Trouble With Horns

“Where do we even go to find strong mobs around here?” I asked Dawn as we left the manor after a few hours of getting ready. “And where is Civette, anyway?”

“She sent us a group message,” she laughed, glancing sideways at me. “Something about going to go and get some experience doing easier stuff because she feels like she’s letting us down by being a noob. She’ll hang out with us during the evenings and stuff. As for stuff to do, there’s usually a whole bunch of dungeons around all these big cities. I’m sure we’ll find one we can do.”

“Ah,” I said, bumping her with my hip as we walked. “You’ve got it sorted for us, huh? I knew I was dating you for a reason.”

“I thought you dated me because of that hand-strap technique I used on you in the kitchen yesterday,” she teased, throwing me a wink.

“Oh, that too.”

Vallas was bustling today, with servants rushing this way and that, along with nobility out for a morning stroll. The district our manor was in was the very creatively named noble’s district, and it definitely looked the part.

While the whole area was pretty cramped, the streets were open and lined with small, well manicured trees, while the coachway in the middle was well crafted and fitted cobbles. They had somehow crammed the typical rich-people boulevard into a road that was half the size you’d expect.

The looks we were getting from our neighbours weren’t nearly as welcoming as the scenery though. They probably thought we were lost idiot adventurers, considering we were walking around looking like exactly that.

Dawn was in the red and grey robes from our dungeon crawl, and they made me feel things, fun, warm, wet things. True to form for my girlfriend, though, she had gone and found herself a lightweight chainmail shirt to go under it, as well as a matching set of what could only be described as tights. I think she’d bought them the instant we got a free moment after the whole getting noble titles thing. The chainmail itself was incredibly finely woven, and made of a dark metal that was supposedly tough enough to still work with links that thin.

As for myself, my green and black armour was newly repaired and augmented with a few toughness enchantments to keep me in one piece. My gauntlets were the same as ever too, with their little rocket engines ready to go. I loved these things so much.

Caught up in admiring my gauntlets as I was, I failed to step out of the way for some young noble looking dude and almost ran right into him. Dawn pulled me out of the way at the last moment, but not before he was clipped by one of my arms. Since I was in plate and leather, and he was in fancy silks, I wasn’t hurt at all. Pretty sure he was going to have a bruise though.

“Mind your surroundings, undead vagrant,” the blonde nobleman spat, rubbing his arm and glaring at me.

One of his entourage, a large, burly man with a sword, stepped up menacingly towards us, hand on hilt.

“Undead?” I asked, surprised and not in the least bit intimidated.

His sneer didn’t slip one inch at my apparent lack of hostility. “Goddess’ folly, that’s what you are.”

“He’s calling us fun slurs for Blessed,” Dawn said beside me, rolling her eyes. “Probably feels threatened by our immortality.”

“Oh, well then,” I said, smiling like I still didn’t understand. I gave him a bow, one of a noble addressing another noble whose rank she wasn’t sure of. “Good day, sir. I’m Lady Tamipesagniyah Bativaraosa and this is Lady Aurora Bativaraosa. Nice to meet you.”

The amount of satisfaction I got when his blue eyes widened in shock was immense. God, I was going to enjoy the absolute shit out of interacting with the nobility if they were all this stupid.

“Y-you?” he stammered, glancing between us. “Nobility?”

“Bativaraosa is the newly resurrected house, my lord,” the larger dude said respectfully. “These must be the adventurers that retrieved the crown.”

“Ah,” the nobleman muttered, then with a grimace, he returned my earlier bow. “My apologies, ladies, I mistook you for common adventurers. I am Baron Rueben Durham. However, I advise that pretty things such as you should take care where you walk, lest your beauty is marred by something less forgiving than myself. A tree, for example.”

“Normally, I’d agree,” Dawn said, also bowing and enjoying the guy’s embarrassment. “In this case, though, I’d expect the tree to lose that particular fight.”

“I-I see,” Baron Durham frowned, clearly unsure how to handle us. “Well, in any event, I must be going. I have important matters to attend to, and precious little time to waste by making small talk with the lesser nobility. Good day.”

Just like that, he was off, trailing his servants and bodyguard, nose in the air. What a pathetic little man. Dawn was probably right, though. It must take some pretty extraordinary mental gymnastics to have an ego like that as a nobleman, when you existed in a world with immortal warriors, angels, demons, and everything in between.

“What an odd dude,” I commented, then frowned and turned to Dawn. “We should probably make a note of his name and do some research, in case that encounter pisses him off in the long term.”

“Good idea,” she agreed, opening a little VR notepad to write the name down.

“Where are we going, actually?” I asked, glancing around at the obviously not-punchable-by-law passersby.

Dawn glanced up from her notepad and gave me a smile. “You’re so cute. I figured we’d try out an Excursion. They were added recently, I think. While we were offline? Anyway, they’re basically instanced explorations of the other realms. Open world dungeons.”

“I’m cute?” I asked, cocking my head at her in confusion. “That Excursion thing sounds fun, though. How do we do one?”

“Yes, you’re cute,” she said, stepping in close to me so she could press a gentle kiss to my cheek. “The lore behind it is that the border between our realm and the realm of energy has weakened or something. Specific spots in the world can be breached with the help of magic, opening a portal. Seems like the NPCs have kicked things off by opening some around key areas. There are others out in the wild though that players can open and control for themselves, offering better loot.”

“I wonder if there’s any on our land,” I mused, already thinking of how fun it would be to tell assholes to get lost if they wanted to use our Excursions. “How do we open them?”

“No idea,” my girlfriend said, patting me on the shoulder. “The nearest one for our level is over in the merchant district. It was opened by the local enchanter’s guild. They let you keep everything that isn’t enchanting related, and force you to sell them everything that is at a lowish but not unreasonable price.”

This was sounding more and more fun by the minute! “When do we go?”

“Now, silly,” she chuckled affectionately.

“Ah, yeah.” My thoughts had rushed off ahead, getting distracted by the idea of exploring and punching things at the same time.

“Scatterbrain,” she accused me, smiling.

I nodded and turned to look back down the road, where in the middle distance, the guy I’d bumped into was still walking. Something was niggling at me about him, just a feeling, but it was distracting me.

“Let’s not forget to look that guy up,” I told Dawn, still staring. “Getting a bad feeling about him.”

Her expression turned pensive while her gaze darted between me and the retreating back of the nobleman. “Okay. I trust your hunches. We'll keep a good eye out on him.”

From there, Dawn led us through the city and into the merchant district, which wasn’t actually what it sounded like on the tin. Or, rather, it was what it said on the tin, but in a very different way than you might expect.

The merchant district was where the city’s un-titled upper class had their homes, and in some cases, high end businesses. It wasn’t where the average citizen could go to shop, but rather where deals were made, banks made their headquarters, and large sums of money were lost and won in the gambling houses.

It was also where most of the guilds had their halls, including the enchanter’s guild. We apparently needed a permit to use their Excursion portal, which was oh so coincidentally located out the back of their building. Game logic was funny like that.

We found the enchanter’s guild down a bustling side street where many other players were hanging out, preparing to go into the excursion. Judging by the fact that many were swapping camping gear and the like, I did a quick inspection of my inventory. Yup, still had a bunch of emergency supplies in there.

“Wait… isn’t that those players who got noble titles?”

My head whipped up and around to see a group of players staring at us. They were your standard party, six dudes filling out all the roles neatly, a tank, a healer, a utility, and three damage dealers.

Dawn shifted uneasily next to me, probably wanting to ignore them and head inside. We weren’t getting out of this one though, babe. Better grin and bear it.

“Sup,” I said, giving them a gauntleted wave.

“Oh, hi!” the guy who’d spoken said. He was either their healer or their utility, I couldn’t tell which. “You’re um, Tami, right? Tami and Aurora, or something?”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s us.”

“You guys are so cool,” one of the DPS said, stepping forward with a friendly smile. “And hot. You should do NSFW stuff, you’d get heaps of money.”

Beside me, Dawn made a hacking, choking sound and turned to the side. Meanwhile, I let out a surprised laugh. “Flattering, but no thanks. We’re not really too interested in broadcasting our relationship for other people.”

“Oh shit, you are actually together? I thought it was just a thing you did to boost views,” he blinked, staring at us in confusion. Don’t break your last remaining brain cell there buddy.

“We don’t stream,” I chuckled, shaking my head. “Why would we do it to boost views if we don’t have our own streams? Sorry, dude. We are real life lesbians.”

“Well…” the first guy said, looking like he’d just butt-chugged a lemon. “I was going to ask for a selfie or something, but apparently this idiot here doesn’t just aggro mobs without thinking.”

A spark of mischief popped into existence within my thoughts, and I turned and threw a surreptitious wink to my girlfriend. “Nah, you can come over here.”

Mister healer/utility man looked apprehensive, but I ushered him over with a smile and a wave. Dawn, who understood now what I was doing, stepped up on his right while I took his left. We each slung an arm over his shoulders and smiled up at the camera app I’d just summoned.

A quick smile, and a click, and the picture was taken. Before I sent it off to him, I threw in our fancy new digital fan signatures. It was pretty cool, all holographic and shiny, with my black and blue, then Dawn’s orange and white.

He received the digital file with a wide eyed smile. “Holy shit… thanks! I didn’t think…”

“A reward,” I winked, already stepping back and towards the enchanter’s guild. “For not asking us to get naked on camera like your friend did.”

We left them laughing and smiling, while their damage guy looked suitably chagrined. Hopefully that would set a precedent with the fans. If they wanted a quick selfie, they should not be weird about it. Hopefully.

QuietValerie