บท 20: CHAPTER 20
"I won't," I said to his retreating figure. "Tomorrow."
Afraid to trust my memory, I immediately linked to the local headstone, which is what I had decided to call the respawn points. I sat down near the well and hit the log out button. I pulled myself out of the capsule with a groan and massaged my low back.
"I'm spending too much time lying down. That's not good, I need to move around more," I said to myself. "Maybe I should call up Elvira? Maybe I should eat first. Or I could combine the two: she can come, cook, and then we could get to work. First one, then the other."
My pleasant thoughts were interrupted by my phone
ringing. I stepped over to the table and checked the screen—Gamroth was calling.
"Hi, Alexei Ilyich," I answered.
"He-e-ey, Milford! You deigned to pick up your phone! I guess you're just drinking your life away." The boss's roars echoed across the phone line.
"Yeah, right. I'm doing what you told me to do—spending every day sitting in the game... well, laying."
"You aren't doing crap! Where's my article? Where's my article, you twerp?"
"What am I, a meteor?" My confusion was completely sincere. I'd only spent three days in there...or had it been four?
"You have a month to write a nine-part article series.
Every three days, get out and write something!"
"What do you mean, nine-part series? Okay, so it may have grown a little, but not by that much. Six-part! We talked about six articles."
"Okay, fine. Six. But the first one needs to be in my inbox tomorrow morning. No matter what!"
"No matter what?"
"No matter what. Make it happen!"
"I'll figure something out," I said dejectedly and hung uthe phone. I looked to see who else had called and saw that that was Gamroth's sixth call that day.
Looks like some clients of his are turning up the heat, I thought. They paid money, now they want to see some results. They should have just paid me. I'd have written the whole thing for them without ever even trying the game. This way…
But what frustrated me most was that my plans for Elvira were off. Girls and writing serious material generally go together as well as "evil" and "genius."
After scarfing down some pelmeni, I sat down at my
computer and confidently typed in my title: "A New World for Millions."
I hammered away until 2 a.m. The article didn't turn out too badly, and Gamroth would be happy, at least, with the gold-star treatment I gave Radeon. I brushed my hair back and said, "Nice work, nice work. Genius! A star in the modern literary firmament."
And with my debt paid, I went to bed with battle waiting in the morning...again…
It was morning in the village. Roosters crowed in the yards, some bird squawked away annoyingly from behind the palisade wall, the villagers walking up to the communal well added to the hubbub, and an elder or just some old guy bellowed along. I went over to see if he needed anything, though the noise he made could have just been his normal manner of speaking.
"Can I help you?" I asked him for the third time.
"Definitely," he nodded his head. "E-e-eah, for sure—good timing!"
That "e-e-eah" was starting to get to me.
"E-e-eah what?"
"E-e-eah, I need help!"
"Help with what?"
"Exactly!"
"What, your ear?"
"No, no, no, my ears are fine. My eyes, too! And my
teeth…the few I have left. Don't worry about them. I need help!"
"What kind of help do you need, you simpleton?"
"Definite help!"
"O-o-okay... Oh, by the way, how much will you pay?"
"Ah-ha, down to business!" The old man's face instantly went from moronic to focused, and his manner altered markedly. Apparently, he took me for someone in charge, or maybe just some rascal. "We'll write a receipt for 300 gold, and you'll get 230 if you do the job. What do you say?"
"270."
"240."
"285"
"250."
"Got it!"
"What?"
"It's a deal. What do you need me to do?"
"Kill a monster!"
"What kind and where?"
"What kind…what kind...a monstrous one! You leave the village, stay left, and go two miles. Its den is by the swamp."
"And why can't you and the other men here take care of him?"
"They're afraid. They think they'll fail and even be cursed. There's an old graveyard there and a ruined castle nearby. Nasty place. Even a cursed wood!"
"Maybe it's the other way around? A castle with a graveyard nearby?"
"No, my dear sir. The graveyard has always been there—our great-grandfathers are buried there. But the castle's only been there for four hundred years. Although, sure they built it on an older foundation."
"Who destroyed this castle?"
"We fought the skeletons two hundred or so years ago, and they laid siege to our old landlord in there. But the undead came at the castle experienced warriors who knew the place. Skeletons and their masters, all skeletons, too. With crowns, and glowing candles for eyes. And enormous swords."
"Leeches?"
"How should I know? Probably. But the warriors were
good, even if they didn't have any meat on them—all
bones. They took the castle. The landlord didn't want to become a zombie, so he used some kind of magic
and—poof, he, his family, and his warriors were in the
afterlife, the skeletons were piles of bones, and the castle was in ruins. And the village didn't have a landlord anymore. It was odd at first—my grandfather told me, and his grandfather told him. But they liked it! Later on, of course, some cousin of the landlord came and told everyone he was taking charge. But then one night he went for a walk in the marsh for some reason..."
"And?"
"And anyone who goes for a walk in the marsh at night is completely taken over by the power of evil… Probably drowned... Or somebody ate him. My grandfather told me something was howling that night fit to burst… Maybe 240?"
"250. And some food."
"Fine. As soon as you bring us that thing's head, I'll write the receipt, and you'll get your money. Okay?"
You have a new quest offer: Kill the Swamp Beast.
Task: Kill the monster near the swamp and bring its head to the old man.
Reward:
250 gold
1000 experience
Accept?
Needless to say, I accepted.
"Okay. What's the receipt for?"
"Once a month, someone comes from the city, from
Fladridge, to collect taxes, so he needs a report—who paid who what, if they needed to pay for something."
"Taxes?"
"In life, you always have to pay someone something.
We're no different. We pay Fladridge, but if we have a
problem, they help us. For example, two years ago, there was a bad harvest after some witches wove a herb wolf into the field and the wheat rotted. They sent us that, um...human-kind aid. Food, sugar, salt."
"Humanitarian."
"What?"
"It's humanitarian aid. It means they sent it out of the
goodness of their hearts."
"Oh, right, right," the old man nodded. "That's what I'm saying; they're good people. And we pay them taxes like we're supposed to. They left us money so we could hire one of you passers-by in case we have a problem. But we have to have a receipt: so-and-so gave so much, so-and-so got so much. So, we'll write the receipt as soon as you kill the beast."
"Sounds good! Hey, maybe someone else needs help around here?"
"Of course!" And the old man told me about all the settlement's problems.
Soon, I had a quest from the blacksmith to collect 20 goblin arrowheads, while a heavy-set woman from the local tavern needed me to bring her five boar legs—five left forelegs, to be exact. She must have told me five times, "Left fore, my dear. Don't forget! I'll be sure to have something to thank you with!" She winked coquettishly after that last part.
Given the fact that she weighed more than I did, my capsule, and Gamroth breathing down my neck put together, I had to wonder if going through with that was worth it. She'd crush me. She wasn't a tank, so you couldn't just heave a grenade under there—tanks weren't as dangerous. But my fears were unfounded. It turned out the APC of a woman wanted to give me experience, money, and three days' worth of dry rations in exchange for those left forelegs. The old man sent me some food, too, so I was set.
A local shepherd also needed me to find a lost cow and let him know where the poor guy was. Happily, that was it; I didn't need to bring it back myself.
That was all the people I could find in the village with problems, so I set off quickly for the gates. I figured, as any normal person would, that the faster I got started, the faster I'd finish.
Just like in Brad, the Tocbridge forest began right
outside the gate. The only difference was that roads led away from Brad, while all Tocbridge had were some narrow paths. When I was about a hundred strides from the village, I opened my map and checked the status of my quests. The Elysium developers had made things easy for players. Zones with quest monsters or items blinked red on the map.
~ ~ ~
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