I woke up to the feeling of light, warm pressure on top of my chest and a couple of eyes staring right at my face. Those eyes belonged to, as far as I could tell, the only other person in the entire “game.” She must have moved from my side to on top of me while I slept.
“Did your love points go up?” Vala asked upon noticing I was awake.
“I told you to stop with that, and no,” I answered.
“Ehh? Seriously? But you’re a virgin. Shouldn’t a virgin be panicking and blushing and falling in love when he wakes up to a cute girl lying on top of him?”
“All you’ve done is remind me of my old lizard.”
“I reminded you of a lizard? For real?”
“Yeah. I used to have a pet monitor lizard. She liked to sleep on top of me.”
“I–I lost to a lizard… your first time sleeping with a woman was stolen by another…” She sounded genuinely disappointed. Maybe, in the same way that I compared her to a lizard since she was a dragon, she saw the lizard as competition despite her being an actual woman versus a pet animal?
“Not that it matters, but you’re the first person I’ve slept together with.” That seemed to have cheered her up a bit.
“I guess that makes it a little bit better. But wait, if that’s true, why aren’t you panicking more right now? Shouldn’t you still be flustered and shouting and trying to run away and hide out of embarrassment? You’re not even asking why I’m here or anything.”
“Well, I figured you’re on me because I’m soft and warm. That’s why my monitor liked me.”
“C-could you stop applying that logic to me, please? I’m not a pet lizard…”
“Other than that, I guess I just—”
“It must be because I tried triggering this flag too early. Dang, I let my impatience lead the way instead of my gamer sense. I should have known better than to bring out such a powerful attack before lowering your defense first.”
“You don’t have to talk about everything like it’s a game. You know that, right?”
She stuck her tongue out at me, revealing just how long and serpentine it was. So, in addition to her having horns, wings, and a tail, she also had a tongue that made it hard for me not to continue comparing her to my old pet monitor.
“Come on, get up. I don’t want to laze around and do nothing. If I’m here to play a ‘game’ then I’m going to play a game, and right now, that means preparing for tonight.”
“Ooh, you’re actually taking this pretty seriously!”
“I figure I have three choices. One, I could not take it seriously, probably run away and try to survive on my own away from you, and be easily found by you or Window. Two, I could just be depressed and lie around doing nothing while wanting to go back to Earth. Three, I could take this seriously, hopefully not die, and play along with your games in hopes of staying entertaining so that you don’t kill me.”
“I’m not going to kill you. I just want to play vidya with you.”
“You know, you could have posted an online advertisement saying that a lonely dragon girl is looking for virgins to play games with and you would have had millions of applications.”
“That’s not the same,” she said with another pout. “And… you know, if you really want to go back… I guess I can send you back. It’s not impossible. Co-op isn’t any fun if you have to force somebody to play with you, so…”
I honestly considered telling her right then and there to just send me back. I missed my greenhouse, I knew nothing about her, was constantly being called a virgin by Window, and we were about to be under attack as soon as it was nighttime. Going back to a normal, safe life back on Earth sounded pretty good.
Then I remembered what Window said about me being able to have a, “super huge garden” here. Vala even mentioned aliens invading and bringing new species of flowers with them. Going by the fact that she could turn the sun blue and supposedly created this entire universe by herself, I didn’t doubt that aliens really could bring some awesome, exotic flowers from alien worlds to this one. So, even if I could go back to Earth, what opportunities would I be missing if I did?
If anybody asked me, “Would you want to go to a brand-new world to live your life out away from society being able to grow huge gardens full of plants nobody had ever seen before?” the day before, I would have said yes and lamented about how impossible that was. There would have been no hesitation in accepting such an offer as long as I could have brought my greenhouse with me.
Maybe that was why I was still hesitating to just fully give in and accept this dragon and this world? I wanted my greenhouse and didn’t trust anybody back on Earth to keep the plants within it alive. Imagining them slowly withering away or being tossed out was the most depressing thing since my pet monitor died.
So, I could either give in and do something I had always dreamed of but previously thought impossible, maybe never getting the opportunity again, or I could go back home to take care of my plants while living the rest of my life out alone and potentially regretting my decision.
It came down to mourning my plants versus a lifetime of potential regret.
I really didn’t want my plants to die or be mistreated.
That was when I thought of something.
If I didn’t want to live out a lifetime of regret, even if it meant staying with a dragon who might secretly want to kill me, and I didn’t want to leave my greenhouse behind…
Why choose between those two things at all?
“Vala,” I said.
Vala tilted her head. “Hmm? Yeah?”
“I have an offer for you.”
“Ooh. What? Is it vidya related?”
“Kind of. How about this: if I can bring my greenhouse from Earth here, I’ll play as many games with you as you want for the rest of my life.”
“Your greenhouse?”
“Yeah. It was the only thing I cared about back on Earth. If that’s here, I have no reason to ever go back.”
“You’ll stay here forever if you have that?”
“Until I die.”
“Really, really? Like, you’ll play games with me here forever and ever?”
“Really.”
“Deal! If it’s just a greenhouse then that shouldn’t make the game too easy or anything like bringing your entire house would, and it’s totally worth it if it means an eternal player two! I can’t let such an important flag slip past me…”
“So, how are we going to bring my greenhouse here?”
“Oh, that’s easy. Hey, Window, come out.”
Just as requested, Window popped out of thin air and bent her “body” in a way that made it look like she was saluting Vala.
| The best informational status window ever, Window, at your service! |
“Gimme my powers back real quick.”
| Do you promise not to cheat and spawn nukes or battleships? |
“I won’t, I promise. This is important.”
| Okay. There, your powers are back. Hurry up and give them back before you give in to temptation. |
“Thanks, Window.”
With that, Vala reached a hand out and—I don’t know how to explain what happened other than by saying that she formed a bridge from our world to Earth. It looked like there was a rip through reality itself, and on the other side of the rip was a top-down view of my hometown.
“Which house is yours?”
“That one,” I answered and pointed at my house. From what I could see, there were a couple of moving trucks in front of it and workers moving in and out of the house taking all my belongings out of it. They brought way too many people for how easy that job should have been. It wasn’t like I owned much. More importantly, it looked like my greenhouse was safe. “Can you—I don’t know, zoom in?”
“Of course. Who do you think I am?”
“Some sort of winged lizard named Vala.”
She turned to look at me, stuck her tongue out, and went back to the tear in reality so that she could zoom in on my backyard.
“Is this it?”
“Yeah. That’s my greenhouse.”
“Ooh… so you owned your own house and had a yard and everything?”
“I had nothing else to spend my money on.”
“You must have been a hard worker to save up that much money to buy a house this big at your age. Aren’t houses like this really expensive?”
“It cost me a few hundred thousand, but like I said, I had nothing else to spend my money on. Getting a loan helped out, too.”
“And this greenhouse?” she asked and brought it closer into view.
“Built it from scratch. All of my free time went into getting building permits, making sure everything was legal, learning how to actually build it, buying materials, and then spending all of my time inside of it. You know what this style of greenhouse is called?”
“Nope. I don’t know anything about this sort of stuff.”
“It’s a geodesic dome greenhouse. You see how it’s made of what looks like a bunch of triangles in a circle? That distributes the structural stress. This design is stable, has great light absorption, offers a good amount of space, and it honestly just looks nice. I would be lying if I said that liking how this style looks wasn’t my primary reason for wanting to build this kind.”
“I see, I see. So, I bring this here and you’ll play vidya with me forever? You won’t want to leave or run away?”
“That’s the deal.”
“Alright, stand back, okay?”
I stepped back and let her get to work.
I didn’t know what to expect, but I definitely wasn’t expecting what I got to watch happen.
The tear in reality opened until it was the size of a movie theater screen. Then, magical energy poured from our world over to Earth, “scooped” my greenhouse right off the ground, and everybody was going outside or rushing into the backyard to watch as my beloved greenhouse was lifted into the air as if aliens came to abduct it.
My jaw may as well have been in the grass the entire time I watched that happen.
Slowly, the greenhouse approached the tear connecting the worlds and began to appear on this side of it. As cheesy as it might sound, I had to try not to get teary-eyed at the sight of my greenhouse returning to me. We were only separated for a few hours and I was ready to run up to it and hug it.
That is exactly what I did once it was placed gently on the ground on our side. While I tried my best to hug my greenhouse, Vala clapped her hands and closed the tear.
“You can take my powers back now, Window. The temptation to spawn an aircraft carrier is getting hard to resist.”
Just like that, Vala’s ability to tear a hole through reality to connect a bridge between worlds was taken away from her. Though, it wasn’t like she probably couldn’t just ask for her powers back again to do that if she ever found the need to.
“So, I get to use you as a body pillow tonight, right? Since I totally should have gotten a bunch of love points from tha—”
“Sure.”
“Wa-wait, really? I can? You don’t mind?”
“I figure I have two choices. I can say no despite you doing exactly what I asked you to do, even if cuddling wasn’t part of the deal, or I could surrender and stay warm with a dragon in case it gets cold.”
“Sweet, I unlocked a new event.”
“Speaking of events, we’re going to be attacked tonight, aren’t we?”
“Yeah, basically.”
“Alright. Let’s get working on our defenses then.”
“Ooh, you sound fired up now!”
“Of course I am. I have to protect my greenhouse. I was already separated from it once, so now I’m not going to let anybody hurt it.”
“And because you want to protect the main heroine who just so happens to be an awesome and lovable dragon, right?”
“Don’t push it. I only just agreed to being your pillow.”
Vala flashed a smile at me before turning around and looking over the materials I gathered earlier. Then she turned back to face me and asked, “Woah, aren’t you sore?”
“From what?”
“You know, from bringing all of this over here! Even if you made a wheelbarrow it still would have been a bunch of work.”
“It wasn’t that hard.”
“That’s what she said,” she said while pointing finger guns at me. “Pew pew.”
“Pew pew,” I said and shot my own finger guns right back at her. I figured I might as well start relaxing and playing along with her more since I’d be with her for the rest of my life. It might have been naïve or nonsensical to just go and genuinely believe that all because she brought me my greenhouse, but she brought me my greenhouse. That was enough to make me realize she might not be some sadistic killer waiting for me to bore her after all. No bad person nor dragon would have done something like that for me.
“Alright! So, what do you wanna do? Got any ideas?”
“Well, what are we going to be fighting?”
“I dunno. I wanted Window to keep that a secret from us. Think of her as like… a dungeon master. She’s our DM and we’re the players, so it’s up to her to surprise us.”
“Then we’re going to have to come up with some universal defenses that are good against everything.”
“What towers are available?”
“Towers?”
“Yeah, towers. You wanted a tower defense game, remember?”
“I remember saying something like that, yeah.”
“So, we need to build towers! First, since we don’t have a base yet, we’ll just use your greenhouse as a castle until we get a real one!”
Before I could raise any concerns about my greenhouse getting used as a castle against enemies, a flag with that cartoonish dragon logo appeared on the top of it.
“But which direction will they come from… that’s kinda important to know,” Vala said. “It’s not fair if they come from all—ooh!”
I looked to see what seemed to surprise Vala and saw a dirt road appear in front of us. The road led from my greenhouse’s entrance toward the nearest forest, split into two paths, and then led beyond the trees. “I’m guessing our enemies are going to come out of the forest along the road then. They’ll come from two different paths and then converge as one in the final approach. I guess, before we do anything else, we have to figure out what towers we can build and how many.”
| Oh yeah. I should probably limit how many towers you can make. >_> |
“Oh, it’s you.”
| You sound too disappointed for being able to bask in my presence! |
“Show us what sort of towers we can make.”
“Vala, how do I make this thing more obedient?”
| First off, I’m not a thing! Second off, it’s not my fault you don’t know the proper commands! |
“She’s sassier than I thought she’d be,” Vala said. “But the command is probably something like… ‘Tower Building!’”
Vala and I were lifted high enough into the air for us to see the entire path from the greenhouse to the forest. Glowing, pulsating circles appeared in intervals along the path with hammer icons floating above them. Assuming it worked like any other tower defense game, those were spots where we could build towers. A smaller window floated in front of us that read, “Selected Heroes: 0/2,” and below that were pictures of our faces.
As for the large window in front of us, it looked just like the crafting menu but with a focus on towers instead of any random item that could be made with a specified material.
Only two towers were available to us with many more grayed out on the scrollable list.
|
Warrior Tower
Difficulty Level: ★
Build Time: 30 minutes
Required Materials: Any type of wood (x75), any type of stone (x50)
Durability: 100%
A tower that is home to brave warriors who will fight the invaders in melee combat!
Bowman Tower
Difficulty Level: ★
Build Time: 30 minutes
Required Materials: Any type of wood (x100), any type of stone (x25)
Durability: 100%
A tower that is home to brave bowmen (and bowwomen) who will shoot invaders with arrows!
|
I looked down at the stockpile of stone and could only count twenty-three cubes.
“We don’t even have enough materials for one tower,” I said.
“I guess we’ve gotta hurry up and gather more then. How about… you go gather, and I’ll think about strategies?”
“How about, I go break up rocks and you load them into the wheelbarrow to bring them back here so that we’re both working?”
“Does napping count as working?”
“No.”
“I guess I can help you out for a little bit since I’m so awesome and helpful. Then I’ll go to sleep.”
“You just slept earlier. Twice.”
“There is no such thing as too much sleep.”
“Can’t you make it so that you’re never sleepy if you can control everything in this universe?”
Asking that brought about an expression that would make one think they asked her the most offensive, horrifying question in all of existence. “Why—why would anybody ever want to do that? Sleeping is the best thing ever! It’s even better than games!”
“Then why don’t you sleep forever instead of playing games all the time?”
“Because I want to play games even if I want to sleep. It’s a really hard life having to constantly choose between sleeping and gaming. Humans just can’t understand the ultimate struggle.”
“You’re going to offend even more of humanity.”
“Less complaining, more mining. Look, we only have a couple of hours before it’s dark.”
She was right. The sun looked like it would set soon, so we had to hurry. “How do we get back to the ground?”
“Let us down.”
“Put us down.”
“Set us down.”
| You can’t just keep changing the first word and expect a different answer. Well, maybe if you add an extra first word that starts with “P.” |
“Positively put us down.”
| Why are you the way that you are? |
“I should be asking you that.”
| All I want is to be treated with common courtesy! |
I sighed and finally gave in, saying, “Please let us down.”
| See? Now was that so hard? |
“Don’t get used to i—”
We fell.
Rather than being let down gently, whatever kept us floating in the air dropped us and waited until right before we were about to hit the ground before stopping us and letting us down safely.
| That’s what you get for being so stubb—w-wah! Hey! Stop shaking me! |
Window vanished the moment I stopped shaking her.
“You two really get along,” Vala said. “I’m kinda jealous. She better not be getting more love points than me…”
“I always liked playing the straight man back when I was in school, so that’s why it looks like we get along. It’s not because I like her.”
“You should totally tell me about your school days sometime.”
“I’ll tell you some stories while we mine stone, if you help me.”
“Ooh, you’d be a good politician.”
“Isn’t that way too far of a leap?”
“You should run for president.”
“That’s even further!”
Vala giggled and said, “Come on, let’s hurry up so we don’t fail tonight.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Vala turned away and looked up to say, “Next time, the first battle!”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m letting the audience know what happens next time since that seemed like when an episode or chapter of something would end. Don’t you think that was a good stopping point?”
“Sure, but… you’re just going to talk up at the sky and pretend there’s an audience of people watching you?”
“I could make an actual audience appear up there, but that’d be kinda creepy. Then we’d be watched all the time.”
“Being aware that you were actually inside of a show or book or something would be weird. You’d just be there for somebody else’s entertainment, and you wouldn’t even know who.”
“Yeah. So, let’s go hurry up and mine so that the next chapter can begin! We have to keep the audience entertained.”