The UI had a new gift for him when he was in the middle of trying to seduce a fellow adventurer at the tavern. The pop up took him by surprise.

 

Congratulations! Although it didn’t require sex, and perhaps because sex wasn’t requisite here, you have pushed your Relationship with Rachel further than you may have anticipated. The gift of a necklace with abilities specifically tailored to her class, and she now understands you didn’t simply purchase it. Had you done so, she would have been appreciative, but now it is much more appreciated. Further, she now understands the gem could have been set into a weapon or armor and kept, or given to another.

As a result, you have gained a large number of Relationship points all at once.

*Relationship rewards: +16 points, +1,600 xp applied to your classes. You have moved from Close Friends to Intimate Friends with Rachel, +5,000 xp applied to your classes.

+6,600 xp has been applied equally to your classes.

 

Directly on the heels of this came the following message.

 

Congratulations! You have leveled up! Sorcerer and Bard reach Journeyman level 6. You have unspent attribute and skill levels. Tap here to begin applying them.

 

“Whoa,” he muttered, and vowed to save his attribute and skill levels for the time when he slapped his two copies of Not a Fighter together to make it… whatever it would become.

“What’s that?” The lizard girl and her friend the angelus asked. Meanwhile the other three members of their party apparently weren’t keen on having him working on their buddies. A lot of glowering and scowling was going on behind their backs, and directed at him. Ash cheerfully ignored it. He had taken out an entire repossession team of Journeyman adventurers; he could handle these guys if push came to spells and swords.

“Got some unexpected experience points. Sorry. Tell me again about the tomb with the drow spider monsters?”

He did a Staves (Clever) check and made sure he wasn’t being overconfident now.

 

*Lizardfolk, Knight— Journeyman level 5, Monk — Amateur level 4

*Angelus, Spectral Sword— Journeyman level 6

*Dwarf, Knight — Expert level 1

*Half-human half-elf, Warlock— Journeyman level 1

*Orren, Mauler — Journeyman level 6, Pilot— Amateur level 5

*Drow, Cleric— Journeyman level 1

Would you like further information on any of these adventurers? Click on their race or class for more. Common action deck abilities for these classes can be found under their classes.

 

Ash didn’t think he’d end up fighting any of these people, but getting a measure of their capabilities was never a bad idea. You made sure you were a good driver, and then accepted the fact that sometimes what happened was beyond your control; some people were just shit drivers and you couldn’t protect against everything. It was much the same here. He wouldn’t go looking for a fight, but one might find him anyway.

He was also going to try and see if he could go without using the spork in this situation. Sure he and his ladies knew the world hadn’t always been like this, but Tinniel hadn’t, and these people were unlikely to have a spork of their own.

It was also fragile, with only a single durability point, and he had no wish to lose his connection to his past life just because someone freaked out when presented with their actual past life.

Secondly, it would be interesting to see what the new reality did to people’s lives and stories. If anyone seemed like they were especially unhappy, maybe he’d unleash the spork’s power on them and remind them of who they used to be, but not just yet.

The Expert level on the dwarf surprised him, but shouldn’t have. He could easily be an Expert Sorcerer by now, if he hadn’t funneled most of his xp into his skills and attributes. He doubted the dwarf would have but a couple of really high level cards, or skills or attributes for that matter. Given Ash’s Harem Laird, he’d been able to specifically channel tons and tons of sexperience into making himself a seemingly low leveled powerhouse.

The dwarf was also a Knight, meaning Ash could just stay away from him and he’d be basically useless. If he ended up with a movement power that might change things a little, but not so much.

A few of the other classes also gave him pause. He figured a Mauler was just a punchy guy without much of the finesse or options of a monk, and looking at the common abilities made that very clear. Mauler was just a heavily tanky monk without the mobility. Pilot made sense, if he had cards specific to maneuvering or gunnery for his sky ship. Spectral Sword also intrigued him, and the list of common abilities further intrigued him.

The Spectral Sword was something like a swordsman, a duelist, and something like a necromancer at the same time, with a hint of cleric. You could infect the soul of your opponent. You could make a blade out of your own soul, or the incorporeal body of a ghost or shade, which would ignore armor, and you could summon ghosts or banish them. Souls could be forced to sooth wounds or clear conditions. He hoped it wasn’t easy to recruit souls to do your bidding.

They probably thought he was trying to poach them for his own team. Actually, he hadn’t seen an angelus yet, and rather enjoyed the softly glowing yellowish white skin, the soft halo of light surrounding her head, and the completely white eyes without pupils or irises. Her hair kept moving as though it was being softly blown by a fan, though the tavern had no hint of a breeze whatsoever.

If he was being honest, he wanted a little Beaver Creamery, in the innuendo sense.

The lizard woman was another oddity he was interested in. The lizard girl was built like a gecko: long, lender body with an equally long, slender tail, though she had dainty human-like scaled hands, big glossy alligator eyes, and a mouth that literally stretched from one side of her head to the other. She was a knight and monk, so she had ‘strategically placed’ armor: arm guards full of curve knife blades, equally dangerous looking shoulder armor, a sort of codpiece he didn’t have a name for, thigh plates, and finally spiky knee covers. She had her two weapons, shredder claws, slung at her belt on a strip of tied leather.

Both he was keen to try sleeping with just on principle, but he kind of wanted to see what a lizardfolk had, anatomically speaking, and this one was really just a sweetheart, so he was a bit on the fence regarding the idea of seducing her. He was on a Vegas trip in a way, where no questions would be asked, and anything that happened out here stayed out here.

They had the wrong names, too, which he loved. The angelus was called Kirith, which clearly suited the lizard girl, and the lizardfolk’s name was Ariella. Clearly wrong, but beautifully, perfectly wrong.

He laughed at their rendition of getting stuck underground in the drow cavern, packed into a small cavernous room they chose as a place to stay the night, where only two of them could lay side by side while the other three had to stand awkwardly, ‘keeping watch’ but really just unable to so much as sit down.

The angelus and lizard girl were both instantly smitten, which put the other four off even further.

“I love it,” he said, slapping his knee. “Especially the part where your orren just pretended to be a boulder at the entrance.” He passed a Cups (Charming) check against all the others save the orren, and kept himself from smiling a little too hard.

Ariella the lizard girl’s claws hit the table too loudly, and she bolted straight up in her seat. “You should join our team!”

“Is that right?” Ash said, bright smile and hands open.

“We could use another caster, and we’ve never had a bard with us,” Kirith added. “What do you play?”

In point of fact, it was usually the other way around, with the ladies playing the skin flute, but that was too crass to mention in polite company, and he had a crazy feeling the guys wouldn’t take too kindly to that.

“A little of this and that,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter what he plays or how well,” the Dwarf finally groused. “We’re not taking him on.”

The two other male members grunted their affirmatives.

“I’m afraid I already have an adventuring party,” he said. “They’re about the town presently, training and shopping and such. I was merely wondering what sort of legendary journeys you veteran adventurers had been up to.”

“Coulda asked any of us,” the orren grated. This one wasn’t just the spitting image of the enormous slab who’d attacked him back in the first infested town they’d liberated, he could’ve been the other one’s twin.

“I hope you’ll forgive me if your ladyfolk here were up at the bar ordering when I was up there, and we struck up a conversation.” And the four male members of the party were so standoffish as to be active jerks.

“Can you play us a little something?” Ariella asked, eyes huge and pleading, ignoring the glares Ash was getting from her so-called friends.

The UI didn’t need to tell him that she was the much more willing and available one. Her excitable manner told him something about the party dynamic.

He would one hundred percent take Tinniel to bed, maybe transform into a fey in order to have flying-around sex, if she was down for it. For sure he could go for some of that, but in the absence of that, he could really use a little distraction. With all three girls going to look for some other jewelry, he could stretch out, flex his Charming and Hearts, and see whether any of these ladies would like a roll in the hay.

But Tinniel had made it clear she wasn’t available. Or she wasn’t yet ready to share him with other women. Or she was horrified of the idea of being with a half-orc and half-drow.

“I think we can manage that,” he said, and produced a lute.

And then he hoped like hell this would work. See, Ash hadn’t played much guitar in the last five years, and he’d never really played very well anyhow. He’d done a stint in late middle school and then high school where he’d joined what you could only loosely call ‘a band’ and he’d been the bassist. Arguably the easiest position in the band, and he hadn’t been that good at it. Still, he knew what the strings did, and he had moved his fingers around on the frets a few dozen times before being moved to the drummer position. It suited his build far better anyway, but this tavern wasn’t the bongos and beat poetry sort.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” the Dwarf complained.

He plucked a couple of strings and searched around the UI for the skill he would need for this kind of thing, but it sounded off key, and all four of the male adventurers scoffed. Soon though, Arcana (Quick) gave him a decent result and he started to make the lute emit something sweet and a bit melancholy: a song celebrating the beauty of a lost lover, perhaps.

As soon as he could, though, he used Jack Be Quick to give his performance skill using Arcana the same rating as his Diamond skill, which he’d just boosted to Master level.

It turned out to be just what he needed. The music coming out of the lute grew somber, gorgeous, and mysterious, like a smoky-eyed woman you just met in a bar who was probably bad for you. Ash’s fingers plucked out an intricate melody, walking that smoky-eyed woman up to the listener and having her run a finger down their chest. Over the next few minutes, he had her grab the listener by the tie and drag them back to her place for some aural sex. Next to him, Ariella and Kirith both closed their eyes and sighed. Even the three disgruntled adventuring companions seemed to soften up on hearing him play.

He finished off after a good eight or ten minutes. It could’ve been half an hour for all he knew, since he blissed out and just relaxed into the music, letting his fingers dance in a way he hadn’t been capable just a few months ago. Or, hell, just a few minutes ago.

The lads softened to him after this, and they all chimed in with their experiences in the drow caves. They’d leveled up quite a lot there, but had come within a hair’s breadth of death quite often.

From there, the ale started to flow, and he found Ariella leaning toward him again and again. Kirith played the coy, slightly standoffish one to Ariella’s more desperate act. The fellas all gravitated toward Kirith, which made a lot of sense, which made Ariella’s attention on him all the more naked. He enjoyed the attention from both of them, though Kirith’s attention made much less sense.

“Hey Ash,” Kirith said in a slightly drunk and suggestive tone. She was really putting on a sultry look, and glowing more brightly than ever. “How about—” But a very drunk Ariella cut her off.

“I could tell you about my clan’s territory on the delta,” she suggested in slurred tones.

“You could? That would be lovely.”

“It’s too loud here,” she added, and Ash noted the flick of attention he got from Kirith. Really? He found himself surprised at the interest from her. None of the guys could satisfy her? “We could head to my room.”

“I… sure.”

“Just to have a discussion,” she insisted.

“Just for discussion,” he confirmed, face blank and blameless. “Scout’s honor.”

The moment they got on the staircase and hit the first landing, she pressed herself up against him, eyes already wet with tears.

“What… is happening?”

“I’m so sorry,” she blubbered. Cool, a quick one-eighty.

“Sorry for what?”

“Sarem, Jareth, Quanny, Rune… the boys, they’re going to try and kill you.”

He hugged her tight, and although the UI warning went off in his periphery, he ignored it and comforted her. “Don’t you worry,” he told her. “They’re not going to try and kill me. I’ll be fine. I can take care of myself.”

“No, you don’t understand,” she managed, through the sudden flood of tears. “They… they always…” And then further speech wasn’t possible.

He simply helped her up the stairs, but got only two steps further before Kirith called out to him. He noted the glowing face peeking out from the bottom of the stairs.

“Hm?” he asked. “Help you?”

“Hey there handsome, where you going?”

“Up the stairs,” he said.

“Oh, uh… you guys okay?”

“Sure thing,” he said, and gave her a blithe smile.

“You’re not… there’s not… everything is okay?”

His user interface was going crazy with first a Wands (Sly) check and success, followed by a Wands (Clever) and a Staves (Sly) check. He ignored them, having figured out roughly what was happening here before having it slapped in the face.

“Everything’s great. Ariella was just going to tell me about her clan’s history up in the room, where we could have a chat in relative peace. The great room is pretty loud.”

“Oh,” she said, and followed this with a confused blink. “So there’s nothing… else?”

He offered up a blithe smile. “Nothing else. Unless you also want to have a nice nightcap, maybe with some coffee in it, and hear about Ariella’s clan history, which I’m sure you already know. You’re welcome to join us.”

Her brows knitted together. This wasn’t how their grift went. “Ohhhkay,” she said at last, and hopped up the stairs.

“What’re you… doing?” Ariella asked, wiping her eyes free of the tears.

“Helping you up the stairs,” he said, and finished doing just that. “Now I’m asking which is your room, seeing you have the key here… so now I’m helping you get into your room. Admiring the room now. Nice room. I like the fact that these taverns don’t just have buggy straw-filled burlap sacks for mattresses, and look here, there’s a table with a pair of nice chairs exactly suited to our purpose.”

He continued narrating all the completely innocent activities he was up to: helping get Ariella in the smoking chair, heading to the small but well-stocked wet bar, and adding a shot of brandy to a coffee, offering to mix one for a thoroughly-confused Kirith, and asking Ariella if she wanted a moment before she told him anything about her clan’s history and current status.

“Now that we’re all here and I’ve closed and locked the door,” he said, turning to stare at the angelus, “do you want to tell me what the grift is, and why Ariella is so certain I’m about to die?”