Chapter 9:

Allergic Allies

I swore, loudly. He would die from a fall that high. We went through all this shit and he was going to die from the literal last fucking—

"I got him!" Stephen yelled.

He was much closer than me and was able to position himself underneath in time and take one more leap the rest of the way. He caught Sam in his arms and he slid along the swamp on his belly. He kindly held Sam above his head so he wouldn't get wet.

I ran to meet them.

"Stephen, that was so great, you caught him! Thank you so—"

His hand swung around and dropped Sam into my arms, who was frazzled looking but oh so happy and otherwise unharmed. Stephen's hand completed the rotation and flopped down into the muck, as well as the rest of him. He didn't move.

"Stephen?" Still nothing. I grabbed his shoulder and turned him around. "Oh my God!"

His face was bright red and puffy beyond belief. His breathing was ragged and getting weaker.

"What the hell do I do!? Stephen??"

I shook him, not helping the situation at all.

Sam stirred and fell from my hands. "He is allergic to something? Just wait one moment, Miss."

"He is dying!" I yelled. "And you want me to wait one—"

A message appeared under his username and health bar.

[ Allergic reaction detected! Administering EpiPen. ]

An EpiPen popped into existence and punctured him. Almost instant relief, he let out a huge inhale of air.

I was so happy to see him breathing again that I shouted, "You're alive!" And immediately hugged the heck out of him, making it harder for him to breathe.

He patted me on the back gently at first but more panicked when I didn't stop. Once satisfied I let go and he hunched over, taking big inhales of air, absolutely raw dogging it like he was making up for the lost time breathing.

Sam and I let him do his thing, and just watched from a little ways off. When his breathing normalized again, Sam actually spoke up first.

"Unkind Sir? What were you allergic to?"

Stephen met his eyes and then looked away. That gave him his answer.

"You're allergic to me! That's why you have treated me so poorly!" He laughed so hard he fell over onto his back.

"Oh come on, even you're laughing at me!?" Stephen shot up, fast, too fast. A wave of dizziness hit him but I was there to steady him.

"I don't think he means it that way, Stephen. Right, Sam?" I looked at him desperately, giving him some eye movements that I hoped he understood.

His laughter quieted, he wiped a tear from his eye, and also hopped up to his feet. "Yes, I did not mean to offend with my laughter. It's just I never would have thought that was the reason that you were treating me so poorly. I haven't heard of someone allergic to fish in a very long time."

He rubbed at his face, likely still dealing with some allergies. "Yeah, I know. I'm apparently an anomaly. That's why I don’t really tell people. Cause, like, it's not even a big deal, you know? If I do have a reaction it's taken care of pretty much instantly."

"Oh yeah, super instant. I wasn't having a complete mental breakdown at all," I said.

He gave a nervous laugh. "Okay, yeah, I guess I should make it more known."

"You should, it's something people need to know about, dude! And you don't need to be ashamed. I only laughed cause in the situation we are in it was kind of ridiculous, you know?" I gestured to Sam. "We just happen to meet a little meat man made of the very meat you're allergic to? Kind of crazy."

Sam just smiled sweetly and we both laughed.

"Yeah, okay, I get what you mean. So, say I mentioned this in a totally normal situation...?"

"No laughs." I crossed my heart.

"I guess we will never know for sure now, huh? Lucky for you."

"Just try it on another friend. They won't react badly, I promise." Could I be sure of that? ... no. But it was about a fifty-fifty chance.

"Another friend, right..."

"Oh come on, drop the act, I know you have friends."

"Yeah, but they are mostly writing friends and they are already, uh, strange."

"That's perfect—you'll fit right in." I beamed at him but he just glared. I stuck my tongue out and that got him laughing again.

The messages for my end of Quest rewards kept flashing at me. "One more thing before we reap our spoils."

Stephen stopped in the middle of just about to click on it. His eyes focused back on me. "What?"

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I pointed to Sam. "You owe him an apology."

Stephen nodded and put his full attention onto the little man of meat, who was staring up at him, a little awkwardly it seemed to me.

"I'm sorry, Sam. I... let my insecurity make me treat you in a..." He glanced at me and I shook my head. "...a kind of foodist way. I am truly sorry."

Sam bowed, splatting his face into the swamp. "Thank you, all is forgiven." He looked back up and smiled, face dripping with mud. But damned if he cared. Friendship was in the air.

"Great." Stephen said and after that neither of them seemed sure of what to do next. In a normal situation they could shake hands or hug it out but both of those would bring misfortune to Stephen's ability to breathe again so, the exchange felt a bit... incomplete.

"Here," I flipped through my inventory and pulled out a stick. I handed it to Stephen.

He didn't get it until I handed the other side of the stick to Sam and said, "Now, shake on it."

They both shook the stick and were all smiles again. The friendship had been finalized. Satisfied, I returned the stick to my inventory.

"That was touching and all but... why do you have a stick with you?" Stephen asked.

"I have like everything I own with me."

Stephen raised an eyebrow. "Really? How much inventory space do you have?"

I scrolled through them a bit. "Um. I'm not sure." I exited the menu.

"You know exactly," he said. "You're being weird."

"I'm not. Just... I'm a bit... of a collector?"

"Collections can slip into hoarding really quickly. How about you let me organize your stuff?"

"Uhhh," I continued to scroll through my 'collection.' "Maybe some other time. That's probably an adventure for another night."

Stephen thankfully dropped it there and I mentally breathed a sigh of relief. I really could use his help with organizing but... that was a lot to dump on a new friend. We had already done so much in our short time together, we didn't need to tackle my "collection problem" too.

Besides, we had spoils to reap!

"Can we open this end of Quest message now?" Stephen asked, reading my mind.

"Please, the flashing it's doing is giving me a migraine."

I made the click and my earnings rolled out:

[ Quest HALF Achieved! ]

"Wait, half, what the hell?" I asked.

"Just keep reading," Stephen said, his eyes lost in the menu.

[ Mission kill the slimes: COMPLETE! ]

[ Mission kill before the slimes form a King Slime: FAILURE ]

Oh. Yeah, that was the main thing we were meant to do, huh? Still, we killed a really hard boss, surely that accounted for—

[ BONUS:

Killed King Slime: COMPLETE! ]

Hell yeah, now we were talking!

[ Bonus EXP to stats used to take the King Slime down:

Running: +5 | 20 -> 25

Arm Strength: +4 | 15 -> 19

Enlargement: +5 | 3 -> 8

Eating: +7 | 200 -> 207 ]

With the Running and Arm Strength stats raising it brought up my overall Combat Level. Your girl was now sitting nice and pretty at Level 9. And the other stats I didn't know if they would ever come in handy in combat again, but the bonus points they gave me for sure would. I decided to save them until I knew what I should spend them on.

But that was not all for our post battle spoils.

[ +1,500 Versecoins ]

[ First combat Quest complete! Achievement Unlocked! 1/1 Combat Quests Completed.

Bonus Stat point awarded! ]

[ Progress until Rank 2: 1/5 Quests ]

Damn. Almost a whole 2k richer. Including the loot from the smaller slimes we were looking at maybe 4k. Why the heck had I never gotten my hands dirty (slimy?) like this before?

One more surprise, that caught me completely off guard:

[ Congratulations! You are the first person to figure out that Slimes are edible! What kind of monster are you?

Slime Meat collected: 50]

[ Made a Discovery that expanded the Interverse as a whole. Look at you, exploring, learning, and moving society forward. (You're still a monster)

Discovery Rank 1 Achieved!

Discoveries needed until Rank 2: 1/3

Stat points awarded: +10

And here's a little something extra:

20,000 Versecoins ]

My eyes were about to pop out of my sockets.

"What is it, what's wrong? What's..." I sent the info over to him. "Wow! What's RIGHT more like. This is incredible! Wait, hold on, there's something else for me, too."

He read over what he got and his mood instantly darkened.

"What the hell is that reaction, dude? What is it?"

He showed me.

[ Unfortunate News! You failed to make the Discovery of something new for yourself. But you were there. (And you didn't stop her, you're a monster, too)

Discovery Assist Rank 1 Achieved!

Discovery Assists needed to Rank 2: 1/3

Consolation Prize: 500 Versecoins ]

I liked to say I reacted nicely and comforted him but, no, I completely lost my shit.

Stephen just shook his head, at a loss for words. I did hear him mumbling something about only 500 Versecoins though which just made me laugh harder.

Sam walked over and tapped Stephen's boot.

"It's okay, Unkind Sir. You will do better next time." He smiled up at him but there was no cheering Stephen up.

"Wait, why am I still Unkind Sir? I thought we were buddies now."

"I apologize, but... I'm not too terribly good with coming up with nicknames. Is it alright if I continue to call you that until I come up with another one?"

"You could just call me Stephen."

He shook his head vigorously. "No, no, no, Unkind Sir. That is much too forward."

By that time I had recovered from laughing enough to follow the conversation. I bent down and put my hand on Sam's shoulder and my other hand on Stephen's leg.

"That's perfect. It will be like a funny injoke. Between friends."

Sam positively beamed at that. Stephen avoided his gaze at first but eventually caught the joy bug and grinned back at him.

"Yay! We are a team!" I first pumped the sky. "Don't worry Sam, we'll get you back home safely!"

"Yes! I believe in us!" He had a mix of a happy and serious face and he mimicked my fist pumping. It was about 100 times more adorable when he did it.

"You're okay with keeping him, right?" Stephen asked. "It's about time to call it quits for the day."

"Huh? We can't go looking now?" I asked.

Stephen shook his head. "I've heard of Quests like these before, they are multi stepped long undertakings. It will be a whole saga. You don't have a map or general idea of where your house is, do you Sam?" The little meat man shook his head. "See?"

"Oh. I thought we could just slam out the rest of the Quest. Okay. Sure, of course you can stay with me."

"Sleepover!!!" Sam exclaimed and jumped into my arms.

I laughed and gave him a hug. "Yeah, I guess it will be."

"For the foreseeable future." Stephen added.

"A never ending sleepover!" Sam gasped.

We both laughed. As intense as the day had been, I think I'd laughed more than I had since my mom died. It was... nice.

"Okay, well, I'm exhausted," Stephen said. "I don't know about you but I didn't sleep well last—well, this morning. I really gotta catch up on my sleep."

"Oh yeah, me too! Thanks for everything Stephen. You really showed me the ropes. Sorry about laughing so hard. I'm sure next time you'll make a discovery!"

"It's all good. Discoveries are super rare, neither of us will probably ever make another one. I'm not too salty about it. You figured it out, you deserve the glory."

"I couldn’t have done it without you. In fact, here." I put Sam down and transferred half of the 20k to him.

"Whoa! You don't have to—"

"If you didn't keep the King Slime busy I never would have beaten him at all. We're a team."

As if on cue, a message popped.

[ Relationship level up!

Darcy + Stephen | Level 0 -> 1: Friends! ]

He grinned that grin that I was quickly becoming so fond of. "We are. That confirms it. Thanks. Night, guys."

"Night!" Sam and I said in unison.

In a flash of light, Stephen vanished. Something caught my eye a ways off, the light had bounced off something sticking out of the mud. I walked over to it, chuckling.

I pulled the fork out of the ground. This silly little thing saved our lives. Or at least our Loot. And in the Interverse that was kind of the same thing.

I pocketed it, adding it back to my vast "collection."

You know, as a trophy to bookend our conquest.

… yeah, I may have a problem.