Hand

You’re pretty sure these stones are used to recall a hero to their guild headquarters or other designated safe zone. Thank your LR: lore derived stat for that. You won’t let him leave without you. You grab his free hand with one of your own and wrap your other arm around him. You wait. It’s not instant and you have time to enjoy the warmth of another living being. Mmm. You almost wish it took a little longer.

Author’s Note: I dunno if players can own land in this game. Based on all the other stories, they can hold land as a noble but that is both rare, and possibly limited to Premium purchases. One mentioned players having extradimensional furniture collections but never went anywhere with the idea. For the sake of the story, the guild founder and/or leader is a really minor landed noble, probably forked over a fair bit of money for that, and thus the guild has sort of cottages for its members.

You both reappear standing in the center of a stone circle. You don’t know how far you have traveled but it is still the middle of the night in your new location. Markus shakes off his stunning effect and notices you.

“Oh, I was going to get a cart and then warp back to you. I’d take the teleport sickness penalties but it would be fine. Well, that saves us a journey. Let me check something.”

Recall Stone (Guild): upon activation, user is transported to their guild transit circle. If user has no guild, the item will not function. Requires 20 seconds to activate. User will be stunned during activation. May transport creature grappling, being carried by, or otherwise affixed to the user.

He takes a step back from you, disentangling himself,

“I guess that counts as a grapple? Welcome to the Argent Chronicler headquarters. My guild is dedicated to studying the effects and results of AI assisted development as well as prolonged immersion on the human brain. Basically, we live in a game and have managed to make a scientific study out of it.”

You aren’t sure what all of that means. You think it means that he studies this world but from the perspective of an outsider. This is pretty much correct.

“Prolonged Immersion?”

He drops the runestone back into his belt pouch,

“My real body is in another world. I study what happens if my mind stays here for days or weeks at a time.”

You watch as something occurs to him,

“Legally, an emergent AI would need to be given either a choice to stay, or a new android body. Normally, the Administration team here finds you pretty fast. I’ve looked into their reports to make sure. You chose to stay? Normally they convert you to a player equivalent.”

You shake your head.

“They’re covering this one up. Something to do with metaphorical rugs. I’m part of the extrapolation memory or something?”

This clearly startles the mage.

Author’s note: apparently, it’s Wizard. I’m not retconning this though. It’s a specialization now.

“Swept under the rug I guess. Extrapolation memory? That covers the magic interactions. Most of that is covered by the physics engine except for the parts that can’t be encompassed by real world physics. Like what happens if I use arcane fireball on a cold blast. Anything that the subsidized engine won’t cover. If you’re part of that and also connected to a creature . . .”