[Vol. 4 pt. 10]
It had been a long while since I went through the starting quests properly. Even on my female alts, I more or less rushed through the starting zone and skipped a lot of the optional quest objectives that served as tutorials to the game.
I helped Lily out with some questing, but that was after she had already cleared the starting area on her own. She wasn’t a total noob when she came to my dungeon for the first time.
But Meadow? Now, Meadow was a verified, absolute noob who needed to actually do all the introductory quests in order to learn how to play.
Considering the fact that she was supposed to be the embodiment of the world and all that… I had to admit, she was kind of ignorant about how the world—how she, worked.
There were a good few examples that proved such.
“You see those exclamation points above the NPCs’ heads?” I asked, pointing at one such NPC while Meadow stood by my side. I couldn’t see the exclamation point myself due to having already done the quest a long time ago, but I knew that the NPC in question was a quest giver for new characters.
“A-ah! I do!” Meadow answered. “The glowing, golden mark above his head!”
“Yes. That’s a quest. It means he’s an NPC who will give you a quest.”
“And what is the purpose of quests?”
“They’re objectives that you do for rewards.”
“I see! I like rewards! Does that mean I should do every single ‘quest’ I see?”
“Well, you might be at it for a long time if you try to do every single one, but there’s nothing stopping you.”
“Alright! What sort of objectives do they feature?”
“I think this guy will tell you something like he’s worried about his daughter playing in the woods behind the house because of goblins, so he makes you go out and kill five goblins and bring back their ears.”
“Is—is his daughter going to be alright?”
“They’re NPCs. They’re fine. Even if a player comes through here and kills everybody, they’re all going to respawn as if nothing happened.”
“Oh. Right. Okay. So, do I just go up and talk to him?”
“Yeah. Once you’re within like five feet of him, he should start talking to you and offer you the quest.”
“Okay!”
With that, Meadow walked up to the quest giver and triggered the automatic dialogue.
“You’ve got to help me!” the quest giver, an older man who looked like a stereotypical fantasy farmer, said. “My daughter won’t stop playing in the woods no matter how many times I tell’er there are goblins out there! Could you do us all a huge favor and go kill some of them?”
Meadow, holding her hands together in front of her, nodded with determination. “I will! To keep everybody safe!”
“Thank you! Just go out into the woods behind the house and you should find them. Bring back five of their ears to prove you’ve killed them.”
“Umm… should I collect two ears per goblin, or only one?”
“Thank you! Just go out into the woods behind the house and you should find them. Bring back five of their ears to prove you’ve killed them.”
“I—I know that part. But… umm… for the ears… should I—”
“Thank you! Just go out into the woods behind the house and you should find them. Bring back five of their ears to prove you’ve killed them.”
Meadow looked back at me and saw me trying not to laugh too much. That only made her expression even more confused.
“He doesn’t have other dialogue lines,” I said. “No matter how many times you try to clarify what you mean, he’ll just say the same thing unless you either abandon the quest, complete it, or attack him.”
“A-ah… okay. Right. That makes sense.”
“Also, you can only get one ear per goblin anyways. They’ll automatically go into your inventory’s ‘quest item’ category.”
“Oh! Okay!”
“Now, ready to go goblin hunting?”
“I think so!”
So, leading the way, we went into the forest behind the quest giver’s house where it didn’t take long to find short, weak goblins roaming between the trees and bushes. Even the strongest ones were only level three, so they were of no real concern. Also, because of the kind of game it was… they all had their dicks out. They didn’t wear clothes, of course, so every single goblin walked around with his dick out.
“Alright,” I said, “now, since you’re a druid, you can either attack things with your staff by whacking them to death, or you can use a spell. You start with the Thorn Shot spell, so I’d suggest opening up with that.”
“How do I use that?” Meadow asked.
“All you have to do is choose a target and then mentally focus on which spell or ability you want to use. In this case, pick a goblin and then concentrate on Thorn Shot.”
“Okay. I think I can manage that.”
Meadow took a deep breath, looked at the nearest goblin, and concentrated. A moment later and the bulb of a rose appeared in the air next to her to shoot out a single, large thorn at the goblin that nailed him right in the shoulder, taking out a third of his health bar.
“I did it! Now what?” Meadow asked.
As for the goblin, he noticed his attacked and immediately hardened upon seeing her. His dick, anyways. After all, she was a cute girl and he was a stereotypical, horny goblin. Of course he was going to get hard seeing her. So, even though she just shot him in the shoulder, he ran at her with grabby hands and a throbbing cock.
“You can cast it again once it’s off its cooldown,” I said, “but you’re going to need to smack him around with the stick unless you want to get molested.”
Meadow blinked at me a few times. “E-eh?”
Before she could react, the goblin reached her, jumped up onto her leg to wrap his arms and legs around her calf, and started humping her leg like a horny dog.
“It—it feels weird!” Meadow whined before swinging her staff down at the desperate goblin, taking out another third of his health and knocking him off of her. “I thought—I thought he would attack me!”
“He technically did,” I said. “Look at your arousal bar. Even if he didn’t do any damage to your health, and even if you don’t like it, ‘sexual attacks’ like that forcibly increase your arousal. If he manages to get your arousal all the way up, you would be forced into submission and be unable to fight back.”
Meadow’s eyes widened when she heard that. Considering that we were in a party together, I could see her arousal bar and saw that it was already about a tenth of the way filled. “That’s not fair! I—I didn’t even enjoy that! How can it say I’m aroused?!”
“You’ll start feeling it whether you like it or not if it gets higher.”
Speaking of which, since she was so distracted talking to me, the goblin managed to get back onto her leg and started humping again. Meadow’s cheeks turned red as a result, but I wasn’t sure if that was because her arousal hit twenty percent or if it was because she was simply embarrassed, frustrated, or both. Whatever it was, the goblin wouldn’t ever get to cum as one more swing from her staff was enough to knock him out.
“So this… this is the kind of world that this is,” Meadow said. I wasn’t sure how I felt about hearing something like that come from her of all people. “Now what?”
“Well, you’ve beaten him into submission. You can either finish him off by killing him, or you can… well, for a lack of better words, rape him. Or spare him. But only killing him will get you the material for the quest,” I answered.
“What is the point of the other options?”
“Well, the rape option is there for, you know, sexual pleasure. Just for fun, basically. The mercy option can boost your status with the Virtues. Oh, right. Rape will also boost your status in the eyes of the Sins. Killing is considered neutral and, depending on the context and what or who you kill, can influence your status among either or both.”
“I see… then I suppose I should kill him for the quest.”
“Yep. Unless you feel like riding some goblin dick.”
Meadow’s cheeks turned an even brighter shade of red as she shook her head from side to side. “Absolutely not! Unless… maybe… if you are the one controlling the goblin… but I would never force myself onto a random monst—”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence seeing as how a nearby goblin ambushed her from behind, jumping up and knocking her over. He planted himself right against her ass with his cock going between her thighs, his small hands gripping her waist.
Unfortunately for the goblin, I wasn’t going to let him have his way with Meadow since I could tell she wasn’t into that sort of thing. If she was into it, I wouldn’t care. It was a game, after all, and it was just an NPC monster.
But if Meadow didn’t want it, I wasn’t going to let her suffer from it. That was why all I had to do was kick the goblin to instantly kill it. Just a light kick from me, a max level player, was enough to immediately overkill the goblin to the point where the option to spare it didn’t even pop up. It was immediate death.
“You have to be aware of your surroundings,” I said, helping Meadow back up onto her feet. “Even if you don’t like it, monsters and other beasts are still going to try and rape you.”
“Ugh… why would somebody enjoy a world so dangerous?” Meadow asked, straightening out her dress after getting back on her feet.
“Because it’s not real to us. It’s just fun. Nothing matters because it’s all just inside of a video game. No matter what happens to somebody’s virtual avatar, their real body is still perfectly safe.”
“I see… I understand. I suppose I am the same way now. This avatar is not truly me, only a shell that I am temporarily inhabiting.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
Meadow then looked down at her thighs and noticed a few spots of cum on them, causing her to look up at me with teary eyes and to whine. “It—it got on me…”
“It’s just cum.”
“But it’s not yours!”
Hearing that made me raise my eyebrows. Hearing herself say that made her blush.
Now, I could have teased her about it, but I spared her for the time being to instead let her know about a very convenient feature. “Open your status menu. Next to your equipment, where you can toggle the visibility of your helmet, there should be a button that looks like a showerhead spraying water. Select that and it’ll clean your body of any ‘dirty’ things.”
Meadow didn’t waste any time following my order, resulting in the successful purging of goblin cum from her thighs. “Oh, thank goodness. Okay. Back to the original goblin! How do I kill it?”
“Just whack it again.”
Meadow nodded, readied her staff, and swung it against the goblin’s side. That was all that it took to officially slay the goblin and spawn a small bag of loot next to it.
“A message should have popped up saying the ear was placed in your inventory.”
“It did!”
“Good. Now, that bag there is extra loot. It’ll probably just have a few coins in it.”
Meadow reached down to touch the bag and loot it. She then looked up at me and nodded. “Only coins!”
“Yeah, figured as much.”
“Now what?”
“Now you do that four more times.”
“Four more times… okay. I can do this. Wait, why four? Shouldn’t I have gotten one from the one you killed?”
“I’m over-leveled and did all the damage, so you don’t get credit for it. The game is set up that way to discourage power leveling by having low-level characters leech off of high-level characters.”
“Ah… I suppose that makes sense. Alright. I can do this! And I’ll try my best not to let them h-hump me anymore!”
“I believe in you.”
With a determined nod, Meadow found her next goblin victim, went to the maximum range that would allow her to use Thorn Shot, and started the battle. The distance between them let her get off two Thorn Shots before the goblin could reach her, and then all she had to do was whack him with her staff once to finish him off, resulting in the safety of her legs from goblin dick.
She looked exceptionally proud about that.
Once all five goblins were slain, excluding the first one I killed and then the other two that snuck up on her and tried to double team her only for me to smack them out of the air with my shield before they could ever touch her, we returned to the quest giver where Meadow was finally able to unlock a new dialogue option.
“Ah, you’re back! I was worried about sending somebody so inexperienced, but you’re really something special to have returned so quickly!” the NPC said. “You’re like a hero!”
Meadow giggled and rubbed the back of her head. “Ehe… I’m nothing that special.”
“Here, please, let me reward you!” The man then proceeded to pull a roasted lamb leg out of thin air to hand to her. And by hand to her, what he really did was instantly transfer it to her inventory. “Just cooked this myself! Was going to have it for dinner, but you deserve it more! Also, if you’re still looking for more jobs to do, I hear the elders a few houses down have some work that needs done.”
“It’s no problem! And you didn’t have to give me your din—”
“Also, if you’re still looking for more jobs to do, I hear the elders a few houses down have some work that needs done.”
“Ah. I forgot.”
“Also, if you’re still looking for—”
Meadow left the repeating NPC to return to me. “Alright! Quest complete! Are you proud?”
“I am, good job,” I said, reaching forward to pet the top of her head which made her smile even more.
Now, as proud as I was of her… there was a feeling that I couldn’t quite shake—or rather, a question.
Why was she was the way that she was? She was seemingly an artificial intelligence based off of the world itself. Shouldn’t she have been incredibly smart? Shouldn’t she know basically everything there was to know? Know how to fight and what the world was like? It felt like, sometimes when we talked, she did. Yet, watching her actually play, it was like she had no idea what she was doing and needed her hand held through all of it.
Was her knowledge limited in some way, or was she just pretending to be so helpless so that I would hold her hand through everything despite not really needing it?
I wasn’t sure. Her existence just seemed incredibly contradictory after watching her actually play using an avatar.
But of course, no matter how contradictory she might have seemed, she was still Meadow. And at the end of the day, that was all that really mattered.