Dario! How could I forget this guy? The priest that accompanied me on my disastrous first ever dungeon—I probably destroyed his chances of joining the White Striders. He’s got more of a reason to hate me than anyone else in this whole game.

  “Motherf*cker.”

  “H-hey. H-how’s it going? Sorry for last time…”

  “Dario! Good news, I have two new recruits to the LoveCherry guild!” A high-pitched female voice interrupts our conversation, and we both turn to see Cherry1 shamelessly clinging to two blushing idiots at once. She looks the same as she did back then, with her exaggerated candy red pigtails and magical girl uniform. I see she’s still looking for attention from every guy she meets, in spite of her boyfriend standing right here.

  Seeing me, she smiles at first, prepared to turn on the charm. Then she does a double take, recognizes me, and her playful, flirtatious look breaks into a glare of fury.

  “This guy!”

  Oh, boy. Here we go.

  “You know him, Cherry?”

  “This guy insulted me!” Cherry1 declares, pushing out her cheeks and pouting, stomping her little foot at me.

  “I didn’t—”

  “And not only that! He’s the absolute worst tank in existence! Thanks to him our whole team was wiped out in the Edgelord dungeon! Twice!”

  The other dudes, her newest love slaves, look at me scornfully.

  “Pathetic.”

  “It was an absolute disaster thanks to him! He couldn’t aggro a single monster. What a joke!”

  “That was because my aura—”

  “I can’t believe you found a guild that would actually take a worthless guy like you,” she cuts in. “The Whales? Their guild leader must be an idiot.”

  “Actually, Revelator is the guild leader,” Sherbie appears then and volunteers this information helpfully. I want to smack him.

  Behind me, Dario bursts out laughing. Cherry1 too, she laughs through pursed lips, then throws her head back and guffaws at me. Soon everyone’s laughing, a whole crowd I hadn’t realized was gathering.

  “Yeah,” Sherbie says grinning, oblivious. “We just formed. If anyone is looking for a guild, we’re accepting new recruits. We already have a healer and a tank, so any damage dealers—”

  “You’re f*cking joking,” Dario cuts him off. “You don’t actually think anyone would join a guild with this piece of shit tank? May as well put a gun to your head and pull the trigger, if you’re thinking of counting on this asshole.”

  [Heart rate accelerating. 136 BPM. Automatic system shutdown if heart rate reaches 150 BPM.]

  “But Rev’s really good,” Sherbie says, confused.

  “Forget it,” I say, grabbing him by the arm and steering him away from this humiliating scene.

  “Hey! I want to join your guild,” one of the onlookers says, and he bursts through the crowd to trot after us. I glare mistrustfully at Sawagg, a fighter by the looks of him.

  “Why? You heard Cherry and Dario. They weren’t lying.”

  “Forget you, man. I’m joining for her,” he says, and he looks down at Sherbie. Then to both our horror, the guy gets a lewd grin. “Where do I sign up, baby girl? I’d put my life on the line for a hottie like you any day.”

  Sherbie’s face goes red with humiliation and his eyes tear up. It’s more than I can take.

  “Go f*ck yourself.”

  “Bro, what?”

  “Since you can’t think with anything but your dick, go f*ck yourself. Moron.”

  “Bro, you want to fight?”

  “Sure.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “Rev—”

  “Fight me,” I say, finding myself in some kind of mood. I pull up the system, select a feature I’ve noticed in the past but never dreamed I’d use.

  [Would you like to challenge Sawagg to a duel?]

  “Yes.”

  “Are you f*cking serious?”

  We’re drawing another crowd, I realize, but I don’t give a damn. One minute and twenty-two seconds. That’s all I need. My aura will eat him alive.

  Sawagg scoffs at my challenge. Lifts his finger to his system screen, and hovers a moment. He glances over it, meeting my gaze. I don’t know what he sees in it, but it gives him pause.

  A second passes. Two.

  “Whatever, man. You’re not worth my time.”

  [Sawagg has declined your challenge.]

  The crowd groans with disappointment.

  “Anyone else want to go?!” I shout at them. “I’ll take you all on at once!”

  They laugh at my dare, but I’m dead serious.

  “Dario?” I call him out, and he jumps a little. “You got a score you want to settle? Fight me!”

  “F*ck you, man.”

  “Yeah, f*ck you and your tiny dick,” Cherry1 echoes him.

  The crowd disperses after that, disappointed they won’t get to witness a fight, leaving Sherbert and me standing in the middle of the street.

  “Rev—”

  “Let’s go,” I cut him off, walking away with my map open. Marking my destination, I make for it on determined strides, while behind me Sherbie has to jog to keep up.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Here,” I say, stopping in front of a shop that sells accessories.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Wait here.”

  I go inside myself and talk to the proprietress, an NPC who, thankfully for me, never has to close her shop or sleep, even in the dead of night. I make my purchase and head back outside to where my friend is waiting.

  “Here,” I thrust the bag at him.

  “What’s this?”

  “Glasses.”

  “But I don’t—”

  “Just put them on.”

  Sherbie does as he’s told.

  “Well? How do I look?”

  “See for yourself,” I say, indicating to the reflective storefront window. He approaches to get a good look, and his mouth falls open.

  “Rev, this—”

  “No one will mistake you for a girl now.”

  I bought him those ultra thick glasses with the spiral, the kind nerdy, unpopular kids wear in anime. Like this, in an instant, Sherbert’s been transformed from a super cute elf girl into a scrawny dude no one would look at twice.

  “You’re ok with that, right?”

  “Are you kidding? This is perfect! And it doesn’t even affect my vision. Why didn’t I think of this? You’re a genius!”

  “Heh,” I say, feeling just a tad pleased with myself. “I wouldn’t go that far. Anyway, don’t you have quests to turn in?”

  “Oh, yeah. This way!”

  Sherbie doesn’t ask me about what happened with Dario and Cherry1 before. He doesn’t talk about that ugly scene at all, and he doesn’t complain about our not being able to recruit anyone for our guild. He really is a good guy, I think, smiling a little fondly at the back of his head. Or is it just that he’s an idiot, and he’s already forgotten it even happened? Either way, I don’t really mind. I’m just glad he’s here. If not for this idiot, I’m sure I’d be over thinking everything that just happened, and working myself into a mess.

  Instead I find myself babysitting this airhead, pulling him out of the way when he’s about to walk out in front of a moving cart, and setting him back on the right path when he gets turned around at the intersection.

  “How did you even survive in this game before you met me?”

  “Did you see that?” he hisses to me excitedly, ignoring my question. “The glasses are working! That group of guys just walked right past me without even pinching my butt!”

  Seriously—how did he survive?

  “Take this quest,” he says to me after turning his in. “It’s the next one in the line. We can do it together.”

  “Right.”

  “The cultists are getting bolder,” says a middle-aged man named Silas with a soot stained forehead. “It doesn’t matter how many of them we kill, they keep coming. They won’t stop until our entire way of life is destroyed,” he says, gesturing around him to the industrialized city.

  “But I can’t understand it,” he goes on with a worried expression. “Where are they getting this power? For years they’ve been a nuisance with their protests and their sabotage, but they were never like this. Go to their camp in Everglen, find the source of their evil magic and report back. I’ll gather the militia, and together we’ll go and stamp it out.”

  [Would you like to accept quest: Root of Evil?]

  [Reward: 4 sp]

  “Yes.”

  “Hey, Sherbie,” I say to my friend later as we’re leaving the city. “Want to fill me in on the quest line so far? I read a little bit about it in the forums, but I really don’t know much about what’s been going on here at all.”

  “Yeah, sure. So there are these bad guys, right? These cultists, and they hate everyone who’s not them. They want to kill every single person and restore the land to it’s natural state.”

  “So, they’re like extremist environmentalists?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “But, you’re a druid. Aren’t you on their side?”

  “No way. It’s the same with those in the Druid Enclave. We believe in the balance of all things, that there’s a place for nature, and a place for people amongst it. They’d never harm a person who’s just trying to feed their family, and they’d never push back against progress unless it was really encroaching too far. Even then, they’d fight it legally, or in some other way that resulted in as little death as possible. That’s what the elder told me at the Druid Enclave.”

  Right. The Druid Enclave. We’re suppose to pay a visit to that place. I’ll ask Sherbie about it after we finish this quest.

  “But these cultists, the way they fight is super suspicious. They use magic, and not the kind of earthy magic you’d expect. When you raid their camps, you’ll find all these summoning circles, and when they cast spells, their hands glow with this creepy blood red light. They’ve also been summoning imps.”

  “Imps? As in, demons?”

  “Yeah. Way suspicious, right? My guess is they’re in league with some kind of demonic entity. I’m sure when we get to the bottom of this, he’ll be the one pulling the strings.”

  Demons, huh? Not something a guy would like to tangle with in a setting like this. It’s one thing when they’re on a screen, another entirely, when you’ve got to fight one face to face.

  Suddenly I’m feeling a bit nostalgic for Tenderfoot Slough, and the days when the only monsters I had to worry about fighting were shroomlets and jackalopes…