We quickly hightailed it back down the hallway towards our little hideout and Isabella opened the door for me and I flopped the goblin prisoner down across the couch. It was still out cold and showed no sign of recovering immediately, so I laid the short sword up on the kitchen table and quickly told Isabella, “I’ll be right back!”
Rapidly, I rushed back out the door and back up the hallway. I knew from previous personal experience that Jello-Muncher would take about half an hour or so to consume a corpse, and that it didn’t move much in that period of feeding, but I didn’t know if it’d consume one at a time or roll over the whole group of them. We might have half an hour, or we might have a few hours before it started down towards us, but either way I wanted to grab up some of the stuff from the janitor’s closet before there was any chance it could get ransacked.
I don’t know if goblins liked duct tape, or if they even had a clue what it was, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I grabbed up the whole case of tape, laid the stack of painter’s masks on top of it, threw the extra pair of coveralls over my shoulder along with the dress, and then stacked as many rolls of small wire as I could into and on top of the box and I carried them back to the lounge.
Isabella was sitting out in the hallway cross-legged, staring out into empty space while doing her mumbo jumbo chant which signified she was using some sort of magic, so I left her be for now and carried everything inside and just stacked it over in the far corner. I took a moment to look the goblin over, and was pleasantly satisfied to see that Izzy had tied it up and gagged it with the strips of torn dress that had been used to wrap the rat meat in the bottom of the fridge earlier.
Testing the knots, they seemed as if they’d hold to me, so I left the little guy alone and dashed back out and up the hallway one more time. I grabbed up a few cans of paint thinner this time; that stuff might be useful, and even if I didn’t have a use for it currently, I didn’t want the goblins to spill it out and somehow light it and catch the school on fire.
The showers and all still worked from all the water stored in the water tower, but that doesn’t mean the sprinklers would. And, even if they did work, they’d use up a lot of the water up there, and who knew how much water was left. I doubt the towers were being refilled any from the town system anymore. We just had what the towers contained, and that was it.
After grabbing the cans of paint thinner, I stacked then on top of a couple boxes of the maxi pads and tampons and I hefted all those up in my arms and carried them back to the lounge. I was careful to make certain that I shut the janitor’s door by bumping my butt into it and pushing it shut with my ass until I heard that distinct click of the door latching.
With enough boxes in my arms that I could barely see over them, I waddled back to the lounge and inside to drop them all in that same corner with the last load. I was debating making another trip to try and clear out everything else that looked good in there, but Isabella put a hand on my arm to stop me. She looked quite a bit paler than usual, and her eyes had a strained, weak look in them.
“Drake, can I feed from you?” It almost looked as if she was going to cry for some reason.
“Do you have to right now?” I frowned. If the slime had finished and was going back the way it was, or if the goblins had found a way around it, I was needed to fight and to do that I needed to be healthy.
“Please.” There was a small drop of water that slowly ran down her cheek. “ I think it’ll be the best thing for us in the long run, but I’ll need a lot of energy.”
“Then, do it.” How could I say no to something like that? I trusted her. If she thought it was for the best, I was just going to put my faith in the fact that it probably was.
Slowly, she wiped a tear from her eyes and then leaned up and wrapped her arms around me. The familiar ache of her stealing my life was slowly burning into my back. As I watched my health go lower, I couldn’t help but be impressed by how much she’d improved her life draining ability. It was much quicker than it had been before. Instead of slowly draining me of a single point of life every minute or so, it was closer to every five or six seconds now. But, from where my physical endurance had increased, the pain really wasn’t any worse than before. In fact, it might even be slightly less painful.
Izzy buried her head in my chest and I heard her snuffle. “Drake.” Her voice was so light that I could barely hear it. “Can… Can I kill you?”
“Wuh?” Did I just hear what I thought I heard?
“You… you told me you’d be back after just an hour.” Her voice was so faint my ears almost hurt as bad from straining to hear her, as my back did from her draining my life. “It’ll take you hours to get your health back up fully, and I’ll probably need to recharge at least once more before I’m finished.”
What the hell?! Didn’t I explain to her the torment that I had to go through to die and be reborn? About how much I hated it and never wanted to experience it again?
Feeling me tense up, Isabella shook her head and whispered. “No. You’re right. Nobody should ask or expect anything like that. I’m sorry for even asking. I’ll just need to find another way.”
I just stood there for several moments, watching my health steadily drain away, before finally I spoke. “I trust you. You wouldn’t ask if you didn’t think it for the best. I just don’t like the ideal of not being here to protect you if those goblins happen to come this way and find you. You know how I feel about dying, so you wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t for a good reason. “ Damn it, I hated this, but sometimes a man just has to be a man. If she didn’t have energy to defend herself, then we’d be at half-fighting power anyway. If a swarm of those beasts came trying to pour through the room all at once, we’d need all the firepower we could muster.
Isabella leaned against me and trembled. The pain growing in my back stopped, and I knew she either had stopped her magic or had become too emotional to continue. From the way she was sobbing, I was betting the second.
Smack! I popped her hard across the bottom of her buttocks. “There’s no time for that. Cry for me after I’m dead, but get it over with for now. The quicker I’m gone, the quicker I can return.” She slowly nodded and then rubbed her face left and right against my coveralls. Did she just wipe her nose on me?
“I’ll.. I’ll make it up to you.” The pain of her stealing my life was returning to my back and shoulders as she barely whispered. “I’ll do something… anything to make it up to you!”
“Ha!” I couldn’t help but put on a front and bark a fake laugh. “You’d do that already.” A time like this is when it’s time for a man to be a man (or at least pretend he’s one), and comfort the girl.
“Somehow. I’ll think of something.” She sounded determined to think of something, and that kind of worried me. With the way she was chasing after my ‘seed of life’ already, I wasn’t certain I wanted to just leave it hanging with a vague something.
My life was getting down into the single digits, and I only had about a minute remaining. “Get a hair cut,” I told her.
“Huuh?” For once I got to confuse her! It might take having to die for me to do it, but it was worth it. She was always confusing me, and it felt nice to turn the tables on her for a change.
“Yeah. A hair cut for a life. It’s been hiding some of the parts I like to see, as long as it is, so you’ll have to cut it. I imagine it took years to grow as long as it is, so you’ll be giving up something big and important as well. It seems like a fair trade to me.” And besides, the thought of her coming up with her own ‘something special’ actually kind of scared me. At least like this, she could feel like it was a fair trade.
“De.. Deal,” were the last words I heard as my body crumpled to the ground and I died.
DING!
You have been slain!
DING!
Congratulations, you have achieved level 9!
You gain 20 HP, 8 MP, 4 SP!
Due to nefarious actions, you lose 1 SP!
You have been awarded 50 CP!
DING!
Congratulations, your party has slain its first Human!
You have unlocked the Murderer achievement.
Your party gains 100 Infamy!
Your SP decreases by 100%
You SPR decreases by 1!
Your total Human kills is: 1
You need 9 more kills to unlock the Mass Murderer achievement.
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What the hell? I became a murderer and leveled up by dying?!
As my body slumped down to the ground, so did Isabella. She laid her head against my corpse’s chest, and Cloudme could watch her just breakdown and sob. She kept repeating, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK. I’ll be back.” It’s funny. She’d killed me, and I was the one who was trying to comfort her. It’s too bad no one could hear Cloudme. Or could they?
“Hey Izzy, can you hear me now?” God. I sounded like the guy from the old world who used to do all those stupid phone commercials.
“Drake?!”
“Hey! What do you know! Party chat still works, even while dead. I can get used to this.” It was shocking, but she could hear Cloudme with the party chat. Hot damn! It doesn’t look like I have to be in the nothingness alone anymore, if my body is destroyed.
“Does… does it hurt?” She asked me.
“Nah. As long as you don’t go attacking my corpse or anything, it’s just a odd dull feeling. I can tell it’s there, but it’s not being chewed on or messed with, so this part isn’t so bad. It’s the rebirth process that I hate with a passion.” Maybe being honest with her would help her calm down a bit. “Besides, didn’t you need that energy for something? Don’t let my death be in vain. I don’t want to be stuck here just hovering while the goblins come and kill you or something.”
“You… You’re right. There is something I need to finish up with my magic.” She was starting to sit back up, and it looked like she was trying hard to compose herself. “But first, there’s something else I need to do.”
Slowly, she got up and wiped her face into her arm, and then she went over to the kitchen counter and picked up one of the long butcher knives there. With one hand, she pulled her hair together into one tight bunch, and then she hacked at it with the knife. It took her several slices, but when she was finished, she just let her hair fall down to the floor at her feet.
Cloudme was so shocked, that I almost flipped upside down as a spirit! I guess even hovering ghost people can fall over when shocked enough. I was thinking she might cut her hair a little closer to the butt, so I could stare at the curve of her hinny better, but she hacked it off right at the shoulders. And it wasn’t one of those fancy-smancy, rich girl, short styles. It was a jagged mess, with strands of all different length sticking out at wild angles.
“Is that good enough? It doesn’t hide anything now does it? Or should I just shave it clean?”
Oh my God! She sounded serious! Who the heck wanted to see that beautiful silver-chome hair all gone?! “It’s fine! It’s fine,” I assured her!
Slowly she nodded and then sat down cross-legged near my corpse.
“Hey Izzy. Can you grab my stuff off that body?” I had to ask, even if it might be hard for her. “If I’d been thinking, I would’ve stripped myself before dying. But, you were hugging me and I didn’t really know what to say, and I guess I just didn’t think about it.”
“Just don’t let my stuff all burn up again. It’s hard to find clothes in this new world, at least inside this part of the school it is. Not a lot of folks carried extra clothes to these classes, and anything a person was wearing like that is now beyond anything I’d even think about putting on.”
Slowly she nodded and then starting tugging the things on my body off. It was difficult for her to move and tug my corpse, but somehow she managed and then she piled everything over onto the second couch. After that, she drug the mop bucket into the bathroom and a few moments later she came out with it full of water. I guess she was going to make certain that the flames of my rebirth didn’t spread far, as she dumped the water all over my naked corpse and the floor around it. Then she went to get another bucket.
“Umm.. I just have to ask.” I was too curious not too. “Are you a murderer now, also?”
She stumbled and almost spilled the mop bucket coming out of the bathroom, but then she nodded. “I am. What do you mean also? Who have you murdered?” She asked, as she finished pulling the bucket closer.
“Myself apparently, just then.” I thought with a laugh. “It was a party kill. Apparently I can get experience from you killing me. I guess we can call it a booby award, but the achievement for becoming a murder gave me another level. I’m level nine now!”
“I’m level four now,” she told me. “Between the party experience which you gained for picking up the Champion’s Tail-Spike, and the goblin’s you’ve killed, and the reward for gaining the ‘Murderer’ achievement, I’m level four. I became level one with the spike you looted, level two during the goblin fight, and gained two levels for killing you.”
“I’ve got to figure out where to put my points soon, but I need to finish something up first,” she said as she sat down cross-legged close, but not too close as to be burnt, to my corpse. Soon she was fiddling with something in her hands once more, and it looked to me like she was playing with a bunch of thumbtacks.
After a bit, I saw a glow of magic fade into the thumbtacks and then she went and opened the door and was gone outside. Cloudme couldn’t see her, so I watched her image in the party window. It looked like she was standing on her tippy toes and stretching with her arm above her head in front of her, and then it looked like she was messing with something around waist height, and finally she squatted down and messed with something in front of her at around ankle height. Finally, she came back in, shut the door behind herself, and locked it.
“What was all that about?” I thought.
“I was just hiding the door.” Normally I’d expect her to giggle or something here, but she just went over and flopped back in the chair. My chair! That was the one I always sat in! To be honest, I was feeling a little sulky, until she turned, leaned, and buried her head in the leather and sniffed it. I was beginning to wonder if I really smelled that bad. Did I stink up the thing so much that my stench lingered? While doubting my own cleanliness, I felt the first burn of the incoming rebirth.
I gritted my teeth, and my Spiritual Endurance arose by a point, and my body erupted and started to consume itself in fire once more. Isabella hopped up and rushed over the the sink and grabbed a cup of water and started splashing cupfuls of water from the mop bucket around, to make certain the flames didn’t spread any further than where I laid. In the end, she managed to keep the fire from doing any more than burning out and destroying a section of the carpet where my body had been.
Since I hadn’t tried to float anywhere, when the rebirth process started, the flames flared up a second time at the same spot. I’d considered trying to move to stand in the bathtub or something, but I only had an hour as Cloudme from this death, and I didn’t want to make it only partway somewhere and then start two separate fires that we had to deal with.
As soon as the second flames died out, and I was standing there naked and alive once more, Isabella was in my arms. Her head was buried deep into my chest, and she almost knocked me over she ran into me so hard. Slowly I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight against me as well. Gently I ran my hands up and down her bare back, and already I was missing the feel of her long hair between my fingers, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. She’d been through enough already.
I don’t know how long I held her like that, but it felt like forever, and it probably would’ve been even longer, if the goblin on the couch wouldn’t’ve started moving and wiggling as it was finally gaining consciousness.
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