By the time Kaldalis got back into the city, he had dismissed his concerns about the dungeon. At the end of it, he’d come through with nearly capped sword and shield, a handful of experience points, and some miscellaneous raw materials for crafting. The manager seemed to be a blowhard anyway. It was possible he wasn’t actually banned from anything, and he was just talking a big game.

Once he was back inside Baimer’s walls, Kaldalis wasn’t sure what he should do next. There was plenty of time before he needed to find Garyung and get to the meeting, so he didn’t really want to just sit on his hands for hours until then. He had no idea where Balrim and Myrin were, but he suspected that if he headed towards the castle, he might be able to find Reno and Ess. It was unlikely - but possible - that they might need his help with something. Or, at the very least, they might welcome a break from the boredom of what passed for questing here in Baimer.

It was surprisingly easy to find them. The castle was a bustle of construction activity, but there were surprisingly sparse adventurers. It didn’t take long to spot the only two women in leather armor darting around talking to people who seemed aggravated at being interrupted. It was almost more trouble getting to them without tripping over a construction worker.

He arrived right as a talsar in a ruffled shirt was fixing them with a serrated-toothed sneer and telling them where they could stick their investigation.

“Kal!” Reno said with a surprised smile. “Right on time.”

“Why?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

“This questline has a lot of weird mechanics,” Reno said, “especially around objectives like this fuckin’ guy.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder, indicating the snooty Talsar.

“We literally just need to kill an hour,” Ess explained. “To progress the quest, we have to come back after that.”

“An hour, huh?” Kaldalis said. “I have more time than that to kill. I thought the dungeon was going to take until the middle of the afternoon but I’m free and clear.”

“Wait, you did that already?” Reno said, eyes flicking to the left where Kaldalis knew there was a clock on the UI.

“It was a shockingly short dungeon, and the wait wasn’t worth it,” he grumbled. “It was… Interesting, but not fun.”

“Too easy?” Ess asked. “Or no worthwhile loot?”

“Both,” Kaldalis said, “Just level 10 stuff from the drops, and the monsters were lower level. But it was a joke all over. During the early trash, my healer literally pulled out a book and fucking ignored the fight. Everything was fine. When my HP started to dip a staff member chucked a heal at me. Literally zero tension.”

“Bleh,” Ess said, nodding. “What’s the point, then? Where’s the fun without a chance of failure?”

“Yeah,” Kaldalis agreed. “I found some fun later on when I started fucking around, but it got me in real trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” Ess asked. “A decent fight?”

“I wish,” Kaldalis said with a smirk. “After I got out, the dungeon manager gave me an earful. I’m apparently banned for life from running the dungeon again.”

“Yikes,” Reno said.

“Why?” Ess demanded. “What did you do?”

“Apparently it was a safety thing,” Kaldalis admitted. “After the first boss, I was bored out of my mind so I pulled wall-to-wall. And the last boss they set up this narrative of a stealth section, but I just marched up to it and started swinging.” He shrugged. “Apparently that was dangerous, even though it’s a fucking dungeon.”

“Who would have been in danger?” Ess asked.

“Apparently the guide,” Kaldalis said. He shrugged. “We had kind of a tour guide telling us about history and geology and all that. It would have been kinda interesting, if I had gone with my mom or something. For a dungeon, though, it was kind of disorienting.”

“Maybe she didn’t count as part of the party,” Reno ventured. “What if she was still operating under permadeath rules?”

“I wouldn’t have let anything happen to her,” Kaldalis said, though even to him, he sounded defensive. “I’m a damn good tank. And they had backup on hand, like the healer who bailed me out when the party healer just stopped paying attention.”

“Not saying you would have,” Reno said quickly. “Or that you even could have, since they obviously had safeties in place. But look around you, dumbass.” She gestured, encompassing the whole castle. “This whole place is a big vacuum-sealed safety bubble. You going a little bit off-script is probably the closest she’s ever been to death in her entire life.”

Kaldalis was about to protest, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ess absently rubbing the back of her hand, where her real-life body had a nasty scar. She’d had a real life near-death experience. If she, as a survivor, saw a parallel, then perhaps he needed to shut up about it.

Different people had different thresholds for danger. What Kaldalis considered mild to the point of boredom, Iarsa could have seen as waving around a loaded gun. Maybe he had been the asshole.

“Anyway,” Kaldalis said, changing the subject. “If you’ve got a whole hour, we could get back to the inn to grab lunch before you need to pick it back up, right?”

“Yeah, good thinking,” Ess said with a smile. “I think we were just gonna skip lunch, but we definitely have time.”

“So tell me,” Kaldalis said, gesturing for the pair of them to lead the way. “What’s this I hear about an investigation?”

The trio made their way out of the castle while Reno and Ess talked very candidly and openly about a murder mystery. Apparently as part of the storyline, the Zaran royal treasurer had suddenly vanished. The questline guided them through retracing his steps, and eventually discovering that he was a part of some larger cover-up. An ambiguously-worded letter from the treasurer indicated that he was going to break his silence, revealing the conspiracy. A couple of quests later, the pair of them dug up his corpse in the woods. They were now trying to investigate the murder.

“The NPCs are pretty real, but they’re kind of… In on the joke?” Reno explained. “They have to go through the same motions and sequences for the sake of the story, but they know it. Everyone we interact with is like a part-time actor doing a bit.”

“Yeah, we talked to Garyung about it a bit yesterday,” Ess said. “He didn’t spoil anything for us, but the murderer is still in working in the castle. Once we solve the mystery according to the plot’s plan, they’ll be dragged off and arrested. But as soon as we move on to the next bit, they’ll be released from custody until the next quester comes through.”

“Jesus,” Kaldalis cursed, suddenly horrified. “That’s fucked up. Imagine you get a big prestigious job in government, but at the same time as you have to maintain the whole country’s finances, you have to memorize a script and do improv acting for clueless rubes off the street twice a day. The indignity. The torture. These AI are… Well, they’re people, right? Real people? And they’re being subjected to-”

Reno stammered wordlessly for a moment, and Ess looked away. He realized that the topic of the reality of the NPCs in this world was probably treading dangerously close to having a conversation about Heluna. His entanglement with her was still something he wasn’t entirely comfortable talking about. Ess had been pretty encouraging about it on the boat, but he still hadn’t been exactly happy to discuss it.

“Just… Kinda weird,” Kaldalis said at last. “Everywhere else things seem to continue to develop and unfold instead of looping back. Like, Onirioago isn’t going to finish her trial and then get perp-walked right back out to Cotanaku to let her start her scheme all over again to let the next punk unravel it and get her arrested again. Right?”

“Early quests are always rougher,” Ess said with a shrug. “Right? Think about the original starter zones in Colossus in comparison to the expansions. Just like any creative profession, game developers build on their previous experience. This whole questline was probably a first pass. That’s why before they went live, they put everyone on a boat to show them the proper system.”

“It’s uh,” Reno said, clearing her throat. “It’s something alright.”

“So okay, you’re solving this mystery,” Kaldalis said, shaking his head and trying to put the moral issue out of his mind. “Do you know who did it?”

“I think so,” Ess said, “but I don’t have any genre savvy at all. I could be way off-”

“Excuse me,” someone called to them from across the street. “Excuse me!”

Kaldalis looked over to see a youthful human man in a red and white uniform composed of a short-sleeved shirt and short pants. He was speedwalking in a peculiarly conspicuous way. He carried a messenger bag over one shoulder and a bright red hat in his other hand.

“Kaldalis?” the man asked, looking around the trio as he put his hat back on his head.

“Yo,” Kaldalis said, at the same time both Reno and Ess pointed at him.

“Letter for you, sir,” the man said, producing a sealed envelope and handing it over.

“Thanks,” Kaldalis said, turning it over in his hands to look at it. It just said his name and a rough description of him - more than enough to identify him. “Uh, any idea who it’s from?”

“Sorry, sir,” the messenger said, adjusting his messenger bag. “I just carry it.”

"Sure, of course,” Kaldalis said. On instinct, he fished a half-doubloon coin out of his pocket and flipped it to the messenger. “Thanks again.”

The man caught the coin with a brief grin before turning on his heel and speedwalking away. His ill-fitting hat immediately bounced off his head and he deftly caught it and carried it in hand as he had when he arrived.

“Onward to mail, I guess,” Ess muttered.

“What is it?” Reno asked, as Kaldalis opened up the message.

He immediately knew who it was from. He turned it to show first Reno, and then Ess.

In the middle of the page were a familiar four letters in a familiar hand.

“Help.”