Chapter 12: Gretel’s Story

As Lexi and Gretel made their way from the battle’s wreckage to the city gates, the paladin worked to quickly devise a stratagem so that she could elicit information from NPCs like the mage without necessarily revealing her status as a PC from another world all together. It was so simple that she had to hold back from slapping herself in the forehead when the idea finally came to her.

I’ll just tell them I’m a wandering knight from a different city, Lexi decided. I mean, shit, I can probably just use my actual hometown and that’ll sound super exotic to the NPCs here. Anyway, aren’t the best lies ones that’re grounded in truth? This way, I’ll probably be less likely to slip up and forget what stories I’ve told to whom.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Lexi ventured. “What city is it that we’re heading towards, anyway? I’ve been wandering around in the wilds for so long, I’m actually not quite sure where I even am right now.”

Gretel looked wide-eyed at the paladin, mouth agape.

“H-how…did you even come through the King’s Wood alive, much less as unscathed as you appear to be? The ring of greenskins surrounding the capital has closed in so tightly that none dare even pass through the gates unless in the company of a seasoned party of adventurers. The whole kingdom has grown utterly perilous!”

Fuck! Maybe this wasn’t the best idea after all.

“Well,” Lexi said as a blush spread over her face and bust. “To be perfectly honest…when I said ‘wilds’ I wasn’t actually talking about the forests here.” Scrambling, Lexi thought of a way to smooth this over without drawing too much attention to her singular situation as a PC. “I wasn’t sure if you would believe the truth, but here goes. I’m actually pretty new at this whole adventuring thing — this fight was my first.”

“What!?” Gretel gasped. “B-but, you were so amazing back there! I mean, it was my first time too, and I couldn’t even stop the goblins from r-ra–”

Not wanting the defiled young mage to relive that experience any further, Lexi gently shushed the girl, placing a finger on her lips.

“Let’s leave all of that behind us for now. I don’t think it worked out they way that any of us hoped, but there’s no use in dwelling on our failures. We came through it alive, and are stronger from it. We might want to think about where things went wrong before we plan our next adventure, just so we don’t make any of the same…what’s the word…tactical missteps. But, it won’t do either of us any good to dwell on how we fucked things up. Deal?”

Gretel’s eyes shone with admiration for the paladin. The faintest trace of tears rimmed her clear blue orbs. But, these were tears brought on my gladness, not despair. A warm smile lit her face, and the young mage sniffled, giving Lexi a nod of assent.

“So anyway,” Lexi continued, hoping to leave the goblin debacle in their wake for a while at least. “Like I was saying, this was my first real adventure. I’d done a bunch of…uh…training before, but never for real.”

The lie came easily to her lips because it really wasn’t that far off from the truth. After all, was it not because of all her borderline obsessive time spent playing J-RPGs that the game’s AI had selected Lexi to be a player? It was hardly even a stretch to recast that experience as training, for Gretel’s benefit.

“But, you’re not from Astyanax?” Gretel asked, head cocked.

That must be the name of the city, Lexi reasoned.

“No,” the paladin shook her head. “My city is, I think, probably really far from here. I doubt you’d have heard of it, since I’d never heard of yours. I was actually brought here by a faerie, just barely before I heard the battle sounds from you and the other fighter.”

“Roland…” Gretel said sadly, her voice dropping with subdued pain at the mention of his name. But, to her credit, the mage blinked away any tears of sadness that might be threatening, and powered through the memory, heeding her new leader’s advice. “I’ve heard about such creatures, but I’ve never seen one myself. We’ve got a decent amount of representation the other goodly races in the capital — the ones our kingdom is on good terms with, at least. But faeries are more like something you’d hear about in stories.”

“It’s the same where I’m from,” Lexi agreed. “I grew up with stories about the faeries, but I’d never even thought them real until today. I don’t really even know why I’m here, in your kingdom, except that the faerie told me I’d been chosen to take on quests against the monsters here because of my…erm…training.”

“Wow,” the mage said wistfully. “That’s so romantic! It’s like something out of one of the great heroes’ legends.”

“I don’t know about romantic,” Lexi said with a grin. “But, it’s definitely pretty fucking weird. Enough about me though, how did you end up in an adventuring party anyway?”

Seeing a look of concern subtly darken the mage’s face, Lexi quickly backpedaled. “N-not that I don’t think you should be an adventurer or anything. I’m just wondering what made you want to strike out, since it was your first time and all.”

“My story’s not nearly as exciting as yours, but I’ll tell it if you want.”

“I do!” Lexi said emphatically. “If we’re going to be a team, we’ve got to get to know each other.”

Gretel smiled shyly, a blush spreading across her pretty face. And though her beauty was still marred by the dried coating of goblin blood and cum, Lexi felt a strong surge of affection — both emotional and physical — for the girl.

“You see, I had just joined the Adventurer’s Guild a few days ago. It was the first thing I did after I turned eighteen — that’s the age limit for guild membership here.”

“Adventurer’s Guild?” Lexi queried, her interest piqued.

“Oh! Yeah, I guess they probably don’t have that where you’re from. The guild is really only a guild in name, since there’s no period of indentureship for new members like with most of the real guilds. But, members are ranked according to their expertise like with other guilds. New members like me come in as novice adventurers. Then, depending on how many quests you complete, you can move up the ranks through journeyman, master, or even grandmaster.”

“Interesting,” Lexi mused. “How does the guild decide who moves up from one rank to the next? I can’t imagine that they’d just take your word for it that you’ve completed whatever quest you’re supposed to have done. But, we aren’t bringing back any disgusting trophies like ears or heads — thankfully — to prove that we killed all those fuckers back there.”

“That’s actually one of the most ingenious things about the guild’s system,” Gretel said animatedly. “Each guild hall has a collection of specifically enchanted books that is used to record all of the quests. If your party is looking to take on a new quest, you can flip through that month’s book to see what’s available. Once your group selects a quest, you write down the names of your party members in the section under the quest’s description. And when you get back, each member writes out an account of their role in the adventure. The book’s enchantment — this is the best part — has a really cool lie-detection spell that will automatically cross out anything that isn’t true. So, every account in the ledger is effectively guaranteed to be accurate. It has to be, since the guild pays a bounty for each completed quest. Also, at the end of the month, the guild overseers tally up the deeds of each party and determine whether or not any adventurers should be moved up from one rank to the next.”

“You’re right,” the paladin said smiling. “That’s pretty goddamn ingenious.”

Gretel nodded happily in agreement.

“But, you were telling me about why you joined the guild,” Lexi prompted, glad for the information on the Adventurer’s Guild, but looking to steer the conversation back to Gretel herself. The paladin hadn’t been lying when she told the young mage that she wanted to know about her. The young mage was already starting to grow on Lexi.

“Right!” Gretel said with a suppressed giggle. “I can ramble on about interesting spellcraft all day. So feel free to steer me back on course if I ever get real far off track.”

“Noted,” Lexi said, returning the girl’s smile.

“Where was I? Oh yeah! So, I joined the guild right after my birthday. Before that, I had been apprenticed to an archmage who runs one of the small magic schools in the city. You’ve probably got similar kinds of schools where you’re from for magic users as well as fighters.”

“Naturally,” the futanari lied.

“My parents had sent me to study with Master Kreutz when I was nine. He was nice enough, and I did learn a lot from him. But, the routine of the school just got to be so monotonous and dreary that I felt like I would just explode if I didn’t get out and see the world for myself. Years of doing nothing but reading and studying made me go a little stir-crazy, I think. So yeah, as soon as I could join the guild, I did.”

“I can totally sympathize,” Lexi commiserated. “Where I come from we’re typically in schools from five until at least eighteen. Although most kids will go to col– err…to an advanced kind of school for another four years after that. That’s where I was when the faerie snatched me away, and I can tell you that I was damned tired of school too.”

Gretel nodded emphatically, smiling up at the slightly taller paladin. “I felt like I’d been preparing for something my entire life, but that I’d never actually done anything. So, as soon as I had the opportunity to go and do something real, I jumped on it.”

“How’d you get linked up with the other two adventurers?”

“Every guild hall has a a big tavern where adventurers can get food and drink. Most of them just end up handing their quest bounties right back to the guild in exchange for beer, but it’s also the main place where solo adventurers can link up and for larger parties. Since I didn’t know anyone in the guild at all, I just kinda hung out there for a few evenings, eavesdropping on as many conversations as I could, looking for a party that needed a mage. After I while, I finally heard Roland and Heinrich lamenting over the fact that their party’s mage had called it quits, and wondering how they were going to complete the quest that the three of them had signed up for.”

“Ah, so you guys had all just met each other?”

“Yeah,” the mage nodded. “And in my haste to join any party, I made the foolish mistake of binding myself to one that had taken on a quest that was way too advanced for a total novice like me.”

Furrowing her brow at this comment, Lexi asked, “How are adventurers supposed to know what a given quest’s difficulty level is supposed to be?”

“Oh, that’s easy. In the book, each quest’s description gives guidance for the numbers and ranks of adventurers that it should take to complete it. Then, bounties are calculated based on the quest’s total difficulty.”

Lexi nodded in silent acknowledgment, not wanting to interrupt the young mage.

“If I had spent just a little more time looking over the quest myself, I probably wouldn’t have joined up with them at all. They’d been on a handful of other quests as a party before this, but they were all really small things, because Roland and Heinrich were still novice-ranked adventurers just like me. What I didn’t realize was that they were looking for a big payout, and had taken on a quest that the guild recommended by done by a party of journeyman-ranked adventurers.”

“Fuck…” Lexi whispered.

In a flash, she understood then exactly what had happened to the party. They had been outclassed from the very start. This, however, got the logic juices flowing in the paladin’s mind. Did Felicity just happen to know that this party was in trouble, and created an entry portal for Lexi nearby? Or, did the faerie actively orchestrate the scenario beforehand, knowing that the portal location was fixed, and that she’d be calling for Lexi at some predetermined time?

These questions of predetermination within an AI’s game construct were far larger than Lexi was prepared to deal with while on the road and in the midst of a conversation, however. She put a mental “pin” in the topic, fully intending to come back to it later, when she had some mental leisure time to poke at the problem from all angles.

Just then, both Lexi’s recursive loop of concentration was broken by a happy sounding cry from Gretel.

“Oh! Here it is,” the mage said happily. Lexi looked to see the girl pointing to a large stream just a dozen or so paces off the side of the road. The clear and lustrous waters looked more inviting than any shower or bathtub Lexi had ever seen. With smiles shared between them, the paladin and mage turned off the road, heading for the stream’s shore — their immediate future filled with some much needed bathing.