Chapter 26: Levels, Loot, and Lore

While Lexi tried to quickly repair the damage she had done to her tabard in tearing it from her body, she reviewed the surplus of system alert messages and popup boxes that had accumulated in the upper right-hand corner of her peripheral vision following the melee’s completion. As with the last quest she had completed, the first alert with which the paladin was met served to recap all of the attribute modifications she had earned during the quest.

Nice, I leveled up again! Although Lexi had no notion of what the scale of levels might be in terms of maxing out — or if that was even possible in this world — she was happy to see steady and quick improvement. The additional spell and hit points in particular would undoubtedly come in handy as the difficulty of her party’s quests increased. This one had seemed like it would be a breeze at first, but that priestess had been a pretty serious opponent in the end.

If the quests that Lexi was going to face in this world followed any kind of progression, which she assumed they would given that this was a game world, then it would just keep getting harder from this point on. To wit, when she mentally closed out the top window, the next one which faced her was the updated quest tracker, showing the rescue operation to be complete, but with a new quest already having been added. As expected, its goal was to remove the curse which had been lain on Lexi by the slain goblin priestess.

Following this menu, the paladin was met with yet another now familiar popup, indicating that her level increase had granted her access to a new spell.

Calling up the spell menu, Lexi saw that this new addition to her magical inventory had a rather unusual name, but based on the last spell she had been given, was wholly in character with the apparent spirit of Fantasy Adventure Quest.

Now this one, the paladin said to herself after reviewing the spell’s description. This spell could have some major used both in the bedroom and on the battlefield. Her mind reeled with possible uses for the spell. Scenarios ranging from disrupting a tightly packed room of foes to initiating an instant-orgy-party with her fellow adventurers whirled through her mind’s eye as she carefully perused the fine details of the spell.

Once the paladin had finally finished making the ad hoc repairs to her tabard and had dressed herself, she saw that Samantha had finished unbinding all three members of the Eschenbach family. As each one was currently sleeping from the combination of trauma suffered at the hands of the goblins as well as the powerful healing spells enacted upon them by the monk, Samantha had lain them all together, away from any of the gory goblin carcasses.

“I shall search the village to find clothing for the family we have rescued,” she said, in her usual clipped and formal manner of speaking.

“Good idea,” Lexi nodded. “We probably shouldn’t parade a bunch of nobles through he city totally naked — especially after everything they’ve been through. Let’s all see what we can help find.”

“Yes,” Gretel agreed. “We should get out of this place as soon as these three can walk. The last thing we want is to get into any more trouble today. Our muscular friend here,” the mage indicated Samantha’s leg, “can barely walk on that, and you and I both took some serious hits from that little green whore’s whip too.”

“Oh shit!” Lexi slapped her forehead. “You used all your healing spells on the Eschenbach’s, didn’t you, Samantha? And you were just planning on walking all the way back to the city on that?! You can barely hobble across the cave right now.”

The monk nodded stoically, saying nothing. Her leg did look bad. The whip’s flames had seared off nearly an inch of muscle in a complete circle around her enormous thigh, leaving a cauterized valley that looked absolutely horrendous to the paladin. Samantha’s hands too were burned and blistered from where she had struggled to disentangle the flaming whip from her leg during the melee.

“Let me help you first,” Lexi said softly. “You two are both tapped out magically, but I’m still at full strength.”

Kneeling down in front of the monk, Lexi placed her hand delicately on her friend’s wound, and cast the healing spell.

“You too, Gretel” Lexi said, turning to the voluptuous pink haired mage. “That gash on your chest looks ugly.”

“Look who’s talking,” Gretel quipped sarcastically. “I’m not the one with my cheekbone peeking out.”

But, before the mage could argue any further, Lexi placed a hand gently on her chest, and sublingually intoned the spell’s words of power.

Heal Minor Wounds!