Nyatali stopped a little outside of the clearing.

"Well, here you go Hashi. Rats."

We're in the woods near the village. The rats are scurrying everywhere. I just stand looking at them for a bit.

"Wow, that's a lot of rats. How much is considered thinning?"

Nyatali stabs a rat near her twice. It dies. "Just kill them until you get bored. That should be enough. You haven't done this before?"

"Nope, this is my first rat hunt."

I start stabbing rats. And more rats. Fighting with a knife is a bit different from sword fighting. Even though I'm only first level, the rats don't have a chance. One or two hits kills them. Nyatali is efficiently ridding the area around her of rodents. So am I. Occasionally a rat bites me, but not all that often. The slow in combat regeneration takes care of that.

"So this is going to slow down the coming Doom how?" I ask.

"Like I said earlier, how can you stand to listen to the intro text?" Nyatali replied. We're running from rat to rat, cleaning up the woods.

"Tammy was talking, and I wanted to hear what she had to say. Won't we run out of them eventually?"

Nyatali seemed surprised there. "Wow, you really haven't played much. We'll never run out of them. The first ones should already be respawning by now."

Nyatali was surrounded by a flash of light, but she kept on fighting as if nothing had happened. After killing a few more rats, I got a flash of my own. [System: Level up! new stats are available for assignment.]

Nyatali said, "That's good enough for now. Let's loot the rats and turn in the quest."

After looting the rats, we had a treasure trove of rat skins, rat tails, and copper coins. I suppose I could make some shoes out of the rat skins.

"Wow, that was fun. I haven't ever killed any monsters here before."

Nyatali looked at me. "That was amazing if it was your first time."

"That was my first time killing monsters. I spent a lot of time training in the fighter's hall on my previous character."

"And you never killed a mob the whole time you played? What were you doing?" Nyatali looks puzzled.

"Grinding skills and practising. I did try combat against some wolves. They killed me. It was fun."

"Girl, you are weird. Why make a new cat girl character?"

"I like the way cat girls look. I like the ninja outfits as well. I was wondering during character creation if I could do the paladin thing wearing ninja gear."

"I suppose you could. Probably not very efficient, but we would match." Nyatali laughed at that. "Do you want to keep playing together?"

[Nyatali would like to be friends. Accept?]

"I'd really like that. I haven't played with anyone here yet."

I have a new friend. Yay!

We turned in the quest with Tammy. [Thinning the Horde complete. +100xp]

Tammy give us each two healing potions and another inventory bag.

"Ok, Nyatali. You seem to know your way around here. What's next in our grand adventure?"

"Get out your map. See these symbols. Those are people with quests. And this symbol is you, and this one is me. See?"

"Got it. On to the next quest or do we get rid of the rat pieces?"

"Well, this starter area is good for getting the first few levels and some basic armor and weapons. It's not like the rat parts are going to leak in the bag. That would be gross."

"Killing rats was a lot of fun. Even more fun than getting mauled by wolves."

"You have a strange idea of fun Hashi."

We find the next quest giver. Tammy told us about this one. Ginger, the blacksmith, needs help finding missing tools. During Ginger's speech, I watch Nyatali. She's always moving. The longer I've spent with Nyatali, the less real the Townsfolk seem. I can hear Tammy giving her speech to another group of players. It's same speech she gave us, not a word different.

"Nyatali, is Tammy's speech the same every time?"

"Of course it is. All the quests are scripted. That's how this game works."

Huh. I'll have to think about that.