He had climbed a hill. A steep hill, one that had taken thirty minutes of painful, arduous lunges to get to the top. His messy black hair was stuck to his forehead, and the cotton shirt on his back was damp with sweat. He was panting, his legs were sore, and he was pretty sure that he had a sunburn on the back of his neck. Yet his only reward was the gift of saving someone who likely would have died if he hadn’t showed up.
It wasn’t like that was a bad thing. It was better for someone to live than to die, and if Leo encountered this man naturally, then he would have saved him without a doubt. However, he had not discovered him by chance, and it didn’t feel as good knowing that you didn’t save the man out of the kindness of your heart, but rather because you were following an order.
And it especially didn’t help that he had been doing mundane tasks such as this one for over 200 days.
But this was quest 498 out of 500. Finish this one, and he would only have one more until he was able to return home. So Leo steeled his mind and focused on the task at hand.
The young man in front of him was unconscious. It was clear given the fact that his eyes were closed and the aforementioned fetal position — Leo didn’t think that anyone conscious would ever be caught looking like that — but Leo still gave him a good kick to make sure.
Best to check all of your options. After all, if the guy woke up, then Leo wouldn’t have to carry him down the hill. And though it didn’t happen often (or Leo wasn’t smart enough to think of them), some quests had loopholes that allowed him to complete them easily.
Unfortunately, the young man was well and truly asleep. Leo debated pouring some of his water on him for shock value, but considering that it was the middle of summer and the fact that he was also sweating bullets, he decided to drop that idea.
Instead, he scratched his leg and thought.
There were a couple of options.
He could carry him. Leo’s body had considerably toned up ever since he arrived in this world, a byproduct of completing many menial yet intensive tasks, but he really didn’t want to lug the young man down to the village. He was already sore enough from hiking up the hill, and the downhill advantage he would have had was mitigated by the fact that he was carrying someone.
That was definitely the last resort. If he had a plank of wood, maybe he could put the young man on it and push him down the hill. He’d probably fall off in the middle of rocketing down the slope, but if he even got a quarter of the way down, Leo would call that a win.
But he didn’t have a plank of wood, or really any material he could work with.
Hypotheticals were not solutions. He remembered his old science teacher telling him that back in ninth grade, but he really had nothing else.
As he was lamenting his situation, Leo heard a soft “squish” a couple of meters to his right. He jumped, drawing the small sword he had stashed on his waist, and held it towards the noise. The weight was uneven, and Leo kept having to adjust the sword to make it upright.
Still, he held out his sword instead of running away, because he was pretty sure that he knew what was hiding in the ankle-high reeds. His suspicions were confirmed as a gray, viscous blob rustled its way out of the grass and started hopping towards him.
A slime. Leo sighed in relief, because these were about the only things he could kill in this world. They were common in the plains, and the only way someone died to them is if they were asphyxiated in their sleep. And if that happened, you would have to wonder how they survived that long in the first place.
Leo unceremoniously walked up the slime and brought down his sword, slicing the mana core in its center in half. The moving blob turned into two, unmoving blobs.
Leo scrunched his nose and began wiping some of the excess fluid off of his shirt, before feeling some of the fluid on his fingers. Then, he thought for a moment.
He looked at the young man, the dead slime, the slimy, gelatinous liquid on his finger, and came up with an idea.
Guarding the village gate was a normal and easy job.
At least, the two guards at the east gate of Korok village thought so. They had been assigned this job for a couple of months now, and the most exciting thing that had happened to them was catching a merchant who was trying to smuggle a couple of cats into the village. He had been apprehended, and after a short conversation with the mayor, was allowed to keep the cats.
Other than that, nothing else happened. The guards were, essentially, doormen, and most of the day’s work consisted of letting people in and out of the village. If something truly dangerous arrived, they were supposed to abandon their posts and tell the mayor — not stand and fight — and thus the people assigned to this duty were generally young people with too much free time on their hands.
It was a pretty chill job. Feris, the guard standing on the right side of the gate (left if you were coming from inside the village), kicked a rock as he spoke to his colleague, Rom.
“So, you got any plans after this?”
Rom stroked the random assortment of stubble that he called a beard as he replied.
“Yeah. I was going to try and go talk to Marie again, see if she wanted to do anything.”
Feris grimaced. Marie was Rom’s childhood crush, or perhaps more specifically his one-sided childhood crush — a fact that was made explicitly clear the last ten times Rom had tried to make a move on her. The last time that Rom had made an attempt to woo her, she told him that she would ask the mayor to kick him out of the village if he tried to talk to her again.
“Dude, I think it might be time you move on from her,” he replied slowly. “You know, there’s other slimes in the plains, as they say.”
Rom shook his head.
“You don’t understand, Feris. There’s a connection there. She just… doesn’t realize it yet.”
Feris began to open his mouth to respond when he heard a rustle coming from the tall hill located near the east village.
Usually, that would be nothing to write home about. The plains had a lot of windy days, after all, and it wasn’t rare to see the knee-high reeds undulating rhythmically throughout the day.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
But today wasn’t windy. Also, only a very specific section of grass seemed to be moving. And it was moving very quickly towards them.
“Uhh… do you see that?” Feris asked.
“Hm?” Rom frowned. He had taken Feris’s silence as an opportunity to talk more about his one-sided love with Marie. “What are you talking about?”
“There.” Feris pointed at the rapidly approaching section of weeds. Rom’s eyes widened.
“That doesn’t look good. Monster?”
“Probably,” Feris nodded. “A fast moving one too, by the looks of it. Go tell the mayor.”
“What will you do?” Rom asked hesitantly.
“I’ll be fine. I’m going to check out what it is, and if it’s dangerous, I still have the horn.”
The horn was an artifact given to the guards in case of emergency. It warned the whole village of an impending danger, and encased the person who blew the horn in a protective bubble for a couple of minutes. Feris had always wished for the opportunity to use it, but now that the moment might be here, he realized that he might not always want what he wished for.
“Go,” he pointed towards the center of the village, trying to not make his finger tremble. “Quickly.”
Rom gave him a quick glance and then started sprinting towards the mayor’s office, while Feris backed up and watched the moving pieces of grass warily.
It was getting closer. The rustling of the grass became louder as it moved further down the hill. And now that it was near, Feris could hear another sound: a dull, rhythmic thumping of something hitting against the tough ground of the plains.
Fast. Heavier than expected. Feris gulped and brought the horn up closer to his lips. It felt futile, however. Whatever was coming towards him was moving fast enough that it could probably yank the horn out of his hands before he could blow it. He hoped it didn’t have intelligence. His grandfather had told him of a monster that could recognize artifacts and disable them before adventurers could use them.
But those were high level monsters. Surely one of them wasn’t approaching the village right now.
Right?
The monster was practically on top of Feris now. His palms clammed up as he quickly put the horns to his lips. He held it there, trembling as the monster finally entered his point of view. It seemed to be…
A human. An unconscious one, at that. Feris could see the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest as he appeared out of the tall reeds and into the flat grass that surrounded the village. He had blonde hair, torn clothes, and was oddly… shiny? Feris squinted as a ray of sunlight reflected off of his body. That was odd.
Feris continued holding the horn to his lips. His grandfather had always told him that monsters attacked when they least expected it, and he knew that the unconscious human (if it was even that) could be bait for a monster that was hiding in the shadows. So he stood where he was, unmoving. He would wait until the reinforcements arrived.
Well — that was what he would have done if another human didn’t come barreling out of the reeds and rammed into him, knocking the horn of out his hands. Feris’s vision went black, and when he had rubbed the dust out of his eyes and regained his bearings, he saw a thin, black-haired boy stumbling on the ground. Every time that he tried to get up, his balance would give out and he would fall back to the ground, dizzy.
Feris blinked.
“… Leo?”
After a couple of attempts, Leo finally stood on his two feet. Feris noticed that he also had a odd sort of slimy substance coated over his clothes. Leo’s head swayed from side to side as he responded.
“Wow. I feel like I’m about to throw up. Oh Feris, that was you? Sorry for the bad roll. There was a big rock at the end and I had too much momentum.”
Feris looked at him, not comprehending the situation.
“Are you… the monster?”
Leo stared at him, then shook his head.
“Monster? No, is there one around here?” His head swiveled around. “I just found this guy sleeping on the hill and decided to bring him down.”
Feris didn’t reply, his mouth hanging open, as Leo continued speaking.
“Can you take care of this guy now? It was a long way up, and I need to hit the hay… and the bath, if you know what I mean. Just give me a nod and I’ll get out of your hair. Just a nod… Alright, I got confirmation. Thanks Feris! See you around!”
Leo, with an incredibly fake-looking smile, bid Feris a goodbye and began walking towards the village. Feris stared after him, and then with a deep breath, lay his head down on the ground once again.
Tomorrow, he was going to quit guard duty.
Leo Caldera did not get away with it.
He knew he wouldn’t, but he figured that the time saved by rolling down the hill covered in slime debris was worth facing a potential consequence. And even then, it was still a possibility — it was only when he hit into Feris and saw the horn on the ground that he knew he was in trouble.
That’s why as soon as he got Feris to accept responsibility for the guy (thus completing his quest), he speed-walked towards his hut as quickly as possible. It was the classic “avoid consequences for as long as possible” strategy, and Leo had used it to great effect during past quests. This time, he was even able to wash the slime off of his body before the angry knocks on his door arrived.
“Leo, you’re kicked out of the village.”
“What? Don’t do that.”
Leo found himself in a compact, rectangular room about the size of a modern college dorm. The guards had brought him here after he failed to convince them that Feris was talking about “Neo,” the ghost that haunted the plains around Korok village.
The room spoke of cleanliness and order. Two wide bookshelves lined the walls of the room, each packed to the brim with books. The books were placed with deliberate care, upright and alphabetically sorted, and Leo doubted that he could even fit one of Earth’s magazines in the space between them.
In front of him was a desk, and sitting behind that desk was an old man. At least Leo’s version of old — the man had only just started to get wrinkles in the past couple of years and could still be seen training in the fields before the sun rose. He sat upright in his seat, posture immaculate, as he adjusted the top hat on his head and glared at Leo.
“Give me one good reason for me not to kick you out of the village right now.”
Leo opened his mouth to respond, but Mayor Trugo slammed his fist down on the table and scowled.
“No witty responses. If I hear one more of those out of you, I’ll take everything you own, including the clothes that you are wearing right now, and leave you in middle of the Vermillion Forest.”
Leo closed his mouth. Mayor Trugo gnashed his teeth as he continued speaking.
“While you’re thinking of a single good reason, let me give you mine.”
He held up a finger.
“One. This is the third time this month that one of your antics has put the village on high alert. Feris almost used the horn because of you.”
He put up another finger.
“Two. Every time that you bring something from out of the village you immediately leave it for someone else to take care of. Just last week you brought a herd of wild bullcows to our farmer and left them there for him to ‘tame them’.”
Another finger.
“Finally, you are actively making the lives of everyone you interact with worse. Every time you try to ‘help’ someone, they end up worse than before. Mr. Margit came to me this morning and told me he had to buy a new bedframe after you tried to fix his last week. He told me he pulled his back because it fell apart in the middle of the night.”
He glared at Leo.
“Do you have anything to say?”
Leo thought that he was being quite mean. However, he also knew that if he pointed that out he would be walking out of the village with no shoes and a small knapsack on his back. Therefore, he took his time to think, and responded with grace.
“Bald.”
Mayor Trugo looked at him, stupefied.
“What?”
“Your bald head is showing.” Leo pointed to the top of Mayor Trugo’s head, which was now exposed. In his anger, the mayor’s top hat had slid to the back of his head, exposing the bare skin that lay beneath it.
“Are you… serious?” Mayor Trugo replied slowly. The glare in his eyes had been upgraded from ‘angry’ to ‘death.’ “Is that all you have to say?”
Leo shrugged.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, mayor. Every week, you drag me into this room and yell at me. I’m as tired of it as you are. Can we just skip to the part where you kick me out of the room?”
Apparently, that was the wrong sequence of words to say, as Mayor Trugo’s face turned beet red. But he took a deep breath, and when he spoke, he spoke slowly.
“Leo. This is the problem with you. You take nothing seriously. You ignore consequences. And no matter how much I punish you, you do everything in the laziest fashion possible. You twist words. You lie. You act as though you are above everything.”
He looked at Leo with a glare that felt as if he was staring into his soul.
“I’ve had enough. I want you out of this village by tomorrow.”
[Emergency Quest: Don’t get kicked out of the village!]
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