A quest. I let the concept sink in, silent and unmoving. A quest in itself isn’t a foreign concept to me, I’ve been on countless quests in my time back at castanica, running random errands for merchants and visitors. Escorting the occasional popori or human to the various camps outside of the city, it’s surprising how much they fear the wolves, those pups were hardly a threat. There were also the boring quests like gathering of resources, nothing unmanageable for the young me.

Born in the heat of the Argon war, I never met my parents. I wondered the streets of castanica along with the other orphan castanics, fending for ourselves, scrapping a living by running errands for the adults. Estellda called me a walking cliche, but such is the reality of war. When I saw the call for young castanics to participate in a ground breaking project on the noticeboard in the plaza, I ripped it off, keeping it for myself and never looked back. It was my calling, a chance to be great. Little did I know it would take me to the city of elves.

The formation of the Valkyon Federation was a great stimulus to trade. Castanica may be small but it’s always busy, no doubt in part due to the activities in Pleasure Street. The other races would flock there just to catch a glimpse of the forbidden. The other obvious reason for traders and visitors would be the excellent weapons and armor crafted by our master craftsmen.

This quest however, if I’m actually on it, is very much different. If it really is a Estellda described, this quests allows me to bend time and space much like the adventurers. If NPCs and adventurers are governed by a different set of rules, then it seems the adventurer rules started applying to me since I awaken. I am however still affected by the world resetting. If I can somehow make more adventurer and less Npc rules apply to me, it’s very possibly the key to me breaking free of the reset cycle.

“Red. You there?” Estellda’s face suddenly comes into focus before me as she stops spinning around.

“Yeah, just thinking about what you said.” I focus my attention back on Estellda “go on.”

“Great! I thought you went afk for a moment, didn’t think NPCs could do that.” Estellda moves back towards the drawing on the ground.

“Afk? Oh that trance you adventurers sometimes get into. Yea.. I was just thinking about what you said... Please go on...”

“OK back to the time line.” Estellda steps towards the last untouched fifth of the line, “currently we’re somewhere here in the patch, we just got Gunners and the level cap got raised to 65.” She turns to me and adds “A patch is what we call it whenever eme makes a great change to the world and erm level cap would be...”

“It’s kinda like a limit on how strong we adventurers can get.” Bree explains for Estellda. It’s great that they’re explaining the jargon before I even ask now.

“Remember how I said you weren’t always in Baldera? That you only recently appeared? The fact that you’re a gunner is too much of a coincidence. I’m convinced it’s related somehow.” Estellda draws a new line intersecting the main timeline to mark the location of the patch. She then draws a short line parallel to the main timeline, much like the timeline for adventurers. “This is your line Red, from the moment you awaken.”

“So you do think I’m an adventurer like you.” I said, a strange feeling in my gut as I refer to myself as an adventurer.

“Kinda sorta but not quite at the same time.” Estellda moves to the adventurer lines, extending them so they’re about the same length as the main timeline. “See our timelines will follow the flow of the main timeline, yours does too, just starting at a different point in time.” She steps back closer to my timeline, “However, your timeline ends everytime the world resets.” Estellda draws a line parallel to mine. “And you get a new timeline because you always respaw... You always reappear at your original level until we awaken you. You following so far?”

I nod. “Mmhmm...”

“Good. So the thing about quest cutscenes, at least in Arborea, is that unless you complete the entire sequence, you’d have to do it again. I can’t say with certainty that this is the case but I’m pretty confident it is.” Estellda smiles, “the last time the world crashed before we could find out much but this time we can plan our moves carefully before talking to Fraya.”

“So... If I’m not mistaken, you’re saying we should fight Freya again?” I don’t really like where this is going. Even though I know I can just awaken again, it’s not a pleasant experience and definitely not something I want to do over and over again.

“Who said anything about fighting?” Estellda’s smile widens into a grin. I felt a chill run down my spine. I really don’t like where this is going.