I slowly awoke to the sound of the hustle and bustle of Lophan wafting in through the open window. Proper consciousness returned to me in waves and I felt great, snuggled into my sheets as I was, even if they were drenched in mucus and probably needed to be burned after I got up. I noticed that I’d shaken off the year-long tiredness that I’d grown so accustomed to that I forgot about it. The only thing missing from this perfect morning was a good and proper stretch to get the blood flowing.
Well, my blood was probably some weird void substance at this point, and I wasn’t even sure if stretching helped voidlings to get the liquid flowing, but I did it anyway. This, of course, involved stretching several pairs of tentacles to their utmost, which caused my cozy blanket to fall off the bed. I didn’t let this deter me from just how refreshed I was feeling, though. I looked around my little room, the red sun outside bathing everything in a reddish hue as I lazily psyched myself up to get out of bed. I don’t think I’ve ever slept as well as I did this time, nor had I woken up as refreshed.
I basked a bit in the morning sun that just so happened to hit the window at just the right angle to hit me in my bed, until I heard a few sounds from the floor below, reminding me that I wasn’t alone in this house. I remembered being outside the city with Redax and Andrius to test out some spell modification before the no-sleep-for-a-year drink that Tim gave me finally wore off. They must have brought me back here after I fell asleep on them. I idly wondered how long I’d been asleep for, before once again thinking that I should really, really thank Tim for what he did for me.
It might have been relatively easy for him to make that drink, but had he not done so, I’d most definitely have been eaten and/or absorbed by some other ambitious voidling. After shaking off the last vestiges of sleep I decided to put my money where my mouth was and attempted to use my void crown privileges to enter the void. The system, of course, reminded me that all kinds of teleportation off-planet or in between layers was still prohibited. I’d really hoped that the restriction had been lifted while I slept, but it looked like my heartfelt thanks needed to wait for a bit longer.
With a slightly annoyed sigh, I hopped out of bed, carefully balling up the soaked blanket and throwing it back on the bed. With how much mucus these two things had sticking to them, they’d essentially become a poisonous artifact that could kill most people on contact. I’d worry what about to do about that later, but for now, it was time to check in with my friends and caretakers and get some updates on what happened while I was asleep.
And also eat something, as I felt like I hadn’t eaten for weeks.
Having “destroyed” an entire bed and some sheets, I once again felt a pang of guilt at my mucus situation and decided to try something. Instead of either crawling around or hopping along with my leg tentacles, I lifted myself off the ground and extended my arm tentacles to help with stabilizing. The result was me suspended about half a meter off the ground, looking like some fucked up void spider. Terrifying thoughts aside, I attempted to walk forward like this, and it actually kind of worked. It was a lot slower than my usual hopping and it probably looked like it would give children nightmares, but as long as I was inside and didn’t need to go anywhere fast, it’d probably work out.
I idly wondered why I hadn’t thought about doing this before and eventually blamed my foggy, tired brain. Now that the drink had worn off, I finally realized just how tired I’d felt over the last year, and how it probably hadn’t done my critical thinking any favors. Little sleep as I needed with my amazingly strong body, sleeping was still nice and necessary to keep myself in peak condition.
Awake, and ready to face the day, I encountered my first obstacle. Granted, it was a minor one, but it took some finagling with my balance to free up one of my arms to open the door. With the slight inconvenience gone, I exited my room, turned, and was almost immediately confronted with the stairs. Right, going down the stairs might be a bit of a challenge with my newly discovered method of locomotion, but I felt ready to challenge even this. I carefully put one limb in front of the other, slowly realizing just how difficult it was going down some stairs with four limbs instead of two.
My center of mass was constantly too far forward and threatening to send me tumbling down until I realized I could simply adjust the length of my tentacles to readjust my center of mass to a proper position. Yeah, suck it creatures with fixed-length limbs!
“Hey there sleepyhead, finally up?” I heard the teasing voice of Orbos, seeing him standing in the doorframe of the kitchen. “By the way, love that you’re finally leaning into the whole “every children’s and adult’s nightmare” shtick, really suits you.”
“I’m just trying something new in an attempt to not get mucus everywhere after waking up in what only can be described as a chemical exclusion zone by now,” I replied, finally making it down to the stairs. “How long was I asleep?”
“A tad more than a month,” Orbos gestured toward the table. “I’m actually making lunch, if you want some, you should grab a seat. The others should be back any minute now.”
“Thanks, I’m quite literally starving… I think,” the promise of food was enough for me to quickly sit down, retracting my tentacles as I relaxed on the chair. “Did I miss anything important?”
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“Well, the meetings you’d set up with the experts came and went,” Orbos started explaining, raising his voice as he went back into the kitchen to cook. “They were very understanding about your circumstances and said they’d love to reschedule at your earliest convenience. Aside from that, same old, same old.”
“Damn, I was actually looking forward to those meetings,” I cursed. “Still, a month is quite a long time to spend sleeping. I’m full of energy and I feel like I need to get out there and knock out a few quests now that I’m awake, catch up on lost time, you know?”
“For sure, I’m certain the others will be more than happy to help you get started on that,” Orbos called over the suspiciously loud noises he was making in the kitchen. “Townsfolk have been getting kind of antsy when you suddenly stopped doing quests around here. Has led to some awkward rumors going around, actually. Don’t mind them if you hear any.”
“I’ll try?” I wondered just what kinds of weird rumors were floating around out there when the door opened and Nimma and Andrius walked in. “Hey guys, long time no see.”
“Oh trust me, we’ve seen you a lot while you were asleep,” Andrius rebutted. “We tried changing your sheets occasionally, but we gave up when Orbos almost died from poisoning.”
“Don’t listen to him, Orbos’ life was only slightly in danger,” Nimma corrected, and somehow I didn’t believe her. “It’s good to see you awake again, though. Lophan has been asking questions about when you’ll wake up.”
“Not sure why he’s so stressed about the whole situation, not like there’s any time limit on the whole quest thing,” Andrius said as he sat down at the table. “If he wanted regular updates instead of anxiously asking every time you visit his office, he could’ve just asked Redax to give him regular reports, dude was watching you sleep almost every day.”
“I did no such thing,” I jumped a little as Redax replied, having sat down at the table at some point without me noticing. Our little game was apparently back on already, and he got one over me. “I only did some light guarding duty every now and again, you can never know what could happen.”
“Aww, you like me,” I lightly teased in an attempt to cover up my failure to notice him by embarrassing him. “That’s so sweet, thank you.”
“He does, which is weird since he usually doesn’t connect to people,” Orbos slid into the conversation, bringing out several pots and pans with food. “He’ll never admit it, though.”
Redax earned himself some pointed looks, but he played it off well. Orbos put the food on the table, pulling ladles, plates, cutlery, glasses, and drinks out of his inventory to finish setting the table in the most ingenious use of the inventory system I’d ever seen. I hadn’t really thought about the practical uses of the inventory up until now, only using it to store dead monsters and the occasional useful things. Maybe I should look into putting more stuff in there. It was, after all, allegedly bottomless.
“How’d you sleep, by the way?” Nimma asked as we started filling our plates with food.
“Dreamlessly as far as I can tell,” I replied, shoveling some slop onto my plate that I couldn’t quite identify. “Far as I’m concerned, I fell asleep outside the city, and the next moment I woke up in my bed.”
“Nice,” Andrius replied. “We somewhat worried about what kind of fucked up sleep a potion like that could induce. Now, I’m not implying that your friend Tim is bad at what he does, but a potion like that could have any number of bad side effects once the positive effect runs out. That’s just potions 101.”
“True, I guess,” I started shoveling food down the gullet with reckless abandon. I couldn’t taste it anyway, so it didn’t really matter what went in there. Not sure how gluttony dealt with the whole “keeping me full of nutrients” thing while it sequestered the food off to wherever it went to, but I wasn’t about to complain. “I’d have taken a month of suffering over being shredded to bits by an angry mob of voidlings any day, though.”
“I’m not entirely certain I’d take that deal,” Orbos replied munching on a mouth full of odd-looking vegetables. “At least the voidling thing would be over quickly. Not a big fan of excruciating pain. Especially not of the prolonged kind.”
“I do like being alive,” Andrius stepped in. “But I’d be second-guessing if you told me about the suffering.”
“Can we stop talking about things that none of us will ever experience,” Nimma stepped in. “I’m trying to eat here and talking about torture isn’t exactly what I’d like to converse about while doing so.”
“We could talk about the fact that I’m feeling more energized than ever and would really like to go out there and get this whole questing thing done,” I suggested.
“Now that’s something I’d love to talk about,” Nimma said. “We’ll actually have to go around looking for some new quests since most of the ones we had expired while you were asleep, but we could probably get going by tomorrow.”
“I’d love to,” I said while throwing more food down the gullet. It was very convenient that the void language was spoken through mana, so having stuff in my mouth didn’t hinder my speaking. “Just five more individual-tier quests and I’ll be ready to tackle some of them village-tier quests. Looking forward to doing something a bit more challenging.”
“And I’m sure the village heads are looking forward to reaping the rewards from you doing them just as much,” Orbos chuckled.
We talked a bit more while eating, making plans for the next couple of days and getting back in the swing of things. Before long, lunch was over and we split up to do our things. For me, that meant I had to contain my newfound energy for a bit longer than I liked, which ended up in a city-wide game of hide and seek with Redax. It took about a week, but at the end of it, I had completed the last five quests I needed and finally hit level twenty. With my level maxed out and the basic requirements for evolution met, it was finally time to tackle the bonus objectives of this floor.
Time to do my first village quest!