He tried again at 6:55 PM, after dinner, which was baked salmon and a salad and his father announcing to the table that he had never felt better in his life, which nobody believed.
[LATTICE OS v1.0.4]
[Calibrating... please lie still and breathe normally.]
This time, he was ready for it. He'd napped for forty minutes at five, the first nap he'd taken since he was six, and woken up with the dinosaur blanket wrapped around one leg and his heart rate back to normal. He'd mixed a fresh Clear Draft at six and sipped it through dinner while Maddie watched him like he was drinking from a skull. He lay down. He did the four breaths. He thought, very deliberately, about the truck show and the snoring and nothing else.
[Baseline synchronization estimate: 52%]
[Modifier active: Hydrated (Clear Draft) +3%, 3h 49m remaining]
No stress line.
Owen let out a breath he'd been holding since 1:10.
Okay, he thought. Okay. That's the deal, then. The machine didn't punish you for having a bad morning. It just told you, honestly, how much of you was there. And if you went and lay on the couch with your family for a few hours and let your heart slow down, more of you came back.
It was the kind of thing his mother would have said, if she'd known what a sync rate was. He made a note to tell her anyway.
The river came up.
"There he is," said Lemonwedge at the East Gate, and then, more quietly: "How's your dad?"
"Asleep on the couch. Snoring like a lawnmower."
"Good. That's good, right? Snoring's good?"
"Snoring's great."
Theo nodded, very seriously, the way you nod at a funeral when you don't know what else to do. Then he cleared his throat. "Okay. I'm forty-seven. I took a nap. A nap, bro. My mom asked if I was sick."
"Proud of you."
"Don't be weird. What's the plan?"
The plan was Level 10. Owen had about two hours of real time and ninety-two percent of a bar to fill, and the ridge alone wasn't going to do it before curfew. But the Cairn crofts had six regional quests that most players in his first life had skipped, because they were boring and paid in mutton. The quests were Lost Lamb,The Ram That Ate the Gate,Bells for Brennick,Wolfsign,Smoke on the Hill and The Cairn-Keeper's Count. They were front-loaded XP, all of them, the way Lattice did with quests in the first zone so new players would feel good. Most people walked past the silver markers on their way to the ridge and never looked back.
Owen was not most people. In year eleven, during a slow week, out of pure boredom, he'd rolled an alt, a second character on the same account, and started it from Level 1 just to see the early game again. He'd done all six on the alt and been shocked by how much they paid.
"Bro," said Theo, reading his quest log. "Lost Lamb? We're going to find a lamb?"
"We're going to find four lambs."
"I'm a wizard."
"You're a wizard who's going to find four lambs."
The lambs were the funniest twenty minutes of Owen's second life so far.
Lost lambs in the Cairn Hills were not normal mobs. They were NPC creatures with a very simple AI: they wandered, they bleated, and if you got within three meters, they ran away. The quest wanted you to herd them back to the croft pen. There was no herding skill. There was no herding anything. You just had to get behind them and walk at them until they went where you wanted.
In his first life, the forums had called it the worst quest in the Riverlands. Owen had figured out on the alt that the lambs ran away from the source of noise, not from you, and that a Copper Bell, held up and shaken, counted as noise.
He had a hundred and seventy-seven Copper Bells.
"Okay," he said, handing Theo one. "Go stand on that side of the hill and ring it."
"Ring the bell."
"Ring the bell."
Theo held it up and rang it, looking deeply skeptical. The nearest lamb, which had been nibbling grass on the far side of a gorse bush, lifted its head, said mehhh, and trotted straight downhill toward Owen.
"No way," said Theo.
Owen rang his own bell from the other side, and the lamb turned left, toward the croft pen, the way a ball rolls down a gutter.
They herded four lambs in nineteen minutes with two bells, standing on opposite hills and ringing at each other like a pair of very small, very dedicated church towers. At one point a party of Rangers went past on the road, the same three as on Wednesday. One of them stopped and stared again, and said, "Is that the gorse bush guy?" And her friend said, "He's doing something with bells now," and the first one said, "I'm so scared of him," and they walked off.
[Quest complete: Lost Lamb. +1,100 XP. Reward: Shepherd's Thanks (Cairn Crofts reputation +50), Mutton x4]
"This is the dumbest thing I've ever done," said Theo, ecstatic, "and I did it great."
The Ram That Ate the Gate was a Level 10 elite ram that had eaten a croft gate, as advertised, and was now standing in a field wearing it around its neck like a terrible necklace. It charged in a straight line. The gate meant it couldn't stop for an extra half-second at the end of the charge, which was an extra half-second of free hits.
Bells for Brennick was a delivery quest. The shepherd Brennick needed ten Copper Bells for the gate of his new pen. Owen gave him ten Copper Bells out of his hundred and seventy-seven, which hurt in a way he didn't totally understand, like giving away stock.
"That's three copper each," said Theo. "Well, six now. That's sixty copper."
"Shut up, Theo."
"I'm just saying, Mr. Spreadsheet."
Wolfsign was wolf tracks. Smoke on the Hill was a shepherd's hut on fire that you put out by throwing water buckets from a well. Lemonwedge discovered that Ember Bolt made the fire bigger, which was technically a quest failure and so funny that Owen had to log out at 8:00 for his break and laugh into his pillow for a full minute.
[Break: 3 min. Hydration check-in ✓]
He went back in.
[Baseline synchronization estimate: 52%]
And the last one, The Cairn-Keeper's Count, was the one he'd actually come for.
The Cairn-Keeper was an old woman named Edda who lived in the last croft before the ridge, with a dozen bells on her door and a dozen more strung across her windows, so that the whole house rang softly every time the wind blew. Her quest was to visit seven cairns on seven hilltops and count the stones. It was a walking quest. It had no combat. It took twenty-five minutes and paid more XP than any other quest in the hills.
In his first life, Owen had done it on the alt and thought it was a bug. Why does a walking quest pay so much?
Doing it again now, at fifty-two, at night, with Theo trailing behind him complaining about his calves, he thought maybe he understood.
The cairns weren't random. Each one was set on a hilltop along a rough line north, toward the ridge, and each one had a different number of stones, and the quest wanted you to count them, out loud, to Edda, when you got back. Most players looked it up. Owen had looked it up on the alt.
This time he counted them, standing in front of each one in the wind. Seven. Nine. Twelve. Seven. Fourteen. Nine. Seven.
Someone reproduced this passage from the NovelPhoenix site without the author's permission. Reading the original publication supports the writer.
"Why are we counting rocks?" said Theo.
"Because the old lady said so."
"Since when do you do what the old lady says? You never do what the old lady says. You skip all the old ladies."
That was true, in his first life. He'd skipped every NPC dialogue in Vael that didn't have a reward attached, for fourteen years, with a little flick of his wrist. He couldn't have told you what most of the Riverlands quest-givers sounded like.
He stood on the seventh hill and looked at the line of cairns behind him, black against the starlight. Seven, nine, twelve, seven, fourteen, nine, seven.
That's a breathing pattern, he thought, suddenly. In for seven. Hold for nine. Out for twelve. He'd heard Cairnfolk shepherds singing in his first life, in the background of a hundred quests, and he'd never really listened. Their songs had a rhythm like that. Long and short. Like someone teaching you to breathe.
He wrote it down when they got back. He didn't know what it meant. Probably nothing. Probably a level designer had picked some numbers. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
"Seven, nine, twelve, seven, fourteen, nine, seven," he told Edda, at her rattling door.
The old woman looked at him with very bright eyes.
"You counted," she said. "Most walkers guess. Or they ask the wind." She took a copper bell from a hook over her door and put it in his hand. "The cairns keep the count so the people don't forget it. A ringing house is a living house, walker. A counted road is a walked road."
[Quest complete: The Cairn-Keeper's Count. +2,400 XP.]
[Reward: Edda's Bell (Uncommon, trinket - see item)]
[Cairn Crofts reputation: Neutral → Known]
And then, a second later, in a quiet chime:
[Level up! Rook is now Level 10.]
He sat down on Edda's doorstep, because his legs had decided to sit.
The screen in front of him wasn't the usual one. It was bigger, with a gold border, and it took up most of his vision, the way important screens did in Vael.
TRACK COMPLETE: VANGUARDYou have walked far enough to choose how you will walk.
Choose your class:
⚔ Knight - shield and sword; protection, endurance, holding ground.
⚔ Berserker - two hands, no guard; rage, momentum, risk.
⚔ Duelist - one blade, footwork; precision, counters, timing.
You may choose now, or later at any class hall. Until you choose, class skill points are banked.
[Choose now] | [Choose later]
Owen looked at it for a long time.
In his first life, he'd hit Level 10 on day four at a ram field near the quarry, at forty-seven percent, and picked Duelist in about three seconds, because he already knew he wanted Wayfarer Duelist and assumed the plain Duelist was a stepping stone to it. It wasn't. Ser Odran didn't care what class you were. The quest wanted a Vanguard of any class at sixty-five percent, but the plain Duelist's skill tree locked out half the Wayfarer's movement skills when you converted, and he'd spent eight years with a build that had a big ugly hole in the middle of it. The theorycrafters called it the Duelist tax. It had taken him until year eight to figure out why his Road branch never felt right.
The fix, which nobody knew until a forum post in year nine, was to not choose. Stay unclassed. Bank the points. Walk to the hermit with an empty class slot.
The catch was that unclassed Vanguards were weak. Very weak. No class skills meant no class damage, no class passives, nothing. Most people who'd tried it in year nine on new characters had given up at Level 12 and picked Duelist anyway.
You need sixty-five, he reminded himself. You're at fifty-two with a drink. That's thirteen points. That's weeks.
Weeks of being weak, on purpose.
He thought about his father on the ninth step. About deciding later to fix the thing he'd known about now.
But this wasn't that. This was the opposite, wasn't it? This was knowing what the right answer was and not taking the easy wrong one because it was in front of him.
He pressed Choose later.
[Class choice deferred. Class skill points: 1 (banked).]
[+5 attribute points available.]
Theo, who'd been standing by the gate the whole time watching Owen sit on a doorstep and stare at nothing, said, "Bro. You've been staring at the air for like two minutes. Are you having a stroke? Your dad—sorry—is that a thing that runs in families? Should I call somebody?"
"I'm leveling."
"You're ten?" Theo's voice went up an octave. "What did you pick?"
"Nothing."
"What do you mean nothing?"
"I mean I didn't pick."
There was a long silence.
"You can do that?"
"You can do that."
"Why would you do that?"
Owen spent his points, slowly, the way he'd planned it on Wednesday in the notebook. Agility for the stagger-step. Focus for the timing. One in Endurance so his HP stayed on a round number, because he was a man of small comforts.
ROOK - Level 10 Vanguard (unclassed)HP 290/290 | Stamina 239/239
STR 11 | AGI 23 (+2) | END 24 (+1) | FOC 8 (+2) | SPI 4
SYNC 52% (Drift) - dodge window 104 ms - input lag ~144 ms
Form tolerance: ±56 ms | Crit 4%
Modifiers: Hydrated (Clear Draft) +3% [2h 21m]
Forms: Rising Cut (45) ✓ | Back Step (40) ✓ | Taunt Strike (40) ✓ | Breath Guard (50) ✓
Class skill points: 1 (banked)
Traits: Reedwalker
Trinkets: Gnasher's Molar | Edda's Bell
Reputation: Harrowgate Neutral (-10) | Cairn Crofts Known
He opened the new trinket.
[Edda's Bell] (Uncommon, trinket)+1 SPI
Passive: Shades and wolves within 5 m are less willing to approach while you stand still (minor).
"A counted road is a walked road."
Durability 100%.
Plus one Spirit. That didn't go into the stat line, because Vael showed trinket stats on a separate tab, like a receipt. He checked it to make sure. SPI 4 (+1) = 5. Fine. His HP stayed at two-ninety. Edda's Bell didn't affect the math. Small comforts.
Shades and wolves, he thought. He'd never seen this bell in his first life. Not once, on fourteen years of forums. Everyone who'd done the quest had looked up the counts and pasted them in, and maybe that got you a different reward. Maybe you only got the bell if you counted.
Or maybe the world was different now. Maybe it had been different since the morning he woke up.
He put the bell in his trinket slot next to the Molar and stood up.
"I'll explain later," he told Theo. "Come on. I want to show you something."
Ser Odran's hut was a mile and a half north of Edda's, in a fold of the hills just below the ridge, so well-hidden that you could walk past it in daylight. It had no quest marker. It had no sign. It had a stone wall around a small vegetable garden and a door with no bells on it, which, in the Cairn Hills, was like a house with no lock.
Owen had stood in front of this door more times than he'd stood in front of his own apartment. The source of this chapter is g.com.
"Who lives here?" Theo whispered.
"A hermit."
"Why are we whispering?"
"I don't know," Owen whispered. "It just feels like we should."
He knocked.
There was a long pause. Then the door opened, and an old man stood there with a candle in one hand. He was tall and stooped and had a beard like a hedge and a long gray traveling cloak that had been mended so many times it was more mend than cloak. On his hip was a sword in a battered sheath. On his face was the most completely unimpressed expression Owen had ever seen on an NPC.
Ser Odran. The last of the Wayfarers' Lodge.
"Walker," said the old man. "You're late, or early. Which?"
"Early," said Owen.
"Hm." Odran looked at him. Not at the avatar. Owen had always felt this, even at forty-nine, even when he'd known it was just very good animation: the old man looked at him like he was looking past the avatar, at the real body lying on the bed. "Yes. Early. You walk like a man who has learned the road from a map."
He said it the same way he'd said it a hundred times, in Owen's first life.
And then Owen braced himself, because he knew what came next. He'd heard it so many times that he'd once set it as his phone's ringtone, as a joke, and then had to change it because it made him want to throw his phone into the sea.
Ser Odran studied him for a long moment. The candle flickered.
"Your steps," said the old man, "are not yet your own."
[Hidden quest detected: ???]
[Requirement not met.]
The door closed.
They stood in the dark in front of the hut. The wind came over the ridge. Far off, Edda's bells were ringing.
"What," said Theo, "the f—"
"Yeah."
"What was that? What does 'not yet your own' mean? Whose steps are they? Did he just diss you?"
"Yeah," said Owen. "He did."
He wasn't upset. That was the strange part. In his first life, that line had been the worst thing in the game. It had meant you are not good enough, and you never will be, and here is a door being shut in your face. He'd heard it at forty-seven and forty-nine and fifty-one and fifty-three, at Level 10 and Level 50 and Level 200, until finally a patch in year seven had added an easier route through the Lodge in Vessmarch, and he'd taken it, and gotten the class at last, with half its power missing.
Tonight, at fifty-two, he'd heard it and thought: thirteen points.
That was all it was. Thirteen points. He'd gotten eight in a week.
"It means he wants sixty-five," Owen said. "Sync. He can see it. He's got some way of checking."
"And you're at—"
"Fifty-two. With the drink."
Theo did the math out loud, which he'd never done in his life. "So thirteen. That's—bro, that's a lot."
"Yeah."
"How long's that going to take?"
"I don't know," said Owen, and was surprised to find that he meant it. "A few weeks. If I don't mess it up."
They walked back down the hill in the dark. The shrine light burned on the ridge above them, blue and steady. At 9:14 the fake sun came up gray over the eastern hills and the night was over, and Theo yawned for a full five seconds and said his mom had said midnight but he was going to go at ten because he was a grandpa now and grandpas went to bed.
"Hey," he said, at the gate. "Rook."
"Yeah."
"The not-picking thing. The hermit. The bells." He scratched his head with his staff. "You're doing a long thing, aren't you? Like a long-con thing. Not for this week."
Owen looked at his friend for a moment. A wizard in starter robes, Level 8, at forty-seven, who'd found four lambs tonight and set a house on fire.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm doing a long thing."
"Cool," said Theo. "Can I be in it?"
"You're already in it."
"Cool," said Theo again, and logged out with a little puff of blue light.
[Session ended. Final SYNC: 51%.]
LATTICE COMPANION - Session SummaryDuration: 3h 02m
Baseline in: 52% | Baseline out: 51%
Breaks: 3 ✓ | Hydration check-ins: 3 ✓
Physical adaptation: logged
Big day, Rook! You reached Level 10. Keep walking.
Big day, Owen thought, and almost laughed.
He went downstairs at 10:05 for a glass of water. His father was still asleep on the couch, under Maddie's blanket, with the truck show on mute. His mother was sitting in the armchair next to him in the dark, not watching anything. She looked up when Owen came in.
"How's the game?" she said quietly.
"Good. I'm Level 10."
"Is that good?"
"It's really good." He filled his glass at the sink. "Mom. Can I ask you something?"
"Mm."
"When someone's heart rate is up, and they're scared, and then they lie down with people for a while and it goes down. Is that a real thing? Like a medical thing?"
His mother looked at him for a long moment in the dark.
"It's the realest thing there is," she said. "Go to bed, Owen."
He went.