Zeroth Moment: My Cheat Skill Is Stupid, So I'll Just Ignore It

It was the morning of the first day of his fourth week in Frostford when Topher managed to break the universe.

He hadn't left the inn in almost two weeks at this point; he'd basically given up on hunting any monsters stronger than Jelly Slimes unless the prayer scroll gave him some kind of instant-win button. The Remove Fatigue Skill he'd learned from it had been enough for him to want to finish learning everything it had to teach him before he tried to do any more monster slaying, but thus far he hadn't gotten anything exciting from the other spells it listed; learning the Priest Create Light spell had been tricky enough, but doing so had changed his Mage Light Skill into Conjure Light while keeping it at Rank F. He wasn't sure what, if anything, that meant, but what he did know was that all his attempts to learn the most important spell on the list, Cure Wounds, had been a total failure. Never mind that it should be Heal Wounds; whoever named this spell was obviously an idiot, he grumbled to himself sourly.

He had also learned that his Ledger was not infinite, but had exactly 250 pages; he could, at least, erase writing from the book at will, but that was hardly an earth-shaking capability. He wondered what he would unlock if he got an additional Clerk power at Level 10; Summon Inedible Sandwich, perhaps, or possibly Banish Coffee. As far as Topher was concerned, the bar for disappointment was so low at this point it was legitimately subterranean.

It was as he slouched, sunk in the mire of such thoughts, that Elara asked him if he wanted anything to eat; and out of pure spite, without really thinking it through, he snarled "five chicken sandwiches". He didn't expect her to take him seriously -- to be honest, he didn't really expect much of anything, because at this point Topher was feeling rather put-upon by the universe at large. But when she came back apologetically telling him that the kitchen would be unable to provide for his request, his contrary nature asserted itself. "Well, how many can I have?" he asked, nigh-rhetorically.

"Oh, well we've got about enough meat for four chicken sandwiches, Mister Bailey, that'd be no problem," said Elara charmingly but curiously apprehensively, "but we just don't have enough for five. Would four be okay?"

"Sure," mumbled Topher, feigning disinterest. He waited patiently until all four of the sandwiches had been delivered (which was kind of a waste, since he could only eat two at most, but he'd give one to Slaugh and another to Jerp -- that little guy could eat) and then nonchalantly asked, "So, when will you guys be able to get more meat?"

"Ah, well, I'm not really sure Mister Bailey, these things can be a little tricky," replied Elara, still uncharacteristically nervous; Topher watched her like a hawk. "It all depends when the local farms have meat to sell us, you know." How hard can it be? There are only 9+x chickens in this town, thought Topher mean-spiritedly. "It could be a few days; it could be longer. I'm really sorry, Mister Bailey, I know how much you love chicken sandwiches, you order them all the time, I think you might eat more chicken than anyone I've ever met before! Except maybe Mister Slaugh, but he doesn't really count, I saw him eat a whole live chicken once and the mess was just awful. But I'll let you know when we get more!" She bowed apologetically. "Please don't be mad! My father really prides himself on his cooking, and I know it just kills him not to be able to make what his customers want, one time I saw him go out and pick mushrooms for a stew at four in the morning --"

"Elara, it's fine," returned Topher brusquely. His eyes narrowed. "In fact, I tell you what; how about I go around to the farmers and ask them when they might have some available?" He fought to keep an evil smile off his face. "I mean, it's the least I can do."

"Would you really? Oh gosh, Mister Bailey, that'd be just wonderful, we never know when we'll get the time to restock, we're always so busy around the place. You know how it is, cooking, cleaning, doing Guild tasks," -- Topher had seen Elara do "Guild tasks" exactly twice in a solid month -- "the laundry, the mop-and-bucket business, you know, all that sort of thing." She twisted the hem of her skirt nervously. "I hate to ask a customer to do something like they're an employee though, it's really embarrassing, but I suppose since you are a Guild member, we're more like coworkers than anything else, and I did always want someone to work alongside with, Mister Bailey, although now that I think about it I suppose if that's the case then Mister Slaugh is a coworker too, and boy that'll be awkward when --"

"No problem," Topher replied, and hurriedly made his escape before the young apprentice innkeeper could reduce his eardrums to mush any further. He cast Remove Fatigue while visualizing the Lesser Yashfii configuration, hoping it would extend the duration the way it did for his Light spells, but it appeared to do nothing; he wasn't sure if that was because Remove Fatigue couldn't be extended in that way or if he needed a different spatial visualization. It did, however, cost him 1 MP as usual. At least my Light spells don't cost any MP, he grumbled to himself as he headed for the nearer of the two farms.

Both farms were functionally identical; they looked different, but each had exactly the same number of chickens (four) plus a rooster that seemed to exist in some sort of state of quantum indeterminacy. Topher sometimes saw it at one farm, sometimes at the other, but never in both places at the same time, and he wasn't at all clear if that was because the rooster was being metaphysically shuffled around or just because it liked to wander between the two farms (or if there were two identical and alternately shy roosters, for that matter). He'd tried asking about it, but none of the locals were any help; any question he asked about the number of chickens or the rate of egg production was always met with confusion, and he had to be careful not to ask questions that would too blatantly give away his Otherworlder status lest he be outed as an F-Ranker. Not that I know if these people would treat me like the Strathmore people did, but finding out the hard way would really suck. Instead, he made discreet inquiries about the possiblity for chicken meat for purchase.

To his mild surprise, both farms insisted that there wouldn't be any for purchase for the foreseeable future; "All these cluckers still got a lotta egg-laying left in 'em yet!" asserted the plucky young wife of the northern farm's proprietor with a let's-go-team twinkle in her eye. Topher thanked her cheerfully and requested the same information from the southern farm, with similar results; he had now firmly established that there would be no chicken in the Frostford Inn for at least a few months, and possibly for years; he didn't know how long chickens took to reach menopause, but he was pretty sure it wasn't a weekend event. The conditions for the experiment were set.

Returning to the inn, he nodded encouragingly to Elara without actually engaging in conversation, dodged her attempt at engagement, and swept into the kitchen as brazenly as possible; he found Gropp hard at work, replacing an empty beer cask with a full one. I don't know how beer is made, but I'm pretty sure it requires more equipment than this place has, Topher mused, but did not mention aloud; he wasn't about to risk his beer supply with quite the same nonchalance as he was his chicken sandwiches. "Hey Gropp, Elara was telling me that you guys are out of chicken meat; I asked around at the southern farm, but they didn't have any. Where do you usually buy from?"

"Oh, anywhere I can get it," said Gropp, cracking his back as he straightened up; Topher winced in solidarity. "I wouldn't worry too much though, Mister Bailey; I should be able to get some more for you by tomorrow."

"That'd be fantastic, Gropp," said Topher with utterly superficial enthusiasm. "Thank you so much."

That night, he had even more trouble sleeping than usual; he kept giggling to himself on his uncomfortable-ass bed, feeling like a kid on Christmas Even who couldn't contain his anticipation for Santa Claus. The next morning, a chicken omelette awaited him at breakfast; he devoured it gleefully, thanked the innkeeper, and hauled ass to the farms. One of them had to sell it to him, Topher thought victoriously, and they'll remember telling me the day before that that was impossible. Let's see you freaks talk your way out of this one!

He eliminated the northern farm first; the farmer there, a tall rangy fellow with a salt-and-pepper beard, adamantly denied selling Gropp any chicken meat. "I ain't about to waste a good egg-layer for a few copper from an innkeep," he huffed. The southern farmer, a portly squat man with Bozo-the-clown tufts of curly hair surrounding an utterly bald pate, was equally firm on his position.

Topher had now confirmed that the presence of chicken in the inn's kitchen from either local farm was a logical impossibility; all he had to do was confirm with Gropp that he'd purchased the chicken from one of the farms, and he'd have this damn universe caught in a contradiction. He hurried back to the inn, swept past Elara like a whirlwind, and cornered Gropp by the bar; the burly innkeep was filling a mug with cheap beer for Slaugh, who gave Topher a half-glare. The old orc didn't seem to care for him, but wasn't exactly unfriendly to him, either -- Topher was pretty sure Slaugh was just one of those people who just half-hated everyone, and felt a certain kinship with him.

"So, Gropp," he said cheerfully, "I really appreciated you getting more chicken for me. So much so, in fact, that I would love a chicken sandwich for lunch, if that's okay with you."

"Sure thing, Mister Bailey," said Gropp reasonably. He began to head for the kitchen, but blinked as Topher trailed along behind him. "Something else you need?"

"Oh, I just wanted to see the fresh chicken," said Topher, as ingenuously as he could. "You know me; I like to appreciate your cooking artistry!"

Gropp looked puzzled, but had no reason to refuse since he'd already let Topher watch before; as he warmed up the grill, Topher snuck a peek into the icebox. There was, as he expected, no chicken inside; he waited patiently to see how Gropp would react to this state of affairs. As he figured it, one of two things was going to happen here: either the icebox would magically produce a chicken breast despite he, Topher, having observed no chicken breast inside, or --

"That's funny," said Gropp, breaking Topher's train of thought. He scratched his head. "I could have sworn I had some more chicken in here. I just bought four of them this morning, after all."

"You obviously had some," said Topher innocently, "since you made me that delicious chicken omelette this morning." He sat back, mystified, as things spiraled out of control.

Gropp kept wandering back and forth between the stove and the icebox, increasingly agitated; eventually, he called Elara into the kitchen and explained the situation in terse terms. The prevailing theory seemed to be that someone had stolen the chicken out of the icebox, which Topher found pleasantly elegant; but Elara insisted that no one had been in the kitchen all day except for Gropp himself. Things escalated quickly; Gropp went out to procure yet more chicken, only to return empty-handed and even more frustrated. "Yesterday's slaughter was the last one for a while," he informed Topher grimly. Topher did not contradict him that yesterday's slaughter had clearly not happened; he was, quite frankly, becoming increasingly worried that he had done some sort of irreparable damage to the town's weird little logistical system. His fear quickly bore out; no chicken was available that day, or the next, or the day after that.

Still, it had been informative; Topher had established that the system did have some sort of rules governing what resources reproduced themselves and which ones did not. He had also confirmed, albeit at lesser confidence, that a certain level of disinterested inattention was required for such reproduction to occur, and that the people themselves were not complicit or otherwise aware of such behavior; if he called their attention to it firmly enough, it would stop working, apparently permanently. He was also pretty sure it was something he could do deliberately; presumably, if he killed every Jelly Slime out on the hill at once, it would permanently eradicate their presence there, but that wasn't a hardship Topher wanted to inflict upon the future generations of Frostford's Adventurer population. Besides, he had a much bigger problem; liquidity.

He'd managed to buy himself some time by painstakingly copying the entire contents of the prayer scroll into his Ledger and selling it back to Jerp for half its purchase price; that had gotten him back up to thirty-one gold and a few silver, but his funds wouldn't last forever at this rate (and he really, really wanted that mage spellbook). He did eventually manage to learn the Priest Shield of Faith spell, but as with Summon Light, it just converted his Mage Shield skill into Conjure Shield and did nothing else that he could discern. Unfortunately, none of his efforts to learn Cure Wounds had succeeded yet, and he was beginning to suspect they never would; it was possible that the Clerk class just flat-out couldn't cast healing spells, and nobody would want him in a party if that were the case. I wouldn't want me in a party either, Topher thought to himself sourly, even if I could cast healing spells. There was no way around it; he was going to have to try to kill a goblin.

He scouted his target as carefully as possible; there was a small goblin encampment a ways out of town in the forest, and he was able to climb up a tree (with the help of two castings of Remove Fatigue, anyway) and spy on them during daylight hours. The camp appeared to contain about eight goblins, and their behavior was deeply nonsensical; they stood around staring at nothing for most of the day, occasionally ate food from a wild animal one of them managed to kill and cook roughly once per day, and never, ever spoke to each other under any circumstances. At first, this creeped Topher out, but then he remembered that Elara had differentiated "normal" orcs like Slaugh from "the monster ones"; it was possible that there were two entirely different classes of life form in this world, and that these goblins were non-sapient in some way. Not that being a monster is a guarantee of that, thought Topher uncomfortably as he rubbed his stomach; Naungraloth had obviously been aware enough to experience angst, too, and he had unquestionably been a monster. Maybe it only applies to monsters that share a race with "normal" people? No, then I'd qualify. Maybe Otherworlders are exempt, though? We do break the rules in other ways... Eventually, shaking his head, he decided that it wasn't important; he was here to find a goblin to kill for XP, and he should be grateful that it looked like it would merely be Adventuring and not premeditated murder.

He quickly learned that his initial assessment that goblins were a lot more dangerous than Jelly Slimes was correct; the goblins which hunted wild animals for food generally killed them in a single blow, and rarely sustained any injury in the process. If Topher had access to the Magic Dart spell (which, frustratingly, was almost certainly in the spellbook in Jerp's shop) he would have felt a lot more certain of his chances, but that was the whole reason he was out here; it was a real Catch-22.

Eventually, he selected his target; the smallest and weakest-looking goblin of the village, who often wandered away to stand near the river and stare at nothing for about an hour a day. Topher carefully arrived prepared, with full MP; his plan was simply to attack the goblin once, cast Conjure Shield as required to avoid getting killed, and run for it immediately if his first strike didn't incapacitate his prey. This is just an experiment, he thought to himself grimly, his guts quivery with fear as he gripped his spear tightly; just an experiment.

When the opportunity came, Topher crept from concealment as silently as he could behind the goblin; if he could take the thing out with a surprise attack, even better. But he stepped on a twig about four paces away, and the creature whirled, gripping a club and snarling. Shit, thought Topher, and made an experimental stab at the goblin's midsection.

To his shock, the spear practically bounced off the creature; it grazed the little green humanoid's flesh slightly, leaving behind a shallow line of bright blood, then skipped off as though Topher had stabbed a frozen side of beef. Topher, stunned, barely managed to cast Conjure Shield in time to absorb the creature's feeble strike with its club. He got his second surprise when the blow smashed into his shield like a hammer, throwing him backwards head over heels and sending him skidding across the dirt and grass as though he'd done a somersault. Holy hell, and this is the weakest one?! Deciding that discretion was unquestionably the better part of valor against his opponent, who was obviously the Alpha Goblin From Whom All Other Goblins Were Wrought, Topher took to his heels; he cast Conjure Shield every few steps the entire way out of the forest, occasionally glancing backwards to see if he was being followed.

He was pleasantly surprised that the goblin refused to chase him further than about a hundred yards; after that, it would simply lose interest and go back to the riverbank to stare at nothing again. Can I try again? Topher checked his status.

Name:

Christopher Bailey

Level:

5

Class:

Clerk

HP:

15/15

MP:

8/20

SP:

5/5

Strength:

Rank F

Dexterity:

Rank F

Constitution:

Rank D [+1: Rank D]

Intelligence:

Rank D

Wisdom:

Rank D [+1: Rank D]

Charisma:

Rank F

Skills:

Literacy (Rank D)

Mathematics (Rank D)

Cooking (Rank F)

Customer Service (Rank D)

Data Entry and Filing (Rank B)

Packaging and Shipping (Rank D)

Home Appliance Repair (Rank F)

Pen Spinning (Rank A)

[Cold Resistance (Rank F)]

[Heat Resistance (Rank F)]

Special Skills:

Disrupt Illusion

Conjure Shield (Rank F)

Conjure Light (Rank F)

Improved Status

Summon Ledger

Remove Fatigue (Rank F)

Unique Skill:

Attract Object

Christ, thought Topher despairingly, absorbing one hit from this little fucker cost me half my MP. He wanted to give up; he ardently wished that giving up were an option. But he knew that it wasn't; so he sighed, went back to the inn, drank enough beer to restore his self-confidence, and slept. Tomorrow, he'd figure out some way to get the little bastard. How hard could it be, really?