Transitional Adventurer

Transitional Adventurer

 

By Shaddoth

Copyright © 2021 Shaddoth

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.

First printing edition 2021.

 

Chapter 1:

“You dare to defeat ME, MORTAL?! I am the omnipotent Kais! The Djinn who is destined to rule the universe! I shall return and, while you are nothing but dust, I will…” the six-meter-tall Djinn exclaimed while being sucked into the Well of Wishes, which he was trying to escape from. His long-winded speech tapered off into nothing before he could finish it.

“Seriously, couldn’t you write a better villain dying speech than that?” Thomas’s Avatar, CloudStrike, asked aloud of the writers of Adventure World, the VR game in which he was immersed, who weren’t listening.

- SSS quest, Source of Magic Corruption, has been completed. -

Completion rate 94%

188,000,000 exp. 1,888,888 gold.

DING♪.

Level up.

-Renegade Genie’s Greatsword (Legendary+), Renegade Genie’s Earring (Legendary+), Longsword of Ashes (Unique), Boots of Sand (Unique) are awarded for first clear.-

DING♪.

Level up.

At last, level 100. I thought to myself.

+++

I had been playing the VR game Adventure Word since my accident. Not that I could do much of anything else. When mother’s car was hit by the terrorist’s explosion, I was in the backseat waiting for her return when it all happened.

Since she was inside the bank itself, mother had been protected by their automatic safeguards. But I was in her car facing the bank's building itself when the terrorist detonated the bomb which ruined my life. The shrapnel from the bomb destroyed mother’s car and severed my spine but left me alive.

To tell the truth, most days I wish I hadn’t survived.

It took four hundred and seventeen days and five surgeries for the doctors to stabilize me enough so that I no longer needed the aid of machines to live.

Yet now, when not undergoing lessons, all I did was live in a machine and study or play games. There was no employer in the world who would have me, even if I did graduate from college.

Quadriplegics were shunned universally. Hell, even I shunned them.

Nowadays I lived in my VR machine. Initially it was for schooling, and now it was a vehicle to play games and interact with my parents. At least I could make some money to pay for the in-game toys that I wanted and not completely live off of my family’s sympathy and my mother’s ever-lasting guilt. Not that I would ever need money of my own to live. My parents’ guilt and sympathy along with my own significant trust fund would see to that.

I had just turned sixteen and my parents had always been generous on birthdays. Yet there was little they could give to improve my life, nor make me happy.

Last year, for my fifteenth, I received the latest and greatest VR pod. Mom and dad had spent millions customizing it for me. Since then, I had even less reason to leave the pod, and they less incentive to coax me out.

They knew it was a trap when purchasing it and so did I. But it’s what we both wanted. They got the ability to get on with their lives, social ones especially, and I received the freedom to live in a world where I didn’t need someone to change my diapers.

The pod took care of my daily needs while I spent my life playing games in VR or learning in my stipulated private VR custom ‘classrooms’.

+++

Wary of a trap, the last 100-level boss that I had defeated had its treasury full of them, I searched out the cavernous room finding only a solitary well to the left of Kais’s throne. With the Evil Djinn and his minions all dissipated after their defeat, I found nothing else in the large throne room, not even dust.

Just that one well. A so-called ‘wishing well’ which was the true home to the self-proclaimed ‘Most Powerful Genie in the Universe’.

I was already at the highest level this game would allow. Only the Guild sponsored professionals were stronger than me, and even then, I didn’t believe that there were that many of them right now. Yet I could never join a professional guild, my pod wasn’t regulation and they had rules about that in the big guilds who fought for money and fame.

My parents had all the money they and I would ever need. As for fame, my parents wished privately would rather I fade away. I didn’t disagree nor blame them. That wasn’t always true, but most days it was.

Inside the wooden bucket, which was attached to a hand crank and hanging over the well, was an envelope.

Addressed to me.

Not to my character, but to me, Thomas Robert Montgomery.

In cursive.

What the hell? Were the game developers fucking with me?

Whatever.

I opened up the envelope and out poured a smoky White Genie of even greater size and girth than the one I just defeated.

“Thomas,” the genie spoke pleasantly, and the game, all but me and the white hued genie, froze.

“You seem unsatisfied with the reward for killing my rogue brother. Is there something you'd rather have instead? A personal wish just for you?”

“Sure. How about an adventure with better writing, with greater freedom of choices for my character and a fresh start? Even if I can’t keep my items, I’d like to keep some of the money that I had earned over the years.”

“What type of adventure would you prefer, Thomas?” the White Genie asked as if my request wasn’t over the top.

“I don’t know. How about an open world, swords and sorcery, something like this one, with less restrictions and forced paths? A place where I make my own choices and have to live with them.”

That was the main thing I disliked about Adventure World. What was supposed to be an open world turned into one that was too limited in the amount and variety of quests and only a few true real choices. Over the years, the direction of the game had also shifted entirely to PvP to the detriment of the normal players.

We had to be good. We had to fight the forces of evil and we had to rescue the fair maidens or suffer penalties.

Sure, I admitted that I was thirteen when my parents agreed to allow me to sign up for this game, and being forced to follow the path of good made sense at the time. But I had long since outgrown it, I wasn’t the same fragile kid anymore.

“Is that all?” he asked with amusement.

“Something with 18+ content. I don’t know. That sounds about right.” Maybe they were recruiting me for their next Alpha test. I thought that something different would be cool.

“Wish granted,” the White Genie casually said.

The game screen went dark for thirty seconds and then placed me inside a character generating program. Yet name, image, and age were all locked to that of my character from Adventure World.

In Adventure World, I had an appearance of an idealized me. A sixteen year old buff swordsman type with short red hair and green eyes. Father wasn’t very tall at 178 cm, the same height as mother. Since the accident, I hadn’t grown very much, so I placed my in-game height at 182 cm. Just because I wished to be better than father at SOMETHING.

++++

Name: “Thomas CloudStrike” The name was provided. And locked. I didn’t care all that much since I had long since gotten used to the ID.

Age: 15. That was the age I submitted when I first started playing the AW at twelve. I didn’t think that anyone would believe I was older than that and I never bothered to update my personal information.

Appearance: 1.82 m Caucasian. Auburn hair, green eyes, athletic build.

Class:

That was open. In fact, there wasn’t a class generator in the system. Well, I did wish to be able to choose my own class without restriction.

The question was what type of character did I want to play this time. Even if it was an alpha or beta playtest, it was possible to keep the Avatar beyond the release of the game to the public. I had heard that was how some of the professionals had gotten a head start over the rest of us.

In AW-VR, I played a straight up great-swordsman. This time I wanted to be able to use magic. But I had to admit that I enjoyed using my body in games, since it was something that I could not do in real life.

A magic swordsman came to mind, yet that was too similar to my last Avatar. I had too many magic-like abilities to not call me a magic swordsman anyway.

What about something like a dark Jedi? Force lightning and a light saber? But how would that work in a swords and sorcery fantasy setting? And lightning? Did I want that or some other element?

Maybe darkness or blight magic? Something not necessarily good aligned?

Maybe holy magic. Or devil magic? Or what about both? Now that could be fun… the ability to cast both holy and devil magic. Now that sounded great. What about fighting though? How about a staff and weapons skill? I wouldn’t need a lot, just enough to defend myself. Maybe with room to grow on that too.

“For class, can I be a dual caster? Angel and Devil magic with good melee staff skills, please?” I asked to whomever was listening. Since there weren’t any prompts or inputs other than voice, I believed that everything inside this program was voice activated.

Class/Race: 'Half-Fiend' appeared on the character creation screen.

“If you say so,” I replied mostly unsure, but since it was a test program, I could abandon my character early and chose a new one if this one wasn’t to my liking.

Confirm Class: Y/N printed slowly across the screen.

I would have pointed to the ‘Y’ on the screen if my body actually listened to me like it did in VR. Instead, I spoke aloud, “Yes, I confirm.”

“Confirmation acknowledged,” the computerized voice responded. And then it followed up with something scarily incomprehensible.

“Thomas Robert Montgomery, you now have 30 seconds to wish your loved ones a pleasant life. For yours is ending in 29 seconds… 28…27…26…”

I panicked.

“What? What? What do you mean? I’m going to die?”

“Yes, Thomas Robert Montgomery, in 15 seconds your VR pod will malfunction and you will receive a life ending shock. 9…”

“Fuck it,” I said in case it was real. I didn’t have anything worth living for anyway. “Bye mom and dad. I love you both. Thank you for everything.”

“1…0.”

At zero my body jumped. Not that I felt anything, but my head moved along with the rest of me, slightly dislodging my personalized VR headset.

I stopped breathing, yet heard alarms sound outside of the pod. Alarms loud enough that, even through the insulation, I still heard them inside. With the darkening screens and VR environment, I knew that my last minutes of life were coming fast.

“I never blamed you, mom. Never,” I repeated as my eyes darkened. “Thanks for everything, I love y…”

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPP!!!!!

Chapter 2:

I awoke to screaming. Not mine either.

Noises of fighting and people dying, noises familiar from my VR gaming days came through the gaps in the door and the wooden walls surrounding me. There wasn’t much light coming into the small shed or barn that I was trapped in, but enough for me to tell that daylight was waning.

But not the shrieks. Those were increasing. So too was the yelling and the sickening sounds of meat getting stabbed.

My imagination filled in the blanks. Wherever I was, the people around me were fighting. On which end my captors were, I had no idea regarding that.

I looked for a way out and discovered a tall thin door. Yet after throwing myself against it three times, I realized that it wasn’t that thin or fragile.

I rubbed my sore right shoulder, a shoulder that shouldn’t have been that sore since mother had made me keep the settings of my VR games to the minimum in fear of some unforeseen feedback. Which wasn’t going to happen, but they were too careful that way, especially mother during one of her guilt trips.

Suddenly, I remembered the White Genie and everything that transpired after. Including my so-called death.

VR never felt like this before. Not even close.

This felt real. Even the smell of the hay floor or the acrid stench of whatever was in that bucket in the corner.

I took stock to see if I was in VR and could pull up any menus.

Nope.

But I did know four spells. Two Holy and two Devilish.

Strike Evil, a damage spell that only worked against beings with evil intent or that were intrinsically evil, and Protection from Harm, which was some sort of force shield. I wouldn’t know how good it was until I used it a few times.

Banefire, a fire-based damage spell, and DarkGlare, a spell which allowed me to ‘see more’. Another spell that I wouldn’t know exactly what it did, until I experimented with it.

Since my captors were busy, I cast Strike Evil on the door. A fist sized ball of light, moving around 100km/h, struck the door handle to no effect. Risking the shed burning down, I cast Banefire on the handle after stepping back. Moving at a slower speed than the other attack spell, the fist sized fiery ball struck the door handle and the door itself starting a fire around the metal handle.

Seeing how one worked fairly well, I threw a couple more balls of Banefire at the handle. Only then did I notice the drain on my energy reserves. I probably needed a staff. My staff. And when thinking of my staff, an image of a two-faced staff appeared. One serious face and one face laughing, each face on opposite ends of the two-meter ironwood shaft, and facing opposing directions.

My staff was missing and probably in the hands of my captors. Most likely my equipment too since I was left wearing my clothes and what passed for as light armor here.

I also had a strong headache, possibly from getting hit in the back of the head by something and knocked out, which led to my capture for unknown reasons.

But the shed door was burning nicely know. I gave it a solid kick once more and it burst open to reveal mayhem.

Forty or more goblins, short skinny green humanoids, were trying to swarm over four defending women. Five if I counted the one girl on the ground, whose clothes were being ripped off in anticipation of getting their jollies off in the midst of battle.

This was way more graphic than I expected of any game. If it was a game. Somehow, I didn’t think so. The all too real pain in my head and soreness in my shoulder said otherwise.

I had not had felt pain anywhere below my neck since the accident. Not one single bit. Even the best VR's could only mimic itching and tingling from my memory since shrapnel had severed the nerves which controlled the pain receptors in my spine – along with everything else.

But this pain in my side was the same as the one in the back of my head. VERY REAL.

Maybe the White Genie gave me another chance after all.

I was about to help the girl, when I saw a goblin snatch away my staff from another goblin’s greedy hands and try and run off, yet he too was tackled by a different goblin and then a third. It looked as if my staff was valuable to the green-skinned creatures.

I cast Banefire at the one with the staff and charged over to recover it. I missed the target, but hit the one grappling with the current holder, killing him instantly. I slipped and stumbled over a dead goblin but, after regaining my balance, a second Banefire prevented the thief from escaping, as it lit him up like a torch. A screaming oily torch.

All of this carnage, blood and noise was making my bile rise. Something very dangerous to a quadriplegic. Repressing the feeling, I quickly caught up to the most recent holder of my staff and grabbed the free end.

Swinging the staff about, the goblin flew off in an arc and I chased him between buildings. Thunking him over the head was icky. Goblins weren’t strong or durable. With his head caved in and greenish gray blood and bits scattered around, my bile rose once again.

I now had my staff. Next, I needed my equipment.

I tried using Strike Evil from the serious face of my staff on the goblins surrounding me. The spell dropped the ugly creatures to the ground soundlessly, like animated puppets with their strings cut.

I killed a dozen or so before the ladies noticed my presence.

They had my stuff and I needed a bargaining position if I wanted everything back. Especially since I didn’t know what ‘everything’ entailed.

“What-cha doing just standing there. Help that girl!” the oldest demanded, a woman twice mom’s age in tattered and bloody clothes. The girl she referred to was the one who was about to get molested by six goblins. At once.

“It seems I’m missing my equipment and my money. I could be persuaded to help if I had that back. Or I can wait until the goblins finish you all off and then search for it.”

“It’s in the cellar, mage. I swear to AO that your belongings are untouched,” she stated.

“And I have can have everything back if I help and you won’t try and attack me again?” I prompted.

“I swear,” she gritted out. Defending against a dozen or so goblins herself.

“Good enough.” Once every second and a half, I cast a Strike Evil spell, killing a goblin. I had to be careful of not hitting the girl, I didn’t know if she was evil or how the spell would react on hitting her.

The fallen and pinned girl was a beacon to the goblins, they thinned out attacking the other ladies in exchange for the one vulnerable. Which made my and the remaining three ladies’ jobs easier.

When the goblins were down to just a few, I looked to see if there was anyone else hiding or a threat.

Standing next to what looked like an apple tree was another goblin with a staff twice his height. Unlike the ragged leathers of the rest of the mob, he was wearing a black hooded robe, probably stolen since the sleeve of his left arm reached the ground.

I sprinted after him, casting Strike Evil in vain hopes of hitting the shaman goblin. I was too far away and my aim wasn’t the best standing still. Running, it was even worse.

Before I even reached the apple tree, he had disappeared. The dozens of uneven rows of trees, his small size, and knowledge of the area, allowed his easy escape. I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t willing to go all that far for these women.

Plus, I wanted my equipment and money back. AND I didn’t trust them not to steal from me.

If only they treated me right from the beginning, I probably would have chased that shaman goblin for days.

Instead of minutes.

Returning casually to the farmstead, I killed the last goblin just as he cleared the wooden fence. He seemed to be the only one smart enough to run away.

The old lady went to her relatives, starting with the overwhelmed and near raped girl on the ground weeping, and used what was left of her energy to heal the worst of her wounds.

“Boy, can you heal?”

“Nope,” I replied succinctly.

As much as I itched to help, I didn’t trust them not to stab me in the back while I did. The old lady might have given her word. But that was under duress and to someone of dubious character from her point of view.

Two of the women, mother’s age or younger, after a small amount of magical healing was administered to them by the old lady, left to check on the buildings, clubs or cudgels in hand.

Either the old woman didn’t have much in the way of magic, or the girl on the ground was worse off than I suspected. A quick glance showed that her titties were covered in small bleeding bite wounds, so too was nearly the rest of her uncovered skin, but she wasn’t bleeding in the crotch area from being penetrated. But the goblins’ dicks were small…

I refused to think about it. That was beyond my maturity level and I knew it, so I just stood back and watched the three women. Mostly the old woman.

“Casee, put Lin-Lee to bed. Boy, wait there, I’ll get your pack,” apparently, my just standing against the fence and refusing to help further, was more than the old woman could take.

Getting rid of me had become more important to her than seeing to her granddaughter’s treatment.

Which made sense if she was worried about me attacking them, but in most ways it didn’t. That meant that this farmstead was hiding something that the old lady feared for me to learn.

But at a place this hostile, I wasn’t willing to remain to discover just what that secret was.

Ten minutes later, the old woman returned carrying a slim eight-pouch leather backpack with thick straps and two long narrow near empty water skins in opposite side attached sleeves.

It didn’t look familiar, but somehow, I knew it was mine.

In her other hand she carried a woven bag of what looked like fruit and bread, plus something else.

“Just set them there, and back away.” I pointed a few meters away, which earned me another scowl.

After the old woman set the backpack and the bag down and stepped back, I slung my pack over my left arm and scooped up the belt knife. My right hand never relaxed its grip on my staff.

“Where is the nearest stream?”

She glanced at the food offering that I didn’t touch before answering, “Half-hour walk west,” she pointed to my left.

I walked through an opening in the broken fence, one meant more for keeping livestock in than goblins out, and headed south.

“Don’t you want the food, boy?” she called out before I took two steps.

“No thanks,” I called back and kept walking. She didn’t reply.

I even momentarily wished that the goblins got her next time, but changed my mind. All they did was lock me up and hit me over the head, and I didn’t even know why. Maybe they had a good reason. Maybe they didn’t.

Either way, I was through with them.

And this definitely was not VR or anything like the last game I played. In Adventure World, if you rescued a villager, or a village as a whole, you got rewarded with smiles, money, gifts, and sometimes quests. Not with suspicion and hostility.

But, I did need to tell her about the shaman. I paused, “Hey, old lady. There was a goblin shaman in your apple orchard, he got away. Good luck with that.”

“You didn’t kill him?” She had followed me through the opening in the fence to the worn path leading away from her homestead.

“Nope. I didn’t have my equipment and wasn’t willing to risk it in unfamiliar terrain,” I argued back.

“What do you want to hunt the shaman down?”

“Lady, if I can’t trust the food you give me, how can I trust anything else you promise? Ask someone else.” I restarted walking, only half paying, okay, maybe fully paying attention to how she replied.

“Boy, are you sure the one you don’t trust isn't you, but me?”

That wasn’t worth a response. I had learned to trust myself the first time my so-called caregiver forgot to care for me for a full twenty-four hours while mom and dad were at a convention in Vegas and then claimed ignorance regarding the rash. That was before they bought me my VR pod and while I still required a full-time caregiver.

I had to trust my senses and myself. Other than mom and dad, I never could trust anyone else.

After crossing the stream, I rinsed out my water skins and refilled them while half stripping and washing as much as I could. I wasn’t worried about the women from the farmstead doing anything against me, they were all injured and contrary to my earlier argument, I didn’t think that they were hostile enough to pursue me while wounded.

Additionally, there was a goblin shaman out there, plus who knew what else. They had to huddle up until their husbands and sons returned from the fields.

I rinsed out the water bottles and refilled them before finding a safe place to rest. With my back against a large tree, I searched my backpack to see what it contained. In the outermost right pouch, there was a small pouch a quarter filled with copper pennies and a single silver cent, meaning hundred pennies. The center middle reinforced pouch had seventeen gold crowns, each worth a hundred of the silver cents along with a few of the smaller pouches containing more of the pennies and a cent or two evenly distributed among the other pouches. Their names came to mind as soon as I saw the coins.

‘Never keep all of your money in one place,’ dad had said more than once. But he was referring to stocks, bonds, and banks. Yet in this case, I could see the wisdom in his words.

I learned early to never doubt dad when it came to money or stocks. I tried to learn how he came to his conclusions on which ones to buy and sell. But the thousands of charts and reports was more than my mind could handle when I was six. And even at sixteen, while I could make a profit, it was only a small one compared to his.

The rest of the pouches, those that held anything, contained trail mix, a thin blanket, a waterproofed leather tarp, and assorted survival gear, including a sketchy map of the area I awoke, in addition to a few other helpful items.

If I looked closely, and I did, there was a tiny ‘x’ just off center of the warn hand drawn map. I thought, and hoped that was where I was. The topography of the map wasn’t the best, neither was the scale or the lack of a legend. I had no idea if the scale was close to being correct or kilometers off.

But memorize it I did. To the far northwest was a city called Springfield and, from its size on the map, it was over ten times larger than any of the villages surrounding it. There also weren’t any mountains displayed on the map, but there were numerous rivers. One very large one was named Verdun and ran mostly north-south to the west, or through Springfield was my target. I guessed that this little river I was washing and sitting by was one of Verdun’s many uncharted tributaries.

“Mage,” called out a man on the other side of the river. He seemed little older than my father, dressed in coveralls and a dull woven pullover, topped off by a wide brimmed hat held on by a chin strap.

Caught unaware, I could only look up at the man and look around me to see if anyone else was there. Just because my back was to a tree didn’t mean that no one couldn’t sneak up on me.

“Yes?” I called back over the light noise of the seven-meter-wide river. The crossing was precarious, but the river was shallow, even if it was fast moving. I figured that it was safer on this side than the other.

“Thank ye for helping ma and the women. We will forget about you stealing eggs and won’t say nothing to nobody.”

So, that was why I was knocked out and held in the shed. I stole a couple eggs. Or the old me did.

“It’s okay,” I called back.

“Ma said you wouldn’t take no food. I don’t got much coin,” he went on to say. I guessed that he planned on offering a monetary reward.

I didn’t need it, I hoped. Besides, the earlier me was in the wrong. The fucking ass. Stealing eggs of all things…

“Keep it. Call us even. Just watch out for that shaman goblin.” I probably owed the old lady an apology.

Maybe next time.

“I’ll be alerting the neighbors tomorrow.” He hesitated on the other side of the river; he didn’t quite know what to say since I refused his money.

I folded up the map and repacked my backpack while ignoring the man, who now was trying to convince me to come for a meal before heading off.

“Thanks anyway. Bye, Mr. Farmer.”

If I followed this tributary to northwest, it would lead me to the main river. From there, I could find my way to the large city. And from there, I would have time to decide on my next course of action.

I stood up, brushed off, and waved at the farmer wordlessly before heading northwest.

Walking in VR and walking in untended undergrowth of rugged, unclaimed farmland were nowhere close to one another. I didn’t even try to keep track on how many times I stumbled, tripped, or outright fell.

Oddly, my right thumb was the sorest part of my body. Landing on my staff was hard enough, landing on my thumb holding my staff was the worst.

The leather coveralls I wore were sturdy enough to prevent the early spring grasses and other plants from cutting or scraping me. The long-sleeved linen shirt was pretty decent at it too, but the occasional burr would stick to the woven cloth, which required immediate removal.

The problem I had was that there was little to forage along the way other than roasted squirrel and bird. Banefire overcooked the small creatures and Strike Evil did absolutely nothing to wildlife.

I guessed that they weren’t considered evil by the spell’s governing body or something.

But overdone meat was still better than no meat or living off of my dwindling supply of trail mix.

Of water there was plenty, as long as I was willing to wade a meter from shore. Thankfully, my boots were waterproof and my leather coveralls wide enough that I could raise them up easily above water level.

After four days of travel, and tripping, and stumbling, and bumbling through the overgrowth, I came across a grooved road three meters wide. The raised center of the road signified that carts were the main transportation here, and they drove down the center of the narrow road. I guessed that the emptier or lighter carts had to make way for the fuller ones since cresting that center hump wouldn’t have been easy with a full load.

Judging from the rains and the temperature, I calculated that this was early- to mid-spring. That also depended on the local average climate and the latitude. All of which I had no indications of or means of finding out. If the me before I got bonked over the head for stealing eggs had half a brain, he would have purchased the eggs with a copper penny and asked.

But apparently, he didn’t.

Maybe that was why I was now inhabiting his body.

Yes, I wasn’t in VR. After a week on this world, I could say definitely that I was here in person. At least my mind was. There wasn’t a VR in existence that would let me shit in the woods and leave me to use leaves to clean up after myself.

I hadn’t wiped my own ass since I became a quadriplegic.

Wiping my own ass wasn’t bad. I gladly would take that in exchange for magic and the ability to walk again.

DEFINITELY!

Skinning birds and squirrels was a new rapidly developing skill. Nothing beats quick learning when it was hunger driven.

But all of that didn’t tell me what to do about THAT.

That was a pre-set ambush.

Up in the distance were four men cutting branches off of a fallen tree while six more were covering it with mud.

The ‘whole tree across the road to stop the carriage’ ploy. Yet this one went a few steps further with them covering the tree in mud to mask its presence. Plus, a mage with a staff was standing aside to lord over everyone.

I could easily skirt around the ambush. But that would have left the innocents in a carriage, who were to come after me probably in an hour or three, to get shot up if those bows were any indication of their plans.

I didn’t believe for a second that those bandits were going through all of this work for a farmer’s feed or fertilizer. It was planting season, not harvest, so any cart coming down this path would have been little use to the bandits. Unless those bandits decided to change careers and take up farming for a living and need starter seed and fertilizer.

Which I’d heavily wager against.

The light rain had to be annoying to the bandits. Rain and bows, medieval ones at least, didn’t go well together. But the sight lines of the carriage drivers would also have been reduced, making their artificial road bump harder to see, until the last second that was. A point in their favor.

The carriage would also be moving slower… I added up the points, yet came back to the large buried tree blocking the road. And the mage. Of the two, the mage felt more dangerous.

The eleven archers, I felt, weren’t much of a hazard since learning how to shoot a bow was never supposed to be an easy task. During medieval times especially.

That they all carried a short melee weapon didn’t seem to bother me for some reason. One I couldn’t put a finger on.

I kept my crouch at a distance near the side of the road and waited to see what else was up their sleeves.

After the branches were removed and the trunk mostly covered, not buried, but covered in mud, the two groups of archers separated. Four bandits with axes and bows followed the mage to the right, the other six climbed the small rise to the left.

That was a signal I had been waiting for. I went to the mage’s side and crept well behind the bandits, moving low and slow.

In stealth, even in the rain, speed kills.

“Mage Guy, does the Lady have pretty maids?” I heard the muffled voice’s question float down the hill I was creeping across.

“One, the other is even uglier than you. Now shut up.”

That simple conversation sealed their purpose. These were the bad guys. Not some rebels or emissaries trying to prevent an alliance or war or something. These bandits were definitely not the good guys.

I crouched and waited. There was no way that I could handle this many bandits alone.

…

“String your bows, they are almost here,” the mage called out, his voice sounding older than I thought. Maybe even a few years older than father.

I wondered what spell that was, as I prepared my own equipment. Contrary to my guess, the mage wasn’t notified by a spell of their target’s approach, a single horseman galloped past the ambush at full speed, hurdled the buried tree, and kept going.

On all fours, I crept closer to the mage. Earlier, I had aligned myself to be perpendicular to the road to inch up behind the mage undetected.

I wanted a clean strike at his back.

Oddly, he dropped his staff and replaced it with a bone tube it in his left hand. He was going to use a scroll for something. Probably something stronger than any magic he could cast on his own.

I heard the horse drawn carriage approach fast. How I knew that it moving fast? I didn’t know, but I did know.

Regardless of what I did, the carriage was going to get stopped and ambushed. I had to time my actions so that everyone was focused on the ambushes and not me, who was ambushing the ambushers.

“STOP, THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE ROAD!” exclaimed one of the drivers over the slightly muffled sound of the light wind and rain.

From the pain of the horses, I don’t think the driver reacted in time. But the archers, almost coordinated, stood and released their arrows at the two drivers of which only a few hit.

The archers weren’t very fast in their reloading. Almost as if they were afraid of the very arrows they were using.

Poison.

The mage, on the other hand, was slowly and ceaselessly chanting from his scroll that I didn’t see him remove from the tube, which now lay at his feet beside his staff.

The poisoned arrows set my hackles on edge, but that mage still needed to be dealt with.

Standing up as quietly as I could, the rain helped, I chanted the spell for Banefire and swung my staff underhand with all of my strength, aiming between the mage’s slightly spread legs.

Withholding the release of the spell until I connected, I spoke the final syllable in conjunction of the muffled thunk. My second, third, and fourth strikes were all to the collapsed mage’s head. By the amount of blood and the crumbled eye socket, I believed he was dead.

One more for good luck and on to the closest archer.

“Surrender Lady Alison. Your guards are dead and your guard dog’s magic is nullified,” called out a rain muffled male voice from the other side of the fallen tree.

I risked a glance at the speaker, seeing a man on horseback. Probably the same one from earlier.

He was an unknown. I needed to move faster.

The archer’s eyes got big when he saw me when I stepped up before him. “You aren’t mage Guy.”

“Strike Evil,” I replied.

From this range, I couldn’t miss a stationary target. He, like the goblins, dropped once the ball of light hit him in the head. The next two archers on my side of the hill fell just as easily, but I missed the fourth.

That bandit dropped his bow and dove to the side, ran down the slight hill and kept running away from the road and us. The brave Sir Robin didn’t even look back nor utter a sound during his flight.

Okay…

I wasn’t brave enough to take on six archers that were secure on the other side of the carriage, so I reverted to plan A.

“Whoever is in the carriage, the mage is down, plus four archers on this side. Careful, the arrows have poison on them, I think,” I called out loudly.

The masked horseman’s head whipped right in my specific direction.

Which wasn’t good.

“Who are you?” an older woman’s stern voice rang out from the inside of the carriage.

“A passerby who didn’t want to see bandits succeed in their ambush. There are six archers to your right. I don’t know how many arrows with poison they have left, but your coachmen are down. Plus, there is a man on horseback on the other side of the obstruction. They dropped a tree across the road and coated it with mud.”

“Young man. If you leave now, I will pretend to have never seen you before. You have to the count of five.” The masked horseman called out.

He was definitely older than me, maybe even by thrice, by the sound of his voice.

“Let me loot the bodies here first. They were my kills,” I called out to the horseman, mostly to stall for time.

The maniac actually laughed and agreed.

And then two women stepped out of the carriage. One on my side, in a full dark green hooded cloak, and one on the other, I only caught a brief glimpse of her hood, the same as the one on this side.

“Oh, so you are willing to give yourself to me, Allison?”

“In your dreams, asshole,” the girl responded.

“Language,” the woman on the other side of the carriage responded, chastising her charge.

“Jaq, they are trying to kidnap me and you are complaining about my language?”

“You are a Noble Lady. You must always act like one. Now let me take care of the vermin.”

Mind you, the arrows never stopped arching at the guardian on the closest side. But then, with a single chant, a beast made of water sprang up the short hill and charged the bandit archers.

“Nothing is ever easy. I’ll remember you, boy,” the horseman scowled behind his mask. And of course, blamed me for his men’s failure.

“Hey, you let me loot. I didn’t do anything else,” I complained aloud.

But he was already out of hearing range, the horseman had turned his horse and fled. His plan of setting up a no magic region via the dead mage had been disrupted by me. He did have a right to be pissed off at me.

Shrug.

The mage was the only one with anything decent on him. The archer bandits each carried a couple pennies and one cent (a silver coin), some hard bread and cheese, and had a few poisoned arrows left.

They had started with a full quiver of twelve, each mostly emptied.

“You up there. Come down where we can see you,” the Lady’s guardian called out. Witnessing the strength of her last spell, I wasn’t about to fight it out with her. Especially since I was on the side of good this time.

I stood with the mage’s backpack over my left arm and with his staff in my left hand and carefully made my way down the slippery short slope.

“Who are you?” the guardian demanded.

“The guy who just saved your asses from a null-magic scroll and didn’t even get a thank you.” Given her attitude, I was unlikely to either.

“Why didn’t you warn us earlier of the ambush? If you had time to set yourself up like you did, you could have just as easily stopped us earlier,” she interrogated me.

“Right. Your drivers would have stopped just because I, a young mage, said so. Get real. Since you aren’t planning on killing me, I’ll just go.”

What a bitch.

“Wait,” said the girl, yet it wasn’t directed at me. “Jaq, he did save us. Get his name and reward him.”

“Allison, he could also just as easily be a spy for Trevor or Vasti.”

“And if he isn’t, then you just killed an innocent who aided us. Reward him,” the girl ordered.

“Fuck off. If a simple thanks for helping you is too much, then I don’t want your reward,” I interrupted their bickering.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

I kept walking and ignoring the girl’s entreaties. Her protector said nothing more.

+++

“Jaqueline, why did you act like that? You know as much as I do that he wasn’t part of the ambush,” Allison demanded of her protector.

“Maybe he was or maybe he wasn’t. Either way, he is a commoner and you should not concern yourself about them.” Walking away from her charge, the mid-ranked mage protector checked on the health of the horses first and coachmen second. The men were both dead or close to it, poisoned like the young mage said, she concluded. The horses were both hit at least twice by the arrows also. Even the healthy one wouldn’t last if the poison was potent.

But maybe it would last long enough to get to the next rest station.

Mechanically, Lady Allison’s protector cut the traces of the dying horse and then maneuvered the carriage around and over the tree with the aid of her magic.

Ordering her charge back inside, Mage Jaqueline took up the reigns and set off at a gallop. The speed and exertion was killing the horse, but the mare had a limited amount of time regardless.

As for the men she left behind, she would have someone see to them later. They did belong to her liege’s house after all.

+++

Fifteen minutes later, the carriage galloped by, but with only one horse and at the reigns was the water mage. I had thought both horses had arrows stuck in them, but I might have been mistaken.

The bald protector didn’t even give me a glance as she spurred the mount to greater speed.

I was right, she was a bitch.

Six hours later I chanced upon a small inn. The first one I had seen in this world. Of course, the noblewoman’s carriage was stabled in the open barn. Not that I cared, as long as I could get a warm bath and hot food, I was golden.

Inside the inn was a single fireplace with a small fire fighting for its life and four tables vying for the warmth’s attention. Thankfully, only one table was occupied, and that was by two men in thick leather armor.

Professionals.

There wasn’t a bar, but there was a serving girl. She wore a woolen dress and had a 5 cm high thick metal collar welded to her neck.

Slave.

But she did come straight away and asked my business. Every word was spoken with dull eyes as from one who has seen too much or experienced too much with no escape.

“I’d like a room for the night, a bath, and a meal, please.”

“Five coppers for the room and meal, it comes with one ale. The bath is two coppers extra.”

“I’ll add an extra copper if the bath is at least warm,” I offered.

“Yes, Mister.

“Do you want the bath or meal first?” she continued.

“Food first. Can you bring it to my room and which is it?”

“Four, it’s at the top of the stairs, second on the left,” she dully directed me.

“Thanks.” It wasn’t a room; it was a closet. Standing up, I could touch both sides of the room and the ceiling with my elbows. Laying down, it had a meter on me. At most. But it did have three crossbars for hanging wet clothes, and warmth. And no rain.

The tub water wasn’t the cleanest, but it wasn’t bad enough that I refused to bathe. Besides, I was tired. Tired enough that I was contemplating a second day of rest here if the rain hadn’t stopped when I woke.

In the morning I spent some time going through the mage’s backpack. Unlike mine, his wasn’t geared for taking his whole life with him. His was more of a week or so camping expedition type and mainly filled with food.

The few silver cents that he had stashed were worth more than everything else combined, excluding the staff and the backpack itself, which was made of excellent quality material, almost equal to mine. The jerky that was in a wax bag was hard as a rock, I probably needed to boil it before it became even close to edible.

Additionally, there was something that I didn’t want to think about. A brown ceramic jar with the wax seal broken. Resealing the wax wasn’t hard with a bit of flame. But I could guess all too easily what was inside.

Did I want to walk around with that strong poison on me? Also, what would the local’s reaction be if they discovered that I carried a poison that could kill a man in minutes?

Hiding it sounded better to me than destroying it. Maybe burying it somewhere nearby was the way to go.

The following afternoon, when the rain finally let up, I went for a walk to stretch my legs. I had noted that the carriage wasn’t in the barn any longer, something that I considered a good omen.

Chuckling to myself while carrying the shovel that I rented for a copper penny, but with a three-copper deposit, I found a likely spot a half kilometer away to bury the poison. The ancient Willow tree with he split trunk wouldn’t be easy to forget, nor was the distance nor direction from the inn hard to place.

I hoped that I would never need that poison, but felt that somehow, or somewhen, I would. Hence the exact burial spot instead of emptying it into a ditch somewhere and shattering the ceramic jar after.

Chapter 3:

Thankfully, there were no signs of rain during the following two days walk. The sole village that I came across, I decided to pass on. There wasn’t a torch or light anywhere that I could see.

Even the guard on duty hid in the shadows from his perch to the left of the wooden gates of the unnamed collection of hovels.

Two days further, I came across a near identical village all buttoned up, but it was before the sun had set, so I chanced it.

“Hi. Is there a place I can grab a bite to eat and sleep for the night?” I asked the sole guard. He didn’t have any armor, but his pike looked used and well maintained.

For all I knew, the man’s skill might even be head and shoulders above the rest of the folks I had seen up to now.

He looked me over and nodded, “Third house from the left, Ma B has a room and normally has extra bread and cheese for visitors. As long as you stay smart, you will be safe. Understood?”

“Thank you, Mister.” He nodded once more and opened the gate.

Ma B was younger than he was, somewhere in her late thirties, and dressed in heavy woolen pants and sweater. But her apron was pure white. Maybe even cotton, something rare in this society from what little I knew about it.

She was clean, pretty and, best of all, she was nice.

Ma B offered an excellent stew that she shared with me for a few pennies. Why she was single? With cooking like this in a society like this, made me wonder if she secretly transformed into a werewolf during full moons.

But I wasn’t staying here and it wasn’t my place to ask.

I gave the kind woman a few pennies extra for a full loaf of freshly baked bread as a thank you for the meal and warm bed. The first one since arriving here. The previous inn only provided a wooden plank floor. The rest was on the travelers if they wanted comfort.

“Ma’am, how far is it to Springfield from here?” I asked while packing up and double checking to make sure everything was in the right place the next morning.

“Three days walk to the north. Just keep following the road.”

“Thanks,” I smiled in return and headed out into the misty rain.

Peachy.

But I was full and warm. Something I couldn’t have said for any of the starts of my mornings since arriving to this world. Ma B even dried my clothes last night. Something I didn’t expect.

The two packs I was carrying, one on the front and one on the back, shouldn’t bring me much notice. But the second mage’s staff, a high quality one similar to mine, would. So, I ended up cutting a long line of grass with the other mage’s dagger and rolled the ironwood staff in between the cut. While it may not have prevented anyone from finding it if they stood in this area, it did hide it from casual lookers.

+++

Springfield was larger than expected. In fact, it was freaking huge. Or at least the walls were.

I had a friend when I first start playing AW, who would have called it ‘Ginormous’. And that aptly described the walls and door.

The walls had to have been over fifteen meters high and six meters thick. The double doors and raised portcullis were square on top and close to half the wall's height. Looking left to right, the walls had to have been over three kilometers in length.

Again, something that made little sense, when all I had seen for the last week was rained out farmland and tiny villages with less than a thousand people, at most, living inside.

The three-meter-tall wooden fences were decent protection for those villages, but they weren’t going to prevent anything that needed walls that high to protect this city’s denizens.

It was possible that the walls were a relic from an older time. Yet they looked maintained from a half kilometer away when I stopped and stared from the side of the road.

Another strike against needing a walled city like this was the road I had been traveling was dirt packed and, besides that one carriage and ambush and a few horsemen traveling in pairs, I hadn’t seen another soul traveling on it.

Less than twenty people in total on the road, yet that city had to have been able to house hundreds of thousands and defend against five or even ten times that amount if properly provisioned.

Judging from the amount of rain this last week, hell, water shouldn’t have been an issue either. Plus, there was this large fast moving river on the east side of the city. The map showed it west of the city, but in reality it looked as if the river made a loop to the eastern border.

At least from this angle it did. I bet that once inside, I would find a wall a distance back from the river. Anyone who went to this much effort to build walls this high and this thick wouldn’t trust anything less.

My curiosity aroused, I marched on.

Laughingly, or not, when I approached, there was only one guard standing under the partially raised portcullis. The left-hand door was closed and had no signs of it ever being opened, while the guard stood close to the walls with his pike firmly planted on the ground, the hood of his cloak snug and a miserable look on the guy’s face. And the guard couldn’t have been more than a year or so older than I.

Which meant either punishment duty or the youngest got stuck with the worst job.

This was also an opportunity.

The guard looked up at my approach with a bit of interest. I guessed that anything beat nothing other than standing alone in the drizzle.

“Name and home?” he called out, after coughing once.

“Thomas of New York.” Well, it was.

“Fee is five pennies. If you don’t have a permanent residence in a week, you are subject to conscription. If you…” blah blah blah…

The upshot was that, within a week, I had to have a place to stay, a permanent job, or a recommendation. If not, they would keep three of my five pennies plus either boot me out or conscript me to the local work forces.

“Thanks. Are there any decent inns that you can recommend? Something not too shabby with a good bath?”

He rattled off a list of seven.

“If you wanted good food, great bread, and a warm safe night, which would you chose?”

“Lynne’s. It’s a bit more but she has the best bread and the prettiest girls,” he grinned in remembrance of something. And it wasn’t a leer or anything like that.

“Thanks.” I held out my left hand, “I’m Thomas. Remind me to buy you a beer or ale sometime.”

He accepted my hand, and the coins that I palmed. A trick I learned in VR and had carried over to this world’s skills. In fact, a great many real-life skills and abilities had carried over to this world from my VR experience, which I was thankful for.

Relearning how to walk and move would have sucked. Sucked royally in a medieval world which boasted absolutely ZERO modern conveniences.

“Where can I find Lynne’s Inn…?”

“I’m Eon. It’s by the waterwheel near the center of the west wall, you can’t miss it. Lynne’s is the one with the pink sign in front.”

“Thanks again, Eon. See you later.”

After passing through the walls, the light rain that had been following me for days finally let up and a hint of sun shone through the gray clouds. Taking that as a good sign, I flipped back my hood and let my gaze wander.

The buildings in this area were lined up in perfectly straight rows. Each stone house, for that was what I thought they were, looked to be twelve meters deep, six meters wide, and two stories tall. Yet few had visible roofs.

Even more interesting was that only one in five houses had doors. Exactly every fifth house. From the way the weeds grew between the two-meter separation between the houses, I doubted that anyone lived in this neighborhood.

Instead of heading straight towards Lynne’s Inn, I spent twenty minutes just wandering the neighborhood. Twice I came across one man standing back from a dozen workers rebuilding roofs to the abandon houses. Those houses had doors in both cases and, with a quick count, there were four empty houses between them with no doors.

I don’t know why, but the no doors rang a discordant chord in my brain that I was having problem letting go of. Gaming OCD probably.

Yet this wasn’t a game. The White Genie hadn’t lied.

Exiting the abandoned housing area, I stepped into an identical neighborhood, yet one obviously occupied. There were even kids playing in the mud. Something I was never allowed to do as a child. Mother would have gone through the roof if I ever came back that muddy. Even a little dirt on me was reason for a scolding from her.

But mother lived in a pristine world of wealth and privilege.

I shook off that thought and continued my walking, trying to not too obviously stick out, at which I knew I failed at. Kids knew who lived in their neighborhood and what they looked like.

I certainly wasn’t one of them.

A less muddy kid hurried over to me. “Hey, Mister, for a penny I can show you around the city or take you where you want to go.” He, I thought, was ten and, dressed as he was, it was hard to tell. The wide bottom coveralls, like mine just made out of thick wool, seemed ubiquitous. Even the guard at the wall gate wore a similar pair of wide bottom pants. Even if the guard's were similar to mine and made from stout leather and reinforced.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“I’m not a kid. I’m nine,” he protested.

Yes, you are. “Sorry, sorry. So, what’s your name?”

“Gin. Well, it’s really Gingofidol, but no one calls me that ‘sides gamma. So, what do you say? I know the city great. Just one penny and I show you how to get anywhere.”

“Okay, Gin.” I grinned at both his name and his exuberance.

“I want to go to Lynne’s Inn.”

“I can take you there, but I’m not allowed inside. Com’on, Mister.” He took off and I had to walk faster than I usually did just to keep up.

Something else I noticed about this city, the streets never ran uninterrupted for very long. After every three sets of five houses, the street came to a ‘T’ and some streets were only a corner of that ‘T’.

Almost as if the city’s layout was a simple maze. Every other city I had ever been in, had and was proud of their main thoroughfares, both in the game and in the real world.

I racked my brain over the why and only half listened to my guide prattle on why his neighborhood was filled with laborers and the next with soldiers. I came to the quick conclusion that each neighborhood was segregated. I only had to discover where each social-economic class was placed.

That Gin and I were allowed to move unmolested through the neighborhoods was a positive in my mind. The housing segregation was a strike against the rulers that be, but the freedom to move as they chose was a plus.

We’d see how the rest of the city added up.

“Hey, Gin, are there any long straight streets in this place?”

“Yeah, there are four. They are like a plus sign. I’m learning maths and that made me think of it and did you know that…”

“Focus, Gin, focus. Let me guess, they run from the four gates to the center of the city, right?”

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“Lucky guess,” I replied. The kid was gabby and never ran out of things to say, but that wasn’t bad in a guide. I didn’t want to discourage him from talking. I didn’t have any information on this city and he at least knew where everything was.

“Hey, Mister, are you a Mage? And are you going to go to the dungeon?”

Was that why the streets were all mazes? To keep the dungeon for themselves or was it to keep the dungeon contained in case it spat out its monsters?

The kid wouldn’t know, but others should.

This city was probably a lot older than had I guessed.

“I’ll probably take a look at the dungeon later.”

“COOL. Can you take me?”

“Not until you are older,” I must have heard that excuse from my parents a thousand times as a child myself and felt odd repeating it to someone else.

“Aww. Please? I won’t tell anyone,” said the kid who had not stopped speaking in the last twenty minutes except to breathe.

Suddenly he slowed and stuck to my side. Exiting the merchant housing section was the reason why. This new area had longer and wider streets, filled with shops and, unlike Gin, the people here were all clean, only the occasional shopper a bit damp from the misty rain.

I stopped and handed Gin his copper. “Let me guess, you will get in trouble if you go into this section of the city, right?”

“Kinda,” he admitted.

“I can find the way from here, it’s next to the water mill, right?”

“Yeah, it’s got this pink sign and everything. The ladies there are all pretty,” he continued blathering.

“I got it. If I need a guide again, I’ll remember you.” I handed him an extra penny for which he glowed with happiness.

“Cool, thanks, Mister.”

“Thom. You can call me Thom.”

“Thanks, Mister Thom. BYE!” he waved vigorously at me as I walked into the merchant section.

I wasn’t the cleanest, with my mud coated boots and the splattering on my leather overalls but, other than curious glances from the shoppers, I didn’t receive any unwelcome attention.

A few things and people caught my eye while traversing the merchant quarter, for that was what I named it in my mind, and most of those were ladies wearing bright, too bright, too revealing clothing.

It was hard not to stop and stare, but I forced myself. Those were mysteries for a later time. Right now, I was in need of a meal, a bath, and a dry set of clean clothes.

Even the shopping areas were segregated, the street of clothes for women was completely separated by the children’s before I passed through the men’s clothiers. And then I ran into the wide cross street that traversed the city, according to Gin. Knowing I would be following this road east at another time, I turned left and headed west towards the river and where I hoped to find the ‘Gigantic Watermill’.

Upon seeing the watermill, I couldn’t blame Gin for his choice of words. The wheel was probably half the size of the London Eye, spanning over forty meters in the air. The stone tower it was attached to had to have been twenty-five meters or more itself.

Maybe they would let me sightsee it sometime.

I turned north as instructed and passed by dozens of block-sized, three-story warehouses until I entered into a new city quarter, one with a different feel.

It was like the rest of the city didn’t exist, and these streets were for the upper middle-class or possibly high-class consumers.

It was the people, everyone dressed better. And not just by a little. Mother would have had no issue shopping at the same stores that these people did. Well except for that woman in the asymmetrical knee length tapioca skirt and bra combo with the bright yellow longbow slung over her shoulder. To her left was a bare-chested man in neon green leathers with a greatsword slung across his back. Both seemed grossly out of place in a medieval world such as this.

Carefully looking around, I noticed that they weren’t the only ones openly bearing weapons while scantily clad, just the brightest colored. For some reason, they were given preference on the sidewalk. And I didn’t think it was due to fear. But they were too far away for me to pinpoint the reason.

The sudden appearance of a woman wearing a bubblegum top and white leggings with black short-shorts sent a strong discordant note through my brain. Yet she too wasn’t treated differently than the other brightly attired women in this odd district.

Lynne’s Inn looked identical to the rest of the taverns and inns on this street. Seeking the pink sign, I noticed an old west boot brush next to the door, which I used before entering.

Inside was a well-lit, warm, dry bistro with two dozen tables, each seating four to eight depending on their size, with well thought out placement and pink tablecloths over the square and rectangular tables. The bistro also had white embroidered cushions resting on the spindle back chairs, all of which shouted that I was in the wrong place.

But the crystal bell attached to the door had already given me away.

Although, judging by the patrons, four pretty girls a little older than I attired in brightly colored clothes occupying one table who sent quick dismissive glances at me, staying here might not be so bad.

A plump, busty, very busty woman in her early forties, wearing a cream dress and matching boots, sought me out immediately. With a smile.

“Afternoon, Mage. How may we be of service today for you?”

Odd phrasing, but what the hell, I was the stranger here.

“I was looking for a room to stay, food, bath, and more food,” I replied. I was hungry since I hadn’t eaten anything in five hours of walking.

“That we have. Do you have the required compensation, Mage?” she asked. And oddly, I didn’t think she was questioning my ability to pay, but asked that question for some other reason.

“I think I do. How much are rooms here?”

“Two cents a week, good Mage.”

I nodded, that was about what I thought. Expensive but probably worth it. If not, I’d move. And meals were probably extra. No biggie.

I had readied a pouch for this very reason and handed her two silver cents. “That sounds wonderful, Ma’am. I’ve been on the road for a while, is there anyone here that can wash my clothes and prepare a bath for me?”

“I’m Marcy. Remove your boots and hang your poncho there,” she gestured at a coat rack standing all by itself in the corner beside the stairs.

I unbuckled my boots and set them aside while she sought out ‘a girl’.

The bathtub was shorter than I liked, but that was reasonable since I believed, correctly, that her other guests were women and shorter than me. The plump maid that the manager sent to aid me in my cleaning and help me undress was all smiles, which wasn’t a first, nor a thousandths, so I paid it no heed. I submerged myself into the steaming water and unwound. It wasn’t until I stood to dry off that I hadn’t even considered that all of my money was in my room.

And by then it was too late. If anything was going to happen to my money and backpacks, it had already happened. The comfort level of this place and my mental tiredness had bypassed my defenses.

The only set of clothes I had that wasn’t in need of professional cleaning was the set that the previous body’s owner had packaged in a waterproofed waxy bag, sealed by some sort of gum. I had peeked once during the initially search through my backpack that first day, but hadn’t removed them, nor touched anything, for I was wet and dirty at the time.

But now, all I had left that was clean were those special clothes.

Perfectly fitted light-gray slacks and a cream button-down, linen collared shirt with buttoned cuffs were the package’s sole occupants.

Such an outfit I had never worn before. Mother always had me dressed in suits when in public or at a party which I could not skip. Otherwise, sweats and decent side button shirts was my normal attire at home for the last eight years. And when in VR, clothes were changed by clicking on the icons.

Yet here in this world, I had only worn pullovers and the coveralls. Button down clothes seemed to me to be an extravagance. But grinning, I suffered through it.

Besides, I wanted food and the bread here smelled just as good as Ma B’s.

Using the key that was enchanted to work only on my room lock, I re-locked the door. It would take me weeks ‘outside’ to discover why people in this quarter were so blasé about leaving their valuables unattended in their rooms.

The penalty for theft from the inside of any home, hotel, or hostel room in the Adventurer quarter was death. And the success rate for capturing those thieves was near perfect, since every adventurer would hunt that person to the ends of the earth.

That was one, and possibly the only thing, that the adventurers all stood shoulder to shoulder together. Without that safety of one possessions, adventurers wouldn’t be so willing to risk their lives as often as they did.

Springfield may have not started out as an adventurer-centric city, but it was one now and the laws and customs wholeheartedly supported them.

Barefoot, I strode down the stairs to a busier bistro like restaurant area. More than one head turned to observe me, and quite a few of those that did gave me an unhappy look. For which I thought it was because I was a man invading their territory.

Stupid me.

Used to eating small meals, I asked the plump serving girl, they all were plump, to choose for me, and tried to relax even more and let the ambiance of Lynne’s settle my mind.

Ever since arriving on this world, I had been on the go, or sleeping with one eye open. Even at Ma B’s I suspected that there was something hidden behind her pleasant exterior. But here, I paid extra for that peace of mind. Spending cold hard cash went further in putting me at ease than a nice smile did.

So much for my upbringing.

But my parents lived in a world where money ruled. And so had I. I wasn’t sure if money ruled here, but by the ambiance I was willing to bet that it did. Yet the adventurers’ powers might have mitigated that rule.

While nibbling on mini pitas, of which there were a dozen instead of the expected four per plate from an establishment such as this, four of the other patrons at a single table abruptly stood and sought me out.

Disturbing my dinner.

Each girl was striking in her own way. And wearing less than would normally be expected, outside of a bedroom, in a medieval society such as this. Unless more magic was available than I had guessed.

The black and silver haired girl had her hair pulled tight in a severe platinum wire bound ponytail, with the same platinum wrapping surrounding her wrists and forearms. The bra was wire too, which spiraled from the base of her breasts inward, only to be covered by a dark purple amethyst. Her shoulder guards and the belt that held up her thick deep purple velvety pants were also comprised of the same twisted platinum wires. All of which was protected from the back, not the front, by a thick matching hooded cloak made of the same material as her pants with wires grouped in sets of three, each a half meter long and angling downward.

Of the four, the purple and platinum girl’s expression was the most neutral.

The silver haired girl, which was cut in a bob, had a golden hilted two-handed sword sheathed diagonally across her back. Oddly for a swordsman, she was wearing less than even the mage, with a wide collar that spanned from her mid shoulder to the top of her neck. All in silver, with lots of gold embellishments. The woman’s detached fingerless white and gold gloves cleared her strong biceps and abruptly ended. The VS style bra, which could only be worn in high-end fashion shows, was of the same pattern.

Completely bare bellied, the woman walked with the utmost assurance. Even if she wore a pair of skimpy gold panties and a thick skirt which went down to below the knees. Yet it parted in the center, which let me get a glimpse of those panties as she strode towards me.

The boots matched the bra in every material, it seemed. But I was too busy being mesmerized by the sheer amount of tanned flesh heading my way to judge properly.

The busty, dusky-complexioned archer in her bright emerald hooded cloak and shiny wide laced bustier, which was held together by thin laces and ended in an arrowhead below her belly button — yet that corset was nowhere near being closed. And I wagered privately that it was open backed.

Contrary to her companions, she had actual pants and boots, in that same shiny emerald leather. She would not be sneaking up on anyone outside of a lingerie boutique.

Last but most definitely not least, the slim and trim blonde in red. She wore a cape, which wrapped thrice around her neck, covering the shoulders and upper chest region. Yet she too was wearing a half-shirt style armor, in red, with very obviously enhanced molded cups.

If she wasn’t an A-cup, I’d eat my shoes.

Elbow length gloves hid an elaborate tattoo on her left arm. Her skirt was similar to a samurai reinforced slatted hip armor, yet that too only covered what was probably an amazing ass.

As for those boots that probably came up to her ass, I had nothing to say, but I knew some guys in the last VR game that I played that would beg her to step on them as much as she wished.

Those boots looked to be made of the same velvety material as her cloak, but I believed that they were actually leather, not a cloth. Regardless of my initial guess.

And unsurprisingly, hers was the severest scowl of the four.

Suddenly, I wasn’t sure if I wasn't back in a VR game. The armor and clothes in no way at all matched the rest of this universe that I had seen. Both inside and outside of the city walls.

After spreading out evenly to surround the table in which I sat and giving my staff a glance, the Purple and Platinum girl spoke first in a firm voice, “Who are you?”

“Thomas,” I replied, setting down the half-eaten mini-pita. “Can I help you with something?”

“Why are you here?”

“Lynne’s was recommended to me, is that a problem?”

“This inn is for experienced adventurers only. Rookies should know their place.”

Ah, more segregation. And maybe some sexist bullying, seeing how this inn only had female guests.

“Marcy accepted me as a guest, maybe she knows something you don’t.” I didn’t believe for a second that the shop owners and managers did not also participate in the forced segregation. They had to, or the custom would have never endured for very long.

If my staying here would cause too many problems, then I would relocate. Hopefully the manager here, Marcy, would give me a good recommendation.

Purple and Platinum paused at my rebuttal, for it was one that they had not thought of. Bullying someone who didn’t belong was one thing, bullying someone who was an acknowledged guest of the proprietress was quite another. And by the looks of it, this place was high on the ‘places to be seen’ list.

Making a scene here and getting banned would not do well for their careers or social status.

“Then why are you not wearing your Armor?” the severe blonde in red asked. The way she said the word ‘Armor’ meant more than colorful and skimpy clothes.

“What is that to you? I wear what I chose, both inside and outside of any dungeon or inn.”

“Venda Treet, is that any way to treat one of my guests?” the matronly Marcy asked. Her appearance behind the Blonde in Red made me jump. And I wasn’t the only one.

Blondie froze, Purple and Platinum jumped, Silver and Gold’s hand jumped for her sword slung diagonally across her back and Emerald Archer coiled her body, preparing to dive out of harm’s way.

Yet all of us reacted too late, if Marcy actually meant any of us harm.

“From the looks of things, all five of you, yes you too, Thomas with those odd eyes of yours, need more experience in life,” she announced very clearly. Much to the dismay of the four girls.

Her observation wasn’t new to me, I knew that I needed a great deal of experience in this world before I became comfortable living here.

I could only nod and agree, both internally and aloud. “I do, Ma’am.”

“Marcy, so what if none of us are at your level. You were,” were? Poor choice of words there P&P, “one of the best ever. But we’ll be there one day too.”

“Katya Stein,” Marcy, the plump buxom proprietress clucked at the Purple clad mage, and continued. “None of you are as smart or as good as you think you are. Either leave this boy be, or invite him to your party and find out just how good he is. Who knows, maybe with him the six of you can bypass level 20 sometime before you turn thirty.”

Which sounded like a slam to me from my new friend, Marcy the manager of Lynne’s Inn.

“Don’t be so smug, Thomas, you will not survive forever alone in the Tower to Hell,” Marcy turned her attention toward me.

“In fact, to make up for your insolence to a guest at my inn, I want you four to clear the first four levels with Thomas.”

“Absolutely NO!” the blonde in Red objected.

“Okay,” the Emerald Archer replied. She was only one who had been silent up to now.

Red’s head did a 180 and demanded, “Vivvy, are you out of your mind?”

I took a bite out of the half-eaten mini-pita and watched the fireworks. No one had asked me, but I didn’t have any objections.

These girls weren’t evil, or PK’ers, player killers, and probably decently skilled. Traveling with them would be at least reasonably safe in the early levels while I got the hang of the only dungeon in town. And, as I would find out later, in this half of this Kingdom.

“Look, he’s a mage, and probably a good one. With those shoulders, I bet he can use that staff too. And didn’t Gregor say that we needed to use our heads more? With the new guy with us, we’ll have to.”

“Only if he isn’t useless,” the Silver and Gold girl said at last. Which I felt ended the objections.

Purple and Platinum scowled, “You better not be useless.”

“Only one way to find out, right?” I asked.

“Tomorrow at 10:00, then.” P&P, who seemed the spokesman for the group, declared.

“I just got in town today. I haven’t provisioned or even looked at a map or a bestiary. How about in five days from now, you girls can do whatever you normally do until then.”

My suggestion was agreeable to them and, without saying anything more, they fled out of the inn.

“What’s a bestiary?” Silver and Gold asked to P&P after they left my table and headed out of the inn.

“I don’t know, Sherl,” the Purple and Platinum girl responded, before passing through the inn’s front door and out of my hearing range.

I didn’t know if the girls were aware, but the whole inn had followed their conversation and Marcy’s subsequent punishment. There would be some interesting rumors in the streets tonight.

“Thank you, Marcy,” I said aloud, before returning to my late lunch. For I knew that she was listening from her hidden location somewhere in the main floor of the inn, which had been turned into a bistro catering to female adventurers.

That there were high level adventurers that still frequented this place was obvious for anyone with half a brain. We all had favorite haunts when we first started out. I did too when I began playing Adventure World VR. When I got tired of the endless solo hunting, I found a place I liked in a city that was mostly clean and hung out at that same tavern for the rest of my game time in that world.

It was expensive, but I could easily afford the in-game currency spent there, especially after I leveled up some. I even met most of the friends that I played with during my time online inside that tavern.

Just like I hoped to find here. If Lynne’s tavern cost most of my money, and I ended up with some good teammates, then it would have been worth it.

One of the problems I had was that I had no idea of the value of money in this city.

Another was that I had no information about this city, how it worked, or the dungeon itself. I finished my meal in thought. It wasn’t until three women, all in their mid- to late-twenties, entered the inn that I broke from away from my thoughts.

They were dressed similarly to the other women and girls here, but sexier. Their panties, shorts, or skirts were lower riding, the bras, bustiers, or corsets were tighter and smaller and their cloaks weren’t velvet but silky.

These must be the next higher tier, or even the one after that than the girls who accosted me earlier, I thought to myself.

A woman in blue, dressed similar to Silver and Gold girl, but wearing Blue and Silver and carrying a single bladed, reversed spike great axe across her back, separated from her companions and headed to my table.

Another troublemaker.

Maybe this wasn’t the best inn to choose after all.

With one look at me she changed what she was about to say, “You’re no rookie. Let me guess, you are new to the city?”

“I am,” I replied guardedly. Marcy wouldn’t be able to chase this one off as easily as she did the others, I surmised.

She looked at my staff. I mean really looked. Instead of glossing over the serious face, she stepped around the table and ignored me while inspecting it. Without touching. If she reached out, then we would have had a problem.

Thankfully, she didn’t.

“Catty, why are you bothering that boy?” the mage in Black and White asked.

“This boy can use Angelic Magic,” ‘Catty’ replied a bit too loud. Silencing all those nearby.

I could tell that the black haired axewoman was itching to pick up my staff for a closer look, but restrained herself and even took a step away from it.

The Black and White mage joined her comrade, but instead of staring at my staff, she politely asked if she could join me.

I took it as if her question was inclusive of her friends, ‘Catty’ too.

“Sure,” I replied succinctly. Besides, I didn’t want to get on their bad sides. They were all older and I strongly suspected high leveled, and I thought I was yet a low one. But that was still unknown.

I didn’t know exactly what the White Genie did to me or the power level at my disposal. I only knew that I had command of four spells and had excellent staff melee proficiency.

“I’m Bea, that’s Ann, and the loud one you already met.”

“I’m Thom,” I replied with the shortened version that, other than mom and dad, I normally only let close friends use. But since they offered their nicknames, I felt cornered and compelled to offer mine.

‘Ann,’ the woman wearing dozens of black leather straps with seemingly hundreds of stilettos strapped to those straps, in addition to tight black leather shorts, barked at her standing friend, “Cat, sit.”

“Bitch, don’t tell me what to do,” Catty, or Cat, sat anyway.

The friendly argument, which resulted from the name calling, eased the interest of the other tables from ours. Unfortunately, Bea with the white staff only paid attention to me. Even her casual summons of the plump serving girl wasn’t enough to take any of the mage’s attention away from me.

“Is there something you want from me?” I gathered the courage to ask.

“Riley, bring us food and our usual wine. Him too.”

“Yes, Miss Beatrice,” the girl responded and then, before I could act or refuse, Bea cast a spell and struck the floor with the butt end of her staff. A shimmering pearly white half sphere suddenly encompassed our small group.

“No one will bother us this way.”

“So, Thom, where are you from?” Catty inquired.

“New York.”

“Never heard of it,” Ann immediately replied.

“It took me a while to get here. I entered through the south gate,” I added, hoping that since no one entered from that gate that maybe no one paid any attention to the south.

“Bea, do you think he’s an angel?”

Bea flashed her loud friend a look of displeasure. “You could have at least pretended that Thom is sitting next to you,” she chastised her friend.

Catty turned to me, “Are you an angel?”

“I’m not.”

“You would think he would know if he was an angel,” Catty remarked to her friends.

And now I understood how she got her nickname.

“Do you have a party or friends in Springfield?” Ann asked.

It almost felt as if they were taking turns asking me questions. I wondered if I got a turn too.

“Marcy set me up with four girls.”

“Marcy did?” Catty stated, more than questioned.

“Which girls?” Bea asked.

“Probably the noisy brats that are close to fifteen. The rushers,” Ann replied to Bea’s question. I thought that Ann meant level fifteen, since they all looked two or three years older than me.

“Why are you so interested in my magic?” There! I got my own question off.

“Cuz it’s Angelic magic,” all that was missing from Catty’s response was the ‘Duh’.

“So?”

“I don’t think he knows,” Ann said to Bea.

“I don’t either,” Bea replied to her quiet friend. “Thom, how strong is your magic against demons?”

“I don’t know. Pretty good, I’d guess,” I replied.

“Hold that thought,” Bea stated. With a second tap of her staff, the noise of the bistro came crashing in on us as the pearly white barrier vanished.

Outside of the barrier stood two servers and Marcy. The servers efficiently provided each of us with a fist sized segment of fresh baked bread and a decent sized bowl of stew. The wine was provided by Marcy in silver stemless cups.

“You treat my guest right, Beatrice Kilston,” Marcy ‘suggested’ before leaving behind with her serving girls.

Ann tore a slim piece of bread, dunked it in the thick stew, and was munching even before Bea had the barrier back in place.

All three of them were pretty in their own way, but Catty was too barbaric for my tastes. Ann was too dangerous for me to even try to get a better look, the parts hidden by those straps were just enough to let her walk in public, yet the countless stilettos seemed all to point at me when I did so. Which left Bea, who was studying me as if I were a bug about to be dissected.

None of which ruined my ever-present appetite, but did lower my libido.

“Bea, are you thinking of porting this kid to the twenty-fifth boss with us?” Ann asked once she finished chewing.

No way in hell.

“Not yet. Maybe if he gets some time under him,” Bea took a small spoonful of the stew, blew on it and considered. “Thom, the twenty-fifth Boss in Hell is a Demon Baron. Too many teams have died at her hands for us or any other team to be comfortable facing it without a full team of top-of-the-line fighters.”

“I haven’t even stepped into this dungeon yet,” I protested.

“I know,” Bea sounded a little defeated with that admission. “But the last team that killed a Demon Baron had an angel on their side,” she breathed heavily out, hoping for more from me.

“The dungeon is getting too easy for us. It’s either face the Baron or get bored,” Catty gestured with a piece of bread at me while admitting their failing.

“Thom, the last angel that anyone’s seen anywhere was three hundred years ago. He came, kicked the Baron’s ass, sired a House, and disappeared. All within five years,” Bea filled in some of the blanks.

“Sired a House?” I noted the capital ‘H’.

“Yes, the Angels descendants are the city rulers. That spermy bastard knocked up a dozen women, all of who were great adventurers,” Catty replied. She didn’t specify if their children were the great adventurers or the mothers were. That was a question for later.

“Thom, when the Baron dies, it takes months to respawn him. That means a free pass from level twenty-four to twenty-six for everyone,” Bea explained.

“And better rewards?” I guessed.

“Yes. The drop and quest difference between twenty-three and twenty-four is negligible. But between nineteen and twenty-one, it’s very noticeable,” Ann pointed out.

“Why do you care if others get past the boss after you kill it?” It sounded like a selfish question, but I didn’t mean it that way.

“All of us as a whole get stronger. We need it,” Bea said. Completely emphasizing the last sentence.

“I don’t get it. Is the dungeon going anywhere or is the city being invaded?”

“The Kingdom is,” Catty replied, once she made sure, with liberal use of her napkin, that she didn’t have any food left on her face.

Mother would have been appalled and father would have pretended to have not seen a thing. Or her, for the rest of their time together, unless she was a key to even more money in his portfolio.

“And you want to farm the dungeon for better gear to supply the army defending the Kingdom? Won’t the three of you, as you are, completely decimate most units?”

“Thom, do you think that this is the only dungeon around the kingdom?” Ann asked.

Ah.

“Elites versus elites. But won’t that get ugly if one side ignores the others elites and decimates the other side’s regulars?” or targeted lower leveled adventurers. These three versus twenty of the other girls would still be twenty other girls dead.

“Which is why we want to elevate as many from here as possible. The better the gear we have to support our King when the Greenskins invade, the better it is for all,” Bea informed me.

Ah, it was not just humans versus humans any longer. Now orcs and goblins were involved.

“And you want to use me to kill the Demon Baron. Sorry, but you’re going to have to wait until I get stronger.” A lot stronger.

That was a preview of Transitional Adventurer. To read the rest purchase the book.

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