Chapter 7: You owe me

Upon leaving the dungeon the party achieved quest completion as well as an increase to level 4 with the usual timed countdown. This time without hesitation Eric immediately opened up his character screen, seeing a menu for perks he selected it and was met with a barrage of thousands to choose from (6752 to be precise, and no, I am not going to write out a comprehensive list so you can see what they all are). He scrolled through a series of options ranging from the mundane to out right ridiculous, one included gaining a tail he could equip with a weapon to automatically fend off attackers from behind. After scrolling through several perks related to magical skills he didn’t have and had no intention of obtaining he started scrolling back to try and find the tail perk, but once again, he ran out of time.

“Wow, you are bad at this, once again you have ran out of time and have defaulted to option 2, maybe try being a little less indecisive? Luck +1, Strength +2, Resilience +2. Perk: Lucky Rank 1, minor chance based on luck stat to obtain a lucky outcome. Ability: Shockwave Rank 1, slam your weapon into the ground creating a shockwave to knock your enemies back. Stamina cost: 10.”

“Dammit!”

The rest of the party looked over at him, surprise on their faces

“What?” Uruk replied

“Keep running out of time while leveling up, 1 minute isn’t anywhere near enough time to browse through thousands of options to pick the right one”

“Just set up some filters, narrow it down to around 4 or 5 options, you know, like the tutorial told you?”

“My tutorial never mentioned anything about filters”

There was a sudden puff of smoke in the middle of the party, once it cleared Limbo was stood in front of him.

“Checking….. Oh dear, looks like your tutorial skipped that part, now how can we fix this?”

Limbo stood in front of Eric, his reaper like form posing an intimidating figure, the rest of the party stood behind him, seemingly frozen in time. Eric looked at the world around him and couldn’t help but notice that everything around him seemed to be frozen in time, Limbo just stood there his eyeless sockets of impenetrable darkness staring right at him. Then snapping his bony fingers with a loud crack a massive wheel reaching roughly the height of a 6 story flat appeared behind him floating in the air.

“As an apology I will give you a free spin of the wheel of potential fortune where the top prize is a +30 to all stats.”

Eric looked up at the wheel which was sectioned off into small segments, each segment had a listed prize on it. Large as it was he couldn’t read all the available prizes, but of the ones he could see some were useless like an endless supply of rat teeth, others were seemingly powerful perks that could give him a major advantage in the game. The “prizes” that caught his eye however were the debilitating ones, ranging from permanently crippled legs to instant death.

“Hold on a minute” he said waving his hand in front of him.

“What kind of compensation is being offered a chance at being instantly killed or permanently crippled?”

Limbo shook his head and sighed at his response

“Well this is the wheel of potential fortune, not the wheel of guaranteed fortune. Why focus only on the negative? Just think about the +30 to all stats and the great advantage that would give you..”

“No, I don’t accept this as compensation, the risk is too great”

Limbo sighed again while scraping his bony hand down his skeletal face producing an eerie grinding noise.

“Fine, I will take out all the deadly and debilitating prizes, but I am leaving in the useless ones… Deal?”

“Deal”

Limbo snapped his fingers and the massive wheel was replaced with a smaller one, instead of being the size of a 6 story building, it was now roughly the scale of a medium sized bungalow. He then gestured towards a handle sticking out of the now less massive wheel. He grabbed the handle and gave it the best push he could, it slowly crawled round looking like it was about to stop but suddenly started to pick up speed. Spinning faster and faster it floated into the air above his head and a series of colourful lights started dancing along it surface. Eric found himself entranced by the vision seemingly forever when it abruptly stopped and his prize was announced.

“Congratulations you have received an unusual perk: Bird box beard Rank 1, gain a big bushy beard to house your very own randomly selected bird companion.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

There was a short drum roll followed by another announcement.

“Congratulations, you have obtained a new companion….Loot bird, this amazing bird will automatically loot the corpses of anything you kill adding the items to your inventory. It has the scavenger ability which is ranked according to the rank of its bird box. Perk: Scavenger Rank 1, luck based chance to find extra useful items while looting defeated enemies.”

After reading the announcement limbo vanished and the world around him started to move again, seemingly unaware of what had just happened Astrid started explaining to Eric how to use the filter system in his menu. He tried to listen but was distracted by the sudden itching on his face, he went to scratch it when a mass of hair sprouted from his chin jaw and neck. Astrid stopped her explanation as the party stood and stared at the thick bushy beard that now hung from his face drooping over the chest of his armor. There was a chirping sound, then a small black bird flew out from the beard before perching itself on Eric’s shoulder.

“Select a name for your new companion”

“A name?….Maggie?”

The bird let out a short *chirp* before flying round his head and diving into his beard, he grabbed hold of his with his hand and squeezed it lightly, there was no resistance, weird, he thought to himself.

“Cute bird, where did you get it?”

“Yeah, what the hell is going on?”

“Will it be useful to the group?”

Annie, Uruk and Astrid inquired while Fred just stood quietly waiting leaning on his staff. Eric then gave a brief explanation of what had happened before asking Astrid to go through the filters again, turns out there is a simple option to show only the recommended top 1-10 of each category based on your party role, you could also set your stats to auto assign based on the same thing. Eric decided to forgo the auto stats and opted to be shown the top 3 perks, spells / abilities only so he could be given a reasonable amount of time to read through each one before making a decision.

“Soooo, what now?” Annie asked

Everyone looked towards Eric who had absolutely no clue what to do next, he shifted uncomfortably for a second before a familiar voice started shouting at him.

“Hey, I remember you, your the guy who tried to rob me, you owe me a favor”.

He turned to see a cranky looking old lady running down the street towards him with a massive book tucked under her arm. When she got to him she thrust the book towards into his arms.

“Take this, keep it safe, don’t let anyone take it. Or see it they will kill you if they know you have it.”

Before he could respond the old lady ran off, a group of guards came running down the street weapons drawn shouting.

“Stop her”

Not knowing what else to do Eric tucked the book into his inventory, the guards approached the party.

“Did you see where she went?”

Before anyone could answer a young pretty girl with long leaf green hair and long pointed ears came running towards the guards, tears were streaming down her face.

“Please help, the elf eater is back and he is devouring my village”

“Do I look like and elf?” the guard snapped back at her

She took in a sharp breath and stepped back eyes wide as she looked at him shaking her head.

“Not my problem then is it?”

He turned to the party.

“You there did you see which way that old lady went?”

“No, sorry”

After responding to the guard Eric turned to look back at the crying elf who seemed visibly shaken by the guards response.

“Dammit, right split up men, don’t let her get away with that book”.

The guards charged off in various different directions while Eric continued to stare at the elf who noticed him looking at her, her eyes widened, a tiny spark of hope seeming to flicker within them.

“You are players aren’t you?”

She moved towards Eric tightly grabbing his hand.

“Will you please help me? My people, my family are dying”.

“Quest received: The elf eater has struck and is devouring a nearby elven village, will you help this young lady save whoever is left? Or will you take comfort in the fact that you are not an elf either and so it isn’t really your problem? Accept yes / no?”

Annie stepped forward without hesitation

“Of course we will, wont we guys?”

“Yeah sure, whatever, so long as I get to fight something”

“I will follow your directive Eric Sir”

Fred simply nodded

“If we can help we should, I will try to keep up.”

Eric who hadn’t taken his eyes off the elf simply said

“Of course we will, where is this village of yours?”

“Quest accepted.”