"Well done you guys, you've arrived."
"Hello, guys." The doctor greeted them as she waved at them. Jack reciprocated her wave.
The doctor wasn't wearing her mask, which allowed Nathan and Jack to see her face. She had vanilla-colored, unblemished skin contrasted with her mid-length straight jet-black hair and eyes. The NPC had his mask on, however.
"So that's how the doctor looks, huh," Jack whispered to Nathan. "It makes sense why the NPC is always hanging with her."
Meh, Lilith's far better looking.
"Two locations and now a cottage located deep in this forest. How many places do you guys even have?" Nathan asked.
"This cottage is for emergencies where the locations of the warehouses are exposed, which happened now." The NPC said.
Sounds to me that the developer knew this would have happened ages ago.
"Anyways, let's go inside." The NPC said. Agreeing, they followed him as they entered the cottage.
Upon entering, they noticed that someone was sitting in the living room, apparently watching the news on the television. Upon a closer look, the person wasn't paying attention to the news and was scrolling the media on their phone.
"Who's that?" Jack asked.
"Huh? Oh yeah, you guys didn't meet him with his mask off." The NPC said. "That's the communications specialist."
Upon revealing this, Jack and Nathan immediately turned to him.
"Oh? It's you again." Jack said.
Just like the doctor, the C. Specialist had taken off his mask. He seemed to be an adolescent, with black magnetic earrings, a right nose ring, and three rings lodged below his right eye in a line. The rings, his hair, eyes, and even his clothing were very non-standard, fitting for his role of essentially being the social media manager.
"Oh yeah...hey Jack." The C. Specialist responded.
"Nice recording skills by the way. You got my good angles when I was murdering those cops."
"Uh-huh."
While they were talking, Nathan decided to look around on his own. He heard the sounds of metal clashing together in a separate room.
Hmm?
Hesitating, Nathan looked over to the others but the NPC and the doctor were focusing on the C-Specialist and Jack's conversation.
"You interested in what lies beyond this door, my game character?" The developer suddenly spoke on Nathan's phone.
"...The noise is just annoying."
"Don't worry, you can just enter."
Taking a moment to decide whether this was a good idea, Nathan listened and entered.
The cause of the clashing metal sounds was made known to Nathan, as someone was busy hitting metal with a black cross-peen hammer.
Nathan noticed that the room he had entered was like an armory. A large variety of bladed and firing weapons, armor, and other strange creations hung on the walls and decorated armor stands.
"Uh, hello?" Nathan said in an attempt to gain their attention, which he did as they stopped and turned towards him.
"Congrats! You met my last NPC!" The developer said. "The blacksmith!"
The blacksmith was a young-looking woman of average height. She had dark skin, which complemented her short-length, honey-brown hair. Her eyes were almond-brown and had a strange glow to them, which greatly interested Nathan.
She was wearing a black apron with a grey shirt and green cargo pants underneath, along with a pair of long, thick grey gloves with almost reached her elbow.
"Oh, are you Nathan?" The blacksmith asked.
"Yes, I am."
"How's my weapons been treating you?" She asked with a smile.
"Weapons?"
"Yes. Didn't you get weapons when you became a character?"
"Wait, you were the one that made those?" Nathan asked.
"Yup, that's me." She said with a cocky smile. As she looked at Nathan's armor, her smile quickly wore off. It was heavily damaged (due to all his fights and raids) with numerous knife slashes, bullet imprints, and other damages.
"Huh...what did you do with the armor I made!?" She angrily shouted. Her sudden change of demeanor confused Nathan.
"Huh?"
"Tsk! How could you do that to my creation, you brute!" She angrily vented.
"..."
"Sigh, give me the armor." She said.
"What?"
"Give me it and I'll fix it up I guess."
"...Oh," Nathan said. She went outside to let him change. and returned when he was finished. He changed into casual clothing and placed his armor and cargo pants on a table beside other metallic materials.
"Good, I'll fix it right up...don't mess it up again." She said.
"Oh, I also got this," Nathan said as he materialized the uniform of the super soldier he killed. This greatly surprised the blacksmith.
"Wow! You had something like that and you're just telling me!?" She said with great interest.
"I also have quite a bit of stuff like weapons, explosives, tons of metal, and whatnot. Can you make them into stuff?" Nathan asked.
"Haha! I knew you would have been pretty interesting. I watched your escape and saw that you chose that inventory ability. Gimme all your stuff."
"But, I don't think all of it will hold in this--" Before Nathan could finish his sentence, the blacksmith picked a remote up and pressed a button, which opened up a space in the ground, alarming Nathan.
"You can dump them in here." The blacksmith suggested.
I'm not even going to ask.
He proceeded to dump a large amount of metallic materials, weapons, and other things he had stored (keeping some in his inventory, however) in the open space.
"It's going to take some time, but I'll make it better than ever." She said. "Make sure you keep bringing materials like this in the future!"
"Okay." He responded before leaving her to continue with her work. Nathan saw that Jack was eating, so he decided to go back outside. He sat on the bench that the NPC and doctor had sat on when they arrived.
Looking up in the sky, he began to think.
Ha...I'm in a lot of danger now Lilith. The army and everyone it has is now on my tail. I don't really know how well this is going to go, but I'm glad that you've evacuated at least...you're away from this shit.
"Oh my, you look kinda sad." The developer said. "What's wrong?"
How the hell can he even see my facial expression?
"...None of your business."
"Is it about Lilith?"
"I said, it's none of your--"
"Lilith is still in this city. She hasn't evacuated." The developer revealed. Hearing this revelation stunned Nathan, causing him to sweat.
"H-Huh?" Nathan stuttered. "W-What do you...mean?"
"It's all cause of me!" The developer ecstatically said. "I told her to not evacuate so she'll find out about why you became a--"
Suddenly, Nathan materialized a dagger, and in rage, he attempted to drive it into the phone but stopped short.
"Aww, are you going to destroy another phone?" The developer said. "This will be the third phone you're gonna destroy now."
Although his hands were shaking with anger, he stored the knife back in his inventory.
"Good, I knew you were capable of reason."
"...I'm going to make you regret this," Nathan said before shutting his phone off and storing it to stop the developer's speaking.
It's always one bad thing after another...
With clenched fists, Nathan made his way back into the cottage. Although Jack wasn't finished eating, Nathan approached him.
"Jack, let's talk about what we came here for," Nathan said with an annoyed expression (due to his previous interaction with the developer). "Let's hurry up and plan now."