Mael and Snyl had stopped running out of fear hours ago, running out of professional obligation instead. Though, professionalism only goes so far. On the way through town to the Exterminators Guild, they saw the light through the wooden shutters of the tavern. There was no surprise the place was so close to the guildhouse.
Inside, the bartender was partially leaned over the bar, listening in a patented bartender way, showing both intense interest and relaxation to his customer.
"Two steins, Merry", said Snyl as the two men approached.
The bartender stood up properly, got the first mug, and started pouring from the cask behind him. "You two look like you saw somethin' you didn't want to", he mentioned without looking.
"Yeah", was all that Mael said.
"Was it yur muther?", came a voice from one of the tavern's tables, causing uproarious laughter.
"Yours!" shouted another voice, with another burst of laughter from various tables.
Mael took a hefty swig of his drink, getting foam on his upper lip and nose. "Ghost town in the peat bog had a monster."
"Nothing I've seen before. Or heard of." Snyl took his freshly filled stein from Merry.
A few of the patrons didn't care, less weren't humorous anymore, and one, sitting at a table, spoke up. "What?"
Mael took another drink. "Yep. In the old church." Without waiting for anyone's response, he chugged the last of his mostly-empty drink.
Snyl drank his own stein at impressive speed, though no one was focused on it. "Killed a giant", he said as the two of them left again to go make a proper report to the people they should have.
One of the men who had been sitting at one of the tables, not drinking or laughing with everyone, pushed his chair back, stood up, and calmly walked out of the building.
"Glad he's gone. Was spoiling my night", said one of the men who had been sitting at the table for half an hour before the other man came and sat across from him without invitation.
"He's not so bad", said a woman who was sitting against the wall in the back corner, just behind the other man.
The complaining man turned around halfway. "YOU should join the Exterminators, leave the Ministry. What do you even see in them anyway?!"
"They do good work. You know they could be worse."
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He thought about who she meant. "BARKEEP! ANOTHER DRINK!"
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Jack, now feeling like he had mastered the ability to pick things up, walked around the new 'room', looking at the shelves with a little more interest. 'Looks like the place was abandoned a long time ago like the rest of this crappy little city. Hamlet? I don't know', he thought out loud to himself as he touched a bag with tiny holes that had fallen over.
Getting the familiar options, he was getting bored of being asked. 'Store'. Upon the bag disappearing, there were some tiny black things moving around, if barely, where the bag was. 'What the hell is this?' Jack asked no one. Not trying to store it, but to investigate it, he touched it. And got the options again. 'Oh shit, I can do that with animals? Store.'
Now on the hunt for more animals, or at least traces of them, Jack looked around. Instead of vaguely interested glances down the few aisles and shelving walls, he actually looked, closely. At the base of a partially collapsed support beam, he saw what he was looking for. Termites!
He poked one, got the options, and did what he did with the other thingies, which he still didn't know what they were. But some of them looked a little different than the one he grabbed. So, he poked that too. 'Rinse, repeat!' he thought to himself with excitement. 'Not sure what I can do with you, but I'm doing it!'. A few minutes after looking around the rest of the place, he said something else. 'Yes I do. Ha! Where's a bag? Or a dummy? This'll be awesome.'
He looked at the support beam again. There was another one that looked better than the one he was focused on, but he was getting a weird idea, in his own opinion if no one else's. 'Can I store that? What'll happen to the building... Eh, I'll do it later.' Walking around, he realized something. He walked through the door, but didn't touch it. One way to fix that.
[Construction Discovered: Door]
[Construction added to research list.]
'Wait, just the door? Okay then.'
[Construction Discovered: Doorframe]
[Construction added to research list.]
'If this was gonna be like that, then doesn't that mean... I don't know, whatever. Not like I'm doing anything.'
[Construction Discovered: Wooden Floor]
[Construction added to research list.]
'Why hold back?' Jack asked himself. 'What about my, I mean the, no, yeah it's my, tower? Oh, right, the bell! Can I play with my thwomp?' Jack walked across the road back to his Core Room, touching the short staircase leading up the the doors, adding them to his research list along with the bell tower and one of the walls. Inside, the church bell was smashed, and only partially visible through the hole in the floor, surrounded by the rope that used to be used to pull on the bell in order to sound it.
'Hey up there, come down!' he yelled at his thwomp, which was... thwompfully resting as thwompfully as possible at the top of the tower. It rushed down, and if someone was there, they'd have been killed instantly. Jack reached out from where he stood at the side of the hole, and touched the monster.
[Research completed. Monster Type: Thwomp]
'Is that how I was able to make it? Alright, save me some time. Wait, a minute.' Jack rushed out of the church with the now broken open door. Reaching down, he touched the grass. 'Store', he said to the options he was presented with. 'Store all this!' he yelled at the open air, as he brushed his hand across whatever greenery he happened to brush his hand against.
There was now a very obvious lack of plant life where he had used his arm like a kleptomaniac scythe.