3…

2…

1…

The timer ran out, and Elise continued trying to stop the door from hitting someone in the face. This quickly turned into disoriented surprise when the door and the narrow hallway, in her experience, spontaneously disappeared.

Her hand came for his face a moment later, Darryl barely registered the slap while she winced in pain. Even without his shield, his breastplate’s three levels in stalwart made striking him like slapping solid wood when he stood still.

Her second attack did more. Though it barely dealt any damage and felt more numb than it would if his constitution wasn’t granting him superhuman toughness, a kick in the groin still made him buckle.

Elise tried to flee, but Darryl quickly grabbed her wrist. She struggled but after a second gave up on pulling to instead move in closer and throw another attack.

“Hold on! I mean you no harm.” Darryl said as she kicked his shin and flinched from the pain in her foot. “Please, calm down.”

“Fuck you!” She spat at him.

“You speak English?” Darryl said relieved.

She released a string of German in response, ended with another “Fuck you!”

Ah, not actually able to carry a conversation in his language, then. Too bad.

“Listen, calm down.” Darryl said, trying to convey the meaning through tone and body language if words wouldn’t work. “I’m here to help.”

She glared at him and then at her wrist, and Darryl let go. She still seemed wary with a hint of hostility, but didn’t try to run away again. Instead she crossed her arms and defiantly stared him down.

“Once we go in there, don’t attack me. Okay?” Darryl said, pointing at the door of the Tutorial Guild. “Bad things will happen if you get a third strike. Bad things, okay?”

His words fell on deaf ears, but hopefully he could convey the meaning. She still looked defiant and ready to become hostile at a moment’s notice, but not panicked or scared. Hadn’t been before either, he noticed.

“Follow me.” Darryl said.

He opened the door and entered the Guild Hall. Elise followed suit and after a German squeak of surprise stepped out again.

“Don’t worry, I’m not a monster.” Volos shouted, not even bothering to look up from the book he was reading.

“She doesn’t speak English, Volos.” Darryl said.

“Neither do I. But you crawlers hear me and the talking mobs as if we speak your native language. Meanwhile you and your lass speak Syndicate Common in my ears.” Volos said, folding the edge of the page he was reading and closing the book.

“Oh, right.” Darryl said, embarrassed. “You did explain something like that before.”

Elise seemed to be a girl of extremes. Where she immediately retreated upon seeing the weird fish monster just moments before, her caution was gone the moment that Volos showed lack of hostile intent. Volos didn’t seem to like her poking him during her up-close examination.

“Just to be sure, can you tell her not to attack either of us and what happens when she does? She’s already on strike two.” Darryl said.

Volos explained it and turned back to Darryl. “She says fuck you for using that as an excuse to grope her.”

“What!? I never-”

“She says that there’s no way you could’ve carried her with one arm without being indecent, though I already explained to her that her clothes were frozen too.”

Darryl made his shield appear in his hand and made it disappear again. Volos didn’t need prompting. “What you see is the inventory system at work. You crawlers get unlimited storage space, provided you can lift up the item for four seconds. You could be stored while you were frozen, though that’s more a bug than the intended use of the system.”

“And it’s quite dangerous out there, better that I brought you straight here than having to escort you.” Darryl added.

“She seems to think that there’s only ordinary beasts from the surface out there, specifically rats and sheep. She doesn’t seem too worried.”

Darryl beckoned Elise to follow him and walked out. Once in the dungeon again he took out one of the Krutnik corpses and it fell onto the ground with a sickening crunch.

“Thanks for doing that outside.” Volos said. “And that’s just a regular mob, by the way. The bosses are worse.”

Elise visibly paled when she saw the odd monstrous insect sprawled on the floor, and she grew a hint less hostile. Darryl headed back inside. “I’ll leave it out here for a bit, it should attract some rats for you to grind after you completed the tutorial.”

“She asks if you’ve got some food for her, she hasn’t eaten in two days now.”

Darryl took out a plate with a thick burger, fries and sauce-drenched salad. The only item of food Ben ordered that had any vegetables at all. Ben hadn’t considered that they might want to eat some food a bit healthier, or considered food for women at all.

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His worries were unfounded, however. Elise’s eyes went wide when she saw the burger and she made happy squeaks in German. She then stripped the burger of its cabbage, tomatoes, pickles and unceremoniously threw these in the salad shoved to the side, before tearing into the burger and fries with abandon.

What seemed like ten seconds later, Darryl gave her a napkin and made the empty plate disappear into his inventory. Clearly she had been very hungry and wasn't embarrassed about it as she rubbed the grease off her lips.

Elise nodded thanks and sat down in one of the chairs while Volos reclaimed his own. Darryl sat on one of the school chairs on the other side of the room and began to scrape off the skin on his wound while Volos did his tutorial talk.

She apparently didn’t have as much patience as the others had, because the talk didn’t last more than five minutes. Darryl got up and joined them.

“So, the others are already on their way with your father, they should be here soon.” Darryl said. “About what happened before… Do you want to talk about it?”

“She says she has no father. Single mom.”

Darryl: He’s lying, she said she doesn’t even have a father.

“Then who is Gunther to you?” Darryl asked.

Volos didn’t even need to translate that. When she heard the name Gunther she scoffed and dismissively said something that made it clear she considered him the lowest of the low barely worth her time.

“Some perv, she says. She already figured he followed her here, but didn’t know he was still around.”

Darryl: She doesn’t seem to consider Gunther a problem or foe, just a nuisance.

“So, if you weren’t trapped, then why were you in your room for two days?” Darryl asked Elise.

In response, she said something and carefully peeled up her left trouser to reveal blood-stained toilet paper sloppily wrapped around a wound.

“It’s infected, huh?" Volos said, studying the wound. "Yeah, those rats inflict that debuff but regeneration and the game mechanics reduce it to about an hour or two usually. If you didn’t follow the tutorial though, it’s a real infection appearing way faster than it should. Real bad luck you ended up bedridden for about two days, considering how little time you’ve got to grind this season.”

Elise said something that sounded scathingly uncaring, which Volos shrugged off as he turned to Darryl. “You’ve got a potion of Antidote, right?”

“Yeah, the party got about seven of those things by now.” Darryl said.

…

Volos waited.

Darryl continued the silence.

“So…” Volos said.

“Yeah?”

“Would you mind bringing one out?” Volos said.

“Oh, right.” Darryl blushed as a potion popped into his hand. Elise had quicker wits and didn’t need to be told what she had to do, instead snatching the vial out of his hand and downing it. Her face scrunched up at the taste.

“Even though it medically doesn’t make sense, infection counts as a poison and can thus be cured by antidotes.” Volos said to her. “Now take this health potion, put it in your inventory instead of drinking it, put it in your hotbar and click on it there. You’ll consume it without tasting it. That antidote is nothing compared to the foul brews you might encounter later.”

Elise complied and stripped off her poor bandages to reveal a bloody but fully healed leg. She laughed, said something and then began using her menu.

A bronze box appeared in front of her, opened up and something shot into her inventory. She took out the fingerless gloves and put them on.

“You might want to read the description first, some items you don’t want to-” Volos said.

A ring came out of a silver box and she wore it not a moment later.

“Some items could be really bad if y-” Volos tried.

Elise put on a pair of aviators that reflected the light unnaturally.

Volos sighed and didn’t bother any further. Then he gasped as a box appeared that seemed to be made out of white gold. Or rather…

Elise giddily leaned inwards as the platinum box slowly opened itself, and out popped a large pointed club several times longer than the box itself. The item immediately popped into her hands and she read the description gleefully before slinging it around her shoulder. She sat back in her chair, crossed her legs and stared at Darryl from behind her sunglasses.

“Du feelzing luck-hy, punk?”

“Sorry, not a clue what she just said.” Volos said. “Whatever that was, the system didn’t translate it to Syndicate Common. Also, wow your Earthly languages sound weird.”

“I think she was trying to speak English just now. It’s a reference so I think I got it, even if-”

Thomas: We’re almost here.

“Hold that thought. Elise, can you come with for one sec?” Darryl said, nodding to the door.

Elise shrugged and got up, and when Darryl opened the door he saw that the krutnik carcass was already being swarmed by half a dozen rats. The janitors of this floor didn’t take big bites, but they ate ravenously and from how much of the Krutnik was already gone they probably didn’t actually get full. Also they were eating its hard carapace as if it were jelly.

“All yours.” Darryl said.

Elise didn’t need his invitation and already swung her big club. The rats had stopped eating and snarled at them when Darryl opened the door, but two never even got the chance to attack. She struck them both with a single swing and turned them into goop splattering a good twenty metres into the empty hallway. Swinging the club back over, she clipped a third rat and only liquefied half of its body while the other half tumbled lazily through the air with a pained shriek.

What followed after that was a game of Whack-a-Mole, except the moles popping out wasn’t necessary because she could swing her bat hard enough to smash through the krutnik carapace as if it were made out of clay.

“Wow, that was hot.” Ben said, mouth agape as he watched the redhead splash the last rat into goop with a wide grin on her face.

Elise looked at him, and then turned her gaze to Gunther.

The man paled.

Elise turned and began to walk towards him slowly with her bat leaving a trail of rat blood over the floor as she dragged it behind her.

He turned around and ran away.

Elise chuckled and said something incomprehensible to the rest of them. Whatever was going on between her and Gunther, clearly it was nothing bothering her too much.

“Guys, remember when I said that we might be able to tell if they tried to molest her based on how traumatised she’d act?” Thomas said after a moment of silence. “I think we owe the French an apology.”