Today’s Earth date: September 5, 1991
I wish I had a camera.
I’m not sure anyone will believe me when I describe how beautiful this world is. I saw some great views hiking a piece of the Appalachian Trail last summer, and none of them can compete. Not even close. Everything here is brighter, larger, almost like it oozes a golden magic aura.
That’s made me more aware of how small we are by comparison. Anything outside a city wall is untamed wilderness for practical purposes. People live outside the city, of course, but dealing with orcs and goblins is as normal as us dealing with farm pests. It’s like everything is amplified in this world, from the size of mountains to what counts as “average” dangers.
What I mean to say is, we are truly on our own out here, and we have so much ground to cover.
-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin
***
The yellow blob on his HUD, the one he thought might be treasure, was Jason's room.
He was right.
Resource Values.
Chosen Fighter Armor (Full), Average Value of 93,050 gold coins.
Chosen Rogue Armor (F) (Full), Average Value of 134,600 gold coins.
Chosen Fighter Longsword, Average Value of 97,670 gold coins.
Chosen Rogue Twin Daggers, Average Value of 97,800 gold coins.
Tammi must have been the Chosen Rogue because the rogue suit was tailored for a female, to the point that Wayne felt a bit gross holding it. Collectors must prefer female Hero armor over male Hero armor for the value to be that different, and the touches that made Wayne uncomfortable were likely why. The armor wasn’t a leather bikini, but it had multiple details to accentuate cleavage and a corset structure beneath that.
Fighting in a corset sounded terrible. If a strange man handed Wayne fantasy lingerie moments after he appeared in a new world, he’d likely be reluctant to play along too.
This room had the same furniture as Tammi’s, but Jason was not much of a decorator. He didn't add any rugs or bother with fancy bedding. Why all of their Hero items were in here, Wayne couldn't say. The only clue he found as to who Jason was as a person was a single copy of The Hobbit, a mass market paperback.
The cover featured the classic 80s painted fantasy style, depicting a wizard in a giant bird’s nest with some halflings. The pages were so well used that the book barely closed.
Just kids, Wayne thought to himself. How long had they been down here before they died? Weeks? Years?
He opted to explore the rest of the dun– underground apartment. Being thorough was a good excuse to delay his choice of what to do next. He didn't know a protocol that applied to this situation–finding your Hero predecessors dead in a secret lair, bunker, hideout, whatever. With great loot.
He found four more rooms, not as large as Jason and Tammi’s, and they were unfurnished. No green Xs and the yellow dots were odd keepsakes like figurines or silver coins covered in dirt.
According to his HUD, he explored the entire complex. He wasn't proud of it, but he decided to pack up the armor, the weapons, and the book. The longsword was comically large, so he wasn't sure if he'd end up using it, but it was probably enchanted. He wasn't sure how to check other than to test it, which would have to wait.
Now to walk all the way back out. Or…
Rise.
Wayne appeared on the surface. In the dark.
Between Light and his HUD, he found the entrance again and went back underground to wait for sunrise. Fortunately, Jason hadn't died in bed.
***
The next morning, Wayne tried leaving again, but he followed his shrubbery to walk out the old fashioned way. Before he fell asleep last night, a question came to him that he intended to answer: How did the tree end up on the door in the first place?
Lining up the correct stump to find out was trivial, but he still felt like quite the detective doing so.
Most of it was rotting, but the trunk was clearly splintered. Almost a full third of the tree remained upright, jagged and reaching to the sky.
Lightning strike, maybe?
He wasn't sure how he would have reacted if he found a stump with axe marks in it. That was the beginning of a dark conspiracy that existed only in his mind, thankfully. What terrible luck for Jason and Tammi, though. Get isekaied against your will and then a freak accident traps you underground.
Being the Zero Hero wasn't all that bad by comparison.
A new question came to mind: Should he tell anyone about this?
Wayne came to terms with being a grave robber under RPG pre-tenses but was unsure of revealing the location of this place to the wider world. People would traipse all through their home. Scholars would want to confirm cause-of-death before the skeletons were buried, so the bodies would be moved and poked and prodded. And Jason and Tammi would get one more round of Chosen Hero consequences in terms of the attention the news would attract. This world was bound to talk about the discovery of two Hero corpses, especially with these circumstances.
Wayne felt a sense of loyalty to the two Heroes, like he had a unique responsibility to do right by them because of their shared Earth connection.
He covered the door with dirt again, and pushed one half of the fallen tree back on top of it. That decision could wait.
He turned to walk away but paused.
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Nee.
Nee.
Nee.
Yeah, that was some natural looking shrubbery to complete the disguise.
Walking back to the road, he realized he had a long way to go before Teagaisg. Bandits wouldn't attack a guarded wagon caravan but would almost certainly jump one guy with a big bag of treasure on his back.
Oddly, the danger of the scenario didn't scare him now that he had his Christmas List spells and skills. He just preferred not to kill people. Forty five years of not offing someone was a good run. He could keep that going.
Accepting his reality, he took another look at his HUD, again noting the location of the buried yellow dots he had not been able to access so that he could revisit them later. Then he began jogging down the road, using Probe as often as he could.
***
Would he have accepted being a Chosen Hero like Laszlo or would he have refused like Jason and Tammi?
Wayne liked to think he would have risen to the occasion, but he disliked much of what came with being a Chosen Hero. Facing off against demons was not appealing, nor was the endless camping, danger, pain, and death. He read all of the Hero journals and diaries in the Royal Library, so he knew from their own words that carrying the fate of the world on their shoulders affected them deeply, pushing them to the edges of insanity as their battles became more and more grave.
Riding in a carriage with Fergus was better.
When the sun began to set, Wayne stopped jogging. He was tired, but not exhausted. Stat boosts were pretty incredible.
He made camp out of the way, off the road. He opted to forgo the fire, preferring to fight off a beast attracted by smell instead of a bandit attracted by campfire light.
***
Crunching leaves woke Wayne. He didn't move anything but his eyes.
Probe.
Over fifteen red dots closed on him from all directions.
He slowly reached for the Fighter’s Longsword and wrapped his fingers around the hilt. He charged Sword of Water.
Then he jumped to his feet.
Light.
His magic headlamp blinded a walking rat as tall as he was. It had coarse, oily fur and a fleshy tail the length of a jump rope. It covered its eyes, bearing vicious teeth and raising long claws. He took the ratman off its feet with a block of ice to the face and ran toward the falling corpse.
Missile.
That winged another nearby ratman. The monster lived, but the spell served its purpose. Wayne cleared a gap wide enough for him to run, not away but to a new position where he wasn't completely surrounded. He watched his HUD the whole way.
He spun around suddenly, surprising the nearest ratman with a sword through its chest. As soon as the monster went limp, his vision filled with red outlines.
The forest was still dark with inky night, but the ratmen were highlighted. The effect didn't cast actual light, so the woods were no brighter, but a quick glance confirmed that all of the ratmen silhouettes had red outlines, corresponding to red dots on his HUD. Except for the ones represented with red Xs. Because they were dead.
Not wanting to push himself to the point of passing out again, he launched one more Missile and ran at the next vermin with his sword.
Fencing kept him alive. The targeting buff from the longsword made that easier, keeping him from getting caught unawares by a ratman in the dark. The quickness of his fighting style helped him dance away from most attacks–scratches, clubs, bites–but not all.
He lost 35 hit points in the process of killing every monster on his HUD. He took a club to the head and claws to his neck, shoulders, and arms. His leather armor kept him from the worst of it, but their nails were sharp enough to reach his skin on several occasions.
Gasping for air when it was over, he saw a red dot move out from under an X behind him. It slowly retreated.
Wayne put his sword through the crawling rat’s spine and felt two system notifications.
He hit level 5:
Hero: Wayne the Guy
Level: 5
HP: 123
STR: 15
AGI: 12
VIT: 6
LCK: 19
And he had a new skill from Pirates!:
Fire a Broadside – Your gun captains automatically fire the side of the ship nearest the enemy.
Like his other offensive spells or skills, it was greyed out. He needed to be near enemies to use it.
But what the hell could that mean for a skill? The original version of Fire a Broadside was obviously a barrage of cannon fire. That made sense for a game exclusively about seafaring and ocean conflicts, so maybe he'd get some kind of gun? That was a vague analog for a cannon, right?
He surveyed the ratmen. He could likely collect some part of the monsters to turn in for a reward, but dragging ratmen tails along for two more days sounded gross.
He passed on collecting trophies. The sun would rise soon, and he doubted he'd be able to sleep with a bunch of monsters rotting nearby, especially when the scavengers of the forest caught the scent of the new ratman buffet.
Reluctantly, he broke camp and resumed a slow journey to the next city, every movement stretching and pulling at cuts and bruises.
***
When the sun neared noon, Wayne heard hooves approaching him from behind.
Three riders came down the road with green cloaks over leather armor, quivers on their backs, and bows and swords attached to their saddles. The men seemed serious and focused, but Wayne couldn't immediately tell if they were serious hunters or serious bandits.
One rider moved ahead of the others, a lean but muscular man with dark skin, long braids, and stubble on his face.
“Was it you who escaped the ratmen?” he asked.
Wayne looked down at the bloody tears in the armor. “Pretty fair guess.”
“It’s unusual for someone to outrun the rats, especially with that much gear.” He was referring to Wayne’s camping supplies and his bag of weapons and armor.
“Are you going to rob me?” Wayne asked. Their dots were blue, but if the HUD worked like most games, their color wouldn’t change until they intentionally tried to harm him.
The rider chuckled. “Not bandits. Rangers out of Teagaisg. The ratmen were slain also, so you have no need to fear them or us.”
The Capital had rangers too. They were essentially freelance hunters who made their living culling monster populations around cities, turning trophies into the guard for gold. Wayne didn’t know the going rate for ratmen tails, but he suspected that many of them would yield a decent payday.
He could go over and touch them with Resource Values to know for sure, but he wasn’t curious enough to handle dead ratmen parts.
“I’m a scholar on my way to Teagaisg. They attacked my camp in the middle of the night.”
“A scholar? On foot with that kind of gear?”
The ranger had a fair point. His appearance and his being here would seem odd to anyone who didn’t know him. “Traveling like this is a new hobby for me. Having the proper supplies and training seemed wise.”
The ranger seemed to agree. “I’m Gus.”
“Wayne.”
“We are on our way back to Teagaisg now. Would you like a ride?”
“I do, but I also don’t want to force you guys to carry all my stuff.”
The ranger said that was no problem. They passed his bag of loot to one of the other riders, and Gus offered a hand to pull Wayne up onto his horse. When he wrapped his arms around the ranger to hold on, he felt like a sportbike girlfriend.
He was okay with it.