notice a single Offworlder or a couple bushels of missing herbs.”