The "EZ Life"

“…whoa!” I did a double take when I saw what else was in my inventory. I was freakin’ rich. Of course I had enough items to be worth a fortune a 100 times over but I had the maximum amount of currency allowed at one time in the game: 999,999 Kess. Huh? I could’ve sworn it was just labeled as dollars or coins, but it’s been about a decade since I’d last played so I was probably just misremembering.

I walked over to my desk. Huh? The map was a bit different as well. I was in the Callum Region of a country called Vonda. Yep, none of that was familiar either. I shook my head, rolled the map up and stuck it into a bag I’d set in my chair before going to sleep the night before.

If I was actually in the game then today was going to be the day I set out on my journey. I swept up my bag by the handle and opened the door to my room.

“I’m telling you, he’s going!”

“Over my dead corpse!”

“If you’re dead then you’re obviously a corpse, hag!”

“He’s my son and I’m putting my foot down, tramp!”

Two women were verbally squaring off across the kitchen table from each other.

“Rin!” “Sweetie!”

““Tell her you’re (not) going”” They tuned and shouted at the same time.

“Umm, what’s going on?” The older lady with long dark hair was probably my mother but who was this shoulder length blonde spitfire. It seemed as though they were disagreeing as to whether I would be starting my trainer journey. The other bit was my name which didn’t surprise me, it wasn’t my real name but it was the name I often used online.

“I really couldn’t stand losing you like I did your father. Please stay here, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“Professor Bright could probably comfort you.” The blonde jabbed.

Oh, boy, this was tense I didn’t quite know what the dynamic between me and these other two were so it was best to try and get them to tell me first. This was probably superfluous to the story anyway.

“It’s been our dream to go into the wild and tame the most powerful monsters we can find ever since we were young.”

Tears began to run down my mother’s face, “Rin, ever since you were appraised as a tamer I’ve felt so beside myself, I knew you’d want to run off after your father the minute you came of age, but now that it’s here I just can’t let you!”

What? There were so many question marks appearing over my head. Appraised? Tamer? Monsters? Listening to them talk I was beginning to realize, I’d made a lot of assumptions and you know what they say about assumptions.

“You know,” I looked over at the blonde, “I don’t think-” she began to growl, “I- I should probably have taken some t-time to consider things a bit more deeply and p-prepare a bit more”

“Don’t be such a wuss. You’ve done plenty of research, you’re probably one of the best tamers in our class aside from yours truly. This is so not like you, Rin.”

No, I haven’t! I have not done any research. I have game knowledge but if the scraggly god somehow messed with the game, or if this wasn’t even the game and just a world that resembled it at a glance…

My eyes widened. I was beginning to think through the implications of such a thing.

“Speaking of Professor Bright! Where might he be?”

“In his lab” “or by the river mill”

“Hey, wait!” The blonde tried to reach for me but I dodged and ran out the door.

“A mother’s wisdom always get through in the end, Amy.” I could hear my mother smugly rubbing it in the girls face as I exited the house.