Samantha Carrillo's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Samantha was ten steps past the warning post when her HUD chimed. A small icon blinked in the corner of her vision, gold and insistent. She stopped on the dirt path and opened it. A tutorial quest she had skipped on her first day sat there, still flagged available, with a marker pulsing back toward the plaza. The quest title mentioned a training yard. Below it, a warning line in red told her the reward had already been delivered to her inventory, unclaimed. She pulled up her inventory and saw a wooden box she did not remember. The system tag named it after a captain. She had not opened it because she had not known it was there. She stood on the path and did the math. Two days to Hollowmere. The sun was already sliding. If she turned back to finish the tutorial, she lost the afternoon. If she walked on without whatever was in the box, she walked into the wilderness underleveled. She thought about the silent players on the benches and the girl with the blue fox who had been kind for no reason. Then she turned around. The training yard sat at the far edge of the plaza, behind a wooden sign with a painted arrow she had walked past three times without reading. Inside the fence, straw dummies stood in rows. A quest marker hovered over a rack of practice swords. She followed the prompts the way she should have on day one. Swing here. Block here. Hit the dummy ten times without missing. Her arms learned the motions faster than she expected. A bar in her HUD filled. When the last dummy fell, the quest closed with a soft tone and her level ticked up twice. She opened the box in her inventory and equipped what was inside. A leather breastplate settled over her shirt. A plain sword weighed down her hip. Her stat panel rewrote itself in green. She stepped back through the plaza gate as the sun touched the tops of the trees. She had lost three hours. She would not reach Hollowmere before dark now, and she would have to sleep somewhere on the road. But the sword on her hip was real weight, and the breastplate did not let her forget it was there. She tightened her ponytail and started walking east again, slower this time, watching the tree line.