As myself and Yi Gore walked back into the inn, I could see the rest of my party struggling to hold back an enraged Carmine as she kept screaming insults at some other humans that she had beaten up. Fung, Xibei and Jin had been forced to literally pile up on top of her to stop her rampage, as Liliam and Lingfeng were trying to pacify the pissed-off innkeeper by promising repayment for all of the broken items.
"TThih ihh noht ofver!" Yelled one of the thugs that Carmine had beaten up as he was picking up his teeth from the floor. Wow man, standard “bad guy” text lines too? "My unchfhll ihh thh town mayor! I’ll haff you all in chains foh dis!"
After exchanging a few quick whispers with Lingfeng, I pretty much got the whole picture about what had triggered the fight in the first place, so I intercepted the guy with the missing teeth before he could run out of the inn and call the authorities by propping myself right in the doorway.
"Now hold on for a moment there, benefactor. I see that the spot between your eyebrows is darkened (it was, from a bruise and probably broken nose). Misfortune may await for you if you act on an impulse out of rage. Let us all calm down and try and talk this through, shall we?"
"Tak? Fuch yuh! He kichhd mah teef outhh!"
"You mean my faire companion, LADY Carmine?"
"Dahht a LADY?"
"Well, yes, you know, female dwarves sometimes have beards. It's one of the characteristics of their race. I thought everybody knew that?"
"Uth...firiouhfli? We all thott daht wah juht hom ugleh nohmal dwarhff! Waht th' helff!"
"Pff, Gonzo, den y’u dan’got beaten up by ah woman, eh?" Laughed another thug at the guy with the missing front teeth.
"Hhudup, Teng! Hhe beat yo’ upff too!"
"Now, I can understand the confusion, but are we not missing the point here, benefactor? Why was there a fight in the first place?"
"Cuz dahm crazeh dwaff attachhd us!"
"Is that so? And you did nothing or say nothing to provoke said attack for any reason? Like something improper about her race and her family members?"
"N...no?"
"Now, you wouldn't somehow be foolish enough to lie in front of the Holy Monks of the Temple and bring bad Karma up on yourself, now would you?" I began to accentuate direly as Xibei suddenly began releasing sparks from his body, Jin was raising the air temperature, Lingfeng was conjuring waves of intimidating fog across the floor and Fung was shaking the earth beneath the floorboards and causing all of the glassware and bottles on the bar to clatter from the localized earthquake. Add in the shadow effects that had dimmed the light in the room from Yi Gore's arm, and we suddenly had all of the thugs pissing in their pants before me even without having to lift a single hostile finger.
"Okhh, I am hhorry alrighf! It was us! We hftarted fhe fight! It was our fault! Pleaff, hust hon't hurt us!"
"Hurt you? Eeeeh...now, we would never do such a thiiiing, benefactooor! We are all profound pacifist Monks in our group, RIIIGHT! Why would you ever think something like that?" The floorboards shook even harder and the light grew even dimmer as I plastered on my most evilest poker-face smile onto my face.
*HIIIIIIIIIK* The whole thug group crumbled under my gaze.
"Now, can we have everybody sit nicely at the same table and talk with each other? I pointed to one of the few intact tables left."
"S...sure…"
As all of the thugs cleared the broken chairs away and put two tables together, we now had an impromptu “round” table in the middle of the inn with all of us “Monks” on one side and the thugs on the other. Carmine had also been released from her restraints and sat down on one of the chairs while still flipping the bird at all of the thugs with both hands. As soon as she sat down, she yelped in fright as Yi Gore’s artificial eye suddenly closed in on her face.
"Ok, STOP! Carmine! Don't punch him! He's a friend!" I screamed as I pulled Yi Gore back for his own safety. "What’s suddenly gotten into you, girl? Why were you fighting everybody at the bar?"
"Dat u, Trina?*Sniff*" Asked Carmine while trying to shake off her intoxication. "Dem bastards made fun of meh and meh people! Dey made fun of...of..." I immediately saw Carmine begin to stammer as large tears began to fall from her eyes. Aw craaaap! Waterworks! My weak spot! ERROR! ABORT! JUMP SHIP! Aaa fuck...too late!
"WAAAAAH! Dey all dead! All of dem! WUEEEEEEHHHH!"
"Wait? Who's dead? WHAT?"
"Me folk from back home! I just went t' the (Hic) Adventurers Guild, and dey told meh dat (Hic) mah Village got burnt to th' ground 15 years ago wid’ zero survivors by some pissed off Red Dragn’ dat was looking fer a thief who ‘ad stolen some stupd silveh rapier from the Dragn’s hoard. Th’ beast den went mad an’ incinerated twenteh villages an’ two small towns in anger!
Ow crap, that's bad, I thought to myself. It means that the poor lass is an emotional wreck right now, and I have very poor skills in my repertoire for handling such people. I never seem to find the proper words to say whenever such bad news hit the people I know. I mean, what could I say? “I hope they died fast, and didn’t suffer?” That seemed stupid!
This occurrence though...it couldn't have been anything related to our narratives, now could it? If the villagers got burnt down 15 years ago...Hmm, had Jin already been born by then? Was he somehow supposed to find this crazy dwarf lady still inside the tunnels during his level 50 Quest? Hrrr...I doubt that. I mean, when the Hall of Medicine sank beneath the earth, Carmine had almost already dug her way out. The most Jin would have been able to find, if I hadn't “ruined his narrative”, was the leftover tunnels. It would have been pointless for the System to kill Carmine's family for any sort of narrative-related reason, if she wouldn't even directly show up in the original script.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Maybe I am just being over-paranoid and keep blaming everything on the System, and this is just one of those shitty little happenings that has absolutely nothing to do with the System's interference. I mean, the system does indeed interfere with the destinies of players by manipulating them into always facing adversity, but that is just a small part of the entire world, with the rest just functioning all on its own without the System having to raise a single finger.
If you think about it, when you create Monsters, Dragons and similar terrifying things and then set them loose upon the world, even if you do not directly interfere with the actions of the monsters, they are going to create a whole lot of casualties. For this world, monster attacks and entirely dead or burned villages were just a common occurrence.
"Tell me the name of the beast and I shall bring you its head, no matter how long it will take. I swear it upon my honor!" Yelled Yi Gore while taking Carmine’s hand between both of his in a gentle gesture.
"It doesn't (Hic) matter anehmor" Replied Carmine while wiping her snot on Yi Gore’s sleeve. "Tis alreadeh dead. After th’ Dragon wrecked too many villages, a high-level team wuz sent t’ subjugate it and dey came back wid ‘ts head. Vanquished, dei said."
The whole story had left the entire group of the thugs feeling incredibly ashamed about their own actions, as they all began to wholeheartedly apologise to Carmine over and over again for their insults and brash actions. After I tried to ask the thugs why they had seen it fit to pick on the lonely dwarf that was sobbing over a drink, it became obvious that this was a small case of racism, since this area of the world had mostly humans, and not many of the other races.
Of course, there were more and more “exotic” races the closer you got to big towns, but they were usually just part of caravans or adventuring teams, and never took any roots in the East that much. Therefore, a small amount of “human supremacy” mentality dwelled within the hearts of all of the humans within the three-clover “China” Empires.
In the end, the whole assembly devolved into a group therapy session, as I directed all of the thugs to take turns and vent their frustrations out into the world, then admit to their own mistakes, complexes and wrongdoings even outside of the recent fight.
To finish them off, I then decided to use my newly-acquired Regeneration Spell on all of the hurt people, to try and heal all of their wounds and bruises. Amazed by my ability to seemingly make any of the visible hurt go away and even cause some of the missing teeth to start regrowing, the group of thugs had decided altogether to ignore the fight that had just occurred, and even bought a few drinks for us “Monks” on their tab.
As soon as the thugs had been pacified and they were all getting drunk while hugging each other, a second more serious discussion had begun to occur into a shady corner of the inn.
"Alright Trina, who's your little friend over here? And why does he look so strange?" Lingfeng narrowed his eyes.
"Lingfeng, say hello to Yi Gore. If I had to approximate him to anything from real life, then the closest thing he would be to me is a sort of a Father? I mean, he's the one who created all of the Clones back at the Lab, including myself. While we may not share any sort of genetic background, he most certainly would qualify as a Father to me from a moral standpoint, since he is the one who “seeded” me in that cloning pod in the first place."
"Then he is from the…"I saw all of Lingfeng’s muscles tense, as he was seemingly preparing to attack at any moment.
"Moon-Devouring Sect? Yes, he used to be a part of it, but he is no more. Before you jump to any hostilities, you should listen to him first. He got released from Fury Bone's Subjugation Nail after the Sect Master died, and has gone “straight”."
"The what Nail?"
"Remember that strange black Nail that you guys extracted from my head back when we first met? Fury Bone had implanted those Nails into the heads of every member of his Sect, and used them to threaten the lives of everybody that had one of those things stuck inside of his head, as he forced them to do his bidding under the threat of extermination. You either did what you were told by the Sect Master, or you died a painful agonizing death with the Nail penetrating through your spiritual root and brains. That includes Yi Gore here as well. In fact, I think that he even still has that Nail stuck inside of himself to prove it, right? Do you still have that black horrible Nail inside of your head, Yi?"
"Unfortunately, yes, that cursed item is still present inside of me, and I don't think there is any immediate way for me to remove it, since it is already heavily entangled with my spiritual root. Attempting to simply yank it out at this moment would just result in irreparable damage to my Spiritual Roots, so I just left it there alone. I can't even feel it, so it does not bother me in any way."
"Can I have a look at it? I might be able to do something about it."
"Sure, go ahead. I don’t see what you could possibly do to it though." Said Yi Gore as he turned his back on me.
Going into Qi Vision mode, I saw how the black Subjugation Nail had entangled with its darkened tentacles all of Yi Gore’s Spiritual Roots, looking creepy as fuck. I tried to poke at it with my branch-tentacles, but it was almost impossible to reach from outside, as the normal Soul-Barrier that all high-level cultivators had against foreign spiritual intrusion prevented me from poking directly inside of Yi Gore’s body. The Soul-Barrier was usually the reason why I couldn’t just simply go and manipulate the insides of a living being any way I pleased, as my branch-tentacles seemed to bounce off of the membrane. Sure, I could probably brute-force it and pierce right through if I really had to, but the higher a level and cultivation a living creature had, the sturdier its Soul-Barrier became. Still, there was a small gap that I might be able to use, since the Soul-Barrier did not apply to the Subjugation Nail Itself, so I could attempt to simply drain the Thermal Qi away from it, and then simply shatter its connection to the remote tentacles that were surrounding Yi Gore’s Spiritual Roots. I asked the Innkeeper if he had any pliers or similar object that I could use to pull out the Subjugation Nail, and he brought me back a large pair of tongs used for general woodwork or smithing purposes that were just the right item to grab onto the Nail.
I then shoved all my branch-tentacles that I could fit inside of the Nail, as I matched the number of black tentacles that were shooting into Yi Gore’s head with my own. On a count of 3, then I grabbed all of the Thermal Qi from the place where the black tentacles extended away from the actual Nail, causing them to reach freezing point and shatter, as all of the heat got redirected to the other side of the Nail. I then yanked the Nail out of Yi Gore’s head with a crack and a sizzle by using the tongs, as the half-cold half-burning Nail finally got pulled out of Yi Gore’s head.
"AAACK!" Yelled the midget, as he began to roll on the floor in pain while holding his nape. I immediately cast my Regeneration Spell on him, to lessen his pain and tend to the wound the Nail had left behind, then I showed the creepy-ass nail to Lingfeng.
"So, you say that this thing was present inside the head of all of the members of the Moon-Devouring Sect? This is a strange artefact indeed. It’s not just a simple Nail, the craftsmanship involved in this is astounding. There are hundreds of runes and small formations carved into this thing! How did Fury Bone even manage to create such an item in vast quantities?"
"He had the Tablet, remember?"
"Aw...right..."
"He probably got inspired from some of the articles detailing remote communication and control that are written within that tablet. Something that we called WiFi or 4g where I came from. Still, I wish I would know how to power that tablet once more, but I don’t dare to mess with it for now. Sure, I could probably try and create some sort of power generator using some copper wire in a coil then spin some magnetite ore around it to generate a steady power supply, but without a regulator circuit it would most likely just burn up the power port of the tablet instead of charging the battery. Not to mention that I have no idea which is the plus and minus on the input jack, which could also cause it to melt."
"Cough...you do realize that I understood even less than 25 percent of you just said there, right?"
"Ugh...sorry...I was just thinking out loud. I hope we’ll find some way to repair that Tablet eventually. Too much valuable information is stored onto it."