OFF//WORLD: It's Easy to Save the Universe When You're in a Pocket Dimension

Chapter 3 - A Bear in the Woods

With trepidation, Jain summoned her player menu. The air glitched and fussed, but after a moments protest the menu appeared as expected. Most options were grayed out. Player Profile, Loadout, Skills, something called ARSEN Points... but there it was, Inventory. Highlighted in a beckoning, soft glow. She tapped the icon, and a list of one presented itself.

Mystery Box (Wrecka [Astral])

Jain fell back against the stone wall. Her legs were gelato. Had it only been a few hours since she saw them? What an unusual sensation, nostalgia for the company of people she barely knew, and with whom she had spent all of thirty minutes.

Knowing the feeling was silly did not dismiss it. But had it ever? Jain backed out of the inventory to look at the rest of the unavailable options. Purse? Self-explanatory. Reciprocity Status... less so. Perhaps some kind of karma system? And another glowing sigil labeled... Map.

Eagerly, Jain summoned it, and a golden representation of her current surroundings leaped into view. There she was at the center. That dot must be the shack. And not far away... Jain's eyes widened. The question mark! Had Sulak brought her to it intentionally? Surely more than one unknown location like that existed.

Either way, now she had a goal—if a temporary one. Using the map's compass, she oriented herself and stalked off into the forest.

For a game touting tens of thousands of players in its alpha and beta tests, OFF//WORLD was pretty empty. Jain made her way cautiously through the trees. Once or twice she felt eyes upon her, but the sensation was too transient to be real. If anything at all was real here.

The forest gave way to an oasis of sorts. A stream fed a small pool flanked by a blanket of brown leaves beneath the open sky, and a curious pinging, like fingernails tapping on metal. It was faint, and vaguely in the same direction as the map indicator.

Stepping into the clearing, Jain braced for a jump scare that did not come. Emboldened, she knelt by the pond and got a first look at her own face reflected in water dyed indigo by the plant above. It was hers, but not; at once familiar and strange. She poked at a cheek, tweaked her nose. Such breathtaking fidelity; and no lag at all.

The pinging continued. Rhythmic, then random. She followed it upstream, though she could not say why. Certainly her own curiosity played a part, but from the moment she first saw that golden dot from above Jain had longed to discover what it marked. If anything.

She walked for what felt like hours, and the gradual incline became steeper, more treacherous. Her slippered feet skidded in the wet grass and she often had to seize the trunks of saplings and low branches to steady herself. Eventually she stumbled into another, much smaller clearing, and the pinging stopped.

A rush of fluttering wings catapulted a small, bird-like creature into the air, its origin a lumpy shadow leaning against a rock. The glowing marker vanished from her map, and Jain dismissed it as she approached.

It did not look like much at first. A rusted suit of armor, perhaps, long since discarded, but it was far too large for a human to wear. Indeed, the closer Jain got, the huger it became. A person could easily climb inside it with room for two more.

The helmet had no opening, just a set of staggered lights and a dent like someone or something had been hammering at it for a good long while. Jain brushed a layer of leaves and dirt away from it and stood back.

Easily 3 meters tall, its vaguely womanish shape was curled up, arms around its knees, head bowed to its chest, where something else glinted in the planetlight. Jain leaned in, reaching over the suit's clasped arms to wipe her palm across it.