by A O Storm
Bending down, Kano moved the leaves around for a moment and realized what it was. A skull. The size was about right to be an adult human, he guessed, and Kano suddenly felt a cold shiver of fear down his spine as he heard a dull thunk noise. "Shit!"
Looking up, Kano saw Bob standing over him, the long knife now stuck in the thick bark of the ancient tree. "You shouldn't have ducked," Bob said, working the knife back and forth with his meaty right hand. "Then you'd have met the goddess without fear or worry."
"Were you trying to kill me?" Kano stepped back, glancing to the side to see Chuck looking ashamed. The other men were starting to walk toward him as well.
"No, lad, of course not," Bob said, yanking the knife free and walking slowly, menacingly toward him as Kano continued stepping backwards. "I was going to sacrifice you. Murder is frowned upon by the goddess, but sacrifice is noble." He grinned an evil smile, showing his teeth. "Earlier, you sounded eager to meet the goddess. Did you change your mind?"
"That's all?" Kano couldn't believe the man; Bob had seemed so kind earlier. "Just a little human sacrifice? C’mon, I thought you meant like, meet her, not meet her in the afterlife. What kind of druid are you?"
"I worship the goddess, who lives in that tree, there," Bob said, gesturing with his thumb over his left shoulder. "Chuck was actually going to be the sacrifice, until you came along."
"Druids don't sacrifice people!"
"You really aren't from around here, are you, Kano? Of course we sacrifice people! It's written in the sacred text." Bob paused, tilting his head. "Everyone in this region is bound by the sacred text. Even travellers from foreign regions have heard of our text."
"Yeah, no. Why don’t we all just head back to the inn and you can explain this all to me."
Bob shrugged. "I've never sacrificed an ignorant man to the goddess before," he said. "Then again, the book doesn't have any specific details about the educational background of the sacrifice." Bob looked around at the other men, "Hold him down, boys."
"Just wait a second," Kano said, trying to stall and not wanting to get violent. Even though Bob was the only one carrying a weapon he could see, it still seemed like a bad situation. "What if the sacred text told you to fillet and eat another man's member? Would you listen to that?"
Chuck's face grew scarlet, and a few of the other men looked at each other, surprised. Two, on Bob's side, looked at Kano and asked him in a high-pitched voice, "How could you know that?"
"Enough!" Bob shouted, scowling at Kano. "We learned after that one time it was a bad idea and have since ignored that part of the sacred text."
Kano started laughing, just as Chuck grew close enough to grab his arm. "Touch me, hillbilly, and I'll make you squeal like a pig, boy." He looked down at Chuck as he said it, casually dropping into a fighting stance, shaking his arm free.
Chuck's head went to the side. "I don't think you're any older than me," he said, moving to grab Kano again, "so what you're saying makes no sense."
Kano shook his head, shifting his weight and preparing a counter attack against the smaller man before any others grew too close. Chuck grabbed for him and Kano dodged, shifting one foot and then swinging his right leg upwards. There was no elegance to his counter. However, when his foot connected squarely with Chuck's groin, the smaller man was lifted off the ground into the air. He landed with a thump, and Kano told himself, one down, six to go.
Two swung a meaty fist into his side, just as Kano dodged back from Bob's rash knife swing. Pain exploded in his ribs and Kano narrowly ducked the secondary swing. Kano's combat experience was limited to the arena he'd completed, other than a few scrapes growing up in the suburbs when some other boy had his temper up. Jumping backwards, he rolled on the ground and gained some distance between Bob and Two.
Notifications appeared in his display and he took a quick moment to read while getting up from his roll and back on his feet.
Skill Acquired: Dodge, current rank Ignorant, +10 skill points gained
Skill Acquired: Acrobatics, current rank Ignorant, +10 skill points gained
Skill improved: Hand to hand combat, +50 skill points gained
Skill Synergy: Acrobatics improves both Hand-to-Hand Combat and Sword Fighting skills due to similarities in movements and abilities needed to use either skill.
Skill improved: Hand to hand combat, +50 skill points gained
Skill improved: Sword Fighting, +50 skill points gained
Skill rank improved: Hand to hand combat, new rank Initiate, next rank Novice, all attack and defense moves improved 10% when fighting without weapons
Skill rank improved: Sword Fighting, new rank Initiate, next rank Novice, all attack and defense moves improved 10% when fighting with a sword
A ten percent boost to attack and defense? I might survive this yet, Kano thought. "Let's be reasonable," he said, standing and backing up. The roll had taken him a few yards away from the other men but not far enough. "I'm sure that, with one exception to your sacred text, you can go with another, right?"
"No!" Bob shouted in response, advancing on Kano with five men at his back, Chuck still out cold, if not dead, from Kano's kick.
"So you ate a dick," Kano said, both amused and horrified. "Now what, you just kill random strangers?"
"Chuck drew the small straw, so he was due to be sacrificed today to bring the rain. We're going through a drought." Bob sounded almost apologetic.
Not too different from California when I left, Kano thought, nodding. However, unlike a medieval peasant, modern humans mostly knew that rain clouds were not governed by a random sky god.
The six men rushed him, or tried to. Kano dodged and grabbed the fastest man, Two, swinging him around into the knife Bob attempted to stick him with. "There's your sacrifice!" Kano snarled, holding the man as a human shield. "How about we call this done now?" He pushed Two’s limp body against Bob’s knife and heaved, almost knocking the heavyset innkeeper over from the dead weight of Two.
Bob and the remaining four men still on their feet didn't say anything in response. Drunk and Dopey split from the group to attack Kano from the side. Cokey and Emo paired up and started to run around to his back while Bob advanced from the front slowly, his knife still dripping Two’s blood.
"Sorry, lad, that's not what the scriptures say."
"Didn't we just discuss this, Bob? What the shit?" Kano blurted the questions even though he knew the answers. Religious zealots never changed their stripes. The religion really did not make sense to Kano and he could not believe they'd gone to such an extreme as to embrace human sacrifice. After the arena he knew survival was all that mattered and despite the odds, he’d fight as long as necessary.
"This ain't fast food," Kano whispered as Bob moved forward, "and you are definitely not having it your way!"
Leaping to the side, Kano cleared enough space between him and the two groups he could take a moment to breathe. His reflexes and energy were better than he could ever remember, despite the alcohol, and he understood the power of those attribute points. With enough upgrades, Kano realized, the group of five ill-equipped and barely trained men would be no match for his martial capacity. Ribs aching and breathing hard, he used the brief respite to glance at his display.
Skill Improved: Dodge +50 skill points gained
"Nice," he said, taking a quick look at the notification. The fight had gained him multiple new combat skills, as well as jumps in existing ones. "If it weren’t for my aching ribs, I might think this was easy," he muttered. Between the increase in his Hand-to-Hand Combat skill rank, as well as the new acrobatics and dodge skills, Kano was much better prepared to fight. The acrobatics skill synergy gave him almost the same size boost as a full skill rank increase in hand to hand combat. If there are more skill synergies, I should try to acquire them, Kano thought, preparing for the next attacker.
Using a classic snowboard stance, Kano looked at Cokey and Emo, the two men who’d rushed him from behind. He gave the black outfit wearing Emo a
thin, small smile. "Eat me," he said, ducking under the man's punch. Kano stood and slid to his side, delivering a rabbit punch to Emo’s temple with his left hand. The man dropped like a rock, his eyes rolling back in his head, closed, as he melted to the ground.
Cokey almost tripped over his fallen friend as he rushed Kano, trying to catch him off guard as the snowboarder paused to watch Emo crumple. “You’ll pay for that,” Cokey sneered, and Kano jerked his head around as the wild eyed man swung. Feet catching, Cokey fell forward, his momentum causing him to fall on top of Emo. Kano wasted no time in kicking the man’s head in while he was down, his booted foot caving in Cokey’s face. Blood and viscera coated his leather boot and Kano shook the thing, trying to dislodge the crimson slime.
“Yuck,” Kano said, glancing up just in time to see Bob growing closer, knife held ready. The bearded innkeeper was circling around the two fallen men.
"Seven men enter, one man leaves," Kano jeered, dancing back to create some space between himself and the three men still standing. Bob struck him as kind of a coward, as the only one armed, allowing his compatriots to attack first before trying again himself. The other two, Drunk and Dopey, charged him from the opposite direction as Bob.
Preferring to fight unarmed against unarmed foes, Kano spun towards the two men and met their charge with his own. Drunk swung and Kano dodged, countering with a swift kick to the man’s stomach. Kano followed with a right swing and knocked drunk down, the man falling to the ground unconscious. Dopey, caught flat footed by Kano’s savagery and unable to defend, lasted only long enough to struggle and fall, knocked out. Ultimately, it was down to him and Bob. Kano stood, unsteady on his feet and stomach rumbling with need, watching the lunatic with the knife.
"Hey," Kano said, "I need to use one of those drop spots. Can you make this fast?"
Bob sputtered something angrily under his breath, his rosy cheeks turning a scarlet hue. "The goddess will taste your blood, lad!”
Kano knew in real life, he could never defeat a man, unarmed, with a blade like that. Thankfully, the combat skills and points he gained told him somehow, he’d be able to pull through.
When Bob swung, Kano's elevated skill in dodge came into play, along with the acrobatics synergy. He stepped smoothly to the side, evading the attack, the movement so fast it appeared as if Kano could read exactly where Bob was going to strike.
"I know kung fu, bitch," Kano said, swinging an arm down onto Bob's neck as he lunged to Kano's side. The man went down hard and his knife hand was far enough away Kano felt confident as he jumped onto Bob's back. "Your goddess is waiting for her sacrifice," he said, snarling in anger. "She's been waiting for a man as big and strong as you, Bob." Kano grabbed the man's head in his hands and yanked. Seated on Bob's back, he had a lot of leverage.
Bob's head snapped as Kano twisted, ensuring he broke the druid's neck with the move when he did.
"Ugh," he said, releasing the dead man's head. "Bob, you were so close to being my new BFF," he said, upset. "What were you thinking?" The whole thing was still confusing, as Kano had heard about societies where human sacrifice occurred, but for the most part they were extremely rare. The hillbilly druid thing is a sick twist, he thought, disgusted. The game writers had done a pretty disturbing job.
Kano stepped back from the grizzly scene and looked around the corpses, wondering for a moment if Chuck was still alive. He walked to the man’s prone form and checked for a pulse with his fingers. No, he thought, shaking his head. His stomach did somersaults as he did what he needed to do. With the knife Bob wielded in hand Kano murdered the few yet living, unconscious men. Each time he reminded himself the men were only game characters.
"This is too real," Kano said to himself, wiping his mouth after finishing, his stomach emptying its contents on a thick, brown root. "What now?"
The answer was obvious after he thought about it. He searched Bob's body first, and then proceeded to loot each of the others in turn. Feeling around Bob's pants was the most awkward, as Kano realized the goddess may have wanted him for his largest asset, definitely not his brain. His pockets held a few keys, a pouch with a few odds and ends that made no sense, and a symbol he could only assume represented the goddess. He set that aside and continued to empty each man's pockets, finally obtaining a few dozen silver and similar amount of copper coins, and a strange bag. The majority of the coins came from Bob’s pouch, which made sense to him, as the innkeeper probably had the most lucrative profession.
He put his hand into the strange bag he found. The fingers on his hand, and skin up to his wrist, suddenly felt cold, but he could not feel anything on the inside of the leather sack.
“Hm,” Kano said, as the bag was the largest of the pouches the men carried.
Kano decided to start putting all the coins inside the strange sack. Once he did and finished looting the bodies, Kano reached in again and, to his surprise, felt only the same strange, cold feeling. No coins only empty space.
“What happened to the money?” With his hand still inside the bag, he thought about the silver coins he just dropped in, regretting the loss. As soon as he thought about them he immediately felt the metal discs appear in his hand. Once he realized how the bag worked, he was more than satisfied. "Two must have been holding out on Bob," Kano chuckled, wondering how a villager here had obtained such a potentially valuable item.
He looked at the dead druid on the ground, smiling, "Imagine the scandal, if only you knew what Two was hiding!" Kano could not imagine Bob would allow one of his followers to have something special that he didn’t have.
By the time Kano finished looting, the afternoon sun had started its descent into evening. "I might as well return to the inn after this," he said, stretching out his aching body. His ribs hurt, he had a bruise making the left side of his face swollen and an injury in his right leg. “I just hope the rest of the village wasn’t into the whole human sacrifice thing,” Kano muttered, looking out at the rows of buildings. The area was surprisingly quiet and with no angry mob carrying pitchforks or otherwise, Kano set to the gruesome task of disposing of the dead.
The hunting knife was good enough for Kano to dig enough fresh earth to obscure the men's bodies. Twice, he stopped working on digging up the ground or covering one of them to urinate on the sacred tree.
“Human sacrifice?" he scoffed. "If that’s the kind of goddess you are, this is all you’ll be getting from now on," he said with a final squirt. There’s no way the villagers approved of Bob’s activities.
The majestic oak tree swayed then, as if in response to Kano's taunts. He finished retying his pants and then turned around, heading back to the village. Using Bob's keys Kano thought he might be able to acquire the inn cheaply, as he did not imagine the former innkeeper had any living relatives in town, given his hobby. Breathing deep, he smiled at the thought, "Thank you, Bob," he said.
Even if becoming an innkeeper was not in his plans, he knew that being able to acquire an asset like an inn was a huge win. What with the potential revenue, a free place to stay and the usual flow of information, an inn was a veritable gold mine. If he was going to be stuck in a game, owning and operating the inn felt like a solid place to start.
Kano started to hum happily as he crossed the distance to the village, taking a more interested look into the buildings this time. One was a smithy, with open columns where multiple men of various heights, all solid, might work side by side. At the moment, there was only a single man, more slender than Kano expected for a smith, working an anvil. He looked to the other side of the street and saw a general goods store next to the inn.
Over the entrance, the inn had a funny sign on the entrance, depicting a white rabbit. Kano smiled to himself when he saw the sign, recalling that Bob had mentioned the inn’s name, the White Rabbit. "And how deep does the rabbit hole go?" he said aloud, looking beyond the inn. There was another large open area with a fence that housed various animals and Kano could see further out a few houses were set up in a c
luster. "Interesting," he said, looking around. "I think this village has potential."
Given the small population, Kano was not surprised as he returned to the inn to find there was nobody inside, especially since all the customers from earlier now lay beneath their special tree. He took a look around the rough-hewn chairs, the fully stocked bar and the stained floor. "Thank you, Bob," he said, bowing his head for a moment. He knew Bob was probably a randomly generated computer character, but he had sincerely hoped to make friends with the man. At least he did until Bob wanted to sacrifice him.
Kano saw a notification in the corner of his vision but pushed aside the thought of reviewing what happened, he wanted to explore the White Rabbit.
Eleven - Day Drinking with a goddess
The inn was quiet as he locked the door behind him, not wanting any customers showing up until he figured things out. He had no idea how the village was governed, nor did he want to end up in some medieval dungeon. So he scoured the inn for any kind of paperwork. The rooms were on the second floor, accessible via a staircase that was further down the same hall as the restroom Kano had used earlier. Up the flight of stairs he saw there were four doors. Knocking and using the keys, he found each room was empty. Relieved, he went back downstairs and then started to mull over his problem.
Bob was a bastard, had probably killed other villagers and done other nasty things. However, it was his inn. Kano was a stranger, basically a newborn to this world, and his only claim to the property boiled down to "Bob was a human sacrificing idiot. Since I killed him, I figured I could keep his stuff." He had no idea if that was okay, or if attempting it would land him in jail.
Despite the rooms being empty, Kano could not help harboring a suspicion taking over the inn would be simple. The silver lining, from his perspective, was even though there were no business records he could find, in the storeroom, he had found a burlap sack stuffed with coins. In total, there were fifty copper, twenty silver, equal amounts in large as well as small coins, and the first gold coin Kano had seen.