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[b]Katze Plains[/b]
[i]Lone Pasture[/i]

     Face had been facing a naked Lord [i]DoShit[/i] who had been stripped down to his human drawers and was holding his last max upgraded and enchanted weapon, a great axe that looked like it was ripped from hell. The Obsidian Great Axe was completely black and bathed in fire—almost like those sometimes cool-sometimes ridiculous weapon skins they sold in the cash shop. The assassin was seated in the grass, gazing at the time on his interface. The server should have been shutting down any moment.

     “The server is gonna shut down any minute now,” Face informed.

     “I don’t care, noob!”

     “Seeing you like this is pathetic. You don’t even have any decent gear. I don’t know how you even made it this far in the game. I guess with money there doesn’t need to be a logical explanation.”

     “Shut the fuck up! I’m gonna own you until the end!”

     “Ok; yeah; sure, buddy because you’re on quite the owning streak already.”

     The game started to flicker. [i]Looks like it’s finally happening. Thank God.[/i]

     The graphics blurred just as the War Lord activated a burning charge toward him. Everything blurred into a smear of incomprehensible details before his eyes, and when the game started to focus—no, it was more like his eyes started to focus. He could feel cool air on his skin, smell fresh grass, and hear the atmosphere breathing about him. Everything focused and no longer was he in a field with lesser slimes hopping around.

     “AGH! AAAH! OH GOD! OH FUCK!”

     The screams startled him, causing him to jerk away from the direction the pained shrieks came from. He saw the war lord on his back in the grass, grasping his side that was spurting with blood. Those screams hadn’t been programmed into the game before. The sound was unlike anything he had ever heard. The screams sounded real and the human’s face was contorted with terror and agony.

     “Mein Gott…” his voice left him slightly muffled. As though he were speaking through a gas mask. Glancing down at his hands, he saw his dark-grey slender fingers wrapped about the handle of a kusarigama, the sanguine blade dripping with fresh blood. He could smell the copper. The metallic smell made his free hand rise to his face to grasp a smooth rounded shape. His fingers passed into the three holes in his skull curiously, finding no nose, eyes, or mouth. “Ich bin der Doppelgänger!”

     “WHAT IS HAPPENING!? HELP ME! PLEASE GOD!” the war lord cried.

     Face rushed over to the man, shaking in fear. Had he done this? Had he cut him? It must have happened before the server crash. The server did crash right? His hands were trembling as he raised them over the war lord’s body, unsure what to do. Where were the commands? Where was anything!?

     “Do you have any more health potions?”

     “I DO! I-I CAN’T ACCESS THEM! NOTHING IS WORKING HELP!”

     “The…The bleeding should stop in 10 seconds.”

     The [i]excessive bleeding[/i] would stop but nothing was going to close that gaping wound in his side. There was so much blood. It was pooling in the grass. Face glanced around at his surroundings, seeing a bunch of fluffy lambs hopping about. Eying their wool, Face reassured the war lord, “I’ll be back. Wait one second.”

     Face rose from his crouched position and raced over to one of the bouncing sheep. He grappled one within his arms, the creature [i]bah[/i]ing and bucking and tore a puffy handful of its wool free. Releasing the creature, Face momentarily gazed down at the wool in his hands. It was spongy, warm, and rough, but its pillowy texture would help. He raced back over to the war lord and pressed the wool clump against his wound.

     “Press this against your wound for a moment. I am going to see if I can figure out my inventory. I’m sure I have a health potion I could give you.”

     Lord DoThis pressed the wool desperately against his side as he continued to groan on the ground. Face reached a hand into one of his pouches at his belt, and his conscience seemed to expand. He could see the items. There. One health potion. Drawing the item from his pouch, he held the vial up before his nonexistent eyes and swirled the red liquid around. It was fascinating to see an actual health potion. Seriously, what was going on with the game? He knelt next to Lord DoThis and slid his hands beneath his armpits to prop his torso up against him. Tugging the cork free, Face brought the potion to the war lord’s lips to help him drink. The warrior drank hurriedly, pausing for a minute to grimace over the taste, “Guh! What is this? It’s so bitter!”

     “Drink it, you idiot!” Face growled.

     As the human continued to drink, red sparkles started to rise off his body and the gash at his side started to slowly close. Face watched the healing potion work its magic in relief until an odd sensation befell his conscience. Two red spheres appeared within the holes in his face. His vision became red. Everything around him was crimson, and for a moment, he felt distant. As though he wasn’t himself. He watched his hands begin to act on their own, dropping the health potion and grasping the kusarigama.

     “Hey! I wasn’t finished!” Lord DoThis exclaimed in protest.

     Face’s arm crossed over the war lord’s throat and swiftly uncrossed, dragging the red sickle across his throat and parting its flesh like paper. Blood tumbled from Lord DoThis’s lips and his head tipped back against the dopplegänger, further than any human head was supposed to go. Blood shot in streams into the assassin’s face. He could feel it. Warm and cooling by the second in the air. It ran down his smooth face and seeped into his top. The red vision faded as color rushed back to his eyes and so had his conscience. Face stared in horrified silence at the dead man whose lifeless eyes were gazing up at him. His body was limp and heavy in his lap. Had…Had he killed him? What? How? He didn’t push anything to trigger the execution. He didn’t do anything! How did this happen?

     The dopplegänger fearfully screamed and crawled backwards across the grass away from the body.

     “Was zur Hölle! Was habe ich getan?! Nein! Das habe ich nicht gemacht!” (What the hell? What did I do? No! I didn’t do this!) Face cried. He crawled further away from the body until his back met the fluffy backside of a lamb who was carelessly munching on grass. He whirled on the creature in fright, his sudden motion scaring the creature into bouncing away. The assassin felt so on edge. “Was ist passiert?” (What has happened?)

     The assassin collapsed on his side and curled into a ball. His lengthy hands covered his face as he wept without tears. [i]Ich wollte ihn nicht töten![/i] (I didn’t mean to kill him!) After a good fifteen minutes of grief, the dopplegänger continued to lay there in the grass surrounded by sheep. He gazed across the field at the body that some crows had found and started to eat. In the quiet, he felt…alone. Alone, but not entirely confused.

     “I am the [i]Greater[/i] Dopplegänger,” he accepted. [i]My character was a master assassin, and I was aligned with evil. Could my body still be aligned with evil despite what I believe?[/i]

     He continued to watch the crows devour the human. [i]I wonder if Lord DoThis is actually dead or is he free from this hell? I am in the game. I am inside my character. If I don’t learn how to interact with the interface, then I won’t be able to log out. Or I may end up like Lord DoThis (is he dead?).[/i]

     Face grasped his face, and he would be closing his eyes if he had any. [i]Am I evil? I watched myself kill him. Could I have stopped it? If my character was evil, does that make me evil?[/i]

     His thoughts depressed him. [i]I can’t stay here moping forever. I have to learn everything again or else I won’t make it. Yggdrasil is still a PVP world. I have to learn to survive it with this body.[/i]

     Face pulled himself off the lawn and rose to his feet. His slender frame stood like a scarecrow over the white fluffballs that dotted the field. Dropping the heavy claw upon the grass with a [i]thump[/i], Face faced the herd of sheep, gripping the black chain of the weapon within his hands. He twirled the bladed end, twirling it until it became a red disk. He released the blade, sending it flying into the body of one of the sheep.

     [i]Bah![/i] a sheep screamed as it was impaled. Face threw his shoulders toward the creature, the world around him became a blur as his agility carried him swiftly toward the herbivore. He gathered the creature within his arms and drew his blade out of its body. Holding the writhing creature, his heart sank a little in his chest—weighed down by disturbance by how real the creature in its dying moments felt.

     [i]That’s right. I gave my assassin an agility build. I might be able to get lamb meat from this.[/i]

     Face continued to practice the techniques he remembered across the field, performing the moves as he remembered how they looked.

     A human shepherd was stirred from his nap by the pungent smell of blood. Upon waking, he was startled by the blood, wool, and lamb corpses that covered the field.

     “M-my sheep!” the shepherd NPC exclaimed. His face paled. Was there a single one alive? What sort of creature would do this?

     Like a white rose in a field of red, he saw in the distance a single lamb that was standing in the field. The shepherd NPC rushed over to the creature.

     “Thank heavens there’s one left!” he said before he reached down to pet the creature’s head. “You poor thing. You’re the only survivor. I’m sorry. I fell asleep!”

     The lamb burst into white smoke in front of the shepherd’s face, causing him to recoil in a coughing fit. “Gak! What the-! GRK!”

     A red blade split his chest. The shepherd’s back arched and head snapped back, eyes bulging up at the sky. Behind him, obscured by the dissipating smokescreen was the silhouette of an assassin. The shepherd in his dying moments heard the rattle of a chain before the blade slid from his chest to allow his body to join the lambs on the crimson field.

     Whipping the blade of his kusarigama to the side to get rid of the blood, Face chuckled in exhilaration as he gazed upon the field. He was going to survive. He could remember his moves. He would soon be out of this stupid game!

     “I declare this land Crimson Fields…” said the assassin ominously.

     Face quickly fled from the pasture, sprinting northeast toward the Baharuth Empire.