Delayed Again

"Ha! Guardians of life, indeed. I can't imagine a more ridiculous lie," a deep, rumbling voice scoffed.

Another voice, that of a sultry woman, sounded disinterested. "■■■■■■, you know what to do. Have yourself a good time down there."

"I will, Mistress," the first voice replied, carrying with it a chilling kind of glee.

Enough time passed for the owner of the first voice to leave. Then, the woman's voice came once more, "Oh? It looks like we have ourselves a little visitor. How cute."

Somehow, though no visual information conveyed this, it was clear that the woman had turned to look.

"Little seed, I hope you grow big and strong. Here's a little gift from me," she cooed. What followed was the sound of a kiss and then a whoosh of blown air. 

"That should do you nicely. Things are about to get a little heated down there, so do be careful, my dear."

Time passed again. 

With the visitor to whom she had spoken first now gone, the woman turned her attention to another. "And to our other visitor, I do hope you enjoy the show…"

----

Alesha woke with a start, heart racing, and sat up. What had she dreamt about just now? It had faded so quickly. 

She felt… surprisingly refreshed.

She remembered having received the quest completion notice, and (with a slight sense of embarrassment) how she'd torn the Mother Cragulok's throat out with her teeth. Her hand reached up to feel at her mouth. There was no blood there, all of it having dissolved into particles of light since this was a video game. She surmised her teeth had probably changed for the bite, considering the instinct that had driven her to attack that way in the first place, and if they hadn't changed then she was 90% sure she'd have been unable to beat the creature. Her teeth were back to normal now, though. 

Before she could test to see if she could activate the skill on command, a familiar voice greeted her: "Alesha, you're up!" 

It was her brother.

Startled, Alesha turned to face him, surprised and suddenly embarrassed as she laid eyes on his avatar. "Wait… how long have you been here?!" she cried, not even bothering with a proper hello as a seed of dread planted itself within her. Had he seen?

"I watched you kill the Mother Kragulok," he admitted. "It was… a creative way to beat her, I guess, but you went way crazy! How high are your Emotive Immersion settings?"

Alesha realized with surprise that, in fact, she hadn't turned them on at all. When she created a new account for UGW 2000, it should have prompted her if she wanted to enable Emotive Immersion, and if she confirmed interest, it should have taken her to a virtual mini theater. In that theater, a safety "video" would be put on to explain the benefits and potential dangers of Emotive Immersion, a feature that allowed the game to recreate your avatar's emotions in your mind. This feature was mostly applied to make the Player actually experience status effects such as Fear, Rage, or Charmed, but could also apply in extreme life-or-death situations such as the one she was just in. It was designed to enhance a Player's experience with more fully immersive gameplay. 

After watching the safety presentation explaining as much, she would have been required to sign a consent form if she wished to proceed.

Yet… she hadn't done any of that. The option had never presented itself to her and she had completely forgotten that, as a "new player" on this device, she should have been required to complete that process. Did that mean that all of that was her own emotions? No, the sedation from the poison wouldn't have affected her mind if that was the case. A Player could not be forcefully put to sleep without having signed the Emotive Immersion consent forms.

Pulling up her settings, Alesha was stunned to find the "Emotive Immersion" settings grayed out. They were disabled?! But she couldn't click on them, either. Nothing happened when she did.

[Allow me to explain,] the System interjected. [Emotive Immersion must be fully activated in order for Quests to translate between Reality and VR games. I completed the requisite forms on your behalf.]

Alesha sighed, conscious that Dennis was waiting, and opted to not make a big deal out of something that had already happened. Was this going to be the pattern going forward?

She finally responded to her brother's inquiry. "Yep, I have Emotive Immersion fully activated."

Dennis's eyebrows shot upwards in shock. "Woahhhh you have Emotive Immersion turned on all the way?! Like, all of the Emotive Immersion settings turned to the max?!"

[The answer is yes], the System helpfully supplied.

"Yyyyup," she affirmed, drawing out the "y" sound.

It was strange to see a fully-grown Dark Elf man jumping up and down with his hands over his mouth, which was what Dennis, in his avatar, did in response. "THAT'S INSANE!!! What's it like?! I heard it's like something reaches inside your brain and rewires it, almost like you're being hypnotized to think a certain way! That's why so few people activate all the settings, and of those that do, less than 1% have them on at full strength! I've heard that one guy even started thinking he was his game character in real life because his Emotive Immersion settings were too high! And another became a bloodthirsty criminal after playing a Barbarian character for a year! And --"

"Hey buddy, I know you're excited, but I'm not going to turn into a different person just because my settings are too high, ok?" Alesha said with a smile. 

Though, she was privately very worried about that happening, just not in the way Dennis thought. It wasn't the game's "Emotive Immersion" that really scared her -- it was the System's. She had already undergone a few worrisome changes because of it, and if her gut feeling was right, what she had experienced so far was merely a precursor to what was to come.

"Come ooooooon, at least tell me what it's like!! We have time as we walk back to my castle," he suggested. 

"Alright then," Alesha relented, standing up to join him. "Let's get going and I'll tell you about it. Though I also want to see if we can figure out what happened with me spawning somewhere random."

As they walked, she started by explaining how she had spawned in, including how she had checked to make sure she'd done nothing wrong. Then she described her battle with the Craguloks. She didn't remember feeling anything that didn't belong to her during that battle, so she said as much. 

"I saw that I had leveled up a bunch but wanted to check your message first --"

[The Chaos Moon has been summoned]

She stopped mid-sentence, confused. Chaos Moon? What was that?

"Yes?" Dennis prompted, oblivious to the System's message.

"U-uh, sorry. That's when I checked your message and realized I probably should have just run away."

[Host will experience increased physical and mental recovery for the duration of the Chaos Moon, and Chaos Energy will increase by 1 every 10 minutes until the Moon sets. Please be advised that Host's body is still not capable of holding very much Chaos Energy and as such, Host will need to expend it regularly while the Chaos Moon is up.]

"What happened next? Did you notice something?"

"Um, I distributed my stats and waited for the Mother Cragulok to appear…" she responded aloud.

Then she internally hissed, "System!! What the flip is going on?! It's been night for hours in here! Why does this game have a Chaos Moon to begin with?!"

[This is not from the game. This is happening in reality. You may want to log off very soon, I'm not sure how this happened either.]

"...Dennis, can I explain the rest later? I think it's about dinner time, we should probably go help Mom out," she said.

Dennis looked disappointed, but checking the time displayed in the upper right of his HUD (which only he could see), he agreed. It was already almost 19:00. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea. We might get to play after dinner too if we help out now."

"Is this a safe place to log off?"

"Yeah, you killed the biggest threat already," he answered, laughing. "See you in the kitchen!" 

He waved and logged off.

Sighing, Alesha quickly checked to see if the System had anything more to add before she logged out. It didn't, so she went to the HUD and clicked "End Session" to directly leave CT-VR instead of first returning to the Temple of the Mind.

Time to see what this Chaos Moon was all about.