Chapter 10: Uninvited Unguests Over For Dinner

Oh, fiddlesticks. We weren’t ready!

This was worse than having guests showing up several hours early to a dinner party!

“How many?” I asked.

“Three. Wait! Two and a half. One of them is a big guy. And the other is a cat.” Jellybee asked. “What do we do? I’m not trained on how to fight a cat!"

“We stick to the plan.” I replied. “We’ll just explain this was all a big understanding.”

“Great idea!” Jimbo-no said. “We’ll just say, ‘Sorry we set your house on fire and turned it into a dungeon. We replaced some of the floorboards. Hope you like it.’ I’m sure they’ll be very understanding.”

“Exactly.” I said.

Then my ghost form disappeared. This time on purpose though. I figured focusing less on Soul Stroll would give me some extra oomph to think. I was also quite aware now of my potential time limit I had for walkies. I didn’t want to time cut out mid conversation, like a video call accidentally getting hung up.

Jimbo-no facepalmed and groaned.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t yet see what Jellybee had reported. My sight became extremely limited and ethereal beyond the range of the house and the backyard up to the tree I planted. But while I couldn’t see them approaching, I could feel it. And I could hear them, though not clearly. Their distant voices - sound waves carried through the air - bounced against the outer walls of the cottage.

My Core shimmered in anticipation. It tugged at my human emotions. This was a natural reaction to this new form of mine. I felt an uncanny mix of excitement and fear, like walking onto stage before a crowd. Or bracing myself before walking down a dark alley. But it was more than that. There was a small tug behind all of that. A feeling of … hunger.

Greedy, violent hunger.

It was a feeling I hadn’t really noticed creeping up slowly in the background this whole time–the events of the day had all been too distracting–but now that it was here it was hard to ignore. I knew this hunger wasn’t mine. It was an inhuman instinct. One that told me that I had to build for the sake of destruction. It urged me to use my minions to kill.

I rejected the instinct. Squashed it down. I had to be logical. Jimbo-no had ultimately been right. Not making traps was a mistake. But it was too late. I had no traps. And the only way I had of defending myself would cripple my minions.

I had to play my cards right.

I heard their voices clearly now. They were close.

“Ouch, Bedknob. Stop squirming,” I heard a woman say. “Wait, Bedknob! It’s not safe!” She let out a groan of frustration.

A moment later a bolt of fuzzy black lightning jolted through my vision. It skimmed right by the porch, darted around the side of the cottage and through the garden. The lightning bolt came to a sudden stop in the backyard and cautiously sniffed at the air.

The bolt of lightning was a cat. An ordinary black cat.

Then I heard… thunder?

Jiminy crickets! Did this cat just briefly break the sound barrier?

Then, casually, it clambered up one of the trees shading the home, sauntered across a branch, and leapt onto the thatched roof.

It sniffed around again, kneaded in place, let out a soft mewling yawn, and then curled up for a nap.

Yup. It was certainly a normal looking cat. But it seemed harmless enough on the roof. As much as my crazy cat lady instincts were in overdrive, I couldn’t afford to get distracted by this fella. I had more pressing matters. I chose to ignore it for now.

I Soul Strolled back into the living room. “Time to work some magic,” I whispered to my two minions.

Jellybee nodded gravely. “I know a spell or two.”

The woman was close enough now that I could hear her gasp. “Oh Gods. No, it can't be,” she said. “There really was a fire. Look. There's still smoke!” Her voice cracked.

“The place is still standing though. The fire must have died out,” the man replied. There was a pause. Then his voice took on a quieter tone. But not by much. His deep voice projected easily. “Wait. The door is open. Could be a trap.”

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“I don't care. I didn't come all this way, just to watch it all burn. I'm going inside.”

“No. I’ll go first. Check it out. Make sure it's safe”

“No. I’ll go first,” she repeated. Her words were confident, yet spoken with timidness. “I'm not scared of some goblins or bandits. I can handle them. Besides, I’m technically a higher level than you.”

The man grunted in response.

Interesting. Humans could level up in this world too. This place really did feel like a video game. I wondered if dying here would have one of those arcade “Game Over” screens. Could one insert a few coins to restart? Or was this not that kind of game? I assumed the latter. Otherwise everybody wouldn’t be so cautious.

The woman gingerly stepped onto the porch. Her eyes grew wide as the system undoubtedly notified her she was entering a dungeon.

No, hmm. ‘Woman’ isn’t the right word. She was barely an adult in my view. This was a young girl. Because, naturally, the first thing I noticed was her dyed seaweed green hair. Along with the gaudy Spirit Halloween-esque witch’s hat upon her head, with a brim so wide that it could barely fit through most doors.

I huffed. Kids these days.

But my judgment softened as I noticed the dark circles under her eyes, contrasting sharply with her pale complexion. She carried an expression of fear across her frail frame, shaking like a leaf. The poor thing was clearly overstressed and overworked. There was hardly any meat on them bones. She needed more than a couple good meals.

I fully admit that I can be quite quick in my tendency to stereotype others. I know I should never judge a book by its cover and all that. But something about this gal didn’t sit right with me with her appearance.

This was the owner of the cottage? This dusty, lived in place with good taste in decor? The one that owned all those antiques and old fashioned, handwritten recipe books? The one that was a famed adventurer, hunted by skeleton soldiers? I don’t believe it.

Her undead minions were scared of... a Hot Topic Cashier?

An older man stepped onto the porch right behind her. He was maybe in his forties? Tall, broad shouldered, and built like a man well accustomed to hard physical labor. He had a short red beard and a traditional farmer's tan. And admittedly, he was handsome.

She turned to him. “I don’t understand. A dungeon?” The girl said. “This wasn’t in the letter.”

The man started to speak, but stopped short when I Soul Strolled out onto the porch to announce myself. “I hope you don’t mind the intrusion. I made myself at home while you were gone.”

The girl’s eyes widened with shock. Then narrowed in anger. Her hands twitched. Green fire crackled within the pupils of her eyes. I felt Mana in the atmosphere shift near my avatar. Like pressure dropping before a storm. My Core immediately recognized this as a threat. It was the equivalent of someone reaching inside their coat pocket to pull out a concealed handgun.

But her companion was quicker. Out of thin air, he materialized a giant tree splitting maul into his grip. The axe head was massive–comically large–at almost half my size. The butt of the axe head was inscribed down its length with a strange language I didn’t recognize and the blade bit undulated like a silver blade of steel.

Was that for cutting down Redwoods? Or mountains?

“Wait! Wait!” I held up my palms. “I’m just an old, lost lady! Can’t we talk about this?”

“No,” the man said. Then winded his ax back. “This is no home for the undead.”

Before he could swing the weapon, I heard a clamor from inside, followed by Jellybee leaning out the front window and shouting “I cast brick!”

Jimbo-no and I both screamed in unison. “Jellybee, no!”

But it was too late. He threw the brick. The man, surprisingly agile for his size, jumped backwards and intercepted the brick with his axe, cleaving it in two with ease

One half of the brick went flying. The other half landed on the porch. It was covered in a bright yellow slime mold that coated it like protruding veins.

Fascinating. Could every darn person in this world do magic? None of the bricks were like that before. What had he done to it?

But I had no time to ask. Because the fungal veins on the brick pulsed once. Twice.

Then exploded.

The bricks erupted into a violently potent cloud of yellow spores, blasting the girl off the porch and Jellybee back into the house. My avatar fizzed out of existence.

Clearly Soul Stroll couldn’t handle taking damage like that.

Well, this was not going well.

For a moment I saw nothing. They were outside the vision range of my Dungeon again.

The girl called out and coughed. “There’s more undead, Uncle!”

“I know! I saw it! There’s bound to be more! We can’t take them all on.”

“Uncle, no! THATS MY HOUSE!”

“I’ll fix it later!”

There was a loud crack, followed by a tremendous groan of wood splitting. Birds screeched.

Jimbo-no and Jellybee ducked for cover. There was a thunderous yowl from the roof.

Then a tree–an actual tree–crashed through the porch,

The tree skidded across the deck. Support beams snapped. The porch roof collapsed. Thatch tumbled everywhere.

A log as wide as the front door came to a stop before the entrance.

They were blocked in from this side.

“We’re leaving. Now.” The man said.

“NO! Put me down! That’s my home!”

His footsteps faded in the distance.

My Core couldn’t see clearly with all the dust in the air. I Soul Strolled back into the living room for a closer look.

Jimbo-no lifted his head up from behind the couch.

Jellybee held something in his arms. He seemed perfectly fine.

“Well, that went better than expected!” Jellybee exclaimed. “And look, we even got a new cat out of it!”