Daniel Newwyn

[I am a Table] Chapter 16

Instead of securing the wand in a drawer, a box, anywhere, ANYWHERE safe, she just… moved on. She grabbed an onion from the counter and got to chopping, completely oblivious to the fact that the magical artifact of destiny was now in grave danger.

Blorbo watched in horror as the chaos began.

She plopped a handful of herbs onto the table—right next to the wand.

Then came a stack of sliced carrots. Then a cutting board. Then an entire raw chicken.

Blorbo was about to lose his mind.

THE WAND WAS ALREADY GETTING BURIED.

He tried to will her to notice. Look at it! Look at the wand! LOOK AT THE WAND!

As if noticing a telepathic disturbance in the air, she stopped chopping the herbs.

Oooh, it’s working!

Lena simply wiped her hands on her apron and turned to grab the salt. Then she kept chopping the herbs.

Blorbo could see the timeline branching before him. If she didn’t move the wand within the next two minutes, it would be lost to the void forever.

And then, as if to confirm his worst fears…

THUNK.

Lena plopped a sack of potatoes directly on top of it.

Blorbo internally exploded. That thing might have already broken in half!

As he was preparing to mentally draft his last will and testament for the wand, a new threat appeared.

A soft thump landed on the kitchen counter, followed by a purr.

A flick of a tail. A small, smug yawn. A set of beady little eyes surveying the kingdom before him.

Tabby. The feline menace.

Lena didn’t glanced up. “Not now, sweetheart.” She scratched Tabby absentmindedly behind the ear before returning to chopping onions. The cat yawned an jumped down the counter, walking towards Blorbo.

Blorbo couldn’t breathe. Not because he didn’t have lungs, but because something horrifying had appeared above Tabby’s head.

A golden, glowing question mark.

It spun. It shimmered.

THE CAT HAD A QUEST.

Never in Blorbo’s life would he have guessed that his arch nemesis would be his only saving grace.

Blorbo’s Opportunity Sense screamed at him. His status screen flashed open against his will, revealing the new quest.

[QUEST: Meow Meow (1)]

Objective: Convince Tabby to retrieve the buried wand.

Reward: +12 EXP, +2 STR, and a new beginner skill (random).

Prerequisite: 5 AGI, 5 END, 5 PER

Failure: Lena NEVER learns magic.

What? Meow Meow ONE? You mean I will have to do more quest that has anything to do with this foul beast?

Also, what kind of failure consequence is that? NEVER learn magic? That’s absurd! She can just encounter another four-gloved, robed stall merchant in the future and get another wand from him, no?

Tabby had already jumped on Blorbo’s surface, licking its butthole and rubbing the butt against the table. The status window for the cat’s attributes kept opening then closing, to Blorbo’s absolute frustration, but he had to endure. He had to focus.

Step one: Assess the target.

Tabby was currently kneading a small circle into his surface, tail flicking in boredom. She was seconds away from deciding that nothing interesting was happening and leaving.

Blorbo’s nonexistent pulse spiked.

Step two: Identify a strategy.

Option A: Try to mentally will the cat to act. (Low success rate. Cats resist orders on principle.)
Option B: Hope Tabby accidentally does it herself. (Even lower success rate.)
Option C: Make the wand interesting. (Best option.)

I need the cat to see the wand first.

Step three: Execute the plan.

He activated Adjustable Angle.

His wooden frame titled just enough to subtly shift Tabby’s viewpoint toward the sack of potatoes where the wand was barely peeking out.

His eyes flicked toward the movement.

He saw it. He must’ve seen it!

The tiny glimmer of wand. The forbidden, untamed artifact of hunt-worthy proportions.

Then, the real test.

Would Tabby take the bait?

He stared, and stared, for way longer than a cat who had found something interesting would.

Blorbo screamed internally. COME ON. IT’S RIGHT THERE. POUNCE ON IT, YOU LITTLE GREMLIN.

Tabby yawned. Then it went to sleep.

Blorbo internally exploded. His rage had reached critical levels. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Why is everyone in this household so daft? Must I be the only one with a functioning brain in this hell-forsaken world? Arrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!

And then—

Blorbo shook.

Not metaphorically. Physically.

A sudden, violent tremor plowed through his wooden body, rattling the very foundation of his being. A notification flashed across his vision.

[NEW CONDITIONAL SKILL UNLOCKED: MASSIVE LEAP UNDER DURESS]

Wait? Have I seen this before?

Then came the description.

When under extreme stressful situations, have an 80% chance of either: 

Getting a randomly-generated boost in a random skill

or

Unlocking a random beginner-level skill. If that skill is already learned, either upgrade it or unlock a branched evolution of that skill, at random

He’d never seen a description so long nor letters appearing so quickly before from the System. Wow, wow, wow! Slow down with the info!

Once he’d finished reading, he beamed with joy. Oh, great! I love self-inflicted stress.

Then something else happened.

The tremor didn’t just shake him once. No.

It kept going.

Another notification appeared.

[NEW BRANCH OF ADJUSTABLE ANGLE UNLOCKED!]

→ Surface Agitation (Level I) – You can now rapidly shift left and right by two degrees.

Oh! So the vibration I’m making is actually caused by me just leaning left and right at supersonic speed!

Blorbo had evolved. 

He was no longer just a tilting table. He was now a shaking table.

Of course, his sudden, violent reaction had consequences.

Tabby’s eyes snapped open. He was so shook by the table shaking that he just had to jump off. The kitchen counter was the only other platform.

With a startled yowl, she launched herself off the table—straight onto the kitchen counter.

And then…

Her back paw accidentally kicked the wand as she avoided stepping on the sack of potatoes.

Blorbo watched in slow motion as the wand soared through the air, flipping end over end. Lena, oblivious, turned around just as it sailed past her ear. 

Somehow, against all laws of probability, the wand landed perfectly on Blorbo’s surface with a muted plop.

[QUEST COMPLETED—Meow Meow (1)]

Reward: +12 EXP, +2 STR

Blorbo couldn’t believe it. He had shaken the cat into saving magic.

He eyed at the new skill he’d learned.

New beginner-level skill unlocked: Synchronized Sitting (Level 1)

Ohhhh! That sounded great! What does it do?

He willed himself to click on the details of the skill.

You have an innate talent for making people feel like they sat down at the exact same time as someone else.

What is this NONSENSE? What am I ever going to use this for?

[I am a Table] Chapter 15

As the cart rumbled along the dirt path toward home, Blorbo did his best to ignore the cabbage dust coating his surface and the dread of losing that one cabbage point. He didn’t know if Opportunity Sense had done anything to boost his perception, but he felt as though he was a tiny bit better at overhearing stories against his will now.

“So do you think he’s an actual mage?” Rob was asking.

Of course he is! He cast an aura on me! Useless, but very real!

“I don’t know. Why would a mage set up shop in a boring town that only sells produce?” Lena retorted as she put a finger on her chin.

“I mean, the Mage Academy up north is supposed to be huge,” Rob replied. “It’s not that far away. Say maybe only two-day worth of horse trekking.”

“That is an entire one thousand miles away, Rob!” She nudged him lightly on the arm. “Why are you phrasing it like that? And I heard they’re training battlemages to fight the orcs on the Northern Frontier. They should be too short-staffed to, you know, sell trinkets in a lazy market. This one doesn’t even sell trinkets! He doesn’t even look to sell anything useful. He’s just weird.”

Blorbo’s metaphorical ears locked in.

Mages. Orcs. War. This was critical world information. He must listen.

“Magic has existed for hundreds of years, dear,” Rob smiled. “There are mages who do all sorts of trades now. If he’s not a battlemage, there’s no reason he should have to be stuck at the Northern Frontier.”

Lena stared at the ridiculously tiny wand between her fingers. “I guess. Maybe he couldn’t become a battlemage since his stick is too small.”

Rob seemed to like the historical aspects of things, and the conversation flowed as smoothly as it would when you get a nerd to talk about the one specific thing that he was deeply interested in. 

Rob burst into a monologue, and Lena was reduced to a role of a listener.

Nonetheless, Blorbo was showered with important world lore.

From what Blorbo had pieced together, magic had only existed for a fraction of humankind’s existence. Before that, people were entirely normal. No fireballs, lightning balls, or other reality-bending nonsense. If they wanted to kill another person, they had to pick up a yucky sword.

Until one day, a man named Gregorwy (now titled Archgrandmaster Gregorwy) suddenly conjured a chicken out of thin air.

That was it. That was the moment magic entered the world.

Nobody knew how or why it happened. One minute, Gregorwy was a simple farmer about to cook dinner. The next, he had accidentally summoned a fully feathered, very confused chicken into existence. That chicken was bathed in ginger and rosemary! It came pre-seasoned! Truly an abhorrent combination.

Blorbo was VERY adamant that the System had something to do with the birth of magic. Only such a twisted mind could combine ginger and rosemary.

The town freaked out. Some people claimed it was a con, an intricate prank, others straight up denied it every happened. Gregorwy, not fully understanding what he had done, attempted to prove it wasn’t a fluke by conjuring another chicken. And another. And another.

By the time the town guard arrived, Gregor had spawned over 400 chickens and caused a massive supply-demand imbalance in the local vicinity. 

This event became known as “The Cluckening Awakening.”

At first, people assumed it was just Gregor. Some strange, poultry-based curse. But then, others started showing signs of magic. A blacksmith accidentally melted metal with his hands. A fisherman discovered he could summon water out of thin air (but only saltwater with 3.5% salinity). A particularly dramatic bard started setting people’s hair on fire whenever he sang.

The world was never the same again.

“So what happened after that? Did the nobles freak out? How were they able to get these magic-wielders so organized that they’re willing to learn magic in an academy?” Lena really got into it now, grabbing and grappling the wand so fiercely as Rob’s words flowed into her ears.

Rob gave her a cheeky grin. “I’d love to tell you more but…” He opened the wooden door to their own home. “We’re home. We have dinner to make.”

Lena and Blorbo groaned in unison.

But dinner was more important than blasting orcs with a wooden wand. Commoners who didn’t have magic had to feed provide for themselves, since there weren’t many chicken-conjuring mages. In fact, mages who could conjure foodstuff were an extreme rarity, and were so revered amongst the public and scholars alike that there was a separate class for them: The Chicken Mage. Blasting orcs away was not as important as solving world hunger.

Rob quickly moved Blorbo to his rightful place in the middle of the main room.

Lena strolled into the kitchen, twirling the ridiculously tiny wand between her fingers. The sky had already darkened, and she would have to get to work soon, so she was hard-pressed for time.

But there was something more hard-pressed than dinner. Magic. Real magic that could shatter reality as he knew it!

Do it, woman! Train yourself in the arts of the arcane!

“What am I even supposed to do with this?” Lena muttered.

She gave it a few experimental flicks toward the air. Nothing happened.

She pointed it at the fireplace. No sudden bursts of flames.

She even tried waving it over an unpeeled potato like she was about to turn it into a feast. The potato remained a potato. Still unpeeled.

Lena sighed. “Magic this, magic that. Yeah, I’ll figure this out later.”

And then, without an ounce of ceremony, she dropped the wand onto the kitchen table.

Blorbo internally screamed.

NO. NO, NO, NO. DON’T JUST LEAVE IT THERE.

He could already see the future.

He knew Lena.

If something stayed on this table, it was as good as lost.

This was the same woman who had once misplaced a whole cast-iron skillet because she left it on the table, then proceeded to cover it with a pile of vegetables, two bags of flour, and an entire stack of handwritten recipes. By the time she actually needed the skillet, she spent two days complaining that someone had stolen it.

She had lost a skillet.

A SKILLET.

And now, she was treating the wand the same way.

LENA, YOU IDIOTIC CABBAGEHEAD! YOU’RE GOING TO LOSE THE WAND!

She hummed to herself, completely unaware of the catastrophe she had just set into motion.