SIDE STORY – THE QUESTGRINDER
“Did it ever occur to you,” said Eric, “that calling the capital city ‘The capital’ is just lazy worldbuilding?”
Jack hummed. “It did, at first. For the first three seconds or so perhaps. Yes, I recall that being my first thought, followed by the realization that the name is actually a symptom of well-researched worldbuilding, if we wanted to keep up your pretense that this is all a story made up by someone of course.”
“Well-researched?” Asked Eric.
“Look,” Jack sighed, “Do you know how many indigenous people actually call themselves ‘the people’? Why are kangaroos called like that? Or that Rome was actually the Urbe, the City? Calling a capital, Capital, makes more sense than you give it credit.”
“Alright, you win.” He conceded.
The two kept walking towards the guild building with a brisk pace. Eric was barreling through the crowded streets without the slightest care, letting his muscular build do its job, while Jack moved carefully and observed all the movements of all the people around him.
“There, go in and accept all the E and F ranked quests that you see, minus the combat ones.” Jack said.
“You owe me one combat quest from that time in the sewers, remember? And it must at least be C-ranked.”
“Fine…”
Eric went in, and Jack rested his weight onto the outer walls of the building. He took out a little notebook, and wrote down some scribbles while he waited. After a little while, he shivered lightly. The cold wind was creeping inside his clothes, making him miss his old modern wardrobe. He looked around impatiently, and saw that Eric was nowhere to be found. He considered what to do, and decided that making a magic bubble of warm air here would be too bothersome. At the same time, walking inside the guild to check would mean that he had to be in the middle of yet another unruly crowd.
He tossed an illusionary coin, made of mana, in the air. It landed on heads. He sighed.
Putting the notebook back inside a hidden pocket, he walked inside the building. As soon as he crossed the threshold, his nostrils were assaulted by the smell. Beer, alcohol and unwashed bodies all crammed together made for quite the horrifying sight to his eyes. After witnessing the Covid-19 pandemic, or at least a small part of it, Jack had come to loathe crowds and large masses of people.
Scanning the room, he found his companion. He was stuck in line, waiting behind a young man who was yelling at the receptionist. Eric caught his gaze, and shrugged.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said softly, tapping at the shoulder of the young adventurer. “What would your problem EVEN FUCKING BE!” He yelled the last part, and the whole atmosphere inside the large room seemed to freeze.
“The Questgrinder!” Someone whispered from the back, and was quickly hushed.
“He’s going to kill the guy, isn’t he?”
“Hush, idiot. Wanna die?”
All eyes were now pointed at the three, with Eric trying to make himself look as small as possible, despite his generous build. Jack towered over the young man, like he did over everyone, and his black eyes seemed to shine under his white hair. A few stray locks were slowly dancing in the breeze from the open door, and a chill wind was creeping inside the room.
The youth turned around. His face was scrunched into an expression of disgust, and his shiny armor and sword glimmered for a moment. Then he saw the golden plate around the neck of the person who disturbed him, and felt the heavy air all around. The words that were said in the back registered in his mind, and he lowered his head and even his armor seemed to lose its luster.
“I’m—I’m sorry for the inconvenience.” He said.
Jack scoffed and stormed back out. As soon as he was out, he released the magic he had cast before, and resumed his normal breathing, cringing at the thought that he had to actually go inside one of the guild buildings again. The cool air felt good in his lungs.
Eric emerged soon after, with a large pile of yellowed parchments under his arm. Jack took them, and swiftly made them all disappear into nothingness.
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“So, which one do we do first?” Eric asked.
“Decide. Do you want to do the combat one I owe you now, or we leave it for last?”
His eyes lit up. “Now!”
“Well, let’s get this over with.” Jack muttered. “Stand still.”
Eric stood still, and waited while his companion casted the magic required to reach the quest location. In a matter of moments, the very fabric of space and time seemed to distort, and crackle, with little discharges of static electricity bathing the ground in white lightning. Then, a hole in space opened, and on the other side they could see a large green plain.
“Messed up the Einstein-Rosen bridge by three miles. But it’s only fair, considering I’ve never been to the target place. I say it’s good enough.”
He nodded, and stepped into the portal, with Eric right behind him.
“Okay, so the quest says…” his eyes glazed over for a moment, and he seemed to be reading from an invisible screen. “To bring back three Mulak horns.”
“Mulaks?” Eric asked, stretching his limbs.
With a flick of his wrist, Jack made a hologram appear hovering in the air before them.
“That’s a rhino.”
Jack chuckled. “A rhino, yes, if rhinos could spew acid and had a hide as tough as Kevlar.”
“Still looks like a rhino, though.” Eric said. “Where to?”
Jack pointed, and Eric took the lead. They walked the three miles under the pleasant warmth of the winter sun, with Eric still doing stretches. They weren’t necessary, according to Jack, because the wormhole did nothing bad to their bodies. But how would a brainiac know, Eric usually replied, about the real effects on one’s body? He, being the body cultivator of the two, or so he would say, knew much better how to read his own body. And thus, feeling stiff after portalling, he stretched every single time in the most extravagant way possible.
They stopped at the edge of a little grove of trees. At the center of the grove, many animals and monsters were grazing and drinking from a natural spring. In this world, Jack had written in his notebook a long time ago, the distinction between animal and monsters was very blurry. Mostly, it depended on how a person felt about a certain creature, and if he was scared of it then he would most probably call it a monster. It didn’t help that even the most harmless looking animals could be enhanced by mana and definitely deadlier than a bear or a lion from Earth.
They spotted their prey right at the edge of the grove. Jack relaxed, and let his battle crazed friend have his fun. He was always ready to react in case something went wrong, of course, but he didn’t feel that a small group of Mulaks would be an issue for Eric. He sat under a tree, created a small bubble of warmer air, and took out his notebook.
Moments later, a loud crashing sound like a lightning strike very close to him shook him out of his reading. He looked around, but the sky was perfectly clear and there were no signs of a possible mana storm brewing in the air. Looking down towards the grove, he saw his companion running towards him at a considerable speed, chased by five angry Mulaks.
“Jack, god dammit! You didn’t tell me that these were of a lightning variant!”
Jack briefly examined the quest in his storage space, and indeed noticed that little detail. “Oops—” He said, half smiling.
“I need a little help, please?”
Jack sighed audibly. “Damn it, you.” He said, and slowly got to his feet. “Okay, prepare yourself. When I tell you, sprint towards them and slash with your sword.”
Eric nodded in agreement, and slowed down. He stopped, and turned around to face the charging animals. They were huge, bigger than a car, and each of them looked very determined to make him pay for bothering them.
“Now!” Jack yelled.
Eric started charging towards the towering masses of angry muscle and lightning. Many stray arcs tried to fry him, but were deflected harmlessly to the ground by a dome-shaped shield that appeared around them. Two of the Mulaks opened their mouth to let out a furious roar, and while they did so they also let out a tremendous barrage of magic towards the charging man.
The tip of his sword glowed gold, and all the energy of the lightning was absorbed into it. It glowed and crackled with power, sending colored sparks through the air and whirring like a powerful engine of destruction.
Jack’s lips were curled up in a small smile. “There. All shonen’d up.” He muttered to himself.
Eric’s shape became a blur, a mote of indistinct shape and shadow dancing around the towering animals. He was weaving around the Mulaks as if the whole world was still, and he was the only one moving. Cuts and sprays of blood appeared on the impenetrable hides of the beasts, seemingly from nowhere, and they accumulated in a matter of instants.
Jack tracked Eric’s movements, pride swelling in his chest as his latest experimental magic was a total success. Then, his eyes widened, and he saw the blurred shape begin to glitch, and flicker.
“Eric! Abort!”
He yelled and called at his friend, but Eric could only hear a low-pitched noise that made no sense to him. Jack started cursing, and saw that his friend was now ramming into trees and boulders, making them explode with the sheer energy of the impact. Each impact drained Jack’s energy, hitting him like a punch in the back of his head, and the shield he was maintaining to keep his friend safe lost some power.
“God dammit! Messed up the last four-vector matrix transformation. I need to fix this. How do I fix this?” He muttered, and cursed.
Eric went through one of the Mulaks, and it exploded in a mist of blood and entrails. It showered Jack, too busy to conjure a shield for himself. He wiped the gore from his face, but his eyes were fixed in place. He was looking at the complex Hilbert space calculations, running though the numbers in his head, feeling the energy being drained out of him as time passed.
“There!” he said, and immediately Eric reappeared, ten meters in the air. He dropped down like a sack of potatoes. “That’s why I hate combat.” Jack said, then collapsed.