by G. Akella
"I'm not the innkeeper, I just work here," the elf shook his head. "The boss is in the stables—he'll get here shortly. But we do have ale. A choice of two different ales, in fact."
"I'll have the better ale," the bald warrior gave a wave of the hand as he eyed the dining hall. "Not bad," he grunted. "Not the Ritz, but ale will make everything better."
"Four ales, is it?" asked the elf, and, without waiting for an answer, addressed the hunters sitting at the table in a loud voice.
"Aunriel, Thyardis, didn't you promise you would fix that door?"
"In a moment," muttered one of the hunters grudgingly as he rose. He tapped his companion on the shoulder and started toward the entrance.
Max bent down and pretended to adjust a leather strap on his boot as he slipped out Masyana's mirror. Then, taking his time straightening out, he placed his right hand at the hilt of the sword, and started to speak hastily in the party chat channel.
"These are no elves—they are fiends of some sort. The mirror does not reflect them. I noticed that the freak behind the bar cast no shadow back in the yard. As far as I understand, those two have gone to block the exit. At my command, we will dispatch them first, and then lock the door. I have no idea what kind of boss they're expecting, but I'm not looking forward to seeing him—until we dispose of everyone inside, at least."
"Are you sure?" Luffy took the staff off his back in a casual motion, and proceeded to inspect a crack near the top.
"Just my luck," Bonbon sighed. "The instant you decide to have a pint in peace, something always happens."
"Guys, uh..." said Masyanya in a whisper. "Are you really going to—?"
"No 'uhs,'" Max cut her short. "You'd better shoot if you want to survive. Your target is the taller one. Go!"
Utter chaos ensued—the party managed to catch the fiends by surprise. Max Charged at Aunriel, who died within ten seconds. Instead of an elven corpse, a dark shapeless carcass fell to the floor, all covered in black clotted fur. Furious roars were heard all around at the moment of the attack, and Masyanya gave a loud yell. The dark elves shifted their shapes, transforming into hideous hunchbacked monsters with huge fangs and covered in black fur. The elven armor hung grotesquely on their bodies. The second ghoul—these were ghouls, judging by the red legends above their heads—only managed to strike at Bonbon twice, surviving his companion by five seconds at the most.
Max grabbed a massive metal beam leaning on the wall, nearly choking on the unbearable stench of rot mixed with burning fur, and tossed it onto the rusty metal brackets.
"Behind you!"
Luffy's warning came too late—something sticky hit him in the side, sending a burning icy sensation through his body. Max bit his lip in pain, cracked open a vial of lesser healing potion, and turned around.
Thersanyl's chest was sprouting two arrows, his life bar in the yellow. A dark flame began engulfing his hands, but Masyanya was sharp and used some fancy arrow to interrupt the the cast. Luffy's fireball threw the monster behind the bar. The huntress lost her bearings for a moment, and was simultaneously attacked by the two female ghouls that had been sitting at the table. Within seconds she lost some thirty percent of her health, but Bonbon Charged at one of them, using Provoke to draw their attention while pushing aside the huntress, who had fainted. The female ghoul that had stood near the stove pounced on Luffy with a hideous shriek, knocking him to the floor. The mage managed to twist himself free, and the thing gripping him by the arm ended up underneath him.
All of this flashed before Max's eyes in a matter of a few moments. He covered the distance to Luffy in a single leap, grabbing the hilt of the sword with both hands, and burying it in the throat of the monstrosity whose teeth had been clamped on the mage's arm with all the force he could muster. A crit! The ghoul's throat emitted a hoarse rattle, its maw opened, and Luffy finally managed to pull his arm free.
"That bitch!" hissed the mage, nursing his wounded limb.
"Help Bonbon," Max snapped at him, dealing another powerful blow that upped their lead to 4:0, and dashed to help their tank, following Luffy.
The entire building shook from a mighty bang on the door.
Here comes the boss, thought Max as he slashed at one of the beasts attacking Bonbon.
Incidentally, Bonbon performed his role brilliantly, and Max gave himself a mental pat on the back for giving the rare armor dropped by the gray rat to the tank, and then insisting on buying a rare shield. If the tank had none of those items on, the outcome of the encounter could have been rather dire without a healer.
When the last female ghoul fell to the floor, knocking the table over, and Bonbon went down to his knees, breathing heavily, another incredibly heavy blow shook the door.
"Someone's knocking on the door," Luffy managed a smile. "Shall we get it?"
"Bonbon, you'll rest later," Max clapped the bald warrior on the shoulder. "Grab Masyanya and drag her upstairs. Luffy, you follow. I'll break the stairs, and you will help me. I don't think the boss is that advanced. Let's climb upstairs and shoot it at our leisure from a safe distance. Step on it!"
Bonbon rose without saying a word, picked the huntress up off the floor, and carried her upstairs with all the speed he could muster.
Max looked at him go and shook his head in bewilderment. How could so many personalities coexist in this man was beyond him—there was the eighteen-year-old butthead, the wise man, and the cold-blooded warrior. But the fact that he was here with them in this strange world certainly was a huge stroke of luck.
When he got to the middle of the staircase, the huntress came to and started to try to break free instinctively, but Bonbon held tight and got the girl to the top of the stairs without a hitch.
"When I feel like carrying you around just for the sake of entertainment, I'll sure tell you about it in advance. Take a swig of this," he handed the bottle to the girl.
Realizing what was going on, she nodded gratefully, took a few sips, and started coughing.
"Much better than turning your nose up at the stuff," grunted the bald warrior. "You should have started back in the wagon—it would have gone down smoother now."
"Bastard!" Masyanya exhaled, wiping tears from her eyes and passing the bottle back. "I'll get you for this yet."
The inn door cracked under the blows, but still held. The burning staircase to the second floor still had twenty percent durability left. Max hacked at it as fast as he could, realizing they would never be able to take on the boss that was forcing its way into the building without a healer. Luffy helped him to the best of his ability, trying not to hit his friend with his fireballs. The staircase finally collapsed in a heap of glowing embers that scattered all across the floor. The door got kicked in with a deafening bang the very same moment.
"Hurry up!" Bonbon leaned down and offered Max a hand.
Max jumped and grabbed onto the bald warrior's hand, hearing a furious roar and the scratching of claws at his back. The tank pulled him up in an instant. There was a crash behind him, followed by the sound of wood breaking and a disappointed roar—the beast missed, slamming into the wall underneath the staircase.
I wonder how much longer this luck will hold, Max mused. He could finally see the enemy that raged in the hall below them.
The boss was called Rgharg. An enormous beast some eight feet tall, he was covered in clotted black fur and looked like a rearing bear with a hyena's snout. Nothing but muscle, with yellow fangs protruding from underneath his upper lip, and foot-long fangs...
Rgharg was level 25 and had 43,000 HP. He kept thrashing around the dining hall as they shot at him from above. There was the stench of charred flesh and burning fur in the air. Every thirty seconds the monstrosity tried to leap up to the second floor, only to crash into the wall underneath the staircase, and Max gave mental thanks to the unknown builders who had made the hall's ceiling so tall.
"Piggy, piggy, answer me..." Masyanya was singing some strange song as she kept firing one arrow after another. Ma
x stood right behind her and tried to stay ready for anything. Bonbon, however, didn't seem to care one bit for what went on downstairs. He sat there on the floor with his legs crossed, calmly nibbling on a chicken leg. Neither the roar of the boss that raged downstairs nor the aromas that permeated the air seemed to affect the bald warrior's appetite.
Max looked in his direction, envying his tank's unique not-giving-a-shit skill. Then he looked down—and just in time! Once the beast's HP got down to twenty percent, he thrust its paws toward the ceiling, roared horrendously, and grew about one and a half his size. Rgharg made a huge leap, and the snout of the monster emerged over the edge of the landing. Max felt the stench from the open snout on his face. The warrior hit the boss right between the ears, but that didn't stop Rgharg.
Bonbon saved the day by Charging into the boss right from his sitting posture. The stunned beast started to topple backwards, and Max and the bald warrior simply pushed him over. The boss managed to leap again, but this time he didn't make it to the second floor—an arrow in the eye drew a line under tonight's adventure.
You've completed the pop-up quest: Roadside Inn!
You have gained a level! Current level: 21.
You have 1 talent point to allocate.
Racial bonus: +1% to resistance to earth magic.
Class bonus: +1 to constitution, +1 to strength.
You have 3 stat points to allocate.
"What the hell is a pop-up quest? Sheer idiocy!" Luffy plopped down on the floor heavily, right next to Bonbon, who was back to chewing something or other, and tapped him on the shoulder. "Get the booze out, will you?"
"My, the lot of you are mending your ways right before my eyes," the tank chuckled as he handed the mage a bottle.
"Well, if we completed this quest, there must be some sort of reward somewhere, right? We've been told nothing about who we have to see to hand it in," Masyanya wrested the bottle away from Luffy, drank from it, and looked expectantly at Max.
"Why are you all looking at me?" he shrugged. "Y'all know just as much as I do."
"But you were the one who saw they were no elves."
"So what? I'm telling you, that creep cast no shadow. Have you never watched any horror flicks about the undead?"
"Vampires are the ones who don't get reflected in mirrors and cast no shadow!" Masyanya started coughing, passing the bottle to the mage.
"Why don't you ask the devs, eh? How should I know?" Max all but pulled the bottle out of Luffy's hands, taking a couple of large gulps.
The mage looked at his empty hands, and chuckled.
"Give the mirror back to the girl, will you?" advised Bonbon, wiping the chicken grease from his fingers on the floor. "You said you would only keep it for five minutes, but it's been a lot longer than that. We might start suspecting something soon. Although—and I feel this has to be said—you've got a bulletproof excuse this time."
"Oh, really?" chortled Max, handing the mirror back to Masyanya. "Thanks."
"Thank you," the girl shuddered. "If it wasn't for your paranoia, we'd all be sitting by our gravestones now."
"All right, kiddos, listen to daddy now." Bonbon shifted to make himself more comfortable, and pointed his hand, which held a rolled-up cigarette, to the ceiling. "Pop-up quests were introduced by the developers around two years ago, but they were said to have been canceled later. What it boils down to is that the inn could have appeared in any realm—human, dwarf or orc lands. The mobs have to correspond to the level of the zone, and that's that. It's like a miniature dungeon, if you will—a piece of another world. That must be why the sky got suddenly overcast once we entered here. I paid no attention to it, the old idiot that I am, while Max... Well, anyway, had we gotten ourselves killed here, the inn would disappear, and our corpses would remain in the forest. The mobs would level up and relocate to some other part of the world, inn and all."
"You mean they could level up endlessly in that manner?"
"They could in theory, but that's highly unlikely." Bonbon took a pull from the bottle, puffed on his cigarette, and pointed his finger at the floor. "We almost busted our asses fighting them, granted, but players of higher levels are usually well-equipped. At around 100, three decently geared players would have sufficed to dispatch this ghoul nest. Then again, I'm just guessing..."
"What about the quest? Do we hand it in to anyone?"
"No one. There should be a chest or somesuch with our reward somewhere around here."
"How do you know all this?" Luffy rose, approached the edge of the landing, and looked down cautiously.
"Duh. I've been playing for two years now," the bald man snorted.
"And you only got up to level 21?" the mage stopped eyeing the scene of devastation downstairs, turning to Bonbon incredulously.
"This is my fourth character," the tank shrugged. "I have already played as an orc, as a drow, and as a human. But I didn't really come here to play. When you've been married for fifteen years, certain things become routine, which is why we would change races every six months," the bald warrior drew a heavy sigh and turned away.
"Come now, I won't tolerate depression," Max patted him on the shoulder and pointed down the hallway. "Let's search everything upstairs first so that we wouldn't have to go back up. Tap all the walls—we might find a secret cache of some sort, you never know. Then we go downstairs, collect the loot, and keep on looking."
"Bonbon, there is something, uh... Anyway, thanks," Masyanya tapped the bald warrior's shoulder, then sighed loudly. "You're a right bastard, make no mistake, but sometimes you're all right."
"May you live long and prosper, too," the tank winked at the girl. "Once we get to Talyan, we can dye your hair black, and you'll finally look human. Well, inasmuch as a woman can look human in the first place."
"You ass!" snorted the huntress, following Max to search through the rooms.
There were four rooms altogether, all with broken furniture and ancient layers of dust. Bonbon picked up a femur that had been cracked open by someone's teeth in the very first room, scratched his cheek pensively, and said:
"I was going to take a look at what they had been cooking in those pots. But I'll probably give it a miss now."
"Why would that be?" Luffy egged him on.
"Those freaks have already eaten the yummiest parts," the bald warrior stuck the bone in the mage's face. "Take a look—they have sucked out the marrow! How are you supposed to make proper soup without it?"
"Boys, spare me the details of your gastronomic preferences," the huntress muttered through her teeth, growing a little pale.
"Right on, you culinary geniuses. Go ahead and search here, while Masyanya and I will move on to the next room," Max touched the girl's sleeve and nodded toward the exit.
A thorough inspection of the second floor yielded two gold coins that they found in one of the chests, about a dozen potions and elixirs of different kinds up to level 30, and an unusual cloak with a bonus to agility that Max instantly gave to the huntress.
The six ghoul corpses downstairs dropped six silver coins, as well as four unusual items. Max got three of them: plate fauld, breastplate and boots. Luffy got a ring with a bonus to intellect and bluish entrails of some sort.
"A pity you can't skin them," Bonbon sighed as he kicked a ghoul corpse. "Well, maybe you can, but using traditional methods, as it were—my skill doesn't work here. Or should I give it a try?" he looked at Max with a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
"Don't even think about it," the warrior frowned, heading for Rgharg's corpse. "The rats and toads back in Lake Cave were more than enough for me."
"I was just wondering," shrugged the bald warrior. "All right, show us what's inside that ferret."
Max bent over the corpse and touched it with his hand. There was a clinking sound, and each of them got a gold coin and a half.
You've accessed the quest: Rgharg.
Quest type: unique.
Deliver Rgharg's head to Majordomo Elloise in Talyan.
/> Reward: experience, 4 gold. Increased reputation with the dark elves.
"Come on, Max, get on with it," Luffy got the quest and looked really antsy now.
"In a moment," Max took his hand off Rgharg's corpse and raised his eyes at the huntress. "I have to tell you something, Masyanya. We have this custom: whoever gets a rare drop has to dance."
"What does it have to do with me?"
"We-e-ell..." Max produced a small bow that looked rather ordinary from the body of the boss, demonstrating it to the party.
Yew Bow of the Wanderer
Bow. Ranged weapon.
Durability: 397/400.
Rare.
Minimum level: 22.
Damage: 30-60.
+33 to agility.
+1% to critical hit chance with a physical attack.
Weight: 5 lbs.
"You want to give it to me?" asked the huntress cautiously.
"Who else?" Max looked surprised. "Bonbon? The only thing he can shoot is shit."
"But it costs—"
"Don't try to get out of dancing now," Bonbon chortled. "And no less than a minute, mind you."
"Are you serious?"
"Serious as a heart attack," Max confirmed the bald warrior's words. "Get on with the dance already."
Masyanya was an excellent dancer, transporting Max to another plane for a while. Indeed, imagine a beautiful girl's body spinning and twisting in an enthralling dance in an inn that was completely destroyed—amid furniture debris, puddles of black blood, and enemy corpses. This was how the ancient Vikings must have imagined their Valkyries.
"So cool," Max expressed everybody's admiration as he handed the bow to the huntress.
"Thanks," nodded Masyanya, her face reddened. She pulled the bowstring back a few times, looking pleased with the result. She eyed the companions. "But you still are bastards," she concluded, shaking her head. "Mistreating a lady so—I haven't been to a club in years."
"Enough with the false modesty," the mage winked to the girl. "Any inn would hire you as a dancer at the drop of a hat."