13. Roadside Glasses

The walk out of the village was an unpleasant one. The villagers in the way each had something unique and quirky one-liner to say, but I just pushed them aside and continued on.

After crossing the bridge above the river, I was once again in nature, yet I did not feel its peace. The birds’ chirping and the bees’ buzzing turned into annoyance. The chilly breeze was frustrating.

The mountain ahead, my destination, towering above the clouds with steep walls of grey and snowy white peaks seemed like a face, laughing at me. Weak. Pathetic. Its expression was a screaming grin, deafening any inviting sound of nature.

As I stood there, growling at the sight before me, I realized I was not the one making that sound. Before me, inside the bush, there was an undead. Its torso was impaled upon the bush. Eerily though, it did not seem to realize. All it did was growl and claw in my way, unable to move.

Grabbing my pickaxe, I walked up to the zombie and raised my weapon. It was an easy kill, almost unfair. Like stepping on a flightless wasp, or shooting a mosquito with a gun.

But just as I was about to kill it...

“Wait!” A voice cried out behind me. It belonged to a woman, but not just any.

Her skin was snow white. Not in a metaphorical or poetical or theoretical way. Her skin was snow white. Her hair long and blonde. Before her pearl blue eyes sat a pair of glasses. She wore a green tunic with grey and purple lines.

“Please, don’t kill him,” she begged with urgency.

All in all, she was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

However, I was pissed.

“Yeah, I can’t do that,” I said, then raised the pickaxe again.

She squealed, then spoke hesitantly. “I... I can pay you! Please, just hear me out!”

Money? I like money.

I lowered the weapon with a grin. She sighed, wiping her forehead.

“I did not think he would wander this far from the camp. Sorry about it.” She fixed her posture and formally held a hand onto her chest. “I am Emma Goldshoe; youngest daughter of William Ironbark and Mary Goldshoe, and a proud member of the Ironbark Clan!”

“Hi, my name is Axel.”

She side-eyed me as if waiting for some epic response. I just stared at her.

“What? Are you unfamiliar with the Ironbark Clan?”

I nodded.

Emma sighed again. Her proud stance disappeared into a hunched back, as she spoke with a tired voice.

“Who am I kidding? How could I fool anyone? I am no member of the Ironbark clan! Once was meant to be, but no more.”

“Lady, I have no idea what the Ironbark is.”

She recoiled, covering her mouth. “D-Did you just say... lady?”

“Yeah. You look like a librarian. I guess you could maybe be fifty or forty? But even if, you look way younger! Like... you look at least thirty-five!”

Her eyes went dead. A thousand-yard stare. What I meant to be praise turned out to be something else.

“I’m sixteen...” she muttered quietly.

“Oh... we are the same age...”

Silence. The awkward kind.

I had to break it.

“So, uh... You said something about money?”

Emma’s expression turned into a mixture of upset and disbelief, both battling in confusion. But she quickly fought her anger and sighed, adjusting her glasses.

“Okay, a deal’s a deal. I will pay you for not killing the zombie. However, I need you to do a bit more before being paid. I got a camp nearby, where this specimen must be returned. Could you help me out with that?”

“No.”

“I will pay you double!”

“Yes.”

– – –

I tied a rope around the undead and followed Emma into the forest. She said her camp was nearby, but that quickly turned out to be false.

Wrangling the zombie through the green made me realize something. This was an escort mission, one of the many tiny missions one could randomly encounter while walking the roads of Ancient Blades.

Emma was one of the randomly encounterable NPCs, but not from the base game. She was one of Weeboy’s creations. I knew this because I have seen her model before.

Emma Goldshoe. She was a part of the Cutey Followers modpack Weeboy made, however, she could not be found inside the game. This was because while Weeboy modeled her and wrote almost every line needed for her program, she was ultimately scrapped from the project.

Why? No idea. Some said that Weeboy was just lazy and forgot to make her functional. There were also rumors that her AI was bugged, and because Weeboy compiled most of his script from other mods, he could not fix it.

Either way, I was on high alert. Mods were not just lines of code in this world. They were real. Part of the basis that formed the universe. Matter and law.

A simple glitch could tear a wound in the fabric of reality. In the blink of an eye, everything around me could collapse, all because someone did not fix his code in another universe.