It took altogether too long for the barkeep to get his third drink.

“Slow down! I have other customers!” it said.

Well then.

At least his status effect was hitting.

Tipsy: Agility -10%, Dexterity -20%, Focus -20%, Lowered Inhibitions, Relaxed

Ah yes. Relaxed.

He needed Relaxed to get over all the fucking death he’d seen and caused lately. That made him even more sick. Who said he deserved to be relaxed? He’d gotten all those prisoners killed. Now here he was drinking less than a mile from where so many of them died, drinking as if nothing had happened. Wanting to jack off to porn and play an RPG because having a beautiful, sexually enthusiastic woman and having an over-powered skill in a real-life RPG world was no longer escapist enough. Meanwhile, less than a mile away, humans sat imprisoned.

Tears formed as he thought of everything he’d done. He replayed in his mind, over and over, the bodies hitting the wall and snapping to death under the impact. Rayi’s body hitting the ground and turning into a corpse. The fucking ptau flying off with it.

The ptau he kept on repeat. It just flew off into the sunset, taking his new companion with it.

Finally the barkeep gave him the third drink, which Jerome nursed close to his chest while looping through the pain in his mind.

The beer, or whatever this was, sloshed on his chest and he decided to start actually drinking it.

All those humans, still waiting. He saw the scalpel in his hands, the blood seeping from the cut in the girl’s stomach. The cut he’d made.

The dissections wouldn’t stop just because Jerome was out of town. They’d continue for as long as Katani held the prisoners. How many had died while he’d been playing in the woods, fucking Krystyna. How many more would die between this infiltration and the time when they finally got around to rescuing the humans?

Jerome finished the rest of the drink in one gulp and threw the mug on the ground in frustration.

“What are you doing?” The barkeep yelled at him. “Those mugs aren’t cheap!”

Jerome growled, fished out a gold coin, and tossed it at the shocked barkeep.

Enough wasting time.

He walked unsteadily out of the bar, catching himself on the doorway and heading into the sunlight.

Where was that prison? That “science center”. Jerome loved hearing about the experiments of old, but he’d had terrible luck with science centers lately. Was all progress this messy and hidden under the layers of history? Surely Lysenko hadn’t killed giraffes while trying to make their necks longer.

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Didn’t matter. This was one set of experiments he had to stop, and he had to stop them now.

The streets swirled around him, all the buildings with their same one or two stories of white stone pulled straight from the earth, their curved roofs, and nets hung at various points.

“Hey you,” he said, stopping a random gnoll in the middle of the street. “Where’s the science center?”

The gnoll looked at him reproachfully.

“The one where they cut up the humans.”

It backed up and spoke harshly. “You’ll do nothing for the kingdom going there drunk.”

“I’m not drunk!” Jerome said forcefully. “I’m tipsy. Just tell me.”

It pointed and Jerome followed the finger.

Why couldn’t these streets make more sense? When Jerome found a general store he walked in and demanded a map.

“A map?”

“Of this city. This area.”

The shopkeeper regarded him suspiciously. “Why would you want a map?”

“So I can find things!”

“At your level? A Gatherer? And you don’t know the city yet? You’re going to sell this to the outer tribes, aren’t you…”

“What? No! I just want—”

“And your skills… my god, you’re a killer!” The shopkeeper backed up in horror. “Help! Help!”

Jerome scrambled over the counter, trying to take down the shopkeeper. His legs knocked over several potions and trinkets on his way over. The alcohol and transformation robbed him of his usual agility, but he could still take down this fucking shopkeeper.

A back-fist to the face. Not the most elegant move, but he wasn’t in the mood to be elegant. It cracked the shopkeep’s jaw and made its head whip to the side. Only took off 23% of it HP though.

Shopkeep had no moves to respond with. Fucking useless thing. It tried to call for help but the broken jaw garbled its words, and Jerome hit it in the solar plexus to stop any further communication.

He wrapped his hand tight around the thing’s neck.

“Street out there is pretty busy,” said Jerome. “No one heard you, I bet. If they did, I’ll kill them. Now, you’re going to sell me a fucking map.”

Good. This was progress. Hurting gnolls made the pain recede. Any Exp was good Exp, right? If beating and killing gnolls was wrong, then the game shouldn’t have made that the way to level up.

The gnoll pointed weakly to a closet. Jerome got up and opened the closet, but there was nothing there.

The shopkeep had tricked him and was trying to crawl away on hands and knees.

Nope! Not happening. Jerome stomped it in the ass, knocking it down to its stomach.

“You asked for this, you fucking animal,” said Jerome. He put his foot at the base of the thing’s spine and used Recoil Burst, breaking its spine and taking out most of its remaining HP. “Try crawling away now.”

It tried, using its arms to drag itself, so Jerome repeated the trick further up the spine, killing it.

Then he ransacked the shop, looking everywhere for a map.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

No map. The stupid shopkeeper could’ve just said that.

He grabbed the money from the register: four gold and a bunch of silver and copper. Half a crystal.

Maybe Krystyna would find some of this useful. He dumped what he could into the Bag of Holding, including a second Bag of Holding.

Quest partially complete.

But no one saved.

No map to get him closer, and a dead gnoll on the floor, spine snapped in two places.

It reminded him of the human prisoners shattered against the wall.

The species were different, but they broke just the same.

Jerome collapsed on the floor and cried.