Chapter XXXIX – Men in the midst of trees.

27th of Summer, 5859
Outskirts of Mount Curry, Casamonu

Trees. They’re quite the common sight, unless you’re in Hell. Or Heaven. Or a metropolis. Or space. Or in a black hole. Thinking about it, trees aren’t a common sight at all for a lot of people. Thankfully, Gemeinplatz in its northern parts were chock full of trees that mass deforestation would be impossible without an Industrial Revolution of sorts. For miles the ocean of green stretched and… Hey, haven’t we done this sort of intro to a chapter before?

In the midst of the countless trees lay a small party lead by one certain individual named John Brown, radical abolitionist, novice soap maker and non-conspicuous old man. “We’ve all memorized our lines, right?”

“Yes, old man.” Flanking old Brown was Ayomide, radical catgirl abolitionist, former maid café worker and present log drying expert. “I have those lines drilled so deep into me that I’m afraid I’ll never be able to pluck them out.”

“I bet I’ll be reciting these when I’m drunk.” Flanking the flanking Ayomide was young Shinasi, former winesop / oenophile adventurer turned not-so-radical abolitionist human tank. “At least it’d be better than me letting the beans spill when my mouth gets loose.”

This odd trio was travelling in single file through a small desire path that cut a clear line through the forest from Mount Curry. Clearly this path hadn’t been used much in recent times: errant stones and plants had worked tirelessly to make traversing the path harder than it should be. They all had to move in sync as any of them stopping made the person behind them stop completely, like what Brown decided to do at the moment Shinasi talked about being drunk. He stopped, looking at the young man directly. “Young man, we have no room in the budget for any drinks. You need not worry about spilling any beans without volition.” Brown made sure to especially stress the part about volition. “Let’s just say that I have some experience with those who spill beans with volition.” A certain Hugh Forbes, Brown would definitely curse his name if cursing others wasn’t a sin, came to his mind when uttering these words.

Shinasi had to stop as Brown stopped, which made him felt a bit stressed out when he was stuck so close between an old man and a catgirl. “Of course, captain, I’m an adventurer of my word who follows the adventurer’s code closely: don’t kill steal, have loot sharing enabled, and make sure you don’t accidentally use public chat instead of party chat.”

Brown looked at Shinasi as if the young man had spoken in Proto-Sino-Tibetan to him. “Have loot sharing enabled? May I ask what that exactly means?” He began walking once more, allowing Shinasi to walk and talk.

Shinasi fell silent for a second, not out of fear but out of needing to think after such an odd question of language. “Huh…” It wasn’t everyday that he had to explain adventurer lingo to a man who was completely otherworldly in understanding.

Ayomide decided to butt in as well. “Oh, I’m very curious as well.” She hadn’t exactly understood much in the oddly worded adventurer’s code either. Sure, Ayomide had heard adventurer lingo in the maid café before, but she was definitely unable to understood what they meant in any usable context.

The young adventurer found more motivation to exposit now that he had an opportunity to impress his catgirl comrade with his big load of knowledge. “You see, these were terms brought over by the first otherworlders. Apparently, back on Örf, many otherworlders would engage in an activity known as an ‘ememoharpiji’.” He sounded surprisingly intellectual when expositing needless information.

Brown did his best to spell out the ungodly word that Shinasi had uttered. “M-M-O-R-P-G?” He managed to land close enough with his Yankee understanding of phonology. “What might that mean?”

Shinasi was quick in satiating Brown’s curiosity. “It apparently meant something like ‘massively multi-player on-line role-playing game’ in a language spoken on Örf.”

“Massively multiplayer online roleplaying game?” Brown quickly translated this monster of a word into English so that he could break it down in a much easier way. “That in English would be… massively multi-player on-line roleplaying game.” A spark lit up in Brown’s old brain. “The abbreviation of that would be M.M.O.R.P.G., which sounds awfully similar to how that word is spelled in your language.” Having completed his dive into linguistics, John Brown came to the obvious conclusion. “I think that those otherworlders and I might have spoken the same language.”

“You don’t say!” The young adventurer clearly didn’t seem to be too shocked by this revelation as Brown was. “Many otherworlders come from Awmereighka, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the old otherworlders were Awmereighkan as well. That being said...” Shinasi’s eyes seemed to gleam more with curiosity now. “I’m guessing you participated in ememoharpiji as well? I want to hear how it was from a genuine otherworlder!” Grand clans and guilds, massive dungeon raids, thousands of participants… Shinasi had always heard rumors about how massive an ememoharpiji was.

Then came Brown to unceremoniously erase any and all glimmer of hope from poor Shinasi’s eyes. “I actually have no idea what this so-called MMORPG is, young man.” Having died exactly hundred and nineteen years before the release of the first multi-user dungeon (MUD), the aptly named MUD1, didn’t leave much chance for Brown to learn what an MMO or an RPG was.

“We don’t call him an ‘old man’ for nothing.” added Ayomide. “He seems to know nothing that the other otherworlders know by heart.”

“I suspect that is because the other Awmereighkans come from a completely different age compared to me.” Brown was still intrigued by the prospect of a 21st century USA potentially existing at the same time as the 19th century USA that he was ungraciously expelled from. Both of them somehow existing at the same time was the most ‘rational’ way he had managed to resolve the question of how he and Jacob could meet from more than a century away. Even then, this answer was quite unsatisfactory to him, but how could a 19th century man even manage to begin thinking of such topics? The old man simply lacked the words needed to describe the unreal situation he was observing. “Oh, what hath God wrought…” muttered Brown upon such contemplation. The alien reality that he found himself had managed to defeat Brown a long time ago.

Shinasi decided to let Brown be left existentially flabbergasted while he continued talking “As for what the terms I talked about mean, ‘have loot sharing enabled’ means that you should equally share your loot between your party members, and ‘make sure you don’t accidentally use public chat instead of party chat’ means that private manners should remain private.”

“I think you forgot the one about ‘kill stealing’.” reminded Ayomide.

“Right, that one is a bit harder to get for outsiders.” Shinasi continued on to explain what might be the most important article of the adventurer’s code “That means that you should leave the killing of an enemy to the person who has dealt the most damage to it so that they can get the XP that they deserve.”

“Ekspee?” Brown was honestly getting tired of all the weird abbreviations. “What might that mean, young man?”

“It stands for ‘experience points’ in the Awmereighkan language if I remember correctly.” The one to reply was Ayomide. “That Jacob always loved to brag about his experience points to customers. He and his former party members apparently engaged in an activity called ‘grinding’ to raise these points.” She added a shrug. “For what reason I don’t know.”

Shinasi was more than happy to exposit even more. “You see, these experience points drop from everything you hunt down. This XP is some sort of magic energy that improves your strength when you collect enough of it, and those who engaged in ememoharpiji would strive to collect as much as they could to ‘level up’ and reach new heights.”

“These ‘points’ are supposed to ‘drop’ from everything you slay?” asked Brown, who had done a fair bit of slime hunting in Gemeinplatz. “I’ve never seen anything unusual drop that I could call an ‘experience point’.”

“Oh? I thought that otherworlders could see them.” Now was Shinasi’s turn to be surprised. “Apparently these XP points were visible on Örf, but no one in Gemeinplatz has visually seen them like the otherworlders describe.” His mind went to a rumor he had heard on the playground as a child. “I even once heard that the otherworlders could even open up a ‘window’ to look up their ‘stats’ gained by leveling up.”

“I can open up windows, young man, but I talk about the ordinary windows that are tangible and make some sort of sense.” Gamer lingo was most enigmatic to John Brown. He really wished that he could meet a 21st century otherworlder who’d explain all this nonsense to him.

“Well, maybe it’s just an old man thing.” Ayomide simply brushed off all of Brown’s existential crises thusly. “People’s senses tend to dull as they get older.”

“Young lady, you need to learn how to respect your elders!” Brown would definitely need to set up a proper lecture, with an appropriate number of quotes from the Bible and ancient Greek classics, to teach her how old people didn’t deserve to be dismissed just because they couldn’t sense some ‘experience points’.

“Sorry old man.” Contrary to Brown’s observations, Ayomide wasn’t trying to be disrespectful. She simply had lacked any sort of upbringing that had her interact with any elders, for old slaves tended to be discarded long before they reached their 60s like Brown did, and the rude old customers (who were also oft the most lecherous despite also being the ones who were oft most religious) in the maid café hadn’t exactly inspired a healthy sense of ‘respect for the elderly’ within her.

“Anyways,” Shinasi deliberately entered the scene once more to dispel the lightly tense atmosphere “adventurers still hunt for XP, despite the experience points in Gemeinplatz being invisible or intangible.”

“Wait, you can’t see or feel the XP?” Ayomide’s eyebrow was raised up high with skepticism. “So, you believe in a force that you can’t properly observe? How can you tell if experience points are real?” She made a simple comment that could be made about many beliefs in and outside of Gemeinplatz.

Shinasi scratched his head. “I mean… I do feel stronger after defeating a foe, which means that I must be gaining experience points.” Then he made an argument that was simply flawless in its nature. “Hey, all the otherworlders and adventurers can have been wrong about experience points, right? I’m just a newbie adventurer who hasn’t felt the true strength of XP yet.” Simply put, due to an absence of MMORPG-like mechanics in Gemeinplatz making XP actually real, ‘experience points’ had become something akin to a pagan belief practiced amongst adventurers. Before Brown could interrupt him with further questions, Shinasi suddenly stopped walking. “Oh, here’s a place that we could grind for XP now.” He pointed towards a small divergence in the path, which slowly got wider and cleaner as it approached it.

“Hmm? Where would that lead us to, young man?” Brown was quite curious as to what ‘grinding’ might entail.

“It’s a dungeon, the Minor Curry Dungeon to be exact.” His adventurer instincts made him take a few steps towards the place. “I’ve been here plenty of times with my old party. Wanna take a look?”