War of Eternity: Stone cold bright eyed girl

Have fun

Finally, they found themselves at the end of their trek and in a cavernous room. Unlike the rest of the tunnels that they had transversed so far, the area had a noticeably different feel to it. Both the ground and the walls had been worked until they were clean-cut and smooth as if they belonged in a building rather than at the bottom of a filthy mine, and there was a small structure directly in the center of the room. Constructed from white stone that glowed so brightly it illuminated the entire place perfectly, its simple elegance stood out in stark contrast to the dank and dreary warren they had navigated to get there. Lastly and most strangely, the air had a peculiar sweetness about it--a nectar-filled aroma that penetrated Lee’s nose the moment he stepped into the area and that seemed to alleviate the hunger that had started to build as the day went on.

Ethan refused to follow him when he stepped into the room, instead hanging at the edge of the invisible barrier where the wall had just been broken. Come on, Lee urged the little mouse. He was far too used to having eyes on the back of his head at all times, and it made him uncomfortable to think about the little mouse not being around. It was almost like he was being forced to walk around with one eye closed.

Miller and David stepped into the room, and a penetrating yellow rays shot across the hall to highlight them. Lee followed the light back to its source and found that there was a statue situated in the center of the white structure. Although he was too far away to make out the details, he could tell that it was holding a yellow stone at chest level that was the source of the light. The statue itself looked like it was staring directly at them.

“They may not enter,” a deep voice said, and as it spoke, three Krobken’s rose from the floor on either side of it.

“But I may?” Lee asked. He was hesitant to walk any further into the room with the three beasts standing guard. The last fight hadn’t gone smoothly, and their victory hadn’t come without a price. Ling had almost died, and Lee had lost several chunks of his health.

“You, the qualified bearer of his will and the blood of his chosen who has entered into the Temple of the Creator, may not leave until your first gift is tested,” the statue answered.

“My first gift?” Lee asked. The way in which the statue spoke to him and the titles by which it called him answered even fewer questions than they created. Am I supposed to even trust this thing? Does it have a reason for deceiving me? But then why would it lie?

“You must answer three questions, and then you may ask three questions. No more and no less. Should your questions prove as lacking as your answers, you will have failed, and I will have to remove the stain on your patron’s name.”

So you’ll kill me if I don’t measure up. Lee understood the simple meaning behind the statue’s words.

Between the yellow stone that it held in its palms and its glowing yellow eyes, it was hard to look directly at the statue. The combination of white light being emitted by the structure and the yellow radiance was almost too much. Now that his eyes had started to adjust to the brightness of the room, however, he could tell now that it was a completely-nude, six-foot-tall Amazonian.

“So I have to ask riddles or something?” Lee needed to understand what type of questions he was supposed to ask.

“You must answer three questions, and then you may ask three questions,” the monotone voice repeated.

“Fine, bring it on.” Lee readied himself for what he expected to be a Sphinxian examination. He had taken his fair share of stupid questionnaires on the Internet over the years, so he was fairly confident that he could handle himself.

“The first question is such: it has one eye but cannot see. It’s best work is seen by nobody. If it fails, one cannot stitch the tear that rips at dignity.”

Lee had braced himself for one of the toughest possible riddles he might encounter, so he was fairly surprised to hear such an easy one. He wasn’t sure about the second half of it, but the first sentence he had seen several times from knitting-enthusiast pun lovers on Blueit. Wait a minute. If I remember correctly, wasn't I prompted with the information that I was the first English speaker to take part in this game? How did they manage to script puns and riddles that work with my language if no one else speaks it?

“A needle,” Lee answered. He was fairly confident that it was the correct answer, but he definitely wasn’t certain. He stared at the Krobken’s surrounding the statue to see if they moved.

The needle did have an eye, where one looped the thread, and if the stitching was good, no one would ever see the fix. He could only guess that the last part of the riddle referred to the fact that, if the stitchwork failed, the shame of ripped and torn clothes in public places couldn’t be undone--especially if the tear happened to be somewhere sensitive like the seat of one’s pants. That would definitely tarnish someone’s dignity and couldn’t be taken back.

The statue’s yellow eyes glowed brighter, and Lee stiffened up, afraid that the language barrier may have caused him to answer incorrectly.
“The second question is such: I measure out the life of men, a ruler by their side. My visage on a faceless face, hands holding what I hide, a makeshift chain that only serves to anchor in my endless tide.”

With this new riddle, Lee froze. He instantly had an idea of what the answer could be--either time or a watch--but the two were so closely linked that it was also slightly confusing. The second part of the riddle said, ‘my visage on a faceless face,’ which could reference that the watch was where time was visible, not that the watch is what’s seen. The fact that it said ‘my endless tide’ had Lee leaning toward time, not a watch or pocket watch. After all, time was endless, and he had never seen a watch or any other device that would last past a decade. There was also the fact that most riddles like this always had some silly, hard-to-fit, abstract answer that was rarely based on a tangible answer.

“Time,” he answered after thinking for a minute.

The statue’s eyes lit up even brighter, drowning out the remaining white and painting the entire room in a solid yellow hue. “The final question: a blade I am, handled with care. Not deadly for those that can bear. I’m held by all, and everywhere--I am a form of past warfare--where mothers run their daughters through, a word, a thought, and then a glare--a child left in disrepair. A yearning, wish, I’ll carve into. My blade weighed by what one knows is due, so hold me tight, and cut what’s fair.”

Before he could even try to piece together the puzzle, creeping doubt seized ahold of his heart and thoughts. That makes no sense whatsoever. Is this the end of the line? The doubt weaseled into his mind as he looked back and forth between the statue and his friends. Ling was watching him with curiosity and confusion as if her struggle to process the riddle had spilled out of her head and across her face. No help from you guys either? I guess I’m on my own then. There has to be some sort of wordplay . . . some sort of trickery. It’s the third and final question, so it can’t be as easy as the previous two.

Lee mulled over the riddle in his head. Past warfare . . . That’s the wordplay. If everyone still has the weapon, present tense, and holds the weapon, present tense, then why is the warfare labeled as past warfare? He suddenly smiled, having finally come to a conclusion much quicker than he would have guessed.

“Guilt,” he answered from a dried up throat as he wiped sweat from his forehead. This process had been nerve racking, and even as the words left his mouth, he still wasn’t entirely sure about the answer.

“Acceptable,” the statue answered. The light from its eyes reached a blinding level of yellow luminescence, shining so strongly that Lee had to turn his head and shield his eyes from the light. The light dimmed after a long moment, and Lee turned back to see that the once-white stone was now half white and half yellow.

“Now,” the statue continued after the light had dulled. “You have answered; you may ask. You may pose three questions. These questions will also be used to test the nature of your gift, as a mind that can find any answer may be sharp, but without the right question, it is still useless. Therefore, the point and task of your questions is not to trick or deceive. Rather, it is to prove that you have the ability to ask as well as you can answer.”

Lee was halfway through with this challenge, but he didn’t feel any sort of relief at that fact. He had answered tons of awful riddles on the Internet, but he had never been so great at coming up with them. Not to mention, what if he was expected to make it like a poem? His talent with words was as lacking as morals in Washington.

“So I can . . . ” He started to ask for clarification points, but realized that he was about to ask one of the questions. If he didn’t meet whatever standard this statue wanted from him, he could only guess that the three beasts would kill him where he stood. He quickly continued, hoping that the rising pitch in his voice didn’t suggest to the statue that he had just asked a question. “I mean to say, my first question is thus: what is the nature of experience and levels, such that we gain experience but never lose it in this world?” He literally just spat out the first thing that that came to mind though it was also a question he wanted an answer to.

The light from the statue’s eyes turned blue this time, rather than yellow, as it answered. It said, “The nature of experience, as you call it, is that of your soul. Your body, made in the image of your identity, is the manifestation and realization of your soul’s true power. As you kill, you take fragments of the souls of the lives that you have destroyed, leaving enough that they reincarnate once more. As you complete tasks for those that have prayed, a part of their soul is also rewarded to you as a price for your efforts by the creator of this world. In these ways, through absorbing the excess of others, your own soul is fortified, and you grow stronger. You gain a thing that cannot be lost until your own life is taken and your soul re-enters the cycle once more.”

Lee felt like a bombshell had just been dropped on him. Are you kidding me? You’re telling me that . . . I’m currently a manifestation of my soul? You’re saying the reason I get stronger is because I’m not flesh. Lee looked down at his hands. That explains the damage system. I take damage, and I get hurt, but this hit point bar counting down to zero is probably a gauge of my soul’s integrity . . . how much damage it can withstand before it can no longer sustain itself within the vessel. But, in my real world, we’re flesh, not some magical spiritual mumbo jumbo, so it must obey the laws of physics and entropy and lose what makes it strong little by little over time. “That’s insane.” The words escaped his mouth before he could put them back.

“You may ask two more questions,” the statue reminded him.

Now that he knew he didn’t have to come up with some obscure riddle, Lee took the time to think about what he needed to know. The first question had helped me understand a massive detail about this world that I had overlooked, but . . . Wait . . .!

“There is a blue box that often lets me see status updates and that items transfer into my inventory after I kill someone; yet, those items will disappear if I they do not transfer to me. How is all this possible if this world isn’t a game?” Lee asked. His initial question was ‘Are we in a game world, or are we in a real world?’ but he changed it because he would be able to get two answers this way: whether or not this was a real world or a game world, and how and why the prompt function worked within the world. If it was actually a game, then the statue would just tell him that he was wrong in his assumption, thus answering the question.

The blue lights grew even brighter than the yellow had ever been, forcing Lee to squeeze his eyes shut and look away. He was actually thankful that the color wasn’t yellow again. Despite its intensity now, the other color had been even harsher on his eyes when it flared up.

“As a body is real, so are the things it touches. Since a body is imbued with and manifested by a soul, it may latch onto the things that it holds and touches. When the body dies, the items will be pulled with the soul, either being siphoned off as the piece that went with the soul to the victor, or the pieces that got pulled into the cycle of rebirth. As for the reasoning behind the notifications, I am not allowed to divulge that.”

So everything in this world is built on faith and souls . . . souls that grow larger but never die.

“You, who have used your gift to seek the knowledge of how and why, have proven your worth. Still, I require that you ask one more question.”

If we’re composed of our souls, or rather, we’re made in the image of our identity by the realization of our souls or however she put that, then why do we age? If the spirit keeps growing stronger, not weaker, aging shouldn’t occur, right? He was curious, but he couldn’t waste this opportunity on such a simple question--especially not one that wasn’t pressing and would solve itself over time.

“What is the importance of the item you are holding?” he asked.

The blue light instantly enveloped the entire room, blotting out any traces of the yellow  before withdrawing into the stone as if it were a fleeting shadow scurrying away from light. The two colors swirled in the stone for a moment, both yellow and blue fighting for dominance, until the two at last merged to form a perfectly smooth emerald.

“This is a fragment of the World Stone. It is a piece that shapes the existence of this reality. It is also the key that will allow a Herald to win this battle in the War of Eternity in a wholly different way. Without the completion of the World Stone, the soul may only be made divine and fortified through the consumption of another Herald’s gift. In order to complete the World Stone, however, a Herald must pass a test for each of his divine gifts. By passing a test, the Herald’s divinity will connect with the corresponding fragment, and that fragment will be as much a part of the Herald as his own soul and will only be able to separate in death.”

“Wait, a gift from our deity’s divinity? My gift was tested? What was my gift that riddles and questions sufficed?” Questions spewed out of Lee’s mouth, but the statue said nothing in response. Instead, its white exterior turned black, and the green sphere levitated until it was a few inches above its hands. The three Krobkens simply turned to ash and fell into a thousand pieces, disappearing as if they had been blown away by a hurricane despite the fact that there wasn’t as much as a gentle breeze in the cavern.  

Before Lee could even think about approaching the statue to collect his bounty, however, the green gem shot toward him. It painlessly penetrated his chest, and without even affecting the fabric of his shirt, completely disappeared inside of him.

What in the hell? Lee gripped his chest expecting to find an open wound.

You have just absorbed a fragment of the world stone. All of your primary attributes will receive a 5% passive boost. Your intelligence will also receive a passive 5% passive increase.

“Lee!” Ling and Miller cried out in unison, but the entire process was over before the words even left their mouth.

“I’m fine,” Lee assured them. “Better than fine, actually.”

“That’s . . . . good . . .  but what the heck was going on there?” David asked.

“I was just answering the riddles,” Lee answered, taking a moment to glance back to the center of the room where the statue had been.

“Riddles? What language were you even speaking?” David asked in astonishment.

Huh? They didn’t understand me? Oh, that’s right. It was speaking English, so they probably had no idea what I was saying. English was labeled as an exotic language by the blue boxes, the notifications, or whatever they are that the game system wasn’t allowed to divulge to me.

“He was speaking the language of the gods, of course. What type of silly question is that?” Miller’s overly-enthusiastic faith squelched the line of questioning before it could go any further.

“Mmm. Let’s just get back to town. We have what we came for, and I got more than I expected too,” Lee said. He silently said goodbye to the statue that had filled him in on so much. He knew it was silly, but he actually kind of liked the overly-threatening, naked marble lady a lot more than most people he had met so far.

“Did we actually get what we came for though?” Ling asked. “There wasn’t a map among the men.”

“Well, we found out that there is a barkeep who knows what we’re looking for, right?” Lee said. “There can’t be many barkeeps in Satterfield, can there?”

Ling started listing off the places in town. Given she had lived in the tiny place her whole life, she was the ideal source of information. “There is Copper Lane, which has two barkeepers. One works the early night, and one works the late night. Then, of course, there’s Trader Jill’s, but the food is way too expensive, so very few people go. They only have a single girl running most of the establishment, bar included. Lastly, the only other place I can think of is Wenises Off the Table. It’s a fun tavern to go to, and they have three different barkeeps all working randomly. The food is alright at best, but the women there are really good at storytelling. It’s practically their main commodity, and the fact the girls telling the story are all . . . Well, even my dad has wasted several of our hard earned coppers just to spend the night drinking and looking at their faces.”

Miller nodded along with Ling as she spelled out everything. “So that leaves us with two suspects,” he concluded.

“What?” Ling asked. “I just told you there were at least six or seven!” she huffed.

“Nonsense! You said it yourself: Only one of the places employs guys, and there are only two there. Not to mention, they work odd hours, so they probably shift back and forth so that one of them can run messages.”

“What? So a girl doesn’t count as a barkeep?” Ling’s ire toward Miller grew as they walked back toward the mine’s entrance.

“What? No, of course they count!” Miller looked shocked, and the fact that his drunken roar had just come off cooldown and was re-activated only added to the effect of his aghast expression. “I’m just saying: Didn’t the letter use the words ‘him’ and ‘he’ also when talking about the barkeep?”

“Oh, yeah . . .  it did,” David agreed.

“Oh  . . . umm . . . well, we still can’t write them off.” Ling’s lips pursed up as if she had just bitten into a sour apple.

“Wouldn’t it still be three, though?” David asked. “I mean, far be it for me to interfere with the work of a good inquisitor paladin such as yourself or tell you who you should or shouldn’t be burning, but aren’t there three male barkeeps--specifically barkeeps and not simply hired help-- in the town?”

“What? Is there another bar we’re missing?” This time, it was Miller’s turn to scrunch up his face, though his was more puzzled than pouty.

“Ramon?” David answered, albeit as if he were asking a question.

“Huh?” Miller didn’t seem to register what David was saying at all.

“I’m saying that Ramon is a barkeeper, and he’s male. So wouldn’t that make three?”

“You’re being silly. Ramon could never be the informant. He’s a good guy, and he’s the one who sent us here to find them.” Miller shook his head. “That’s why there are only two suspects.”

“But--” David tried to say something again.

“That’s why there are only two suspects!” Miller stomped his foot and slammed the butt of his spear into the ground as if he were doing another drunken shout, but nothing special happened since the cooldown was still in effect.

Following that, a long and awkward silence settled over the group that persisted as no one wanted to say anything to counter Miller’s declaration of trust in Ramon. They group just quietly worked their way back up the mountain--quiet, that is, apart from Miller continuously using his shout in order to train it up. By the time they were near the entrance, Lee’s Appreciative Drunk had climbed all the way to Initiate Level 9.

“So what’s the deal with you two anyway?” David asked at last as they exited the cave.

“I’m the Paladin, destined to lead his and my name into greatness as I spread the fires of damnation to every non-believer in the land!” Miller stated proudly. “In fact, you could say it all began fortuitously when--”

He started to rattle on, but David interrupted him. “No, no I meant with Lee and Ling,” he clarified. “She seemed like she really wanted to say something to him earlier, but she’s been silent the whole time.”

“Oh, right. Right you are! Good eye, young apprentice.”

“I’m older than you,” David shot back.

“Age is nothing more than the hourglass our body gives us to measure a life, letting us count the passage of time with the passage of hair instead of sand from the top to the bottom of the container.” Miller chuckled at his own explanation. “Don’t let it be any more of a constraint to you.”

“Guru wisdom aside, how come you haven’t said anything?” David prodded Ling.

“Well . . .” Ling bit her lip. “I . . . I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”

“You could just try saying whatever you want. No one is going to judge you after the day we’ve had.” Lee just shrugged. He was equally at a loss of what it could be. From the way she had acted earlier, he wondered if it was going to be one of those fabled anime confessions he had heard about but never seen. As someone who grew up in the western world, the limit of his experience with women had always been just a slow progression from hanging out, to more and then to failure.

“Well, it’s hard to talk about when I still don’t understand anything at all. I don’t get it! Why couldn’t I think for so long? Did you do something to grant me the ability to think properly?” Ling asked.

“It hurt when you first did it, didn’t it?” David asked.

“Yeah, like . . .”

“Like a knife in the head, twisting and turning with each thought?”

“YES! Just like that! You too? Did Lee free your mind as well?” Ling asked excitedly.

“No, I guess you could say that the last Herald did. It started about the same time he made a visit to our humble mine. I don’t understand it myself. I only know that I couldn’t think before, that it hurt a lot, and now I can.”

“I see . . .” Ling looked down. “So it’s a Herald thing. It’s what their presence does.”

David held his chin in his right hand as he looked at the floor. “Yeah, I reckon that’s a way to put it.”

“Well, I’m glad he could help you because I have no idea what you’re talking about. Sadly, I don’t know much, and what I do know, I don’t know if I can say.” Lee gave Ling a sympathetic look. Not being able to think her whole life until she met me? This must be a side-effect of being an NPC. It must be one of the mechanics that lets the game control quests.

“Which means he knows everything, but as a benevolent deity, he won't take away the our glory of exploration in the pursuit of truth,” Miller asserted, once more giving Lee far too much credit.

“Of course,” David agreed, nodding along with Miller. Lee wasn’t sure if he was humoring the guy or if he honestly agreed with him, but it was a funny sight to see.

“Hey, where did the rest of them go?” Ling asked, interrupting the moment. They had stepped out into the opening, and only half of the former slaves that they had freed were still hanging around.

One of the liberated ran up and immediately dropped to her knees and bowed her head.  “We . . . umm . . .  I’m sorry, my lord. When you didn’t return after a long time, some of the older and sicker people started the journey down to the town. They didn’t think you’d make it, and they didn’t want to die up here or be stuck if that evil charleton sent troops to check on the place.”

Another of the former slaves fell to his knees in front of Lee. “Please forgive us, oh great one. We tried to stop them! We tried, but we couldn’t convince them to stay! Please, forgive us! Please, overlook our failure!”

“Failure indeed.” Miller once again spoke for his friend before Lee could even collect his thoughts. “A simple task of waiting, and you failed even that! Have faith in your god, and you failed that too! For shame! For Shame!” he yelled, slamming his spear down and letting out another drunken shout.

The entire crowd all lowered their heads, half in apology and half from shock over suddenly being wasted as a side effect of Miller’s outburst. While the whole matter was serious, the sight of it was amusing enough that Lee actually had to suppress his instinctual chuckle lest he burst out laughing.

“Shame indeed.” David nodded along with Miller. “A travesty. We should hunt the dog--”

“We should try and understand what they’ve gone through,” Lee interjected, cutting them both off. “These are people who have suffered a great deal and gone through even greater hardships. Don’t look at them or judge them. Faith is like an archer, not a sword at one’s throat: one can only image where it is. It is hard to be mindful of it when its presence so rarely blesses us. Instead of cursing and damning those that left”--Lee looked at the followers still in front of him before kneeling down and bowing his head so low he was inches from kissing the ground--“let me instead show my thanks and sincerity to those that listened when there was nothing to gain.”

“No, you shouldn’t bow to--” Miller tried to stop the groveling obeisance, but Lee didn’t let his follower get away with pushing him around this time.

“I insist. I must thank them. They have done us a service when there was nothing to gain, so this is the least I can do.”

“Please master, please, stand up,” a man said, and several others began moving toward him.

“Yes, please, stand up. We’re not worthy of this kindness.” One woman actually tugged at his body armor as she tried to pull him to his feet. “Please, don’t be so kind and bow. We couldn’t even stop them, and we don’t deserve this.”

Lee heeded their pleas after a moment, pushing himself to his feet and looking at his successful manipulation. So this is the effect that honey has over vinegar. Lee’s face might have been as calm as ice, conveying only solemnity as he looked at them, but he was bouncing around on the inside. If he was going to be peer pressured by this mob and forced by a meddling god to make a religion and grow it, he definitely wasn’t going to let it be a violent and vengeful one. There had been enough overly-sadistic, violent religions on his own homeworld, so he didn’t need to propagate any of them here. It was a small victory, but he was thrilled to know that he could exert even a tiny bit of influence on the world by helping shape the religious morality.

He actually wished that there was a baby around for him to kiss, like politicians were known for, but of course there wasn’t. Instead, he did the second best thing: he went to the side of an older lady and tried to comfort her. He put a hand on her back as he talked to the others, trying to drive home his point and prevent as many people as he could in this world from falling down the wrathful path of his old world’s religions.

“I can not do much for you all. Your trials of faith and perseverance will be many, and others will constantly test and anger you, insult and harm you, drive you to the wall and try to take from you. I don’t ask that you not defend yourself, but I ask that you not seek out an eye for an eye. Remember that tomorrow’s trials will be much like today: you will suffer during the evening, and light will come again during the morning, but the reward will still not be felt. Know that those who follow my words here, those who endure no matter what the trial, will be gifted above all others in the next world--the world where I will have authority, where I will have power. In that world, I will grant you all the end to your tribulations and do everything in my power to see you live more comfortably than all those who scorned you and turned their back to me. It’s easy to be strong in faith when you are still enjoying its blessings, but it is much more difficult, and thus much more rewarding, to have faith even as you are cursed. Do these things, persevere, and I shall reward your efforts.”

Due to your continued practice at lying and deceiving others, your charisma has grown by 3. Current Charisma: 8

Six of your personal followers have become zealots. Your personal Faith has increased by 18. As Zealots, their religious related abilities and skills will grow at twice the normal rate, and they will be able to specialize into previously locked religious classes, such as priest. You will also receive a 50 charisma bonus toward quests or conversations with these followers, and they will also receive a 10 charisma bonus when talking to those of the same religion. However, due to their religious zealotry, they will suffer a 35% likability penalty with all those of other faiths.

Current Personal Faith Total: 33

Well, that’s handy, Lee thought as he looked over the benefits that his zealots gave him. And then, after skimming past the part about skills and abilities, he saw the 50 bonus charisma he received when dealing with his zealots and his lecherous brain kicked into overdrive for a moment. No, stop that! He shut the line of thought down right away. He had been away from alone time with a computer or a proper girlfriend for too long recently due to his travels in this land, so he had to calm his brain down right away. He forced himself to consider the other, less-pervy benefits of being a beloved holy man.

The best part of all of this was that he had gotten 18 more personal faith as a result of their increased devotion. Considering only around forty people had been there to begin with, and of those he had only managed to get fifteen to convert, this was a big deal. He had actually more than doubled the amount of personal faith they had in him with just one speech.

That’s it. As soon as I get back to the real world, I’m picking up every religious text I can and watching every video on famous prophets. I will not take the skills of my ancestors and teachers for granted, he told himself, fortifying a plan for his next visit home.

“Now that’s how the pious should behave,” Lee heard David grumble from the side as everyone else just quietly stared at Lee. “All this murder and kidnapping stuff ain’t gonna convert anyone.”

He didn’t make out anything past a ‘hmmm’ from Ling and the others, but he could see there was a very serious look on Miller’s face.

“Justice doesn’t count as vengeance does it? It ain’t eye for an eye if you’re just cleaning up scum, is it?” Miller asked with great earnestness on his face.

This was an improvement for Lee because he was used to seeing the blowhard justice warrior, who ironically probably did more evil in terms of mass murder and carnage in the last two days than most every apathetic nobody in his hometown would do in their whole life, actually listen to him. He was expecting Miller to just overwrite everything he said.

“Of course it doesn’t. Burning bad guys and running the wicked ones through with your spear is what it means to be a paladin, so of course it isn’t!” Miller exclaimed before Lee could respond, nodded to himself again and let out another drunken shout.

Yep, that’s exactly what I expected him to do . . . but at least he listened to me for a moment in the first place. Lee shook his head.

“So if they’ve gone down to the town, doesn’t that mean they know we freed them, and there will be people coming?” David broke the moment, reminding Lee why he wanted the group to stay in the first place.

“Yeah, it does. And these people . . .” Lee looked over the group. “They aren’t fighters. We need to make it to town and reclaim that advantage quickly. We need to find the barkeep.”

“If you say so, boss,” David said.

“Mhmm. I’m with you, no matter where we’re going,” Ling announced.

“Can we burn them?” Miller asked

Lee knew exactly what Miller was going to ask even before he had gotten the words out. “NO!” he shouted, shutting down the idea as quickly as possible. “We are not burning down Satterfield.”

“Can we burn down the tavern at least?”

Lee just gasped at him, dumbfounded by the oaf’s need to torch as many persons and their property as possible. “You know, if we burn a building that’s connected to other buildings, they’ll all burn down in a chain reaction. Right?”

“Oh, yeah. Well, let’s drag the enemies outside and then burn them all alive out in the open,” Miller said, smiling. “We must appease Augustus and . . . you. You do still like burning stuff, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I do,” Lee answered as he thought about what Miller had said. That won’t work in a town skirmish, but he’s not wrong. That idea could come in handy later. It’s entirely possible that we could drag people out and start burning them alive.

Just when Lee had thought everything was wrapped up, that he’d be descending the mountain back down toward Satterfield, someone pulled on the back of his leather armor.

“You can’t leave us,” an older woman pleaded.

Lee looked at her, confused. “I’m not. We’re going back to town now.”

“No, I mean you can’t leave us out of the fight. If our Herald is fighting, then we must fight too,

“But what if you get hurt?” Lee blinked, not sure what help she could be, but suddenly noticing the entire group’s attire. He hadn’t thought much of it since he had been around David, Ling and Miller, but the whole group held pick axes or other weapons, and they were all wearing a few pieces of armor too. Did they already plan for battle? “You all aren’t fighters, and we’re about to go into a conflict that will most likely result in even my death again.” Lee felt odd having to tack on that final word.

“We can’t abandon you though,” one responded. “If you die, what will become of us then?”

“Right!” Another cheered on this sentiment, hoisting a pick axe over her shoulder at the same time. “If you perish, they’ll just take us back, right?”

“I don’t care what happens to me there, I just want to take one of those bastards with me,” an older man, his beard holding all the hair the top of his head used to, chimed in.

“That’s right. Don’t stop us from joining you,” the motley crew of scrawny slave’s youngest looking man added.

“But . . . death. Very real, very serious death will probably await you if you follow,” Lee noted. At the moment, he had managed to climb up to level 9 thanks to the mass murder of the soldiers earlier with the fire and the killing of the Krobken, but that didn’t mean that this rabble were good for a fight. For all he knew, they were level one to ten individuals who had never killed anything in their life. They had never absorbed pieces of anyone’s dead soul like what the statue mentioned about how EXP really worked. That meant that while he could probably, with some effort, handle a few soldiers on his own in the upcoming fight, especially if they were the same level as the ones he had been fighting before, there was really no way to say how well they would fair.

“That doesn’t matter. If we die, we’ll just be waiting for you to show us the promised land in the afterlife,” the girl said.

“Right, don’t worry about it. Let’s just go kill some evil bastards and stop them before they take any more of our town for their twisted purposes!” the first one to speak added.

“AND BURN THEM ALL!!”” The pyromancer paladin, Miller, tacked on with unsettling zeal.

This whole “of Fire” title for my deity screen is entirely your doing. Why don’t you take it? Lee grimaced as he thought back on the smell of roasting human flesh for a moment before getting back to the matter at hand. “Alright, let’s umm--” he looked around at his brave followers, each of them having gone quiet as they waited for him to say something inspirational, but he just wasn’t sure of what to add. There wasn’t anything more to say than this: “Well, let’s go kill some bad guys and a barkeep and take all of his booze as recompense!”

While the group shouted out a chorus of, yeahs, yays, and just weird noises from the group as they all gave their approval, Lee made his way to the other side of them and started his march back toward the town. “Let’s also find a bed,” he mumbled to himself along the way.

“Mhmm. All killing and no sleep . . . not a good combination. Might end up killing the wrong person,” Miller agreed.

Let’s not forget all the walking too, Lee thought, but didn’t say out loud. He wasn’t sure how any player in a game could really take to all the walking they had done. He absolutely hated travel in most of his MMOs back home, and it turne dout that walking in person was no different. Sure, it was a necessary that was put in order to make the world feel ‘more realistic,’ but at the same time, that was also why unrealistic, flying, fart-powered, comically-proportioned mounts were invented. The more realistic a travel system, the more boring the game.

-----

When they got to the town, they were ignited with a sense of enthusiasm that one shouldn’t have after barely getting any sleep and then marching for seven miles.

After their talk, Lee had been torn on what course to take after they arrived back in town. The other group had essentially caused them to give up what little advantage they might have had in the element of surprise by traversing down the mountain and into town early. As such, Lee actually had a choice to make: either let everyone rest and eat before marching into town or just go straight in. He almost told the group to set up a perimeter around the town, so that they could try and catch anyone who left, thinking it might be the best way to catch the courier while letting most of them take a respite, but the problem was that he might be able to leave town in other ways as well. And, despite the fact that the town wasn't very large, he definitely didn’t have the manpower to completely surround the entire town.

Based on the stories the former captives told, there were several ways the enemy had snuck their victims out of Satterfield and up the mountain. That’s why, when the decision finally came, he chose to just march right in and go straight for the most suspicious bar: Copper Lane. Since they reasoned it had to be a man, and two of the three men worked at Copper Lane, it was the natural destination to check first. The building stood separate from the ones on either side of it and it was clear where its theme came from the moment Lee saw it. Even though It was a wooden building, it was surrounded on all sides by copper tubes as if it were straight out of a steampunk convention. It even had several large, seemingly-pointless gears built into the wall that didn't seem to be connected to anything else.

Do these people even have mechanical technology that would even use gears like that? Lee questioned as he studied them.

David interrupted Lee’s thoughts before his own gears could spin any further trying to make sense of the purely-decorative machinery.

“So, umm, boss . . .” David began, interrupting Lee’s thoughts as the funny-looking band of partially-armed and partially-armored slaves surrounded the entrance to the building. “Not to harp on any one point, but how do we figure out which barkeep is the guilty one?”

“I still can’t believe it might be one of them,” one of the slaves chimed in. “They . . . It just wouldn’t make sense. I don’t want to believe it.”

“Well . . . ” Lee raised a hand to silence the group and prepared himself. He had been thinking about about this issue for awhile, and he had an idea for how to address it. “We’re going to have to be really rude, sadly. I suggest that a few of us hold down the suspects while the rest of you search the place for any clue you can find. If we can get something tangible . . . well, that will make our job easy. If they’re panicked about us finding something, or they think we actually did find something, they’ll also be more likely to confess. So, even if you guys don’t find anything, come up after and pretend like you did. If they still don’t crack, then . . .”

“Then we can just kill them to be safe,” Miller offered when Lee trailed off.

“No!” Lee said emphatically, shaking his head. “No, that’s not okay. We only kill the guilty party after we get a map.”

“Fine, ” Miller said, actually pouting as he reached reached for one of the copper cogs and opened the door.

Inside, the entire room was lavishly furnished with copper barstools, copper tables shaped like gears and there was a long wooden bar decorated with copper tubes that had froth coming out their ends. Copper Lane definitely lived up to its name on the inside as well as it did on the out. There was a man working at the bar who was eating eggs and chatting with three patrons who seemed to be dining on what looked like a salad chock full of nuts and leaves.

Holy crap, this guy is totally a steampunk-styled hipster, Lee thought as he approached the barkeep. He had a long twirly mustache and the oddly-over-groomed beard that were the defining attributes of hipsters back in his hometown. If it wasn’t for the fact that his style paired so well with that of the bar, he would have have stood out like sore thumb--or at least appeared as out of place as this bar was in the middle of Satterfield.

As soon as Lee and the crew walked in, the composed and sophisticated-looking barkeep dropped his spoon and started crying.

It wasn’t an ‘I just ate something incredibly spicy’ cry or a ‘holy crap that hurts, but I have to be a man and tough it out’ cry. It was a full-on bawling with tears and snot running out of his eyes and nose, and he climbed over the five-foot-tall bar and started running straight toward Lee.

“See? Guilty and about to beg for his life,” Miller said in a low voice to Lee as soon as the man started toward them.

Lee thought he was going to collide with him, getting tackled by the unarmed, snot-covered, crying barkeep, until he noticed his trajectory wasn’t a bee line. He was running right past him. Lee was just about to shout for someone to stop the man, and Miller had already readied his spear to gorge him, when he stopped without a word having to be spoken right in front of the girl who had assured everyone of his innocence moments ago. He dropped to his knees and hugged her, crying into her shirt, while she patted his head.

“I’m so, I’m so happy you're back,” he said. “I heard some of the others came in last night, but no one saw you. No one said anything about where you were either,” he choked out between sobs. “I thought I had lost you for good.”

“It’s okay, honey.” She started crying too, but it wasn’t nearly as badly as the man. “It’s okay, dear. I’m here for you.”

Miller had concluded the same thing as Lee--that this man couldn’t be the spy--and he said in as low a voice as possible, “Well, then that leaves only one suspect left.”

“Wh-where is Dad, honey?” the girl asked. “Doesn’t he still usually cover the morning shift?”

“He hasn’t been able to sleep well since you’ve been gone, so he couldn’t do the morning round anymore. He just drank himself to bed an hour ago. He’ll be so happy when he wakes,” the man answered, standing back up and adjusting himself.

What?! You are lovers with this man, your dad owns the place, and you didn’t think to mention that when we were talking about suspects earlier? Lee resisted the urge the urge to start creaming and pull out his hair. There was nothing stopping him except for the fact that he just couldn’t bring himself to ruin their moment.

“Well, that only really leaves one suspect,” Lee said as he looked to Miller.

“No, no that can’t be!” Ling protested. “I’ve known Ramon my entire life. He couldn’t . . . He couldn’t do that to us!”

“She bit her tongue as we came here to investigate her lover and father, but those reactions weren’t fake,” Lee concluded with certainty. Nobody could act that well. There was a difference between crocodile tears and breaking down like that, and he couldn't possibly imagine a father who would willingly give up his own daughter he loved so much that he was drinking himself into a stupor after. None of it made sense, so he just dismissed the man outright. Yet, Ling and Miller both looked equally depressed at his conclusion. “They aren’t suspects.”

“That’s . . . that’s not right! How could it be him?” Ling seemed genuinely horrified at the proposition. “He always took such great care of me! He always treated me so well. He used to . . .”

“What do you mean by suspects? What do you mean Ramon is a suspect? Did he do this?” The barkeep wiped his face clean as he ran behind the bar and pulled out a giant two-handed flail.

“Honey, please, no!” the woman pleaded.

“If he’s behind my wife going missing,” he said, his face turning solid red, “I will kill that bastard! You three, get your damn weapons!”

The three patrons at the bar who had just been relaxing and having breakfast before Lee walked in, stood up, though with much less gusto than the barkeep. “Yeah,” one of them, a six-foot-tall guy with hair sticking up like Einstein, said. “Let’s go check it out.”

“Look, we still don’t know he’s guilty,” Miller insisted. “We should investigate.”

“And, if we don’t find anything, just kill him to be safe?” David offered, cracking his knuckles. “I was at the damn guy’s bar the night I was kidnapped. Drank shots with the bastard, shots he gave me for free. Insisted they were on the house. I thought that son of a beaten Poméan was being nice. I thought he was a good guy.”

“Wait, he gave you free rounds of drinks before you were taken?” Lee’s eyes opened up at this.

“Yeah, wait! He bought me a dozen rounds too,” an older man in the back added. “I had just finished cutting out that new ditch, a fairly a big task for the town, and he said we’d celebrate with a round of drinks. I was passed out drunk in my bed that very night when I was taken.”

Lee looked to Ling. “Did he do anything for you the day you were taken?”

“Well . . .” Ling trailed off as she thought for a moment. “He bought me breakfast and then asked what I was up to. I told him that my cat was missing and where I was going to look for him..” Her face grew pale at the realization. “You think he set me up too?”

“I think he set everyone up,” Lee answered with a nod. “He’d either make sure the person was plastered and asleep in a bed he had access to or chat the person up and find out exactly where they’d be.”

Miller simply stared at Lee in silence, then he asked, “Wait, didn’t he buy us a bunch of free drinks the night before you were attacked?”

“Yeah, he did,” Lee replied.

“If that was the case, then why would he send us on the quest to go find and free these people if he was the guilty party?” Miller asked. “He pleaded with us to save them.”

David was the one to answer before Lee could. “Because he probably thought you two couldn’t get it done. I mean, who in their right mind would have thought that a barracks full of forty soldiers wouldn’t be able to fend off two adventurers, or that one of you would be a god.”

Miller frowned. “So you think he sent us up there just because he didn’t want to have to deal with us in town and was sure we’d fail?”

“Yeah, that’s the sum of it.” Lee twisted his mouth around like he was trying to chew on a large ball of something something that smelled rotten, and he was being forced to swallow it.

Well, I only knew the guy for a day or two, and I spent that time trying to convert or scam him depending on how you look at it, so it’s not like I should feel bad about this. But I do. “Either way, we need to go kill him and then get a map so that we can kill his boss,” Lee stated matter-of-factly. It was a done deal in his head: Ramon had to die.

“Murder, quest item, more murder, that sounds good to me,” Miller agreed. “But it doesn’t feel right killing the barkeep.”

“Well, think of it this way: You won’t have to pay for beer tonight or a place to stay,” David said as he patted Miller on the back. “Now, you can just go murder happy and drink and sleep off the rest of the day.”  

“Alright, fine. Let's go kill Ramon,” Miller agreed with the resignation of a child being forced to do homework before getting to play video games.

The rest of Lee’s followers quietly followed after Lee and Miller as they walked to Ramon's bar. Nothing had changed outside, but the air felt more still to Lee. Like the wind had stopped and a stale odor had creeped into his mouth as they remained silent the entire trip.

When they finally reached the Ramon’s place, they paused at the door.

“You think he’ll be in there? You think he’ll be waiting for us, pretending as if he’s done nothing wrong or nothing happened to us?” one of the former slaves behind Lee asked.

“Yeah. Probably.” Lee hesitantly reached for the doorknob before pulling his hand back.

What am I going to do? They’ll expect blood, and we do need the map, but how do I control the situation? Lee quickly tried to put together a game plan. He wasn’t about to deny them their vengeance, but he didn’t want things getting out of hand and someone getting stabbed or murdered before information was obtained.

David gave him a look and then grabbed the door in his place. “Don’t worry, it’s just one guy. We’ll be--”

The door swung open, and Lee heard a sound.

Click.

You have learned the proficiency skill Trap Detection. This skill is currently at initiate level 1. This skill improves one’s ability to detect hidden traps.

Due to learning Trap Detection, you have received +2 intelligence. Current Intelligence: 48.

Lee reacted on instinct, grabbing Ling and pushing her away from the door and out of harm’s way just as a pair of giant wooden spikes thicker than Lee’s arm shot out from behind the door and stabbed David, impaling him through one of his legs and his stomach.

David cried out in pain as he backed up. He didn’t manage to fall backward though as the spikes were apparently stuck to a device that seemed to operate on a door hinge as it was forcefully attached to the wall.

“What blasphemy is this?” Miller yelled as he grabbed David’s body and yanked it off the spikes. Miller pulled David’s prone form from the spikes and passed him his body back to some of the people behind him as Lee equipped his shield to block any potential new threats. He wasn’t sure if there would be more traps, but he knew that bad things might definitely happen if they just charged through the door. They had already been fooled once, and if they let themselves be snared twice by a similar trick, it would just be akin to throwing away their own lives.

“It’s a trap,” Lee explained as he looked around for the trigger. There it is, thought as he spied the small metal loop at the bottom of the door frame and the tiny rope and pin that would hook into it. It was a rudimentary trap designed to use weights and counterbalances in such an obvious fashion that there was no doubt he would have noticed it last trip if it was there. “Ramon knew we were coming, and he set up a few tricks to kill us.”

“Very perceptive of you, Harold,” Ramon responded with a smirk. He put away a cup from behind the counter before reaching down to grab a weapon. “Stating the obvious must be a new power in the narrative of your life. Perhaps, when they chronicle your pathetic joke of an existence, they can spend a few pages of your story etching out how you failed to deduce this earlier.” His tone, demeanor and everything about him had changed. He was suddenly much more reminiscent of a stereotypical British villain than a humble barkeep.

“What can I say, you were a likable guy,” Lee replied as he searched the floor for any additional traps. There’s another one, he thought as he spied what looked like a loose floorboard. It was slightly higher than the others next to it and slightly smaller in width. “There’s another trap here,” he said to the others as he stepped over it.

“Ah . . . . I should take that as a compliment, but I’d rather you just take it as an insult for how dull and unwitting you were. That mask I was forced to wear was awful: always cajoling and comforting, always being nice and entertaining. The only benefit I received from the entire ordeal was that sometimes, out of the myriad of pathetic and unimaginative tribulations you uneducated mundane fools discussed, there was sometimes something interesting--a small glimmer of novelty in your repetitive lives that might have made the entire process worth a damn.” Ramon was one-hundred percent following the prescriptions for the evil villain speech.

“But Augustus is real, and he is amazing,” Miller piped up from the side. “You’ve tried his food, and you’ve seen his miracles, so how can you doubt his greatness?”

“Doubt him? Who says I doubt him? In fact, I probably even have some legitimate degree of faith in him. But he isn’t a god to me, he’s a devil.”

“What?” Lee asked as he edged closer to Ramon, moving as slow as possible so he could didn’t step on any traps.

“He’s the end of all good stories and legends. He’s the beginning of apathy. I’ve seen that book, so I’ve seen what he brings: comfort. My Herald has shown me stories, dozens of them, from other lands with other technologies . . . Stories of worlds with gadgets that one cannot fathom! There is even a land where the people are so lazy that they have a toilet that uses water to wipe for them since they can’t even be bothered. So, when he told me these stories, I thought ‘What great changes will humanity undergo?! What new yarns will they spin?’ It was only then that I realized there were none. Their stories of greatness were all fiction, lies. This town . . . With such a small population . . . They’ve gone through more interesting things in the past year than a city of a million suffered in a decade.”

Ramon’s monologue gave them enough time to make it halfway across the room and convince Lee that he wasn’t going to run into another trap. It also afforded him the opportunity to start mentally lining up the fight in his head, so he wasn’t overly eager to cut off Ramon’s diatribe and get down to business right away.

“I wouldn’t say that.” Lee shrugged, not buying into his narcissistic babble at all. “Technology doesn’t change the amount of great adventures and stories people have to tell, it just gives them a better outlet for their time than sitting around a bar trying to impress strangers.”

Lee could feel Ramon’s glare and the contempt he held for him like ice on the back of Lee’s neck. “No one will ever tell the story of that guy who fried chicken and used an automatic toilet,” Ramon droned. “They’ll only tell of the hero who saved a group of slaves or the humble barkeep who helped a great god rise from the ashes of poverty through cunning and wits. One of those stories will be told, and both of them will have been made more interesting by the lack of your god’s inventions.” Previous