Lillian's house was one that was a little isolated from the rest of the town, a two-storey cottage with warm indoor lights already glowing in the twilight. She guided me up to the front door and rang the bell and I looked at her confusedly.
"I thought we were sneaking me in?"
"Relax," She answered, "I forgot my dad's getting home late from work today, so it's my sister who's going to open it."
"It's your house, though. You could just walk in."
"I thought we both understood it's not safe around here anymore."
Before I could reply, the sound of a key turning in the lock rattled out and after two turns, the door was pulled open a crack. A little face peeped through and as soon as she saw her sister's face, she pulled the door open a bit wider.
"Lilly!" She yelled and ran into her sister's arms and all I could do was stand and stare. When Lillian said sister, I'd expected someone older or just a little bit younger. The girl I was looking at was at most eight.
"Hey, Cassie. Everything good?" Cassie pulled back a little to look at Lilly's face. "Yeah," She replied.
We all went into the house and the door was locked behind us once more. I was wondering why Cassie hadn't said anything about me when she paused in her footsteps and turned around to look at us. She stared at me and I laughed inside my head realizing it had only just clicked inside her head that a third person was inside the room.
Cassie's eyes went wide and her gaze flicked to Lilly's, a question in them.
"Oh, him?" Lilly said, nonchalantly. "He doesn't have a place to stay so I offered him our house for the night."
The younger girl nodded understandingly. "Dad doesn't mind?"
"He's not going to find out." Lilly bent down to her sister's height, "And you're not going to tell him."
Cassie walked off to continue whatever she was doing before we arrived and Lilly led me up the stairs. As soon as we were inside her room and she closed her door, I asked, "Is she really not going to tell?"
"Yes. I trust her," Lilly replied and turned to look at me. She stared at me and I stared awkwardly back.
"I can't say the same for you. I'm not a magic user but I do have an affinity for it. Try any bullshit and I'll see to it that you're never able to walk again."
My mouth dropped open at her threat that came out of nowhere and I started to ask what the hell warranted it, but then I realized it wasn't anything I did but the possibility of me doing… something. She brought some guy she met on the street into her room and had to give herself some sort of protection, in the form of this threat.
Realizing reassuring her meant absolutely nothing in this case, I nodded mutely.
Lilly backed away and scratched at her arm, and switching topics like the past few seconds never happened. "Sorry, we can't have dinner before my dad gets home, but I do have a few snacks stashed somewhere…"
She goes to look for said snacks and I use the time to take a look around her room. It's small and bereft, but also cozy. Apart from her small bed and the wooden desk and chair set that had a lot of heavy books on it, some lying open, she had a little drawer beside her headboard and a semi-large cupboard against the wall. It was the same one she was mumbling to herself while searching.
"Aha," She said and pulls out a crinkly, brightly colored bag. "You can have this bag of sweets."
I left my position at the door and walked to her to collect them, but as I did so, I flinched at a glare she was giving me. Sighing and holding back a groan, I asked, "What now?"
"I hate sharing my sweets but you can have them all. You owe me though."
I could not stop the laughter that barrelled out of me at her words. "I don't know if you remember, but I don't have shit to pay you back with."
"Not in the literal sense, you idiot." Lilly rolled her eyes. "We're wasting time."
I ripped open the bag and followed her to where she sat at her desk. "I'd been doing some studies and here's what I found."
As she spoke, something occurred to me. Wasn't there a limitation to how much players could interact with NPCs in games? I checked my current player activity where it said I was conversing with her and opened up her character profile.
[Lillian Dirge]
[Woodpine Local]
[Non-Playable]
My suspicions were disproved. Lilly really was an NPC. I had to give it to Aetharia's developers, they'd done it with this advanced game world. If only its functionalities weren't completely useless.
"Hero, are you listening?"
"Huh? Yes."
"This is a map of Woodpine Town and its outskirts." At her words, I nearly spilled all my sweets scrambling to look at the large piece of parched paper I didn't notice she'd pulled out. A map! Finally! This had to be how I was to obtain one. "It will be necessary somehow because I don't know how far out we'll be searching if we don't find it in the forest and I don't know those places all too well."
My eyes scanned the ink sprawled across the surface and immediately, a notification dropped in.
[New item obtained!]
[Woodpine Map]
I opened my menu and tapped on it and sure enough, an exact replica of the map on Lilly's desk was spread out in front of my eyes. I discovered I could interact with it by zooming in on an area to get more detailed directions and info on certain places in Woopine town. When I closed it, it shrunk in size and snapped like a puzzle piece into a small, dark area on the corner of my screen I hadn't noticed this entire time. Looking closely, I could see it seemed to be the full map of Aetharia. The only visible part was Woodpine, everywhere else was blacked out; I would have to find and look at the other pieces to access them.
I found Woodpine's map!! Did this mean this was how the gameplay was supposed to go all along and I wasn't an unfortunate fuck up of a player? Or there were several that could have been obtained anywhere in this town? I thought about it seriously for a moment but then decided it didn't matter too much. At least, I found this one. I was doing something right…
I resumed playing and listened to Lilly explain a rundown of our plan. She didn't intend for us to be gone longer than a week. If we couldn't find the demon within that time frame (impossible because I sighted it today and it couldn't have gone too far between now and the next day), then there would really be nothing we could do but return. She didn't want her dad worrying about her for too long.
"That backpack," Lilly pointed to a dark brown knapsack bag, "Is where I've kept some food and water, and every other necessity. If there's anything you'd like to bring along, let me know and I'll stuff it in."
I shook my head indicating I didn't and she wrapped up her briefing.
"Forgive me for asking," I'd learned to start with that when I wanted to say anything that might potentially offend the blonde, "But what exactly do you intend on doing when you find the thing? You can't fight. I sure as hell can't either. At least not yet."
"I am going to capture it."
"Capture it," I repeated dumbly.
"Yes."
"And how do you intend to do that, O great red spider lily?"
Lilly blushed brightly at my mockery but rolled her eyes to wave it off. "There's something called a Documentation Machine. It's usually only used by professional research scouts in Aetharia but there are books on how to use it and I read them."
"What does it do?"
"Well," She sighed and got up from the chair to flop back on her bed. I took the now vacant chair and listened as she explained. "It's actually what does the capturing. It engulfs an unrecorded creature and scans it, listing out its features, possible taxonomy, and any magic abilities it has, and then it can be named according to whatever the researcher sees fit. After that, all these details get filed into the ACRA — the Aetherian Creatures Records and Archive."
I blinked when she finished. Technology like that existed, of course. My bad for assuming medieval living and magic was all this world had to it.
"That makes sense." I said, "But where are we going to find this machine?"
"You don't have to worry about that."
"Well, good luck to us on trying to get near enough to it without getting killed. Its speed and killing aura is terrifying. It's only been a few hours since I was faced with it, I can't forget." I leveled her with a stare, "Are you prepared to lose your life?"
She nodded determinedly.
"Why?"
Lilly swallowed, holding my bewildered gaze for a long moment, and then she looked away. I don't get my answer.
A knock sounds from her door out into the quiet of the room and we hear Cassie's voice. "Lilly? Dad's home."