"Did anyone get the number to the bus that hit me? And why is my skull soft?" Sam sat up in the bed, poking at her aching head. "How am I even hungover with my recovery speed and poison resistance? And seriously, why do I have a concussion and brain bleed?" She thought, as her skill told her of the damage when she probed her head with mana repair, then groaned as another wave of pain flashed through her head.
A soft voice much too cheerful assaulted her eardrums like a marching band. "I don't know what a bus is, but you did headbutt a level 52 paladin last night on a bet." Nara said chirpily from beside her, "Also, I am fairly certain your poison resistance, crystal mana channels, and healing ability are the only reasons you are still alive."
Sam just groaned again and started pouring mana into her regeneration. Her health bar was blacked out, whatever that meant.
Nara, either oblivious or uncaring of Sam's plight, continued speaking, "You literally drank twice your body weight in alcohol. Ken was serving you actual poison by the end of the night just to get you to leave," she paused for a second looking thoughtful, "or die." She giggled at that.
That's when Sam realized she was nude, and so was the giggling Tenarian beside her. Sam threw the furs back and jumped out of the bed, moving behind a table a few meters away.
“Nara, uh, did we um, you know…” Sam let the statement trail off.
Nara looked insulted, "do you mean, did I take advantage of an intoxicated friend? Of course not!" She pointed to a pile of furs on a couch in the room, "I was actually going to sleep on the couch, but you dragged me to the bed with you," she gave Sam an appraising look, "You are very strong."
Suddenly worried, Sam asked a question she wasn't sure she wanted the answer to, "did I, um…hurt you?"
Nara laughed, "No, Sam, you just went on and on about how we're friends now and how happy you were about having a sleepover with a friend. You told me how glad you were that you saved me. Then you passed out and started snoring almost immediately." She giggled again, "You are adorable when you're drunk." She furrowed her brow, "very forceful though—and also a little terrifying."
Sam sat in one of the chairs at the lone table in the room, put her head down in her arms, and said, "Please tell me I didn't kill anyone last night." She gasped and looked up at Nara in panic, "Or get us kicked out of the guild!"
Nara's face grew more serious, "No, not exactly…we need to talk seriously about last night, though. You might want to finish healing yourself first."
Sam didn’t like the tone in Nara’s voice. “Oh crap, what did I do?”
***
Nara hopped out of the bed and dug through a dresser near the bed until she found a sheer gown and slipped into it. She went to the table where Sam was and sat opposite her. She tapped one clawed finger on the table rhythmically while staring at Sam, who was becoming more nervous by the second. "Where to begin…" Nara mumbled.
"How about the beginning," Sam said helpfully, ready for the torture to end.
“Okay,” Nara said, “but no interruptions while I tell the story. Are we clear?”
Sam gulped and nodded. She felt like she was about to find out what happens when you take a woman who was already pretty wild when drunk, send her to a fantasy world, give her insane magical powers, and then get her drunk. "I'm scared to know," she told Nara.
“Oh, you should be,” Nara said without hesitation or humor.
***
Nara began retelling the events of the night.
"After you finished two entire kegs of beer, Ken cut you off from beer. Not because you were drunk but so he would have enough for other patrons. So, you immediately switched to wine."
Sam nodded her head; it seemed like something she would do. Something bothered her, though, and she had to interrupt Nara, "How could I have drunk that much beer? I mean, physically, how is that possible?"
“I’ll explain how your body works in this world later. Don’t interrupt me.” Nara said curtly.
Sam clamped her mouth shut, and Nara continued. "Where was I? Oh yes. You then proceeded to drink about fifteen liters of wine before you got up and started dancing with one of the warriors from that all-female adventurer's party. The one with the pink hair." Sam stared blankly at Nara, so she tried to jog her memory, "The ones you said looked like a bunch of sexy Amazons…"
Sam's expression didn't change, and Nara sighed in frustration, "How can you not remember them? You danced with all four of them and made out with the pink-haired warrior for twenty minutes!"
"Oh yeah," Sam snapped her fingers, "doesn't seem to be coming back to me." She offered unhelpfully. She rubbed her forehead with one hand; at least it didn't feel soft anymore. "What about me headbutting the paladin? When did I do that?"
Nara scoffed, "I'm not even close to finishing what happened last night!" She gave Sam a look that was a mixture of fear and admiration. After a deep breath, she continued her story, "After you finished dancing and, ahem, other things, you accused Ken of watering down his wares. Loudly." Sam winced at that revelation while Nara continued. "You demanded Ken break out the hard stuff and stop treating you like a child…actually you said something much more vulgar, but I'll not repeat it." She gave Sam an accusing look, "Ken was obviously pissed, but also, I think he felt challenged, so he brought out several different bottles of 'hard stuff' and poured them for you in tiny glasses one after the other. One of them was actual poison! Like made in an alchemy lab, real poison!"
“He wouldn’t have done that to a customer,” Sam interjected. “There is no way he could stay in business if he poisoned everyone who insulted him.” She figured Nara was now embellishing a little because she seemed to be getting a little agitated while recounting the previous night’s events.
"Oh yes, he would have, and he did!" Nara snapped back, "Now stop interrupting me!" She seemed agitated now, "Ken charged you ten gold and made sure there were at least two healers in the room willing to offer their aid before he poured you a quarter of a shot of the poison. He refused to give you more even after you called him a pussy boy."
Sam could only stare at the table as Nara retold the story. "I'm going to spend all day apologizing to people, aren’t I? Still, I bet the 'poison' was just a high-ABV drink that's hard to make, though." She voiced that last thought to Nara, who laughed a little hysterically.
Nara was on a roll now, "the bottle had three skulls on it, and he had to get it out of a magically sealed safe!" Her voice faltered, and her hands shook as she continued, "You took the shot he offered of the poison and absolutely loved it. You said it tasted like flowers, and before anyone could stop you, you snatched the bottle from Ken and chugged half of it before he could stop you!" Nara's voice was now a cross between a scream and a terrified cry.
Sam tried to calm the Tenarian down, "I'm obviously fine, Nara, so it couldn't have been that bad." She gestured to herself as she said it in a calming voice.
"Let me finish!" Nara half screamed, causing Sam to shut her mouth in surprise and sit upright in her chair like a scolded child. Composing herself a little, Nara continued, "When Ken and two berserkers managed to get the bottle away from you, he started screaming for the healers in a full-on panic!" She looked at Sam with wide eyes, "freaking berserkers Sam, two of them! One even had to activate a freaking skill to get the bottle away from you!"
Sam patiently waited as Nara panted a little. "Is it wrong that all I can think about right now is how cute she looks when flustered? That, and it sounds like the berserker’s were wusses.” Of course, Sam knew better than to voice those wayward thoughts. So, she patiently waited for the cute little sorceress to calm down and continue her story.
Nara poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the table, took a big gulp, and continued, "After you chugged the poison, your skin turned blue, not just your face, Sam; all of your skin turned a bright blue!" Nara pushed her chair back and started pacing the floor in agitation. Sam wisely kept her mouth shut. Nara started waving her arms as she continued, "Well, Ken started backing up with wide eyes, the bottle clutched to his chest, mumbling about how this has never happened before and how this isn't good and he will get fired, fined, or executed. You, on the other hand. Stood up from your chair, told the healers to fuck off, looked down at your empty glass on the table, smiled widely, hiccupped, then belched.”
Sam smiled and was about to say something about it being no big deal, but the look in Nara's eyes told her to keep her mouth shut. It was a look of complete disbelief, and what Nara said next explained the look.
"When you belched," Nara shuddered a little, "Your skin returned to normal, and your breath melted your teeth and lower jaw." Sam's eyes widened as Nara continued, "The entire table and most of the chairs disintegrated next, along with the silverware and mugs. Followed by the floor—" It was Nara's turn to groan, "the two-meter thick, magically reinforced, enchanted stone floor of one of the most secure buildings in the city just…melted away." Nara surprised Sam with a question, "Did you know there is a level 150 plus dungeon beneath the guild hall for the elite members to train and harvest in?" When Sam shook her head slowly, Nara screamed, "Neither did anyone else! Well, that is until last night!"
Sam buried her head in her arms. She didn't want to know but had to ask, "How bad is it?"
"Oh, I'm not even to the best part yet!" Although still slightly hysterical, Nara was clearly enjoying Sam's anguish now.
Sam was perplexed. If everything Nara was saying was true, then… "How are we not in prison, Nara? Or at least me?"
"I'll get to that," Nara smiled despite herself, "now, where was I? Oh yeah, the dungeon. So, when you melted the floor, Ken dropped the bottle and fainted." Sam gasped, and Nara didn't miss a beat, "that's exactly what everyone else in the guild hall did, too! Except for you, that is. You just waved your hand, and the bottle stopped falling suspended in midair. I, of course, know you used one of your threads. Still, I think everyone else in the guild thinks you're telekinetic now." Nara tapped her chin in thought, "it is strange how hard it is to see your magic; I wonder why that is?" She shrugged and continued, "anyway, the bottle zipped across the hole in the floor into your hand before poor Ken's head even struck the ground." Nara narrowed her eyes at Sam, "I think you let him fall on purpose. But no matter. Once you had the bottle, you closed your eyes, grew your jaw back in seconds, then, to everyone's horror, you slugged back the rest of the bottle in a couple of gulps." Nara paused for effect. She was really getting into the story now, "Did you know there is a magical barrier protecting the guild hall from aerial attacks?”
It was more of a rhetorical question, but Sam shook her head. She knew where this was going.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Nara confirmed Sam's suspicion gleefully, shouting, "Neither did anyone else until last night! At least not the low-level rabble like us in the hall last night. When you belched this time, you did it upward. You melted a hole in the ceiling and nearly destroyed the barrier!" Nara put her face in her hands, her voice coming out muffled, "the entire upper city thought the guild was under attack. The guild guards busted into the hall with blades and spells ready, followed closely by the city guard, all of them ready to defend the guild with their lives." Nara pulled her face from her hands, "oh, that reminds me, you owe the city guard thirty-five gold for the false alarm. It has to be paid before we can leave the city."
“Thirty-five gold? That sounds a little high to me,” Sam was incredulous.
"They mustered over two hundred guards, Sam," Nara chided.
Sam just hung her head, dejected.
Nara dragged a chair to sit next to Sam, patting her knee. "Cheer up, Sam. I promise it gets better," she paused, "eventually." Nara suppressed a giggle and continued retelling the night's events, "After the second belch woke up most of the city and everyone in the guild hall, the guild master showed up. his name is Harold, by the way, and he is also a Tenarian." Sam looked up surprised, and Nara nodded, "Yep, surprised me too. So, when Guild Master Harold showed up, he looked at the hole in the floor, then the one in the ceiling, and then checked on Ken. He looked outraged and was about to say something when he saw the bottle in your hands and stomped over to you. You were really wobbly but had already healed your jaw again, so when Harold walked up, you handed him the bottle and slurred something about it being empty and that it was the best shit you've ever had."
Sam was horrified and blurted, “I embarrassed myself in front of the boss! That’s like the worst thing you can do!”
"I don't think embarrassed is the right word," Nara said, a little confused, "you consumed a lethal dose of poison more than once in under a minute and turned it into some melty breath attack. That's impressive, Sam. Harold looked at you and the unconscious Ken and started laughing hysterically!"
Sam looked at Nara with hope in her eyes, prompting Nara to keep going, which she did. "Harold waved his hand, and the barrier, ceiling, and floor started repairing themselves slowly. He shooed the furious city guard commander away, laughing the entire time. When I offered to pay for the damages to the hall, he just waved me off, saying the looks on everyone's faces when he showed up were payment enough and to only worry about paying the city. He woke Ken up and told him if he ever opened another bottle of Trillian Aged Cyan Death Whiskey again, he had better come and get him first to watch! He then asked you how much health you had left. When you slurred, "Thlen points, but it was worth lit cuz that shlit was delicious!" He started laughing all over again." Nara shrugged, "That was pretty much it for the repercussions. You and Harold sat at a table and discussed which of your internal organs melted. He told you which ones to focus on rebuilding once he realized you could heal yourself. The two of you talked for about an hour while the hall rebuilt itself, and then he left, telling everyone to "have fun."
“Wow,” Sam said when Nara had finished, “that was one wild night.”
“Hold on,” Nara said, “I never said I was finished. Don’t you want to know how we got this room?”
The grin on Nara's face told Sam she probably didn't want to know, and she murmured, "Please tell me we just rented it." Nara's smile widened, and Sam was sure she didn't want to know, but Nara wasn't about to let her off that easily.
Nara stared with a question. “How’s your forehead?”
Sam instinctively touched it, replying, "It was a little mushy when I woke up. I assume it was from a headbutt?" Nara nodded slowly until Sam finally said, "Fine, tell me what I did."
Nara laughed and slapped the table. "You bet a level fifty-two paladin everything you owned against his spatial suite in the guild hall that you could knock him out with one headbutt. This suite has been in his family for generations and is a coveted item among guild members. They are almost never sold, and it usually creates a bidding war when they go up for sale. He was bragging about inheriting it, and it annoyed you. He initially refused until you pulled out the summoning token, which I definitely want to know how you got. That token caused a stir, for sure. When he still looked like he was going to refuse, you told him he could use any defensive skills he wanted and wear his helmet, but if he did that, you would also get to call him "Little Boy" from now on."
Sam’s eyebrows were as high as they could get, “how could he have agreed after what he had already seen me do?”
"Simple, he arrived after you drank enough poison to kill nearly the entire city and melted things with your breath. A few who had seen you tried to stop him, but he just ignored them and agreed to your terms." Nara made a face, "he was kind of an annoying prick. But he was cute, though…"
Sam stopped poking at her forehead, checking for any soft spots mana repair might have missed long enough to ask, "—was? He is still alive, right?"
"I'm getting to that!" Nara refused to spoil her story. She cleared her throat, "So, he accepted and made a big deal, calling out the names of his buffs as he activated them. Names like 'Stalwart Defense' and 'Iron Skin.' I think he wound up applying five buffs, which let everyone know he was something of a coward who was afraid of getting hurt." Nara paused to catch her breath, then continued, "Once he was done shouting and buffing, you quietly asked him if he was done being a little wuss." Nara held up a hand, "Now keep in mind you were wobbling on your feet and could barely keep your eyes open, so when you half asked, half slurred your question, he looked at you and scoffed, calling you a pathetic sewer rat."
Sam knew what happened next. She had a particular hatred for rats. She had a bad experience once and disliked talking about it. "Oh no, he did not call me a rat. Please tell me he used another word."
"Yes, he called you a rat, and your eyes started glowing purple when he did. He had enough balls not to flinch when they did, but all the onlookers stepped back, at least the ones that had been there from the beginning." Nara clapped her hands with glee and, with mirth, said, "You walked up to him and looked up into his faceplate; he is a head taller than you." Nara was smiling from ear to ear now, "you put your hands on his shoulders, belched into his helmet—"
Sam gasped when Nara said she belched into the guy’s face.
"That's exactly what everyone else did, too!" Nara giggled. "Thankfully, you did it without melting anything this time, although Ken did faint again." Nara paused for effect and continued, "Then you slammed your forehead into the idiot's helmet; oh yeah, he kept his helmet on. It is a good thing he did, too, because the general consensus among the healers is that his helmet is literally the only thing that saved his life."
"How bad could it have been, really?" Sam asked. "He was a level fifty-two with buffs and a helmet. I'm tough but not that tough."
Nara looked at her blankly, "Sam, you didn't just knock him out. You broke his neck, crushed his skull, caved his helmet in so badly a metal mage had to remove it before the healers could work, and you came within a millimeter of crushing his brain. The crack was so loud I half expected the city guards to rush back in!"
Sam just stared at Nara with her mouth agape, so she continued. "After knocking out the paladin, Chad is his name; by the way, you walked over to me and snagged his key and the summon token off the table they were on. You said we should "go check out the Little Boy's room" and wobbled towards the stairs in the back."
Nara gestured around the room, "And here we are. I woke Ken again, and he told me which room it was. I checked with the healers that Chad would be okay and chased after you! Oh, the deal was the room and all its contents, so this is all ours!" Sam stared at Nara with a furrowed brow, and the Tenarian quickly stammered, "I mean yours; this is all yours." She looked down, embarrassed.
Nara had misread Sam's expression, so she cleared the air of misgivings, "As far as I am concerned, Nara, this is our room. It sounds like you spent the entire night cleaning up my mess."
“Messes,” Nara provided helpfully.
"Right, messes," Sam corrected herself, continuing her thought, "I don't really get what the big deal is about this room? It's nice and all and big, but why so coveted?"
Nara looked at Sam like she was an alien. Then she remembered that Sam was, in fact, an alien, so she explained, or it could be more accurately stated, she gushed. "It is a spatial suite! Do you remember those little boxes in the upper level at the back of the hall? The ones you said looked like outhouses, whatever those are. Well, each one of those boxes is one of these rooms!"
That statement floored Sam. This room had to be at least two hundred and fifty square meters with a five-meter-high ceiling. "Bigger on the inside," she mumbled, gazing at the expansive room with expensive-looking wood furniture. Ornate rugs adorned the floor, matching the tapestries on the walls. Some tapestries had a coat of arms depicting a giant bird holding a spear in one taloned foot and a bundle of arrows in the other. Sam assumed it was "Little Boy Chad's" family crest. “Man, they were going to be so pissed!” She wasn't looking forward to that confrontation.
She asked Nara, "How long do we have this room for?"
Nara looked confused, "Forever Sam. Apart from a yearly maintenance fee of ten gold, this is your rent-free home in the guild." She sipped her water and offered Sam a glass, who took it gratefully. Nara explained some more. "Most adventurers rent the space when they aren't using it. The guild hall will also manage the rental for a small percentage of the rental fee on top of the annual fee."
"You're saying that for ten gold a year, I can stay here anytime I am in the city?" Sam wasn't fully versed in the value of the currency of Hallista, but from what she did know, ten gold still sounded fairly steep just to have a place in the city. Even with the kick-ass tavern downstairs…the very lenient kick-ass tavern.
Nara cleared the price up for her, "I'm saying that for ten gold a year, you can stay in any Adventurers Guild Hall on the planet! The room isn't in the boxes; it is in the key! The boxes unlock the key, not the other way around. The ten gold is to rent the space the box occupies in all the guild halls across the planet and the moons!"
Sam whistled and then had a brilliant idea, which she immediately shared with Nara. "We can bring the box with us on jobs and—" She stopped talking. Nara was already shaking her head, devastating Sam's hopes of sleeping in the luxurious bed and relaxing by the fireplace in the middle of a dark and dangerous forest. She was no stranger to roughing it, but why rough it if you had a mobile suite in your inventory?
"No, the boxes cannot be moved. They are powerful magic items attuned to your key and carefully maintained by the guild. How they work and were created is a closely guarded secret. The guild will not let them leave the hall. In fact, there are supposedly enchantments on them that cause the box to disintegrate if they are ever taken off the grounds."
"Well, there goes my dreams of glamping through deadly forests and dungeons. Oh well, you win some, you lose some." Sam had already figured it wouldn’t be possible, but she had hoped. Either way, having the room was a serious advantage. "I wonder…if I ever manage to leave this planet though…could I convince the guild to mount it in my…I don't know, my spaceship? Ha, look at me, like I'll ever have my own spaceship. A girl can dream, though, can't she?" Sam had another thought and asked Nara, "How will the guild rent the room if I have the key?"
Nara must have anticipated the question because she replied immediately, "They won't rent this specific room. They have a master key that lets them create another room in this space. The quality of the room depends on how much the patron wants to pay. It's part of the yearly rental fee. Trust me, Sam, with this room, you will make hundreds of gold per year, maybe even a thousand if you never use the room."
Sam moved to the bed and plopped down, sprawling out on it and closing her eyes, enjoying the soft down mattress. It all seemed so surreal and far too serendipitous. She started to suspect that the System may be curating situations for her. She dismissed the thought almost as soon as it came to her. There was no way an all-powerful system controlling an entire verse in an infinite multiverse would care about an insignificant speck like her any more than she cared about an individual microbe in her gut."
Sam enjoyed the soft bed, relaxing and taking it all in. She realized Nara had been unusually silent for too long and opened her eyes only to find Nara staring at her legs with a strange expression. Glancing down at what Nara was staring at, Sam realized it wasn't her legs.
Clamping her thighs together, Sam said gruffly, "I need a bath!"
"Me too," Nara whispered as she absently licked her lips while staring.
Sam waved a hand at the beautiful sorceress, saying, "Hey, eyes up here, missy," trying to distract the woman from whatever thoughts she was currently having.
Nara pulled her gaze reluctantly from Sam’s naked form and looked her in the eyes questioningly. “I’m sorry, did you say something?” Her voice told Sam the Tenarian’s mind was a million kilometers away.
“Where is the nearest bath house, Nara? Or showers, or whatever people who don’t have a cleaning spell do here?” Sam questioned.
“Oh, there’s a bath in the corner,” Nara pointed to a partition on one side of the room with a folding screen that reminded Sam of the kind she had seen in movies where people threw clothes over the top, disrobing while hidden behind it.
Nara jumped up and grabbed Sam's hand, pulling her up, "Come on, I'll show you."
Sam let herself be dragged along to the bath and was pleasantly surprised at the size of the tub. It was bigger than a jacuzzi and already full of steaming water. Sam hopped up the two steps to the lip of the tub and tested the water with her toe. It was perfect. Quickly sliding into the water, Sam moaned with pleasure. Glamping at its finest, indeed.
“This is the life,” Sam thought, sliding deeper into the steaming water until just her nose and the top of her head showed, “soaking in a hot tub in a medieval room with a lit fireplace is the ultimate coziness. All I need now is a good book and a glass of wine.”
A light cough off to her left brought Sam's attention back to the only other occupant in the room. Nara was standing at the entrance of the partitioned area, biting her lower lip and looking sheepish of all things. “Oh, what the hell,” Sam thought, waving her over.
Nara was out of her gown instantly and ran over to quickly slide into the tub opposite Sam with a beaming smile.