Chapter 11: Leveling Up

“This’ll be over soon,” Lexi said. “I know it really hurts, and this is probably going to make it worse for a few seconds. But, I promise I’m going to make sure you’re OK.”

The sobbing girl’s tear streaked face looked up into Lexi’s, her bright blue eyes puffy and red from crying through the torturous rape she had endured, and the continued waves of pain emanating from the two swords which yet pierced her wrists. She sniffled, and gave a stiff nod, mustering as much courage as she could bring to bear.

“Your name’s…Gretel, right?”

“Y-yes,” the girl stuttered. “Gretel Schultz.”

“I’m Lexi, and I would say that it’s nice to meet you,” the paladin quipped. “But, to be honest, these circumstances are about as fucked as I could imagine. I’m a little banged up myself, but the job these little fuckers did on your wrists looks way worse than mine. I’ve got enough juice left to cast my healing spell on you twice, so I’m sure that’ll be enough for us to get you through the worst of it. The only thing is, I’ve definitely got to pull these goddamn swords out of your arms first, and that’s going to suck.”

“J-just d-do it…quick,” Gretel said through gritted teeth. “I can t-take a little more p-pain.”

“Attagirl!”

Without anymore hesitation, Lexi gripped the hilts of both swords and slid them free, trying as much as she could to match the angle of penetration so as to not further injure the mage. Nonetheless, Gretel screamed in pain. Fresh streams of blood began welling from her wrists as she collapsed onto the ground.

Heal Minor Wounds!

You Healed Gretel!

+5 HP (7/20)

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Lexi whispered. “You were almost gone. Let’s give that another go.”

Heal Minor Wounds!

You Healed Gretel!

+5 HP (12/20)

“T-hank you…Lexi,” Gretel cooed. Her wounds had almost entirely healed, the enormous gashes in her wrists knitting themselves back together before Lexi’s very eyes. There were still a half-dozen other small wounds marring the girl’s soft ample flesh, but the worst of them had been healed by Lexi’s miraculous intercession.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lexi said with a genuine smile. “I’m pretty new at being a paladin, but I think that rescuing people is, like, a big part of the job.”

“Well,” the mage said seriously, “it means a lot to me. You didn’t have to risk your life fighting all these goblins, and you didn’t have to save me from getting r-raped to death…but you did. And, for that, I pledge myself to you. I’m n-new at adventuring myself too — this was actually my first excursion from the city. I…we…had no idea what we were g-getting into with the g-goblins.”

Lexi took the girl’s hand in her own, helping her roll into a more comfortable resting position on her side.

“Why don’t you relax for a few,” Lexi said soothingly. “I’m in no condition to walk right now anyway with this leg, but I’ll keep watch over you if you want to rest a bit. I should be able to heal my leg in about two hours, so we can head out together then.”

“Thank you, Lexi. I really mean it. And, I meant what I said about my pledge. Consider me your mage, poor as I might be, from here on out.”

You Gained an NPC Follower!

Gretel Schultz

“Deal,” Lexi said with a grin. “But only if you lay down and recuperate for a bit.”

Gretel nodded weakly and closed her eyes. Before Lexi could blink, she was already deep asleep, the healing magic still wrapping the young mage in its tight embrace. With Gretel now settled, Lexi gave her attention to a window that had popped up, which appeared to be a summary description of the quest in terms of her character points.

Attribute

Modification

New Value

Reason

Experience Points

+250 (x7)

2,250

Defeated 7 Goblins

Experience Points

+500 (x2)

3,250

Simultaneously Defeated 2 Goblins

Experience Points

+500

3,750

Gained 1 NPC Follower

Experience Points

+1,250

5,000

Completed Quest

Level

+1

2

Gained 5,000 XP

Hit Points

+5

25 (+5/hr)

Leveled Up

Spell Points

+1

6 (+1/hr)

Leveled Up

Attack Points

+2

12+2

Leveled Up

Defense Points

+1

11+3

Leveled Up

Mind-Break Points

+1

6+1 (+1/hr)

Leveled Up

Reading through the catalog, Lexi was struck by the enormity of everything she had done in the melee. Nine goblins single-handedly was no mean feat. Two out of the three adventurers in Gretel’s party had not made it out alive, she had come pretty close to dying herself! So, Lexi was glad to see that the experience points given by the system seemed to reward her actions commensurately, taking pride in the fact that she had not only completed her first quest, but had also gone up a level — boosting all of her key attributes.

“Gotta remember that I get double points for wasting two fuckers at once,” she chuckled quietly to herself. Satisfied with her increased stats, Lexi mentally cleared the menu from her field of vision, only to see another alert pop up into view.

Since there was no further information on the alert, Lexi dismissed it and called up her spell menu to see what the addition to her repertoire was.

Level

Spell

SP

1

Holy Illumination

1

1

Heal Minor Wounds

2

2

Holy Fuck

4

Giggling at the new spell’s name, Lexi “clicked” into the spell to see the full description.

Spell Attribute

Description

Name

Holy Fuck

Level

2

Spell Points

4

Duration

N/A

Range

Touch

Requirements

Caster must orgasm through direct sexual contact with target

Effects

Automatically triggers an orgasm in the target, adding a +4 bonus to the MP damage inflicted on the target

“Wow! That…kinda crazy.”

Still, she mused to herself, if my next encounter is less combat oriented and more on the lewd side, this could be a real ace in the hole.

The fact that the game had selected this spell for her — and not something more directly associated with combat — told Lexi to expect a quest that might have her thrusting something other than a broadsword. Still, it was hard for her to even think about anything remotely sexual as soon as she scanned the scene of utter devastation around her and Gretel. The bodies of eight goblins and three humans all lay in various stages of death and dismemberment, like something from the final scene of a horror film.

Lexi got to her feet with no small amount of effort and limped around the carnage, trying not to step into any pools of blood or piles of viscera that littered the clearing. What she was looking for was some kind of canteen or water skin. Not only was she desperately thirsty after so much physical exertion, but she was extremely eager to was off as much of the goblin blood as she could from her skin and armor. They would want to find a creek or river to bathe in eventually, but Lexi was willing to take any little bit of help at this point.

As luck would have it, the warrior she had fought alongside had a large fat skin slung through his belt. Thankfully, the goblin’s blade that had eviscerated the man hadn’t pierced the vessel. All the same, retrieving it required Lexi to get far closer to a corpse than she ever had in her old life — and ever really wanted to again.

After quenching her thirst, Lexi found a few scraps of cloth, and spent the next two hours meticulously cleaning herself and her equipment. She dressed her wounds as best she could with some additional strips of wet fabric, trusting that she would be able to heal them once her spell points had regenerated enough to cast another healing spell. Since she did not have any kind of watch or other way to pull up a clock, so far as she knew, Lexi kept refreshing her class attribute table at regular intervals, watching the spell and hit points regenerate at what felt like an abysmally slow pace.

Once the two hours had finally elapsed and she had recovered two spell points, Lexi held her hands over the most serious wounds and cast the spell. As the intervening time had also resulted in a recovery of ten hit points, the spell brought Lexi all the way up to hew new full strength.

You Healed Yourself!

+5 HP (25/25)

Gretel awoke then, roused by the intonation of Lexi’s healing spell, looking worlds better than she had two hours prior. Though still covered in the grime of the encounter’s unholy mixture of blood, cum, sweat, and tears — Lexi was glad to see a genuine smile behind the pretty girl’s clear blue eyes.

“Feeling better?” Lexi asked.

“Much!” answered the mage in a chipper voice. She ran her fingers through her wavy pink locks, scratching her head sleepily. “How are you? That wound in your leg looked pretty serious.”

Lexi was just in the process of removing the makeshift dressings she had applied, and showed Gretel the fully healed spot on her thigh where the dagger had pierced her.

“Good as new. I found some water while you were sleeping. I didn’t go through your gear to check since you looked like you needed the rest, but if you need some, feel free to take what you want.”

“Mmm, yes. I didn’t actually realize how thirsty I was until you said something.” Lexi handed her the water skin, and the mage drank deeply.

“I cleaned myself up as best I could,” Lexi said to the girl while she drank. “But…you’re going to need a bit more than a few dabs of water to get clean.”

Looking down at herself, nearly covered from head to toe in goblin blood and other even less savory fluids, Gretel’s eyes goggled. She opened her mouth to say something, but lost the words, and ended up snapping her mouth shut so quickly that it made an audible pop. For some reason, Lexi found this tableau just too absurd to be anything other than darkly hilarious. A fit of irrepressible giggles started bubbling up, and by the time she realized it was coming, there was no stopping it.

“Heh heh,” the paladin snickered at first, the giggles rapidly transforming into full on gales of laughter. Gretel’s face went red at first, embarrassment washing over her at the thought that she might be the butt of some joke. However, another glance at the disheveled appearances of both her and her savior caused the mage to realize that the situation itself was the joke. Glad to have something to bring laughter back into her heart after her ordeal with the goblins, Gretel joined in heartily.

United through sharing in the hilarity of the complete and utter absurdity of the scenario in which they found themselves, the mage and paladin — already technically bonded as main character and NPC follower — began forming a bond of friendship. This was a bond not only informed by their shared trials against the goblin horror, but also in their ability to find levity and joy in what might have been a dark and dismal time for both of them.

“We should probably start making our way back to the city,” Gretel said once the mutual laughter finally subsided. “It’ll be dark before too long, and I don’t think either of us wants to run into anymore greenskins today — especially not in their element.”

“Agreed,” Lexi nodded. “Hopefully, we can find a stream or something on the way so that we can get cleaned up before we reach the city gates.”

This being a medieval themed world, Lexi assumed that the city would be set up like a typical curtain walled town with gates and guard. But, she realized in that moment that she did not really know anything about the part of Aeternia in which she and her new follower found themselves adventuring. Also unsure about how Gretel would react to Lexi’s complete absence of knowledge about even simple thing such as where she was, made the paladin think that it would be most prudent to elicit this information without drawing too much attention to the anomalous nature of her position as a player recently transported into this world from Earth.

Gretel might be an NPC in this world, but the intensely real nature of everything she had experienced here made Lexi extremely hesitant to think of the mage — or really any NPCs — as being mere automatons. Mentally, she began to bracket the PC and NPC distinction as having less to do with one’s consciousness or agency, but more so with the nature of a person’s entrance into the world, as well as their self-awareness of the nature of this world itself as being an ARMRPG.

“I’m pretty sure I remember seeing a creek about a mile East of here, just off the main path,” Gretel said.

“Perfect, let’s salvage whatever gear we can and head out.”

Together, the mage and paladin set about the grim task of raiding the bodies of Gretel’s fallen companions, so as not to waste any valuable equipment. Not wanting the fallen adventurers’ weapons to fall into the hands of any greenskins, Lexi scavenged a few strips of leather and bound their swords to her own massive blade’s sheath. Additionally, they were also able to salvage another water skin as well as several days’ worth of rations, which Gretel collected into a leather pack she wore on her back.

Hesitating to leave the corpses of the two brave — if foolhardy — fighters to be mixed with those of the slain goblins, Lexi and Gretel dragged the men into the woods. They had not the time or energy to dig even shallow graves for the two, or to cover them in makeshift cairns. So, the paladin and mage resigned themselves to simply arranging the two bodies next to one another, giving each warrior as much dignity in death as the situation allowed.

The mood sobered, Lexi and Gretel set out, leaving the remains of the massacred goblins in their wake.