Chapter 289: 26: The Quest

The traveling merchant reached out and squeezed Kit's hand, and then he said, "When you find that person, it will be announced to the world. Good luck in your quest this evening Kit, my dearest friend."

"What person?" she asked anxiously. 

"The person that I can also be," he answered as he hefted his pack. 

Kit's fluttering heart dropped like a stone into an inky pool of darkness as he walked away and left her standing in the sandy town square. She knew that the bright sun hadn't really dimmed, it was only that the sudden hope she had felt for a moment had brightened the world, and then fled. She couldn't even explain the flip flop of her own emotions. 

A flicker of hope still existed though, until she pulled up her menus to check her current quests. Nothing had changed. 

She swiped over to her friend list. ZipZing and Aishin were still logged in and still at the same location. Kit bit her lip as she saw Magna Silvam log in, and that the elf's location was also in Fogton. 

She messaged: "Are you really Lin Hao, the one who answered my first bug report?" 

Silvam's messenger this time was a green butterfly, that looked like a wind blown leaf as it delivered the quick reply: "Yes."

She stood there, long enough for the wind to push loose grains of sand into a ripple around the toes of her boots. The town square was only an outline, like many of the streets. Paving stones had yet to be laid, although the stone daises for the portals to each of the major racial capitals were in place along the northern edge. 

Finally she sent: "Who else can the traveling merchant be?" 

The little white mouse messenger, that ZipZing had gifted her on the day they'd met, gave her a sharp look and walked lazily around her to where Magna Silvam stood. The pretty blonde elven face had a very neutral expression as she bent to accept the message and then read it. 

"Well, that's definitely not the question I was expecting," Silvam commented.

Kit cringed with embarrassment. "How… how long have you been here? It said you were in Fogton."

"I was." Silvam rubbed her head with one hand, as though she'd forgotten that she had long hair here. She dropped her hand and then explained, "I figured that you probably wanted to complain to me, so I followed you here, but you were just standing there, so I wasn't sure that you hadn't already disconnected."

"You came here so that I could complain to you?" Kit asked. Her eyes teared up as she gazed at the wary expression on the other woman's face. Only apparently she really wasn't a woman, not that Kit had really disbelieved ZipZing, she'd just never met any man who seemed as gentle as Silvam seemed to her. 

"Yes," Silvam replied quietly. "What does it mean, who else the traveling merchant can be?" 

"I don't know," Kit complained. "He asked me how people know that they are the same person…" she summarized the odd conversation she'd had with the merchant nervously. Repeating the merchant's question about whether or not she wanted to be the wife of someone else felt like dropping a grain of salt into a wound.

Silvam didn't comment on that, and her expression didn't change, until she repeated, "When you find that person, it will be announced to the world?" She demanded, "What does your quest say?"

"I don't have a new quest," Kit protested. She admitted wryly, "I checked because I hoped that maybe…"  

Her voice trailed off, but Silvam didn't demand that she explain her hopes. For the first time, Kit really believed that Silvam was the same person as Lin Hao, as the elf frowned and entered a long message or note into her menus with incredible speed. 

She looked up at Kit after a couple of minutes, and said quickly, "Oh, sorry. I got distracted. What do your current quests say?" 

"I just have one for setting a boundary," Kit explained. 

"Can you add me to your party?" Silvam questioned, 

"Sure?" Kit agreed questioningly. She added Silvam to the party she was in, with Shrubbery, Ryullusion, and MatchlessMinion.

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"Alright, let's go," Silvam encouraged her. 

"Let's go?" Kit asked blankly. 

"Set the boundary?" Silvam replied.

The elf helped clear the lot without complaint, and watched quietly as Kit laid out the boundary and used her skill to set it. She even eased the discomfort of the desert night's cold after the sun set, with a warming buff that she applied to each of them.

Kit glanced at the elf, who was acting just as quietly sweet and helpful as she normally did when they happened to play together. After she completed the last layer of the boundary, she asked diffidently, "What did you think I was going to complain about?" 

Silvam's posture tightened suddenly, and Kit said quickly, "It's alright if you don't want to tell me."

Silvam gave her a wry smile and reached out uncertainly to give her shoulder a single short pat. "Ryullusion is right, you're stronger than I think," she said softly. "I know ZipZing is very unhappy with my refusal to restore your marriage with the traveling merchant, even though she understands why. I just expected you to be even more upset than she is, when you found out that it was me?" 

Kit turned so that they were face to face. The elven woman was a bit taller than she was, but she was way too pretty to be intimidating. "My heart broke," Kit said simply. 

Silvam flinched, but she didn't say anything.

Kit gazed into Silvam's eyes for awhile, and then asked suddenly, "You are like his parent aren't you?"

"What?" Silvam asked blankly. 

"The traveling merchant," Kit said simply. "And you're just protecting him aren't you?" 

Silvam's expression was a little strange as she hesitated before nodding. "Yes, basically?" 

"What if I really find him someday?" Kit asked. 

Silvam opened her mouth, and then closed it. A moment later she opened her mouth again and asked, "The person who will be announced to the world?" 

Kit blinked at Silvam as her interpretation of the traveling merchant's words found Kit's ears. "He will be announced to the world… not… do you?" Kit whispered.

"I think so, I really think it sounds like a quest that has been given to you," Silvam replied gently. "If you find an incarnation of the merchant who is not bound by the restriction against marriage, I won't interfere."

Even though it was still night within 'Living Jade Empire' the entire world seemed to lighten so much to her, that Kit searched for dawn arriving on the desert's horizon.

-- 

Lin Hao's private theory was that the system had figured out on its own how to create the copy of the merchant that he'd offered to Kit before. He wasn't going to explain that to her though, after seeing how her face brightened at the thought of finding it. 

Most people assumed that he was too attached to the computers he worked with to understand the emotional attachments people had to each other. Devon Yu was actually the first person he'd met who had understood that you actually had to understand people pretty well to create an AI that would fool them into seeing it as a person.

Lin Hao knew that love was also a form of belief, and that his game was trying to give this sweet and gentle woman someone to believe in.

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