Chapter 3: The Puddle and the Pest
"Eight bowls, Royson! And extra fermented kimchi! I can feel my stamina bar crying out for the spicy crunch!" Susan declared, her voice echoing off the stone walls of a narrow alleyway.
Royson pinched the bridge of his nose, his regal patience fraying. "Susan, for the last time, the sensory feedback of consuming eight bowls of udon in a single sitting is… it's statistically grotesque. You are a Level 40 Archer, not a competitive eating simulation."
"And you," Agamenticus snapped, his Green eyes flashing as he adjusted his tunic. The dragon horns and talons had vanished the moment they crossed the town threshold, but his arrogance remained at a steady Lvl 18,523. "You will cease discussing human digestive processes. We have a mission. My internal compass—now tuned by the first shard—is pinging. The next fragment is close. Irritatingly close."
He pointed a finger toward the South Gate, back toward the Tutorial Fields they had just sprinted through.
"It's in the mud," the Dragon King said, his lip curling in disgust. "Specifically, a localized accumulation of stagnant rainwater. A puddle."
The Tutorial Fields: Low-Stakes, High-Stress
The trio marched back out into the sun-drenched meadows. The Tutorial Fields were designed to be welcoming, filled with colorful flowers and the occasional, non-aggressive Lvl 1 Slime that looked like a bouncing lemon drop.
"There," Agamenticus commanded, stopping before a particularly unremarkable, muddy depression in the middle of a dirt path.
The water was murky, reflecting the bright blue sky. But to Agamenticus's eyes, a faint, rhythmic pulse of blue light was visible beneath the surface. It was a humiliating placement for a piece of his divine essence—a literal roadside puddle.
"Susan, retrieve it," Agamenticus ordered, crossing his arms. "I refuse to submerge my hands in such a primitive liquid."
"On it!" Susan chirped. She knelt down, splashing mud onto her leather boots. "Wait, I think I see it! It's stuck under a—whoa!"
The ground beneath them suddenly shuddered. A deep, wet gurgle erupted from the center of the puddle.
"Move back!" Royson shouted, pulling Susan by her collar just as the mud began to rise and solidify into a towering, gelatinous mass.
SYSTEM MESSAGE: AREA BOSS ENCOUNTER— THE SLIME EMPEROR(LVL10)
The Slime Emperor was a massive, translucent green blob wearing a tiny, flickering crown of golden pixels. It wasn't "dangerous" to a normal player, but to Agamenticus, it was a catastrophe.
"A Level 10 Boss," Royson hissed, raising his staff. "Its ATK is 35. My Lord, your Defense is only 25. If it lands a jump-slam, the unmitigated damage could trigger the deletion protocol!"
Agamenticus went pale. "A puddle-dwelling gelatinous blob is going to be my executioner? This is an insult to my entire lineage!"
The Slime Emperor let out a squelch and prepared to launch itself.
"Don't worry!" Susan yelled, fumbling for her bow. "I'll just—wait, where's my quiver? Oh no, I left it at the udon stall!"
"You WHAT?!" Royson and Agamenticus screamed in unison.
The Slime Emperor began to vibrate, its tiny crown glowing. It was about to leap directly onto the Dragon King.
The Slime Emperor launched.
It was a slow, majestic, and terrifyingly wobbly arc of green gelatin. To a normal player, it was a joke. To Agamenticus, it was a five-ton wrecking ball aimed directly at his fragile code.
"TEMPORAL FLICKER!" Agamenticus shrieked, his voice reaching a pitch usually reserved for terrified choirboys.
The world stuttered. For a fraction of a second, the Dragon King became a blur of blue light, reappearing three feet to the left just as the Slime Emperor slammed into the mud with a sound like a giant wet sponge hitting a tile floor. Splat.
"Stay back, you pulsating heap of waste!" Agamenticus cried, scrambling backward with zero dignity, his boots slipping in the mud. He wasn't the menacing Final Boss; he was a man being chased by a very large bowl of Jell-O. "Royson! Destroy it! Burn it! Delete it from the annals of history!"
The Slime Emperor rotated its crown, let out a gurgle of pure, slow-motion malice, and prepared for a second leap.
"I—I'm a Cleric, my Lord! My offensive capabilities are statistically negligible!" Royson shouted, frantically cycling through his menu. "I only have a base-level utility spell!"
Royson pointed his staff, his knuckles white. "MINOR CINDER!"
A tiny, pathetic spark of orange light—barely the size of a match flame—flickered from the tip of his staff. It drifted lazily through the air, looking like it might go out if a stiff breeze hit it. It landed squarely on the Slime Emperor's crown.
There was a moment of absolute silence.
Then, the game's elemental physics engine encountered a freak calculation. The Slime Emperor was made of highly flammable marsh gas (a rare environmental trait for this specific spawn). The "Minor Cinder" hit a pocket of concentrated methane.
FBOOM.
The Slime Emperor didn't just die; it disintegrated into a pillar of shimmering green light and vaporized slime. A shower of gold coins and a single, muddy Defense Shard rained down from the sky.
"YES!" Susan screamed, jumping up and down and pumping her fists as if she'd just soloed a world boss. "Did you see that?! We totally smoked him! I totally distracted him with my… my tactical lack of arrows! High five, boys! We are the greatest team in Aethelgard!"
Royson, still holding his staff in a defensive position, stared at the spot where the boss had been. He slowly turned to Susan, his face turning a dangerous shade of red.
"'We'?" Royson repeated, his voice trembling with academic fury. "'We' did nothing, Susan! I cast the spell. I adjusted for the atmospheric methane density—completely by accident, mind you—and I saved the Dragon King from being crushed into a decorative floor rug!"
"Hey, I was the emotional support!" Susan countered, crossing her arms. "Plus, my presence increased the party's luck stat. You wouldn't have gotten that crit without my vibes, Roy-boy."
"'Vibes' are not a recognized stat in the G-Force manual!" Royson barked, stepping toward her. "You are a liability! You are a walking, talking repair bill! You didn't even have your quiver! If we were in a high-stakes raid, your 'vibes' would be the last thing we heard before the screen went black!"
"Whatever, you're just grumpy because your fire spell is the size of a birthday candle," Susan smirked.
"A candle that produced a one-hundred-percent kill rate!" Royson roared, winning the verbal exchange by sheer volume and the undeniable fact that he was the only one who actually did anything. "Now pick up the shard before I use my next 'candle' on your backpack!"
Agamenticus, meanwhile, was frantically wiping a speck of slime off his sleeve, his eyes fixed on the muddy shard.
"Cease your bickering, brats," the Dragon King muttered, though his hands were still shaking. "The insect is dead. Retrieve my shard. And Royson… never speak of the sound I made when it jumped. That is a royal decree."
Royson, still seething over the vibes comment, snatched the muddy Defense Core Shard from the ground. Agamenticus, meanwhile, was already absorbing the fragment, his Green eyes gaining a slight, stabilizing metallic sheen as his Defense jumped from 25 to 40.
"Another patch applied," Agamenticus announced, dusting off his hands. "Let the insects rejoice. Now, back to Sasabaru for a proper assessment. We move fast. I want no further chance encounters with methane-fueled confectionery."
The trio quickly headed back along the path toward the Sasabaru Town gate. They hadn't gone far when they encountered another group, distinct from Pip's scattered lackeys.
This group was led by an older player, perhaps in his late twenties, who carried himself with a forced, outdated dignity. He wore a ridiculously ornate shirt with exaggerated, frilly cuffs—a clear attempt to mimic antique nobility—and he was currently giving a stiff, boring lecture to a circle of bored-looking, low-level players. This was the mentor to [PiptheGreat].
His player tag read [HonneOfNagasaki].
"...and thus, the true noble spirit is not found in the gold, but in the carriage of one's shoulders!" Honne pontificated loudly. "The nobility of the Honne line, despite my current… temporary common status, maintains this posture. Now, observe the correct way to ignore a Cleric."
He chose the worst possible moment to demonstrate, as Royson stormed past. Honne placed a hand on his hip and sneered, noticing Royson's pristine robes and high-strung demeanor.
"Ah, a Cleric. Perfect. Note the subservient aura of the healing class. They are meant to be seen and not heard, attending only to the needs of the warrior elite."
Royson, still burning from the Slime incident and Pip's previous insults, completely lost his composure. The combination of fake noble pretension and the denigration of his class was too much.
"Enough!" Royson exploded, pointing his Cleric staff directly at Honne's excessively frilly shirt. "I have endured the fake aristocracy of a child and I will not endure the arrogance of a disgraced Honne! This is not nobility, this is cosmetic arrogance!"
Royson channeled a flicker of mana. He wasn't aiming to kill, just to humiliate.
"MINOR CINDER!"
This time, the spell was fully intentional, if still pathetically small. The match-sized flame landed squarely on the overly starched frill of Honne's shirt cuff.
FWHOOMP.
The delicate frills, made of cheap, highly combustible VRMMO cotton, flared instantly, disintegrating the front of Honne's shirt and exposing his neck and collarbone.
Honne didn't take physical damage, but his embarrassment was total. Exposed prominently on his neck, just below the jawline, was a ridiculous, brightly colored, pixelated tattoo: "I HEART LORDS."
Silence fell over the Tutorial Fields. The surrounding players, who had been listening out of boredom, now burst into vicious, mocking laughter.
Honne clapped his hands over the tattoo, his face flushing crimson—a reaction far more visceral than any damage an enemy could inflict. The disgrace of the former baron's son, exiled to commoner status, was now public.
"You… you common Cleric! This is defamation! I will report this to the—to the authorities!" Honne squeaked, abandoning all posture. He quickly gathered the remnants of his dignity and bolted, running in the opposite direction toward the deepest part of the woods, his followers scrambling after him.
Agamenticus watched the entire spectacle, a genuine smirk stretching his lips. He even let out a small, quiet, amused "Hmph."
"That," Agamenticus commented, his Green eyes fixed on the retreating figure, "was perhaps the most satisfying use of a Tier Zero spell I have ever witnessed. And I have seen stars explode." He glanced at Royson. "A Level 1 Cleric spell used for maximum social disruption. Well done, brat."
Royson felt a strange mix of satisfaction and horror. "My Lord, I—I think I need to sit down. That was entirely inappropriate and reckless."
"Reckless, yes. But effective," Agamenticus said, turning his back on the humiliated player. "We now have two new, petty insects who will try to annoy us to death. Honne will likely now assume a more subtle, vindictive approach than his pupil, Pip. We should monitor the Nagasaki data logs for a sharp increase in false reports."
"Noted," Royson said, finally starting to feel the thrill of chaos that Susan lived for.
The trio, now carrying a combined defense of 40 and two new, highly motivated antagonists, quickly melted back into the safety of the Sasabaru Town crowds, ready to plan their next move.