Chapter 25: Chapter 25: Butcher

The duo stood at the entrance to the room, one looking much more bewildered than the other. "Okay, so they're not here, and they never came here. That sucks," Luke muttered in a high-pitched tone, entering the room and zigging and zagging about.

"I probably shouldn't take anything that's theirs, but I think we can use this room until they show up since I paid for part of it." The navy-haired male gestured towards the bed near the far right of the room, hastily made with creases in the covers, but made nonetheless.

"That's my section."

"If they are not here, where should we begin to search next?" Nikola gazed from one end of the room to the other. Luke's friends had taken everything of value with them, and only scraps remained, though she hadn't tried checking the bedside tables. She walked over to the leftmost one and pulled the top drawer open.

"What are you doing?" Luke's voice had a twinge of annoyance to it. He seemed to ignore her question about where they should start searching next, shouldering it away in favour of questioning her in turn.

"Perhaps they left you a note, or some indication of where they may be going. Now, where should we look next?"

The male's shoulders tensed and drew closer to his neck and face. "I have no fucking clue. I didn't think they'd be this pissed at me for getting them killed - I checked my messages with them earlier this morning, and they still haven't responded. Not a single one of them. They should have respawned and found their way here, but all their stuff is in the same place it was when we left. Are they off levelling up so they can go back to Denburrow to challenge you again without me? Or did you somehow kill them in a way that made them not come back?"

The latter half of his sentence sparked something within him, and his steps quickened. "Hey, that's actually possible. Since you went through character creation, maybe the game is counting you as both an NPC and a PC. That could probably cause some wonky stuff to go down-- oh damn, and I have seen you glitch out a few times now. This could actually be a thing." He balled his hands into fists and looked over to the cloaked female with determination.

"Nikola, you said you wanted to know more about the game and being a player in it, right? Let's open up your Menu and take a look at what's there. We should be able to see what the computer chose for you."

Nikola had been rifling through his friends' side tables while her companion spoke, and had found nothing of note - not even an actual note. One of them had left the core of an apple to rot, which seemed ridiculous when there was a garbage can only a few steps away.

"Acceptable. I will put the red-haired girl down so my hands are free to navigate the magical floating rectangle." She didn't wait for permission before she started to peel his covers back and flopped her down on roughly the middle of the mattress. It conformed to her body like a pillow, and she tucked her in neatly. It could have been her imagination, but her face instantly looked more peaceful as she adjusted her limbs and made sure the pillow was resting under her cherry-coloured mane.

The Awakened NPC joined Luke across the room, and drew the symbol in the sky that summoned her 'menu'. It swished into being dutifully, appearing in front of her in a pixelated haze of colours. Luke pulled his up as well. With both of them up at the same time, it became obvious to her that hers was markedly different than his. His was angular and perfect, while hers was falling apart. Was hers... sick?

"Okay. I want you to press the button that says 'Character Info'."

[Settings], [Character Info], [Inventory], [Messaging], [Relationships], [Tutorial] - each button was plainly there for Luke, in a sort of Windows desktop-like setup where one could click each of the icons and bring up the related info.

Nikola's blue box wasn't quite as straightforward. Each and every one of the words was broken and flickering, with an array of black dots wedged between them. She could barely see the 'buttons' he had mentioned; everything was scattered about like confetti in the wind.

To her, his box has no buttons present on it. It looked like an empty sheet of blue with an image splayed across its back.

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"What do you see when you look at my rectangle, Luke?"

"I see a glitchy-ass menu with the World of Wills' emblem on it. You can't look at another players' menu; it just shows up with the game logo on it. Why? Can you not see a Character Info button?"

The [Messaging] button was the only one she could make out; the envelope that it used as its picture was relatively unmarred by the 'glitchiness', as he called it.

"I cannot."

Luke's lips drew into a disappointed line. He went over to his bedside table and pulled the drawer open, pulling out a notebook and some paper from inside. He cracked the notebook open.

"Alright, plan B, mon amigo. I'm going to draw you what the screen is supposed to look like, and you just try to click where the [Character Info] button is supposed to be."

He scrawled out an approximation of the layout and then handed it over to Nikola. His drawing was competent, but it was nothing like what hers was presenting her with. There were bits of text that appeared similar, but it was almost like fragments of an entirely separate screen were overlaid on top of hers.

"That is far cleaner than what I am presented with. I will use this as a map to guide me."

Nikola reached out and booped the part of the screen that he said would be the Character Info section, and immediately her screen flew apart like a swarm of flies dispersing, loosing a loud and broken pang as it did.

"Whoa, what happened?" Luke couldn't see the text on Nikola's screen, but he did see it burst into bits as he watched on in anticipation.

"The screen has split," she delivered in a level tone, scanning each broken bit individually, "and I am confident now that I am seeing two different screens fighting for dominance. One is similar to the one you showed me, but the other is-- raw, written in a language I do not understand."

The navy-haired male's eyes went wide. Could she be seeing her NPC details at the same time as her PC details? "Nikola, can you see the word 'Butcher' anywhere in there?"

Butcher was Nikola's special NPC class; a class that only she and a select few other NPCs in the game had. Its skills could be performed with either an [Axe] or a [Knife], and happily her [Cleaver] was considered both at once. It was one of the rare weapons in the game that belonged to two weapon families.

Nikola's eyes narrowed as she focused on the jittery, fuzzy words. They were tiny and multi-coloured, moving the entire time she tried to parse them - but after some careful observation, she spotted the word Butcher buried within them.

"Yes."

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