Chapter Twenty-Six - There beneath the blue suburban skies

It took a while for me to collect myself now that I couldn’t channel the seething anger into sharp words. I leaned on the kitchen counter, breathing deeply for a good minute before I judged myself to be ready to get back into the living room.

It seemed this also had given Sam some time to deal with her panic attack, as she was sitting there, Geri’s arm still around her shoulder, chewing mechanically on her bread roll.

“We’ll be picking up your stuff tomorrow, Sam. Livia, could you be a darling and make sure we have a full set of goons and a van for that?” That wasn’t a question or a suggestion. Sam needed someone to tell her what was going to happen, or her inner turmoil would just get in the way.

“Sure thing, boss,” Livia said.

“Sam, could you please tell us what’s all yours? Everything in your room, I guess? The furniture, too?” I hated to make her think about that place, but I didn’t want to have to go there twice. “Stuff in the bathroom? Boxes in the attic?”

She shook her head. “It’s all in my room, even the bathroom stuff. I, I didn’t trust them…”

“It’s ok. Forget about them. That’s the past. They won’t mess with you ever again, or I’ll send the whole guild after them. Just imagine how non-players would fare against all of us.”

She gave me a forced smile. “Like goblins. You can leave the furniture; it’s all teeny stuff anyway. And leave everything that’s pink or fluffy. Those are gifts from him.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Now, ready to slaughter some monsters?”

🙚⚜🙘

Hunting the imps past midnight yesterday had been a bust. We had all been way too tired after the long day to even try. Now, the imps had multiplied again, recommending a group level of 15, something no other group would be able to tackle. If the pattern continued, they’d be at 20 tomorrow, 25 the day after and so on.

We didn’t want that to happen, as they might become too numerous for even us to take down. What would happen then? Maybe a raid?

So we piled into the car again, and Bill, Greg had his free day, drove us to Penny Lane. Without my map marker, we could have wasted hours searching for them along the street until we realised the quest said “near Penny Lane”. It wasn’t even that near. It took us a good ten-minute walk down Greenbank until we reached a small wooded area next to some allotments.

The system bubble, or privacy shield, or however it may be called, started directly where the sidewalk ended. “Sam, Geri, get your weapons out the moment we are over the threshold but keep behind me and off to the side a bit. Make sure nobody sneaks around to get at Livia, but remember she’s still sturdier than both of you together.” That would change once the class skills and abilities overpowered our racial ones, I was sure.

The others nodded, we hadn’t been chatty after the events of the morning. I turned, stepped into the bubble and dropped my glamour. I kept my shoes on this time; my foot claws weren’t as useful when fighting smaller, more agile monsters as they were against a single big foe. While having claws changed what I could do with my feet, I still remembered Chester’s lessons well. Never use your feet or knees to attack something that’s higher up than their easy swing range.

The first attack came just seconds later. A rat-sized, red creature with black wings and tiny horns dove down from a tree at me. I tried swiping at it, but it dodged and sunk its teeth into my forearm. It stung, but it also immobilised it, so I grabbed it with my other hand and squeezed. Little bones cracked under the pressure, and black blood welled up where my claws dug into it. It screeched louder than its little body should be able to, then expired.

My arm was bleeding, the wound bubbling at the edges. “Their saliva is acidic or something,” I warned the others.

“Buggers. We don’t exactly have a healer,” Geri said, swivelling her head rapidly.

“Or crowd control,” Livia added.

They were right. Effectively, we were all frontliners. And I didn’t even have a class yet, I remembered. I really needed to talk to Gamma about this. She had promised to help me get a good one.

No more imps attacked, so we slowly moved forward. I half expected to run into yet another player on the verge of losing a fight, but what we found were only more imps. This time, two attacked at once, one from the left and one from the right. Geri had no issues dealing with hers; it dodged one of her daggers just to be impaled by the other one. Sam had more issues hitting hers with the slower sword, but when she slammed her magical shield into it to stop it from eating her face, it turned into roadkill.

“As nasty as their bite is, they are everything but sturdy,” Livia remarked. “Jane, use your telekinesis. They can’t dodge that, I think.”

“I’ll try. Do you have some kind of AOE spell?”

“Sadly, no. I have a free spell slot, but no idea where to get a spell for it. Maybe that guild library would help?”

“Later,” I said and moved on. Now was not the time to discuss character development.

We encountered a dozen more of the little critters on our way to where the map marker pointed. It was barely a clearing, just big enough for the tree cover to have a hole. Someone, if I had to guess, I’d say playing kids, had built a rickety hut from discarded pieces of trash there. But that wouldn’t be our concern; instead, we had to handle the over three dozen imps hanging out there.

We moved a bit back to plan. “That’s tough,” I said. “There are too many to avoid being bitten.”

“We could torch the place,” Geri suggested.

“Not really. We’re not in the middle of ‘fantasy land outer nowhere’ but Liverpool,” I pointed out. “Also, they are imps, demon creatures. There’s a good chance they are immune to fire.”

“Can you send them to sleep, Livia,” Sam asked.

“One by one…” Livia shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Then how about we avoid the lair and just empty out the area?” Sam suggested. “Take the threat level down a notch so someone with AOE damage can handle them?”

“That might also cause imps from the lair to spread out to fill the void,” Livia speculated. “I think that’s a good plan.”

“Then it’s settled,” Sam said. “Jane, can you plot a spiral course around your map marker?”

“Let me try…”

Please don’t call me orientation-impaired just because I don’t have a built-in inflatable compass needle in my pants. I blame that all on growing up with a cell phone that has a free map app. Or, in other words, I didn’t manage a spiral, it was more like a wild zigzag. Yet it didn’t really matter. The wooded area wasn’t that big, and the containment bubble restricted it even further.

My telekinesis turned out to be pretty useful for taking down imps, at least those I noticed before they were in reach. Sam put away her sword and used her shield to attack instead, although she was quite limited in energy and was soon drenched in sweat from overexerting herself. Geri held up the best, her faint-and-stab method working like a cheat code. Livia’s class abilities were completely useless, but her battleform’s claws worked well. She had to rapidly switch into and out of it when an attack came, as she couldn’t keep it up, but it seemed to be getting easier for her to do so.

Still, we couldn’t get every imp before it managed to bite one of us, and so we soon were all covered in small itchy bite marks. Sam and Geri also had to deal with scratches from the imps’ claws, as their skin was not as leathery as Livia’s and mine.

It took us well over an hour, walking two steps, crushing an imp or two, waiting a minute for energy levels to get back up, rinse and repeat, until we got the the point where no more imps showed up.

“Should we check the clearing?” Sam asked without any enthusiasm.

I also wanted nothing more than to get out of here. My wounds healed after about twenty minutes, but I still was itching all over. Yet, that wasn’t the right thing to do.

“We need to at least get eyes on what’s there now,” I said. “It’ll only take a minute.”

What we found surprised even Livia, who had suggested it may happen. The clearing was nearly empty, with maybe ten imps remaining.

“We can take ten, can’t we?” Geri said, her tone suggesting she wanted to hear a no as the answer.

“We can,” Livia said before I could. “It will hurt, but if we’re quick about it, it should be over before we’re bitten too often.”

“Ten imps, so two to three each. We’ll each kill one initially, so we get at most two bites from the others in the first exchange. Then another for those who have two imps on them,” Sam did the maths. “That’s not too bad.”

“As luck has it, I’ll get seven,” I grumbled.

“Let’s do this intelligently,” Sam said. “Don’t storm at them; let them come to us. How about Livia starts with a force blast and Jane grabs one with telekinesis to start off? That’s two down before contact.”

“Let’s do that,” I said. “Livia, you first. Your force ball thingy can be dodged, you implied?”

“One, two, three,” she counted, then threw her magic into the clearing. Concentrating on it, I could see the small, fuzzy white ball of magic. It was quite fast, but I think if I saw it coming towards me from a couple of metres away, I may have been able to step out of the way. The imps didn’t have that luxury. It hit one in the back, not between the wings, as the ball was twice the width of their backs, but as full-on as possible. That imp turned into a cloud of black and red splatter. The force ball, diminished by more than half of its size, carried on and clipped another imp. The impact was still hard enough to throw that one against the lean-to and turn it into a mangled body.

I nearly missed my cue watching the spectacle. Only when the first imp screeched and flew towards us did I remember my task. I grabbed that one with my telekinesis, thanking the system that it was instantaneous and didn’t require a cast time, and yanked. I had my hand up to shred it, but as luck had it, there was a tree between the hand I was pulling it into and it. It splattered against it, turning into an ex-imp. Three down, seven to go.

Sam’s advice had been good, even better than it had sounded. Because the imps had been scattered over the clearing, they did not arrive at the same time. Sam and Geri each took down two in quick succession while I failed to grab mine, and it bit me in the face. I grabbed it, squeezing it into mush—we had learnt painfully that pulling them off was a bad idea—missing the two others.

One attached itself to my forearm, while the other flew straight at my body and freed me from the notion of ever getting a nipple piercing. The pain was excruciating, and now I screeched like an imp. It was so bad that my vision blurred, and I just stood there, ready to fall to my knees. Before I could do that, the pain lessened, and I saw Geri standing in front of me, her two daggers extended, each decorated with a dead imp. One of them still had pieces of my teat between its teeth.

“Bloody fucking shitballs, did it bite it off?” was the first thing that came to my mind, mostly by me hearing myself say it. I grabbed my breast, trying not to put my finger into the wound.

“Not quite,” Geri said, bowing down and coming real close to the source of my dismay. “You’re lucky it opened its mouth so wide. Had it aimed for the nipple, it would have been gone. So it’s just bitten halfway through. It’ll heal.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, it hurts,” I yammered, internally praying for my fast healing ability to speed up and do something about it. Sam and Livia giggled behind me, not at all caring about my close call with disaster.

🙚⚜🙘

Had someone told me an hour earlier that pain could render me mostly useless, I wouldn’t have believed them. Had I not fought on after that troll had turned the insides of my belly to mush? Yet that single half-bitten-off nipple had me mostly oblivious to what was going around me for a good while. About twenty minutes, to be exact, as that was the time it took for my fast healing to patch it up.

“It’s good we don’t have to take the bus home,” Geri needled me in the car. “People would be queuing to stare through that hole.” She poked a finger through the hole in my shirt. I had pulled it to the side a bit, as walking around with a bloody nipple poking out, even if it just was the short distance to the car, felt weird.

I swiped at her hand. “Grab or caress, but please don’t poke,” I said, then remembered her dad in the driver’s seat. He was looking out the windshield, either not having heard it or ignoring us. Or maybe he wasn’t fazed by sexual references around his daughter?

“What’s next?” Sam asked. “The day is still young, and my sword’s bored.”

I pulled out the system pad from my back pocket. It shouldn’t have fit in there, not just because I was wearing women’s jeans but also because it was a 10-inch device, yet it somehow did.

“First, we get 57 coins from the quests,” I announced. “I’ll put them into our group’s account with the guild for now. Then we have a couple of possibilities. The siren is still there, another two goblin lairs have opened up, one of them level 10, the other two are 5 again. However, there’s nothing around our level range except one thing. A dungeon, rated level 10 to 100.”

“Nice, finally some concentrated action. What is it?” Geri asked.

“And where is it?” Livia added. “I hope it’s not halfway to London…”

“Let me check; yes, there is some lore. ‘When the railway tunnels were dug, one of them breached the dark underworld. It was quickly bricked up, but now the bricks have crumbled. Dive into the horrors of the deep dark, lest the monsters find their way to the surface.’ And you’ll never guess where that tunnel starts…”

“Central?” Livia guessed.

“That’s…actually right,” I had to confirm. “Right next to our guild hall. Make it a five-minute walk to the backside, two if you’re in a hurry.”

“Neat. Is it an open invitation, a clearance quest or what?” Sam asked.

“I think it’s a spearheading quest. It says the floors we clear will open to everyone afterwards.”

“Or it’s just for first clearance rewards,” Livia speculated. “Like those monster lairs don’t give rewards, but you can clear them anyway.”

“Possible. Shall we check it out after lunch?” I said.

“Or before, I’m not really hungry yet,” Geri said, then looked puzzled as we all giggled. Um, of course, we all laughed in a lady-like grown-up manner.

“What?” she asked.

“Food. You,” Livia explained, turning Geri’s face into an “oops” emoji. “But yes, I could eat. Maybe something less calorie-dense this time? My customers have expectations.”

“Um, Livia. That belt you’re wearing, it’s one you wear all the time, isn’t it?” Sam asked.

“Yes, it’s my go-to for lighter-coloured shorts and jeans. Why?”

“Because I can see the wear and tear from you using the same hole over and over. And that’s not where you have it right now.”

We all scrambled to look, and indeed, the worn hole was clearly visible in the part of the belt she had pulled through the buckle. Another virgin one was sitting between it and the one she had the buckle in.

“I hadn’t even noticed. Seems I lost some weight,” Livia said with surprise.

“Not just you. Jane also looks like she could wear a size smaller. That’s how I noticed it today. When we swapped clothes this morning, they looked way less tight on her than they had felt on me yesterday, but the ones she had on yesterday that looked to fit well hung a bit loose on me,” Sam explained.

After parsing that sentence, I asked, “You are saying we all lost weight?”

“Yes…duh.”

“Any guess why? More exercise? Changed metabolism?” Livia asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Sam replied. “But I don’t exactly have the reserves to lose more, and neither does Jane. So high-calorie food for us, and Livia, I think for you, too…”

Ten, anything in the help pages for this? I’d check, but…

🖹

You’ve got a private message from SOL-GB-Liverpool-39-Gamma-10: “…but you don’t have access to those. No, there is nothing, but that could be considered an oversight. I’m filing a suggestion to add the basal metabolic rate and calorie requirements to players’ character sheets as they are significantly higher than people are used to. It about doubles at level 5, which can lead to issues if people are not aware of it.” Reply? (1) Yes. (2) No.

Thanks, Ten. “Guys, I just checked the data. We need to eat about twice what we’re used to.” I said out loud.”

“Twice?” Livia and Sam asked in unison, both not looking unhappy about it.

“So, burgers again?” Geri asked with a wide grin.

“Burgers again,” I agreed.

🙚⚜🙘

We got to our burgers a bit later than planned, as we had to stop at home to shower and change clothes first. They say facing danger makes you horny, and if you take the extended time our session in the shower took as evidence, that’s probably true. How an instinct to make more offspring to have more people who might survive the dangerous world out there applied to our grouping was everyone’s guess, but I won’t complain.

We also noticed we were running out of battle clothing, unless we wanted to patch rips and holes in generally cheap stuff, so we added a shopping tour between lunch and the dungeon. A day has so many hours, but all the small side chores add up; you wouldn’t believe it. At least we could offload grocery shopping to the goons. They had shopping lists for a whole lot of regular Hameswood home cooking recipes on file, thanks to a genius idea Livia’s mom had ages ago.

“Why do they always have to add such large drinks to their menus? I’m bursting,” Sam complained. “Be right back.”

“I’ll come with you,” I added.

Livia also stood up, which prompted Geri to say, “I’ll hold the fort.”

“Thanks,” Livia said.

🙚⚜🙘

Only one stall was in operation—its state making us question our decision not to hop over to the guild hall—so we had to take turns. The thin door did nothing to block the sounds, so I had the questionable pleasure of hearing Sam and Livia making beach noises. This triggered a memory, and when it was my term, I did some acrobatics trying to replicate another sound pattern I had heard recently. Without success.

Back at the table, while trying to dry my hands with the remaining napkins there, I asked, “Do any of you have an explanation why, when I let Paul use the toilet in my office, it sounded very much like he was standing up for his business?”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

“Thin stream, hitting from high up? I don’t know how to describe it, but it just sounds differently,” I said.

“I don’t know what you heard, but I can confirm those two noises are distinct,” Livia confirmed. “Heard both types often enough in my line of work. Or all three, I should say. Men sitting down sound different again.”

“Then, that shouldn’t be possible,” Sam said. “Paul’s a hundred percent not equipped for that.”

“Mysterious guy,” Geri joked. “What’s next? Ghosts? Come on, Jane. He rubbed you the wrong way, hiking up your suspicion to eleven. That’s all.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I admitted.

“If you want a real mystery, find out where the stuff I eat and drink go to. I haven’t been to the toilet once since you brought me back to unlife. Shouldn’t even those nanites need to get rid of stuff somehow? I mean, it’s matter; it doesn’t just vanish into thin air.”

It surely did in this computer simulation, but I couldn’t tell her that. “Maybe they walk it out at night,” I speculated instead.

“Like the Adipose, you mean? Just without the mischief,” Geri mused. “That would make sense.”