New Story -- Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Ashcleft Town Guard Virlo sat at the table across from him and didn’t say a word as the story spilled out in bits and pieces. He debated on whether or not to lie or obscure some of what had happened to him, but decided that he was too tired to think of what to conceal or what to change in his story; not only that, but he couldn’t find a single reason why should leave anything of his experience out, because what he wanted most right now was some sort of information about what he should do now that he had made it out of the dungeon and back to civilization.

Well, information was the second-most of what he wanted right now; the desire to take another nap was at the top of his list.

When he was done, he slumped in the chair and looked at the strange, three-eyed Charee that hadn’t said anything since he started. The powerful archer stared at him impassively, and the Assistant Healer couldn’t even begin to guess at the response he was going to get.

“Well.” The gruff voice was back, startling him at the suddenness of the guard’s voice. “That all sounds like a pack of lies all wrapped up in a blanket of misdirection, but either you’re a more accomplished liar than your appearance and manner indicates, or you absolutely believe everything you just said.”

Huh?

“You—You don’t believe me?” Thaden asked incredulously.

“Of course I don’t, even if my Truth Sense ability cannot detect any lies you’ve spoken. A few half-truths here and there, but nothing that was a blatant fabrication. However, even given that my Truth Sense has never failed me before, I cannot – in any shape or form – believe anything you spouted off as anything but nonsense.”

The Assistant Healer was so flabbergasted that it actually woke him up from his overfull, exhausted semi-stupor that he’d been in while reciting what had happened to him. “What do you mean? Everything I’ve told you has been the truth! You even said it so yourself!” he exclaimed. “If you don’t believe me, that’s fine; but why don’t you believe in this ‘Truth Sense’ ability you mentioned, if it has never failed you before?”

“Why?” the guard said angrily, before ticking things off on his fingers.  “Because, in the first place, there is no possible way that you’re a Contender. Our own arrival here on Tarth was stringently dictated by the Assimilation System to occur exactly 50 years before the arrival of the first Contender, and that deadline isn’t due to occur for another 89 days.

“Secondly, the Assimilation System is infallible, as you should know. It is never wrong about timelines, it never makes mistakes, and it would never let a Contender arrive on Tarth before it has undergone Training.

“Third, this nonsense about your Mana never being used when you cast spells is utterly impossible, as is the fact that your body miraculously ‘resurrected’ itself without any outside interference. That just doesn’t happen outside of the Training that all Contenders undergo.

“Finally, I don’t know how you managed to survive even 10 minutes outside of this town being only Level 1, especially as you claimed to have cleared the Vogmite Tunnel Dungeon all by yourself – even if it was on Minimal difficulty. You should’ve died hundreds of times over according to your story, and there is no such thing as a channeled spell that will give you immunity to physical damage for more than a few seconds before their Mana bottoms out.

“So, like I said, I don’t believe you – no matter what my Truth Sense tells me. If I were you, I would keep my mouth shut and never spread that type of absolute crap where someone else could hear you, because you’ll essentially be saying that the Assimilation System is fallible,” Virlo leaned forward and spoke low and menacingly, “and that type of talk is normally punishable by death.” Sitting back up, the guard continued in his normal voice. “I’m going to be a bit more lenient than most others because I’m giving you the chance to change your story, given that you’ve obviously been malnourished and were half-dead from exhaustion and dehydration, so I’m willing to forgive a little delusional fabrication of events.”

Thaden shrank back from the Charee sitting across from him, scared by the guard more than he liked to admit. While he still had his Field active, it said that it only blocked attacks from Level 20 or below sources, and with Virlo being Level 45, he had a feeling that it would be entirely ineffective in stopping the archer if he wanted to kill him.

“Then, uh, what—?”

“Here’s what I think happened,” Virlo talked right over his question. “You’re a new addition to Tarth that arrived after Charee, and your people settled far enough away from here that we’ve never heard of you before. You seem young enough that you were probably a slave at some point, and after escaping and fleeing for your life through dangerous territory, you miraculously found your way to this part of the world… only to end up at my gate. How am I doing so far, this sound familiar? And don’t worry about us turning you in, because we absolutely abhor slavery in any form, even if we know that it is standard practice in other parts of the Assimilation.”

Thaden wasn’t sure what to say, because none of that was the truth. However, as it seemed as though the guard really didn’t want to believe his real story, he figured he might as well go along with it. He gave a non-committal shrug that didn’t say yes or no, but Virlo seemed to accept that he had hit upon the truth of the matter as he smiled for the first time.

“See? I’m a pretty good investigator, as any Town Guard should be, so I knew that I’d be able to work it out.” He leaned forward again and the seriousness came back. “Now that we’ve confirmed that you’re not an imposter for a Contender, we’ve got to figure out what to do with you. Before anything else happens, we need to clean the stink off you and get you something else to wear; you look like you picked those off a corpse, and not one that was freshly dead, either.”

He wasn’t far from the truth on that one, at least.

“After that, given that you seem quite adept at avoiding death while moving through the dangerous countryside, you should look into joining the Adventurer Coalition and take some odd jobs that will allow you to earn some experience both in a practical sense and for your Class. You said you’re an Assistant Healer? Those can be in high demand in the Coalition, especially if you turn out to be any good.”

Thaden didn’t know what else to say, so he just nodded. The guard gave another look at the bartender – his daughter, if he understood what Virlo had said earlier – and the woman just sighed and threw the rag she was using to polish the bartop down in apparent disgust.

“I, uh, have some money if that helps to pay for all this,” Thaden ventured, figuring that was the problem.

“Keep your coins for the meal and the bath you have coming up, as well as the room Varla will be providing you for the night. If you hand me three copper, however, I’ll go out and get you something to replace those filthy rags so I don’t have to arrest you for running around naked.” Thaden opened the pouch he had taken from the Dungeon and managed to pull out three of the copper coins that were inside, placing them gently on the table.

“Thanks. Why are you doing all this for me?” he asked.

The guard snorted. “Because I don’t want any trouble in my town, and the sooner I can get you back on your feet and working, the less likely you’ll resort to thievery to sustain yourself. I’d hate to have to kill you when you could become a valuable member of the Adventurer Coalition, because there are never enough volunteers eager to join.”

“Why is that?”

“Going out and fighting monsters isn’t exactly many people’s idea of a viable profession, though we fortunately get enough dumb—er—brave individuals that are more than willing to risk their lives out there.”

Thaden wanted to ask more questions, especially as Virlo seemed to know more about Tarth, Contenders, and this “Assimilation System” than he did, but the guard quickly got up after his daughter arrived a few seconds later and beckoned him to follow her. “I’ve got to get back to my post; good luck and don’t die too quickly out there.” The powerful archer left without even looking back at him, leaving him to the annoyed glare of his daughter.

“Are you going to sit there all night? Come on, I have things to do.”

Rather than argue, Thaden followed the Charee woman out from the dining room and through a doorway, where she led him down a few wide hallways until she came to a closed wooden door. Turning to him and handing over a wooden block that had a faint red glow around it, she said huffily, “Here’s your access key to your room. 2B. You’ll find the baths in here and I’ll burn those things once you peel them off your filthy skin; it seems my father is getting you some new ones, and I’ll leave them outside the door when he brings them.”

After he took the block of wood from her, she immediately left and hurried away, and he just stood in the hallway in confusion. What was all that?

Mentally shrugging, he entered a small room with a single porcelain-looking bathtub in it, already filled with steaming hot water. While not necessarily fond of baths, the thought of getting clean and out of the dirty, stinky clothes he was wearing was more than enough to revitalize him into getting into the tub as quickly as possible.

It was hotter than he expected, and he felt his skin start to scald after he dipped himself inside, but he didn’t care. With his Weak Regeneration still running, he healed any damage that the near-boiling water did to his skin, and he just tried to ignore the pain as it eventually cooled off enough that it was just pleasant. I wonder if she had it so hot on purpose, or was it an accident? He had no way of knowing without more information, and at the moment he was consumed with getting himself clean.

Thaden quickly discovered why she seemed to be disgusted by him when the water quickly turned a dirty red. All of the injuries he’d sustained since he was resurrected, either self-inflicted or from the magical green flames of the Vogmites, that had caused him to bleed in some way had remained on his skin even after he had been healed. Now that he had a chance to wash it all off, it was sloughing off the surface of his body like he was snake shedding its skin. After he was as clean as he could get, he sat back in the tub and nearly fell asleep, but he got out instead, using a nearby dark-grey towel to dry off.

Feeling at least partially Human by this point, he noticed that someone had apparently come into the room while he was bathing and took his old, disgusting clothes. With nothing to wear, he peeked outside the door to find a stack of cloth containing a dark-blue, short-sleeve shirt with a V-neck collar, and a pair of loose-fitting grey pants that were tightened and tied by a simple cord running through loops at the top. As for his boots, they had been taken and simply cleaned, meaning that they weren’t splattered with blood and didn’t stink like rotting flesh.

Navigating his way through hallways once he left the bathroom was a bit of a chore, but he eventually found some stairs leading upwards. On the second floor, he quickly found a door that he recognized as “2B” written on it, though it certainly didn’t look like anything that would normally make sense to him.

Looking down at the wooden block in his hand, wondering how it was supposed to work, he leaned forward slightly to get a better look at it, which moved it toward the door itself. The red glow on the block flashed green for a half-second and he heard the lock on the door suddenly unlock, and he pushed the door open, figuring it was some sort of magical equivalent to the technology-based hotel key cards back on Earth.

Once inside, he closed the door, which locked automatically, and he barely looked at the small wooden desk, equally wooden chair, and the iron and wood chest of drawers in the room, as all he could focus on was the bed. It wasn’t fancy, and the mattress seemed to be stuffed with a mixture of straw and feathers, but it still felt like heaven when he flopped down on it and fell asleep almost instantly.

* * *

Waking up from a sleep filled with nightmarish Vogmites swarming him with green fire dancing in their eyes was difficult despite the less-than-welcome dreams. When he finally struggled awake, he opened his eyes to look up at the wooden ceiling above him, letting the memories of the previous day flood into him as he came to terms with where he was.

Now that he had gotten sleep and sustenance in his body – though he was already voraciously hungry again – Thaden finally had a chance to think about his situation. He’d gotten a bit more information the night before, as the guard inadvertently told him about the “Assimilation System”, the world of Tarth, and a tiny bit about Contenders in general.

For some reason that he could only guess at, the Charee – and possibly other races – had been transported to this world almost 50 years before… but for what purpose? To get the world ready for the Contenders? Why? Was the world of Tarth completely empty before they arrived? Were there beasts or “monsters” there like the guard had mentioned, or did they arrive at the same time. Was this world artificially or was it a simply a very sophisticated simulation like the Matrix? Or was it simply a world out in the universe that adhered to different natural physics, which just so happened to include magical miracles? What was this “Assimilation System” and how was it he could access something like a Character Report? Did everyone in this world have Classes, not just the incoming Contenders? Speaking of Contenders, what exactly were they in contention for? He knew a little bit from his previous dream-like experience that had a genderless voice speaking in his mind before he was supposed to go to Training, but it didn’t really explain why all of this was being done. Would the Training have given him this information? If not, how would he find out without revealing his ignorance, which could get him in trouble if he somehow admitting that he was on Tarth through a mistake made by the aforementioned Assimilation System?

All of those questions were important, of course, but he thought that the most important one was: What am I going to do now?

Based on what he’d learned, he still had nearly three months until the rest of the people of Earth finished the Training they were undergoing, which was another thing he wanted to know more about. What was he missing by not being a part of the Training? Why did it take three months? Whatever the answers were, it didn’t seem as though he would easily learn those answers until he finally met someone from Earth who’d gone through it. He had a suspicion that the Town Guard, Virlo, knew more about it – and perhaps had even undergone the process – but he was already on thin ice by mentioning how something had gone wrong with the system, so he’d rather not jeopardize his life by pushing the archer more than necessary.

Which still left him with a decision to make. Should he find some sort of work to do around the town? That was contingent on whether there were any sort of work he would be qualified for, given that he doubted anyone needed a Data Analyst anywhere nearby, though perhaps as someone who could heal? For some reason, the way Virlo had made it sound, healers weren’t exactly rare; instead, it was uncommon for them to want to join the Adventurer Coalition he had mentioned, because it was dangerous work fighting monsters. While he in no way knew the current number of healers present in the town of Ashcleft, he could reasonably assume that being an Assistant Healer was probably not impressive enough to land a gig somewhere.

Which left wandering around and looking for odd jobs that could keep him making enough to pay for food and a place to sleep or joining the Adventurer Coalition – which brought with it its own dangers. Of course, he could always venture to another town or city that might have better prospects for him, but it sounded as though even traveling to those different places would be fraught with danger by monster attacks, and there was no guarantee that they would even be willing to take in a lone, Level 1 Assistant Healer from a race that probably didn’t even exist in this world quite yet.

Actually, why am I still only Level 1? This Assimilation System seemed similar enough to an RPG that I thought I would’ve gained experience from killing those Vogmites in that dungeon. Or did those not count for some reason?

He thought that it was complete BS if the deaths of the nightmarish Vogmites hadn’t counted for any type of experience, or… what was it called, again? He opened his Character Report to see the name of what he figured was experience, as well as to see what might have gone wrong.

#32599999-E

Assistant Healer

Level – 1

Progressive Internal Combat Knowledge (PICK) – 0/100

Health – 10/10

Mana – 20/20

Physicality – 1

Celerity – 1

Mentality – 2

Personality – 1

Fortuity – 1

Spells:

Weak Healing (Channeled)

Weak Regeneration (Heal-over-time)

Weak Repulsion Field (Channeled)

Competencies:

Support Spellcasting Competency (Level 1, 0%)

Defensive Spellcasting Competency (Level 1, 0%)

Mana Management Competency (N/A)

(NOTIFICATIONS PENDING!)

Ah, that’s right. Progressive Internal Combat Knowledge, or PICK.

His PICK still said 0/100, which couldn’t be right, could it? Perhaps that is as broken as my seemingly never-ending Mana?

If that was the case, then he might never increase his Level, which he could only assume was a bad idea to stay at Level 1 for the rest of his life. He’d already seen that having a higher Level made people stronger, as Virlo the Town Guard demonstrated quite adeptly, so it would give him a chance to survive against stronger monsters that he might come across over the years.

Oh, wait. Didn’t that dream message involving that robotic voice say something about people who didn’t increase their Level past 1 would be ejected from the world? I can only assume that I would be killed for good, and I can’t count on another series of accidents saving me from total annihilation.

As he worried over his fate in the future, Thaden noticed the words, NOTIFICATIONS PENDING!, which reminded him that he had ignored almost everything that popped up in the windows once he was involved in staying alive against the Vogmites. Thankfully, the windows had stopped interrupting his sight after he shut down the first unread one, and he could only remember one that had popped up letting him know that he wasn’t able to pick up that special Scepter that the Vogmite Queen had dropped.

Hoping that it would have some sort of answer as to why he wasn’t getting any “PICK” from the fights against the Vogmites, he mentally opened the windows he had been ignoring—

—and was immediately bombarded with so many that he had trouble processing them all. If he hadn’t been already lying down, he would’ve been knocked straight on his back, as his entire world was now filled with screens and information poured into his mind like a flood.

When he could finally think coherently again, he scrolled back up to the top to see what exactly he had missed.