Level One God

Bed bugs? Seriously?

I reread the stats several times, quietly trying to convince myself I hadn’t just made a terrible mistake.

Lyria stood beside me, one arm folded over her chest and the other lifted so she could gnaw a nail, eyes locked on the ominous bedroll.

I had barely looked at the bedroll itself, but it definitely looked cursed. It somehow gave the impression of being drenched in blood, and it was covered in glowing red runes and ritual symbols. Red energy slowly drifted up from the bedroll like smoke.

Scary ass smoke.

I sighed. “It could have been worse, right?” I asked Lyria.

“Maybe?” she said. “I’m just trying to figure out how you’re going to explain this thing to people. It’s a little… conspicuous.”

As she spoke, a low, eerie growl rose up from the bedroll, making the gathered grommets jump back in fear. A couple of them tipped over, scared straight to unconsciousness.

Great.

“Well,” I said, feeling awkward. “Thanks for your help, Grimbo. I hope everybody enjoyed watching that.”

Grimbo moved in front of me, lifting his pink arms to stop me. “This one feels… gratitude. You will take this small gift?”

“You don’t have to give me a gift,” I said.

Grimbo reached in his hair and pulled out a root with a big bite taken out of it. He extended it toward me with both hands, flat teeth gleaming from behind his hair. “This one insists.”

“Okay,” I said, taking the root. “Thanks, Grimbo. Do you need to do any of the fancy stuff for this bedroll? Or do I just… take it, since it’s not bound to my personal space.”

“You will be taking it. And you will be keeping the secret, yes?” Grimbo’s eyebrow area lifted.

“Oh, definitely. We won’t tell anybody about your digging and secret caves.”

“A grommet pays his debts,” Grimbo said, eyes wide.

“Okay,” I said, looking down at the root with a bite taken out of it. I give it a little lift and a smile. “This is great. Consider your debt paid."

Grimbo smiled mysteriously, as if there was something I didn’t understand. Apparently satisfied, he waddled away to converse with the other grommets. From the bits and pieces of conversation I heard, they were talking excitedly about my bedroll. A few of them were slapping the unconscious grommets, trying to get them to wake.

I felt a little bit like I was picking up a snake as I approached the cursed bedroll. I knelt down in front of it and I could actually feel the way it disrupted the mana around it. It reminded me of how it had felt in the infested ruins.

It was that same, chaotic energy.

I picked it up and zapped it to my slip space as quickly as I could, hoping none of the supposed bed bugs would get on me. I still couldn’t believe the damn thing had bed bugs. Of all the ways to curse someone, why did it have to be something so diabolical?

Lyria joined me as we headed back the way we’d come. Grimbo apparently trusted us to make it back on our own.

“Are you going to keep it?” she asked once we were alone.

“The curses are pretty terrible,” I admitted. “But if I can find a way to feed this thing, I think it will be worth it. Only needing to sleep an hour per day and getting fully healed every time? Plus I can bring it with me anywhere we go? Those are huge.”

“But the bugs…” Lyria said.

I sighed. “Yeah. I’m not thrilled about that. Maybe I can get myself some kind of… skin-tight full body suit. Bug-proof clothing.”

She frowned. “You’re going to really be quite the sight if we join a party, aren’t you?”

I chuckled. “We can just make something up about how I got the bed. It’s not like the thing is a dead giveaway that I’m… who I am.”

She nodded. “So you’re really planning to keep it?”

“For now, at least. I just wished I knew how long I had to feed it before it would awaken, though. Wait,” I said, frowning as we passed one of the glowing rocks stuffed in the cave wall. “Can it awaken inside my slip space?”

Lyria shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe? And for the record, this is exactly why normal people don’t mess with curses.”

“Yeah, well, that ship has sailed. What is soul burn, anyway?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even know corrupt and dark mana were different things. I’ve heard people use them interchangeably before.”

“Well, I just need to find one reliable source,” I said. “Any ideas on how I’ll keep this thing fed?”

Lyria looked thoughtful. “Infestations are teeming with the stuff. Dungeons, too, I think. Or you could always try to make friends with a Forsaken and ask if they mind you leeching a little bit of their power every night.”

“Funny,” I said, voice dry.

My head was buzzing with questions as we finished moving through the tunnel, climbing back up to Grimbo’s shop, and eventually crossing the street toward the tavern. For some reason, I was oddly fixated on the bed bugs.

The bedroll “aggressively haunted” anything that tried to rest on it “to death.” Wouldn’t the bed bugs have to rest, eventually? What did it even mean to haunt something to death? Could I eventually harden my body enough to resist the bites of the bed bugs, or was I seriously doomed to a lifetime of itchy, annoying welts? If I was fully healed each night, wouldn’t that at least mean the bug bites would heal and not bother me all day?

I also tried to think through any kind of potential loopholes. Would the bed only get hungry when it was outside my slip space? Maybe my inventory was a sort of stasis zone I could use to keep the bed dormant.

Even if the bed didn’t get hungrier while stored, I was going to have to bring it out at least an hour each day, though. Because of the curse, I could only sleep an hour each night, no matter where I slept. That meant if I wasn’t sleeping on my bedroll and getting fully rested from that hour, I couldn’t afford to sleep in a normal bed even for a single night. Otherwise, I’d be exhausted and unable to sleep.

There was no way around it. I had to find out how to feed this thing, and I needed to do it soon.

Whatever method I chose was likely to be dangerous, though, and I wasn’t about to go rushing to find a source of corrupted or dark mana without preparing myself. The description also made it sound like it awakened in stages. That implied I’d be able to get some rough idea of how close it was to awakening. I hoped that also meant the awakening process took some time.

In other words, I would give myself at least the time to claim my reward tokens and say goodbye to the others. If I could, I’d try to discreetly dig for information about corrupted and dark mana from them. Maybe there was a source I could access without having to go sneaking into a dungeon or infestation.

Somehow, I doubted it. I had a feeling my path was leading straight to danger, and sooner than I liked.

The whole group was still sitting in the back of the tavern when we arrived. I guessed we had only been gone claiming the bedroll for about an hour, but it looked like they were all deep into their cups already.

The table was littered with empty mugs and cleaned plates.

Our entrance earned a raucous cheer from Bloody Steve and waves from the others. We ordered ourselves some food and something to drink, then joined them at a table in the back. The table was close enough to an ongoing game of Vice that I found myself sneaking a peek, trying to figure out who was winning.

We blew off questions about where we’d been, earning a suspicious look from Kass. At first, I thought he somehow knew what we had been doing, but then realized he was suspecting us of something entirely different.

Nope. As much as I found Lyria pretty, I already found myself thinking of her more like a sister. Or maybe it was just that I felt too much pressure to get stronger. It was hard to feel like I could fool around with superfluous things like romantic involvement when so much could depend on me getting stronger.

I listened with half an ear as I scarfed down my food, using my awkward “half-raised helmet” technique to eat and drink with the group. They’d all seen it and given me strange looks enough on our trip that it was old news by now. I almost forgot how silly it probably looked until I saw the number of stares I was getting from everyone outside our group.

The meatballs were pretty good, but my favorite was the drink they called a “Thraskian Tart.” It was sweet, cold, and foamy with a taste that reminded me of orange soda, if it was made into an alcoholic drink. A rail-thin woman behind the bar was creating perfect spheres of ice in her palms, then letting them clink into the glasses before they were brought out. Curious, I inspected her.

[Human, Level 3 (Wood)]

Interesting. I had talked with Lyria during our travel in the Black Wood and learned there were ways to shape a corestone into something like a crafting class. People with crafting stones stayed low level and their bodies never improved like adventurers, but their stones could keep evolving from use in their trade, letting them make powerful magical items.

Or, in this case, I guessed they let bartenders create refreshing balls of ice for their drinks. Using something as amazing as ice magic to chill drinks felt like driving a tank to get your morning coffee. Then again, I wasn’t going to complain. I hadn’t been able to enjoy a cold drink since I came here.

Bloody Steve leaned forward, beard still greasy from whatever he had eaten. “So there I was,” he said, dramatically sweeping his lone eye over the group as he continued his story. “Just me and the biggest feckin’ chicken you ever seen.”

Eros has chickens, too? I wondered if animals and plants could get portaled here like I had. I supposed it would make sense. I really wanted to know how things had all started. If I was one of only nine people to reach godhood, did that mean I was among the first ever to arrive on Eros? Or did it mean that humans were somehow uniquely suited to the progression of power here.

There was no way to know, for now.

The two little girls laughed, and Steve jerked his gaze toward them, his lone eye wide.

“Oh, no, little pups. This was no laughin’ chicken. It was bigger than this room. Claws like swords. Beak like iron. And the teeth.” He stretched his small hands out as wide as he could, shaking his head gravely. “A lesser man would’ve run. Not me. No. But it was too powerful for open combat. So I fed it. See, death chickens love corn, just like regular chickens. Once it was good and fat, I snuck up on the bastard, and I–” he paused. The two little girls looked horrified. They’d grown attached to the death chicken in his story. “And uh… I petted him. Real good,” Bloody Steve said, nodding unconvincingly.

The little girls relaxed, smiling. “Was he soft?” one asked.

“Ohhh, that’s right,” Bloody Steve said emphatically. “Soft. Real soft. Especially when I was done with him.”

Some adults chuckled, and Bloody Steve gestured for another drink before launching into a new story.

Kass nudged me. “So what’s next, Helmet?”

I couldn’t say the first thing that came to mind when he asked. Because, right now, my idea of “next” was the potentially Diamond level threat growing hungrier inside my slip space.

And it was growing hungry, slip space or not. I had checked it and seen the “Hunger” level was up from 0% to 1%, now.

At least I could track the progress. That meant I would be able to destroy it if the hunger level was too high.

“I want to reach Iron,” I said. It was true, at least, even if it was number two on my priority list at the moment. “I’m open to suggestions on the best way to do that. Once I run some errands in town, it’ll be my main focus for the time being. That, and—”

“More training?” Kass guessed with a half smile. “Am I allowed to ask why you’re so driven to get stronger? Perch thinks you are an escaped slave, trying to power-level before your master finds you and tries to drag you back to work. That’s where he thinks your fancy helm came from. Swiped it on your way out.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Is he close?”

I almost dismissed the story, but decided it was probably better to leave as many false trails as I could about my past. Denying one would only bringing people closer to the truth. I gave a simple shrug, turning the topic back to him. “You mean you’re not driven to get stronger?”

Kass sat back with a thoughtful sigh, nodding a little. “Oh, sure. I’ll take more power. Irons get better pay. Just ask Bloody Steve.”

“Money?” I asked, unable to hide my disbelief. “Haven’t you seen the things people of higher ranks can do? How can you not want that for yourself?”

He chuckled. “I’ve seen how easily Irons can land a lover. I’ve seen that. But that kind of power means people start expecting things out of you,” he added more seriously. “People expect things out of you and you wind up like that nice woman from the ruins… You’ll be the only one strong enough to stand against the threat, and you’ll be the one dying while everybody else slips away. I don’t want to see people suffer, but I’m not so noble that I’ll spend my own life to save them, either.”

I sighed. To be honest, I could understand his position. And maybe I should’ve been more worried about his point. I couldn’t say if it was knowing I had advantages, knowing I’d been to the top before and survived the journey, or if it was just in my nature, but I didn’t care. The danger of the journey only felt like a challenge for me to overcome.

I wanted to face the challenge and feel the satisfaction of pushing through it. I wanted it bad enough that it was hard to sit still in here, even if I was enjoying the company of my new friends.

Kass was watching me. “It’s hard to read a man who never takes off his helmet. But you know you have a tell?” He shrugged, smiling as if apologizing. “I have a bit of experience gambling, and I’m used to watching people for tells. Yours is that you clench your fists when you disagree with somebody. If your hands are touching something, you’ll squeeze it till your knuckles go white. If you’re just standing there, you’ll ball them up like you’re about to punch the stupid out of somebody.”

I cleared my throat awkwardly, releasing the bunched up fabric of my pants I’d been grasping in both hands.

Kass chuckled. “Look, I know Lyria says you’re from some place deep in the outer rings, so maybe you don’t quite get it. You can reach Iron with a decent amount of risk and a little determination. Hell, you can get there almost by accident in some lines of work, so long as you’re willing to wait long enough. But something tells me you’re hoping for more. Hoping for Silver, maybe. But you’ve got to be a special kind of crazy for that. People like that go looking for trouble. They welcome it. Those are the types you really don’t want to mess with. Sure, the power, respect, money, and relative fame would all be great. But I’d prefer to keep my head on my shoulders. Iron will be enough for me, thank you very much.”

“I see,” I said, carefully trying not to clench my fists again. He was talking like my end goal was Silver, as if reaching even for Gold was so far from reality that it wasn’t even worth mentioning. But I wasn’t even planning to stop at Gold, was I?

Kass laughed. “Yeah. Iron won’t be enough for you, though.” He tilted his head, studying me for a moment. “I can see it. Well, when you reach Silver someday, I’ll tell people I got to meet one of them when they were a lowly Wood. You won’t mind if I embellish a few stories and use our connection to get women, I assume?”

“Kass,” Lyria said. “You shouldn’t openly admit you need to make up stories to get women.”

“Oh, I don’t,” he said. “I’m talking about getting them for Perch. He’s hopeless. Gets all shy and awkward as soon as they so much as look at him.”

We turned our attention to the hooded man. He had a meatball on his fork halfway to his mouth. He slowly lowered it, cheeks going the slightest tinge of red. “That’s false,” he said, then stuffed it in his mouth and chewed rapidly. The man was lean, but it looked like he had been eating the whole time we were gone. Where did he put it all?

“Anyway,” Kass said. “Since I can tell my many warnings haven’t deterred you in the slightest, you should probably check out the adventurer’s guild. Rumor is there’s a dungeon that opened up a couple weeks back down here in the Thrask cave system. You could check out the easier sections. I’m sure somebody has at least the low-level areas mapped out by now, and the guild will give you a copy if you’re a member.”

“The dungeons where I’m from were far too dangerous to explore,” I lied. “I have to admit I don’t know the first thing about them, except I learned to stay far away. You explore them here? Wouldn’t there be… you know, dark mana or corrupted mana there? Is there even a difference?” It might not have been my most subtle work, but Kass just looked thoughtful, as if deciding which question to answer first.

He wiped his mouth and leaned back, an amused glint in his eye. “You’ve heard of infestations, sure, but dungeons? They’re a whole different beast.”