“Well, that’s a disappointment,” John sighed, looking at the window. Part of him had hoped he would luck out and directly roll into an Adventure that had the things he needed to save Delicia. Even though his powers were bullshit, he did not possess such a level of cosmic luck. ‘Running into as many attractive women as I do should be all I can ask for.’

They had spawned in some kind of highland city, as loosely as that term applied. The number of houses scattered between the rocks, craggy hills and mountains that penetrated the wavy emerald landscape was too high to be described as a village. With all of the gaps between the houses and the lengths of the streets that connected the clusters that stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, city wasn’t right either. It was a major population centre, but a very sprawling one.

Perhaps because they were entirely artificial, the people walking around did not care whatsoever about the duo that had just spawned in the middle of their city. It couldn’t be said that they were overlooked because they fit in either. The primarily presented garb had that rough, medieval linen look, with the occasional rich person in silk drapery walking around.

More importantly, none of them had a halberd the size of a person, glimmering with the iridescent power of all elements, resting over their shoulder. Most common around were the kind of knives people used to cut meat with. In medieval times, before the advent of manufactured cutlery, people tended to have their personal eating utensils on them when they went somewhere.

“This is all entirely made up by Gaia, right?” Metra asked, gesturing with her free left at their surroundings. She stopped while pointing at the nearest house. Like most of the others, it was primarily made from cobblestone and two stories tall.

“Technically speaking, all of reality might be,” the Gamer responded. “If the whole dream thing is true anyway.”

Metra gave his chest a backhanded slap. One of her ears flicked in irritation. “You know what I mean, you wordsmithing bastard,” she chastised him. “These people aren’t real, right?”

“That is correct,” John told her.

“Mind if I start murdering them?” the First of Wrath asked.

This was a question that did succeed in making John hesitate. “Well, de-facto they all die the moment we leave anyway… and they are essentially NPCs…” he voiced his thoughts. “But I’m not sure how comfortable I am with seeing humans murdered in front of me.” One of the people that walked past them, a man with large mouse ears, caused him to amend that statement, “Humanoids getting murdered in front of me. I know it has no consequences, but seeing it done in person rather than through a screen strikes me as something that could train my brain in bad ways.”

“Hmm,” Metra hummed, thoughtfully tapping her shoulder with the handle of her weapon. “Depends on how sapient these puppets feel, right?”

“That’s definitely true,” John agreed. “If they only have the appearance, it doesn’t matter much. Let’s test that. Hey!” The moment he called out, one of the people who had previously just moved around uncaringly suddenly turned towards them.

“Hello, citizen!” the person, a man in his forties, responded with the cheeriness of a ‘sound happy’ voice line by a B-list voice actor. “It is a wonderful day today!”

John looked up. It looked like it was about to rain. “Debatable,” he responded.

“I DON’T KNOW YOU AND I DON’T CARE TO KNOW YOU!” the man suddenly and angrily asserted, practically shouted, before turning away.

Amused to a tail-wagging degree, Metra looked to John. “Murder time?”

“Behave,” John chuckled and scratched the wolf berserker behind her new ears. Predictably, it was quite effective and Metra let out a high-pitched sound from deep within her throat. It was difficult to say whether she was pleased or pleading for more. “I could get used to you being so well trained.”

“Throw me a bone every now and again and I’ll play nice, Master.”

“I thought we didn’t want to do the dog puns.”

“No, I didn’t want you to do dog puns,” Metra corrected. “Anyway, what more do you need?”

“They could have had a bad day,” John said. “Let’s talk to two more people, then I’ll be sure. Hey you.” The random person he talked whipped their head around with so much force, it looked like it dislocated for a moment. Then the rest of their body followed suit.

“BEEP!” they said.

“Uhm, what?”

“BEEEEEEEP!”

With that, they turned away and kept on walking. Forehead in wrinkles, Metra smugly looked at John. “One more,” he insisted and tried to pick out someone who looked at least somewhat normal. Once he had spotted a man in his thirties who looked, dressed, and walked normally, he addressed them. “Hello.”

“How can I help?” he asked.

“How can I help?” someone else asked Metra in the exact same voice.

That was enough for John to make the call, “…Alright, go ahead.”

The third word was barely out of his mouth when the plasma burst propelled Rex Magnar out of its resting state and into a guided, wide swing. With immense brutality, the drumming and riffing weapon cleaved apart the person in front of him, turning the man from a human into scorched halves on the dirt road. Cracks spread out among tremors, strong enough to rattle the wooden roofs of the nearby houses.

The person that had addressed Metra first did their best to regain their balance. All around people wobbled, somewhat over-exaggeratingly got on one leg. Only after the enchantment-caused earthquake was over and everyone stood completely still again, did they all, uniformly, react to the corpse.

““AAAAAAAAAAAH!”” they all screamed in one of four voices. The vast majority of people scattered into random directions, with a select few coming closer, hands raised.

“You will pay for that!” one of the people closing in, a woman that couldn’t have been older than nineteen, declared boldly. She was of average muscle mass and easily a head shorter than Metra. Despite that she hurled her fist at the barely clothed wolf girl. The knuckles connected with the toned midriff and the latter did not yield. In another act of NPC defiance, the woman punched again and again.

Metra just stood there. “This is almost too funny to get angry,” she said, only for her smile to slowly sour. “Too bad I’m really good at getting angry.” Grabbing the woman by the throat, the First of Wrath had snapped her neck in an instant. The body turned into a ragdoll when she dropped it, twisting and folding more like a pretzel than a corpse.

“Is this…” John started to get a hunch what Gaia was referencing with this entire place. “No… she wouldn’t… no, actually, she definitely would.”

While he monologued and Metra slaughtered the other NPCs uselessly throwing their non-lives away, a man approached John. “Hello there,” he greeted the Gamer.

“General Kenobi,” the Gamer responded in absent-minded reflex. Then he shook his head. “Sorry, shouldn’t you be in a state of fear?”

Putting a hand on his stomach, the man laughed badly, “Ha Ha Ha. You are very funny traveller.” Suddenly his expression got very serious and his entire voice changed to a deeper, brooding one. “Have you heard about the slaughter at Merl Plaza? A woman with blonde hair is supposed to have killed twe- thirte- fou- fifteen people.” He got to finish his sentence when Metra took a pause to scan the surroundings. “Truly a grave day for Teilgir.”

“When did that happen?” John asked drily.

“I hear it was zero seconds ago.”

“Not a particularly smart AI, this one,” John just said it to the man’s face, before tapping the side of his face two times. There was no reaction to that. When the Gamer averted his gaze, the man started to move. When he quickly returned the focus back to the NPC, they froze again, waiting for the conversation to continue. “What if I told you I’m with her?” he asked and pointed over his shoulder.

“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” the man suddenly shouted in an already familiar voice and ran away.

John looked after him for a little while, then his gaze jumped on the man in full steel armour that ran towards them. The design was plain and adequate, an armour a knight or city guard should wear on duty. The front of the pointy helmet was open, revealing a mildly chubby face.

With the conviction of the just, he declared, “Stop right there, criminal scum! Nobody breaks the law on my watch!” As this was being said to John, Metra was occupied with killing the last few assailants. “I’m confiscating your stolen goods. Now pay your fine or it’s off to jail.”

‘This entire Adventure is an Oblivion reference,’ John thought and prevented himself from sighing. ‘Metra, could you come over here?’

‘Why are we changing to mental communication?’ the First of Wrath asked.

‘Because the NPCs here can only react and they only react poorly. As long as I stay silent and don’t avert my eyes, this guard won’t do anything. He’ll wait for an answer.’

As if to test that hypothesis, Metra did a couple of swings in the general direction of the guard’s head. She looked like a baseball player testing the weight of their bat while preparing for a homerun. ‘True enough,’ she said when the guard continued to stand there, frozen except for the rhythmic pattern of angry breathing. ‘What now?’

‘Well, I thought I’d leave that up to you,’ the Gamer responded. ‘This is your Adventure. General power levels seem to be too low to properly fight something, but murdering them all could be cathartic. Alternatively, we could try breaking out of prison. Your call.’

Metra thought and John had a hard time keeping up the eye contact. Staring at the pasty-faced guard was incredibly dull and even if they had a spark of life to his eyes, the Gamer wouldn’t have found it in him to get lost in them. What made it even harder was the crowd of NPCs that walked to the plaza and engaged both in the stock photo equivalent of conversation and overexaggerated lamentations of the corpses lying about. Individually, one had to add, causing John to hear the same badly acted line several times in succession. Somehow it got funnier each time.

‘Goddammit, my brain is absolutely conditioned by Oblivion memes,’ he realized, the corners of his lips trembling. ‘I watched one compilation too many with Lee recently.’