Chapter 6

If Rayner had known he would have to carry Axel so far, he would have begged the goblin Vix to stay with him to help. Needing a break, Rayner set Axel down next to a blighted tree. Despite leaving the zone of the miasma, the damage to the environment in proximity to it continued.

He’d seen twisted trees, sickly grass, and muddy ground ever since leaving the miasma.

Checking Axel’s pulse and breath, Rayner saw no improvement in his condition. As he rested among the cursed land, he took out his list. In only a short time it had gotten long and increasingly ambitious. But now he wanted to focus on the basics. The game-like system has several key differences from what he was familiar with back home. A review of what he had learned was in order.

Attributes like speed, strength, health, wisdom, and charisma existed, but in a different form. These stats continued to represent the same function. Speed represented movement, accuracy, and generally all motor skills. Health represented how long until death, exhaustion, or physical condition. Wisdom or intelligence tended to mean how smart or wise a person was; this stat helped magic users in almost all games, it was also the attribute Axel specialized in. Strength represented physical power. Then there was charisma that he used to intimidate his enemies and rally his allies. In other games it helped trick or seduce people, this world had a more practical use for it.

All these stats were rolled into one super statistic: mana.

When he looked at the tattoo on his palm that everyone in this world had, he could see none of the traditional stats, only mana. A greatly simplified system, if only he understood all of it and its complexities. Finding a teacher they could trust would also be on his to-do list.

As far as Rayner could tell, Worshipers, this world’s adventurers, had greater ability in one stat and that would mean more mana would be spent powering up that specific stat, compared to others. Thus far he and Axel did this without much knowledge of how they accomplished it, not to mention the use of skills.

He took out another page to make notes on the use of skills. Then Axel stirred behind him. Axel shook as if in a winter storm without clothes and his sweat soaked his shirt. Rayner hoped his condition would stay the same if not improve.

He put his list away and returned Axel’s body back over his shoulders, wishing his friend was not so heavy but sucked it up. Axel needed help, and soon. Besides, Rayner could use a little exercise.

The first village Rayner stopped at greeted him with armed civilians, a man and a woman, but after seeing his and his friend’s injuries they let them in. The village had sturdy walls surrounding it, with a trench for added defense.

The local healer did not know what was wrong with Axel, so couldn’t heal him. When the healer tried to pray for him, she said it was not working. It was if the gods could not see Axel, she told him.

That was probably because they couldn’t. Not with their Titles, Godless and Faithless, preventing them from worshiping or getting blessed and cursed by gods. The Titles sounded cool but more often than not, they prevented them from fully integrating into this world’s society and culture.

He’d carried Axel and their supplies for most of the day until he reached the village. He needed rest. Rayner decided he would stay and ask the villagers if they were headed in the right direction and for any other useful information.

Other than the wall, the village was like any other: people went about their daily chores and kids chased each other, bothering those at work. He stopped at seeing the armed woman who let him in the village.

“Hello, thanks for letting me and my friend in. I forgot to say thanks before, so, well, thanks,” Rayner said, offering his hand.

She shook his extended hand. “We help each other out around here when we are able. It is better than the alternative.”

“Alternative?”

“We were hasty. We should have stayed behind the walls but left our protection to confront you. As soon as I saw you, I knew you could have defeated us.”

It was true, he could easily fight them, but he had no intention of doing so. “I want you to know I have no desire to hurt anyone here.”

“That is clear now.”

“Will other villages react the same way?”

She took a moment to think. “There is a saying ‘it is better to feed the beast than become the food’.”

It hurt to know people would think of him as a beast, mainly because he was thinking of himself as a beast as well. He didn’t want to be a Barbarian. Rayner had always imagined himself as a paladin or a white knight, maybe even a hero.

Seeing his distress, she said, “Do not trouble yourself over this. It is an abundance of caution we take out of habit.”

“I understand. Could you also tell me about the monsters your walls protect the village from?”

“Sure, but you should have seen them on your way to the village. Isn’t that how you got your injuries?”

“We took a shortcut through the miasma.”

“A shortcut, are you two fools?” she said in shock.

They were, but he did not want to admit it. “Our quest is important. We are trying to reunite a family so they can hopefully begin a new life.”

Confusion replaced shock on her face. “I have never heard of a combat Worshiper undertaking such a quest, certainly not deeming it important. Is this man whose quest you have taken a lord? If so, you have been fooled, we don’t have lords here, it is too dangerous.”

“He is a poor refugee, not a lord, and his plight is important to me if not to anyone else,” he said. “How can this region have no lords, is it autonomous?”

“Most of Alta governs by way of elected councils. If this were a powerful country, it would be the strong worshipers that rule.”

He and Axel had not thought of the government of Alta at all. They understood Alta lacked strong Worshipers but never questioned why a militia had not at least been mobilized. With so few lords how was this country being governed? Was it a democracy? He put it in his notes.

The woman peeked at his furious writing, amused. “Are you a Cataloger as well, do you research monsters?”

“No, I just like to keep of track of what I don’t know about. I would still like to know about the monsters in the Alea region.”

“I can’t speak for the entire region, having not fought too far outside my village. I can tell you that the monsters we fight are ones that anyone would recognize, goblins, kobolds, gremlins, various wolves. Troublesome but manageable, with the walls and some defense forces.”

She shifted from foot to foot and had trouble looking at him. He supposed she was understating the problem or trying to look tough. “Thanks, that’s good to know. Never fought a gremlin before. Could you give some tips?” He was trying to put her at ease, show her he was not a big bad monster slayer and was genuinely interested in learning a way to get an edge in combat.

Without hesitation, she went in depth into the telling of her own humble adventures.

Rayner kept himself busy and useful, determined to let the villagers know he was no threat. He shoveled animal waste, chopped firewood, and plucked weeds with the children.

The children had many questions for him. He learned more from them than they did from him. Their questions were mature. It must have been the environment they grew up in.

“Have you bedded any princesses?” a child yelled.

“I can’t say I have.”

“Taken any maidens?”

“If you mean forcibly, no I have and would not. I have rescued some women. Some were maidens.”

“Are you a hero?”

That gave him some pause. “I would like to be.”

“How many monsters have you killed?”

“Not enough!” He boasted, causing the kids to giggle.

He felt something wet and hard hit his back. It was a ball of mud, a kid had thrown it at him, and looked ready to fire off more. Rayner wasn’t upset and was getting ready to play along until he saw the boy’s tears.

“You are not a hero, I bet you have not killed a single monster.” The boy threw another mud ball at him. “I bet you have taken many maidens you big nothing!” The kid hurled insults at him along with his mud balls.

He avoided the mud balls easily, but that was not the problem. The child was more sad than angry. A man picked up the child and apologized to Rayner on the kid’s behalf. The kid never stopped yelling at him and squirmed in the man’s arms.

“No problem sir, he is just a kid. I don’t know what I did to set him off. I heard that some may think I am a danger to this village, but I assure you I am not.”

The man hesitated. “Come with me inside, we can talk about it in my home.”

The kids having already finished pulling weeds went home, along with the angry child who gave him a parting glare to let him know this was not over before scampering off.

The rest of the villagers, having also finished their work for the afternoon, headed inside with great haste, eager for some rest. This left Rayner and the man walking through the village by themselves, until joined by the healer followed by the village guards that brought him into the village. One of them was the woman he talked to about monsters. This was looking like an ambush. He made a move for his hammer.

“There is no need for that,” said the healer. “We only wish to talk in private.”

He looked around. Nobody made any threating moves, and the village guards were unarmed, likely to put him at ease. He moved his hand away from his hammer. “Fine, we can talk, but I don’t like how you all went about this.”

“Apologies. Please come with us.”

They sat around a fire in the single room home. A woman came to serve porridge for those gathered around the fire before leaving the house. “My wife wants no part in this. She has no hope,” the man said.

“First, introductions. My name is Martha, I have been responsible for patching up the men and women of this village since I was a girl. Our host,” pointing to the man, “is John, uncle to the poor boy you saw earlier. These two,” gesturing to the remaining man and woman, “you have met already. They let you in the village. Meet Mary and Walker.”

They bowed their heads slightly in greeting. Eager to find out their motives Rayner asked. “What is this all about?”

“We did not let you in to help your sick friend,” Martha said. “We needed your help.”

“Why not simply ask?”

“We didn’t know enough about you. Now we see you are a pleasant and strong young man. That and we needed to keep our intentions a secret. Mary and Walker told the village council that they let you in because you could have attacked them otherwise. Their excuse for leaving the walls in the first place was youthful overconfidence.”

“What task requires you to keep it a secret from the village leaders?”

This time Mary answered, “There is another monster common here. Dragons.” Seeing his alarm, she elaborated. “Not the kind you are thinking of. I speak of the serpentine variety. They are not native to the area but they have bred well here, having no natural predators. The scale of the problem is reaching critical levels; it is still a local issue for now as the dragons are purposely trying to avoid notice.”

In other circumstances he would have said yes without hesitation; however, he had Axel to care for. “I am sorry, I can’t help you.”

“If you don’t, we have to make another sacrifice!” Walker said.

Sacrifice? He remembered the questions the kids asked and the crying boy. “This village sacrifices maidens to the dragons.” The shame on their faces confirmed his words.

“We can’t fight dragons, we tried, and it was a laughable attempt. It’s a dragon for gods’ sake!”

In another life, he would heap shame on them, but the realities of this world tempered his righteous anger. These people had been dealt a bad hand. It did not change the fact that he could not help. “I am sorry. Is there anyone else you can turn to?”

“No combat Worshiper will come here unless they are looking for a thrill. Their churches and governments provide them with resources to fight both weak and strong monsters. We have nothing to offer them.”

This story again. He’d yet to meet these Worshipers that used their powers to do so little for those who needed it. “I understand the people of Alta don’t worship the major gods to keep out of their conflicts, but it does not seem to be working. Alta is a war zone and you cannot defend yourselves. Why hold to this principle?”

Martha stared into the fire. “It is not entirely by choice. No matter how much we pray to any one god, none of them become powerful enough for it to mean anything.”

Rayner thought about his lack of experience. What she said made sense. Even if they worshiped many gods instead of one, some objection to this practice should have formed along with a cult for the purpose of worshiping a more powerful god. He saw no signs of any such a cult.

For the first time, John spoke, “It is better to feed the beast than become the food.”

Knowing the secret of the village gave the saying a much darker meaning. “Is the sacrifice related to you?”

“She is my niece; the boy is her little brother.”

Again, it didn’t change his situation. He couldn’t help. It was best if he just left this place. Staying at their home, eating their food, and not helping them would eat at his conscience.

“We can heal your friend,” Martha said.

“You said you could not help him before; did you lie to get me to help you?”

“Peace, please. I would not do that. The cost to heal him is significant. But if you can save this village from further sacrifices, then yes I can heal Axel.”

“How much?”

“The cost is not money. The skill requires me to trade places with the target. Meaning I will be left in the condition Axel is in.”

She was not a young woman; would this kill her? He could not ask that of her. “Is there no other way?”

“It is not suicide boy, I wouldn’t be transferring his injuries to myself, just his state of being. For example, if he were sick, I would feel sick, but not be sick. I will live. The problem is I could not carry out duties in such a state.”

“Then his life will still be in danger. What is the point in that?”

“My skill works differently with mana related illness. It will debuff him.”

This was likely the best chance he had at healing Axel.

“I’ll do it.” The others brightened. The mood in the room had been dark since the conversation started. They thanked him with great enthusiasm, the job hadn’t even started yet and they acted as if he saved the day. “We still need to work out the details. I don’t want to go in blind.”

Walker spoke first, “Their scales are not hard but they are thick, the deepest anyone has pierced it was two inches. The dragons are varying shades of green. We don’t know if that indicates strength or age.”

Mary spoke next, “Most of them are the length of an average fallen tree, and almost as thick. The biggest I have seen could wrap itself around a small hill!”

“Known weaknesses?” At this they stopped, putting forward no ideas. Damn. “Do they breathe fire?”

“Why would they inhale fire?” John asked.

“No, I mean exhale fire.”

John looked at him as if he were the fire-breathing dragon.

“OK, so they don’t breathe fire. So, they are big, strong, and hard to stab. Is that really all?” It did not seem so bad, compared to zombies.

“They eat EXP,” Martha added.

Well, that was alarming. “I thought that was something gods do through prayers and worship?”

“We don’t think they eat all EXP, only some of it, certain parts of it. Everything we do is part of our experiences. Cooking, cleaning...”

“Not having sex. That is a form of experience or inexperience.” He surmised this was the reason dragons wanted maidens.

“Again, we can only guess. It is another reason why we cannot get Worshipers to fight it. They don’t want their precious EXP taken.”

Understandable. In most games all that is needed to gain experience is constant combat with monsters or performing the same actions repeatedly. Even if it resulted in diminishing returns in the form of less experience, it still added up. With enough EXP a gamer would advance in level, granting them points to distribute among their stats or skills. But like he and Axel kept reminding each other: this was not a game.

They could not distribute points, pick classes, or gain EXP by mindlessly murdering large groups of monsters. The quality of experience played a huge role in leveling up more so than quantity.

In order to lighten the mood, Rayner joked, “The dragons might take their gold.” They didn’t understand his reference. Meaning dragons are not known for hoarding gold in this world. “So, where is the dragon I am supposed to kill?”

“Dragons,” John said.

“Pardon?”

“We want you to kill all the dragons.”

They spent the rest of the evening discussing how others hand fought the dragons. They wanted him to kill all of them by himself. It would take some time for Axel to wake up even after the healer Martha had used her skill on him.

He left the village first thing in the morning, heading to the swamp where most of the dragons resided.

A green figure appeared ahead of him. He would have liked it to be the helpful goblin they fought within the miasma, but he had no such luck. Seeing clearer he could tell there was more than one. They were Inimi goblins, he could tell. Probably deserters from the main army. The two goblins had not noticed him yet. There were no trees, bushes, or tall grass to hide in, so he crouched as low as possible and crept toward them.