Gao stopped where the trees thinned out and folded his arms, watching the rice paddies below. Ryu caught up a moment later, still a little out of breath from the downhill walk. The morning air felt crisp against his skin, carrying the sharp green smell of wet rice stalks and the faint smoke from village cooking fires.
He spotted the ten players right away. They were a mess of grey tunics and mud, scattered across the edge of the field, laughing and pointing at everything like they had never seen real dirt in their lives. One had just chased a village boy and earned a loud scolding from two angry women. The rest kept wiping mud off their faces and shaking out their wet sandals.
Ryu opened the admin panel with a quick thought and typed up a simple starter quest while they were still too far to notice anything strange.
► NEW QUEST ASSIGNED
Title: Find Your Footing
Description: Two warriors from the
mountain are visiting the village today.
They are looking for capable hands.
Find them. Show them what you can do.
Reward: 10 Yang + possible opportunity
► Accept? [ YES / NO ]
The quest box popped up for all ten players at once.
Down in the paddies everyone froze for a second, then started talking over each other.
Marco read the floating text out loud. "Two warriors from the mountain visiting the village today, looking for capable hands." He looked up the slope where two figures were making their way down through the last of the trees. "That has to be them."
Dani looked at the quest box in her vision, looked at the figures on the path, looked back at the quest box. "It just gave itself to me," she said. "I did not do anything. I was standing here looking at a rice field and a quest notification appeared in my eye."
"Yep," Graypack said.
"I did not press a button."
"Nope."
"There was no menu."
"Dani," Marco said, "they are coming down the path, can we go."
She pointed at her own face. "There is a quest box, in my eye."
"I have one too. Everyone has one. Let us go."
Ser_Otomo_IV was already moving toward the path without waiting for anyone, his eyes fixed on the two approaching warriors with an intensity that had stopped being casual about thirty seconds ago. The warriors were maybe forty meters out now and the detail was visible even at this distance, the layered armor, the worn leather straps, the way they carried themselves, and Ser_Otomo_IV had gone very quiet in the specific way he went quiet when he was processing something at a level that precluded speech.
Then he found it.
"The left side of the chest piece," he said, to whoever was closest. "Where the shoulder plate ends. The armor stops there and the underlayer cloth goes the rest of the way and there is a gap, there is an actual gap between the plate edge and the cloth where you can see the skin underneath and the light is catching it and that is," he stopped walking entirely, "that is a real person's chest. That is a real texture. That is not rendered skin. That is actual skin with actual pores and an actual," he turned to Marco, "Marco. That man's nipple is 4K."
Marco looked at him. "Please do not lead with that."
"I am simply noting the level of detail."
"I understand what you are noting."
"In fifteen years of gaming I have never seen a secondary NPC with nipple geometry."
"He is not going to be happy about you saying that."
"He is an NPC, Marco, he does not have feelings about it."
They were close enough now that Gao had clearly heard some portion of that conversation, and his expression had shifted from flat to something that was one degree away from a problem. He looked at Ryu. Ryu looked at the treeline.
"City folk," Ryu said. "They appreciate craftsmanship."
"One of them said nipple," Gao said.
"He really appreciates craftsmanship."
Ser_Otomo_IV stepped forward and pointed, in the manner of someone presenting evidence. "The gap between the plate and the cloth, right there, the way the light catches the edge of the exposed area, the texture fidelity on the skin underneath, this is extraordinary work and I need whoever is responsible to know that."
Gao's hand moved to his hilt.
"City folk," Ryu said, with more urgency.
Before Marco could say anything Kuya Bong appeared from somewhere in the middle of the group, already at the front, already smiling, both hands raised in a greeting that was slightly too enthusiastic for a first meeting with strangers.
"Hello dear NPCs!" he said, with the energy of a man who had been waiting his whole life to say that to someone's face. "We have received the quest! We are here to help with the harvest! We are very hardworking players and we will not cause any problems!"
Gao looked at him for a long moment. "What did you call us."
"NPCs," Kuya Bong said pleasantly. "Non-playable characters, it is a term of endearment."
Gao looked at Ryu. "What is an NPC."
Ryu opened his mouth, then closed it. "City slang," he said. "It means honored locals."
Gao looked back at Kuya Bong with the expression of a man who did not believe that for even a fraction of a second but had decided to leave it alone for now. "He called us honored locals to our faces."
"He is very enthusiastic," Ryu said.
"I can see that."
Kuya Bong, who had not registered any of this as a problem, gestured at the air beside his head where his status window sat. "We got the notification. Find the warriors from the mountain. That is you two, correct? You are the warriors from the mountain?"
"We are," Ryu said.
"Excellent!" Kuya Bong clapped his hands together once. "Then we are in the right place. Ten people, all here for the harvest, all very willing to carry rice. Some of us are still finding our feet but we are improving quickly."
Gao studied him for another moment. "Why are you so loud."
Kuya Bong considered this seriously. "I am just happy to be here," he said.
Gao had no immediate response to that. He looked at Ryu again with the look of a man filing a formal complaint through his eyes.
Ryu pointed toward the village. "Headman's house is the one with the blue roof. Tell him we sent you for the east field and do not stand around waiting to be told what to do twice."
The players went, talking the whole way down the path, voices carrying back up to where Ryu and Gao were standing. Jett, who had been quiet through most of the exchange, fell in at the back of the group and glanced over his shoulder once at the two warriors before following the others through the gate.
Gao watched them go. "The loud one."
"Kuya Bong," Ryu said.
"I did not ask his name, I am asking why he is like that."
Ryu thought about how to explain a forty-seven year old man who had been playing Battle Realms since 2001 and had apparently decided that meeting what he believed to be fictional characters in person was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him. "He is very passionate about new experiences," he said.
Gao looked at him, then he looked back at the group disappearing through the headman's gate, specifically at Ser_Otomo_IV who was examining the gate's wooden hinge with both hands before anyone had even opened it.
"The other one," Gao said. "The one who keeps touching everything and talking about textures and detail and," he paused, "nipples."
"Again, he is very observant."
"He may be touched by the same sickness that rots the Lotus clan," Gao said, completely seriously. "We should have the Elder look at him before we bring him up the mountain."
Ryu choked on nothing. He turned it into a cough, which did not fool Gao at all, and spent a moment looking at the treeline while he got himself together. "He is not," he said. "He is just, he comes from a place where things are built differently, less detail. He finds the craftsmanship here striking."
"He found my chest striking."
"He finds everything striking."
Gao looked at him for a moment. "You talk like you know these people."
"I do not know them," Ryu said.
"Then how do you know where they come from."
Ryu opened his mouth. "They have the look of people who are seeing everything for the first time," he said. "You can tell."
Gao looked back at the gate, where Ser_Otomo_IV had stopped to examine the hinge before anyone had even opened it, and the village boy assigned to him was already staring at the sky with his arms at his sides. "They do not look like they came from any city I know," Gao said, and left it there, and started walking.
Ryu followed and said nothing and quietly opened the admin panel.
He had been meaning to add this since the first day and kept putting it off. He built it quickly, a relationship tracker sitting in each player's status window, visible to them as a simple meter next to each named character they had interacted with. Green for positive, red for negative, a number attached so they could see exactly where they stood. He tied it to actual NPC sentiment, which meant it would move on its own based on what players did and said without him having to manage it manually.
He pushed the update and watched it populate across all ten active players.
Through the headman's gate, about three seconds later, he heard Ser_Otomo_IV say "oh" in the specific tone of someone reading something that has personally implicated them.
Then: "Gao. Relationship status. Minus five."
Then a pause.
"That is fair," Ser_Otomo_IV said, to nobody in particular. "That is completely fair."
Ryu kept walking and kept his face where Gao could not see it.
Gao fell into step beside him and said nothing for a moment, which with Gao meant he was about to say something. "Whatever you are doing when you move your lips like that," he said, "stop doing it where people can see you. The Elder will think you are having vision. Two more weeks of that and he will put you in front of the shrine permanently."
Ryu pressed his lips together. "Noted."
"You are smiling."
"I am not."
"You are doing it right now."
Tsk….