“What?” asked Artyom as all eyes stared at him in abject terror.

“You mean there are more rats, and they’re hidden?! What about all of these?” asked Sae, motioning towards the numerous giant rat corpses scattered across the floor.

“As I said, they’re just the guards,” replied Artyom. “You know rats aren’t normally fighters, right? They hide in the dark and steal food when nobody’s looking. That’s their thing.”

Sae opened his mouth to speak again, but Artyom interrupted.

“Yes, even really big ones like these.”

“So how are we supposed to get them if they’re all hiding?” asked Pireni.

“Now you’re thinking!” exclaimed Artyom. While the answer was obvious back on Earth, he didn’t want to just give it to the adventurers. Not every fight was about strength or strategy; sometimes you had to solve weird problems such as this.

“Well… why not use a trap?” Skeya asked meekly. “Or maybe some poison?”

“Oh hey, that’s a great idea!” replied Sae. “They’ll need to come out to eat, and they’ll get caught or sick when they do!”

“The only problem is we don’t have a [Rogue] in our party,” said Pireni with a groan. “We’ve never needed an expert in traps or poison before.”

“Let’s just stick to poison in that case,” said Artyom. “Let’s head upstairs and see if Ruba or anyone else around town has any.”

“I don’t think Ruba’s a [Rogue],” replied Pireni. “I doubt anyone in this village is either.”

“Don’t worry, we just need rat poison, not people poison. That’s not too hard to make.”

“What do you mean it’s not too hard?” asked Sae. “I thought you were a spellcaster, not a [Rogue].”

“…I am,” Artyom said while raising a questioning eyebrow. “Why do I need to be a [Rogue] to make poison?”

“Because nobody can make poison except for [Rogues],” said Pireni. “They’re the only ones who get the [Create Poison] Skill.”

“What? Has nobody here ever considered mixing together some arsenic, or even some cyanide? It would be pretty easy with all of the fruits being grown here,” thought Artyom. “Maybe it’s because this is a Fairytale world, and people don’t normally consider making something so nasty?”

The three looked at the man from Earth oddly as he spent a long moment in silence.

“In that case, ladies and gentleman… I do believe I shall teach you how to perform a very dirty deed, and for dirt cheap no less,” said Artyom, with a very mischievous grin spreading across his face.

The others looked slightly concerned.

----------------------------------------

What followed was a search for a good source of poison. While Artyom was no rodent exterminator, he knew how to kill. And there were plenty of toxins that would kill both humans and rats.

The first option was cyanide, which could be gathered and refined from fruit seeds, but the concentrations he’d worked with would be overkill. If even a drop somehow ended up in someone’s food, they likely wouldn’t survive long enough to make it to a healer. Artyom didn’t trust himself to dilute it enough to kill a rat without hurting a person, so he decided to skip that option.

Then how about fungal or bacterial toxins like botulinum toxin or anthrax? Artyom didn’t think it was wise to mess around with what was considered the deadliest neurotoxin and disease respectively back on Earth. Especially when the process of growing and refining them took so long and risked infecting people nearby.

That left one last option: nightshade.

When asked, none of the farmers in town even knew what the purple flower was. This was a Fairytale world after all, and the absence of such plants didn’t entirely surprise Artyom. It could also explain why brewing poisons without the Class was unheard of; the people here simply lacked inspiration!

But that didn’t worry Artyom. While explicitly poisonous plants might have been missing from the local ecosystem, the mundane crops that produced the toxin weren’t.

“Ruba, do you have any green potatoes?” asked Artyom, back at the inn’s common room.

“There are several in one of the hanging crates in the cellar, buried under the good potatoes. But you don’t want those, dear. They’ll make you sick!”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to eat them, I have something else in mind.”

The rest of the party watched Artyom in a combination of fear and awe as he pulled down the crate and picked out the greenest potatoes. It was fortunate that Ruba hadn’t bothered to toss these out yet, as Artyom was able to gather several especially verdant spuds.

“Fun fact: potatoes are part of the nightshade family, along with tomatoes and eggplants. And like the original nightshade, potatoes can produce the same toxin, which is what turns it green,” said Artyom, facing the adventurous trio. “It only forms when potatoes are exposed to sunlight however, so properly cultivated potatoes that stay underground should be fine. And even if you do eat the toxin, it’s incredibly weak so it takes a whole lot to affect a human being. The problem is that it stays inside the body for a long time and can build up. That’s why you’re supposed to avoid the green parts whenever you can.”

“So your plan is to get the rats sick?” asked Pireni. “I thought we were trying to kill them?”

“The church healers told me that people die if they become too sick. That’s why they always treat the sickest people first. Maybe that happens to rats too?” said Skeya.

“On the dot, Skeya!” exclaimed Artyom. “Oh my god these people are too innocent,” he thought to himself. “Even the kids I’ve taught fresh from Earth were more hardened than this!”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Artyom’s instincts told him to give these three a proper lesson in what to actually expect from the world of adventuring and combat, but he reigned that urge in. This was a Fairytale world after all. The chances of them getting into a fight where they risked actually dying, losing their friends, and living with knowledge of their weakness was low. If he did, Gus might take it as a show of pettiness and give him another week here.

He wouldn’t hesitate to show them if they were kids from Earth.

Artyom held out a particularly green potato in front of him, right above some barley and dried fruit that was placed in front of one of the rat burrows. He cast the same purging spell he used on himself earlier on the potato, and the green began to leach out into a thin liquid that dripped down onto the bait.

“That’s the first of the burrows, let’s do the same for the others.”

“There are others?” asked Sae, trying his best to scan the cellar, which was only growing darker as the day turned into afternoon. “How can you tell?”

“Like this: Detect Life.” As Artyom cast the spell, magical energy flowed into his eyes and lit up his vision with several blue glows. Every living creature within a large radius, in this case animals, appeared to him even if they were behind cover. While the three adventurers and everyone else in the inn were highlighted, so too were numerous smaller figures behind the many walls of the cellar.

“Oh, this is bad. I count several nests though, let me start throwing down more of these food traps.”

Doing so didn’t take too long, and soon the entire basement was primed with poison.

“Now for one last step,” said Artyom as he gathered his magic and sent it out as a wave into each of the four walls. “Vulnerability to Poison, Painless Suffering.”

“What do those spells do?” asked Pireni.

“The first one magically makes toxins more effective against the target, and the second keeps the rats from realizing they’ve been poisoned, so their brethren won’t be able to figure out that it was our trap that’s killing them.”

A dark memory surfaced in Artyom’s mind. “Not to mention that it’s more merciful if they don’t have to suffer. They deserve that, even if they’re just rats. They’re just trying to survive, they don’t realize what they’re doing is hurting others.”

The three silently nodded.

“And that, my friends, is how to take care of a rat problem,” concluded Artyom.

“I guess that settles it, then,” said Sae. “You can be our new [Rogue]!”

“Didn’t I already tell you I’m a spellcaster?”

“You can be whatever you want, Artyom, just so long as it’s on our team!” exclaimed Pireni. “And what about you Skeya? Changes to the party have to be unanimous, so no pressure!”

Skeya looked over Artyom once more with large eyes.

He gave her a warm smile in response.

After a few seconds, she nodded. “I want Artyom to join the team.”

“So it’s settled then, welcome to the team, Artyom!” said Sae. “We can go over all of our rules and how we do things in the morning. In the meantime, let’s head up and celebrate!”

“But first, lunch!” said Pireni. “Or is it dinner? It’s getting pretty late and we skipped our last meal because of you, Artyom.”

“Hey, it’s not that late. That took like, an hour and a half?” asked Artyom.

“The extra sparkle we drank was really filling though, so I don’t mind,” said Skeya.

“Of course you don’t,” said Pireni with a wink and a nudge to the girl’s shoulder. “But Artyom’s still going to pay for our meals to make it up to us.”

“Shouldn’t the rest of the team be treating the new members, and not the other way around?” replied Artyom, as he and the others began climbing the stairs. “But since I’m such a nice guy, I’ll cover the booze.”

“I guess that explains why you’re so weird,” said Pireni. “It’s because you’re a nobleman! We’re still too new to adventuring to afford the stuff!”

Artyom raised his eyebrows at his accidental hiccup, but quickly returned to a neutral expression. He doubted anyone would have seen his reaction in the darkness, but still replied. “Oh no, I’m not a noble. I just read somewhere that this was just how the big adventurers celebrate, is all.”

He wanted to come off as their peers, not their betters. Any kind of perceived arrogance would hurt his ability to get advice across, and make training them even harder.

“If you say so, lord spellcaster Artyom,” said Sae with a cheeky grin.

“But really, why is the stuff so expensive?” asked the man from Earth out of genuine curiosity.

“I was told alcohol is really hard to ferment,” began Skeya. “My church uses it in some rituals, so the priests always complained about the price. Apparently fermenting juice almost always ends up as sparkle instead, unless you’re a high level [Brewer]. They get a Skill that lets you make alcohol instead.”

“Skeya, if we wanted a sermon about the church, we’d go there ourselves,” whined Sae, bored at the new information.

Skeya looked dejected in response.

“I thought it was pretty interesting,” said Artyom. “No wonder it’s so expensive, if it takes that much training to be able to make the stuff.”

Skeya’s eyes brightened at his response, and her expression began to glow, even down in the dark basement.

It didn’t take much long after for the group to reach the ground floor and give Ruba the good news: the rat problem should be solved for good. She excitedly handed over the reward to Sae; several silver coins and a few bottles of cherry sparkle.

“And you’re sure the problem is solved permanently?” asked Ruba, slightly incredulous at their statement. “Either way, not having to deal with the rats for a few more weeks is worth the price, but are they really gone for good?”

“According to Artyom here, they should be!” said Pireni. “So let’s party!”

And with that, after Sae had a chance to clean off his sword and patch up the bite mark in his pants, the four party members gathered at the bar for dinner. They were arranged in a similar order from before, with Artyom sitting between Pireni and Skeya.

They all chatted over some of their hard won cherry sparkle and grilled steaks that Ruba had prepared in celebration. Sae was describing his heroic fight against the rats, how he took on an entire swarm of them single handedly. Pireni of course corrected him whenever his boasts edged into the realm of fiction, and Skeya giggled at their resulting bickering. Artyom simply sat back and enjoyed the meal and company.

It still stung how he wasn’t in the field and making a difference, but moments like these reminded Artyom of the good times when he was first summoned. Sitting among friends, telling stories over drinks, and making the most of life. Not to mention the barley stew ended up being delicious! Artyom decided his gamble was worth it, and that he really lucked out.

Maybe Sofia was right about this really being a vacation?

The celebration continued late into the night, which meant everyone was getting ready for bed by nine o’ clock. It might’ve been a celebration, but everyone was strict about adhering to a proper bedtime. Artyom woke up early that morning anyway, so he welcomed the chance to sleep.

“I’m totally going to level up tonight!” exclaimed Sae. “I wonder if I’ll get a new Skill?”

“I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely going to get an accuracy Skill tonight!” replied Pireni.

“I hope the Goddess blesses me with a level too,” said Skeya.

By the sounds of it, the leveling System of this world only granted level ups at night time, likely when the leveler fell asleep. Different Systems did it differently, and this was a relatively common quirk.

“Well hopefully I’ll be getting one too,” said Artyom. “If everything I did today doesn’t give me a level, I don’t know what will.”

The four teammates headed to their rooms for the night. With them being the only travelers currently passing through Freeacres, each of them had their own suite. It was still quite small however, and would not have been able to fit more than a single person anyway.

As every member of the party fell asleep, they heard a chime and the words “level up!” ring in their minds. The sound filled them with a feeling of happiness and pride that brought them better dreams.

That is, except one.

As Artyom lay in bed, ready for sleep to take him after such a long day, his phone rang.