Chapter 249: Adventuring Ailments (Patreon)

Sylvie did, indeed, puke all over the floor. She’d collapsed onto the hard ground the moment we arrived in the desert cave we housed our Beacon Anchor Point in, and after a few moments of groaning and moaning, she coughed up a pool of yellowish liquid full of chunks.

I took a deep breath to calm my own stomach, leaning on the cave wall. “Ugh, I hoped it wouldn’t be as bad this time.”

“What was that voice as we left?” Erani grunted. “Was that…Entismo?”

“I think so,” I said. “He said something about a Demon? Think they spotted some approaching Infernals?”

“Should we go back?”

“It’d cost a hundred thousand Mana to activate this thing again. That’d be, what…”

“It’d be 14.73 hours,” Index said. “And to come back to Precipice afterward, a little over six straight days of Mana production.”

“Right, pretty much impossible. Even if we accepted that we wouldn’t be able to afford the trip back until the cost increases wore off, we’d still need to spend pretty much a full day just charging up the Beacon, if we factor in the need for sleep. Which…” I yawned wide. “...We do need to sleep soon.”

“But if the town’s about to be wiped out by a Demon army…”

“Did he say ‘a Demon army?’ Or just ‘a Demon.’”

“I don’t know,” Erani said. “The teleportation was messing with my senses as it activated; I couldn’t hear him very well.”

“Me neither. Shit, should we use, um,” I glanced to Sylvie’s half-unconscious form on the ground. “Use…my ability to go back and—”

“There’s no need to use Time Loop,” Index interjected. “I could hear perfectly well up until the moment you arrived here, so I can attest that he only said there was one Demon.”

“Arlan?” Erani asked. “Why did you randomly stop talking?”

“Oh, apparently he said ‘a Demon,’ singular.”

“So the town should be capable of handling it on their own,” Index continued. “No need to waste a use.”

“I do kind of agree with what it's saying here,” I said, referencing Index without saying its name because of Sylvie. She didn’t seem like she was listening, but if she did remember tonight’s events, it would be best to keep our secrets. Erani seemed to understand what I was getting at. “If it’s just one Demon, then the adventurers in town will be absolutely fine. I mean, some of them are stronger than us, so our being there would really just be adding a few to the numbers of several dozen.”

“Entismo came to us for help for a reason, though,” Erani said. “Doesn’t that imply something was happening that we’re needed for?”

“I don’t know much about Human personalities,” Index responded, “but from what I do know, it seems like Entismo is the type to run for help at the first sign of trouble. He probably saw a Demon, and his first thought went to you two, who are the only people he knows who have dealt with one. By the time he gets back to town, it’ll probably have already been dealt with.”

I thought for a moment. Index did have a point. But then, if the Demons were there, attacking and subjugating yet another group of people…I couldn’t allow what happened to the people in Koinkar to happen here, too. Back then, I ran because I couldn’t fight back. Now I could.

“Think about this rationally,” Index continued. “It’s one Demon, not an army. Why would they just send one? It’s probably a scout, there to see if you’re still around. If you show up to attack it, then they’ll know you’re there and will definitely send more. If you’re nowhere to be found, they’ll leave the place alone. Especially if they prove themselves able to defend against an attack without assistance.”

Shit. It had a point.

“You seem like you’re in deep discussion,” Erani said. “I assume you’re being told ‘abandon them, let them die, they don’t matter’ or something along those lines?”

“It hasn’t said anything like that. Though, I don’t doubt it’s thinking it. But the main point it’s made—and that I agree with—is that this Demon is just there to see if we’re still around. If we show up to fight it, that’s when they send in the full army. I hate to admit it, but just being in a certain place will naturally put the people there in danger. We’re better fit staying away, in a much better defended place until we’re sure we can fight off a full-on assault.”

Erani sighed. “I won’t try to claim I don’t prefer staying hidden and away from conflict, regardless. But leaving these people to fend for themselves against a threat that we brought to them just makes me feel…dirty. I mean, even if they’ll be okay against one scout, what happens if the Demons send in an army anyway, even though they didn’t see us, just to be safe? What if, tomorrow, the town of Salvation sees a thousand Infernals marching to their gates?”

“Hm. We could send a message back, right? Ask Entismo what exactly’s going on, and tell him where to contact us if there’s a crisis.”

“That…could work. Only, I don’t know how the courier system works here.”

I looked down at Sylvie, still splayed out on the floor. “She sent us a letter. She knows how to do it.”

Erani sighed. “Yes, well, I’m not sure she’s in a state to give us tutoring at the current moment.”

“Then we do it tomorrow. She should be fine enough by then.”

“I suppose that works. We can send a letter to Entismo, he can explain, and…That was Entismo, right?”

“It was was his voice. And I caught a glimpse of him before we disappeared. No idea how he found us, though.” I frowned. “Actually, if he saw us just as we were teleporting away, that kind of compromises the Beacon, right?”

Ainash sat up, having stumbled and fallen to the ground, herself. “Goblins should make sure he is not problem.”

I glanced over. “What do you mean?”

“They are supposed to kill all enemies,” she said with a perfectly straight face, getting to her feet and dusting herself off.

I stared at her. “Ainash. They aren’t going to murder him, are they?”

“Um…” she looked everywhere except my eyes. “Maybe not. Would be good if Human did not talk about secret teleportation item, right? Killing is one way to keep from talking.”

“Entismo is on our side. We can't—” I placed my head in my hands. “Ugh, I guess what they do isn’t up to you right now, anyway. But you told them to kill anyone who entered the forest?”

“Only bad guys.”

“And how do they know who is and isn’t a bad guy?”

“...Have not taught them yet. But they should know! I know who is and is not bad guy and I was never taught.”

“If we teleport back to Salvation later only to see Entismo’s corpse lying in front of us…” Erani blanched. “I really hope they don’t notice him. Ugh, why would he go in there in the first place?! Goblins are known to be dangerous, right?!”

“I guess we’ll know how it turned out when we send him a message tomorrow,” I said, trying to put the issue out of my mind for now. It was out of our hands; we just needed to get Sylvie signed up for the tournament, then go to sleep and prepare for the thing to begin when we woke up.

Erani nodded in agreement, and we all took a few moments to fully recover from the nausea that came from using the Beacon.

Then, I looked down at Sylvie lying semi-conscious on the ground. “So, who’s carrying her?”

I ended up carrying Sylvie, mainly because Ethereal Armor protected me from the puke dribbling down her shirt. Now back in Precipice, I’d swapped back to Dark Plate, which covered my entire body, and it seemed like whatever Sylvie was thinking in her sleepy, drunken state, she wasn’t intending to reach through my armor, because her body gripped right onto the ephemeral plates rather than passing through them.

We trekked back through the desert and into the city, doing our best to retrace our steps in the run-down outskirts and find the office we could sign Sylvie up for the tournament in. It took some time, but eventually we got inside, and I woke her from her stupor as we walked to the desk.

“Hey,” I said, “time to sign up.”

“...Huh?” she asked, blinking her eyes open. “For what?”

“The tournament. The one you were begging us to let you join.”

“...Oh, right.” She yawned, closing her eyes back and leaning against me, trying to settle back into her slumber. “Go ahead and sign me up.”

I shook her. “No, no. You have to do it.”

“We’re sorry,” Erani said with an apologetic look to the secretary holding the paperwork out for her to sign. “We’ll be ready in just a moment.”

“I don’t wanna!” Sylvie said. “Do it later.”

“This is the last moment to—” I stopped and sighed. “We’ll find a place with an actual bed once you do this. Because I already know you’ll be pissed if we let you go to sleep without signing up. So do it now, and you can lie down sooner.”

“Ugh…” Sylvie groaned and took a laborious step forward, opening her eyes once again and squinting at the documents. “Is this gonna, like, kill me or something if I sign it?”

“...No?” the lady standing at the desk answered.

“Cool.” Sylvie signed it without reading a single word. Then she turned around and began trudging out of the building. “Let’s go.”

I shrugged at Erani, then started to follow.

Erani followed suit. “Is she already hungover, or something?”

“Pretty sure she’s just extremely tired, which I imagine the drunkenness isn’t helping with. Though…” I thought back to everything she’d told us about with the circumstances surrounding her and her family. “Maybe she’s just in one of those moods where she’d rather not be awake so she doesn’t have to be inside her own head.”

Once we were done with that, we found the nearest inn and booked a room there. Thankfully, despite having Ainash with us, it still wasn’t much of an issue to get one. I was worried there’d be a bunch of places with no-monsters-allowed policies, or they’d try to charge us extra, but it turned out that, since Ainash was a full-fledged citizen of the empire, there were a bunch of laws that protected her from that sort of thing. I supposed they did typically only give out citizenship like that after an extremely long and arduous process with plenty of tests to ensure the monster was safe and compatible with Humans, so it made sense they’d earn some legal protections in exchange for that.

“You all are adventurers?” the innkeeper asked as we paid for the rooms.

I nodded. “We’re here for the tournament.”

“Tourney, eh? That’s starting tomorrow, isn’t it? You’re cutting it a little close.”

“Guess we are. But we made it in time.”

He waved his hand “We get a few like you every week. I get official announcements delivered here, so if you’d like, I can slip some copies under your doorstep in the morning. Guests are always in a rush in the mornings of the elimination round to get out and get started on their objectives, so you should get your news on what the objective’s gonna be as early as possible.”

“That’d be a huge help, thanks.”

He nodded. “Two rooms, they’ll be down at the end of that hall.”

Sylvie took one room, while Erani and I took the other. I asked Ainash if she wanted to go with Sylvie and share a bed with her or something, but she said she’d be fine sleeping on the floor in ours. Evidently the entire Nymph species didn’t have much of a need for comfort while resting, being able to sleep just as well on a pile of rocks as they could on a luxury mattress. Not that the straw mattresses here were luxury, of course. But regardless, she lay down and made herself comfortable on the hard floor while Erani and I lay down and closed our eyes.

“You think she’ll be alright in time for the tournament tomorrow?” Erani asked. I opened my eyes and glanced over to see her staring up at the dingy ceiling.

“I can’t imagine she’ll be feeling very good, after the amount she drank. But it’s just a hangover, right? And tomorrow’s just the elimination round; not like it’ll actually be a challenge.”

“I’m more worried she’s still going to be drunk when she wakes up.”

I chuckled. “Actually, yeah. That’s probably the more likely possibility.”

She looked over at me, absentmindedly tracing her fingers along the bedsheets. “Are you nervous?”

“Nah. I’ll save my nervousness for once we actually get further into the contest. For now, it should be smooth sailing.” I was slightly lying, of course—how could I not be a little nervous, when messing this up could mean ruining my ability to help Erani get her arm back—but telling her about my own nervousness would only make hers worse.

With a sigh, Erani looked back to the ceiling. “I suppose. I just really don’t like competing against others like this. My build was in no way constructed for Human-versus-Human combat.”

“Well, the key of all this is that even if you fuck up, you’ve still got us to back you up, right? It only matters if we all fail. I mean, there can only be one winner in the end anyway, right? So all of us getting to the finals wouldn’t even matter.”

“Oh no, does that mean I’m going to have to fight you if we’re the two semifinalists?”

I laughed. “And here I thought you were pessimistic about how you thought this would end up. I imagine we can just have one of us forfeit the match if it comes down to that.”

“Good. I would hate to hurt you on accident.”

“See? That’s the right mentality to have. Don’t be afraid for yourself; be afraid for your opponents. They’re the ones who have to go up against a hot badass Sorcerer lady.” I grinned. “Get it? Hot? Because you shoot fireballs? I’m hilarious.”

Erani did her best to look unamused. “Sure.”

“Alright. Let’s go to sleep. Big day tomorrow.”

“I thought you said the elimination round wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Ah, you misunderstand. It’s not a big day because we’re going to struggle, it’s a big day because we get to go and crush the competition.”

Erani snorted. “Alright, alright. Let’s go to sleep, then. Wouldn’t want to miss that.”

When I awoke, Erani was already up, standing by the door and reading a paper that’d been slipped underneath it.

A muffled shout came from behind the door. “I don’t wanna get up!”

“You need to start getting ready!” Erani shouted back, still reading the paper. “At least look over the announcement!”

“Ugh, why so early?”

“Because I know you won’t get up for another thirty minutes no matter what I say, so I have to start trying now or else—” she glanced over at me and stopped, then lowered her voice. “Oh, sorry, did I wake you up?”

“Apparently it’s time to get up anyway, so I don’t mind,” I said, crawling out of bed.

“It probably would be a good idea to start moving, actually,” she said, looking back over the paper. “Seems like these next few days won’t be as leisurely as we thought.”

“Oh?” I walked over and looked at the paper.

CONQUEROR’S TOURNEY OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Starting with this round, the elimination rounds of the Conqueror’s Tourney will be conducted differently than how they have been in the past. In order to make a more engaging spectator experience and to reward the most qualified of contestants, a ranked reward system will be put in place during the elimination round.

Instead of being a pass-or-fail aptitude test asking contestants to complete a single task, this round will offer four different challenges contestants can attempt to complete. Finishing any single one of these challenges will allow an entrant to compete in the official Tourney, making it easier for contestants to qualify. Rejoice!

However, for the most qualified of contestants, if you are capable of finishing more than just a single one of the challenges, you will receive rewards to aid you later in your rounds during the Tourney. The more challenges you manage to complete, the better the rewards will be.

This system will be explained further as the elimination round proceeds. For now, the first challenge will be revealed. The second will be revealed at the start of the second day of the elimination round, and the third and fourth will be revealed at the start of the third and final day.

CHALLENGE 1: Turn in one full-grown desert crystal of each primary color. Beware of the Sand Hive!

“Oh, so it’s been changed to still challenge the higher-Level people,” I said. “Still, this first one shouldn’t be too bad. I mean, I remember seeing dozens of those big crystals cropping up across the desert on our way here. Even if a bunch of them were in Sand Hive territory, there were still a bunch of them in safe areas.”

“...Which, those easy ones are probably being taken as we speak by hundreds of other contestants swarming the desert,” Erani said.

“Ah. Right.” I stood there, staring at the paper for a moment. Then I threw it to the side, hastily moving to cast Ethereal Armor and cover myself in Dark Plate. Glancing over to our door, I shouted, “Sylvie! Get up! We’re moving out in two minutes!”