PART 1/2

“Cheers!”

Bon clinked his chipped mug against mine and took a gulp, as did I. The taste was pretty interesting, one I hadn’t had before. I’d been Unclassed last time I had alcohol, and the alcohol for the Classed and Unclassed was made very differently.

Since increasing your Endurance and your Health made you more resistant to harm, it also meant that alcohol—which was technically a poison—had a reduced effect on you as you increased in Level. So the “beer” we were drinking was really closer to straight liquor in alcohol content, having been created by mixing regular beer with pure distilled alcohol.

So, obviously, it tasted quite different. It actually tasted a lot weaker than I’d have thought it’d be, but I supposed my taste had probably been adjusted too from the extra Endurance, or maybe I’d just forgotten what it actually tasted like to begin with.

Erani took a sip of her own drink, as did the rest of the room—aside from Ainash, who hadn’t been offered one to begin with. Part of me considered letting her take a sip out of my cup just so she could know what it tasted like, but I also felt like giving alcohol to a two-year-old would be pretty irresponsible, so I decided against it.

“Been a while since we’ve had any reason to break out the strong stuff,” Bon said. “Don’t often get shipments of it here. Normally just the flamin’ standard swill for Unclassed weaklings, doesn’t even do anything unless you have a barrel of it.”

“I’d imagine it wouldn’t do anything at all, no matter how much you have,” I remarked. “If you’re all high-Level Melee-Types, you probably have some pretty significant Endurance values.”

Jannin just snorted at my comment and took another sip, leaning back and making himself comfortable in his chair. Poppins, who’d been pretty much completely silent ever since the whole prostitute debacle, had a mug, but I was pretty sure it was full of water. Probably just didn’t like to drink.

As time went on, we went through mug after mug, with me admittedly having more than I should have, though I told myself it was just because my Endurance was suppressing the alcohol and so I needed more of it to feel a buzz. Erani was chugging them down pretty quickly, too.

Since Dark Plate was the only thing protecting my identity and it automatically dismissed itself every hour, I needed to excuse myself to go to the bathroom every now and then, where I could manually re-cast the Spell and refresh its cooldown before it ran out. Obviously, this left me taking piss breaks pretty often, but it drew no more attention than a couple jokes at my expense.

“Father, your thoughts are funny when like this,” Ainash messaged me.

“I’m fine…just…need to get a break from all this bullshit…fuckin’ Demons,” I said back.

Bon and Jannin both slammed down mug after mug alongside us, being the only two that were really talkative during the night. I may have been a bit tipsy, but I still recognized that I needed to watch my mouth. And I didn’t really trust myself to watch it correctly in my current state, so I just settled with not talking at all if I could help it. Erani was also silent, seeming to not even be paying attention to the conversation. She’d sat on the floor in a corner at some point, leaning up against the walls and staring up at the roof as she nursed her drinks.

“I just don’t see why the flamin’ ‘Emperor’ Etrin has gotta tell us all what to do!” Jannin was saying. He apparently had a revolutionary streak in him that came out with the help of the booze. “Lyra was just as good—”

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“—and pretty,” Bon interjected, eyes only half-open.

“—so we don’t need some new flamin’ guy comin’ in and changing everything up. Needs to flamin’ dry himself of that flamin big ol’ mouth and ego for once and maybe let the people tell him what we want. I know everyone agrees with us, too! Just too scared of that flamin’ tyrant to say anything.”

I nodded along to their rants, trying to follow all the names and places that I was sure they’d mentioned before, but now escaped me in what they all referred to.

“Um, father?” Ainash sent me another message. She was standing over by the window, glancing between me and Erani. “Think mother is not happy.”

I blinked. “...Hm?”

“Feel sadness coming from her. But when try to talk, thoughts are weird like yours. Can you talk to mother?”

I looked over and saw her, still staring off into a random point on the ceiling. Bon and Jannin were arguing about some random thing I had no idea about, so I silently stood and made my way over to her, only barely stumbling as I got up. I tried to mentally force myself into sobriety through sheer force of will, and it sort of felt like it worked, though not by much.

I plopped myself down next to her, and heard a few empty mugs scatter that’d been lying next to her across the floor. How many had she had?

“Hey,” I said.

She looked up at me, a hint of red in her eyes. Had she been crying? “Hi.”

“How are you? Ainash said you were…all fucked up or something.”

“‘Course I’m fucked up,” she slurred. “How could I not be?”

“I…listen, I’m fucking drunk, so sorry if I say dumb shit. But I think you’re fine. More than fine. You’re great.”

“No, I’m not,” she took a breath and blinked slowly. “My life is gone. Everything I had was completely destroyed.”

“That’s not true,” I said, trying my best to think of something to say. “You still have—”

“Nothing! I’ve got nothing. My family’s fucking dead, and I can’t go home, and now I don’t even have a fucking arm.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “It’s all gone.”

I wrapped my own arm around her and pulled her into a sideways embrace, which she fell into without a word. Fuck, I was way too drunk to think of something that could cheer her up. “I’m sorry.”

Erani just sobbed to herself with her head leaning on my shoulder. Bon and Jannin hadn’t even noticed I was gone, it seemed—they’d just been keeping pace with me with their drinking, but they seemed absolutely hammered.

“I…Listen, you don’t have n…nothing—er, you have something,” I stuttered out. “You…I’m sorry your old life is gone. But you have something new, now. Ainash is a fucking…great daughter. I know she loves you. And I do too. We both really…really care about you. And we can make a big, new, way better life here.”

She sniffled. “It won’t be way better. The Demons exist. They’ll make it awful.”

“Demons suck ass,” I spat. “Fuck ‘em. We’ll just fucking kill the Demons and then boom. New, better life. Promise, I won’t fucking rest until those stupid fuckin’ monsters are dead. And I’ll sell the dumb fuckers’ corpses and buy a sick-ass mansion for us to live in. It’ll be awesome.”

“Who’ll buy the corpses?” Erani laughed. “Nobody’s going to want them.”

“Nah, they’ll be trophies or something. And the Demons’ll be extinct, remember? So their corpses’ll be, like, a rare thing. Or something. I’ll find some way. But I’m telling you. It’s gonna be awesome. We can totally make our lives awesome.”

“That sounds so dumb when you say it like that,” she laughed again and looked up at me, head lying on my chest as I leaned against the stone wall. “You’re totally so drunk.”

“You are too, dummy,” I smiled. “You look, like, super hot though anyway. It’s really cool how you can do that. Just look great all the time.”

“That’s so stupid,” she said with a chuckle. “You sound so dorky. Don’t you know you’re supposed to sound cool in front of a woman?”

“That’s fuckin’ stupid,” I muttered. “If you look good, you should know it. People should tell you every single day.”

But when I looked down at her, she’d already closed her eyes.

With the droning sound of Bon and Jannin arguing back and forth about complete nonsense, and the alcohol coursing through my veins, I found it harder and harder to stay awake every second that passed. And within a few moments, I drifted off.