Ashes of the Fallen

"But I do, I really do!" she stated with a playful fit. "There's a really fancy village near the mountains, and by a river, I saw a picture of it! There were tons of NPCs in there, like a hundred!"

Eh, this girl was giving me a headache.

And she was troubling me.

The picture she was talking about was one and the same… the one they showed at the Alpha and Beta Meeting. The one that Emily put up for all to see… and the one that made me angry enough to stop attending.

Where did this girl hear or see it?

And why would she want to travel alone, a hundred some miles, to see a village.

That made no sense at all to me.

"Sounds like fantasy to me hun, you sure it wasn't photoshopped?" I asked with a confused expression, attempting to cause some misdirection.

"No way, it exists, it's been verified like for real."

"Well, even if it did exist, why would you want to head there?"

She took a second to think as her index finger made its way toward her chin. Tapping repeatedly as if it were a bad habit, she eventually stopped and answered me with measured confidence.

"I want to move to the North," she finally stated.

Nodding at herself, she seemed pleased.

"Yeah? Well, again, welcome to the North miss," I said with a slight bow.

"Hehe, thank you thank you, I'm Milly by the way, pleasure to meet you!"

Laughing at myself for getting caught up in her pace, I gave in.

"Likewise, the name's Sigurd."

Extending a hand, she took the offered handshake and returned a cheerful smile.

"So you're going to take me, yeah?" she asked immediately while still holding onto my hand. "I won't let go until you say yes!"

"We'll see about that, I might make my way north in a day or two."

"That's a promise. I'll hold you to it mister!"

Ah, this girl.

I wasn't sure what to do with her.

Oh well, if she tagged along for a day or two and still wanted to move North, I couldn't stop her. I would need to increase the player population anyways, if I wanted to turn my little village into a metropolis. It was a bit soon to start, since my infrastructure wasn't completely sound yet, but it couldn't hurt to start.

The more the merrier, or so they say.

Chapter 62: Infrastructure

(Saturday, September 18th Game Day / Sunday, March 28th Real Day)

An entire week of hunting out in the forest wasn't enough to deter my wild follower as she continued to tag along, logging off when I was done for the day and logging back on around the time I said I would be on. She was persistent and a bit psychotic for someone I had only recently met.

"Hey Milly, are you ready to go?" I asked her as she was switching out of her battle attire and into her casual trendy clothes.

"All done! Let's go!" she yelled back with that constant enthusiasm that never seemed to leave her. We were heading back to Dragon's Breach now, even though I was a bit hesitant to bring strangers with me. It was hard to delay anymore anyhow, seeing as she had been following for me almost eight real-days now.

If she wasn't serious, she would have left by now.

We weren't too far from the village, as I slowly circled back while hunting in order to cut down the travel time. An hour's walk was all it would take, despite the massive bag of furs on my back.

"Hehe so we finally get to see it?" she asked with an innocent grin spread across her face. "And you said you didn't know of it, humph!"

"I believe your words were, 'secret,'" I countered with a deadpan delivery.

"Oh hey, no, girls can have secrets," she replied seriously. "It's not right for a guy to keep a secret like that, that's just a lie, you lying old man!"

"What, I'm not even more than-" I cut myself short, not wanting to call her age into question. That was a cardinal rule: all girls over twenty were twenty-one as far as I was concerned. "I'm not that old, kiddo."

"Eh eh, what were you going to say?" she teased as she leaned forward while walking, sticking her tongue out at me. "You aren't even more than, what?"

"I'm not that much older than you, you know."

"No way! That's a lie, again! You've got white hairs already!"

She started dancing around me while pointing and laughing. It was a playful laugh, but there was some truth to her words. My face didn't look that old nor did my body, though my hair certainly was a bit mixed.

Thanks, health issues.

The physical stress had taken its toll.

"Not all of us can be so blessed with youth such as yours," I said suavely, more sarcasm than face value. "Ah, what it is to be young, one can dream!"

"Hey, you're not that old now," she cut in somewhat seriously.

With a tilt of her head, she tapped her chin a few times before nodding and continuing on. Dragon's Breach was within visual range now, barely, but it was there.

The wooden walls could be seen along the base of the mountain, with a small amount of smoke billowing from the blacksmith's hut. They were likely quite busy, which was a good sign going forward. Another fifteen minutes went by relatively quickly as we walked along the water's edge.