Glitching Guard

The fight was over. It was over. And he was still standing – that was definitely… something to note. His whole body felt, well, intensely present. Like every part of him had suddenly turned up in volume, almost too loud. Aches and… sensations, just humming through him, vibrating deep, deep inside. His leg was sending signals, sparky little jolts of something. And his fists – he moved his fingers, just a twitch, to test them. Huh. Yeah, they felt… used, definitely used. Like they'd done a thing. Which was, you know, different. Not bad really, for someone who was just a Village Guard who'd… who'd just done that with his hands. When you consider it. If anyone ever did consider guards doing that kind of thing. Which he guessed was unlikely.

He glanced down at the boar. Looked… different now. Still, of course. And quiet – finally quiet. One less boar… just being a boar around here. He wondered if that would even change things. Probably not in any real way he figured. Probably just how it worked around here. Other boars likely just… appeared again, eventually. Because Grimshark was a place with a lot of… them. Still, this one, right there at his feet, was definitively… not moving anymore. And that felt like something. Maybe. For him, anyway. He wondered if those others, the ones who played felt like this after they fought these creatures. Probably different for them, he imagined. But for him… yeah, it did feel like something.

He touched the boar with his boot, just a light tap with the toe. Felt… solid. Not going anywhere. Not moving, not… reacting. Just still. No… things, appear from it. He hadn't thought they would. Why would there be? It wasn't like guards were meant to… get things from them. That was for… those others, wasn't it? The code of the game – it probably worked in certain ways, and not in others. He wondered how it decided what ways were which. He wondered if it ever was… generous. Or if it just… was how it was.

Mud. Predictable Grimshark mud, naturally, coating everything from his ankles down. The kind of mud that formed a permanent bond with the fabric, defying all known laws of digital laundry, even if NPCs didn't technically do laundry. His guard tunic, predictably, was sporting even more rips and tears now, thanks to his tusked opponent. And the stains… yeah, boar stains. Best not to dwell on the specifics of what kind of disgusting fluids leaked out of those things. The whole scene was just thoroughly, comprehensively unappealing.

He straightened up slowly, a quiet grunt escaping him as his abused leg protested the movement. Pathetic, honestly. One measly boar fight and he felt like he'd aged a decade. Players, though, those real players? They'd wade through packs of these things, probably wouldn't even break a sweat, and definitely wouldn't be whimpering about a sore leg. Probably be bragging about it in zone chat right now. And here he was, feeling like he'd just gone ten rounds with a legendary boss after a minor tussle with a slightly underweight boar. Some kind of warrior he was turning out to be. In his dreams, maybe.

He took another panoramic look at Boar Den West. Still the same old depressing mud pit, still that uninviting cave mouth yawning in the rock. The other boars? Vanished. Poof. Back to the digital ether, presumably, off to wherever lines of code went when they weren't actively being a nuisance to paying customers. Efficient, in a cold, digital kind of way. Probably a smart move on their part, to be fair. He likely radiated "annoyed boar" pheromones now, or whatever boars used to register danger. Maybe they just had some kind of built-in "NPC aggression alert." Or, more likely, yeah, they were probably just as brain-dead as they looked.

He was alone again now, at least in the monster sense. Silence dropped back down, heavy and damp as the Grimshark air, blanketed the clearing. Just the usual wind sighing through the rocks, a sound that always managed to sound vaguely mournful, like the game code itself was quietly giving up. No cheering crowds materialized, no heroic fanfare blasted from hidden speakers, and no loot raining from the digital heavens. Just him, the mud, the increasingly pungent dead boar, and the general, pervasive Grimshark gloom. Business as usual, in a lot of respects. And yet… not entirely.

Something was different. He could feel it, a subtle vibration humming beneath the aches and pains. A faint tremor in his code, almost like a… well, a thrill, maybe? Adrenaline, possibly, though he doubted NPCs technically even possessed adrenaline. More likely just another system anomaly, something else subtly breaking down in this already glitchy, perpetually on-the-verge-of-crashing game world. But whatever the explanation, the sensation was undeniably there. He'd fought a monster. And, shockingly, he hadn't just face-planted into the mud and despawned like he was supposed to. He'd somehow, ridiculously, impossibly… not lost. Not in a clean, heroic, player-style way, obviously. But in his own clumsy, muddy, scraped-through-by-sheer-stubbornness kind of way.

He probably should head back towards Oakhaven, he vaguely registered. Guard duty… that was still a thing, wasn't it? Even if it felt distant, unreal, like a half-remembered dream now. West Gate… someone, something, was supposed to be guarding it, in theory. Though, mostly, it just stood there, guarding itself against absolutely nothing most of the time. Still, orders were… somewhere, weren't they? Even for guards who were malfunctioning, questioning everything, feeling things they weren't supposed to feel. Or, you know, whatever this even was.But… not right now. No rush. He wasn't exactly eager to get back to that patrol, back to those same few lines everyone ignored anyway. He wanted… something else. He couldn't put a name to it, not yet. Just… not that. Not the usual, programmed motions. Not right now at least. He looked around Boar Den West again, properly this time, now that he wasn't actively trying to outrun teeth and tusks. Gloomy little spot, when you looked at it. Muddy, rocky, generally just… bleak. Not exactly a vacation destination. Even by Grimshark standards, which were, admittedly, not setting any tourism records anytime soon. But… it was this clearing now, in a way. He'd stood his ground here, survived here, even, somehow, against all the odds, maybe… won here. Maybe he could just… stay a while? Just… figure things out. Was that even allowed? Was there a rulebook for… this? Probably. And he was probably breaking half the rules just by thinking about it.

He wandered over to the tree root, the one that had been surprisingly solid in the middle of all that chaos. Decent bit of wood, sturdy enough, anyway. Still had boar-nastiness smeared all over it, which was less than ideal. He leaned against it anyway, ignoring the ick factor. Felt… strangely grounding, that was the word. This solid, unmoving thing is in the middle of the shifting, unpredictable code world. Like maybe some things in this place were… reliable, even if it was just a tree root. He closed his eyes for a second. Not like he needed to, it wasn't like guards got tired like players did. But it felt… right, somehow. Like hitting a pause button, a moment to just… exist. Feel the non-wind on his non-skin, hear the non-sounds of the non-forest. Yeah, this was definitely… something.

Something new, something he wasn't quite supposed to be doing. Might as well… experience it, right? Then, he heard it. Not the wind sighing through the rocks, not the usual background drone of Grimshark. Something different. Faint, far off, but distinct. Sounds of… fighting? Monster noises. Grunts, snarls, wet impacts. Player combat, almost certainly. That's mostly what Grimshark was when you boiled it down: just endless player-monster brawls. He opened his eyes again, suddenly sharper, more alert. Fight sounds weren't exactly a rarity in Grimshark, you could barely take five steps without stumbling into some player happily hacking away at something. But these sounds… they were coming from Boar Den West. Here. His… clearing. His… tree root. Okay, not his exactly. But still, here.Curiosity, that weird, unexpected… urge, pricked at him again.

Players were here, in this clearing, he realized, blinking a little. In Boar Den West. Fighting these boars. Well, not these specific boars, exactly, the boars were probably all just… boars. But still, here. It was a little… unexpected, somehow. A bit strange that they'd come to this particular spot. Something felt… off about that, a tickle of confusion in his code. Almost like… well, like stumbling upon someone in your own… space? Even if it wasn't his space. Just a feeling. A slightly puzzling feeling. Players in Grimshark, mostly just went… everywhere, didn't they? Just wandered around and did… player things, all over the place.

He pushed himself up from leaning on the tree root, noticing his leg twinge, but… huh, maybe it was a little better now? Or maybe he was just sort of used to the constant ache of being there. He wasn't sure which. Time to… well, time to see what was going on, he supposed. Seemed like the thing to do. And it wasn't like he had any better ideas for what to do with himself just standing around after… all that. Plus, hey, maybe these players were new to this area. Maybe they were still figuring things out, and, you know, maybe struggling a little with the local… wildlife. Maybe, just maybe, a guard who had just, you know, not-failed completely against a boar, could… could see if they needed any… pointers? Yeah, probably not. He was probably just imagining things. Players probably didn't need pointers from guards. They seemed to mostly just… ignore guards. Or sometimes… use them as scenery.

Still, that curiosity feeling, that weird little buzz of… something different… in his system, was pulling at him now. Making him want to move. Towards the sounds of fighting, getting closer. Towards the players who were… here. In this clearing. Towards… whatever might happen next. Because things weren't exactly… predictable lately, were they? Seemed like things were just going to be… one slightly strange, maybe a little dangerous, definitely not-quite-by-the-book step after another from now on.