Page 6 of 3013: Hellion

However, that wasn’t the worst part of the situation.

As he lay there, the sounds finally reached him. Slowly sitting up, he realized that the holo people were moving again, going about their business like they had been programmed to. Whatever that shockwave of power had been was strong enough to restart the game.

But something was wrong.

When a holo man walking a dog that was almost as big as he was accidentally let go of the leash, the dog ran off and bumped into a holo woman standing by the edge of the lake. The holo woman spun around and fell into the water with a loud splash.

A splash a mere image shouldn’t have made.

The ramifications of that hadn’t quite sunk in yet when the dog ran right past him, bumping up against his leg as he darted off after a squirrel.

Xian did a double take.

He had felt the contact.

The dog had been real, just like the woman currently floating in the water. People started forming a crowd near the lake, pointing at the woman and shouting for help. He started to rush forward to help, then came to a jarring halt when the body in the water transformed into a cloud of dust that was carried away on the wind.

The holos were real…until they weren’t.

The crowd of people dispersed as if they had never even seen her, leaving Xian gaping at them in stunned silence. That shockwave of power had magically brought the holos to life, but they seemed to be nothing more than animated puppets doing what they had been programmed to do.

Living their lives within the parameters of the game.

The entire restricted island was filled with simulated images and characters that were a part of the different game scenarios, but not all of them had been programmed to do mundane things like take a walk in the park.

Some of them were hostile.

Some of them were deadly.

And that revelation made him realize that things were about to get a whole lot worse. He wasn’t just on a rescue mission anymore.

It was now a game of survival.

Chapter Three

Dragon Warrior JayaTesera studiedthe magical protective barrier in front of her with a mixture of curiosity and concern. The magic felt familiar, so that wasn’t a cause for her worry. She sensed it was Dragon Warrior magic laced with Ilius, but it was somehow being amplified by the technology on the island.

And that was something she hadn’t seen before.

There were very few things that could prevent her from entering a space. On principle alone, she wanted to figure out a way to break in. She loved a good challenge and was fascinated by an intriguing mystery.

An adventurer at heart, there was nothing she appreciated more than experiencing the unknown. That was why she and her twin, Jecca, spent most of their time exploring the universe.

But according to her sister, Jaya’s curiosity was both a good and bad thing.

She could admit that her impulsive nature had led them into plenty of difficult situations in the past. The Crown Princes of the Palace on the Isle of Mist, her older brothers Malachi and Braxas, had labeled her a hellion and troublemaker. That didn’t bother her since she called them boring hardasses in return.

While they loved to lecture her about her reckless behavior, they didn’t understand that it wasn’t just her impulsive nature that made her do things they found questionable.

It was a magical sense of insight that drove her to act.

Jaya had learned to trust her instincts no matter how crazy they made her seem. It wasn’t always initially clear why she did something, but everything usually worked out for the best. And by that, she meant there was normally an important reason for her decisions.

This time, her curiosity had led her and Jecca to Evo, the new gaming world located near a giant blue star. When they had heard about a planetoid that had been terraformed with a combination of magic and the latest technology, the concept had intrigued them enough to detour there so they could explore.

Evo was still in a testing phase, meaning it wasn’t officially opened to the public yet. Even so, a group of people had been invited to explore the gaming world to test it out. That gave Jaya and Jecca the opportunity to look around and observe everything before it became too crowded with visitors.

They’d left their vessel hovering close to the planetoid while they had transported down to the surface. They had decided to start their tour on the largest island where most of the people were located and had masked their presence so they could observe everyone undetected.

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