“We have to cancel our plans,” Theora said simply.
Dema’s face fell at the prospect of not getting to bathe with her. “Damn, why! What’d I do!”
“Not you. Something came up.”
At these words, Dema raised an eyebrow, her interest piqued. “Oh? You found something for us to do?”
Meanwhile, Theora gathered her things and mentally made sure they hadn’t forgotten anything important. The notification was open in her mind in front of her.
[Side Quest: Kill the Devil of Truth.]
The description below outlined a destination. It wasn’t a very precise location; usually, Theora would need to start investigating and asking locals the closer she came to the whereabouts of the monster she needed to dispatch.
“So, where we going?” Dema asked as they left the tavern behind.
“I received a request to dispatch the Devil of Truth.”
Dema widened her eyes in mild surprise. “That guy woke up? How long’s he been awake for? Thought he was dormant in hell.”
“Apparently, not anymore,” Theora said. “He’s in Callarand right now. Or rather, that’s where the quest leads me. So it could mean that he’ll be in Callarand by the time we get there. Who knows.”
“Callarand…” Dema mused. “Don’t think I’ve heard that before. Must be a new country. Those pop up like weeds. Or is it a town?”
“A region in the south,” Theora supplied.
“So, ‘by the time we get there’? What’s that supposed to mean? How long are we gonna travel for?”
Theora slightly pursed her lips and frowned in thought, going through different paths in her head to calculate a rough estimation. “It’s far away. I’d say, five to seven years, depending on how many roadblocks we meet. But the quest gives us a very long time to complete it, so it should be fine.”
The thing Theora did not say out loud was that she very much intended on using up all of that time. There was no telling what the System would be up to after the side quest’s completion. She’d drink up every single second she received, like finding an oasis after a long drought.
But… how would she actually spend all that time? All she knew was that she was oh, so very tired.
“Damn, so long,” Dema said. “Wait, if we have that much time, we can totally take a bath! And see the campfire! Come on, don’t waste years just like that! That’s like, what, half of a human’s lifespan or something?”
“Humans live a little longer than that,” Theora said. She stared at Dema’s pouting face. She was right; they could probably take a bath. The System was well aware that Theora wouldn’t hurry on her way to complete quests; after all, she used them to procrastinate. So, in that sense, the System always measured a lot of time. But still. Theora had never put things off by being… leisurely before. Back when getting stronger still mattered, she used the time to train, and then after, she just started helping out random people she found on the way.
“Point still stands! Bath time?”
Theora sighed. “The System calculates the time we have for quests based on hindrances we might meet along the way,” she said. And Theora had beaten the System into submission by having procrastinated with training and helping people, but never by having fun. So ‘fun’ would likely not be incorporated in this generous time limit they had. “Our time window being so long means something truly outrageous might happen on the way. I would prefer if we… Moved along.”
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Did she really prefer that, though? She wasn’t so sure. She’d gotten all she wanted. A beautiful new Skill, and a side quest she had waited for, for years. Shouldn’t she feel happy? Indulging in a bit of fun with Dema would be fine, right?
Ah, there it was. Yes, that was the issue.
She just didn’t feel like she deserved to have fun with a person she was going to hurt. At that realisation, fog and exhaustion draped over her mind like a spiked weighted blanket.
Sleep. She just wanted to sleep.
Meanwhile, Dema’s innocent eyes simply lit up at the prospect of ‘something truly outrageous’ happening to them. “Alright, sure, sounds good. But I still wanna take a bath! Come on, we have so much time!”
Theora stopped walking and stared at her. She did feel awful in her own body right now. But… sharing a bath with Dema in her current state of being? Terrifying.
“Fine. One after another, not at the same time. And we only stay in for a short while. We really need to get going.”
They needed to get going? At this point, her words correlated to nothing, especially not the truth. Needed to get going so she could lie down and close her eyes, maybe…
“Well, that sounds good enough for me,” Dema shrugged, but her disappointment was obvious. “You’re pretty set on completing this quest, huh? Juicy reward?”
Theora glanced at the quest compensation outlined at the end of the description. “Just numbers and things.”
“Huh… Then, why?”
“The quests I receive are usually those that other people can’t easily complete. I suppose I feel responsible.”
“What a goodie-two-shoes,” Dema chirped.
And thus, after their short baths, they made for their journey. The northern cusp of the continent was rarely travelled to or even visited. The paths were worn out, sometimes not even there. Dusketon was a self-sustaining village; the only people who left or visited probably had [Merchant] or [Adventurer] Classes that would allow them to traverse these types of terrain easily.
While Theora was very experienced in travelling, she did not possess any of the boons granted by such Classes. She was just a person walking around on her two legs with the layers of her coat waving behind her, swimming across the planet like a lost betta fish. Lost, and tired. Oh, so very tired.
Dema spent a lot of time making fun of her, and also gushing about the world. She still kept finding cute little rocks she desperately needed to show Theora, she kept stopping to take in the hillside views, and she kept finding fruits and nuts to eat and offer up. And, Dema schemed. Just sitting at pretty places, lost in her own mind. Or walking along the path, eyes unfocussed, contemplative.
What a cruel fate. As the days, and finally weeks, moved by, Theora realised she may have been tricked. Or that she might have made a mistake. Before meeting Dema, the worst reminder of her Main Quest had been the pop-up, and the fact that she wasn’t receiving side quests. But now, it was different. Now she had a live reminder of her inevitable murder of the Ancient Evil right next to her, in full bloom, all-excited about the smallest things.
Theora remembered opening her eyes once during this time and facing the dawning sky. She’d lain down beneath a patch of brambles, to find shelter against the sun. Their thorny offshoots edged into the corners of her vision, vignetting the soft orange-blue glow of the sky. It was only broken by the beautiful silhouette of Dema. She was sitting on a large weathered rock with her arms placed on her knees, gazing into the distance, writing down notes on paper from time to time.
When Dema noticed her, she smiled. “Why, hello there,” she said, the paper shuffling softly in the wind.
If there was anything left in Theora’s almost empty shell, it left her then.
At some point, rather than wanting to sleep, it more so became hard for her to even stay awake. The reality of her life was just too oppressing. She slept ten hours a day. Another month went by, and she found herself at thirteen, which turned into seventeen, and ultimately, more. Their travels mostly stalled. Dema… what was she doing? The truth was, Theora barely wanted to know, because thinking of Dema was terrifying. Time slowly disappeared from her perception and things just vaguely happened around her, or maybe they didn’t for all she could tell.
How long had she already spent asleep? It was a question that by now she was barely even able to form in her head.
There was only one sound in the world capable of waking her up. A sound that was sometimes whining, sometimes teasing. Sometimes confident, or mischievous.
“Hey, little rabbit, get up!”