Tales of the Pearly Kingdom (Pearly Tales Vol. 2)

67. Tempers on the L.Craft Nightmare

Cal sat in the crow's nest looking out at the sea.

"GARRRGHHG! Why am I so bad at this!" Cal roared in frustration.

This was not a game world anymore it was reality. People were still people, but he had just thrown away the value of an entire caste just because he didn't agree with them. That made him no better then them in some ways.

He couldn't believe that he was on the moral high ground when he thought about it. Just how many people had he planned to kill or worse?

The Klamenocturn Apparatus, with that he could...

No!

Cal shook his head, and stared at his hands. When he remembered the truth of the matter these weren't HIS hands. They were Calloway's. Jasper, the man inside the elf body imagined himself a repentant sinner, but only in act. Since to him, this was all just an elaborate show. But Calloway Calphius, was his avatar's body affected by the skewed moral choices Jasper made when this was just a game? And how much was Jasper's Gamer mind affecting the way he perceived his new reality.

In the game, NPC's were just bits of code until he got his hands on them and gave them an identity. But here in his new reality nobody was a throwaway scrap of code. Everyone had a spirit, a soul, and a conscience. Ophelia, a girl he had found on the street was now so much more to him but in the beginning, he really only saw her as a quest giving NPC.

And now Selene had come out of nowhere. And the scary truth was... that he knew her. She had never really been in the game when he created his character, but she was in his mind. She was a character he imagined when he thought about the perfect girl once. In his mind he had imagined every detail, but in his bio he had merely put her name in reference to that imaginary fiction.

Part of his panic was that she was that person, through and through if THAT person had lived through 250 in this world it was Selene. Name, face, personality, it was her. His original dream girl before he met Shayley.

And now shame and guilt plagued him, what was he going to do!? He had completely forgotten her when Shayley came along, but he had in fact imagined a world where he came to her rescue as a mighty adventurer ad childhood friend. And when he read that window, all the memories came flooding back. How many of her memories where his imagination? Just how much of this reality was warped to fit his Character in its seems?

It was too convenient, and yet he remembered that this world needed 250 to regulate to where it needed to be for him, and other players like him to hang around.

By other players he was thinking about Elenora, the demonkin. She was also from his world and had shown up here 250 years after her character last appeared in Tales of Yggdrasil, the game. How many other players were there?

He had far too much on his mind, it had only been a day and he had already gotten in his first fight with Selene and his second fight with Shayley.

Cal stared at the waves as they went by, he needed to do something to clear his head and the cold water below began to look really good. He also wondered if there were any more monsters below or if he had hunted them all. There was only one way to find out. He activated a water breathing ability and jumped.

*

Achilles glowered. She was not happy about anything at the moment. That bastard had just come tearing out of the room where he was supposed to be having a meeting and it was obvious that he had been in a fight with his lovers. She would have been glad if one of those lovers hadn't been her mother.