He woke up with a massive hangover. She’d fed him a sweet herb, which had been followed by sleep. Now every time the sun came out from behind the clouds his head felt like it was going to explode.

“He lives,” said a feminine voice.

He tried to lift his head up off the ground but it was like a thousand baseball bats hitting him at once. “Maybe.”

“It’s just the status effect; your HP’s fine. Get the right liquids in you and you’ll be good as new.” She offered him a water-skin and he endured the baseball bats long enough to drink deeply. Then it was only a hundred baseball bats hitting him, and they started to take turns.

“Maybe a little bit of rum?” he ventured. “Take the edge off.”

“You’ll have to wait this one out. We won’t be having alcohol for a while.”

“What? Why? Every fantasy world has alcohol. Most of them don’t have hangovers. Why are we stuck in the one that’s the opposite?”

All this because he wanted to see some aliens. He could’ve just seen them on the TV, and they would’ve probably been cooler than any real aliens the World Government was hiding. Then again, this game-world was pretty cool, hangover and near-death experience notwithstanding.

“There is alcohol,” she said, “but we’re humans. We’d have to steal it and that’s not worth the risk.”

“They banned humans from buying alcohol?”

“Not specifically, but try to go into any city and see how long you last. They hate us here.”

“It can’t be that bad.”

“If the guards don’t get you then you’ll be taken out by the first hero that glances your way.”

“Taken out, like…”

“Killed.”

Killed for being human!

“And before you ask, no, there are no respawns. You die once and it’s all over.”

Damn fantasy racism. It was supposed to be flavoring, elves-vs-dwarves banter, or some side issue that’s overcome through the power of friendship and killing lots of things together. But to actually be hated and destroyed because of his species… that sucked.

“Is that why those things were chasing you?”

“Yeah. I was hoping the gnolls would understand. They’ve been kicked around a lot, mischaracterized… or so I thought. But they were just as afraid of me as all the others, and they reacted just like their stereotypes said they would.”

“And then you killed them.”

“No,” she said indignantly. “Then I ran because I didn’t want to inflame tensions. Then some idiot tried to hit them with a stick and then I had to rescue that idiot. That idiot is you, by the way.”

“No, that was Drunk me. Sober me had nothing to do with this.”

“You can’t just hide behind your status impairments! What you did was stupid. It would have gotten you killed if I hadn’t have been there. What were you thinking, attacking two creatures six levels higher than you, without any skills or equipment?”

The baseball bats hit his head with all the force of her voice. “I was drunk…”

“No. If I’m going to protect you, you’re going to take some responsibility. And before you say anything, know this: the elves, the ptau, and the ockdine are all organized enough to sent hunting expeditions after any known humans. Gnolls and every other race might kill us as they find us, but let me repeat: hunting expeditions. By three great empires. Did I mention that the ptau can fly?”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Okay, sorry. I’m sorry. I acted without thinking because…” he paused, catching himself. “Because previously I made the bad decision of getting drunk. Which was my decision and responsibility.”

“Good. Now sit up. We need to get you mobile as soon as possible. No telling how soon those gnolls are going to wake up.”

“Wake up? You didn’t kill them?”

“No! I’m trying to make friends with one of the races. Killing can hurt that effort. As it is, an alliance with gnolls in this part of the world is even less likely than when they started chasing me. Can you tell me why that is?”

Ugh. “I get it, I get it.”

“Good. Now sit up.”

He pulls himself up from the ground, braving the dozen or so baseball bats that continued to beat him over the head, and took another drink of water. When that was done he opened his eyes.

She squatted in front of him, armor off, holding a cup of something warm. He forced his eyes to focus and was richly rewarded for the effort. Her face was perfectly rounded and graced with a gentle smile. Her muscular shoulders said she was ready for anything, but they weren’t shredded like a bodybuilder. Moving down, she wasn’t exposed, per se, but she’d sweated considerably during the battle, and the green summer tunic she wore was soaked through and matted nicely against her… wow. Oh wow.

That’s when Jerome decided he liked her.

He quickly invented several other more socially acceptable reasons. She had a killer skillset (literally). She knew how to take care of herself. She was nice to him and saved him from gnolls. She’d probably done well in school and loved her parents. Anyone with those boobs should love their mother, at the very least.

“Stop staring and take the tea,” she commanded, smile gone.

He did so. Not only did he take the tea, he drank it. His hangover cleared almost immediately.

“That’s magical.”

“It’s herbalism. ‘Magical’ has a very specific meaning here, so you can’t just say it as a shorthand for something you don’t understand.”

“Whoa. Cool.”

She sighed. “Whoa cool indeed. Lots of whoa cool coming your way soon. But before we do that, I need to get something straight: why did they send you here?”

“I don’t know. They’re jerks.”

“Not helpful. Who’s ’they’, and why are they jerks?”

“The security guards at the government facility. Something about quantum research. I snuck in so I could see the aliens, but they wouldn’t let me see the aliens. Instead they grabbed me and sent me here.”

“You snuck into a government research facility.”

“Yeah.”

“To see aliens.”

“Yeah. But there weren’t—”

“Yes, I know, there aren’t aliens. At least you’re not a real criminal. Just an idiot. I can work with idiot.”

‘Real criminal’? He could be a real criminal if he wanted to. He just, you know, didn’t want to. That was his excuse for a lot of things, for when ‘I was drunk’ wouldn’t work.

“What about you?” he asked. “Are you a ‘real criminal’?”

“I was at a free speech rally.”

His admiration quickly turned to disgust. Boobs or not… a free speech rally? “Tell me you were one of the counter-protestors.”

“If I was, do you think they’d throw me in here?”

That was a good point.

“So yeah, I’m a thought criminal of the very worst sort.”

He wasn’t sure what to do. It was awkward. She’d saved his life. She was the only way he would survive in this world. She had boobs that could make a grown man cry. And yet she was also a free-speech extremist who wanted to allow bibles and hate speech and anime porn. She was everything he’d been trained to despise, and decades of government propaganda said that to associate with a free-speecher was almost as bad as being one. If there were prison guards up there watching would they see this and extend his sentence?

What to do?

Luckily, he was saved from that decision by a loud crash nearby.

“Ockdine,” she said in fear.

Well, ‘saved’ might not be the right word. The octopus-men were, after all, trying to kill them.