Chapter 8: Rude Awakening

Sleep is peaceful. When sleeping, she can forget about all her worries. She doesn’t have to worry about processing life’s constant influx of new information, instead simply letting the sounds of a burbling stream flow in through one ear and out the other. She doesn’t have to worry about selling her goods, or supporting herself, or finding her father, or improving her magic, or anything. She can relax, in a state of perfect bliss.

She can relax, for the next… oh, 5 seconds or so?

*SPLASH*

“Ah! Cold!”

Gloria, finding her face drenched with frigid water, bolts upright from her lying-down position and hits her head on her knees. The tall grass of the Paxdom Fields tickles her nose as she does so. Then, she rubs her head as she tries to figure out what’s going on— until a second voice chimes in.

“Wow, you touched your head to your knees so smoothly! You’re pretty flexible, eh?”

Gloria, confused but rendered slightly bashful by the praise, faintly smiles and nods.

“Thank you. Yes, I strive to stretch fairly regularly and— wait… huh??”

Her brain finally catches up with her mouth, and she flops backward in surprise. Because crouching in front of her, holding a bucket— her bucket— of water is none other than a familiar, scrawny, nearly-naked boy. ‘No,’ she thinks. Not a boy, but a—

“PHANTOM! G- GET AWAY!!”

After making the initial panicked shriek, Gloria, under her breath, begins a short incantation; in response, the boy just drops her wooden bucket and watches curiously. After around five or six seconds, however, he backs up with a look of horror on his face. Because the end of Gloria’s incantation, the tone of which has gone from quiet to shrill, is:

“By the blessing of the wind… Scythe!”

“Huh? Wh- Woah, WAIT—”

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“You really didn’t have to try and bisect me, eh? Wind magic is no joke, you know?”

“Well, sir, waking me up with cold water was out of line! Especially after moving me to an unknown location! How do you think I felt, waking up with a monster looming over me?”

“First: I told you, I’m not a phantom, I’m the real Diegi. Second: This isn’t an unknown location, it’s a stream that’s not too far from the path you were just walking on. And Third: damn am I glad you actually stopped to listen to me about that before cutting me in two… even if you only did so after a couple of failed attempts…”

And Fourth: How come you act super scared and run away from any other monster, but when you see one that you think looks like me, you choose to attack instead despite still being scared? Is my face really that punchable!? Well, is it!?

Diegi, of course, doesn’t say this last part out loud, merely thinking it to himself as Gloria formulates her response.

“I had just seen you die at the hands of that horrible sludgy beast, of course it would take me a while to believe that you weren’t a phantom! How are you even alive?”

“Ah, that death you saw was… my Illusion Skill, yeah, that’s it.”

A total lie, but alas. Diegi can’t exactly tell Gloria that he was brought back to life by an evil AI overlord hellbent on having Diegi complete its ‘punishment’ of completing 200 quests, and who plucked Diegi from his peaceful (even if he mostly spent it trolling others online) life on Earth and placed him in this world inspired by his favorite real-world video game, MYTH Infinite Fantasy. Even just thinking about his whole situation makes Diegi sound crazy, even to him. So he continues talking without missing a beat.

”Plus, don’t try to paint me as the unreasonable one. You’re the person who collapsed out of nowhere in the middle of a field. I did you a favor by taking you and your cart over here to this rivulet, then making sure you were alright! Even if I mostly only did so I could wash off the tutorial monster’s stupid sludge… wait, that’s not important. Anyways, this is the thanks I get? I knew kindness doesn’t pay!”

Diegi and Gloria, standing both near a rapidly running stream and next to Gloria’s cart of grains, turn away from each other in a huff. Though, they both soon realize that being standoffish will solve little, and so they sheepishly turn back.

Diegi scratches his head and begins to think on how to move the conversation forwards so he can get to what he really wants to say. Before he can open his mouth, though— Gloria’s already bowed her head and begun speaking again.

“...I’m sorry for accidentally attacking you. Thank you for confirming my safety.”

Diegi, surprised but pleased by the sudden apology, simply nods in response. Gloria, who seemingly expected him to apologize for his rude behavior in turn (he doesn’t— go figure), waits for a few seconds before lifting her head and continuing with an uncertain expression.

“...if that’s all, sir, I’ll be taking my leave. I’m seeking to enter the nearby city of Paxdom, you see.”

Diegi starts to panic as he realizes his window of opportunity is swiftly closing. His demeanor instantly switches from confident to desperate and he falls onto his knees. He even goes as far as to clasp his hands together in a classic beggar’s gesture.

“HOLD ON! Wait, I still have something to ask of you if you would pretty please hear me out.”

“U— um…?”

Gloria, who had begun to walk away, is stunned by Diegi’s latest display of oddness. Diegi, noticing that she had paused for a second, takes his chance and continues explaining what he wants.

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“So, you see… I also need to enter Paxdom, but I’m pretty sure that the guards won’t let me in. From what I know about MYTH’s lore— I mean… It’s just that I’m new in the area and as you can see I have nothing to prove my profession with. And I probably look suspicious as hell dressed like this in my undies. Can you help me out? Please?”

Seriously, I’m begging you! I want to complete my tutorial by registering at their Guild Hall so, so much! I need the level up so freakin’ badly, my avatar’s so weak a falling stick could probably kill meeeee!!

Despite the heavy-duty additional begging going on inside of Diegi’s thoughts, Gloria has an… unwanted initial reaction to his spoken words:

‘Such a ridiculous request’, she thinks. What had happened to the serenity that the young woman had been experiencing only a short while ago? Gloria, struggling to process the sudden influx of information, takes a minute to form a response to Diegi’s question.

“Well I— um, to start, what do you actually want me to do? To help you get inside of Paxdom?”

At that, Diegi tilts his head slightly to the side and adopts a brief confused expression. After a few moments of reflection, he gives Gloria a goofy grin and says “Well, I’ll take whatever help you can give! Got any ideas?”

“Sir… you requested aid from me without even knowing what kind of aid you wanted?”

“No! I mean… yes? Hold on, I have an idea! Wait, Gloria, hold on!”

Gloria, for her part, had begun backing away slowly, like how you would from a bear or some other aggressive creature. Diegi reacts by fully prostrating himself and beginning to speak faster in an effort to better explain himself.

“What if— I hide under all the grain you’ve got in your cart! It’s not too big, but I could probably fit, you’ve seen how thin I am. That way, we can sneak past the guards— Hold on, keep listening!”

Gloria continues backing away.

“Wait, let’s make it a deal! I’ll give you something in return! Like, uh… money! Yeah, I’ll pay you! I got some from that tutorial chest!! Watch, I’ll take it out from my Inventory—”

And Diegi, slightly lifting his head but making sure to keep himself prostrated, makes an odd motion with his right hand and begins to swipe at the air. Completely bewildered, Gloria can’t guess what he’s trying to do for the life of her. As Diegi flicks his arm about, his brows furrow for a moment and he mumbles to himself — “Hey, why are these in here?” — but then his expression shifts to one of satisfaction and joy.

“There we go! Look, I found it!”

In a minor flash of light, something appears in the boy’s outstretched hand. No, not just something: it’s a sack of gold coins.

Gloria’s completely flabbergasted, and she’s sure she didn’t see him pull the bag from some hidden ‘Inventory’ compartment in his skimpy underwear. Is the boy secretly an advanced mage capable of casting spatial distortion spells? No, she’s seen his attribute levels, and given that his Wisdom is 0 there’s simply no way he could be. But then, how? She decides to ask a question to determine the answer.

“Huh? Sir, where did you get that from?”

Diegi, in response— pays no mind to her confusion, because he’s Diegi. And so, he resumes groveling with his sack of gold in hand— and with very impressive form, by the way, pressing his face to the ground and everything— to ask for her assistance.

“Never mind that, look, it’s money! Here, gold! So help me out, okay? Please, please, pleasepleaseplease—”

The begs and pleads just won’t stop coming. Eventually, Gloria stops backing away and sighs. Her instincts are screaming at her to leave the arrogant grovelling boy behind, but she just can’t bring herself to abandon him in such a pathetic state. Even though she feels that she’s already repaid his favor of fighting the monster for her by giving him free bread… she crouches down and offers him a hand.

“It’s alright sir, keep the money. And you can stand up. Here, how about we try to figure out how to make you presentable in order to get past the guards instead of defaulting to smuggling?”

Diegi, happy and relieved, angles his face upwards once again.

“Really? Thanks!”

He then tries to take her offered hand and pull himself off the ground, only to feel a wet squelch when he makes his first preparatory motion. Gloria proceeds to leap backwards in surprise, retracting her outstretched hand and staring at his face. Diegi, surprised, looks up at her in dismay.

“Uh… what? Come on, you don’t need to be scared, I already said I’m not a monster!”

And then he feels something thick drip from his chin onto the ground. The very muddy ground.

“Oh, just my fucking luck, eh?”

Diegi quickly realizes what happened. Being next to a small stream, he’d managed to choose the one spot that was covered by mud to prostrate in. Hell— it was probably mud that he’d made himself by dumping that bucket of water on Gloria’s head. Now his bare chest and face are both totally covered in wet dirt. Shaking his head at the turn of events, he continues:

“You know, before we shake hands to seal the deal, maybe I should take another dip in the stream and wash myself off. Oh, and you might want to use that bucket of water yourself— your curls are still muddy from the water I dumped on you.”

He stops for a second and makes a face, as if the next words are hard to get out of his throat. But after the brief pause, he continues:

“Uh, so… sorry about that.”

Gloria, still conspicuously keeping her previously offered hand close to her chest, gently feels her own brown-blond hair and sighs.

“Apology accepted. And as for washing my hair… Yes, that would be wise.”

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“Splish, splash, splish… ACHOO!! Man, this water is freezing! How does it manage to stay so cold when it’s such a warm day?”

Diegi, splashing around in the nearby stream like a child, talks quietly to himself as he waits for Gloria to be done washing her hair. Not because he plans to use the bucket after her, but because— ah, there it is.

Gloria, who had previously been standing in front of her grain cart and using her wooden bucket of river water to clean her hair, stands up and turns around. Then, she begins walking towards her cart (that’s a small distance away) with bucket in hand and, more importantly— with her back to Diegi.

“Okay, now’s my chance!”

Something had been bothering him since he’d opened his Menu to check his Inventory and offer Gloria that bag of gold from the tutorial chest. But he’s sure that what he’s about to do would freak Gloria out if she saw, so he decides to do it in a semi-secluded area like inside the stream. Not because she can see the menu or anything, but because she can still see the items that come out of it.

Working quickly, Diegi makes the air-box-tracing-and-then-zooming-out motion with the fingers on his right hand, opening the “Main Menu” he’d received from that annoyingly overpowered AI overlord— Automod. As the panorama of floating blue panels appears, he swipes across air to get to the screen he really wants to access: Inventory.

“Okay… so, what is this and why do I have so much of it!?”

Even though he can see the screen perfectly clearly, Diegi leans forward out of sheer computer-gamer habit and submerges even more of his chest in the chilly stream water. Staring back at him, on the floating flat rectangular panel labeled INVENTORY: slots and slots filled with what appears to be duplicates of the same base item. The icon for the item is simply a dark blur, and Diegi has no recollection of ever picking it up or storing it in his Inventory. Heck, he still doesn’t actually know how to store things in his Inventory, just how to take them out!

“If I hover my finger over it, what’ll show up on the preview screen?”

And hover he does. The mini description panel that pops up reads the following:

[ Inventory: ]

[ Name: ####### ### ]

[ Type: UNKNOWN ]

[ Subtype: ######## ]

[ Level: ## ]

Diegi rolls his eyes at the complete lack of information he gained from the so-called description panel.

“Wow, that’s soooo helpful. Thanks Automod, your stupid system is falling apart at the seams… oh yeah, you’re still out of commission. Welp, whatever, if I want to find out what it is, I guess I have to—”

He taps the square slot of one of the black blurs with his finger, then waits for the thing to materialize in his hand. When it finally does, he looks down to find:

“A blob of black goo. Is this really what I think it is?”

Leaning back somewhat, Diegi recalls the tutorial monster that he and Gloria— well, pretty much only he— had fought on the tutorial path. It had constantly been dripping with a black mucus-like fluid. After the tree had fallen on the monster, had Automod’s tutorial system decided to grant him drops of the monster’s secretions as his reward?

“That’s definitely not in the original MYTH Infinite Fantasy game… plus, if that was true, then it would at least have a name. And now that I think about it, the monster didn’t even die from the tree falling on it, it just got back up and killed me! So, this has to be some sort of anomaly.”

Diegi wracks his brain as hard as he can, trying to find some sort of explanation for why he would have a boatload of nameless duplicate bits of monster goo stored in his inventory, but comes up blank. It’s a profound mystery, the kind that a spoiled brat like himself has no chance of solving without any additional clues. Sighing, he closes his Main Menu and sinks lower into the waters of the stream. He stays like that for a bit, until Gloria’s voice eventually rings out:

“Are you done? I’ve gathered some of my spare clothing. I do not know how well it will fit you, sir, but it’s certainly more proper than your… um… current attire.”

The voice startles Diegi, and he makes sure to plunge the hand holding the bit of monster slime under the water so Gloria can’t see it. Glancing over at her, he sees that she’s put her bucket away and is now holding some dusty-looking brown rags— er, clothes— instead. He can see her fairly well, but thankfully her vision of his nearly-naked form is slightly obstructed by the tall grass, mostly because of how low Diegi is currently sitting in the stream’s water.

Those clothes look pretty raggedy… but hey, I’ll take it! Beggars and choosers, yada yada yada.

After taking a moment to think, Diegi yells back:

“Yeah, I am! Hold on a sec!”

Finally, Diegi’s seriously on route to reach the First Human City of Paxdom, where all his tutorial woes will end. Thinking of this, Diegi gleefully begins to drag himself out of the stream’s current, only to realize…

“Shit. Where am I gonna keep this thing?”

Looking at the black bit of monster slime, Diegi remembers that he still has no idea how to store things in his Inventory instead of just taking things out. He looks around him, trying to find some sort of leaf conveniently shaped like a wallet or a bag. He doesn’t find one, of course. Finally, his gaze comes to rest on his own body, or more accurately on the only piece of clothing he’s currently wearing: MYTH’s default male avatar outfit, a pair of skinny black underwear.

Diegi looks at the slime in his hand. Then at his underwear. Then at the slime. Then at his underwear. And then—

“When life gives you lemons… ah, damn it. This upcoming walk is gonna be reaaally uncomfortable.”