Ethan was left speechless for several seconds.
Staring at the oversized head filling the screen, he instinctively glanced back at the sketch in his hand. The drawing clearly depicted a woman who looked to be in her fifties or sixties, her facial features sharp and aged, yet that face was attached to a body that was barely a meter tall. The contrast was so jarring that his thoughts stalled.
Was this…
Dwarfism?
In Ethereal, character proportions were modeled directly after the player's real-world physique. That meant the person on his screen truly looked like this in reality. Ethan felt a headache coming on as understanding settled in.
'Master Roger, you damned old man,' he thought bitterly. 'You seriously cannot tell the difference between dwarfism and a young girl?' All that time wasted, all those assumptions, gone in an instant.
On the screen, the woman's mouth kept moving without pause, her expression animated and relentless. Ethan did not hesitate. He muted her feed.
