“Are these trees natural around here?” I asked. The terrain was otherworldly. Barren trees with branches coming to sharp points. Like some god had thrown handfuls of needles across the land. The loli shrugged. Pulling a hammer as large as myself from out of thin air. How come she has an inventory? I want an inventory. It’s a covenant trope. She slams it into one of the large metal trees. It makes a crunching sound and bends with the blow. That’s odd. Tree’s don’t normally bend. I approach them, careful not to get poked by the thorns, I rub the tree. It is cold to the touch. I scrap at it and the first layer chips away. Below it is shiny metal. “Aluminium.” Well, it’s certainly odd. We make our way through the foreboding defense until we reach a cave entrance. I move to make my first step into the cave, but Kree pulls the back of my jeans. I look down at her, perplexed. “Trap.” She explains. I give her a genuine smile, it’s not everyday I have someone looking out for me. She points out the thin trip wire that I missed. Then cuts it, an arrow flies out from the wall and hits the other wall. “Goblin make stupid trap, Kree better trapping kobold.” I nod.
This would have been a challenging dungeon if not for Kree. Her intense knowledge of traps allowed her to spot every one, disabling it as we made our way deeper into the earth. “I wanna kill something!” The little girl pouts. How annoying. Normally, I’m not ageist against little girls, for all I know she could grow up to be the next Jeffery Daumer or better, but in this case I felt I should speak up. “Little girls shouldn’t be so obsessed with killing.”
“I’m 70 years old. I’m a half-ling. We just look like human children.” Well that’s certainly odd.
Her need to kill does warrant one real concern. We haven't found any goblins yet. This is quickly remedied as we turn the corner. Hundreds of goblins in a large cavern. Sitting at long tables. A chow line stretches from a large pot of soup and snakes its way around the room. In the middle is a buff orc. Not the japanese depiction of orcs as fat pig humans. The Tolkien type of orc. Big buff green humans with tusks. Standing up he is taller than me. He points a spiked sword at my party. “The fuck you doing here you?” His voice booms.
The half-ling pulls out her giant mace. “We’re here to slay you, orc!”
“Shit really? No cap?”
“Yes, now die now you filthy monster.” She jumps forward her mace held in both hands and above her head. Striking down at the orc her mallet stops. The orc stops the blow with his hand, holding it there. “You dumb ass hoe, you thought that would hurt me did you? I’ve evolved twenty times since getting into this world. I am at the end of my monster evolution path. I am a god on this word.” He slashes at her with the sword he holds in his other hand. Her head flies across the room, landing in the pot of soup. He looks at me, pointing his sword at me. A challenge to his next competitor. I see his eyes sizing me up.
“You’re black?” I ask.
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He looks down at himself. “Nigga I’m green.”
“I mean, back on earth.”
“How the fuck you know that?”
“I’m from earth too. It really says a lot about the isekai genre that black characters are so rare that the black community has to look at orcs as their only representation. It’s a very problematic representation as well, but that’s not my place to comment.”
He has lowered his sword. He gives me the look that people on earth give me when I do something that didn’t make sense socially. Perhaps I did. Learning how to talk to people is hard and I don’t care to learn more than necessary.
“We gonna fight or nah?”
I scratch my side burn, they have grown out since I haven't had the time or the tools to cut them since getting here. “I’d rather not. The girl was the one wanting to kill you.”
“Oh, then what are you doing here?”
I explain to him that I’m new to this world and that I needed a room to stay in. How the guild tricked me into taking this quest and I went along with the loli because she made it sound like an easy quest. How I just need to complete this one quest then I can get free food and board at the Adventurer’s Guild. Something dawns on me and I pause mid explanation. “I can lie.”
“You cappin?”
“Not to you. I can lie to the Adventurer’s Guild. What are they going to do? Send someone out here to check. There aren't phones here; it'll take days for them to confirm that we didn’t clear out this cave. Then when they do send someone you will kill them. Then they will make it a missing person case which takes at least 48 hours. I’ll get at least a week of free rooms out of this.”
He gives me a weird look, but doesn’t say anything so I end the conversation there.
“Well nice meeting you.” I wave and leave the cave.
“Why are we leaving him behind?” Yellow asked her sister.
“Cause he’s weak. For the elfs to continue on we must find a strong man to mate with.” Red gave the truthful answer. Speaking in a calmer voice now that all humans around them were knocked out or dead. “But he saved us, doesn’t that prove that he is strong?”
“Look at him!” Yellow waves a hand over Hiro’s unconscious body. “He nearly died saving us.”
“But he saved us, I don’t want to leave him behind.” Yellow protested. Kneeling next to Hiro. She checked her body but the only wound was his ankle. She called upon the spirits of the forest to lend her their power. Green balls of light began to float out of the ground. They surround Yellow. Red looks at her in disgust at how she is helping such a weak human. Yellow takes the little green spirits into her, using her body as conduit they travel through her blood veins and down to her hands. She places her hands on Hiro’s body. The spirits heed her call and heal the young man to full health. His breathing stabilizes, his eyes open. The first thing he sees is a pair of large breasts hanging over him. He looks at them as the body of the elf hangs over him healing him. He sits up and scoots away from Yellow. “I’m so sorry miss it was an accident. I didn’t mean to stare at your tits.” He covered his face expecting to get slapped. Yellow looks at the bewildered hero and gives a small chuckle. “See Red, he’s a nice guy too. Some things are more important than just brute strength.”
“Nothing is more important to strength.” Red said while staring into the sunset. She once saw a man strong enough to mate with. His face is still burned into her memory, if only at that time she had spoken up or said something. He could be hers by now, but no, he left with that god forsaken monster.