Rafael’s mind wasn’t just blown away, but his entire understanding of Eldoria was shattered the moment they made their way into a part of Fersay he had never seen before.
The Bazaar had always been Fersay’s main shopping district, a massive network of streets filled with merchants, blacksmiths, potion shops, food stalls, and pretty much every other store a player could need.
But this wasn’t the Bazaar Rafael remembered.
Not even fucking close.
There were stores everywhere.
Actual stores.
One had huge glass windows displaying clothes on wooden mannequins. Another had shelves filled with dozens of different bottles, soaps, perfumes, oils, and things Rafael couldn’t even recognize from where he was standing.
Beside that was what looked like a barber shop.
Then a clothing store.
A furniture store.
A store selling nothing but shoes.
And between all of them were hundreds of stalls packed so tightly together that people could barely move through the street.
Players weren’t the only ones shopping either.
Elves, dwarves, humans, beastfolk, and races Rafael couldn’t even immediately recognize moved through the crowds carrying bags, comparing items, arguing over prices, and lining up outside stores.
"Holy shit... what the fuck is this?"
"Shocking, right?" Tim’s voice came from beside him. "I was the same. Fersay is supposed to be a fantasy city with medieval-style buildings, but this isn’t the same place we all remember. More than that, it tells us something about this world... It’s almost like it’s been—"
"Like it’s been running before we even got here," Rafael finished what Tim was trying to say.
"Yes. Like it’s been simulating everything before we even got pulled into the game."
"But that makes no fucking sense," Rafael whispered as he looked around, because all of this was starting to mess with everything he thought he knew about Eldoria.
There was an entire fucking store dedicated to tote bags, another one to dresses, and another filled with all kinds of other clothes. It didn’t even look like a medieval marketplace anymore.
It looked like a fucking fashion street.
"I think it makes sense," Leila said. "Everything got synchronized and turned real, including all those clothes that were basically useless cosmetics in the game. Maybe the NPCs saw them, started liking them, and eventually began making their own."
"Not just that," Tim said as something suddenly occurred to him. "Remember, we could sell items we didn’t need to NPC merchants, and they’d buy pretty much anything, even store items."
He looked around at the countless shops surrounding them.
"Maybe they reverse-engineered all of it."
Rafael didn’t answer immediately.
Because the more he thought about it, the more fucking sense it made.
Players had sold everything to NPCs.
Weapons, armor, potions, event items, cosmetics.
They sold everything useless in an MMORPG. And the NPC merchants always bought it.
For almost a full minute, Rafael said nothing.
He just stood there, staring at the Bazaar while the world continued moving around him. Merchants shouted prices, people walked in and out of stores carrying bags, and NPCs argued with customers just like people would have back on Earth.
Tim and Leila stayed silent too.
Both of them were watching Rafael.
Waiting.
The look on his face made it seem like something had finally clicked, like all the pieces had suddenly fallen into place and Rafael was about to say something that would explain what the fuck they were looking at.
Then he finally opened his mouth.
"I don’t care."
"What?"
"I don’t fucking care." Rafael looked at both of them. "None of this changes anything."
Rafael sighed and looked back at the Bazaar.
"We have one job. Survive." Rafael shrugged. "That’s it. Everything else can go fuck itself. I’m hungry, I have no money, so Tim... lead the way."
Nothing.
Tim just stood there staring at him like he wasn’t even sure if Rafael was being serious, while Leila slowly smiled.
For the first time, both of them had genuinely thought Rafael, the great fucking exploiter who somehow noticed things nobody else did, was about to say something important.
Something unbelievable.
Maybe even something that would completely change how they understood Eldoria.
But no.
He was fucking hungry.
"Yeah..." Tim finally said. "Let’s find somewhere to eat."
And with that, he led the way.
Rafael followed behind him without another word, his eyes wandering across the stores and crowds as they moved deeper into the Bazaar.
Leila waited until Rafael was a few steps behind them before moving closer to Tim.
"Is it the Heart of the Forsaken?" she whispered. "Did it fuck up his mind?"
"Might be." Tim lowered his voice as he pulled Leila closer so Rafael couldn’t hear them. "Maybe it affected him way more than it affected us."
Leila glanced back.
Rafael was still walking behind them, casually looking through the windows of the stores they passed.
"He’s been through two World Events already," Tim continued quietly. "One right after the other. Most people would be completely fucked after what he went through. That’s what worries me."
"Not just that," Leila whispered back. "He’s disconnected... like one moment he’s invested in something, and the next he’s not."
"I noticed it too, but maybe we just need to wait a little and see what’s going on with him." Tim sighed before turning around. "What do you want to eat—"
As Tim looked around, Rafael wasn’t following them anymore. More than that, he was suddenly surrounded by people wearing armor and white cloaks.
"So you’re back."
It was the same woman standing in front of him who had wanted to take his life.
"What are you going to do about it..." He paused. "Bitch."
"Watch your language—"
"Oh, I’m scared." Rafael looked at the man standing to her right. "Already made your little hierarchy, huh? And this bitch is leading you?"
He was taunting them, even smiling directly into the man’s face as he grabbed the hilt of his weapon.
"Do it." Rafael’s smile widened. "Oh, you can’t. It’s a safe zone."
He turned back toward the woman.
"And you. Who the fuck do you think you are?"
"What’s with all the aggression?" she asked. "You need to blow off some of it."
"I would love to blow it on your face—"
The man pulled out his sword immediately straight for Rafael’s neck, but the blade stopped.
"Oh..." A smile spread across his face. "So that’s how it works."
There was something there.
An invisible barrier, or maybe some kind of force, that simply refused to let the blade touch Rafael’s neck no matter how hard the man pushed.
Rafael stared at it for a moment.
Then he smiled.
"This was probably the most cliché scene I’ve ever been part of. Straight out of some shitty anime." He looked directly into the woman’s eyes. "But I actually learned a lot from it, so thank you."
He casually shoved the man’s sword away, turned around, and walked toward Tim and Leila.
Neither said anything.
They just followed him and the three of them disappeared into the crowd, and it wasn’t until they had made it farther into the Bazaar that Tim finally spoke.
"Who the fuck were they?"
"Weren’t they the same people who attacked you two in the city?"
Tim shook his head.
Leila did the same.
"Huh... interesting." He sighed. "Whatever. That was the woman who tried to kill me because of the sword."
"I mean, they wanted to kill you again," Leila said. "We saw the whole thing."
"You pissed them off, didn’t you? It’s probably not the best idea to make enemies, Rafael. You said it yourself, number one is survival."
Rafael nodded to it. "Yeah, but they gave me the perfect opportunity to see how the safe zone works."
Tim and Leila glanced at each other then back to Rafael.
"And?" They asked simultaneously.
"There is a way to—"
Rafael stopped. His eyes had caught something in the crowd.
Or rather, someone.
Across the street, between the hundreds of people moving through the Bazaar, there was someone there.
"Uh... Tim, that forbidden spell you cast on me." Rafael’s voice came as his eyes remained fixed on the same spot. "Does it cause hallucinations?"
"I don’t know—" Tim suddenly stopped. "To be honest... I only know that it pushes away certain emotions."
"Well..." Rafael whispered as he kept his eyes on the familiar figure in the crowd. "I think it does a little more than that."
And there was definitely something fucking wrong, because the longer Rafael stared at that familiar figure, the more of them seemed to appear throughout the crowd.
All of them standing completely still and staring directly at him.
"Uh, I think we should leave as fast as—"
It happened in the blink of an eye... she appeared.
The woman from the first World Event... the same woman he had beaten into an unrecognizable state before slashing her throat and watching her bleed out.
She stood less than a step away with that same destroyed face, one eye bulging from its socket, her jaw hanging crookedly and the massive cut across her throat still pouring blood down her body.
Then someone slowly stepped out from behind her.
A girl.
Not another gorgeous avatar from Eldoria... no.
It was a real girl... a real human.
She couldn’t have been older than fifteen, dressed in an oversized hoodie and jeans, her hair tied messily behind her head, and when she stopped beside the mutilated woman.
"I was just scared."
She looked down at the blood still pouring from her avatar’s throat.
"I wanted to go home."
"You—"
"Seven months."
Rafael slowly turned toward the voice that cut him off.
It was the same woman from the second World Event, standing there with her neck twisted exactly as he remembered leaving it.
But beside her stood another woman... young, perhaps somewhere in her twenties.
"We found out she was a girl two weeks before all of this happened," she rubbed her stomach slowly. "My husband wanted to call her Sophia."
Her fingers moved gently across the curve of her stomach.
"I hated it."
She gave a quiet laugh.
"I wanted Emilia."
Her smile slowly disappeared as he looked at her avatar.
"Do you think she died when you broke my neck?" She asked as he slowly looked back into Rafael’s eyes, while keeping her hand on her stomach. "My baby... did you kill her too...?"
"I..." His lips parted. "I—"
Do not insult their deaths with regret.
A deep, horrifying voice came from everywhere at once, surrounding him from every direction, yet somehow, impossibly... it was also coming from inside his own head.
They would have killed you. Why regret surviving?
Mourn no dead.
The tears began to fall on his face uncontrollably, but he felt nothing at all.
Kill when you must.
His fingers curled slightly.
Kill before you must.
Bow to no man. Kneel to no god.
The voice got louder and louder.
Be Forsa—
A touch...Rafael felt a warm touch on his forehead followed by a different voice... a brighter and warmer one.
"By the throne above all shadows, I command you."
The young girl flickered... then she vanished.
"By the flame that burned before the first dawn, I bind you."
The pregnant woman disappeared next, her body dissolving into nothingness.
"By the Most High that bears no name..."
The remaining figures began to collapse into shadow, one after another, until even the voice inside Rafael’s head began to fade.
"Disappear."
In an instant, his body collapsed to the ground.
"Rafael—"
"Don’t touch him!" The woman shouted at Tim as stretched her palm toward Rafael.
"Let the world bend, let the path be torn open. What stands apart shall stand together."
A magic circle erupted beneath Rafael, ancient symbols spinning around its edges.
"Is that magic?"
People nearby immediately stopped.
"Is she casting magic inside the Safe Zone?"
"That’s impossible."
Another circle appeared beneath the woman.
"Beyond distance, beyond sight..."
Blinding light suddenly erupted from the magic circles.
"...carry us far away."