Chapter 1: Ain't That a Kick in the Nuts
...E-Rantel...
Vorig looked around with open mouthed awe. "Huh... didn't know you could stack one building on top of another that way." He scratched the back of his head where his brown hair hung, long and loose.
He looked about through wide brown eyes, "Lot of people here too..."
"Hey! You!" Vorig turned around at the sound of the feminine voice, and looked down.
"Me?" He touched his chest with his left hand. It was a half elven woman who appeared to be roughly the same age as himself, she was a head shorter than he was, and shaped like a sprinter, with long legs for her height, a small chest, and a kind of dirty blonde hair that came with her mixed heritage.
"No, the other numbskull standing in the middle of the alley keeping me from going forward. Would you mind getting out of the way, I've got things to do." She said, tapping her foot and putting her hands on her hips. Her olive skin and hazel eyes were striking, but her impertinent tone was almost laughable.
Vorig blushed a bit, "Yeah, sorry, just I've never seen anything like this." He said as he stepped out of the alley and then out of her way. She kept looking him over.
"What, you a country kid or something?" She asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Yeah, left my father's farm to come be an adventurer." He said and puffed out his chest proudly. "Didn't know you could stack one building on top of another like this though, it's pretty amazing." He said, pointing to the two story buildings that were everywhere.
She looked at him in disbelief for a moment, and then doubled over as she laughed. "Oh... oh that is rich. Damn, kid, if you think these are amazing, you really are a bumpkin aintcha?"
He frowned, "Well, what do you want, I've never left home before."
She shrugged when she finally straightened up. "OK, I guess that's fair, so you want to be an adventurer, huh? Well you did come to the right city for that, I'll give you that much. But did you even come with a sword, any money, anything?" Her eyes raked him up and down, and he reached behind his back and brought out a short sword in its sheath.
"I brought this... and I figured I could... you know..." He held up his fist, "Punch everything else."
She looked at him blankly. "So... your plan is to use a short sword and a fist to stab and punch things to death until you're a legend, that about right?"
"Kinda..." He said and rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "But... I heard I could practice at the guild, and get really good at punching and stabbing before going and doing anything serious."
The half elf looked at him with a blank stare that told Vorig she believed he was a grade A moron.
"Well, I guess if your goal is to die young... that's a way to go. Look, do you even know where the adventurer's guild is?" She asked him with some exasperation.
"Well... no, I mean I figured it had to be close once I knew where to go, a city is just a big village, right, so how many people could be here... three hundred? Four hundred? It shouldn't be that hard to find." He said defensively as his annoyance began to grow.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep, deep breath while she put her right hand on her hip, and looked down at the ground as if his words made her head hurt.
"Damn it, kid... there's that many round you right now! This is E-Rantel, it's one of the largest cities in the Sorcerous Empire."
"OK, so four villages, and maybe eight hundred? Still, how hard can it..." Vorig said, only to trail off when she started tapping her foot in addition to the rest of her exasperated body language.
"No kid, not four villages and eight hundred people? Not even close. There are around four hundred thousand people here at any given time who live here. And almost another fifty thousand passing through, coming or going, permanently or short term."
He stared at her blankly, unable to comprehend the number she threw at him.
She finally stopped looking exasperated and annoyed and said, "Look kiddo..."
"I'm not a kid, damn it! And my name isn't 'kiddo!' I'm seventeen summers old and my name is Vorig!" He snapped with annoyance of his own at her presumptuousness.
"Fine, Vorig, listen, today is your lucky day for two reasons." She said and held up one finger, "First, because you ran into me, and I like to help decent looking idiots. Second, because I happen to also be going to the adventurer's guild."
"You're an adventurer?" He asked with more respect in his voice.
She pointed to the iron plate hanging down in front of her chest. "What do you think this is?" She asked bluntly. "And if you say boobs, I'll smack you, boy."
Vorig's eyes twinkled, "Trust me, I was 'not' going to say 'boobs'. A board... maybe. But boobs, not a chance." He laughed, and she turned beet red.
And that was when she kicked him in the balls.
He went down to his knees clutching his crotch as she stood staring down at him, "I'll have you know that I'm still growing damnit, but 'that' isn't going to get any bigger except by swelling up, which I'll make it do if you say that again!" She glared down at him as she spoke.
But Vorig managed to grin through the pain, "Hey, it made a big enough target for you to go for, course a shorty like you couldn't get much higher so..."
She glared at him as he laughed in spite of himself, and slowly stood back up again.
It gave her pause... "OK... so you've got some balls on you, I'll give you that, maybe you're not destined to have your head turned into some bandit's soup bowl. At least not right away."
"Gee, thanks, now... about those directions?" He asked, "Oh, and your name?" He asked through gritted teeth as he spread his legs a bit once on his feet again.
"Tifa." She said flatly, and then turned her back to him and waved forward ahead of herself, "Come on, this way 'Vorig."
He was glad that she was walking in front of him, as he went farther along, he realized that the buildings he'd seen before were not 'one building on top of another on a distant upswing, rather they were three or four such floors high, around him were all manner of strange creatures that he'd never seen in person and only heard of in stories. Orcs, goblins, ogres, and undead that had chilled his blood with the thrill of safe fear that could only come from stories well told. Yet nothing of what he saw, seemed to care that he was there, or that any human was around at all.
He stared with mouth agape at the clean, stone streets, the unparalleled order, and above all at the sheer pace of the massive city. "Is the whole world here?" He asked in disbelief.
"No, this is a big city, one of the biggest in the world now, but it's far from the only one, though the biggest aren't much bigger, and this one is growing rapidly." She replied without looking back at him.
"So... like ten people a week moving in? Amazing." He said with wide eyes. "My village only had that in a year."
"No..." She sighed as if she had suffered his ignorance for a lifetime, "Between births and immigrants, it's growing at hundreds per day at a minimum and possibly more. Now come on, we're almost there." She said as she picked up the pace.
He hurried to keep up with her, going from a quick walk to a kind of half jog until she led him to a huge building near what he assumed was the center of town.
The stone was polished smooth but it looked almost 'fortress' like, it screamed 'power' to the naive young man, and he froze with awe as he craned his neck to look up at the crenelation designs at the top that looked like a castle someone had once drawn a picture of for him.
She didn't really notice he'd stopped until she reached the double doors and opened the left side. She furrowed her brow when she saw he was frozen at the base of the steps. "Come on, you want to do this or what?" She asked, tapping her foot again.
"Oh, sorry!" He said hastily and jogged up the stairs and entered the building.
Around the large room there were numerous people in wildly varying types of armor and carrying a multiplicity of differing weapons. Long spears, halberds, axes and swords, to name a few. There was heavy black armor, there were men and women with hard faces that chilled Vorig's novice blood to look at, most of those wore the armor of the militant religious order of the Sorcerer King.
Suddenly... Vorig felt... very small. Tifa waved her hand in front of his face, "Hello, hello, you listening?" She asked as she stood up on her tiptoes, snapping him back to reality.
"Oh, sorry, what?" He asked as he blinked away his dazed expression.
"I said if you want to sign up, go over there." She pointed to the far left side of a long bar, it was wood polished smooth and stained a deep black, behind it various workers, from dwarves to humans, four in number at any given time, shuffling documents, stamping things off, handing coins or documents out to those who approached, that feeling of smallness didn't vanish.
He swallowed hard, but didn't move until he felt Tifa slap him on the ass, "Go on rocknuts. Get signed up already, I want to see you punch a skeleton to death already." She smirked at him arrogantly, and prodded by her half mocking smile and her entirely mocking nickname, Vorig approached the place she told him to, and stood there staring dumbly at the blank wall until an elven woman approached the place he stood at.
"Yes?" She asked, "Are you here to sign up?" She asked when she glanced at his chest and saw it plateless.
"Th-That's right." Vorig said with a vigorous nod. "See, I was the biggest and toughest kid in my village and..."
He stopped when she giggled, "You and every other lad with two hands of summers between their ears, you want to sign up, fine, but however tough you thought you were based on the twenty kids you grew up with, well... welcome to the real world." The woman said, and slid a document over the counter to him.
He looked down at it and she handed him a quill and slid a vial of ink to him. "Sign there, also initial what you want done with your body if you die, of course you can reconsider, but..." She shrugged, "nobody ever does that."
"Yeah, and I won't either." Vorig said with more boldness than he really felt, in a voice that cracked a little in spite of his best attempt at sounding manly.
He heard Tifa snort behind him, and struggled to ignore her.
The well dressed attendant behind the desk wore a maroon shirt that matched the red of her lips when they pursed together in an indulgent smile. "Of course you won't." She said sweetly as he filled out the various places on the document, signed it, and slid it back over to her.
"Now... first thing's first, I'll have to have someone more experienced than you take you through the practice dungeon, they'll serve as an escort and appraiser, and determine what plate you should start with. It also gives you a chance to earn the first tokens." She paused as he raised a hand hesitantly.
"Tokens?" He asked.
Her eyes went wide, "You asked a question, good start, most newbies don't ask, they prefer to pretend they already know."
"Well, they're idiots." He said bluntly, and was pleased when neither Tifa laughed nor the woman argued.
"Tokens," she explained, "Come in various valuations, they're not useful anywhere else outside of practice dungeons around the empire, and they're used to acquire guild exclusive items and equipment, you might have noticed some of those out here," she waved her hand out in front of her, encompassing the large hall full of adventurers, "have runic equipment, they get that by doing repeated dungeon runs. Novice dungeons can offer copper tokens, while the higher level ones offer crystal tokens... but so far nobody but Momon and Nabe have completed the crystal runs. The highest anyone else can do is Adamantite. The more tokens you acquire, the better the equipment you can afford for yourself or your team. And of course there are hidden treasures that offer small bonuses, such as items you can't just buy, or extra tokens."
"Couldn't someone do the copper one like, a lot, and trade those in for higher ranking tokens?" He asked, "or just buy higher tokens for real money from those who earned them?"
The attendant folded her arms in front of her chest and said with an almost violent fervency, "No! Tokens earned are held here and recorded, and anyone caught trying to sell them would be immediately banned from every adventurer's guild in the Empire. The Sorcerer King 'hates' what he called 'pay to win' models of progress."
"And as for doing a low level dungeon a lot of times, well that you could do, but that would be crazy, you'd have to finish a copper ranked challenge ten times to trade for a single silver token, that would take weeks, and you'd be worth going into a silver dungeon long before that unless you are just... just awful." She tittered against her will at the image of someone slogging along in such a tedious way just to 'avoid' progressing as they should.
"Anything else?" She asked with a somewhat kinder tone of voice on her pale face.
"No... just... who will take me through?" Vorig asked, but before the woman could answer, the only voice in the city he had put a name to, spoke up for her.
"I got this one Meryl, I want to watch the virgin punch a skeleton to death." Tifa laughed and took him firmly by the arm.
"I never said I'd punch a skeleton to death!" He said snarkily as he followed where she pulled him.
"What were you going to use that closed fist for, to jerk one off?" She asked, and laughed at him, "If you're that much of a necrophile, damn, we've got vampires here."
"No I'm not going to JERK OFF A SKELETON!" He shouted, before realizing he'd shouted only the worst possible set of words, and made the entire room go very quiet and stare at him.
He turned beet red and rushed out the door as Tifa laughed while following behind him.
"Country kids... kinky lot." Somebody murmured, and he froze, almost going back, before the laughter behind him drove him forward again.
He stomped with annoyance down the stairs, and only stopped at the base of them when he remembered he had no idea where to go. "This way kiddo," the half elf woman said and took his arm again, leading him around the side of the building and over to a large stone door that had an angled stone shape behind it that told even him that... this led down.
"Ready Vorig?" She asked with a grin, "You can still go home if you want."
He put his hand on the door, frowned at her for a moment, and pushed it open.
"You have to pull..." She said, and he blushed and reached down for the handle he now noticed, and pulled it open.
Long dark stairs presented themselves, and along the wall, faint candles danced, casting shadows from their tiny flames, to dance on the wall behind them.
He took out his sword and held it in front of himself as he descended into the darkness.
Tifa followed behind, and teased him no more, suddenly she felt different. Gone was the mocking 'senior' adventurer that had kicked his balls and teased him from the moment they'd met, now she was every inch the professional and followed closely behind him.
He reached the base of the stairs, and looked around as he realized a great wide room had opened up. Dull brown rock made up the walls, and the same made up the floor. He listened closely for any hint of danger, and took a deep breath through his nose, then slowly exhaled out his mouth, making almost no sound as he crept forward with goosebumps rising from his flesh.
A shrill scream echoed from far down a hall on the other side of the room. It came again, and again, and again. And in between screams was the sound of running feet.
Vorig tensed for a moment, and then charged to the opening of the hallway and stopped where he was, skeletons came into view as candles sprang to life by magic, illuminating the hall and revealing a single skeleton holding a rusty iron blade.
Its mouth was open and it screamed again, its sword went up, and Vorig hastily raised his blade to block the strike, and when he'd done so, he immediately tried to punch the skeleton in the jaw, only for it to bite down on his hand and hold him fast as it began to wave its blade like a hammer overhead, caught firmly on the defensive, Vorig fell down under the heavier blows of the weakest of the undead, and desperately swung his blade wildly in front of him, only for the skeleton's sword to come down at his head.
He shut his eyes at the moment before death... and then slowly opened them to find the skeleton had frozen with the sword tip an inch from Vorig's forehead.
"Well... that was embarrassing." Tifa said as she went behind him and the skeleton ran back down the hall the way it had come. He lay there, breathing hard and with his eyes wide and his face white with fear. He rested his left hand over his heart and felt it pounding in his breast.
"Oh god, dear Lord Ainz, patron god of courage... I've never been so scared in all my fucking life..." His breathing was rapid and his look unfocused, "I really thought I was going to die just then."
Tifa went to his side and held out her hand, "No, the only part of you that died was your dignity...well unless we count your pants," she wrinkled her nose, "I think those are done for too."
He took her hand reluctantly, and allowed her to help him up. "Jokes aside, you didn't do badly at all."
He frowned, "You don't have to patronize me. I lost to the first skeleton."
"True." She said, but raised one finger and pointed it at him. "But... you appraised the area around you first, and when you recognized an approaching threat you went to block the entry so that you couldn't be surrounded. You also blocked a few blows, a lot of people quit at the first skeleton. They cut and run, have their document shredded, and go do something else with the rest of their lives. You 'tried' to fight, you just don't know how... not yet at least."
"I guess you're right." Vorig said through ragged breaths as he hunched over in front of her and stabbed the tip of his sword into the stone to prop himself up.
"Solid copper rank performance, congratulations, you just need some help, a team of adventurers to work with, practice with, and improve with, and in no time at all you'll be ready to go on real adventures." Tifa said encouragingly as she clapped him hard on the shoulder.
"Soun-Sounds great b-but hey ah, where will I find teammates for that?" He asked as he tried to stand up straight again.
She put her hand over her chest and looked smugly at him, "You're weak and inexperienced but you've got guts, instincts, and no bad habits yet, and even luckier for you, this skilled ranger is in the market for a bull headed country boy with balls of solid rock."
He looked at her in uncertainty for a moment, and she gave him half a glare, "If you say anything about my chest again, I will crack that pair of rocks you're carrying around down there with my next kick."
He put away his sword and raised his hands defensively. "No no, I'm just surprised but..." he thought it over for a moment, and then stuck his hand out, "Thanks... Tifa, I appreciate the offer, and I accept, until I get a bigger offer... better offer." He winked at her as he 'corrected' his mistake, and this time, she laughed long and hard, before she kicked him in the balls again.
"You know Vorig," she said as he went down again, "they say the life of an adventurer is a journey of a thousand miles in the first year... and if your first step on that is taken with sore nuts, I guess the rest won't seem so hard."
He grinned as if to spite the pain, and held his hand out to let her help him up again.
"I can't wait. But I really do want to change these pants first." he said through the grimace, and she let him put his arm over her shoulder as she helped him back up the stairs and out onto the grounds of the guild.