Chapter 58

“You need to stop using that skill if you want to save any money up,” Zea said as she watched Luke stuff some food into his bag.

Luke shrugged, bit down into an apple, and held it with his teeth while he closed the bag. “I don’t think it matters all that much,” he said. “Pretty sure the whole boat idea is a non-starter. It would be faster to walk than to try to save up money to take a ship.”

They started walking away from the stall and she said, “What about money for travel expenses?”

“Hunt and cook for myself. That’s what I was doing before I got here.” He paused. “I am not a good cook, but it was edible and I never got sick from it.”

“How do you not have at least rank 1 [Cooking]?”

“Never spent the AP on it,” Luke said.

“Well yeah. Nobody buys it. You should just get it from, you know, cooking stuff.”

“I am not a good cook,” Luke repeated, staring straight ahead.

“Even still, that’s almost an achievement on its own to still not have gotten the skill for it.”

“Zea,” Luke said softly.

“Hmm? Oh! Oh, sorry.”

Maybe if he’d lived nineteen years with the system, he’d have already picked it up naturally, but after only a month, and all of that spent without access to whatever passed for a kitchen in this world, Luke hadn’t quite managed to acquire very many skills on his own.

They didn’t talk much for the rest of the walk. The room Zea had rented was in what Luke thought of as an old-timey apartment. It had a common hallway and two stories. There was a public toilet, which was a step up from using a chamber pot or an outhouse at least. Zea had the keys to both the front door and to the room they were sharing.

Whoever had built it was smart enough to put the stairs right by the entrance, which beat out the design of a lot of inns, according to Zea. It was one of the reasons she’d picked the place. They went up to the second floor and walked down the hallway to room twenty-one, where she let them both in and locked the door behind her.

“Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t have mentioned-”

Luke cut her off with an upraised finger and cocked his head to the side. “Both rooms on either side are empty, but there’s someone in the room directly under this one,” he said in a low voice. “And someone two rooms over that way. No, two people.”

“Wow, your perception must be very high to be able to tell that. Can you understand what they’re saying in those rooms.”

“I hear so much stuff that people don’t think anyone would overhear. It’s amazing that you all have this stat your entire life and everyone thinks they’ve got privacy just because they closed a door.”

“In all fairness, most people don’t raise it past 8 or 10. Yours is… higher? I’m sorry, that’s rude. Forget I asked.”

“29,” Luke said.

“Fuck me, that’s insane. How do you deal with hearing just… all of that, all the time?”

“Don’t have much of a choice, I guess. You get used to it, but I’ve been thinking I might head out of the city for some time away from all the noise as soon as I have a weapon to defend myself with again.”

“I’m not even sure why you need a weapon,” Zea said. “I’ve seen you fight just fine without one.”

“I only started doing that here. My weapon broke a few hours outside the city. Slammed it on a giant’s skull and snapped it.”

“You are scary as fuck, you know that?”

Luke blinked and focused his eyes on her. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be.”

Zea hopped on the bed and pulled the blanket over to cover her legs “It’s okay. I don’t think you’d try to hurt me. You can be scary at other people. I know you’re gentle. Now, can you tell me what got you in such a bad mood at the bathhouse?”

“Oh, that. Just some off-worlder stuff. Are you sure you want to know?” Luke sank down to his butt and put his back against the wall opposite her.

“If you think it’s safe to tell me, I guess. I’m already up to my ass in this whole mess anyway.”

He took a second to compose his thoughts and try to structure it all into a coherent sentence. “First, I guess I need to tell you that I have a bloodline that lets me talk to the system itself. It can manifest as a ghost thing that’s only visible to me. I was talking to it today, asked it about XP madness.”

“I’ve never heard of a bloodline that does that,” Zea said.

“I guess only off-worlders have it. Anyway, the important thing is that I found out what the system is. It’s a god, trapped by the other gods in the Pantheon. XP are little bits of god-stuff carved out of it and cycled through us mortals, and XP madness is what happens when you get too much XP together for too long a time and it starts to reconnect itself. Then you hear the voice of the trapped god and I guess that drives people crazy?”

“Wow. Okay. That’s not in the scriptures,” Zea said. “I wonder if the gods tell anyone that. There are people who are supposed to be immune to XP madness, the ones who carry out divine will and are blessed by the gods.”

“System thinks I could be, if not immune to it, able to… turn it off, I guess? With my bloodline. I just need to purify it enough to gain access to the ability, or go to the physical location of the prison of this god, and once I’m there, I can just… do whatever I want.”

“That’s why you’re trying to cross the ocean,” Zea said. “To get to this prison.”

“Right. As long as I do it before I go crazy, I can fix everything. System thinks I’ve got about fifty years left if I don’t ever gain another point of XP.”

Zea flopped backwards on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. “Yeah right. Like that’ll happen. You’re fucking crazy,” she whispered. Luke didn’t know if he was supposed to hear that. He definitely wasn’t supposed to hear the next part. “At least he doesn’t know any better. I’m crazy and stupid.”

“Why’s that?” Luke said.

Zea flinched and said, “You just pretend you can’t hear me when I don’t want you to.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

“Stupid Zammin,” she muttered to herself again.

Neither of them said anything for a while. Zea obviously had a lot on her mind, and Luke was content to just sit there and watch her legs kick back and forth over the edge of the bed. He was going to miss her when he left. She was his first real friend since arriving on Aros, his only real friend, actually. He was friendly with some of the other fighters, but he wasn’t close to them.

He’d liked Zea pretty much the instant he met her, though not so much that he would have told her he was an off-worlder if not for being falling-down-drunk. He could see why drunk-Luke had made that call, but he hadn’t been doing her any favors. She had a lot of unnecessary stress from carrying that one around. It would have been far kinder to maintain a professional relationship instead of letting his problems splash over onto hers.

“When are you leaving?” she said.

“A few days, maybe a week. I want to get a bit more money built up for both of us.”

“That’s… quick, but I get it.”

“Going to miss me when I’m gone?” he teased.

She sat upright, kicked the blankets off, and stood up. “Yes,” she said simply. Then she crossed the room, pushed his arm out of the way, and plopped down on his lap. Luke smiled softly and wrapped his other arm around her.

“I’ll miss you too.”

“I was talking to Zammin before your afternoon fights,” she said. “You know what he told me? Hell, maybe you do, with those ears.”

“No, too much background noise and I try not to eavesdrop.”

“He said I’ve been a lot happier this last week than he’s seen me in years, that whatever we’ve got going on, I should hang onto it. I’m pretty sure he meant I should keep you here, but that’s not a possibility.”

“I thought about it,” Luke admitted. “Or of coming back to find you when I was done, if I can’t go back home. Or maybe even if I can.”

“Please, like you could find anything without me around to show you where it is.”

“True enough.”

They shared a laugh at that, though it was a quiet, subdued one. “It’s going to be a long, long journey,” she said. “Very dangerous. Some of the monsters out there… even you’re not strong enough to fight them.”

“I’ll get stronger,” he said. “Don’t really have a choice.”

“Yeah, you’re crazy. You need to pick up some skills to hide your XP before someone decides you need to die just for being too high level.”

“I have skills that do that,” Luke said. “Two of them, actually. [Stealth] and [Disguise].”

“Better rank them up higher and find another couple.”

“I’ll add it to my list.”

“Good. It would suck if you died.”

“I agree. I’ll do my best not to.”

“Good.” Zea snuggled in closer.

“Are you going to be alright once I’m gone?” Luke asked. “Did you get enough seed money to get whatever schemes you come up with going?”

“Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ll survive,” she said. “Always do. This dress probably won’t make it though. It’ll be rags once I’m back to living on the streets.”

“That’s a shame. It’s a nice dress. You look very pretty. Have you considered not living on the streets so that it stays in good condition?”

“It’s not that easy, jerk.”

“I know… Is there anything I can do to help?”

“You just win as many fights as you can so I can keep making money off you.”

“I can do that,” Luke said with a laugh.

At least, he could for a little while. It would be enough to get her the money for maybe another month’s rent and food. If she was careful with it, maybe she could turn it into something bigger. He wondered why she was living on the streets, and what she’d done for money before finding him. It seemed rude to ask though, so he kept his mouth shut.

“You really think I look pretty?” she asked suddenly.

“I really do.”

“Well, good. That’s because I am. You, on the other hand, are too tall to be handsome.”

“Makes sense to me,” Luke said with a nod.

“But you are wonderfully warm. I’ll give you that. This floor, however, isn’t. So I am going back to the bed. Come on.”

Luke dusted his butt off as he stood up. Zea waited for him to climb into bed and set his back against the wall before crawling over to sit on him again. This time she pulled the blanket up around her. “How did you ever survive on the streets before?” he asked. “Sorry, that was insensitive.”

“The winters are mild this far south, but it’s still pretty miserable. There’s a reason there aren’t a lot of dwifkin in Valtira. We just aren’t made for the cold. If you go another few hundred miles south down the coast, we almost outnumber the humans.”

Which meant there was no way she’d be interested in going even farther north with him. She’d freeze to death before they got half way. He hadn’t even considered that when he was listing all the reasons it would be a bad idea to ask if she wanted to come.

Zea squirmed on his lap and pulled the shawl off. “It’s a very nice dress, but it’s not as comfortable as I’d like,” she said. “Plus if I slept in it, it would get all wrinkled.”

“Uh…” Luke said dumbly.

“You’ll keep me warm, right?”

“Uh,” Luke said again.

“Hey.” She scowled up at him. “Keeping me warm is your job right now.”

“Right. Yeah. I guess I have no choice.”

“Good.” Zea reached up to wrap her hand around the back of his head to pull his face down towards hers. Just before their lips met, she whispered, “Keep me warm all night.”

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Author's Note: This scene continues here in chapter 58.5: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sbESkLCvrjE96_JwXYan2CMmJ4d1OTUBcOELy7iScYY/edit?usp=share_link

I don't generally write explicit scenes, but I felt like trying something new. I don't know that there will ever be another one, and you absolutely won't miss a single plot point if you don't read this, but if you're into that kind of stuff, there it is.