Valken stared down at the small piece of cheese, it was struggling to breathe. Valken hadn’t even known cheese could breathe.

  He was currently standing next to Cleanne in her tent with the cheese on the bed that was too large for it. The tent was small, so Cleanne stood close to Valken, and he was trying to not show how much her proximity affected him.

  Cleanne had been trying to cast [Heal] on the little bugger for the last thirty minutes to no avail. She finally turned to Valken, not quite meeting his eye, and spoke softly. “Could you please use [Identify] on it?”

  He raised an eyebrow but did as she asked.

  NAME: {UNKNOWN}

  AGE: 135

  RACE: Humanoid intelligent cheese

  RACE LEVEL: 1

  INTELLIGENCE LEVEL: Very dumb human 1

  CLASS; {NONE}

  IN USE TITLES: ‘The Cheese Lord’

  Valken frowned and pushed harder against the cheese’s defenses, for being at such a low level, he --Valken was assuming it was a he because even though he’d screamed like a little girl it had sounded like a scared guy when he talked-- had surprisingly high defenses. It took Valken much longer than it should have, he did eventually get what he was looking for.

  Ability:

  ‘Resist mana’ -Legendary

  The ability to completely resist any type of magic under the level of mythical. If magic is above or at the level of mythical then ability only negates some effects. This includes magic that the player is unaware of.

  Congratulations!

  You have discovered an ability that even the owner of the ability is unaware of!

  Congratulations!

  You have discovered an ability using ‘Identity’ that greatly exceeds your ‘Identify’ skill level!

  Your ‘Identify’ skill has leveled up!

  Your new skill level is:

  Epic

  Valken’s eyes shot open and he gasped. Cleanne looked over, narrowing her eyes at him. “What? What’s wrong?”

  Valken opened his mouth to answer, then closed it, before finally telling her, “It has the ability [Resist magic].”

  He didn’t tell her more, if he did then she would probably say something along the lines of; “Oh, I must take it to the Academy! It’s the only way to heal it!” He wouldn’t let her get away with that. He had let her get away with too many things.

  Cleanne frowned. “That's odd. I used my rare [Heal] spell. It should have worked.”

  She glared at Valken suspiciously and he hurriedly responded, “He’s a very high level.”

  Her eyebrow went up, and her mouth turned down. Valken glanced away then looked back, trying to smile. “He’s just from a weak race.”

  Cleanne frowned again, looking Valken up and down with a reasonable amount of suspicion before she sighed and turned back to the cheese. “That means that I’ve got to use my reserve of healing potions…”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  She trailed off at the last word, glancing over at Valken she held out a hand hopefully. Instead of handing her bag to her, Valken reached inside of it and pulled out a healing potion. He was intimately aware of how she packed her bag, as well as other things she kept hidden away.

  Cleanne scowled at him and snatched the potion away. Seeing no need to stay, Valken grabbed Cleanne’s bag and walked out of the tent.

  Cleanne’s two lackeys were tied up next to the fire, still very unconscious. Enji sat on a rock next to them. They had left the dungeon a little over an hour ago and had set up the camp a little ways away from it. The camp was in a circle with the campfire in the middle. There were four tents, not including the healing tent, Falkan’s tent, Enji’s, the casters and the rogues (Valken had never bothered to learn their names) and his and Cleanne’s tent.

  Now it was just Cleanne’s tent, though he would be staying in there to make sure she didn’t escape. Against his better judgement he felt butterflies erupt in his stomach. Valken brutally squashed them down. That relationship was over.

  Valken walked over to Enji and sat next to him. Enji was smoking a pipe and held out a bag to Valken. Valken hesitated. Cleanne hated the smell of tobacco. He clenched his jaw and grabbed the tobacco, lit it and took a long pull from his pipe. He didn’t even care anymore.

  …

  I woke up to the horrible sensation of someone touching me. “Geroff me you ligament licker!”

  There was a tisking sound and I was picked up. The elf, Cletus or whatever her name was, held me up and put a magnifying glass next to me. I swatted at it. By Nivlac, I hated her.

  Who the heck was Nivlac?

  More information has been added to your quest;

  ‘Why, Where and how’

  Congratulations!

  You have discovered a god!

  Well… that did nothing to answer my question. In fact, it gave me so many more.

  “Cleanne, will you stop fingering my cheese like that?” It was Valken who made that weird and inappropriate comment. The elf glared at him out her right eye.

  I couldn’t tell where we were, but I could tell we were moving. Cleanne was sitting on something wooden, it felt like a bench.

  “I agree with scary hobo man, I don’t like you touching me.” I pushed at one of her fingers.

  Cleanne started to glare at me instead. “I will stuff you back in the bag.”

  “Oh, no, it’s fine.” I replied hurriedly. “I’ll just sit between you and Scary hobo man.”

  I climbed out of her hand onto the wood bench and sat down in the space between them. Within one minute I was bored.

  I swung my legs around and clacked my cheesy tongue.

  I heard Scary hobo man mutter under his breath. “He’s almost… cute?”

  I stopped kicking my legs. Cleanne just snorted and rolled her eyes. “I think he’s kind of creepy. I mean, he has no eyes.”

  I tried to ignore the comment, but nothing could stop the well-known embarrassment from rising up. I reached up and gently touched the part of me that would have had eyes. Just smooth rind.

  Since my tongue clicking had stopped there was now silence between the three of us…and something else I couldn’t quite put a cheesy finger on. Then, it came to me.

  Tension.

  Not the “oh, we’re about to kiss!” kind, it was the “she caught me cheating at uno.” kind. So, like, worse than calling your mother-in-law fat and actually cheating on your wife… with her sister.

  I had an epiphany right on that stupid bench.

  Your quest;

  ‘Why, Where, and How’

  Has been updated!

  You do not know how you are familiar with ‘Uno’ --which the most learned of scholars have only heard of-- or the emotion of ‘embarrassment’.

  I was sure now that the system was definitely yanking me around like a show pony. You shouldn’t just remind people that they don’t know anything! I scowled my rind angrily.

  We rode on for a while, I was bored and full of questions. I finally burst one out. “How did you get the bench to move so smoothly? From the magical formations I saw, no one has magic advanced enough for this.”

  There was a long, pregnant silence.

  “You-” Hobo man hesitated. “Do you know what a wagon is?”

  For the second time that day I felt embarrassed. “Of course I know what a wagon is, I-uh just forgot the name, that's all. Whoever made this road should be proud.”

  Why had I instantly jumped straight to Magical Floating Benches?! They weren't nearly magically sophisticated enough in their magic technology for M.F.Bs(Magic Floating Benches)!

  I felt the elf what's-her-name roll her eyes, right before an arrow shot clean through her neck. She collapsed on top of me, spurting blood everywhere.