Lyle, meanwhile, uttered little whoops every time one of his punches connected. He drove a fist down on a cockroach’s head. “That’ll teach you to bite me, you little bastard!”
“They bite?” Justin yelled, panicked. He drove his sword down and saw sparks when it connected with the cobblestones. These bugs were damned fast and he was not a fan of it. “Jesus Christ, how do I abandon a quest? Or—who’s the patron saint of giant-ass bugs? Does this fall under Francis or what?”
The cockroaches swarmed around him, their pincers clicking, and Jason gave another scream he wasn’t particularly proud of. He’d been happier when he knew they didn’t bite. In desperation, he whipped his sword around his head like a helicopter rotor and was pleased to see fewer cockroaches when he was finished. All he could hope was that some of them were dead.
Lyle knocked one out of the air with a punch and a guffaw. “Now, this—this is the kind of brawl I like.”
“Psychopath,” he muttered.
The bugs didn’t hit him, but his HP bar was over half gone from fatigue by the time the fight was over. His last kill—by plunging the sword straight down into a carapace—came with a sound he hoped never to hear again in his life. A moment of silence followed, punctuated only by the sounds of cows and owls.
“Well,” Justin said. He cleared his throat and tried to recover some of his dignity. “I, uh…I got the first ten levels of Wild Flailing. So that’s something.” He looked around. “Lyle?” He could only hope that the dwarf hadn’t been dragged off into a bug nest or something.
If he had, he would compose a nice eulogy and go home. There were limits to friendship.
Instead, his teammate popped up from behind the midden heap with a smile and a jingle of coins. “I found it!” he said triumphantly and held a pouch up. “Let’s get a drink to celebrate, shall we?”
Lyle accompanied him to the blacksmith’s shop. His vociferous complaints about the money’s best use didn’t override his dynamics as one of the party, especially when Justin snatched the coin purse out of his hand and marched off.
The farther they got from that particular midden heap, the better.
The sun had finally begun to come up, which was a good sign. The dwarf still complained about beer and food, and Justin’s stomach rumbled as well. Come to think of it, he had felt full after the stew he slurped at the inn, but that food was gone by now.
Also, it wasn’t real. He had to remind himself of that. This game was damned good at convincing him that it was actually life or death. He’d even begun to imagine he could smell things in the game, which was ridiculous.
One more quest, he told himself, and he’d go to sleep. How long had he been up, anyway?
They found the blacksmith at the edge of town, working bellows at the fire in the back of his workshop. A young man stood in the front, dressed in a soot-stained apron and the same brown, nondescript clothing as everyone else in the village.
“Would you like to buy anything, sir?” he asked.
“Yes,” Justin said, speaking over the dwarf’s refusal. “Show me what you have for armor.”
“Of course, sir.” The shop’s inventory appeared on the screen.
He scrolled through quickly. Everything was an upgrade, which was good, but he didn’t have much money. So much for the dwarf’s “reward.” He rolled his eyes at the amount he had. Two silver and two copper. He’d be able to buy much better gear after defeating the wizard but he needed the gear to defeat the wizard.
Maybe he could wander around outside town and slay bunnies for a while. Nah. What was the worst that could happen if he gave this quest a try? He’d have multiple attempts at the quest. Probably.
Justin was beginning to wish he’d run the tutorial.
Finally, he chose a set of leather armor that had some of the best stats he could find and equipped it. A window popped up to display what it looked like and he was pleased to see it was even nicer than Lyle’s, with a red wash on the edges of the leather panels and lacquered tiles around the ribs. It reminded him of some of the photos he’d seen of samurai armor.
He couldn’t afford it, though. With a sigh, he equipped a different set—the very lowest tier the blacksmith offered. He could