Ch12: Briefly Back to Reality & A Chance Encounter

“Hnnh...!” Leanna winces as the IVR headset lifts up and off of her head. “I always forget how uncomfortable this damn thing is...”

After undoing the restraints Leanna stands up and stretches, cracking her neck in the process. Her frail body aches all over. As usual. “Should have changed into something more comfortable too...”

She then turns to her monitor and checks the time. It has been about two hours since she got home and jumped into the game. “Nice, that is some good time dilation there.” Definitely worth the slight throbbing in the back of her brain. “Not sure how long I was in the character creator, but I should have time for another day or two after I have some dinner... It’ll also give me a chance to look up some videos on how to properly butcher those animals. Sure that will be fun to do while eating...”

Shaking her head, Leanna walks over to her tiny kitchen. It always feels so weird leaving an IVR game. Going from a strong and healthy fantasy barbarian who just ate some food to her normal always aching and tired body which hasn’t had a bite to eat in over eight hours. She doesn’t think that she’ll ever get used to it.

Now Leanna just has to figure out what to have for dinner before she can get back to her game...

Krvavy opens her eyes to the soft light of the rising sun. The disorientating feelings of entering into the game quickly fade as she sits up. There was a slight bit of a stabbing pain for a brief moment, but it wasn’t as bad as it was the first time and it should only get better each time she enters and exits the game. Saving up for a more adaptive system was definitely worth it, even if the thing is still pretty outdated.

“Alright, what to do today...?” she mumbles to herself, “Some more wandering about? Maybe try hunting a bit so I didn’t watch those videos for nothing?”

Leaving those questions up in the air, Krvavy grabs her axe and rises to her feet. Despite sleeping on some grassy rocks she doesn’t feel sore at all. Guess that is one of the many perks of going for a physical build.

As she heads off and continues to explore the area, Krvavy is left alone with her thoughts. Usually that is a bad thing. But not today. Here she can forget all about her sad life as Leanna and instead focus on adventuring as Krvavy. It helps that this world feels rather real, even though she knows it is just a game. She doesn’t have to go through her day in a tiring haze of frustration in an uncaring city of glass and steel. She can simply do whatever she wants to here.

And right now what she wants to do is take in her surroundings and enjoy nature. She could never do this as Leanna. The pain that she would inevitably feel from all this hiking would drown out any satisfaction she’d get from the experience. Of course, that is assuming that she would even want to spend one of her few days off travelling somewhere just to hike.

Approaching the edge of the plains, walking through some grassy and shrub covered foothills, Krvavy suddenly comes to an abrupt stop. There is a faint smoky scent in the air, along with something a little mouth watering. If she had to guess, Krvavy would say that there is a camp somewhere nearby.

How interesting.

With no reason not to, Krvavy makes her way towards the source of the smell as stealthily as she can. After a few minutes of walking through the grassy hills, she spots a thin plume of smoke just a little bit away.

Creeping up the next hill and crouching behind a wide tree, she glances down towards the source of the smoke. Just as she thought, there is a camp, though it is fairly basic with little more than a few bedrolls surrounding a small fire. What catches Krvavy’s eyes, beyond the pot of some sort of stew resting amongst the coals, is the fact that the camp seems to be occupied by three Orcs, two of which are men and one is a woman.

They are not really what Krvavy was expecting.

In games like this Orcs are typically generic barbarians that wear leather and pelts. Kind of like what she is wearing, just covering more of the body. But that doesn’t quite seem to be the case here, as these three Orcs are wearing woollen clothing. Specifically, they appear to be wearing dark red tunics with fur trimming along with circular fur trimmed hats. The two males are also wearing some scale lamellar armour over their tunics, while the female Orc has similar looking armour resting on the ground beside her.

Honestly, looking at the three of them makes Krvavy feel a bit naked. Granted, she is essentially naked, what with her only wearing a loincloth and all. She hasn’t really been thinking about that while out here all alone in the wilderness, but now that she sees three very clothed people...

Shaking her head free of those thoughts, as this is just a game and this isn’t her real body, Krvavy considers what to do next. She has no idea if these Orcs will be hostile or not. If she remembers right, the description for Orcs said that in this world they have problems with the more civilized races. But she is playing a Drakling, and Draklings don’t seem to be one of those civilized races. Pretty much the opposite, really.

Whether they are hostile or not isn’t really the problem, when she thinks about it. The problem is if she can handle a fight against three Orcs. She doesn’t mind having to fight, as she has the start of a rather combat focused build going on here, but she’d still rather not run head first into some enemies that she can’t win against. Dying from her first encounter isn’t the most fun way to start a game.

Annoyingly, Inspect doesn’t help. It just brings up the description of what an Orc is. That does make sense though, as she didn’t get to see the attributes for any of the animals she used it on either. But that means she can only guess how strong these Orcs are.

Hmm... Maybe if she got closer...?

Well, since using Inspect isn’t helpful, Krvavy will simply inspect them the old fashion way.

Between the two male Orcs one is noticeably larger and it looks like he is ordering the other two around, though Krvavy can’t hear what they are saying. Resting on the ground beside him is a war-hammer, which she would have called crude a few days ago, but compared to her axe... While the hammer is larger than what would be historically accurate, it is still much smaller than what Krvavy prefers her fantasy weapons to be, which is a bit of a disappointment.

The other male Orc has a large quiver of arrows and what appears to be an unstrung bow close to him. Seeing that brings a smile to Krvavy’s face, as he’ll have to string that bow up before he can use it, which could give her an advantage if she rushes at them. Or at the very least it removes the advantage that they would have, as she should be right up in their faces by the time it is ready to loose some arrows at her.

The female Orc has a fairly simple looking spear resting beside her armour. There doesn’t seem to be anything special about it. Out of the three Orcs, Krvavy figures that the female one will be the easiest to fight, mostly because she is the only one without her armour on.

None of their gear looks all that impressive, and this is pretty close to Krvavy’s starting area, so these Orcs shouldn’t be too hard to fight. It isn’t exactly good game design to have high level enemies right next to a tutorial zone. Though some games do do just that...

Honestly, there is really no reason for her to just charge right in and attack them. They might be friendly, and Krvavy doesn’t want to piss off the main inhabitants of this region right off the bat.

So... how should she handle this?