see black studs in the leather and a very suspicious set of scorch marks.
While he wasn’t sure he wanted to know where this armor had come from, he would try to find out if there were dragons in the area. If his brain intended to treat this game like reality, he would make sure he didn’t get turned into Justin the Crispy.
With another heartfelt sigh, he made the trade. He still had sixty-two copper, which meant he might be able to afford something on the weapons as well.
“Do you have any swords?” he asked. When he saw the prices, he heaved a third sigh. He had become good at sighing but apparently, that wasn’t one of the things you got levels in. “Okay, can you do anything for my existing sword? Sharpen it, or—”
“Of course, sir. We’ll remove some of the rust and sharpen it for you. Twenty copper.”
“Done.” Justin handed it over. He wasn’t sure how it would work to remove the rust, given that the sword seemed to be largely composed of the stuff, but this was a game and game worlds were better than the real world in most ways.
For instance, the boy handed the sword directly to him and he didn’t have to wait at all. The blade didn’t look like it would ever be on a list of famous fantasy swords, but it was recognizably made of metal now and it did look sharper. He equipped it and saw that his damage had increased by almost fifty percent.
Excellent.
Did his armor…smell? It kind of smelled—like smoke and bacon or, at least, he hoped it was bacon. He thought of the scorch marks and felt a little queasy.
“Have a nice day, sir,” the shop boy told him.
“You, too,” he said automatically. He turned and ducked into the sunlight, only to see a man waiting for him. It was an NPC with a blue band of cloth around his arm and he held a small package.
The man’s hand extended quickly and proffered the package.
“O…kay?” Justin took it, at which point the NPC simply stood where he was and blinked stupidly in the sunlight. After a moment of staring at him, Justin took a cautious step around him and walked away. At the end of the street, he looked back.
The NPC was still there and still stared at the side of the blacksmith’s shop.
“We could have made that a little smoother,” Jacob said to Nick.
“Hey,” the other man protested. “I’m not a game designer. He delivered the package.”
“So what will he do now?”
“I don’t know.” Nick stared at him. “I didn’t tell him to do anything other than that.”
Jacob sighed. Not for the first time, he reflected, it was damned good they’d bought the game rather than trying to make it themselves.
With no money left for a proper meal or an inn room, the two teammates headed out of town to make camp. It turned out there was a command for that, at which point the dwarf produced a campfire out of thin air—complete with a ring of stones—and Justin spent a few moments learning how to get the rabbit legs in his inventory to cook.
They smelled good—or, at least, he must be hungry enough that he imagined they smelled good. He sat on the ground and heaved a sigh. He’d never played anything quite this engrossing, glitches and all, but he was tired. He was suddenly so tired. His whole body seemed to ache.
Then, he remembered the package. He opened his inventory and found it, and the inventory screen disappeared to leave him with a strange bracelet in one hand. For a moment, he frowned, tried to decide what to do, and decided he’d play along. If this was a trick from the evil wizard, he’d at least have a good laugh about it. He slipped it onto his wrist.
He didn’t turn into a frog but an image did pop up in front of him, superimposed over the now-frozen fire. Even Lyle was stilled in mid-motion.
The man in the picture had grey hair and a bushy beard and he wore a white lab coat.
“Hello, Justin,” he said. “I’m Dr. DuBois.”
Chapter Seventeen
“You’re who?” Justin asked blankly.
The image kept talking, however. Apparently, unlike the rest of the game, it wasn’t something he could interact with.
“I am your doctor,” the man explained. “You are in a coma, Justin. Everything you see around you is a game being fed into your nervous system through the use of a virtual reality scenario. Everything