I managed to come back with the 3 coins to make 4 coins total. I took them to a gold buyer and got a total of $1830 for them. I bought some first aid kits, and extra supplies of the kinds I think Tommy might need. Gauze bandages for covering wounds and antiseptic to clean them, forceps to extract bullets, and alcohol to clean them. This only cost a tiny portion of my money.

At a military surplus store, I bought a kevlar vest and a kevlar jacket. I couldn’t find any kevlar pants, but I was hoping I could fashion the vest into a skirt. They were also able to supply special scissors capable of cutting kevlar and extra-narrow but strong needles that could be used to sew it. The lot cost $1200. Elissa already had a decent helmet and boots. I bought a jacket one size larger than would fit me to ensure Elissa’s arms and boobs fit into it.

I spent the evening working on the dress. I cut the shoulders out of the vest, inverted it, and sewed it to the bottom of the jacket, making a sort of bulletproof dress. Mom helped. It was the first time I’d managed to talk to her about the dreamworld since the morning I showed the first coin.

“Dad and I haven’t forgotten. We talked to a psychiatrist, but she said that as long as the dreams weren’t causing you to harm yourself, and as long as you are clearly able to distinguish the dreams from the real world, you’re probably fine.”

“And you believe me, even with me bringing back coins from the dream and selling them in real life?”

“Well, the reason we came to you tonight is that we want to set up a camera to record you in your sleep. This stuff should be a good test; you’re going to take this stuff into the dream and leave it there for your friend, right?”

“Yes, that’s the idea.”

“So we’ll set up the camera tonight, and I’ll watch the video tomorrow and confirm that at some point it just disappears, and that you didn’t just get up and hide it. I’ll share with Dad where it happens.”

“OK. I’d like to see it too, since of course I haven’t seen what it looks like here when I leave stuff behind.”

“Sure. The software we’ve got with it will let me cut out a small snippet of the video. I can even email it to you.”

“OK.”

Because the fabric was made of many layers, the sewing was difficult, but we got it done. It wasn’t pretty, but it should work. For sexy clothing, I took my second-favorite nightgown and a bra and panty set that went with it. The bra was decorative and mainly meant to provide modesty under the nightgown which would otherwise reveal too much, so it didn’t matter that Elissa was bigger there than I was. Well, she’d jiggle, but that was fine in the circumstances these clothes were likely to be used.

I hoped I could bring all this stuff into the game, in two big bundles that I held while going to bed, but if it didn’t work, I expected that the remainder would still be at home for me to try again the next night. I didn’t cover up with sheets when I got into bed in order to let the camera do its job.

It worked; I got into the game with everything. I stripped down to just Elissa's panties and put on the sexy clothes I brought, to confirm they would fit. They did, so I put them and most of the other stuff in the pack. I got Elissa dressed in her uniform again and had her wear the bulletproof dress over her other clothes.

Tommy’s note to me today was just the history. Interesting. My guesses were largely right with no American Revolution, and a lot of the rest of the history including both World Wars happened largely like it did here, but Germany developed the bomb first and so World War II was way worse than it was in my world. But that was the distant past. I had to survive tonight, which the new supplies made a lot easier!

So after a while of killing enemies, I stopped and camped in a protected spot. In my note I explained what I brought, as well as the new loot I collected as Elissa tonight.

---

Wow, Tommy thought upon checking the backpack’s contents and reading Sarah’s latest note. She got all this stuff, even a full freaking bulletproof dress, for three gold pieces. That’s consistent with what she says about being in the real world, but totally game-breaking here.

Tommy had Elissa try on the sexy clothes, and checked her stats in them. Yes, these would probably work for what I expect to need to do.

Then he had her put on her uniform again and the dress. Elissa looks like she’s wearing a sack, but if it stops bullets, this will be awesome. Less hiding, more shooting, faster progress. Good thing she knows how to put this stuff on by herself. I’m not sure I could manage the manipulations to get her into the clothes. Unfortunately, I never get to see her changing. But I understand they didn’t want to make it a porn game.

And Sarah found the map. It shows a side-quest that would actually let me earn the GP to buy the sexy clothes, but now I can skip that. With Sarah’s loot, I can skip right to the guy I’ve got to have Elissa romance secrets out of.

---

The next evening, Mom emailed me the video, showing how the bundles I was carrying vanished when I brought them into the dream world. She wrote in the email, “You’re all clear. If you need our support for something, just ask. But I don’t know who can help with what is actually happening to you.”

There was one other thing I was curious about, which was how time passed in our respective worlds. It sounded like Tommy was on Earth in a parallel universe, but who knows what it was like where Elissa was. I was willing to go without my watch for a little while, and wore it to bed, intending to take it into the game and leave it there.

Once I got into the game, I read Tommy’s latest note. Three thousand, he says! I guess that’s a war zone economy for you. Besides the star, he had marked out our entire course through the game, with the parts I played in red. About half the time I had been doubling back into territory he’d already covered. Now I would know where to go.

He was right about the enemies being tougher, but the bulletproof dress, combined with looking ahead on the map to guess where enemies might pop out, made my progress not too difficult. In fact, I reached Bongardo’s office after what I could now measure was about 4 hours. Compared to the recent nights, I estimated I was about 3/4 of the way through my dream, so the whole time I would spend here was 5 to 6 hours.

Before approaching the office, I switched into the sexy clothes. As predicted, he was very welcoming of me dressed that way, and invited me in. Now Tommy had said I needed to charm the secret out of him, not overpower or kill him and search for it in the office. Unfortunately, all my charm seemed to be doing was getting me closer to his bed, which was in a second room behind his office.

Since it seemed that was the only way, I let him take me in there. I thought I was going to have to have sex with him, but we got under the covers together still clothed, and he kissed and groped me for a little while, and then he fell asleep. I wondered what I was supposed to do for a bit, but pretty soon he started murmuring things in his sleep. I wrote them all down on the notepad. It was a puzzle! The first letters of the seemingly random words he spoke in his sleep spelled out a set of directions, which repeated once it was finished. After about a half hour of listening I had the full set of directions and had traced them out on the map.

I left him there, after searching his office. There was a bag of 12 gold pieces, a bunch of ammo, and a sturdier pair of boots that somehow fit Elissa. I took them all and found a campsite nearby, but far enough away that I hoped Bongardo would not find me. Since my time here was nearly through, I recapped for Tommy.

---

Hmm, a watch. That’s interesting, Tommy thought. More interesting though is that my helper completely spoiled a puzzle for me. Is it possible she’s not really a game AI, but actually a person from another world who’s somehow gotten cursed into visiting my game? That’s really weird, but it’s possible.

Tommy looked online for any other indication of Death March 6 players having an AI assistant helping them, and specifically for getting this puzzle spoiled by one. There were plenty of sites which did spoil that the initial letters spell directions to the jade cross, and even the answer spelled out. There were three possible locations, and there were bad traps on the way to the two wrong ones, so you did need to get at least enough of the words to identify a unique part of one of the three paths.

Furthermore, there was no mention of the words being needed again anywhere else in the game. Tommy thought, One reason for the AI to spoil this puzzle for me is to get the words written in my notepad so I will have them for some later puzzle. But there isn’t one, and one player mentioned finishing the game with a blank notepad. It must be that Sarah is real.

So as Tommy moved toward his next goal in the game, he marked the time for Sarah.

---

I guess it wasn’t too strange that Tommy’s time zone was similar to mine. He’s in North America on his Earth. I brought home my clothes at the end of the next night.

We went on like this for several weeks, through a new quest or at least a step in a quest every day or two. Elissa never needed more of my special help by buying more stuff in my world, though I brought in more crackers for me to eat there. Eventually, one night, I killed Trazillia, who I understood as being the next-to-last boss in the game. She dropped an amulet and a big sack of money.

In my real life, I got back to dating Brad. I’d had to tell him no for a while because this thing with my dreams was getting too crazy, but once it started feeling routine, I was able to see Brad again. Even so, I felt like what was happening in my dreams was more important than Brad right now, and I was distracted during our dates.

---

While reading Sarah’s last raid log, Tommy paused the game and looked up this amulet on a spoiler site. Hmm, it’s just called Trazillia’s amulet, and it doesn’t seem to do anything. People are calling it an unimplemented bonus item. It certainly isn’t necessary to win the game. Nor does Elissa need all this gold. She has everything needed to kill the last boss and escape, without the loot Sarah just found. There isn’t even another place for Elissa to spend any of it, unless she backtracks a long way. But maybe I can help Sarah. She doesn’t think there are real curses in her world, so maybe it’s just in her mind, and all she needs is some encouragement.

---

“He wants me to keep the amulet and all the gold, wow!” I thought. “We have thousands of gold pieces. Probably two million dollars worth of gold. It’s a good thing Elissa is so strong, because I wouldn’t even be able to carry it all.”

I got moving toward the last boss, didn’t reach him, but camped close by, slightly early, and packed up to bring home the amulet and the gold. I needed something to carry it in just to hold it all. So as not to steal Elissa’s backpack, I took a pack from one of the guys I killed, put everything in that, and brought it home with me.

---

Well, she took me up on my offer, Tommy noted. The pack wasn’t anywhere near Elissa’s carrying limit, but it’s a lot lighter now.

Tommy set up for the final battle, an epic fight that took most of his 2 remaining hours in the game tonight, and won. This got Elissa the key to the gate which let her out. There was still a trek out of this hellhole which would have to be done later; Tommy had read that it was about 15 minutes of actual gameplay and more than half an hour of cutscenes.

---

Well, I got it. The backpack containing the amulet and all the gold was in bed with me when I awoke. It was, in fact, more gold than I could pick up at once. It was only because the body I had in the dream was so strong that I was able to keep going in that place with what had become a very heavy pack. I put on the amulet and wore it all day, as it was nice looking. The gold I shoved under my bed, in its closed pack.

When I got home from school that day, I found that the backpack was full of tiny holes and the gold had diminished to half of what I brought back. When I examined it more closely, it looked like individual threads of the fabric had vanished. Where missing threads crossed other missing threads, holes were visible. The remaining coins were intact, but it wasn’t clear where the others had gone; the holes were not large enough for coins to fit through.

But this didn’t happen to the amulet, nor to the coins I brought back with me previously. What was the difference? The most obvious difference, I decided, was that I kept the other things with me while I left the gold at home. I bet these things I bring back are sustained by my connection to the game somehow, but when separated from me they start to collapse into whatever this is. Hmm, if this happened to the coins I sold that guy, I’d better not go back there any more. He’d be pissed. But I turned the camera Mom had used previously onto the remains of the backpack to watch any further decay.

So that night, I went to bed still wearing the amulet. Instead of awakening in the game as Elissa, I found myself facing a sort of menu, like on a computer, except seemingly floating in the air before me. Select Destination, it said, and there were two choices: Elissa in Tommy’s Death March 6 game, or New Destination. I chose New Destination. This opened another level of menu in which I could choose a new game, a real-world location, or other. Under real-world locations, there was a long list of choices with cryptic names I didn’t understand. But opening them up showed they were some kind of codes identifying different Earths. The next level of each menu was the continents and you could drill down into the countries, regions, cities, and eventually specific addresses and people. The first world on the list had Gyllaria in North America, and apparently because I had visited his game already, the first one at each level of the menu led right to Tommy. I hoped, anyway.

And I awakened in a strange bed. I was a boy! I took in my surroundings. A stereotypical high school boy’s room. Some sexy posters (no nudes), some car stuff, some sports stuff. And a computer, with shelves full of games and other software around it. The Death March 6 box was there. Does this mean I’m in Tommy’s body? There was some strange feeling about it, different from the other times I was in a man’s body. As I approached the computer and bumped the back of the desk chair I realized what it was. Tommy had an erection! I didn’t know if he had it from his own dreams or if I had caused it, but I chose not to invade his privacy more than I was already doing, and ignored it.

The computer was only in sleep mode, not locked; I awakened it and found the Death March 6 icon on the desktop. Among the games I could choose to continue playing was indeed one for a high-level character named Elissa. Rather than play it, I closed the game, and instead left Tommy a note on paper.

I took Tommy’s body to the bathroom, and looked in the mirror there. He was pretty handsome. Not a typical gamer geek. The erection in his underwear was still obvious.

I put Tommy’s body back to bed. I wasn’t done for the night, though. I found myself in front of the menu again. I could continue to use the amulet to visit other destinations. There seemed to be three categories of visitations I could make. I could visit games. I could visit real-world locations, including other worlds, but unless I traveled to the other side of the Earth, I arrived at night. The third category, simply labeled Other in the menu, let me do a kind of viewing. In this case I wasn’t in any body at all, just watching the world as an intangible ghost unable to interact with things. This allowed me to visit well-known places around the world, past or present, day or night, and even well-known fictional places. I visited the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, Niagara Falls, the Louvre, Julius Caesar’s Rome, Pigwarts, Ankh-Morpig, and several other places, some of them for only a few minutes, before my alarm pulled me back into my world.